Snow-Walker

Eight

I tell of giants from times forgotten,

Those who fed me in former days.

The road was floored with great slabs, powdered with gray and green overlapping lichens. Here and there saplings had sprouted up through the gaps between stones, and bushes of thorn and rowan, but the way was still surprisingly easy to follow, leading downhill among the light-barred glades of trees.

Jessa sat herself down on the edge of it and looked closely at the giants’ handiwork. The slabs had been squared and laid close, each one flat and slotted in neatly to its neighbor. It would take many men and horses to lift even a few. No wonder people thought of giants.

“Are there such things?” she asked aloud.

“Indeed there are. Or there were.” Skapti drew his long knees up. “Once, at Hollfara, I saw a merchant selling bones. Huge bones they were, immense, Jessa, bigger than any man or animal, except the great serpent that winds around the earth. What else could they be but giants’ bones?”

She touched the amulet at her neck lightly. “Then I hope we don’t meet any! Ulf’s big enough.”

She watched him saying good-bye to Brochael.

“Time to go.”

Reluctantly the skald got up after her.

Wulfgar lifted her onto her horse and stood there while Hakon and Brochael mounted. Kari was already waiting, the ravens silent on a branch above him. Wulfgar looked at them all. “It hurts me bitterly to let you all go.” He glanced at Skapti. “Especially you.”

Skapti gave a lopsided smile. “You can get yourself a better poet. You’ve always wanted to.”

“There is no better poet.” He put a hand on Skapti’s shoulder. “If you don’t come back, and I haven’t been caught in the witch spell, then I’ll come looking for you. One day.”

Skapti nodded. He climbed up onto the long-maned horse and the five of them looked at one another, silent among the crowd of men.

“Good luck,” Wulfgar said simply. He glanced at Kari. “There are no others but you who could do this. Let the gods watch you.”

“And you,” Brochael rumbled.

“Good-bye, Wulfgar,” Jessa said sadly. She turned her horse and rode out quickly over the gray stones, the others following, Hakon tugging the long rein of the packhorse.

They clattered down the slope, between the sprouting trees. When Jessa looked back she saw Wulfgar standing at the top, arms folded, watching them. He raised a hand. Then the bushes hid him, and all the men with him.

They were alone.

It was a silent journey, that descent of the ancient road.

None of them wanted to talk, and there was no sense of danger on them, so they rode in a long, straggling line, picking their way over the broken paving.

The road led down and up, winding over low hills, its gray line visible sometimes far ahead. Late in the day they rode over a high moor, with the gray scatter of broken paving stretching in front of them, mosses and peat spreading out over it, as if the land was drawing it back.

Hakon slowed his horse. “What’s that?”

On the horizon a gaunt pillar stood stark against the cloudy sky.

“Dead tree,” Brochael suggested.

“Too straight.” Skapti narrowed his eyes. “A rock, maybe.”

Cautiously they rode toward it. As they came close they saw that he was right, but that this rock too had been shaped, heaved upright. Sliced deep into its surface was a carving of three wolves, tangled together, their jaws agape. Behind them, his great hand reining them in, stood a huge man, his head roughly shaped, his eyes looking fiercely out. Unfamiliar words were carved at his feet.

“Can you read it?” Jessa asked Skapti.

The skald dismounted and went over to the stone, reaching up and fingering the carving thoughtfully. “No. These are no runes I know. And it’s old, Jessa. Centuries.”

“It could be a gravestone,” Hakon said uneasily.

“It could. But I think it’s a marker of territory. Or was.”

“Giants?” Brochael wondered.

Skapti shrugged and climbed back onto his horse. “Maybe. But long ago.”

Jessa looked at Kari. He was gazing up at the stone, his eyes strangely distant. For a moment she thought he was listening to some sound, straining to catch it, but when he saw her looking, he said nothing.

They went on, but after that silent warning a sense of foreboding seemed to fall on them; they rode together now, and more warily.

Slowly the long day died, but still they traveled, not knowing where to stop. Finally, in a small copse of birch by the roadside, they saw the rise of a thatched roof.

Brochael drew rein. “I’ll go and see,” he said. “Skapti, come too. The rest of you, wait here.”

But the ravens had come karking down about Kari in a flutter of noise; they perched on the gray stones, walking and pecking over them.

“They say it’s empty,” Kari said.

Brochael glared at him. “Are you sure?”

“So they say.”

Everyone stared at the birds, but they knew better than to doubt him. Brochael urged his horse off the road. “This is going to be a very strange expedition,” he muttered.

It was an old shepherd’s hut, long deserted. Trees had sprouted in the doorway, and the walls had gaping holes, but the roof was more or less intact, and the floor seemed dry.

They hacked their way in and soon had a fire lit; Hakon and Jessa rubbed the horses down and let them graze tied to a long rope.

“What about wolves?” Hakon said nervously.

Jessa gathered up her pack. “We’ll hear them. And we can’t take the beasts in with us, can we?”

“I suppose not,” he said, grinning.

Later, as they ate around the fire, Brochael brought out the map. He opened it, the waxed sealskin crackling under his fingers, and spread it out on his coat. “We should add to this as we go. That stone, for instance.”

“No ink.” Jessa swallowed a mouthful of cheese too quickly.

“No.” He scowled.

“Besides,” Hakon said, looking at the parchment closely, “maybe the stone we saw is this.” He put his finger on the faint ghost of a mark to the left of the red line; it was so worn it had almost gone, but now they looked closely it could once have been a rough suggestion of the stone, its carvings reduced to squiggles.

“So whoever made it got this far,” Skapti said drily. “That cheers me.”

“This hut”—Jessa waved her knife around—“could be the hut the old man talked about. It must have belonged to Ulf ’s people once. It’s too small for giants.”

The fire crackled and spat over the damp kindling. Outside, the night was still, and through the doorway they could see the stars, faint and pale.

“It’s colder up here,” Hakon muttered.

“It’ll get colder all the time.” Brochael tapped the map. “This will be the forest.”

Tiny scratched trees were massed about the red line of the road. In the midst of them Jessa thought she saw something else, a faint rune, but she couldn’t be sure.

“How long before we reach it?”

“A day. Two.” Brochael folded the skin quickly. “Now … from now on we have someone awake always. In turns. Kari first, then Jessa. We’re out of the Jarlsrealm, and these are unknown lands. We should expect wolves, bears, outlaws maybe. Keep the fire going, Kari, but low. Not too much smoke.”

They rolled themselves in cloaks and blankets on the uncomfortable floor, and as Kari sat outside, leaning back against the wall, the gradual sounds of their breathing drifted out to him. Deep inside each of them, he could feel the terror of his mother’s spell, planted far down in their minds, ready to spread and trap them as it had trapped Signi and the boy. He knew each dream, and knew he couldn’t destroy them, but only suppress them. So that each one would wake and forget.

Stretching out his legs he wrapped his dark cloak about him and looked up at the stars. They glinted, in their strange, spread patterns. Did the same stars shine over the land of the Snow-walkers? And was Gudrun looking up at them now? Though he ranged the night with his mind’s whole power, he could find no trace of her, or anything else either, in this strange empty land.

Except, far to the north, a sudden smudge of sound, which held him still for a moment, listening. A low murmur, like the beat of a drum. He stood up and looked out through the still trees, but he knew already it was a ghost sound, and not in this world.

“Did you hear that?”

The bird shape above came down and stood beside him. “We did. But far off.”

Together they stared out over the unknown land.