Snow-Walker

Twenty-One

With such biting words of rebuke and

reminder he taunts him at every turn.

The hunters arrived back just before dusk.

Hakon, sitting on the fjordshore listlessly tossing in stones, heard the ring of hooves and scrambled up quickly. By the time he reached the hall, men and dogs and horses were everywhere, the air full of voices and angry words.

Grabbing someone’s elbow, he asked, “Did you get it? The creature?”

The man shrugged him off. “It got us. Wulfgar’s hurt badly. The girl’s dead.”

“Jessa?”

Astonished, he let the man push away, staring at him without seeing. He couldn’t believe it. He thought of how he’d spoken to her right here, only this morning, in her soft leather coat, her hair braided. Jessa? And he hadn’t been able to warn her. The fear of it struck him to silence.

Everyone was hurrying into the hall. He went with them, passive, hustled by holders, women, fishermen.

Inside they gathered in a hushed, anxious throng. Hakon was crushed at the back against the tapestried wall. He leaned back against it, feeling lost. Vidar came in, a crowd of men about him. Skuli was one of them. Everyone fell silent.

“Friends.” The priest’s voice was low and bitter; his face gray. “There’s bad news—bad for this hold and for the whole of the north. You may have heard that Wulfgar is badly hurt. The beast struck him from behind, we think. He’s lost much blood. He’s unconscious and may not recover.”

A ripple of talk ran down the hall. Vidar watched, the scar on his cheek dragging the pale skin.

“What happened?” someone yelled.

“Sorcery.” He said it deliberately into the silence.

After a moment he went on. “Wulfgar and Jessa Horolfsdaughter were at the end of the line. Only a few paces into the forest we realized that they were gone. Some rune craft, some filthy sorcery enticed them into the dark. We searched, all of us.” He paused, rubbing the back of one hand down his stubbly beard. “I and one of my men found them in a hollow by a mere, a place of stinking lichens and soft, boggy ground. The Jarl lay still—slashed by its claws. Then we saw it.” He stared in silent horror at the floor, as if he didn’t want to go on.

The crowd kept silent, waiting.

“It was crouched over the remains of the girl—a great, pale thing, a beast of ice, its eyes burning like demons’, a rune terror brought down on us by witchcraft and spells. Not a bear, no. I struck at it in my fury, but the sword passed through, as if through mist. It carried the girl off. Only this was left.”

And he held up the coat. It was slashed apart, bloodied, almost unrecognizable. But Hakon knew it, and he shook his head bleakly. All over the hall, fingers felt for amulets and thorshammers.

Vidar shook the rag fiercely. “Look at it! All that’s left of her! Already it’s killed three of our people, and maybe the Jarl too. And friends, tell me, where can this curse have come from if not from the Snow-walkers?”

A roar of approval erupted. Fists were thumped on tables; near Hakon a woman screamed words of hate, lost in the uproar; men shouted, dogs barked frantically. Alarmed, he glanced around. There was no sign of Brochael or Kari, but he didn’t care about them. Skapti was missing, probably with them. Skapti had been kind to him, he realized dismally; Skapti and Jessa. He began to shove his way to the back of the hall, filled with a sudden, cold foreboding.

“And why look to Gudrun for this?” Vidar shouted, his voice clear and harsh. “She’s gone, long gone. But she was no fool—we all know that! She left us her son. And what weird coincidence brought him here the night of Freyr’s warning, if it wasn’t that the god was warning us of him. Of Kari!” He had to shout now, above the noise. “Kari brought this creature! Why else wouldn’t he go to hunt it when Wulfgar needed him? Will we let him enslave us and torment us, like his mother did?”

The walls rang with shouting, a storm of anger, but not everyone was convinced. One, a tall man named Mord, leaped onto a bench and yelled, “Wait! Listen to me! Listen! Kari Ragnarsson helped save this hold, this whole realm, from her sorcery! We can’t forget that! There’s no proof he’s responsible for these deaths. And above all Wulfgar trusts him.”

“He does not.”

Vidar said it quietly, and the shock of it brought stillness.

He spoke ominously now. “Only yesterday he told me this. He feared that Kari had only come back here to claim his father’s rights, and his mother’s place. To rule us all. To weave a web of sorcery around us, as she did, moving our hearts, our souls, making our minds do what he wants, think what he wants.”

Hakon had reached the stairs. No one was guarding them. He raced up, hearing the noise gather again below.

There were doors, many of them, all closed. Wulfgar’s men clustered outside one anxiously.

“Where’s Skapti?” he snapped.

“In there.”

He pushed through the ring and flung the door open.

Wulfgar lay on a bed heavy with woven coverings. He was pale, and seemed hardly to be breathing. Kari was bent over him, his long fingers touching the Jarl’s forehead.

“Leave him alone,” Hakon snarled.

“What do you want?” Skapti came forward and grabbed his elbow roughly. The skald looked bone weary; his eyes were hard, unremembering.

Hakon said, “Are you in it with them?”

“In what?”

“I wanted to warn you—you were … you and Jessa…” He turned nervously. “Get out, Skapti. Now. Vidar will be here.”

But already the noise was loud on the stairs.

The big, tawny man, Brochael, had an ax in his hands. He caught Kari by the shoulder, pulling him back.

Skapti turned angrily. “What’s going on?”

Then Vidar was in the room, backed by a crowd, among them a small rat-faced man at the back.

“We want you, Kari,” Vidar said quietly. “No one else.”

Brochael raised the blade. “I’ll kill any man who touches him,” he said evenly.

Vidar nodded. “What about you?” He turned to Skapti. “You’re Wulfgar’s benchmate. Where do you stand in all this?”

Skapti stared at him grimly, as if he had begun to understand. “With Wulfgar. All of us do.”

“Not all.” Vidar came forward. “Keep away from the Jarl,” he said fiercely to Kari. “Haven’t you done enough? And why kill Jessa? Why?”

Kari looked up, his eyes bright. “Jessa is alive.”

“Liar! I saw it happen!”

Unmoving, Kari watched them. His eyes had no color; he looked at them each in turn and they quailed, remembering always Gudrun and her power, the cold draining of your mind as you stood before her. Then he shook his straight silvery hair. “Jessa’s alive. I know that. And this creature is not my sending. It has nothing to do with me.”

Vidar came up to him slowly, ignoring Brochael’s threat until the ax lifted.

“We can’t take the chance. We have to protect the Jarl from you.”

“No,” Skapti said unhappily.

“Yes.”

Vidar reached out quickly, grabbed Kari’s wrist. Brochael moved, but almost at once Vidar fell with a sudden cry to the wooden floor, curling, rolling in agony.

“Stop!” he screamed. “He’s killing me! Stop him!”

Kari stared at him, almost in astonishment; then the men surged forward, overpowering Brochael with difficulty, two of them staggering back, the rest leaping onto him and Kari, striking with fists and hilts until Skapti pulled them off, yelling in his loudest hall voice.

On the floor Kari slowly uncurled. The skald crouched. “Leave him! This is Wulfgar’s hold and under his law! He’s not dead yet!”

Some of the men helped Vidar up. Ashen and shaking, he straightened out of their arms. For a moment he seemed unable to speak. Then he said, “Take them both below. Chain them.”

Skapti stood up. “Not that.”

“We must! Don’t you see, the boy has power. He attacked me with it. He must be held secure or he could do anything.”

Brochael struggled furiously in the grip of two men. “Lying fool,” he muttered. “Skapti, for Thorssake…”

The skald bent and picked Kari up gently. “I’ll carry him myself, Brochael. No one else will touch him. And I swear no one will harm either of you. Not until Wulfgar speaks on this.”

“And if he dies?” Brochael snapped.

“There’ll be a new Jarl,” Vidar said. He turned to the door, and only Hakon glimpsed his small, hard smile.