Snow-Walker

Ten

Nine worlds I can reckon, nine roots of the tree,

The wonderful ash, way under the ground.

Jessa screamed, twisting sideways. She jumped back, crashing into Hakon; he caught her arm and dragged her toward the fire, her eyes wide.

“Did you see it?” She gasped.

“There was a shadow … something.”

The wood around them was silent. For a long moment they all stood listening, so tense that they barely breathed, Jessa shuddering from cold and shock.

Then Brochael hefted the ax in his hand. “Get some wood, Hakon. Plenty of it.”

They kept watch as Hakon sheathed his sword and gathered quick armfuls of kindling, Jessa picking up what he dropped. Then all of them backed to the dying fire.

“Build it up,” Brochael ordered. He stood warily, watching the dim trees. “So what was it, Jessa?”

She took a deep breath. “A hand. But the nails were long, really long. For a moment I thought…”

“What?”

She shook her head. “And there’s this.”

She held up the helmet. He spared it a glance, then looked again dubiously.

“That’s familiar. Made at the Jarlshold, or Wormshold, surely.”

Skapti took it from her. “Our people? Here?”

“Still here.” Kari was watching something, his frost gray eyes moving, scanning the trees.

They looked at him and he said, “You remember. Long ago an army from the Jarlshold marched north against the Snow-walkers. None of them ever came back, isn’t that so? Except my father. And the witch was with him.”

Jessa nodded, remembering all too clearly. “Mord told me that. He said the war band marched down into a strange white mist. No one ever knew what happened to them. Presumably they died.” She looked into the fog gathering around the trees. “It happened here?”

“Near here.”

“But the hand I saw…”

“Dead men’s nails grow,” Skapti said drily.

She looked at him in horror. But Kari said, “These are their ghosts. I can see them all around us. Gaunt, ragged men.”

“How many?” Brochael asked quietly.

“Too many.” Kari’s voice was strained; he was glad they could not see as he could. The ghost army stood in the mist; wounded, filthy, their faces hard and unremembering, as if nothing of their lives or memory were left to them. They made no move, but their eyes were cold, and he knew they meant evil.

“Keep by the fire. I don’t know what else we can do.”

Behind him the horses whinnied; they too could see. One reared, and then another, struggling frantically with their ropes. Turning, he saw the wraith men had moved in behind, closer.

“Hold them!” Brochael snarled. “If they break out, we’re in trouble.”

Hakon threw himself at the straining rope; he dragged the horses’ heads down and Jessa grabbed the leading rein of the packhorse, fighting to hang on to it. Slowly they calmed the beasts, talking to them, rubbing their long noses, but they were still terrified, Jessa knew.

“What do we do?” Brochael asked.

“Make a ring around the fire,” Kari answered. “As close as you can. Lend me your sword, Hakon.”

For a moment Hakon hesitated. Then he held it out. Kari took it and held it a moment; then he put the point to the soil and drew a great circle around them, horses and all. Where the circle joined he stabbed the blade upright into the muddy ground; it swayed but stood.

Even before he had finished, he saw the wraith army run forward, heard their hissing snarls of disappointment.

Outside the circle they stood close, bleeding from old wounds, their eyes cold. He saw rusted swords in their hands, smashed shields, helms black with old blood.

“Don’t go outside the ring,” Kari muttered. “Whatever you do, don’t break it.”

Jessa looked at his face, and the fear in it turned her cold. She stared outward but saw nothing but trees, and mist, and faint movements in the corner of her eye, so that when she focused on them they were gone. But she knew they were out there. The concentration of malice and fear was like a rank smell about them; she gave Hakon one of her long knives and he gave her a quick, grateful glance.

Then Kari spoke. “I can hear you.”

He looked outward, at one spot. “Leave us alone. These are your own people. Let them be.”

“We have no people,” the wraith voice snarled at him. “We have only the forest. We are its breath, its stirring. Our bodies feed its roots. We have waited years for you.”

“For me?” he breathed.

“A sorcerer as powerful as she was. Release us.”

There was silence. He knew the others were watching him; they had only heard his answers.

“What do they say?” Brochael growled.

Kari shook his head. Then he said, “I’ll do what I can. How will I find you?”

The ghost warrior grinned, its broken face dark. “We will show you the way, rune lord.”

“When the sun comes.”

“Now.”

“No. When the sun comes.”

Silence answered him. He clenched his fists, alert for what they might do. But slowly, they moved back and faded into mist, into nothing. He let his breath out painfully and turned.

“They’ve gone.”

“Gone? Where? Will they come back?”

Kari pushed his hair from his eyes and sat down. “They’ll be back.”

All the rest of the night they sat alert around the fire, nervous at every sound. Kari seemed weary and preoccupied; he would say little about the ghost army or what they had said to him, and soon drifted into sleep, his head on Brochael’s chest.

“He can sleep anywhere,” Skapti muttered.

“He’s lucky,” Hakon said.

None of the others could. They talked in low voices, uneasy, Skapti making bitter, defiant jokes about dead men. Slowly the wood lightened about them, the dawn glint filtering through the massed leaves, but the mist still lingered, in pockets and hollows under the dark trees. Hakon’s sword gleamed wet with dew.

Stiff, sore, and thirsty, Jessa untwisted her hair and tied it up again, tight. Somehow that made her feel better. Skapti handed out bannocks and some of the dry, crumbly cheese, and they shared the cold water.

“There must be a stream nearby,” Jessa said.

“Probably.” The skald ate quickly, his eyes on the mist. “But I’m not sure if I would care to drink from it.”

“Why not?” Hakon looked at him in alarm. “What might it do?”

Skapti gave him a sharp sideways glance. “There are streams in Ironwood that turn men to ice, make them sleep forever, drive them mad—”

“Skapti!” Brochael growled.

Hakon looked away, his face hot. “I didn’t believe any of it, anyway.”

When Kari woke, Brochael made him eat. “Are they back yet, ravenmaster?” Skapti asked.

Kari nodded, swallowing. “We have to follow them.”

“Follow them? Where?” Brochael demanded.

“I don’t know. They’ve asked me to release them. Some sort of spell holds them here.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Then we’ll never leave the wood, Brochael. None of us.”

Jessa rubbed her chilled wrists. She caught Skapti’s eye and he shrugged. “That’s one tale you can believe, Hakon.”

They mounted up, and Hakon heaved his sword out of the ground. At once Jessa felt unprotected, watched. They rode down the path that Skapti had found the night before. Around them the wood rustled, creaking with movement. All through the morning the realization grew in them that a crowd of invisible presences surrounded them; behind the creak of saddle leather they began to hear the swish of feet through bracken and crisp drifts of leaves.

Soon Jessa grew wary of looking back; she had begun to see movements in the trees, to glimpse tall shapes that kept pace with them, and noticing Hakon’s white, fixed look, she guessed he had seen them too. None of them spoke now; Kari rode ahead, the ravens flapping over him, Brochael saying nothing, but watching anxiously.

At midmorning they came to a hollow and rode down it in single file, the hooves crumbling the rich loam. At the bottom Kari paused, looking into the trees at the left of the path.

“In there.”

The plantation was dark, thickly overgrown. A curious smell came from it, musty—a smell of old, rotting things. Gently he eased his horse off the path, ducking under low branches. As the others followed, Brochael muttered, “Weapons ready. All of you.”

Behind them, all around them, the wood seethed with its silent army, crowding between the trees. Down Kari rode, almost lost ahead among the leaves, and then Jessa saw sunlight flicker on his hair, and she rode out after him into a great swath of open land choked with brambles and bracken.

They all stopped, looking ahead.

Before them was the mouth of a cave, huge, like the entrance to the underworld.

Jessa knew this was the place. It stank of death; flies buzzed in its windless silence. Among the bracken were heaps of rusted weapons, helms and shields, rotting into the soft soil. As the riders moved forward they felt as if the horses were treading among bones and snagged cloth and moss, sinking in deep. Disgusted, Jessa looked back. Among the trees she could see them now, the wraith army, long-haired and gaunt, their faces cold and remote.

At the cave mouth the travelers dismounted. Brochael peered into the dark. “In there?”

“Yes.” Kari slipped past him, and the others followed, leaving the horses outside.

The cave was damp, dripping with water. Ferns sprouted from rock crevices, and other blanched, unhealthy growths dripped liquid from their cold fronds. The shuffle of footsteps rang in the roof.

“How far in?” Hakon wondered.

“I don’t know!” Jessa grinned at him. “Worried?”

He pulled a face. “All this witchery terrifies me. You know that.”

She nodded, thinking that not many people would have said it. But Hakon never pretended.

He slipped and she grabbed his elbow. “Don’t collapse on me.”

“It’s getting darker.”

It was. As they left the entrance behind, the dimness in front of them seemed thicker. Jessa stared into it, her nerves tight. Something was there, something dark, appalling.

Kari made some light. He lifted his hand and a glowing ring grew in the air, crackling with blue flames.

Hakon caught her arm. In the rune light they saw a tree. A huge, dead ash tree. It was enormous; it towered above them into the roof of the cave, and far up in its bleached bare branches hung helmets and shields and the skulls of horses, turning and creaking slowly in the stillness. At the base of the tree a ring of swords had been rammed into the ground, between the spread roots.

As Kari stepped toward it, Jessa began to feel afraid of it; its branches were twisted and strangely askew, as if it had had more than tree life, as if it had moved. Pulling out of Hakon’s grip, she jumped from rock to rock and landed just behind Kari.

“Wait!” Jessa cried.

Kari turned.

“Don’t go any nearer! I don’t trust it.”

Behind her Skapti said, “She’s right. This is an evil place. Only the gods know what went on here. And Gudrun.”

“You recognize it, then.”

They all did. The white snake was carved on the tree, into the heartwood, its lithe body winding around and around the dead, smooth bark, and the moss would not grow on it, as if the oozings of its skin poisoned them.

Kari took one step closer.

The crack rang in the roof; he and Jessa flung themselves aside, the branch crashing beside them, scattering sand and bark. Raising her head, she knew she was covered in dust; pain throbbed in her side where she’d bruised it against a rock.

Hakon hauled her up roughly.

“Be careful!” she whispered.

Kari stood up too, the echoes of the fall dying in the roof.

They looked at the huge branch, split with age, tinder-dry.

Brochael turned to Kari. “What do you want to do?”

“Burn it.” His voice was bleak and cold and he looked at them unhappily. “This is the source of the spell. Burn it and they’ll all be free.”

Brochael unsheathed his knife. “At least there’s plenty of kindling....” He stopped as Kari laid a hand on his arm. Glancing at the boy’s face, he said, “I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.”

“Nothing will burn it except rune fire.” He glanced back. “Take the horses farther away.”

Hakon went back and caught the bridles, dragging the horses to a safer distance.

Kari stood near the tree, tiny in its shadow. High in the branches his two ravens perched and hopped among the twisting shields. At his call they swooped down to him.

He stood still. A draft of air ruffled his hair and the collar of his dark coat. Then, suddenly, he stepped back.

The tree shivered, as if a wind had passed through it. Then Jessa saw a flicker of red spark along the dry bark. Smoke formed a haze; the almost invisible flame roared along the lowest branches, and suddenly the tree was ablaze, an inferno of hot, blackening wood, spitting sparks high into the cave roof. And the snake, writhing among it, came twisting and slithering down, unwinding itself as if it would escape, blackening and opening into a roaring hole of heat. She caught hold of Kari and drew him away; then they both turned and ran for the cave mouth, stumbling among drifts of smoke and the stench of burning. Coughing, her face smarting and her eyes sore, Jessa looked into the forest.

The wraith army waited.

“It’s over,” Kari said to them.

For a moment they stood there, watching the smoke stream from the cave. Then the ghost with the broken face nodded. “Our thanks, sorcerer. And a word of advice. The rainbow is not safe to walk on. Not for you.”

Kari glanced at the others. He knew they had not heard.

“And this warning is only for me?”

“Only for you.”

The wraith army turned. Silently they walked away.