Deep Midnight

Page 50

Every wound he had received before the darkness came to life. He could scarce make it to his feet, despite the power of the man helping him up.
“He needs sleep; time to heal,” the blond man said.
“Aye, and there’s time,” the other man said. “I am Lucian, self-proclaimed power of what we are, if you will. A monster, perhaps. But there are rules to survival, and I have my reasons for doing so?as do you. I maintain the hungers and lusts of the others, but there is a law, as well, far more ancient than my own meager existence, and those who do not accept that law will doom us all. Do you join us with your strange power, or do we pack you back in a tomb of stone and ash and the crisscross of swords where you should have perished long ago?”
Ragnor leaned on him, gritting his teeth. It was night, he realized. The light had seemed so great after the darkness of his entombment that he had thought it day. Now he looked around, and saw that these two were accompanied by something of an army. They were Viking, they were Scot, they were Irish ... they were from the continent as well, he thought He looked back at the one called Lucian. “You’re not monks,” he murmured.
“Far from it, I’m afraid,” Lucian told him. “But we like to think that we are men?or monsters?of a certain enlightenment.”
“We are the rule,” the other offered, and stepped forward, clapping a hand on Ragnor’s back that nearly sent him sprawling once again. “I’m Wulfgar. Do you join us?”
“Why did you come for me? How did you know I was here?”
“In the worst of havoc, rumors fly. There is one who acknowledges no rule; yet there are those who say that he lives in his own world of fear as well, knowing that his brother might arise.”
“We thought you should arise,” Wulfgar said.
Ragnor stared at the one called Lucian. “I have free rein to destroy my brother?”
“We are counting on your knowledge of him.”
“He must be destroyed, completely,” Ragnor said.
Lucian shook his head. “Entombed, as you were. But for eternity. We do not destroy our own. Nor do we create more than two per century, lest we create the unbalance in the world that has occurred now.”
“Now?”
“How long has he slept, Wulfgar?” Lucian asked.
“Near to a hundred years, if rumor is right.”
“A hundred years ...” Ragnor said.
“High time to wake,” Lucian said, watching him. “Ah, catch him, there, Wulfgar?he’s about to go down again. He needs sustenance, and proper rest.”
“I need to find Hagan?and Nari.”
“A time to heal, my friend,” Wulfgar said.
“And then a time to fight,” Lucian told him.
Night deepened, but due to the monk’s insistence, they were all within the church, and the door was barricaded with rough hewn pews.
Ragnor had eaten. With the woman Nari at his side, he rested near the door to the church, back against the wall, eyes closed. He had learned to sleep in nearly any position and to wake at the first whisper of sound.
It wasn’t a whisper, however, that woke him. There was a terrible noise, like a burst of thunder, a roaring, that went on beyond the church.
He stood, drawing his sword. Around him, others awoke, and leaped to their feet. The noise faded; then a slow, steady sound grew. A shrill sound, like the call of a hundred birds, or a fluttering of a thousand pairs of wings.
Ulric strode across the church floor, staring at the door. “What in the name of Thor ... ?” Brother Peter was at the altar, on his knees.
Ragnor strode over to him.
“What is it?” he demanded, interrupting the monk’s prayer. Calmly, Peter lifted a hand, stopping the interruption. Ragnor waited, knowing that he could not sway Peter from commune with his God even if he were to put his sword to his throat Peter rose after a moment “It is evil, but we will persevere this night.”
“If it’s evil, we will fight it!” Hagan roared.
“You cannot fight this evil with your simple methods of brutal violence,” Peter said with a sigh.
“And you can fight it?” Hagan mocked.
“Yes, for I know the face of this evil.”
“I will know its face if I go forth and see it!” Hagan said angrily.
Peter shook his head. “My faith in my God is stronger than the evil.”
“I don’t believe in your god.”
“Then pray to your Odin, and if you listen well, he, too, will tell you not to venture forth from these walls.”
Abruptly as the noise had come, it faded.
Peter stood still for a long time, listening. “For tonight it is over. But it will come again.”
“And what do we do?” Ulric demanded, “Cower within these walls night after night? It is not our way, priest.”
“I am not a priest; I am a brother,” Peter said calmly. “No. They have power by day, but not the strength they have at night. They do not turn to ash in the sunlight. They are weakened by it, though, and God knows, there is little enough strength in the sun here in winter. By light, we hunt them out. We find their lair. We hunt them as we would hunt wolves, and we destroy them.” Ulric and the others voiced their disapproval, but there was a strange sound in their tones for men such as they were; there was fear among them.
They rested.
By morning, the brother had them cutting trees and preparing pikes, or stakes. Such weapons would bring the evil ones down; then they must be burned or decapitated, or they would heal themselves of the injury, and come back.
While Ragnor was in the woods, the woman, Nari, brought him water and food. After he had eaten, she sat with him, and told him that she believed the words of the brother, for she had seen the fate of the village.
She seemed different from the others, and he told her then that he hadn’t known that the chieftain, so recently among the deceased, had had a daughter.
“They are good people here. He took me in. I was orphaned when my parents came north to attack the Scots. My father was from Normandy. My mother from the south.” She laughed then and told him, “My poor father! He worried, wanting a good marriage for me and fearing that I was far too hot-blooded. He knew little about women, for his wife died soon after he married, and he spent his days defending his clan from other chieftains nearby, and from the likes of men such as you. He had no idea that although we may bow our heads and pray, we long for the same excitement that stirs the souls of men.” The suggestion in her tone was obvious. They were fighting a strange and unknown enemy, and might never live to see another sun. He had not dreamed that they would make love that afternoon. They coupled in the forest; she was wild, passionate.
Later, when the midday sun rose in the sky, they rode out, searching the surrounding countryside. But that day, they found nothing, and by night, the sounds came again, violent as a storm beyond the church that they stayed in. Hagan walked around swearing; Peter prayed. The noises ceased, but later, deep into the night, the howling began.
Hagan raced for the door to the church in a fury. Peter cried for him to stop; Ragnor and Ulric fought to pull his brother back, and it took half the power of the Viking forces to bring him down.
“There is the attack,” Peter said, “which these walls, however fragile they may seem to men such as you, will withstand. Then there is the temptation, the cry in the night, the seduction. These walls cannot defend you from that. You must defend yourselves within your own souls.” Hagan was persuaded to remain within the church.
The next day, they started out again.
Still, no luck.
That night, in the church, the noises came and departed. Ragnor slept deeply until something startled him awake.
He realized that he lay against the wall alone, that Nari was no longer with him.
He swore violently, rising. The pews had been dragged away from the door. He went to the entrance and found that his brother and a few of the men were ahead of them. “They’ve gotten in!” Hagan told Peter angrily when the monk would have detained them.
“They have not gotten in!” Peter said. “Nari has fallen to the temptation.”
“Where was your God?” Hagan demanded angrily.
“Not in Nari’s soul,” Peter said.
Ragnor listened, but ignored them. He was sliding his great battle sword into its sheath at his waist and preparing to ride. “Give me what weapons you will, Peter. I am going after them. Give me your crosses, what you call holy, and we will go.”
“You fools! Don’t you understand? The cross will aid you only if you believe in its power, just as the creatures cannot come in here, because they have a bloodthirst in their souls.”
“Then give me no aid. I am going,” Ragnor said.
Peter ran after them when they departed the church, but to no avail. They rode out, a Viking party of twenty hardened warriors with shields, swords, battle-axes, maces and spikes as their weapons. In the deep of the night, it was hard to find the trail. Ulric found the human footprints, followed by those of a four-footed creature with padded paws and long claws.
“Bah, what monsters!” Hagan cried. “We are tormented by a pack of wolves.” And he would have spurred his horse to race forward in fury if Ragnor hadn’t stopped him. “Wolves don’t make fluttering sounds, like the wings that we have heard.”
“There are wolves ahead now, and we will stop them.”
“And take care as we go.”
“It is your woman they have taken,” Hagan said.
“And I will get her back. But we ride with care.”
Through the darkness, they continued, the moon and the torches they carried gave a little illumination against the night. In time they came to a high tor, and in the forest surrounding it, the entrance to a cave, or shelter.
Hagan dismounted.
“Brother, take care!” Ragnor warned.
But Hagan shouted back, “I am not the seventh son of the seventh son, but I am a child of the great warrior wolf of our people, and I will not fear a fight! Men who would dine in Valhalla, follow me!” They drew their weapons and headed for the cave. Gunther, known as a berserker in battle, strode ahead, and before the others even reached the dark shadows of the entry, he had let out a cry like a man meeting a hundred swords with bare flesh and bone.