Snow-Walker

Nineteen

It is not far from here

in terms of miles, that the mere lies

overcast with dark, crag-rooted trees…

All the morning they rode, about forty riders and a pack of dogs, high into the frosted fells. Again it had been only too easy to find marks and prints in the soft mud all about the Jarlshold—between the houses, down at the wharves, even right up to the door of the hall, as if the rune thing had prowled silently about all night. But Wulfgar had ordered everyone to stay indoors with their livestock, and no one seemed to have heard anything at all.

This time the prints led away clearly along the fjordside, among shingle patches and wet grasses. The hunters followed, their reflections traveling with them along the brown, rippling waters.

Jessa, near the back, turned to Skapti. “What did he mean by that—his own hunting?”

“Who knows?” The skald’s fingers tugged a dry leaf from the horse’s mane. “Who can follow the thoughts of runemasters, Jessa, or travel down the tracks of their minds?”

“He’s up to something.”

“Doubtless.”

“And he’s right about Vidar. About all of us. Listen, Skapti—stop thinking up word chains and listen to me! Sometimes I think about Gudrun, and I wonder.” She twisted her head. “Don’t you?”

He nodded unhappily. “But that’s what she wants us to do. She rules us, even now.”

Jessa’s horse splashed through the crumbling turf of the waterside, one hoof slipping into the mud. Jerked sideways, she saw herself suddenly, a small white face far below.

“Her reflection,” she muttered.

Gradually they climbed higher, through wide pastures, beside the tiny lakes and tarns of the mountains, skirting the forest that crowded below the snowline. Above, the sun glinted on the high passes, the white peaks never free from snow.

The trail was easy to follow, the dogs running free, casting about, barking. But as the forest came closer they began to slow down, reluctant.

Wulfgar waved his arm, and the group of horsemen spread out into the long line of the hunt, pacing along a grassy lakeside and into the ferns and bracken of the wood. But the ground here was too steep and broken, riven by streams that crashed and fell foaming among boulders, swept by heavy overhanging branches. Riding was impossible; after only a few yards they turned around.

“It’ll have to be on foot.” Wulfgar swung himself down, and hauled out the great ash spear strapped to his saddle.

“Spread out; keep the dogs leashed. Two men stay with the horses. Jessa, keep with me. The rest of you stay in twos. No one is to be alone. If you see it, or anything, shout. Remember this thing kills quickly, and it’s big.”

They disappeared discreetly, man by man, fading into the gloom between the trees. A crackle of leaves, a swish of branches, and they were gone, as if the forest was empty.

Close behind Wulfgar, Jessa stepped over roots that tangled the broken, rock-strewn ground. In the green light figures flickered to the left of her, but already it was hard to see who. Once someone called from that direction; everyone stopped, listening, but the word came back along the line quickly. “Nothing.”

Foot by foot, the men moved on, trying to keep one another in sight. Long growths of ivy hung from the still trees, and the farther in the hunters went, the darker and more silent the wood became; sounds grew fainter, dissolved into whistles and rustles, as if the great carpet of needles underfoot crushed and muffled every sound. Breathing was all Jessa could hear now, her own, and Wulfgar’s slither and push through the tanglewood. On each side of them a deepening darkness loomed, full of leaf rustle and movement.

Wulfgar slid into a hollow and stopped, dragging his foot out with a whispered curse. He crouched, peering ahead.

“It chooses the darkest places, the most difficult ground for us.”

“Any animal would.”

“Not like this.” He glanced behind warily. “Those farmers were right. The creature can think. Or someone tells it what to do.”

But Jessa was listening suddenly. “Where are they all? I can’t hear anyone.”

He listened too, then called, “Skapti! Vidar!”

There was no answer. His voice rang oddly around them.

“They should never be out of earshot!” Angrily he called them again.

The green silence muffled his shout.

“They’ve gone after it,” Jessa said.

“Without us?”

“We may have been too far over. We were on the end of the line.”

He glared at her. “It still shouldn’t have happened.”

“Or they might be ahead somewhere.”

Wulfgar hesitated. Then, after a moment, he walked on.

Uneasy now, Jessa scrambled after him, her knife drawn. They pressed through the swishing, tangled briars, creeping under low branches, sometimes on hands and knees, until she realized that the ground was dropping away steeply before them. Once Wulfgar called again; his voice rang eerily back among the black, clustered trees, as if there was some barrier it could not pierce. All about them the wood was completely silent.

“There’s rune lore in this,” he muttered.

Jessa thought so too. She crouched in the mud to catch her breath. “Gudrun. It’s her creature, after all.”

“Gudrun’s too far away.”

“Who else then?”

“I don’t know, Jessa. I’m trying not to think.” He looked around at her rather strangely, she thought. “Come on. We have to find the others.”

They slid down the slope, steadying themselves from trunk to trunk, their hands powdered with green lichen. At the bottom they came to a place Jessa disliked on sight.

It was a still hollow. Everything in it was thick with moss, smothered with it, as if nothing here had been disturbed for long years, but had oozed out moisture and liverworts and slow globules of living growth. Wood was rotten, splintering softly underfoot, overgrown with brown steps of fungi. At the bottom of the hollow they saw a small mere, brown and still, the branches of a drowned tree rising stark from the surface.

“A real troll haunt,” Jessa muttered, rubbing green smudges off her cheek.

Wulfgar looked quickly around. “It may have been here. Something made that track to the water.”

He squelched forward through the spongy moss, water oozing out and rolling in bright drops over his boots, but Jessa stayed where she was.

A rustle in the forest froze them both. Wulfgar turned like lightning, braced the spear into the ground, held the point ready, crouching. Jessa crouched too, silent.

Something was coming.

The stiff black branches stirred and swished.

She drew the other knife stealthily and held them both in hot fists.

Then the undergrowth parted.

Vidar looked out.

Wulfgar stood up slowly with a murmur of relief. “You!” he said. “And where are the others?”

“Not far.” Vidar came out into the hollow, tugging his feet irritably from the boggy ground. “Gunther thinks he had a sight of the thing. It moves quickly, for all its size.”

“Which way?”

“North.”

All the time he was walking closer. Still crouched, Jessa watched, and as she was about to stand and ease her knees, a movement in the bushes behind Vidar caught her eye. Something glimmered there, a paleness, a crackle of leaves.

Her heart thudded.

And then she saw it wasn’t the rune beast at all.

It was a thin, rat-faced man, smirking as Vidar walked closer and closer to the Jarl. Closer and closer.

Something snapped in her. Knowledge burst in her brain like light; she leaped up and screamed, “Wulfgar! Look out!”

He turned to face her quickly.

“No!” she yelled, but Vidar’s knife was out.

It slashed down into the Jarl’s back, swiftly, silently.