Free Berserker (Omnibus) by Robert Holdstock

through the storm of dead.
    At last Harald gained control of his fear. He turned from the approaching shape and jumped the fifteen feet to the saturated, sticky ground of the courtyard, and raced into the hut where Gotthelm lay. As he passed the open door of his father’s hall he noticed that the fire was extinguished, but he could see no sign of men within the darkness.
    Gotthelm lay on his pallet tense and agonised. Foam flecked his mouth, and for an awful moment Harald thought his friend had died. But when he shouted his sudden shock, Gotthelm turned his head and struggled up on to his elbow. The Saxon girl cowered on the other side of the bed, her hands touching the warrior as if she drew strength and courage from his flesh.
    ‘Harald …’
    His voice was weak; his skin as white, almost, as the skins of the dead. His eyes no longer burned with that lively fire that gave Gotthelm an ageless appearance despite his greying hair and wrinkled skin.
    Harald ran to the old warrior, and glanced back across his shoulder as if he expected the Berserks to burst in at any moment, or Bjorn the Axe to walk stiffly through the door and flash his great double axe one last time, taking Harald with him to the dark hall of Valhalla.
    Gotthelm’s hand grasped the young Viking’s wrist. The warrior stared through eyes filled with tears and pain. His voice, weakened by loss of blood and strength and possibly by some supernatural power as well, spoke words that for a moment Harald couldn’t understand.
    Then he heard them, more clearly. Gotthelm was saying, ‘Don’t forget the warlock … beyond the wolf’s pass … Blackskull mountains … the warlock, Harald … don’t forget him … Harald, if you value … if you …’ Pain creased his face and he closed his eyes, trying to squeeze the agony back into the recesses of his body. ‘Don’t forget him,’ he murmured one last time. ‘Only one who can help …’ and, having said all he could find strength to say, he collapsed backwards, breathing heavily and noisily.
    Cold wind blew in from the yard, ruffled the grey hair of the wounded warrior, sent straw fragments spiralling and dancing about the tiny hut.
    Someone whimpered and sobbed from a dark corner and Harald glanced in the direction of the sound. A small shape, huddled, cold, frightened.
    Elena.
    How he wanted to run to her, to hold her to his chest, to caress her.
    The biting wind played havoc with her hair and the flimsy cloth robe shewore. Her clothing whipped in the gust, but the girl remained huddled and weeping, staring from some incomprehensible darkness at the man she loved, and yet whom she knew was the target for this terrible wrath.
    ‘Gotthelm,’ implored Harald, looking again at the pale features of his friend. After a moment Gotthelm’s eyes flickered open, stared at the thatch ceiling. ‘Gotthelm … Sigurd … what does it all mean, all this fury? What have I done? What do I do? Help me, Sigurd. In the name of …’
    He broke off. In the name of the gods? It was in the name of the gods that all this was happening. No longer did Odin reach a protective arm around him, guide his singing life-taker into the flabby bellies of red-haired Celtish sword-sluts. No longer did Thor shelter him from the stormy rains, and the disease that racked the weak of body and spirit. No longer did the gentle fingers of Frey or Loki push him along the fertile path between the fields and stables, keeping him in balance with the land and sky, the rocks and sea. Even the dead, the very seed of the earth, had risen to provoke and torment him. He was an island, a man alone, a fragment of mortality being buffeted and directed by the forces of sky and night …
    ‘Gotthelm … what have I done? … what have I
done
?’
    Tears spilled from Gotthelm’s eyes as he again tried to speak, but all he managed was to shake his head and collapse back again.
    Harald looked towards the door, frightened of what might be waiting for him