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.Yes, it would be easy to climb up the inside of the shaft if only she could find some wood.She put the flint and tinder away in its pouch, which she tucked inside her tunic.She couldn’t afford to lose that.There was a thump and something hit her hard across the face, knocking the lamp to the floor.She put out her hand and felt something.An arm! She could just make it out in the guttering flame of the lamp.Aelis drove herself back against the wall to get away from the dead man.She heard screams and shouts from above, some in Norse, some in Roman.‘Witch!’‘She bewitched the merchant!’‘Kill her!’‘He’s dead, Helgi is dead!’‘Troll-witch, houserider!’There was a dead body in front of her.It was him, Helgi.There was no time for horror or elation;, she had to save herself.She forced herself to crawl forwards.Protruding from the dead prince’s back was the handle of a knife.She pulled it out, kneeling on the body’s blood-wet furs.It came free.She looked at it and knew who had killed the khagan.Aelis picked up the lamp and scrambled into the tunnel.She crawled, putting the lamp in front of her.But the tunnel quickly became very low and she was panicking.As she moved the lamp forward, she drove it into a rock.Its clay bulb burst.All she had was the oil on the wick.When that was gone she would be in darkness.She had gone no more than a body length when the flame guttered and died.Now she felt her way with her hands.The passage dropped steeply but she went on, scraping her knees and crying out when her head hit the low roof.Men were coming down the ladder.Again the word she had heard so many times in Norse she needed no magic to translate it: ‘Witch!’Aelis put her hand to the floor in front of her and felt nothing.The ground had disappeared.She turned around and dangled her legs into the void.They touched nothing, not even when she stretched them forward.‘Get a torch!’ The voice was one of the khagan’s wider army because it spoke in rough Greek.So many voices now, she wondered the shaft could contain them all.She could hear five men at least behind her and other more distant voices, shouting and angry.What to do? It wouldn’t be long before her mind was made up for her.She felt for a ladder going down, a foothold, anything.There was nothing.A fluttering yellow light came from behind her.Her pursuers had their torch.They were coming, crawling down the tunnel.Something flashed in the dark.A spear tip.‘Witch!’The man thrust with his spear but he wasn’t near enough.He crawled forward and pulled back his arms to strike again.She searched for something to pray to.God? He had gone from her life.The runes? Never.They had robbed her of herself.She could think of nothing to help her at all.‘Die, witch,’ said the man.Then a name came to her, a name at once familiar and strange, from the life she had lived before.Not a magical creation at all; now more a memory, like a bright flash of childhood alive for a second in the adult mind.‘Vali, help me!’ she whispered and jumped into the darkness.76 DownHugin followed the riverbank back into town.He would need to go in there alone.No matter; he had done that before.As he drew near to Ladoga’s walls he could hear voices – screaming and shouting – women, children.What had happened? A name was on their lips: ‘Helgi!’He ran towards the shouting.When the voices were almost on top of him, he looked to his left and saw a large wooden tower looming above him from the fog.The gatehouse.He knew that entering the town was almost certain death.Helgi had clearly ordered him killed, along with his companions.He crossed the river on the ice.Women, children and old men were pushing in through the gate.Some were crying, others seemed panic-stricken.Hugin grabbed a woman who was trying to encourage a young child to move faster.‘What’s happened?’ he said.‘You are the sorcerer they are looking for you.Get away from me!’He drew his sword to show a thumb’s width of steel.‘What has happened?’‘You should know, troll-witch.Our Helgi is dead.Our protector is dead.’‘How?’‘He put her in the earth and she struck at him.The Frankish witch cast a glamour on a man who Helgi had well rewarded.Our prince is dead.Dead, and we must look to our defences.’Hugin turned away from the gate and ran back along the stream of people.The woman screamed after him that an enemy was among them, but the confusion was too great, the fog too thick.He was just a shape in the mist.He was running up a hill now.Men’s voices shouting, ‘Witch, witch, kill the witch!’ Hugin knew there was no time for reason, debate or argument.These men had found Aelis and were going to kill her.Black shadows in front of him.Another four paces and they were men – druzhina with spears, not looking at him but peering down at their feet.He charged, beheading one with a left-to-right diagonal swipe and kicking the man next to him in the small of the back, hoping to put him out of the fight for long enough to deal with his two comrades.Hugin took off the hand of a druzhina who was trying to draw his sword and booted him into the man behind him, sending both warriors sprawling.He then killed the uninjured man with a blow to the head.The sword jammed in the skull.Hugin let it go.The handless man was in shock, staring at his bloody stump.Hugin drew his knife and gutted him then turned to face the druzhina he had kicked at the start of the attack.The man wasn’t there.Only then did Hugin realise there was a pit in front of him and the man had fallen in.The townswoman’s words came back to him: He put her in the earth.A face appeared over the lip of the hole and Hugin kicked it as hard as he could.The man fell back and Hugin heard shouting below.He looked down.A druzhina with a torch was looking up – eight or nine more of them in the tiny pit, fearful faces gazing at him.He tried to pull up the ladder but the men grabbed it, though none of them looked as though they wanted to climb it to their deaths.Working quickly, Hugin shoved the nearest body to the edge of the pit and booted it in.More shouting from below.He could tell the pit was deep but not so deep he couldn’t jump down.He rolled another body to the edge and hurled the corpse down.Then he freed his sword from the warrior’s skull and rolled that man in to the pit too.He was about to leap down himself when he saw something from the corner of his eye.The body of the merchant.He could only really tell it was him from his silk turban because his corpse had been reduced to mere meat by the ferocity of the attack that had killed him.‘Come on,’ said the Raven.‘You can join me in a last battle, merchant [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]