Читать книгу The Fighting Man - Adrian Deans - Страница 10

Chapter 3

The Ring of Office

‘My name is Valla,’ she said, and I felt my skin tingle.

The sun had already set beyond the low western hills but the summer light would linger for an hour or so. We sat on a couple of rocks near the fire where the cauldron bubbled, filled with jointed hare and herbs. The hare’s guts were wrapped in the skin and roasting under the coals. The ears and tail had already been devoured by the dog, whose appetite suggested he might yet make a full recovery from the wound I had dealt him. (I didn’t like the dog and had started calling him Malgard.)

‘Valla?’ I repeated.

‘You have heard the name,’ she said, and of course I had, but …

‘I am two hundred and forty-two years old,’ she continued, as though that somehow explained matters, and I didn’t know whether to feel terror or scorn. But pride decreed I should assert myself.

‘I am Brand, son of Holgar, as I told you before. I am lord of this land … I am your lord.’

She actually laughed at me as she stirred the cauldron and tasted the broth.

‘Lord of the land,’ she scoffed. ‘Can you make it do your bidding? Can you force the land to grow mountains or split apart to form rivers and seas?’

‘Of course I can,’ I replied, ‘given men and time.’

She shook her head, then leaned forward to stir the cauldron again.

‘Men and time will be the bane of this world I deem,’ she said, passing me a ladle of broth. ‘But you can’t control it … no more than you control the Danes.’

The broth tasted magnificent after my long fast and the smell coming from the cauldron and the coals was intoxicating. Using a forked stick with blackened tines, Valla pulled the charred skin from the coals and unwrapped the roasted hare’s guts, which were gone in seconds (despite burning my mouth).

With a morsel of hot food inside me, my confidence began to return.

‘Once I reach the king I will have his support … and with his aid I’ll control the Danes … and you.’

Even as the words left my lips I would have recalled them if I could, but once they were out, pride required that I stand by them, however ungracious or unwise.

In less than a heartbeat, Valla whipped a knife from under her skins and thrust it within an inch of my eye.

‘Want to control me do you?’ she asked, and I slipped backwards in a delayed reaction, lying across the stone like a sacrificial offering. Quick as a snake, her free hand went under my rag and seized my manhood while the point of the blade pressed against my throat.

‘I asked … do you want to control me?’

‘Yes!’ I gasped. ‘I am your lord! Unhand me!’

Then to my further confusion and embarrassment, I realised that I had become hard in her hand, and she released me as though stung.

‘Get out!’ she snarled. ‘Leave this place and never return, else I tear your balls from your body and feed them to the dog.’

Speaking of which, the dog was now whimpering anew, wagging his tail and looking from one to the other as though imploring us to be friends.

‘I have nowhere to go,’ I said, rewrapping my rag and drawing the cloak about me once again.

‘It is no concern of mine,’ she replied. ‘I bring you safe from the Vikings and you repay me with arrogance and the threat of rape! Get you gone and learn your proper place in the world.’

‘Rape?’ I exclaimed, in some confusion. ‘I haven’t threatened to rape you!’

‘You’ve thought of little else!’ she said. ‘Ever since we met in the wood you’ve wanted me. Even now you are rampant … your bestial urges kept in check only by the threat of my blade!’

‘That’s not true!’ I insisted, despite the evidence that would not allow itself to be properly covered by the rag. ‘But even if it were … what of it? I claim lordship of this land, which means I have rights concerning its people.’

‘Lordship,’ she sneered, once again raising the knife. ‘If you have to claim it then it can’t be so … lordship is natural and self-evident. Your claim is ridiculous.’

‘You think I make ridiculous claims?’ I exclaimed hotly. ‘I’m not the one claiming to be two hundred and forty-two years old!’

But at that moment the dog growled and Valla looked up sharply, scanning the encroaching woods.

‘Aid a fool and share his doom,’ she spat, and I stared into the forest, noting the evensong of the birds, so noisy a minute before, was ominously still.

‘This way, quickly,’ she hissed, and took off around the east face of the hill. Immediately, there was a cry from the woods – something like a barn owl, or something trying to sound like a barn owl.

With a last longing glance at the cauldron, I ran after Valla, leaving the dog to guard the fire. There was maybe an hour of twilight left but, for the moment, we would be easy to spot unless we could get into the forest.

But Valla was running away from the forest and down into the fen, where she soon disappeared down a lane of reeds. For a moment I hesitated – all children have heard tales of the unwary who sink down into the sucking, grasping mud, never to be seen again, but then I heard more barn owl cries, and chose the reeds.

It stank.

Not as bad as the turd pit, but every step disturbed noxious vapours that erupted from the ground and pursued me like a foetid fog. Worse than the stench was the clinging mud itself that slowed my movements and stalled my flight. The reeds seemed to be criss-crossed with little paths and trails and I soon lost all sense of direction.

And I’d lost Valla.

I’d not seen her tracks in the mud and it occurred to me that I would probably make an excellent decoy for the Danes to aid her own escape – and of course, it was me the Danes were chasing in the first place. She would be safe once I was captured.

‘Hssst!’

I spun around and saw Valla, concealed within a thick screen of reeds, pointing back behind me to another large thicket.

‘Leave no trace,’ she whispered.

But rather than go to the other clump of reeds, I pushed through to where she was lying low in the mud, and glaring at me.

‘Fool!’ she hissed. ‘Now if one is caught both are caught and the one cannot aid the other!’

There was wisdom in her words but it was too late to argue. I huddled down beside her – hardly breathing – straining to hear whether we’d been followed – and realised for the first time that I had snatched up a weapon in my flight.

Not much of a weapon – a stick of firewood about two feet long and only an inch thick, but it was heavy, hard and hefted well and was far better than nothing.

We lay for some time as the twilight faded, and after a while I breathed into her ear, ‘We never actually saw anyone … could it be that we are hiding from no-one?’

‘Do owls hunt in daylight?’ she whispered. ‘Be quiet!’

The light, such as it was, was going and I started to feel cold. My legs were cramping from staying in the same position so long but the slightest movement caused the sucking mud to gurgle and squelch – and at that moment, we heard the sound we’d feared. A squelch. Just the one, which indicated stealth and I felt Valla’s body go rigid.

If God was privy to my thoughts and desires, then He must have known, even before I did, that I was fascinated by Valla and wanted to be worthy of her approval, yet everything I did or said seemed to inspire her scorn. Despite the cold and discomfort – despite even the terror of pursuit – I was almost painfully conscious of her body against mine and remembered with a weird pleasure the feeling of her fierce hold on my manhood as she’d held the knife at my throat.

As impossible as it seems, I realised to my dismay that I had become aroused again, and the urge to make some noble gesture became overpowering. They obviously knew we were close – if I could lead them away from the reeds then Valla might escape and think better of me.

I knew such a thought was a suicidal impulse but, possibly due to the desperate need to stretch my legs, I made my decision. I pulled the ring of office from my finger and placed it in Valla’s hand.

‘Keep this for me,’ I whispered then, before she could object, I stood and bolted.

I crashed out of the reeds and was immediately aware of a figure right in front of me. Without thinking, I struck with my wooden club and felt a satisfying crack, but my victim screamed and I heard the hue and cry begin.

Somehow I knew the ground would be firmer at the base of the reeds and ran swiftly down the right of the lane.

A hoarse shout in a tongue I didn’t know sounded from behind, and in that moment I saw two more emerge from the reeds to my left – both Danes by the look of their long hair and beards – young and fit and much stronger looking than I.

But not as quick to realise that the mud was thickest and deepest away from the roots of the reeds and I slipped their grasps, even as both clutched at me from the middle of the reed lane and fell over each other into the mud.

I reached the firmer ground and saw three men, two of whom immediately pursued me, while the third – Malgard’s man Angdred – pointed and shouted.

Then I knew terror. If Malgard had sent men to hunt me then he knew I had escaped the butchery of my brother’s wedding and was going to extreme lengths to ensure my father’s line was completely destroyed. Fear gave me wings and I all but flew along the edge of the mire, heading for the woods on the northern side of the hill. I had about twenty yards on my pursuers, but knew I could not outlast them. I had to find a place to hide.

My brother’s wedding cloak, with the beautiful green web and embossed with our family badge in white and gold, was sodden with mud and I gathered it into a ball as I ran, to prevent it from slowing my escape. Then, as I crashed into the trees, I tore the cloak from around my neck and flung it to my right, even as I swerved left and bounded over a giant log, simultaneously flinging my stick weapon high into the trees back in the direction of the cloak.

I hit the ground and watched under the log as two men ran into the darkening forest, just ten yards away, then my stick crashed to the ground off to the right, and they immediately took off in that direction. Losing no time, and wearing only my muddy shoes and a rag about my groin, I scuttled in the opposite direction until I could no longer see the men, then I leapt to my feet and ran like the wind for about ten paces, when a huge man stepped from behind a tree and swung a fist that knocked me off my feet and caused an explosion of lights and stars in my head.

∞ ∞ ∞

When I awoke, I found myself stretched face down over the giant log – hands tied together, feet splayed uncomfortably apart – and my head feeling like it had been used as an anvil. One eye was swollen and closed, and my cheek rasped against the rough bark of the long dead log. I could taste blood and felt weak with sickness and fear.

‘Throwing a stave one way and running another,’ said a voice behind me – a sneering voice I’d mainly ignored in the past, as he had no place in my father’s household.

‘The oldest of fox tricks,’ laughed Angdred. ‘But a man will always outwit a fox … or a vixen … once he knows it’s foxes he’s dealing with.’

We were in a small clearing and it was now quite dark. Torches of rag and pitch were held aloft by two of the younger Danes and a fire crackled behind me – throwing strange shadows against the wall of trees in front and warming my arse.

It was then that I realised I was naked – my loin cloth stripped away and my splayed feet tied to pegs – and horror crept over me as I realised what they intended.

‘If we’d caught your friend we might have had some fun with her,’ said Angdred, as though reading my mind. ‘You’ll have to take her place young Brand.’

‘I am the king’s representative,’ I slurred through parched and swollen lips. ‘Release me at once or know his vengeance.’

Angdred roared with laughter.

‘King’s representative? Are you saying that Olaf Pighammer is about to fuck the king? That’s treason boy!’

‘What? What are you—’

I could not bring myself to mention, or even put into coherent thought, the thing that I feared most in the world – more even than death – had resisted the monastery to avoid. But in case there was any doubt, Angdred put me out of my misery.

‘Normally I would not approve of sodomites and their filthy practices,’ he said, coming closer, ‘but in this case I will make an exception so you learn the full extent of your fall, my lord. Your husband to be is called Olaf the Pighammer, but he is a mere instrument. As he tears your ring apart with his mighty hammer, know that in truth it is Lord Malgard that mounts you and takes your place as head of the family.’

As he spoke, his face came even closer until he was all but whispering in my ear like a lover, and without thinking I snapped my head back and felt it connect hard with something.

Angdred cursed, and then I shrieked with pain as he kicked me between the legs, where my unprotected nuts hung.

The two young Danes in front of me laughed so hard they all but dropped their torches and then Angdred kicked me again.

There was no way I could protect myself and tears of pain blurred my vision – distracting me from Angdred’s vengeance.

‘Thank you Brand,’ he said at last, still behind me. ‘Thank you for giving me a reason to hate you. Before, I admit, I felt some sympathy for your position … you did not ask to be born between Malgard and the thegn’s seat, and so it was to be a clean death for you unless Olaf wanted you for his concubine. But now we shall take our time … flaying your skin inch by inch and finishing with the blood eagle. You know of the blood eagle don’t you?’

I didn’t respond – just struggled vainly against the ropes that tore into my flesh – causing the torch-Danes to laugh even harder.

‘The blood eagle,’ explained Angdred, ‘is the pinnacle of Danish cruelty. First we shall smash your ribs with hammers. Then, we will carve you open and pull your broken ribs apart … and you will still be alive Brand, I promise.’

There was a hoarse muttering from behind me, and Angdred laughed.

‘Olaf is impatient for his bride, I deem … not long now Olaf.’

Once again, Angdred’s sneering voice was close behind me (although not quite as close as before).

‘Finally, your lungs will be pulled out and arranged over your shoulders like an eagle’s wings. Although you won’t have long to enjoy them … by that point, death will be close … close enough perhaps for you to see your father and brother watching your rape and murder from limbo.’

‘Help!’ I screamed, on the brink of madness. ‘Help!’

Once again the torch-Danes doubled over with purple-faced laughter and the shadows on the trees seemed to dance wildly, then were snuffed out by a vast shadow that could only mean someone very large was between me and the fire behind.

Two huge hands took me by the hips, and a loud voice grunted in Danish.

‘Erm … my name is Carl Two-tongues,’ said a different voice – a kind-sounding voice, if that was possible. ‘Olaf has asked me to translate … I am sorry you have to suffer—’

‘Just translate!’ snarled Angdred.

‘Very well. You are my sweet piglet,’ began Carl – his voice becoming harsh as the hands on my hips gripped harder and stinking breath like rotting fish warmed the back of my neck. Then a sound like a butcher’s mallet thunked behind me and the hands fell away. Olaf made a small mewing noise, and the Danes suddenly shouted with fury – immediately turning and holding their torches up – peering into the forest in front of me. Then one of them staggered backwards and dropped his torch – gurgling and groaning horribly, with an arrow in his throat.

‘The bitch!’ shouted Angdred. ‘Find her!’

But the Danes ignored Angdred, who shouted at Carl to translate his orders. The torch-Dane who only moments before was purple with laughter was now pale with dread – forcing his dying comrade’s fingers to close around the hilt of his sword.

Angdred leapt over the log and kicked the sword away – pointing angrily into the trees and shouting with rage. To my amazement, the unwounded Dane simply stood and drove a dagger into Angdred’s throat, then retrieved the sword and, with tears in his eyes, tried to hold his comrade’s fingers around the hilt. But the wounded Dane had died, and the Dane who had knifed Angdred now stood over him as he lay on the ground, clutching his throat as gouts of blood splashed between his fingers.

Without a word, the Dane stamped down onto Angdred’s head, then hacked with his comrade’s sword until the body stopped moving. Then he continued to chop, two handed, until the head came away completely – and I might have thrown up except there was too little in my still-groaning stomach.

Two other Danes stood and watched, as the first finished the job. Then they all turned to me.

Then the kind voice spoke again from behind me, but it spoke in Danish. Carl Two-tongues he had called himself, and as he spoke, I saw fear come into the eyes of the Danes. They muttered quickly in their ridiculous tongue, sounding like pigs grunting in swill, then they swept up the two torches lying on the ground and ran.

Leaving me in darkness.

Not quite darkness. There was still a faint red glow before me from the dying fire behind – I could no longer feel its warmth on my naked flesh and, despite it being summer, I began to shiver.

‘So,’ said a voice, ‘ … the Lord of the Land?’

‘Valla,’ I said, in relief, submitting to her sarcasm. ‘I knew it was you who shot the Danes … thank you.’

There was a silence, and the red light seemed to be dying further. Then I flinched as a dagger traced my spine.

‘I was tempted to let the big Dane have his way with you,’ she said, the tip of her dagger moving slowly between my buttocks and then pausing at my nuts and pressing a touch harder, ‘to teach you the horror of rape.’

‘Thank you,’ I repeated, desperately trying to squirm aside, but I was staked so tightly I couldn’t move an inch.

‘Do you promise never to rape?’ she asked me.

‘Of course,’ I replied.

‘I want a promise that comes from the heart,’ she said. ‘Not just desperate words under threat of a gelding knife.’

‘You’ll have to take the knife away then,’ I replied, and to my small amazement, she laughed.