Snow-Walker

Eighteen

After nightfall I hurried back,

But the warriors were all awake.

Lights were burning, blazing torches,

So false proved the path.

Asgrim didn’t hesitate. “All right. I stole them.”

“Where from?”

“Out near the river. Behind some rocks.”

“But you didn’t tell me.”

They heard the Dwarf laugh. “I’m a poor man, master. That’s good cloth—well, some of it is. Your quarry must have whipped off their wet clothes and dressed in dry, then sped off and left these. They’ll be halfway up the pass by now.”

There was a pause. He doesn’t believe it, Jessa thought.

Then they heard Asgrim yelp in pain. “You’re a poor liar,” the warrior growled. “They’ve been here, haven’t they? Any idea what she’ll do to you for this? I believe the silver mines beyond Ironwood always need men.”

“Believe me,” the Dwarf gasped, “I can imagine. But no outlaws have been here, I can say that for a truth.”

“Back!” Brochael muttered. “They’re coming in.”

“Search this!” The leader’s voice was so near it made Jessa jump. “All of it. Burn the place if you have to.” The noise of smashing wood and flung furniture made Wulfgar grit his teeth.

“We can’t let them do this.”

“I think,” the skald remarked drily, “I can let them, if I force myself.”

The noise came nearer. Something began to thump the panels of their hiding place. Jessa bit her lip. No one breathed. The hand slithered along the wood, feeling. Brochael raised his ax; it glinted in the dimness.

But before he could move, there was a sudden commotion and yells from outside. A breathless voice rang in the byre.

“The birds! They’re up over the pass!”

Scuffles, the slam of a door, running footsteps. Then silence.

Brochael moved first. “Now,” he growled. He kicked down the panel with one blow and was out, pulling the others after him. A shuffle in the next room made Wulfgar turn, but it was only the old man, his head around the door.

“Hurry,” he said. “They may be back.”

Wulfgar gripped his hand. “I don’t forget my promises.”

The small man grinned. “You’ll probably be dead. And I’ll get no horses from her, either.”

Wulfgar thumped his arm and was gone. As the others passed, Asgrim spoke to Kari. “She must fear you. You must be the one who can defeat her.”

Kari turned bleakly. “What about my fear of her?” he said.

Then Brochael pushed him out. “Will you be safe, old man?”

“Safer than you.”

Brochael nodded ruefully. “There may be songs about you, after all,” he said. Then he raced after the others.

They ran through the trees until the ground began to slope upward. Behind a pile of boulders Brochael stopped them. He crouched, one great arm around Thorkil’s shoulder. “Listen. We go silent and we go swift. They’re ahead of us, and will have men watching every path. They’ll also be waiting at the pass, but there’s no other way over, and we must take it. Be wary; keep your eyes open.”

They nodded.

“No one is to carry anything. Throw those empty packs in here.” He pulled some bushes apart and they tossed in the bags, the springy growth swishing back as he let it go. “Now. Take care.”

They climbed slowly, following the course of a narrow rocky stream that tumbled down the slope into the river. It cut deep into the peaty soil; thick tangles of gorse and bramble sprawled across it. They went carefully in the gathering darkness, often on hands and knees, keeping their heads low, below the level of the bank, splashing through the brown tumbling water chock-full of rocks. When the stream became smaller and dwindled to a trickle things were more difficult. This high up, the ground was open; only boulders and the shadows of stunted trees offered cover. They crawled in the dark over the boggy ground, flattening at any sound, until Jessa’s clothes were wet and her nostrils full of the smells of the mosses and the tiny creeping plants, the tussocky grass and the sundew that clung to her hair.

As the mountainside rose and became rockier, they began to clamber among the loose boulders that dislodged and tumbled underfoot, and scree that slid treacherously. Once, the skald nearly fell, and only Thorkil’s quick grip kept him up. The wind became colder, the air damp with thin rain. There were few signs of Gudrun’s men. Wulfgar thought they had crossed the mountains already, but Brochael just grunted. Jessa knew he was worried about the pass, that the danger would be up there, in the narrowest place.

He was right.

As midnight crept on and the sky turned black, they saw up ahead of them in the rainy air the red sparks of fires, the flickering shadows of watchers.

Finally, crouching behind a tower of rock, they saw the pass. It was a very narrow place, where the path dwindled to a thread between two pinnacles of the mountain, sheer and jagged. In the very middle of the path a fire had been lit; men sat around it, talking, the edges of their faces red in the flame light. Beyond, in the darkness, the path must run on, over the lip of the hill, down and down, into the flat marshy country of the Jarlshold.

Brochael took a long look, then turned his back and leaned against the rock, stretching out his legs in front of him. “We’ll need the High One himself to get us through this.”

Thorkil turned to Kari. “Why don’t you do what you did before—make us invisible?”

Kari shook his head. “That’s not what I did. I made one man think he had not seen you. There are far too many of them for that. I can’t touch all their minds.”

Thorkil shrugged. “So what can you do?” There was a touch of scorn in his voice. Jessa remembered the unwinding arm ring and frowned at him. But then, he didn’t remember.

“I don’t know,” Kari said. “Not yet.”

After a silence Wulfgar rubbed his wet hair. “We can’t get by with stealth, so we must attack.”

“No.” Brochael shook his head. “We’d be cut to pieces.”

“Well, do you have any other ideas?”

“None.”

There was another silence. Finally Jesssa said, “I’ve got an idea.” They all looked at her. She was fiddling with the laces on her boots. “It’s the fire.”

“What about it?” Wulfgar asked patiently.

“It’s the only light they’ve got. And it’s what blocks the way. If the fire went out suddenly, it would be dark, very dark, in that crack in the rocks. Their eyes wouldn’t be used to it. We could take them by surprise, if we were near enough.”

Brochael was nodding. “Yes, she’s right.”

“But listen, little shamanka,” the skald said, pulling gently on her hair, “how do we put it out? Throw rocks at it?”

She shrugged. “Kari must put it out.”

Kari looked at her. “I’ve told you, I can’t—”

“I don’t mean make them believe. I mean put it out. You, yourself.” She shuffled around to look at him, her voice urgent. “She could do it, and if she could, you can. You must. You must know your own powers.”

Kari stared into the darkness. He let Brochael put a hand on his shoulder. “What do you think?” the big man asked gently.

“I don’t know. I’ll try, but—”

“You can,” Jessa said quietly. “And you know it.”

He smiled. “If you say so.”

“If it was possible,” Brochael said slowly, “we could be through in seconds. Wulfgar and I will hold the pass until you’re down.” He grinned at the dark man sprawled elegantly in the mud. “What do you say, my lord? We’d have some good fighting.”

Wulfgar nodded, but the skald said softly, “I thought the point of this was a new Jarl. Not much use to us if he’s dead.”

Wulfgar ignored him. “So it depends on you, runemaster,” he said to Kari.

Kari turned and gazed over the rocks at the blaze of fire. “Let’s move up closer, then.”

Shadows in the darkness, they drifted from rock to rock, silent as ghosts. Now they were so near they could hear the soft speech of the watchers and the crackle and spit of flames. A sentinel moved past them; they waited, flat against rock. Kari, a darker shape in the darkness, edged out so that he could see the flames. Jessa saw the light of them glimmer on his face.

They waited, unmoving. For a while nothing changed; they had time to know they were crouched in a dark, damp place high up on a mountain, pinned down by the wind.

And then Jessa began to feel it, a slow accumulation of darkness, a gathering up of night from all its cracks and holes and crannies. Kari was conjuring with black air; as he lay flat against the rock, unmoving, she could sense his mind searching, gathering, piling night on night.

The fire glimmered. A man muttered something and threw on kindling; sparks flew and went out. Above the flames the air seemed a web of blackness, descending, drifting down. The red light grew less. The flames sank. Kari clenched his fist, his face intent. “Go on,” Jessa breathed, half to herself. “Go on.” Slowly the fire was dwindling, shrinking to small cold blue flames. Someone shouted angrily; the charred sticks were stirred into a cloud of ash. Kari gripped Brochael’s sleeve.

“Now,” he said. And the fire went out.

It was gone so suddenly that Jessa was barely ready. In the blackness someone pushed her. She sprang up and ran up the steep path, slipping between shadows in a confusion of shouts and the clash of swords. Someone grabbed her; she thumped at his chest and shoved him away, and then she was over the pass and racing downhill over loose stones that clattered and spilled under her feet, down and down into the darkness of the land below. Breathless with speed, she slid and rolled and grabbed at the scree to steady herself, hearing the stones rattle down and fall a long way. She crouched on hands and knees. Someone was kneeling at her side. “All right?”

She recognized Thorkil’s voice. “Yes.” She scrambled up. “Where are they?”

The top of the mountain was black against the dim sky. Figures moved up there; there were shouts, the ominous clang of metal.

“Brochael’s holding them.” Thorkil sounded breathless, choked with excitement. “He and Wulfgar, like they said!”

“They’ll be killed! Where’s Kari?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked up. “We must do something!”

But as they watched it, the sky split open. An arch of blue light flamed suddenly over the hilltop, and under it they saw Brochael clearly, wielding his ax, scattering men, and Wulfgar, his sword flashing blue and purple. Then out of the arch shot strange shafts of eerie fire, glimmering down like a net of light. Gudrun’s men leaped back, one yelling, as the blue flames scorched him, until the rippling curtain of light had closed the pass. Wulfgar and Brochael were already hurtling down the path to where Jessa and Thorkil waited.

“Where’s Kari?” Brochael gasped.

“Here.” He was standing farther down the slope, the skald at his side.

In the eerie blue light Brochael stared at him. “Did you do that?” he said, his voice gruff. “How could you have done that?”

Kari was silent. Then he said, “I didn’t want you to be hurt.”

Brochael shoved his ax into his belt. For a moment Jessa thought she saw something new in his face; some fear. But when he looked up at Kari it was gone. “Let’s get on,” he said.