Snow-Walker

Eleven

Boards shall be found of a beauty to wonder at,

Boards of gold in the grass long after,

The chess boards they owned in olden days.

All afternoon as they rode on, a mighty column of black smoke rose behind them, dissipating over the wood. Hours later, from higher ground, they looked back and could still see it, drifting east, the trees around them flexing and hissing in the rising gale.

“Why did she do it?” Jessa said thoughtfully.

“Spite.” Brochael was watching the sky. “The same as with Signi. I don’t like the look of this wind. We’ll have rain. Maybe snow.”

Down among the dim aisles of trees, they found a spring, bubbling cold and clear, and despite his wild tales Skapti was the first to drink from it. He sprawled against a fallen trunk and wiped his lips. “Heart ale. Sweeter than the mead of wisdom.” He looked around, considering. “Why not stay here? It’ll be dark soon.”

“No shelter.” Brochael filled his water skin absently. “We should find somewhere out of the rain.”

Jessa and Hakon exchanged grimaces. They were both tired out—only Kari had slept much the night before, and since the tree had burned, he was silent and withdrawn, more so than usual.

Brochael must have noticed, because he said, “We need a place where these youngsters can have a good rest. And the horses.”

“While we,” Skapti muttered, stretching out his long legs, “we warriors, we Thor-like men of iron, travel tirelessly, I suppose?”

Brochael chuckled into his beard. “Spindly poets don’t need sleep. They dream enough in the daytime.”

For a while they sat there by the stream, eating the last strips of smoked venison that Ulf had given them, listening to the roar of the wind in the high branches. Since the spell tree had burned, crashing in on itself into soft, powdery ash, the wood had changed. All that rustle and movement, the restless anger of the wraith army, had gone. Under the roaring of the storm, the wood was quiet. Its ghosts were sleeping.

They mounted up and rode on, now into squalls that gusted leaves and dust into their eyes. Jessa tied a scarf over her face and pulled her hood up, but soon the rain came, splattering between the trees. In minutes it was a heavy downpour, soaking them all, driving into their faces as they urged the wet horses on.

“This is useless!” Skapti shouted as the wind caught his cloak and flung it against him. “We need shelter!”

“Where?” Brochael roared back.

One of the ravens gusted down, landing with difficulty on a swaying branch. Kari watched it. Then he said, “Not far ahead, it seems. There’s a building.”

“A building? Here?”

“Some troll nest,” Hakon muttered.

“I don’t much care if it is; we’ll look at it.” Brochael wiped sleet from his eyes. He looked up at the raven. “Lead the way!”

At once it flew, low under the spread boughs and splintered oak boles of this part of the forest, gliding like a shadow. They followed with difficulty through stunted hazels, and finally had to dismount and force their way through, dragging the reluctant horses.

Once off the path the undergrowth rose above them, a tangle of thorns and spiny bushes, menacing and almost impenetrable, as if they hid some secret place, lost for generations. Jessa was caught and snagged and tangled; she had to tear herself free more than once, and was ready to swear with frustration when she looked up and saw the wall.

It loomed high over the trees, a black, strangely gabled shadow against the stormy sky. Clouds streamed above it; ivy or some other creeping growth covered it. There was no light, no sound of life.

Behind her Hakon muttered, “I was right. No man built that.”

The size of it silenced them, made them afraid. Sleet hissed into the trees around, tiny crystals of ice bouncing and scattering from leaf to leaf. The wind raged in their ears.

“What do you think?” Brochael said to Kari.

He shrugged. “It looks old....”

Then he stopped. From far off in the forest had come a sound they all dreaded, that they had been awaiting for days, almost without knowing.

The rising howl of a wolf.

Others answered it, away to the east.

“That settles it.” Brochael shoved his way forward. “Let’s find the way in.”

They forced their way through the tangled growth and came to the base of the great wall. It rose above them, huge black blocks of hewn stone, so high it almost seemed to topple outward. Saplings sprouted from it; ivy smothered it.

They groped their way along, searching for an entrance.

“It’s ancient,” Jessa said.

Skapti nodded in the dimness. “If this isn’t a real giant hall, I don’t know what is. What a size they must have been.”

Brochael, in front, laughed grimly. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

Ahead the wall reached a corner; he put his head around cautiously. Then he beckoned them on.

This seemed to be the front of the building. They passed two huge embrasures, deep in shadow and choked with tree growth. Far above their heads they could dimly make out windows, immense and dark. Then they came to a small wall, knee high. It took Jessa a moment to realize it was really a step.

She raised her head and looked up at the doorway in dismay. A mighty wooden door confronted them, the handle higher than Skapti’s head. Two sprawling metal hinges interlaced across it, the bronze rivets green with age.

On each side were three stone doorposts, the first carved into hundreds of faces—some dwarfish, others scowling, grinning, hostile, or ugly—a tangle of leering looks sneering down at the travelers, their huge noses and beards and lips crumbling into wet stone. All across the lintel too the faces crowded, and among them here were skulls, and on the second doorpost strange inhuman things—trolls and wolves and ettins and werebeasts, hideously openmouthed. Dragons finished the design, writhing about the third row of posts, wormlike, biting one another’s tails and slavering over tiny men carved into crevices.

Us, Jessa thought.

Over everything else, a great giant’s face glared down at those foolish enough to knock; it wore a copper helm with nose and cheek guards; the face was stern, with a thick stone beard and deepset eyes that stared grimly from the shadows. Below it, in the same odd script as before, were five runes; perhaps his name. GALAR.

Rain splattered the carvings. The building was silent and black.

“Well?” Skapti murmured uncomfortably.

“We’ll open it. Hakon, come up here with me.”

Sword out, Hakon pushed through the horses to Brochael. He rubbed his nose nervously, then gripped the sword hilt tight with both hands.

They climbed the steep steps to the door.

Brochael reached up, straining, and grasped the ring handle. He turned it with all his strength, and then pushed at the door. It stuck, the wood warped and swollen. Skapti climbed up and helped them; together they shoved hard, forcing a crack wide enough for a horse to squeeze in. Then Brochael said, “Wait here.”

Ax in hand he slithered through the dark gap.

They waited, alert, in the cold rain. In about five minutes he was back. “Seems empty. Come on.”

They led the horses in one by one, the beasts clattering nervously up the steps, their ears flicking at unnameable sounds, balking at the damp black entrance. Jessa had to walk hers in backward, coaxing and cursing him under her breath. Once inside, she gripped the harness and stared around.

They stood in a huge darkness. Nothing could be seen of the hall but a glimmer of dusky sky here and there, far up in the roof, as if in places the turf or wood had worn and crumbled to holes.

“No windows.” Hakon’s voice came suddenly out in the dark.

“Must be. We saw them.” They heard Brochael fumbling for his firebox.

“Smothered by ivy,” Jessa suggested.

“Or shutters.”

They heard Brochael mutter to Kari, and a small blue flame suddenly cracked into the darkness. It steadied into yellow, burning on the end of a thin beeswax taper. Brochael was grinning, as if at some joke.

“Now,” he said, gripping the ax. “Let’s see where we are.”

“What about the door?” Skapti said.

“Ah yes. Close it.”

But although they all pushed together, it was wedged now, immovable.

“Oh, leave it,” Jessa said at last. “At least we can get out.”

“And anything else can get in!”

“The birds will stay outside,” Kari said. “They’ll warn us.”

“Right,” Brochael said. “Follow me.”

Carefully they moved out over the smooth dark floor. Judging from the muffled thump of the hooves, it wasn’t stone but trampled earth, Jessa thought. The flame above Brochael’s hand was tiny; it flung a huge distorted shadow of him back across their faces. The others were barely visible, glimpses of eyes and faces. As they crossed it she knew the hall was even more huge than it had seemed from outside. Here and there weeds and fat pale mushrooms sprouted, glistening wet in the candle flame. All around hung heavy silence, and far behind, the pale crack of the doorway glimmered.

“Over here,” Brochael whispered. He shaded the flame with his hand and turned to the left, walking more quickly. He came to something dark and bent over it; then he picked it up.

“Look at this.”

It was a carved horse, a chess piece. It was as long as his arm.

They gathered around it, fingering the rotting wooden mane. Other chess pieces lay on the floor, scattered around, broken and softening into the soil. Kari kneeled and touched one, lingering over it.

“Long dead,” Brochael said stoutly, but there was a question behind it. Kari took his hand off the king piece and looked around in the darkness. “A wolf is listening,” he said.

Far off, as if to answer him, one howled in the wood.

“They won’t come in here,” Jessa said.

He looked at her strangely, but said nothing.

Walking between the huge chess pieces, they crossed to the end of the hall. Here a doorway led off into another room, pitch black. Weapons in hand, they went in.

This room was smaller; a pale window at one end showed them a patch of stormy sky and two stars glinting. Wind roared through it. Debris was scattered here too, and in one corner a tree trunk had sprouted up and died and fallen years ago; now it lay in a sprawling tangle.

Brochael slapped it. “This will do. Plenty of kindling. We can watch the doorway to the hall.”

“There’s another door down there,” Skapti muttered, straining his eyes into the gloom. “This place is a warren.”

Brochael stuck the candle into a crack in the tree trunk and began to gather scraps of wood. They snapped easily, dry and loud.

It took no time to get a fire going; the flames lit the corner of the great room but little else. The travelers dried themselves out and ate wearily, then wriggled into blankets almost without a word. Jessa was glad to be warm. As she tossed to find a comfortable position, she thought of the old man, back at Ulf ’s. He had said something about a great hall. The thought eluded her; she was too tired to chase it. Sleep swallowed her instantly, like a great wolf.

Hakon had first watch.

He propped his chin on his sword to keep awake, but that was no use; soon he was nodding and had to get up and prowl about in the dark.

He crossed to the doorway and gazed out, into the black spaces. For a moment he had thought that something had shuffled out there, but everything seemed still. Far across he could see the crack of the outer doorway, paler than the surrounding blackness.

The others were asleep; it would be better not to wake them unless he was sure. If it was nothing, Skapti would have something bitterly sarcastic to say. Jessa too, if he knew her.

He stared out, puzzled, into the hall. The silence of the great ruin was complete. He thought of the warped doors, the dust over everything. No one could be still here.

Then, this time nearer, he heard it again. A chink of sound.

Gripping his sword hilt with both hands, Hakon stepped cautiously out, sliding his foot against rubble and stones. Out in the invisible heart of the hall, a patch of moonlight fell briefly through a roof hole and vanished; he glimpsed sleet spiraling down and for a moment something long and gray that moved through it and slid into the dark. His heart thumped. It had looked like a wolf.

He waited, breathless a moment, then took a silent step back. At once a cold hand slid around his mouth and clamped down; a sword point jabbed in his back.

“Don’t move. Make a sound and I cut your throat.”

The swordpoint was a cold pain between his shoulder blades; even breathing out made him wince with the sharp stab. The hand lifted from his mouth and took his sword quickly. Rigid, Hakon squirmed with fury. He wanted desperately to call out, but dared not. And yet the others were depending on him. He opened his mouth but it was too late; the hand clamped back.

“How many of you are there?” the hoarse voice whispered.

Hakon shook his head.

“How many?” The hand lifted slightly.

He managed a yell, half-stifled, but loud; then he was turned and shoved face-first into the wall, a bruising blow that burst in his forehead, and to his astonishment and fear the room growled about him; it rumbled and shook, and the floor tilted and he fell into a slither of stones.