C.F. Barrington's Blog

Her partner was Halvar – defender of the rock – a man-mountain. His face looked as though it had been punched relentlessly for more than a decade and a scar ran from his left eye to his upper lip. His hair was cropped short and matted, and his chin hadn’t seen a razor for a week.

“Some golden rules,” he said, standing in the centre of the hexagon with the candlelight playing on his oak-tree arms. “Keep your chin down, pushed into your neck. Don’t give your attacker a chance to hit this area. A chin or neck punch will fell you.

“Keep moving. Not bloody dancing about like a monkey, but not a stationary target either. Little light steps, always in balance and not too high off the ground.

“Hooks, jabs and uppercuts – only use these if you’re very confident they’ll work. They can be slow or wild or risk counterattack. A straight-on direct punch is always the best option.

“Likewise, kicking.” He looked at Thrall VIII. “Never kick higher than an opponent’s thigh, unless you are very, very good. Any higher and you risk having your foot caught exactly as we saw. Believe me, in a full-out fight you really don’t want to find yourself in that position.

“If you can’t avoid a punch, step into it. This may seem counterintuitive, but the real power in a blow is when the elbow has extended. Step forward so that your attacker’s strike hits you before the arm has fully extended and it’ll soften the impact.

“Finally, attitude. Show confidence at all times. No matter the odds, bristle with confidence. Your opponent may be a gigantic piece of horseshit, but you need to worry him. Make the bastard wonder if you can win.”

The group were silent as he spoke. Half-listening, but also lost in their own thoughts. Perhaps that was why Halvar made sure he filled the quiet with his voice. There had been violence here tonight and they had stepped across a boundary. It was one thing to lift and hit bags, but over the last hour they had gone at one another. They had punched and kicked and hurt. And they had done it unquestioningly because they had been commanded. Some had won. Some had lost. Some felt quietly exhilarated. Some chastened.

But the same question played in all their minds: What have I just done?

“Welcome, arsehole.” The voice was no more than a whisper and so close to Punnr’s ear that he felt its breath. He turned in bewilderment and looked straight into the face of the man with the effeminate mouth and black eyes whom he had goaded in the warehouse. “We’ve been hunting you.”

Before Punnr could react, the man stepped back and threw him a punch that sent him sprawling. It was followed by the full weight of the man. Punnr felt his long hair grabbed and his skull thumped against the mountainside. Fingers found purchase on his face and sought his eyes. Desperately he forced his knee beneath his assailant and kicked. The man was knocked to the side and Punnr rolled on top, but before he could steady himself, his attacker coiled like a snake and rolled him again. A fist slammed into his face and then hands found his throat. He kicked and hit and squirmed, but it was no use. The hands clung on and crushed his windpipe. He saw stars and heard blood roaring in his ears. He tried to drag a breath but nothing came. The night grew deeper and he was falling and spinning and then it started to feel pleasant, like dropping through endless layers of leaves to a warm embracing mattress.

He was almost gone, when there was a voice. “That’s enough! Game over. We have a winner.” Punnr felt the man yanked from him and Halvar’s rough hands were shaking his shoulder. “Are you still with us, laddie?”

Punnr took a savage, hoarse breath, sucking the mountain air into his lungs, and his vision returned, along with an almighty pain across his face. He blinked up at Halvar and tried to nod. The Perpetual stood behind Halvar, rigid with anger, his jaw clenching and his hands still balled into fists. He stared at Punnr with raw hatred.

Halvar grabbed his arm and pulled him onto watery legs. “Now shake and make up, ladies.”

The Perpetual approached and regarded Punnr with cold interest. He held out a slim hand and as Punnr took it he thought how those same fingers had moments earlier been around his throat.

“What are you called?” the Perpetual asked.

“Punnr.”

The man considered this. “And I am Ulf, the Wolf.”

“You almost killed me.”

“That was my plan.”

On the next occasion they entered the vault, the room was empty except for Freyja sitting on a stool, waiting for them. Her braids were tied back and her burnt-cinnamon eyes glinted in the candlelight.

“Sit,” she said extending her arms to indicate the circle she expected them to form on the floor in front of her. They glanced at each other, but obeyed wordlessly, dropping down and crossing their legs like a class ready for a story. There was none of the usual equipment. No hanging punch bags, dumbbells, lateral bars. No hexagon drawn across the flagstones. Only Freyja looking at them and waiting for them to settle.

“It’s just me tonight,” she said eventually. “Halvar’s excused himself because he’s no good at this stuff. This evening I have a few things to say and you’re going to listen. This isn’t an open forum. I won't be fielding questions. But what I have to say is a vital part of the process. So I will speak, you will listen, then you will depart and each do as your conscience demands.”

She focused on a flagstone in front of her as she thought about her next words. No one stirred.

“People die in the Pantheon. Let’s not pretend otherwise.” She said it simply and raised her eyes to look around the circle. “I think you know that. I think most of the world out there…” she waved towards the ceiling to indicate the city above, “…knows that. But there is the romance of death; and there is the reality of death. And they are two very different things.

“You saw the Perpetuals. You watched their skill with the wooden training swords. You heard Radspakr and Halvar telling you that it’s time for your own weapons training to begin. And you’re no fools. You know that although you may start with a blunt wooden stick, you’ll graduate to razor-sharp iron. And when your foe also grasps such a weapon – well, that’ll be the moment you fight for your life.”

Lana Cameron had been in her final year reading for an MA in Linguistics in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at Edinburgh University when she was raped at a student party on St Leonard’s Street on the south-western fringes of Holyrood Park.

Until that night in early May – only weeks before her Finals – she had rejoiced in university life. It was a long held ambition of hers to live in Edinburgh, a city which she first found intoxicating during teenage visits from Dumfries with her mother. She became a model student, immersing herself in lectures and tutorials, reading hungrily in her room in Hall. An already fine distance runner who had represented Scotland at the European Youth Games, she joined the University Athletics Club and pounded out laps of the cinder track in the sharp air of countless dawns.

In her third year she was awarded a place on the Erasmus Exchange Scheme to spend twelve months at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She fell in love with Greece. The golden light that touched everything. She became fluent in the language. She trained under the Mediterranean sun and spent endless balmy evenings feasting on fruit and wine. She met a man named Andreas who was reading Ancient History and he shared with her the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman remains around the upper town. They strolled in the harbour, hiked in Seich Sou forest, swam in the Thermaic Gulf at Peraia, ate bougatsa for breakfast and dwelt over meze in the tavernas of Ladadika.

She could have lost herself in Thessaloniki, but from the other side of the continent, she felt Edinburgh clawing her back. Her fourth year was spent focusing on her dissertation, becoming Secretary of LangSoc by popular demand, and researching a career as a translator. Andreas had inspired in her an appreciation of history and architecture, so she reconnected with Edinburgh through a new love of its twisted dark past.

Now, as Lana walked down the Mount towards the Scottish Academy and Princes Street, her pony tail swinging and her boots clicking on the paving, she struggled to analyse everything Radspakr had said and to understand how her life had taken such a calamitous turn and washed her up in that room beneath the road, listening fearfully to the Lord Adjutant of the Valhalla Horde.

Oliver watched the way the man leaned awkwardly to take his weight on his right side and held his left arm crooked at the elbow. He wore a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his arms looked thin and white, as though they had seen none of the summer sun.

“A very good morning to you, laddie,” the stranger said without looking up. His accent was from southern England, but had an Edinburgh inflection. He raised his head and for a moment his gaze was interrogative, then it warmed and there was the flash of a smile. He had the palest blue eyes, like a winter sky. Beneath his dark hair, he wore an earring in his left lobe. The trace of a moustache followed the contours of his upper lip, reaching down to a shadow beard on the end of his chin. Beads of sweat hung on his forehead. Oliver decided he was an ill-looking musketeer; a D’Artagnan with malaria.

“I bet not much happens around here without you knowing about it, eh?”

“No, sir.”

The man harrumphed, studied him for a few seconds, then stepped out onto the landing with his back lowered and hand held out. “I’m Tyler.”

Oliver shook the hand shyly. Despite the cigarettes, the man smelled unexpectedly of soap and washing powder.

And that was the start of Oliver’s fascination. Over the next few weeks, Tyler caused quite a stir in the community. His van remained unmoved in the Connaughts’ parking space. Every morning, regardless of weather, he was to be found either sitting in the gardens or practising a series of slow stretching movements on the damp grass, and sometimes he would glance up at the window and nod his hat to the little observer. Oliver’s mother invented reasons to catch Tyler on the stairs and it turned out – rather disappointingly – that he was employed on the late-shift at the University library on George Square.

Then, in the second week of August, Oliver’s perseverance elicited two discoveries. Firstly, Tyler sometimes spent whole nights in his van. Oliver would force himself awake in the small hours to study the vehicle, often seeing a pinprick of light as its occupant smoked. The other discovery was that on certain evenings, strange thumps emanated from Tyler’s flat. Oliver would sit tense and listen. The thumps came in heavy bursts, followed by silence. Whack, whack, whack. Something hard on to something soft, as though Tyler were smashing the dust mites from his mattress.