SECOND INTERLUDE

 

Skalla sat in the great hall's late gloom, elbows on his knees, one hand held against his wrecked left eye. He felt strangely detached from all that had happened to him - oddly unmoved by his injury, or the loss of half his sight, even as his good eye watched the blood which soaked his sleeve and oozed through his half-closed fingers, drip into a thick pool upon the beaten earth of the floor. An image of a clawed hand flailing towards his face flashed through his mind. He shuddered at the resurrected memory of its bone scraping against his.

That feeling, too, would fade, in time.

Twelve nights had passed since the first one came. The creature had been drawn by the sounds of their feasting, bitter with envy, perhaps, at the pleasures of honest meat and ale and the promise of lusty embraces that it was now denied; enraged by the voices joined in song, the joy of fellowship, the celebration of life. It was a life-hater from the misty margins of this world, of neither earth nor Hel; a lost traveller between life and death who had no lord and bore no arms and was immune to the bite of human blades. Dead, and not dead. A hate-filled monster. A demon.

Such was the opinion of his master. It was, so Skalla had begun to realise, calculated to cast the conflict in a more heroic light.

To him, the act had no more heroism than the killing of a rat. What was certain was that this guest had come with a wholly different kind of feasting in mind. At least, thought Skalla, it displayed a sense of humour - if sense it had at all. He had reason to doubt that, though. It seemed to him they were driven by only the basest instincts. He had observed their movements the past several nights, as one invader had become two, then five, then seven... He had watched as the first of them to invade the hall had struck the guests through with shock and dread, how its bloody assault upon the nearest of them had happened before any knew how to respond, and how all had made repeated, futile attempts at restraining it, having no weapons to hand, while the woman Arnfrith had screamed over and over in confused horror, begging them not to harm her late husband. That man had been killed by some beast whilst out hunting, they said. Now they knew better.

He had watched each successive night as the clamour of feasting had drawn more of them, the dead of previous nights returning as if in some nightmare, and wondered at the dogged refusal of Hallbjörn to admit weapons or to quit the hall, even when his guests were dwindling in number and those that persisted were getting eaten alive.

And he had watched, especially, during that last desperate fight, when the draugr had proved too numerous for the newly-posted hall-guards to repel, seeking confirmation of his conclusions before taking action. And even then, his actions were by way of an experiment - a confirmation, or otherwise, of a theory. The crushing blows to the heads of three of the fiends with the heavy iron poker - the same one with which he had tended the fire for so many years - provided the confirmation he sought. Each of their skulls had been smashed outright with a single impact, felling them immediately - the last achieved in spite of his grievous wound.

The fact that it had also saved his master's life was pure coincidence.

"You have served me well over many years," said Hallbjörn. "And never more loyally than today. You fought when others fled." He turned, walking in a small circle, avoiding a patch that had been churned to red mud in the struggle. "Perhaps it is time to talk about your future."

"Future?" said Skalla.

It was something he had had little reason to think about. He had trained himself to avoid it over the years. What had been the point? How was his wretched future to be any different from his wretched past, consisting as it did of the same tasks, the same hardships, the same endless succession of days?

"About your freedom..." added Hallbjörn. He spoke with great gravity, emphasising the final word as if it were a potent charm, and carried in its utterance some magical, transformative power.

"Freedom," repeated Skalla. He rolled it around in his mind, muttered it again, as if considering it from different points of view might somehow endow it with life. It remained as dead as earth. The notion, after all, was meaningless. It seemed as though every free man assumed the idea would mean so much more to a lifelong slave such as him. They were wrong. "Freedom to do what?"

Hallbjörn laughed, a note of irritation in his voice. "Why, to do whatever you wish. To remain here. Or to make your way in the world, if you so choose."

To remain here. To work exactly as he had been working, no doubt. Or to venture out there, to what? With what? What kind of choice was that? It was, thought Skalla, the kind of generosity that only a wealthy man could think worthwhile; a gift that, to one with nothing, meant nothing. An act of benevolence that, in truth, gave more to the giver.

But then, perhaps there was something out there that had caught his interest, after all. Something no one could have expected. And something of which Hallbjörn was unlikely to approve.

"What would you have me do?"

The question clearly pleased Hallbjörn. "We must go to the source of this pestilence and stamp it out," he said, his voice suddenly charged with a stern gravity. The voice of destiny, thought Skalla. The voice of an imagined saga, told in an imagined future around this very fire. "I ask that you join me in this quest."

So that was it - the great honour that Hallbjörn was now bestowing upon him. To fight and die for his jailer.

In truth, Skalla had been thinking quite a bit about the source of this pestilence. Since the great firestorm, the night it all began, he had overheard increasingly wild stories about the mysterious island in the fjord and the dark, magical powers that had begun to emanate from it. Skalla did not believe in magic, even as he had watched the dead of the clan of Hallbjörn stagger back into the hall, the marks of their deaths still upon them. In them, he saw no curse. Just another process to be understood. He knew the world for what it was: dead matter, mindlessly shifting in space, grinding the pathetic creatures that scuttled between its cracks with as little thought as a millstone gives a weevil; a relentless chaos of struggle and death, from which only the deluded sought escape through desperate belief in the beyond. Skalla had never had the luxury of such childish notions. Creation was material to be used, held at bay, bent to one's will. Only then could fleeting pleasures, brief moments of satisfaction, be wrung from it.

And what did he care whether dark or light? Two sides of the same coin. Dark, light, day or night - he was equally a slave whichever held sway. The lash raised the same weals, whether brandished by a good man or a bad.

But power - that which dictated whose hand was on the lash... that interested him greatly. It was something he had hardly known. Yet, for that very reason, he felt he knew it more keenly than any of the pampered, overindulged free men who passed him by each day; men who, through years of familiarity, failed to even register his presence. That, too, could prove an advantage.

Yes, there was a power growing upon the island, that was certain. He had seen it challenge Hallbjörn in his own hall, shake his authority to its roots, turn the laws of life and death upon their heads, bringing fear to those who had for so long fancied themselves fearless. It had struck ruthlessly, coldly, without passion or anger and with no regard for etiquette or honour. And for that reason, Skalla knew, it would win. In the past twelve days Skalla had become aware of an entirely different future from the one that, until now, had seemed inevitable. In his mind's eye he now saw something he thought never to see: the fall of the power of Hallbjörn in this land, and the rise of another.

Skalla looked up at Hallbjörn, removing his red, blood-slicked hand from his torn left eye. He saw his master wince at the sight of his injured face, then hastily regain his composure, his kindly, benevolent expression. The reaction gave Skalla a curious glow of satisfaction. He had never before cared how he looked. No woman would look at him, not even the slave girls from whom he had once forced brief, empty pleasures, before such things had ceased to seem worth the effort. But they would all notice him now. Perhaps even fear him. And fear was the greatest power of all.

This would be his way, now. Where others saw a curse, Skalla would find opportunity. And the greater opportunity - the one that had begun to emerge out of the fog over the past few days - finally stood before him, clear and unassailable.

"Odin gave an eye in exchange for wisdom," he said, holding Hallbjörn's gaze. "Perhaps, now, I too see the future more clearly. See what must be done."

"Good." said Hallbjörn, smiling. He turned and went to the high seat, and from behind it drew out a sword in a gilded, richly embossed scabbard. He turned and approached Skalla, carrying the sword before him with great reverence, laid flat across his upturned hands. Its hilt and pommel were of gold, with fine cloisonnÈ inlay of garnets and blue millefiori glass, its grip made of alternating rings of silver and whalebone. This was a great sword from the old times, the only battle-blade permitted in the great hall. But this one ventured into battle no longer. Even in the desperate conflicts of past nights, it had remained sheathed. It was a sword of ancestors, meant for the giving and taking of oaths, upon whose blade - and the blood it had spilled - such oaths were made inviolate.

Hallbjörn, still smiling, drew the great blade and, laying its scabbard gently upon the ground, held the sword before him towards Skalla. Only gradually did Skalla grasp the nature of the honour that was to be bestowed upon him. He was to be given his freedom, and the opportunity to swear his allegiance to Hallbjörn. To be given the status of a warrior.

To Hallbjörn's surprise, Skalla reached forward and took the sword by the grip. Without expression, he swung it from side to side, judging its weight in his hand. Hallbjörn half laughed, frowning at his slave's ignorant action, went to correct him. Before he could do so, Skalla swung the blade with all his strength, severing the old man's head. The expression on its face as it left his body and bounced sizzling into the fire was one of utter disbelief.

Yes, it was a good blade. Sharp enough. It would serve him in his new purpose.

This new power would need men. An army. And an army would need a captain. So why not him? They cared not for status or protocol. But he had to move quickly, before another saw the chance. He would gather others around him - slaves, like himself, who had suffered under the yoke of the old ways. They would accept his authority. He would exploit their bitterness and resentment, fashion a force of men to offer to the new regime that was rising in the fjord, and in doing so turn the tables on their masters.

Skalla glanced down without feeling at the headless body of the man who had once owned him. Taking a step back from the spreading pool of blood, he looked up at great beams of the hall that would one day be his, and, sheathing the great sword in its magnificent golden scabbard, shoved it roughly through the worn, dirty leather belt fastened about his greasy tunic and stalked off into the night.

The first blow of the new order had been struck.