Berserker (Omnibus) Read Online Free PDF Page B

this time the rage was finished, and it was pure malice that took the life of this man. We are dealing with vicious killers, Harald; not only Berserks, but blood-hungry humans in their quiet times.’
    They cut the old man down, and Harald wrapped him in his short lambswool cloak.
    Elena was not in the settlement.
    They had not finished the search, but Harald felt, now, that she had escaped; how he didn’t know, except to suppose that she was at the hold, caring for his mother as she had often done. He fought away from the notion that the killers had taken her with them; she was beautiful, yes, but not so special that she would have received a different sort of death from the others in the village.
    The bodies of Bjorn and Ingredd he lay together and covered with turf blocks which he found stacked inside the door of the largest house, perhaps ready to be added to the drystone walls for extra warmth now that the first bitter winds of autumn were fetching strong.
    As he stepped out into daylight, hands trembling with anger and grief, mind full of Elena, he heard a whispering sound …
    At the last moment he threw himself backwards, looked to his right in time to see the twisting spear slice past his face, its shaft spinning faster than he had ever dreamed it was possible to spin, the tightly coiled cord in the haft’s centre blood-stained and partly cut through.
    The spear clattered off the drystone gable wall of the horse stable, fifty paces further on.
    ‘Sigurd! Where are you?’
    ‘Harald! He’s behind the latrine! Be careful!’
    Gotthelm’s voice was sharp with urgency. He was searching the other side of the main house and could probably see the small building that was the community privvy. Harald hefted his sword and ran, stooped low, along the length of the smallest house to where the spear lay. The weapon was crusted with gore, its long, narrow blade blunted and chipped, but still very deadly when thrown. He held it in his left hand, low down on the shaft, ready to use it as a second sword. He circled the outside of the settlement and finally saw the danger.
    At first he thought it was a naked man, painted red as if in some magical rite of winter. When the figure opened its mouth and roared, however, he got a better idea of the creature’s nature.
    It was a dying Berserker, his thick furs matted and plastered down with the spillage from his own wounds. His head was bare and even the lank blond hair on his scalp was riddled through with cuts and slashes, almost certainly self-inflicted. He was holding himself upright against a dog-tether pole and he balanced there, bestial and bizarre, among the hacked corpses of the dogs; his red crusted sword waved in a wide circle as he looked first at Harald Swiftaxe, then at Gotthelm advancing carefully from the opposite direction.
    A huge spear had been driven through the Berserker’s belly. Its recurved hooks were jammed back into his flesh, and the shaft was hacked and splintered where the man had tried to cut it out of his body but had failed. One of the younger men of the settlement perhaps had had at least one word of revenge, had perhaps turned the Berserker’s own looted weapon against him.
    As Harald closed in he became aware of the smell of the beast, a rich, fetid odour, the stink of split guts and voided bowels. And blood. Always blood.
    The Berserker roared again, his eyes narrowing, his lips drawing back from teeth that were black with decay. His sword slashed through the air, stopping both Gotthelm and Swiftaxe, then Gotthelm closed in to kill.
    His first vicious swipe was knocked aside by the Berserker, whose parrying sweep completed the arc and nearly cut Harald’s throat. Harald drew back and threw the twisting spear from a range of ten paces. It homed true and straight, spinning as it flew.
    The Berserker released his hold on the upright pole and plucked the spear from the air before the point could make contact with his body; he twisted round and the