Snow-Walker

Twenty-Three

Breath they had not, nor blood or senses,

Nor language possessed, nor life-hue.

“Grettir!” she breathed.

The old man smiled at them, a toothless grin.

“What have you done to us?” Brochael roared.

“What my people do, loud man. What my people do. I’ve caught you.” He scratched his head with a long hand. “You haven’t changed, girl. Still the fiery one. And here’s Brochael Gunnarsson too, and the Wulfings’ poet. All so far from home.”

Jessa sank down in despair.

“Who is he?” Hakon muttered.

“Grettir. Gudrun’s counselor. He was with her when she ruled in the Jarlshold—a sly creature, nearly as evil as she is. Did you never see him?”

He shook his head, staring at the pile of their weapons out there on the ice, the dragons on his sword hilt gleaming.

“I suppose,” Skapti said drily, “you don’t intend a feast of welcome?”

“Clever.” Grettir coughed, a harsh, racking cough, and spat. “No indeed. I’ve caught you in a cage of your own dreams. You can stay in there until you die—in this cold, very quickly. Then I might release you, and you can wander this land like all the other stolen souls. Unless of course…” He edged a little nearer, wheezing. “Unless you tell me where the boy is.”

They were silent, glancing at one another. Jessa knew no one would speak.

“I see.” The dwarfish man nodded. “Misplaced loyalty, I’m afraid. Do you think I would harm him? His mother wants him alive.”

“We gathered that,” Skapti said.

Grettir nodded, grinning. “Ah, I’d forgotten. Yes, we took the girl, if only to bring you here. If you knew that, I find it strange that you should have come.”

“You would,” Jessa said scornfully.

“So then. Where is he? Why is he not with you?”

“He came before us,” Brochael said. “He may be with Gudrun already.

Grettir laughed slyly. “Now, that does not become you, my friend. I’ve been waiting here for you for many of what you call days, though here the stars are eternal. And no one has come this way. I watched you come over the bridge, remember. I tasted your anxiety. He’s not with you.”

“Maybe he’s dead,” Skapti said gravely.

Grettir looked at him. “Maybe. In which case you can tell Gudrun, for I dare not. But I think we’ll wait and see. I know this, that he has her powers, and he’ll feel the cold gripping you, the agony of your deaths. He’ll know your danger. So we’ll wait. In this land there is no hurry.”

They turned away from his smug grin and squatted miserably on the frosty surface. Jessa felt so cold, a bitter cold that seemed to pass right through her. The frost cage held them firmly trapped.

“This is a nightmare,” she whispered.

Hakon nodded. “And we’re helpless.”

“If Kari comes,” Brochael muttered, looking up at the bridge, “he’ll walk straight into a trap. The old man must have something ready.”

“Kari might know.”

“And he might not. If only we could warn him! And Moongarm! What treachery has he brewed up?” He clutched his hands in frustration. “If only I could get out!”

“Kari’s grown, Brochael,” Skapti said. “Grown in power. The old man might not have realized that.”

“It’s too late anyway.” Hakon dropped his gaze from the bridge. Then he said, “Take a look, but don’t turn your heads. Don’t let him know.”

Above the bridge two tiny black flecks had soared out of the aurora light, becoming shadows among the starlight.

“The birds.” Jessa flicked a look at Grettir and saw with despair that the old man had noticed them too.

He chuckled and stood up unsteadily. “Ah. About time.”

“What are you going to do?”

He grinned at them. “Let me give you a lesson. Do you know the time to steal a soul? The best, easiest time? As a man dies. It comes loose then, comes free. Almost anyone might reach out and take it—valkyrie, demon, sorcerer, Snow-walker. To take a soul from a living man takes great skill, enormous sorcery. Of all of us, only Gudrun can do that. I can’t. I must be content with a dead one.”

“You’re going to kill him?” Jessa gripped the frost rails. “But you said—”

“I lied. His body will die. His wraith I will take to Gudrun. That’s all of him she wants.”

His eyes lit; his long finger jabbed at the rainbow bridge.

“There!”

Two small figures had emerged from the nimbus of light; for a second they stood still up there, poised on the glassy arch. Jessa knew they were staring down at the empty land as she had done, feeling the relief of being out of the wind. Even from here she could recognize them—Kari’s shining hair, pale in the moonlight, Moongarm just behind him, gripping the rail.

“Kari!” she screamed, leaping up. The others were shouting too, wild, useless warnings. For Grettir lifted his hand and spoke one word, a strange, ugly syllable.

And the bridge faded.

Like a rainbow fades, she thought, gripping her hands into hopeless fists. Through wet eyes she watched it go, lose substance, solidity, melt to a thing of light, through which the figures of her friends slipped, grabbed, fell, plunging down and down like small broken things into the mist. The storm of Gunningagap swallowed them abruptly.

Their fall had been silent.

“Kari?” Brochael whispered.

Jessa turned away, sick and furious. Grettir was still, eyes closed, as if listening for something, reaching for it. She gripped the bars and wanted to scream at him, to kill him, and then she stopped, drawing a tight, painful breath.

From the pile of weapons, Hakon’s sword was being lifted, lifted by an invisible hand. It came floating through the air to the back of Grettir’s neck and jabbed.

The old man stiffened, eyes wide. Astonishment and dismay passed over his face. Then he nodded appreciatively. “Clever,” he murmured.

Jessa grabbed Brochael’s arm and forced him around. “Look!” She gasped, warm with joy. “It’s all right! They’re alive!”

Slowly Moongarm became visible to them all. He held the sword point against the old man’s neck. “Sit down,” he snarled, “and do nothing, sorcerer. I wouldn’t like to soil my friend’s sword.”

The old man crumpled. He seemed ruefully amused. “She said you were unpredictable, Kari. I had not guessed how much.”

“Hadn’t you?” Kari stood on the ice, the ravens flapping out of nothing about him. “Are you sure about that?”

Grettir looked up at him, and his face changed. After a moment he said gravely, “You have grown so much like her.”

Kari said nothing to that. He came over to the cage and gripped the bars.

“Can you do it?” Skapti asked.

“I think so.”

Hakon shook his head. “We saw you fall!”

“I’m sorry.” Kari looked at Brochael. “I had to make it look like that. We’d crossed earlier. I had a warning. Long ago.”

Brochael nodded, numb with cold. He reached out and touched Kari’s sleeve. “I should have known,” he said, his voice gruff. “Get us out of here.”

The bars dissolved; they melted to nothing. And all the world went with them, into darkness and cold.

Someone was chafing her fingers and hands; numbly she felt the pain throb back into them, the hot pulse of blood.

She opened her eyes slowly. Brochael’s bulk loomed against mist and starlight. He said, “You’re all right. You’re back.”

She was wrapped in blankets, chilled to the bone. A fire was burning on the ice, crackling and sparkling; for a moment she wondered how, and then realized Kari must have made it, a rune fire, but giving out wonderful heat. Then she saw the sack burning in it, and the thin, familiar spars of wood. It took her a long moment to realize what they were.

Appalled, she sat up.

Skapti brought her a cup of warm water and some salt fish. She took it, staring at him. “How could you?” she asked gently.

“No choice. We had to get warm.” He smiled wanly toward the burning wood of the kantele. “There’ll be plenty more songs, Jessa, if we get out of this, don’t worry. They’re in me. She won’t undo them. Not the trees in my forest.”

She nodded sadly, wondering what he meant. Her body felt strange, cold at the edges, like a house no one has lived in for a while. She flexed her toes and fingers, her shoulders.

Grettir was sitting quietly by the fire, Moongarm close beside him. They were taking no chances, but the old man seemed content just to sit, as if he accepted his plan had failed. But his bright eyes gleamed at Jessa under his hood, and she knew he was laughing at them all.

She must have been asleep a long time; the stars had moved around in their great silent wheel. Otherwise everything looked the same. The land glimmered, pale and empty.

Kari was talking. “Halfway over I knew something was wrong, but not what. We had to come unseen.”

Skapti shook his head. “It’s cost me a year off my life.”

Brochael said nothing; he put his big arm around Kari and squeezed him.

“And now what?” Hakon asked.

“Now we go to Gudrun,” Kari said firmly. “Alive.”

Grettir shook his head and smiled slyly. “For now, little prince. For now.”