Youthful faces below the caps watched him. Shaking hands held the newly forged swords, and Harald sensed their fear as much in the way they held these weapons as in the way they watched him.
He also realised that his appearance had given him away. There was no hiding the nature of the beast, for the people of the northlands were too familiar with the wild savagery of the Berserks to be unable to discern one, even below the thick caking of salt that clogged the strands of his face and hair, and caked the dark shirt and breeks of the Viking.
Possibly it was his eyes that gave him away, for the eyes of a Berserker were
always more bear than man, and Harald knew well that his appearance was no exception.
‘I only need food,’ called Harald as the two young warriors drew near. They stopped as he spoke, glanced at each other, then stared back at the Berserker. ‘Food,’ Harald repeated, as much for the benefit of those who listened and watched as for those who threatened him. ‘And drink, and a horse, and enough to keep me alive for twenty days. This is all I need, and then I’ll be gone. There’s no reason to be afraid.’
‘No reason to be afraid of a Berserker?’ chided one of the young men before him. He seemed to be fighting to find bravado, as if the very presence of one of the unpredictable bear warriors presented a challenge that could not be refused and, no matter what, there would have to be blood spilled before many minutes were out.
Harald said, very softly, very deliberately, ‘If you value your life, young dreng, I implore you –
back off
. I have no desire to fight, but there is a spirit within me that would as soon have your gizzards for food as a sweet haunch of beef.’
It was the wrong thing to say.
Two blades came up, firmly held, angrily pointed towards him; two young faces became masks of hate.
There was fierceness and anger in others besides Berserks, Harald realised too late, and his gentle hint to the boys to escape trouble had been taken as a threat to their manhood.
Harald allowed himself the luxury of a moment’s regret before he drew his sword from its sheath and waved it before them, allowing them ample opportunity to see and smell the gore and blood that caked and cracked upon its dulled blade.
And the bear roared and lumbered forward, sweeping aside the human reason of its possessor, so that Harald’s eyes became alive with panic, and his stomach clenched with the human sickness of realisation – realisation of what would happen to these youths at any moment, when all he wanted was a chance to rest, to feed and to be on his way.
‘Run you fools!’ he cried desperately. ‘Run while you may!’
The bear roared.
Redness rose before his eyes … his skin burned … his mind burned … a whirlpool sucked, and sucked …
‘Run …!’ cried the human, the last moment of reason before the overwhelming blood lust of the Berserker swallowed him downwards.
‘Die!’ cried the Berserker, and swept towards them, screaming.
Two blades rose. Two blades skittered away across the flagstones of the rough road. Two screams pierced the afternoon air. Two heads rolled across the road, pumping blood.
Gulls screeched and dark birds, with bright yellow beaks, flew and wheeled above him, screaming their anger at the peacefulness of the early autumn afternoon’s having been so bitterly disturbed.
Beneath the wheeling flock of angry blackbirds, running away from the gentle waters of the fjord where the long ship shifted from side to side as the tide rose, Harald – the Berserker – burst into the nearest hall, cut down the man who stood there feebly trying to protect his wife and two young sons.
Blood dripped from the singing blade as Harald ran to the screaming trio and viciously slit the belly of the tallest and ablest of the sons. The mother dropped across the boy and the Berserker’s sword was like a scythe as it cut the woman’s head from her white shoulders in a single sweep.
The youngest boy yelled hysterically and sobbed, waiting for his end.
Harald grabbed him by his cloth shirt and held him tight against the buckling turf walls of the house, pushing the point of his sword against his belly.
‘Why?’ he cried. ‘Why attack?’
The boy screeched and tears flooded from his eyes. A moment later he seemed to see something behind Harald, and Harald moved his head to look back towards the door.
A short-handled axe sliced through the air beside his head, smashing into the youngster’s skull, splitting it in two between his eyes.
Harald dropped the corpse and swung around, staring through the redness at the old man who stood there, a bow drawn and the long arrow aimed directly at the Berserker’s head.
The bear dropped back, the rage subsiding, amused, perhaps, to see how the emerging human would handle the situation. Harald, terribly angry, and still shaken with the suddenness of the Berserk possession, walked towards the other man.
‘You killed the boy!’
‘Better he should die,’ said the man, allowing himself a quick glance at the oozing bodies beside him, ‘Than that he should live to remember this.’
‘I came here quietly, peacefully. All I wanted was food, a horse. I would have left. I would have
left
! Why was I attacked?’
‘You need to ask after what you’ve done?’
Harald screamed with fury and frustration, but – making no move – did not solicit the release of the arrow.
‘I came in peace!’ he cried. ‘They attacked me. What could I do?’
‘You could have run.’
‘I am possessed, you fool. A Berserk possesses me! I couldn’t run. But I would not have killed …’
The old man lowered the bow, stared at Harald for a moment, then let his gaze linger on the dead woman.
‘Did
they
attack you?’
Harald said nothing, felt the rolling laughter of the bear and the rising sickness in his throat. His human senses found the stench of blood, and the spilled excreta of the youth he had disembowelled, so repulsive that he wanted to run from the hall, to run and never stop running and screaming until the earth closed over his head.
The old man, white-haired and clad in the flowing robe of a shaman, met the Berserker’s gaze evenly.
‘There is a curse on you that you cannot shake, and which normal men cannot comprehend.’
‘A truly terrifying curse,’ agreed Harald, his attention half on the old man’s dark eyes, half on the still taut bow with its arrow aimed at his belly. ‘And I arrived here for a moment only. I’m heading into the mountains in search of a cure for that curse. I cannot control the violence of my actions, and I live in mortal fear of the scent of slaughter, or the anger of impetuous youths. They make me mad, and the redness takes me, the bear … oh Thor! The bear … to be
rid
of it! What wouldn’t I give!’
The old man was silent for a moment, then said, ‘We have been expecting Berserks for several days. A group of them feasts and savages at Ondheim, two days’ ride south of here. We have been expecting them and we will fight them when they come. We thought you were one of them. We were obviously wrong.’
‘I am nevertheless one of them,’ said Harald. ‘And slaughter is my trade, my great lust when the bear rules me. I cannot help myself.’
Old man and youth stared at each other searchingly for a long moment, then the bow was lowered completely, the tension of the string relaxed.
‘Do they seek you, these Berserks?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Harald. ‘A group of six, led by a giant man called Beartooth, will certainly be searching for me, but whether or not this is the same group I can’t say. They crossed the ocean a day ahead of me, but I may have arrived before them.’
The old man was thinking hard. ‘These are six in a band, we have been told. The leader wears a necklace of bear’s teeth and is called Beartooth.’
‘Then they are the same, and they seek me.’
‘To kill you?’
‘Almost certainly.’
The old man fell silent, staring at Harald, and shaking his head. ‘Despite what you have done here, I feel great pity for you. All mortal men hate you, and even those who are like you desire your death.’
‘Don’t pity me,’ said Harald urgently. ‘Just give me food and water, and a horse, then let me go on my quest before Beartooth arrives. And take your village and hide, because Beartooth is a frightening man who doesn’t even
wait for the Berserker rage to take him before he lets his sword eat at hearts and brains. Help me and help yourselves, and one day we may be able to raise a horn together under more pleasant circumstances.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the old man quietly; the fire of confusion flickered brightly in his eyes. Six of his townspeople had been cut down, but he himself had been responsible for the death of one, seeing death as a release from some agony to come. When he looked at the Berserker he perhaps saw a more compulsive instinct to kill, as unreasoned as his own action, but equally unavoidable.
‘There will be great suffering here,’ said the old man after a moment. ‘I sense it and the birds, by the way they fly and the way they talk, have told me I sense correctly.’
Harald sheathed his obtrusively bloody sword, and walked down the hall to stand in the broken doorway, staring across the sparsely green hills up to the ridges where soon the dark and irresistible shapes of the six Berserks who pursued him might appear.
The old man, bow still held in his hand with the arrow notched and ready, followed his gaze.
‘Forty years ago a jarl called Asjorn used this port to gather his forces. Twenty long ships nestled in the harbour, and four hundred battle-hungry men camped around the town. Their cries and practices struck fear into every woman and child in town, and not a man who was bonded to a woman in love and honour expected to live to see her retain that honour. Four hundred men, preparing to go a-viking and yet not one of them lifted a finger to assault one of us, nor did they enter the area of the village except when they embarked.’ His eyes, filled with pain, stared up at Harald. ‘The six men who approach us strike more fear into my heart than four hundred
thousand
raiders.’
‘Then hide,’ said Harald. ‘Go into the hills and take tents and food and wait until they have passed.’
The old man shook his head, his white hair rippling in the cool wind blowing off the fjord. ‘Wherever we run, the Berserks will come; this is what the birds have told me, and this is what I dreamed. So we shall wait and take what we must.’
‘Defence is useless,’ said Harald pointedly.
‘Our defences lie dead, cut down with two swift strokes. They were the only strong-armed men left in the village after the attraction of the Celtish campaigns. And those forty men might not be back for months.’
Harald felt a chill pass through him. Should he tell this sad old man that those forty villagers would not be back at all, that the crabs fed off their bones, which were strewn along the shore near the ancient lands of the spirit warriors whom they had insulted by their arrogance?
He decided against it.
‘May Thor protect you,’ was all he said.
‘May Odin be calm,’ murmured the old man. Tears sparkled in his eyes. ‘May he be calm and peaceful, and ride his puppets through our village and into the hills.’
‘Hide the corpses, and disguise the smell of blood with the stink of animal droppings, and you may find your wish granted.’
Harald drew the dirk from his belt and held it before him, staring deeply into the snow-capped mountains it showed, and the deep, rock-strewn passes, with the hardy pines clinging desperately to slopes almost too sheer for a man to climb. The sun shone dully from behind one of the peaks, giving Harald an instinctive feel for the direction of the valley that was central to the view.
He showed the knife to the old man. ‘Do you recognise this pass?’
The old man stared into the bronze blade for a long moment, then slowly shook his head. ‘Not the pass,’ he said, ‘nor the mountains. But the river … the bronze river …’
‘The river seems bronze because of the metal of the knife,’ laughed Harald.
The old man shook his head. ‘When I was an impulsive youngster, a dreng by anybody’s standards, with several friends I rode hard and high into the deserted lands around the black rock gate that stands some four days’ ride inland, guarded by the spirits of the original builders. We were not allowed to pass through the great gate, but we bathed in the water that flowed between the great monoliths that were the sides of the portal guarding the strange lands beyond. The water was bronze, flowing like liquid metal from high in the mountains. A bronze river. I think you could do worse than follow that same route. This dirk is of an age before that of man, as is the gate, as is the water, as is the warlock that you seek, for if you journey into the Blackskull mountains that lie beyond that gate then you are certainly seeking the Keeper.’
Harald didn’t know the name of the wizard he sought, so he merely shook his head. Gotthelm had never mentioned a name, merely that he had saved the man from death at the claws of a ferocious bear.
But now Harald had a definite idea of where to begin his search.
The old man told him briefly and explicitly where to journey, then led Harald to a small stable where three stallions browsed on small bales of hay. Harald chose one and led the beast out into the daylight where he strapped and buckled a simple saddle across the animal’s powerful back and swung up on to the horse to let the creature get used to the feel of its new master.
The old man brought food and water, and with a last salute and an anxious glance to the southern skyline, Harald spurred his horse forward and raced from the village.
He stopped, suddenly, and turned round, staring at the watching man. ‘If I ever find release,’ he cried, ‘I shall return and answer for what I have done here.’
The old man’s only acknowledgement was a slight bowing of the head.
At the top of the first rise Harald stopped and looked back again.
In the bay his long ship was burning, and a small gathering of townspeople were watching with fascination. The black smoke rising into the windy air would have been a beacon for fifty miles to any wandering Berserker, and that boded ill for the gentle village.