THIRTY

The second choice was upon him. ‘Three choices,’ the witch-rider had said. ‘The first will be right. And the others … will be wrong.’ The first choice had ended up bringing him here, when he made the harp and forsook the flyting. But that choice had been simple. This one was not.

There were words in the yell once more.

‘It will be so easy,’ they said. ‘What is a man, when the knife slips in, but flesh and blood?’

Flesh and blood. Flesh … blood …

He looked at the priest. So soft. So afraid. So dangerous.

He had a duty to the trolls. To Astrid’s Nisse. To a whole world he held dear, of gods and spirits, words and magic. A world that the priest would destroy if he let him go.

A world that, now and ever, had its wergild: its blood-price. A world bought every year by sacrifice to hungry gods. Bought by the blood of birds, rams, oxen – by the slaughter of gentle grey mares. Folkmar’s world, he knew, had been saved by the blood-price of his god, by Christ’s self-sacrifice. Why shouldn’t Leif’s world be saved by the sacrifice of Folkmar?

He held up the blade. So sharp it almost sang. Folkmar was helpless, unaware – he wouldn’t feel a thing.

‘No,’ he said, and dropped the knife. It was swallowed by the tall grass.

‘Then our use for you is at an end,’ came the words. ‘Both of you shall die.’

The scream grew louder, monstrously louder, as the sisters closed for the kill. With his one good hand Leif groped behind him, searching for his captor’s eyes. Sharp teeth closed upon his fingers, and he felt the splintering of bone.

His skin prickled, burnt, blistered with sound. The last thing he saw as he fell into darkness was Folkmar, eyes open, arms raised high. Even now, Folkmar believed that his god would save him.

‘Phanuel!’ the priest called.

The angel fell from the clear dawn sky, the rush of air knocking Leif down. A new cry arose amid mad hacking and rending as the angel tore into the sister that held Folkmar, feet and teeth ripping, wielding the burning sword.

But Leif was a dumb, terrified beast, flames taking hold, and the very last two things he knew were red – flame red – and black.

Astrid had just decided to stop blaming herself, when it happened. She hadn’t really forced Leif into this at all. It had been what he’d wanted, since the beginning, just as much as Folkmar: to test himself against the stones.

So she would blame him instead. In fact, when she got hold of him, she’d –

And Leif fell out from between the Yelling Stones, a human candle; fell with a moan and a spluttering hiss into the heaped snow. She ran to him at once, and at once was shoved aside, as the court healer – a man named Hrafn – barrelled his way through the crowd.

‘Get his rags off,’ Hrafn ordered, and Astrid pulled at his tattered, smoking tunic. Some of his skin stuck to the weave as she tugged, and she winced, fearing his pain, but Leif never moved. He was gone from her, gone far, far away.

‘You can do nothing more now, girl; leave him with me,’ said Hrafn, not unkindly. He and Kolga, his assistant, pulled Leif’s limp body aside, sluicing it with snow, then set to laying pads over the worst of the burns. Astrid smelt violets as they applied the poultices – a strangely sweet scent, amid so much horror.

Odin, Christ, whoever, I don’t care, she thought. If you can hear me, then please. Don’t take him too.

But now more was happening behind her. Astrid wheeled round to see Folkmar loom out of the circle. Then there was a rush of hot, desert wind, and everyone blinked at the sudden glare.

The angel was there, among them, a brilliant whirl of light and fury, and all the Danes saw it swing its sword. The blade sheered through the thinnest of the Yelling Stones as if it were a hollow log.

The stone shattered, exploded, a hundred shards flung wide. They all hurled themselves to the ground as chunks of rock whizzed overhead. And then there was total horror, because the stone circle was broken, and the yell itself came free.

They all heard it, that long-frozen scream, crashing outwards like an ocean wave, echoing and re-echoing off the mound and off the hall, pummelling the listeners, bludgeoning their bodies against the ground.

Haralt himself, halfway up the mound, was toppled off his throne by the sheer power of the noise. He scurried back to his seat, glancing about to make sure that no one had seen.

Astrid’s nose was bleeding. The blood ran across her stone-blasted face, tickling her, but she never thought of wiping it away. Her hands were clapped fast over her ears.

At last the yell rose up from that place like a vast flock of birds, and like a flock it broke, and circled, and fled upon the winter air. Then it was gone, and the Danes helped each other to their feet.

Folkmar stood implacably before them, alone again. No one had seen the angel leave. None could even be quite sure of what they had just seen. But a miracle had happened, they were sure of that, and the Yelling Stones were broken.