A Savage Moon, page 1
Theodore Brun studied Dark Age archaeology at Cambridge. In 2010, he quit his job as an arbitration lawyer in Hong Kong and cycled 10,000 miles across Asia and Europe to his home in Norfolk. A Savage Moon is his fourth novel.
Also by Theodore Brun
A Mighty Dawn
A Sacred Storm
A Burning Sea
Published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2023 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Theodore Brun, 2023
The moral right of Theodore Brun to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 612 6
E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 614 0
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For my old friend Will.
The light shines in the darkness. And you were first to point me towards it.
Thence come the maidens mighty in wisdom, Three from the dwelling down ‘neath the tree; Urth is one named, Verthandi the next, – On the wood they scored, – and Skuld the third. Laws they made there, and life allotted To the sons of men, and set their fates.
From ‘Völuspá’, Stanza 20.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
IN THE CITY OF BYZANTIUM:
Erlan Aurvandil – the ‘Shining Wanderer’, a crippled warrior of the north, lately in service to the Byzantine Emperor.
Lilla Sviggarsdottír – the exiled Queen of the Twin Kingdoms, a Sveär by blood, and only surviving kin of Sviggar Ívarsson, the murdered King of Sveäland.
Emperor Leo III, the Isaurian – Basileus of the Byzantines and victor of the Great Arab Siege of Byzantium.
General Arbasdos – Strategos of the Armeniac Theme and kouropalatēs, the second most powerful man in the empire and Leo’s personal ally, who once held the Wanderer as a slave.
Princess Anna – the Basilopoúla, oldest child of Emperor Leo, and young wife of General Arbasdos.
Einar the Fat-Bellied – Erlan’s comrade in arms, a Sveär still loyal to the kin of Sviggar the Bastard.
Orīana – an actress and star of the Hippodrome, and Einar’s lover.
Marta – her daughter, a novice nun.
THE REMNANT CREW OF THE FASOLT:
Demetrios – a Greek helmsman, who joined them in Varna.
Mikkel Crow – an Estlander river-man.
Snodin – de facto skipper during the Arab siege, also an Estlander.
Ran – a Gotlander.
Black Svali – an Estlander shipwright.
Vili, known as ‘Bull’ – the youngest and biggest of the Estlanders.
Dreng, Krok & Kunrith – their crew mates
IN THE CITY OF ROME:
Katāros – the disgraced High Chamberlain of the Imperial Palace or parakoimo-menos. A eunuch of northern origin and traitor to the empire.
Dom Vittorio Massimo – a judge of the city.
Antoninus – Dom Massimo’s personal secretary.
Justus – steward of the Palazzo Massimo.
Emilius – a merchant.
Peter, Duke of Rome – the chief administrator of the city.
Brother Narduin – a Frankish pilgrim.
IN THE KINGDOM OF THE FRANKS:
Karil Martel – Duke (dux) of Austrasia, eldest surviving son of Pepin of Herstal and leader of the Austrasian nobles against the Merovingian king, Chilperic. Later known as ‘the Hammer’.
Childebrand – a Frankish nobleman, illegitimate son of Pepin of Herstal and brother of Duke Karil.
Wynfred of Nursling – an Anglo-Saxon missionary. Known as ‘Wyn’.
Berengar, son of Berulf – a Frankish trapper.
Alvarik the One Eyed – a shaman and leader of the cult of Báleygr – ‘the Flaming Eye’.
Fenna – a Frisian girl.
PART ONE
URðR
THE THREADS OF WHAT WAS
CHAPTER ONE
She smells pine needles, and death.
The sweet, damp scent of the forest litter. A scent so unmistakably of the north that she knows she must be dreaming. She feels the warm earth beneath her feet, its touch familiar to her as her father’s embrace. Even in the dream, her heart aches with a sudden pang of longing.
For home.
So far away. And yet, in the dream, near as her hands and feet.
There has been rain not long past. And now she sees the pines around her, their branches close enough to reach up and touch. Droplets of water still cling to the tip of each needle. She brushes them, her fingertips scattering tiny jewels of light to the ground. There is no hurry. She is at peace. As she always has been in the Kingswood, close to her father’s hall.
The hall that was torn from my grasp.
This thought enters her mind like a splinter. But the forest air is still. Her footsteps tread softly in the earth. The light is dim, though she cannot tell whether it’s the gloaming of dusk or else the grey before the dawn. She glances up again and the tops of the trees now seem far away. Far as the great vaulted dome of the Holy Wisdom. Far as the heavens. Yet dark as them, too.
No light penetrates their branches, only shadows seeping through like a mist, filtering down to her from on high.
Now that other smell grows stronger. Sickly sweet, like rancid meat.
She is following a trail through bracken. A deer trail, maybe. There were often deer in the Kingswood. Some animal has been this way, anyway. She knows this place, knows where it leads. To the Great Ash. To her ash. The one tree in all her father’s kingdom which, as a girl, she could make believe might be Yggdrasil itself – the ancient World-Ash and the bridge between the world of men and many others. Later, when a woman grown, she went there to breathe in the smoke of Urtha’s Weed, thinking herself wise, and skilled enough to journey between them, like a vala of the Old Times. Now she knows better. Now she is wise enough only to know her own ignorance.
The smell of death becomes a stench. She covers her mouth. A low hum invades the silence, dull at first but growing louder, and louder still, till the sound fills her ears. Fills her skull. Flies buzzing. Hundreds of them, thousands. All come for a feast, swirling about her head like the sands of some desert storm in a spice-merchant’s tale.
Then she sees it – a great hulking shadow in the dismal gloom. A monstrous beast, its outline blurred in the hungering dark, a huge muscular back, spiked with hair stiff as thorns, head bent low to some busy work. A boar, she now sees, and over the buzzing of the flies she hears a repulsive, eager gulping as the boar scarfs down… something.
She cannot make out what.
She circles the clearing until, through the swarming flies, she is able to spy what the boar feasts upon. Another creature of the forest. A large grey wolf stretched out under the boar, its lifeless limbs jerking with each thrust of the brutish snout as the boar burrows hungrily into its innards.
She halts, revolted, yet gripped by the weirdness of the scene. She wants to turn away but cannot. And as she looks, the vision becomes stranger still. The shape of the wolf corpse begins to change, like a long, lean sculpture of wax, melting away, resolving into something new. Now she could not have torn away her gaze though her life were the forfeit.
For where before she saw a wolf lies now the wasted body of a man. Naked, limbs withered, face gaunt. And worse, a face she knows. The long black and grey hair, the blunt edge of the jaw, the strong crooked nose.
Father.
The word ghosts over her lips as the boar gives the corpse another shunt. His head flops over, his dead eyes fix on her. Calling to her. Accusing her…
Where are you, my daughter?
She recoils, her belly filling with horror. A stick snaps underfoot. The boar lifts its head. For a long moment, they regard one another – woman and beast – the air between them filled with the boar’s grating pants, the coarse bristles of its snout glistening with her father’s blood. And as she looks, the animal’s long, thin lips curl into a sneer, moving as though in human speech, a whisper in her ear:
Whatever you have, I will take from you…
Queen Lilla Sviggarsdottír sat up suddenly, pulse thudding in her temple. Her long hair hung like a funeral veil over her eyes, dishevelled and clammy with sweat.
For a few seconds she stared wildly through the tangle of honey-gold strands, panting as if she’d run a league, forcing herself to take in the pale cream curtains, the thick marble pillars flanking the muslin drape across the doorway, its folds riffling with the breeze off the Bosporus. She smelled cedarwood and cinnamon. And the scent of the man beside her.
‘Are you all right, my love?’ His voice cracked the darkness, his breath close to her che
Erlan.
It didn’t seem long since that had been her question to ask of him – when the fever had had him in its grip. Are you all right? Which really meant: Are you still alive?
Too often, she had feared he was not.
She nodded at his shadow, unable to do more as the terror of her dream leached from her mind. This was her present, she told herself. This was her now. And yet she heard the echo of those words:
Whatever you have, I will take from you…
Words from her past. Words that the man who usurped her kingdom had hissed in her ear as he thrust her face down into the fresh earth of her husband’s grave.
She brushed aside her hair, sank back into the goose-down pillows and expelled a long sigh. ‘I’m… I’m fine.’
‘You were dreaming again.’ Erlan was propped on one elbow beside her, his dark eyes still luminous in the shadows of night, even though the sickness had stolen much of their lustre. He reached out and chased a last lock of hair from her face. ‘Was it the same?’
‘Yes. The boar… and my father.’
‘I’m sorry… that it troubles you so.’
‘Of course it troubles me,’ she answered quickly. ‘It’s four months since you told me it was time to go home.’ She sat up, drawing her knees to her chin under the silk coverlet. ‘Yet here we still are.’ She knew she sounded cold. She couldn’t help it. The well of her sympathy was deep. But even the deepest well could run dry.
‘I can’t help that I was sick—’
‘You know I don’t mean that.’ Still her tone was sharper than she intended. After all, Erlan had come within a blade’s edge of death. The wounds he had taken on that night of fire had festered. It had needed all the skill of the emperor’s best physicians to keep his feet from the Hel-road. Looking at his sunken eyes, his hollow cheeks, it was doubtful whether even now he was quite well. ‘I’m not blaming you. I just…’ She shook her head. ‘We must go back. I owe it to my father’s memory. And to the oath I swore to my husband.’
‘Your father’s memory has waited this long. Wherever he is, he can wait a little longer,’ he said, his voice a croak. ‘As for Ringast, you owe him nothing.’
She stared at him in the dark. ‘How can you – of all people – think so little of an oath?’ Gods, hadn’t he made her suffer for his own?
Erlan jerked upright, fully awake now. He reached across her to a cup and the pitcher of watered wine on the stand beside the bed. He poured it out, gulped down a couple of mouthfuls. ‘Oath or none, you heard what the emperor said. He has nothing to spare you. No gold, no men.’
The disappointment of her last audience with Emperor Leo still lingered, sour as rancid milk. Leo the Isaurian, third of his name, now hailed the Great Lion of the City. Saviour of the Faith, the Anointed of God. She frowned, remembering how her appeal had fallen on deaf ears. It is a time to rebuild, Leo had said. For the city to breathe. And you, too, my lady. Wait till the spring… then we will talk again.
‘We still have the crew,’ she said, fumbling for some thread that would still hold. ‘And the Fasolt, thank the gods.’ Although the last time she’d seen him, her helmsman Demetrios had said the ship was in need of some upkeep if they were to make any voyage north again. As usual he was evasive on the details.
‘It’s not enough though, is it?’ Erlan offered her the cup but she refused it with a flick of her hand. This argument was stale, each time they had it more frustrating than the last. ‘Even if we made it back, what then?’
‘The longer Thrand holds the Twin Kingdoms, the harder it will be to take them from him. He’s destroying Sveäland. The dream—’
‘You don’t know that for certain,’ he said, his voice clipped with impatience. ‘Dream or none.’ He threw the rest of the wine down his throat and sagged back into the pillow. As if even impatience was too heavy a burden for him to bear for long.
‘I feel it. That’s enough for me.’
Thrand was the last surviving son of King Harald Wartooth. Brother to her own dead husband, and the man who had taken from her the throne, her lands… and worse. Thrand hated her people as much as she loved them. She feared to think what he had done to her beloved homeland.
‘You know I want to help you, Lilla. But we’d need an army to stand any chance against Thrand and his hirds. Not a dozen ale-sot river-men and a leaky boat.’ He gave a snort of disgust. ‘By the Hanged! Gerutha’s dead. Einar’s dead. Aska is dead…’ His words trailed away, and for a moment it felt as if the ghosts of their friends – her murdered servant, his fallen comrade, even his wretched dog – filled the silence between them. When he spoke again, it was barely more than a whisper. ‘Maybe it’s time that—’
‘What?’ she snapped. ‘Time that I give it up?’
‘Yes,’ he said, his voice as tender as it was insistent. ‘Make peace that we are here and Thrand is there, and…’
‘And what?’
‘And that Sveäland is lost to you.’
‘How can you say that? We agreed—’
‘I know what we agreed.’ He rubbed at his temples, squeezing his eyelids shut, as if he could crush all the thoughts racing behind them. ‘I wanted to go back… Part of me still does. But… maybe I have to accept there’s nothing left for me in the north either. Those ships were burned a long time ago.’
This was the voice of defeat. It sat ill on the tongue of Erlan Aurvandil, the ‘Shining Wanderer’… Shining no more, she thought, feeling at once sorry and angry at him. Like a sun that has dimmed.
But she understood whence his reluctance came. She knew all of him now. He had held nothing back. In his shoes, would she want to return? Or would she hesitate, too?
She reached out, traced a fingertip down the scar on his cheek. His eyes opened, flicked up to hers. Those dark eyes that still saw right through her. ‘I can’t let it go, Erlan. I can’t dream the same dream every night. This place is a gilded cage. I’ll go mad if I stay here.’
‘Then at least wait,’ he said. ‘It’s too late in the year to leave now anyway. The land would be ice-locked before we reached halfway home. Who knows? By spring the emperor might feel more secure. He may help us like he said.’
‘I saved his daughter. So did you. If Leo doesn’t feel the weight of that debt now, he never will.’
‘I’m telling you, have patience.’
Patience? She snorted. ‘You don’t want me to wait. You want me to give it up.’
‘Well, is that so wrong?’ he exclaimed. ‘By the Hanged, don’t you know how much I love you, Lilla? I don’t want to lose you, not now I have you. I’ve lost everything else… Everything.’ He raked his fingers through his hair. ‘Besides… we’d be walking into a bear trap.’
‘You don’t know what the Weavers of Fate intend.’
‘Nothing good,’ he snarled. ‘They never do. That much I know.’
‘The fates of men are graven on the World Tree,’ she murmured. ‘I must return – even if it means death.’
‘Why must you return…? So you have bad dreams.’ He tapped his own skull. ‘You should try sleeping a night in my head.’ A tear glinted in the corner of his eye like a jewel, then fell in a silver trail down his cheek. He knuckled his brow, squeezing his eyes shut again. ‘These thoughts, so many terrible, mad thoughts. I see fire and blood and rage. Ringing steel… and death.’
‘My love.’ She reached out, put a soothing hand to his face. ‘My love…’
‘I don’t need your sympathy.’ He palmed away the tear. ‘I just need you to give this up.’
‘I can’t. I will not—’
‘I don’t understand.’ Suddenly he sat bolt upright, more alive than she’d seen him in weeks, seizing her hands. ‘Why this urgency? Why this obsession with regaining what he took from you? Tell me! Why? I need to know.’
He squeezed her fingers so tight it hurt. As if physical pain could make her forget the wrong done to her. Could make her forgive.
‘Because,’ she hissed, her voice cold as the northern snows, ‘… he raped me. The boar in my dream is Thrand… He raped me.’
The words hung there between them, vomited up from inside her at last. And into the void left behind them rushed pain and shame and fury. Erlan did not move. She saw his dark eyes flash with incomprehension… and then fill with pity. Which stung her far worse.
