Read Fenrir for Free Online

behind him.
    ‘Up into the house,’ he said. ‘Jump into the water and swim. He will not follow you that way. Fall prisoner to any but him. Do not let him see your face. Do not let him see your face!’
    ‘Who?’
    There were two soft thumps, followed by a sound like the fall of a thousand coins. Both the men-at-arms had collapsed, hauberks crashing to the cobbles. Black-plumed arrows had caught one in an eye, the other through the neck.
    ‘Go!’ The wolfman leaped to shield her. Another soft thump and a heavy exhalation. The wolfman had taken an arrow to the back. He still had the strength to push her towards a door. She pulled it then pushed it. It opened and she fell into a small house.
    Moonlight split the darkness inside and she saw the huddled faces of women and children looking at her in terror. She pushed through them to a ladder to the next floor. The room erupted in screams and clatter, as the crowd tried to avoid her, to get out, to do anything but sit in frozen fear. She went up one level, where sleeping mats were strewn around, and then to another above it, a lightless place. She felt around the walls, trying to locate a window. She bumped into something – a loom. It was a weaver’s house; there had to be a window for light to work by. She tripped and hit the floor heavily, stood up and pressed on, her hands frantic on the walls.
    Then she found it. Cloth had been nailed across the window in a poor attempt to keep out the cold. She tore it back and looked out. She was not on the river side but looking into the street. Something down there slipped from shadow to shadow. Was it the wolfman? There was movement beneath the arch of a doorway. Then it stopped. A figure walked forward from the direction of the great church. He went to the arch and knelt at the edge of the dark. She shivered to look at him. He was a lean dark man, his hair thick with tar so it stood up in a shock. Something had been put into it – feathers, black feathers standing up in a horrid crown. He was completely naked, his body smeared in white clay and ashes so it shone under the moonlight, pale as a corpse. In his hand he carried a bow and on his back was an empty quiver and that cruel curved sword she had seen in the church, now housed in a dull black scabbard. There was something wrong with his skin too, she realised. It had a rough quality to it. She squinted forward through the dark. It didn’t look like smallpox, but she was too far away to tell.
    The inhabitants of the house were streaming across the square, the women herding the children away. Eight of the Danish invaders came into the square – big men covered in tattoos, the one at the front carrying a large shield with the design of a hammer on it. His sword was drawn and he was pointing it at the naked man, warning him in some way. Not friendly.
    The man was oblivious to him; he was tugging at something in the shadows. It was an arrow. It would not come free and, as he pulled it, the body of the wolfman came with it into the light.
    ‘No!’ said Aelis, and the man turned to her. She threw her hands across her face and peeked out from behind her fingers like a frightened child. He gave a rasping cry of exultation as he saw her and leaped towards the house. The big man with the shield cursed and Aelis scrambled across the room. She lost all composure, knocking over looms, falling over bales, crawling towards the opposite window. She pulled off the vellum covering it and crouched to look down into the river. It was three times her height beneath her.
    She couldn’t jump, couldn’t bring herself to do it. She heard the creature make the floor below, his footsteps light and quick. She put a leg out of the window but brought it back again. The drop was too great. She stepped back inside the room and glanced around her. There was the hatch where the ladder emerged. She tried to kick the ladder away but it had been tied tight to the beams and she had nothing to cut it free