Berserker (Omnibus) Read Free Page B

across the stars, grey and black, chasing each other before the winds.
    ‘It pursues me; it follows me …’
    ‘You’re dreaming that’s all. There’s no wolf, merely a nightmare. You’re having a nightmare.’
    ‘It pursues me!’
    His scream added to the noises of the night, the howls and wingbeats, the rustles and grunts of dying creatures.
    ‘You need rest, Harald. You need days of sleep and eating, long nights of loving and kissing. You need to get the taste of blood out of your mouth. I felt the same when I was a boy. The fear will pass. We’ll soon be a-slaughtering again.’
    ‘There is something wrong,’ Harald murmured to the shadowy face of his friend. Sigurd’s eyes, in the night, were dim white shapes, staring earnestly down; the fire-light caught the eyes redly, gave them the appearance of a demon’s.
    Sigurd wiped the boy’s forehead, grinned (red flame on white teeth, the teeth of a wolf – Harald tensed).
    ‘Calm, boy. Keep calm. It’s just a dream.’
    ‘It pursues me. It’s no ordinary wolf. It comes from Hell, Sigurd. I know it, I sense it.’
    ‘A nightmare. Think of that woman you could have had but spared. Remember her? Think of her, and you’ll fall asleep with aggravation. What a waste …’
    Before dawn they were riding. It was still dark. Harald turned in the saddle and stared behind him.
    He heard the growl, smelled the urine stink of the great beast, saw its coalfire eyes blinking and surveying as it rested a moment in some woody recess of his haunted mind.
    Sunlight spilt across the hills to the east; the trees became alive with fire, no longer black, pathetic skeletons, restlessly waiting for summer. Birds sang, but so few now, the hardy remnants of the summer flocks.
    Sigurd had forged ahead, riding between the trees as they wound towards the final ridge before the tiny village of Unsthof, and then his father’s hold at Urlsgarde. The dawn light flashed off the metal of Sigurd’s shield and belt, and as the old warrior rode across a bare earth knoll, red cloak streaming behind him, so the light caught the gleaming facets of his helmet. Harald froze again, pulled his horse to a stop and stared with his heart thundering at the mysterious man ahead, at the helmet, the skull-like helmet with its drawings and carvings, and the frightening fact of its link with Sigurd Gotthelm’s own destiny.
    Unable to shake the past few months from his mind, Harald reminisced again on the events of his first battle, and in particular on his meeting with the older Viking …
    Sunlight glittered on a metal helmet.
    Harald Swiftaxe dropped to a crouch behind a jutting boulder and slowly rose again to peer down the slope to the dark pool of water by whose softly lapping edges a pile of blue and red clothes lay scattered, as if they had been discarded in a great hurry.
    Hot and bloody, sore, wounded, the warmth and stickiness of his own blood irritating him, Harald thought how truly inviting that pool looked.
    But where was the owner of the pile of garments?
    The helmet sat on the top of the leather jerkin, glinting and sparkling, alarge metallic skull, watching the countryside through its empty eye sockets; but beside it there was no weapon to be seen, no sword, no spear, no axe.
    A thrill of fear passed through the young Viking and he cowered lower, touched the soreness of his shoulder where the Celtish sword had tried to hack off his arm before his own blade had sought and found his attacker’s heart.
    He would not be good in a fight at the moment; he was weakened, and thirsty. The clothes by the pool were Norse, but there were so many different types of men fighting this war that it was not safe to call any man brother or friend until the heat of battle united them into a single war machine.
    But that pool … it looked so good!
    It was nearly midday. The sun was baking hot (a change from the depressing rain that usually thudded on to the saturated earth of this westernmost land of the