King of Thorns

18

Four years earlier

Sindri caught us up before we’d got five miles from his father’s hall. I’d left Makin with Duke Alaric. Makin had a way with the finding of common ground and the building of friendships. I left Rike too, because he would only moan about climbing mountains and because if anyone could show the Danes true berserker spirit it was Rike. I left Red Kent also, for his Norse blood on his father’s side and because he wanted a good axe made for him.

“Well met,” I said as Sindri rode up between the pines. It had never been in doubt that he would give chase. He found us as we left the lower slopes and thick forest behind.

“You need me,” he said. “I know these mountains.”

“We do need you,” I said.

Sindri grinned. He took off his helm and wiped the sweat from his brow, blowing hard from the ride. “They say you destroyed half of Gelleth,” he said. He looked doubtful.

“Closer to a fifth,” I said. “Legends grow in the telling.”

Sindri frowned. “How old are you?”

I felt the Brothers stiffen. It can be annoying to always have the people around you think you’re going to murder everyone who looks at you wrong. “I’m old enough to play with fire,” I said. I pointed to the largest of the mountains ahead. “That one’s a volcano. The smoke gives it away. What about the rest?”

“That’s Lorgholt. Three others have spoken in my lifetime,” Sindri said. “Loki, Minrhir, and Vallas.” He pointed them out in turn. Vallas had the faintest wisps of smoke or steam rising from its western flanks. “In the oldest eddas the stories tell of Halradra being the father and these four his sons.” Sindri pointed to the low bulk of Halradra. “But he has slept for centuries.”

“Let’s go there then,” I said. “I’d like to watch a sleeping giant before I poke a woken-up one.”

“These aren’t people, Jorg,” Makin had told me before we left. “They’re not enemies. You can’t fight them.”

He didn’t know what I thought I could achieve wandering the landscape. I didn’t either but it always pays to have a look around. If I think back on my successes, such as they are, they come as often as not from the simple exercise of putting two disparate facts together and making a weapon of them. I destroyed Gelleth with two facts that when laid one atop the other, made something dangerous. There’s a thing like that at the heart of the Builders’ weapons, two chunks of magic, harmless enough on their own but forming some critical mass when pushed together.

The Halradra is not so tall as its sons, but it is tall. Its lower slopes are softened by the years, black grit in the main, crunching under hoof, the rocks rotten with bubbles so that you can crumble them in your hands, the fire so long gone that no sniff of it remains. Through the ash and broken rock, fire-weed grew in profusion, Rosebay Willowherb as they had it in Master Lundist’s books. The first to spring up where the fire has been. Even after four hundred years nothing much else wanted to push its way through the black dirt.

“Do you see them?” Gorgoth rumbled at my shoulder. The depth of his voice took me by surprise as always.

“If by ‘them’ you mean mountains, then yes. Otherwise, no.”

He pointed with one thick finger, almost the width of Gog’s forearm. “Caves.”

I still didn’t see them, but in the end I did. Cave mouths at the base of a sharp fall. Not that dissimilar from Gorgoth’s old home beneath Mount Honas.

“Yes,” I said. “They are.” I thought that sometimes perhaps Gorgoth should just keep holding on to those precious words.

We pressed on. Higher up and the going gets too steep and too treacherous for horses. We left our mounts with Sim and Grumlow, continuing on foot, trudging on through a thin layer of icy snow. The peaks of Halradra’s sons look broken off, jagged, forged with violence. The old man could pass as a common mountain with no hint of a crater until you scramble up through snow-choked gullies and find the lake laid out before you, sudden and without announcement.

“Happy now?” Sindri climbed up beside me and found a perch where the wind had taken the snow from a rock. He looked happy enough himself despite his tone.

“It’s a sight and a half, isn’t it?” I said.

Gorgoth clambered up with Gog on his shoulder.

“I like this mountain,” Gog said. “It has a heart.”

“The lake is a strange blue,” I said. “Is the water tainted?”

“Ice,” Sindri said. “The water’s just meltwater, a yard deep if that, run down off the crater slope. The lake stays frozen all year, underneath.”

“Well now. There’s a thing,” I said. And I had two facts by the corners.

We hunkered down in the lee of some rocks a little way below the crater rim and watched the strange blue of those waters as we ate a cold meal from Alaric’s kitchens.

“What kind of heart does the mountain have, Gog?” I threw chicken bones down the slope and licked the grease from my fingers.

He paused, closing his eyes to think. “Old, slow, warm.”

“Does it beat?” I asked.

“Four times,” Gog said.

“Since we started climbing?”

“Since we saw the smoke as we rode in from the bridge,” Gog said.

“Eagle.” Row pointed into the hazy blue above us. He reached for his bow.

“Good eyes as always, Row.” I held his arm. “Let the bird fly.”

“So,” said Sindri, huddled, braids flailing in the wind. “What next?”

“I’d like to see those caves,” I said. Gorgoth’s observation felt more important all of a sudden. Precious even.

We started to make our way down, strangely a more difficult proposition than the climb, as if Halradra wanted to keep hold of us. The rock seemed to crumble under every heavy downhill step, with the ice to help any faller on his way. I caught Sindri at one turn, grabbing his elbow as the ground broke away under his heel.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Alaric wouldn’t be pleased to lose another son up here,” I said.

Sindri laughed. “I would have stopped at the bottom.”

Gorgoth followed, kicking footholds for himself at each step; Gog scampered free rather than risk getting squashed if the giant fell.

We found Sim and Grumlow sharing a pipe, sprawled on the rocks in the sunshine all at ease.

The caves were almost harder to see as we drew closer. Black caves in a black cliff with black interiors. I spotted three entrances, one big enough to grow an oak in.

“Something lives here,” Gorgoth said.

I looked for signs, bones or scat around the cave mouth. “There’s nothing,” I said. “What makes you say there is?”

Expressions came hard to a face like Gorgoth’s, but enough of the ridges and furrows moved to let a keen observer know that something puzzled him. “I can hear them,” he said.

“Keen ears and keen eyes. I can’t hear anything. Just the wind.” I stopped and closed my eyes as Tutor Lundist taught me, and let the wind blow. I let the mountain noises flow through me. I counted away the beat of my heart and the sigh of breath. Nothing.

“I hear them,” Gorgoth said.

“Let’s go careful then,” I said. “Time for your bow, Brother Row, good thing you didn’t waste an arrow on that bird.”

We tethered the horses and made ready. I took my sword in hand. Sindri unslung the axe from his back, a fine weapon with silver-chased scrollwork on the blade behind the cutting edge. And we moved in closer. I led in from downwind, an old habit that cost us half an hour traversing the slopes. From fifty yards the wind brought a hint of the inhabitants, an animal stink, faint but rank. “Our friends keep a clean front doorstep,” I said. “Not bears or mountain cats. Can you still hear them, Gorgoth?”

He nodded. “They’re talking about food, and battle.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said. I could hear nothing.

We came by slow steps to the great cave mouth flanked by two smaller mouths and several cracks a man might slip through. Standing before the cave it seemed impossible that I had missed it from across the slopes. Apart from one shattered bone wedged between two rocks there was no sign of habitation. Except for the stink.

Gorgoth stepped in first. He carried a crude flail in his belt, just three thick chains on a wooden haft, set with twists of sharp metal. A leather apron kept the chains from shredding his legs as he ran. I’d never seen him take the weapon in hand, and somehow he seemed more scary unarmed. Gog walked behind Gorgoth with Sindri and me to flank him, then Sim and Grumlow, Row at the rear eyeing everything with suspicion.

“We can’t go far,” Row said. “Too dark.” He didn’t sound upset.

Gog lifted his hand and flames sprung from his fingertips. Row stifled a curse.

I looked back out across the mountain slopes. The fan of rocks and dirt spreading from the cave mouth reminded me of something. Random thoughts scratched each other at the back of my mind, fighting for form, for the words to say what they meant.

“We’ll go on in,” I said. “A little way. I want to hear what Gorgoth hears.” He’d been right about the caves after all.

Toward the back of the cavern several tunnels led into the mountain. The larger passage led up at a shallow gradient. “That one.”

We moved in. Underfoot the tunnel lay grit-floored, strewn with small rocks, but the walls were smooth, almost slick. The shadows moved and danced as Gog followed Gorgoth, his burning hand throwing a vast shadow-Gorgoth ahead of us. Fifty yards brought us to an almost spherical chamber with the tunnel leading on behind it, now heading up almost as steeply as the slopes outside. The fire glow gave the place memories of the cathedral at Shartres, our shadows processing over smooth rock on every side.

“Plato came to such a cave,” I said. “And saw the whole world on its walls.”

“Your pardon?” Sindri said.

I shook my head. “See here?” I pointed to a slick depression in the rock close by, as if a giant had sunk his thumb into soft mud and left his imprint.

“What is it?” Gog asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. But it looked familiar. Like a pothole in a riverbed.

I ran across to the tunnel at the back and stood at the entrance. Men didn’t make these passages, nor troll or Grendel-kin, goblin, pixie or ghost. The air sat almost still, but moved even so, crawling from the tunnel. Cold air. Very cold.

“Jorg,” Row said.

“I’m thinking,” I said, not looking back.

“Jorg!” he said again.

And I turned. In the mouth of the tunnel through which we had come stood two trolls. I called them trolls to myself because they looked like the trolls of my imagination, not the rocky lumps the Danes decorated the landscape with, but lean dangerous creatures, dark-stained hide, muscles like knots in rope, laid along long limbs that ended in black talons. Crouched as they were their height was hard to judge, but I guessed eight feet, maybe nine. They moved with quick purpose, hugging the stone.

“Keep the arrow,” I told Row. I couldn’t see one arrow slowing either of them down unless it went in the neck or eye.

I would have called them monsters, leucrota, mistakes like Gorgoth, except that there were two of them. A pair speaks of design rather than accident.

“Hello,” I said. It sounded stupid, one thin voice in that great chamber, but I could think of nothing else to say, and fighting them just didn’t appeal. The only comfort to be taken was that both those pairs of black eyes were fixed on Gorgoth rather than me.

“Can’t you hear them?” Gorgoth asked.

“No,” I said.

The leftmost troll leapt forward without the preamble of feints or growling. He threw himself at Gorgoth, reaching for his face. Gorgoth caught the troll’s wrists and stopped him dead. Both monsters stood, locked together, leaning in, muscles writhing and twitching. The troll’s breath escaped in quick rasps. Gorgoth rumbled. I hadn’t seen him struggle with anything since he held the gate up at the Haunt. Every task since then, be it unloading barrels, shifting rocks, anything, hadn’t so much as raised a sweat.

Row lifted his bow again. For the second time I caught his arm. “Wait.”

They held each other, straining, the occasional swift readjustment of feet. Troll claws gouging the rock. Gorgoth’s blunt toes anchoring his weight. Muscle heaped against muscle, bones creaking with the strain, spit flecking at their lips as harsh breaths escaped. Moments stretched until they felt like minutes. My own nails bit into my palm, white knuckles on sword hilt; something had to give, something. And without warning the troll slammed into the floor, a beat of silence and Gorgoth let out a deep roar that hurt my chest and set Row’s nose bleeding.

Gorgoth heaved in a breath. “They will serve,” he said.

“What?” I said, then, “Why?

The troll on the floor rolled over and got to its feet, backing to its companion.

“They are soldiers,” he said. “They want to serve. They were made for it.”

“Made?” I asked, still watching the trolls, ready to try to defend myself.

“It has been written in their dena,” Gorgoth said.

“By Ferrakind?”

“A long time ago,” Gorgoth said. “They are a race. I don’t know when they were changed.”

“The Builders made them?” I asked, wondering.

“Maybe then. Maybe after.” Gorgoth shrugged.

“They are Grendel’s children,” Sindri said. He looked as if he thought he was dreaming. “Made for war in the ashes of Ragnarok. They’re waiting here for the final battle.”

“Do they know what made these tunnels?” I asked. “And where they lead?”

Gorgoth paused. “They know how to fight,” he said.

“That’s good too.” I grinned. “You’re talking to them in your head, aren’t you?”

Gorgoth managed surprise again. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I am.”

“What now?” Sindri said, still looking from one troll to the other, testing the edge of his axe with his fingers.

“We go back,” I said. I needed to muse and musing is more comfortable under a duke’s roof than on a windswept volcano or buried in fetid caves.

“Gorgoth, tell the trolls we’ll be back and to keep our visit to themselves.” I looked the pair over one more time. I wondered what kind of havoc they’d wreak on a battlefield. The best kind I thought.

“Let’s go back,” I said. And see if our perspectives have changed any after our climb.