Chapter Twenty-seven

The first Vikings to emerge from the trees were both huge men, naked above the waist but for their badly cured wolfskin cloaks. The wolf’s head each wore formed a kind of hood over their heads, so that they looked like pantomime creatures – or they might have done had not the men themselves been as wild and ferocious as beasts. The woman standing behind Dan let out a muted sob. Aethelnoth groaned.

‘What is it?’ Dan asked, hanging on to his sanity by a thread. His heart was pumping so hard and his whole body pulsed with such energy that he thought he might burst. His hand on Braveheart’s head was shaking and it was not with nerves.

‘They are berserkers – like you,’ Aethelnoth said.

Something inside Dan thrilled at the prospect of meeting a worthy enemy. He hated himself for the thought. He had a farm to protect and were he to fail, people would die, and yet he relished the prospect of a good fight.

The two half-naked men were followed by five or six other warriors kitted out in normal fighting clothes. To Dan’s practised eye they looked to be professional soldiers, properly equipped. They hung well back from the two berserkers, who were slavering at the mouth and baying like wolves.

Dan thought that they looked completely insane with their long unkempt hair almost covering their faces. They were both unnaturally large men, almost as tall as Dan himself but bulky where he, in spite of his hours in the gym, still had the muscled slenderness of a youth. He did not know if he could keep the farmer and his family alive – not against madmen. He thought about Rhonwen’s claim that he himself had magic that he had not yet discovered and hoped she was right. It was not looking good.

No one in the courtyard moved a muscle or made a sound; they seemed rooted to the spot by fear and horror. Dan roused himself and gave a loud cry. ‘Get ready!’ He turned to the boy on the roof and yelled, ‘Hit them between the eyes!’ He sounded as encouraging as he could, but he had seen that all but the berserkers wore helms and the boy’s chance of doing any damage with a sling was minuscule. Still, every man needed hope and confidence before a battle and Dan did what he could to inspire it.

Braveheart was already snarling at his side, his growling slightly less bestial than the cries of the berserkers. Aethelnoth gripped his spear. He was breathing heavily in the rasping rapid rhythm of panic.

‘It’s fine,’ Dan said, while he could still speak. ‘They are only men.’

The pressure on him to run and kill was building. He wanted the fight very badly and it was getting harder to think of anything else. Almost without knowing what he was doing he ripped off his tunic to reveal his own naked torso – somewhat less impressive than that of his enemies – then squatted down on the ground to cover himself with mud. He took off his shoes too so that he could feel the ground beneath his feet, feel the power in the earth. Ursula had fed off the power of the land in Macsen’s world – Dan hoped he could do the same in this one.

‘Their blood will soak this earth!’ he shrieked in what he trusted was a menacing way; it didn’t come out very clearly. His tongue felt thick and overlarge in his mouth. He wished it was Ursula, not Aethelnoth, who was by his side. If he was going to die, he would have liked her near him, so that they could die as he’d always thought they might, shoulder to shoulder in the heat of battle. It was also true that with her strong arm and fearless heart on his side, death would have been a good deal less likely.

He tried to forget about her, about everything but what was to come. He wiped his muddy hand on his breeches and unsheathed his sword. Calling to Braveheart, he started to charge up to meet the enemy.

He was beginning to lose it as he ran to meet the two howling men. He was beginning to find that calm place within himself which was full of blood. He had to hope that whatever magic resided in him in this world would reveal itself, because he could not see that his own madness would be much use against theirs.

The shift happened; he was himself and then suddenly he was a killer. There was no wild rage, only a curious calm and a strange joy. This was what he was born to do.

The first of the men hurled himself towards him, yowling and hissing like a thing possessed. Braveheart answered with a snarl and ran in to attack; the man batted him out of the way as if he were nothing. The giant dog, all muscle, sinew and vicious teeth, was flung through the air like a toy. He had done some damage first, tearing a chunk from the man’s thigh. Blood seeped from the wound; the man did not appear to notice. He seemed impervious to pain. His eyes, under the stinking wolf’s head, were bloodshot and crazed. Dan’s sword stabbed at the man’s naked chest but a great, brutish arm deflected the blade and two vast hands closed on Dan as if to strangle him or rend him limb from limb. Dan snarled.

It was not a noise that had ever issued from his throat before, but it felt right. The man was big but slow and Dan had plenty of time to bite down on the brawny arm as if he had jaws like Braveheart and the teeth of a predator. He felt the man’s flesh tear, tasted hot blood and then headbutted the man out of his way. It was easy. Suddenly the man’s strength no longer seemed so awesome; he was only a man. Dan did not know what he was – there was no time to evaluate, only to act – but with some part of his mind he did allow himself to wonder if he was still only a man, or even if he were a man at all.

Bright Killer lay on the ground a long arm’s reach away, but he did not pick it up to finish off the berserker. He did not think it necessary. His own bare hands would be enough. Dan threw himself at the man, who still howled a war cry, thin and high and tinged with hysteria. Dan’s body was a thing of enormous strength. He swiped at the man’s naked chest with razor-sharp nails, raking it and making it bleed, as if his hands held knives as sharp and as steely as Bright Killer’s blade. The man kept fighting back, though his torso was soaked in blood, though his resistance was weakening. Dan tired of the struggle and finished him quickly, snapping his neck with a violent twist of his massive paws.

The second man was approaching. Braveheart was whimpering somewhere out of his line of vision. Dan could smell death and fear. His balance was a bit off but he coped. He felt heavy and powerful. He dropped into something between a crouch and a crawl. The second berserker was screaming and foaming at the mouth. Dan pounced like some wild animal and killed this one with his teeth. It took a lot of self-control to make himself stop, even after the man was dead. The taste of blood and flesh was not repellent to him.

He got to his feet to take on the rest, the armed men – the men in helms and mail shirts – but they were running away, back towards the trees. Dan turned around to check on Braveheart, but the warhound was cowering from Dan, shivering and growling as though Dan himself had metamorphosed into an enemy. ‘Easy boy,’ he said, but the words came out more like some kind of animal grumble: there was something wrong with his mouth. He did not let that worry him as there was still killing to be done. He smelled the enemy and heard them trampling in panic through the undergrowth; they would not escape. Distantly he was aware that people were screaming. Had he missed an enemy? Someone was calling his name. He turned again to see a man he recognised standing by the warhound, stroking his head so that the dog’s shivering was beginning to abate. Dan did not like other people comforting his dog and Braveheart was unquestionably his. He snarled reflexively and made to drive the man away, but the man raised a hand and suddenly Dan felt unbelievably sleepy, so sleepy that he had to lie down. Taliesin. The man’s name was Taliesin. He was an enemy too, Dan thought, as sleep claimed him and he was lost to the world.