Free Fenrir by MD. Lachlan

would be impossible. She loved horses and had grown up around enough mules to know they only worked for people they trusted. Mules were more intelligent than horses and needed to be coaxed rather than bullied. The animals were not going to walk up a plank onto a precarious boat for her.
    She felt an intense shame building within her, an anger and a deep resentment. Her legs hurt and she had bruises down her back where she had been prodded. That feeling she had had since she was a girl returned, the ability to sense people’s emotions, to hear their character almost as a musical note, to see it as a colour. When she was a small girl and given to sentimental descriptions she had told her nurse that she could hear the ‘strings of the heart-harp’. The sickly sweet description made her blush now that she was a grown woman. But it really did feel like that, and the feeling was intensifying. The Norsemen were a mixture: toughness, cruelty, generosity, bravery, humour; she experienced their minds as a thin band of sound, bright colours, a feeling both hard and cold. The merchant was more complex. When she thought of him she had a taste in her mouth sweet like honeyed almonds, but underneath was something else bitter and astringent: cloves and smoke, vinegar and tar.
    One of the Vikings was screamng at her in Norse, gesturing to the mules and then to the boat. It was the little one again, the nasty imp with his pinched face and thin, strong limbs. Aelis understood nothing of what he said, but his presence was dull and heavy, baleful and narrow. He kicked her and her legs went from under her. She hit the ground hard, driving the wind from herself and banging her head. He was screaming at her, gesturing for her to get up with one hand and prodding her with the butt of his spear with the other. His voice was shrill and high like a pipe blown by a child, almost hysterical.
    Fastarr grabbed him by the shoulder and spoke to Leshii: ‘I am sorry for my kinsman, merchant; he has been unlucky in battle these two years.’ His voice was softer, like a flute, she thought. What was happening to her? Her senses were jumbled by the fall but something else was taking over and the world was not as it had been. All her sensitivities seemed amplified, people and personalities understandable to her in new and confusing ways. It was as if the uncommon stress had unlocked something in her.
    ‘Wounded?’ Again Leshii spoke in Norse. She heard the word as two thudding syllables, like the beat of a drum and, though its exact meaning was obscure to her, she understood well enough what was meant. It was as if all the feelings and emotions of those around her were an open book. She understood what the Norsemen were saying but in a way that went beyond the comprehension of a straightforward translation.
    ‘No kills,’ said Fastarr. ‘A case of bad luck, not cowardice as his enemies maintain.’
    ‘What use is a slave that will not work?’ It was the shrill pipe again.
    ‘About the same as a warrior who does not kill,’ said Fastarr. ‘Now let the boy put the mules on the boat, Saerda, and try picking your next fight with a Frankish man-at-arms, not a mute idiot.’
    Though the words were not quite clear to Aelis, she understood that the Viking with the hammer shield was defending her and that he was mocking the thin little one, who he felt obliged to have in his company out of some debt of duty. Aelis realised that Saerda – she recognised the word as a name – was in as much danger as she was from his fellows and, more than that, he knew it.
    She stood up and the night seemed to teem about her, the thoughts and emotions of the people in the camp buzzing like insects over a swamp. An image came to her. She saw herself on a tall mountaintop overlooking a vast valley. Something was living inside her – it seemed to glow and pulse. It was one of many things, a note, a vibration, that she carried in her bones. She could not name it but she