Snow-Walker (14 page)

As the mountainside rose and became rockier, they began to clamber among the loose boulders that dislodged and tumbled underfoot, and scree that slid treacherously. Once, the skald nearly fell, and only Thorkil's quick grip kept him up. The wind became colder, the air damp with thin rain. There were few signs of Gudrun's men. Wulfgar thought they had crossed the mountains already, but Brochael just grunted. Jessa knew he was worried about the pass, that the danger would be up there, in the narrowest place.

He was right.

As midnight crept on and the sky turned black, they saw up ahead of them in the rainy air the red sparks of fires, the flickering shadows of watchers.

Finally, crouching behind a tower of rock, they saw the pass. It was a very narrow place, where the path dwindled to a thread between two pinnacles of the mountain, sheer and jagged. In the very middle of the path a fire had been lit; men sat around it, talking, the edges of their faces red in the flame light. Beyond, in the darkness, the path must run on, over the lip of the hill, down and down, into the flat marshy country of the Jarlshold.

Brochael took a long look, then turned his back and leaned against the rock, stretching out his legs in front of him. “We'll need the High One himself to get us through this.”

Thorkil turned to Kari. “Why don't you do what you did before—make us invisible?”

Kari shook his head. “That's not what I did. I made one man think he had not seen you. There are far too many of them for that. I can't touch all their minds.”

Thorkil shrugged. “So what can you do?” There was a touch of scorn in his voice. Jessa remembered the unwinding arm ring and frowned at him. But then, he didn't remember.

“I don't know,” Kari said. “Not yet.”

After a silence Wulfgar rubbed his wet hair. “We can't get by with stealth, so we must attack.”

“No.” Brochael shook his head. “We'd be cut to pieces.”

“Well, do you have any other ideas?”

“None.”

There was another silence. Finally Jesssa said, “I've got an idea.” They all looked at her. She was fiddling with the laces on her boots. “It's the fire.”

“What about it?” Wulfgar asked patiently.

“It's the only light they've got. And it's what blocks the way. If the fire went out suddenly, it would be dark, very dark, in that crack in the rocks. Their eyes wouldn't be used to it. We could take them by surprise, if we were near enough.”

Brochael was nodding. “Yes, she's right.”

“But listen, little shamanka,” the skald said, pulling gently on her hair, “how do we put it out? Throw rocks at it?”

She shrugged. “Kari must put it out.”

Kari looked at her. “I've told you, I can't—”

“I don't mean make them believe. I mean put it
out
. You, yourself.” She shuffled around to look at him, her voice urgent. “She could do it, and if she could, you can. You must. You must know your own powers.”

Kari stared into the darkness. He let Brochael put a hand on his shoulder. “What do you think?” the big man asked gently.

“I don't know. I'll try, but—”

“You can,” Jessa said quietly. “And you know it.”

He smiled. “If you say so.”

“If it was possible,” Brochael said slowly, “we could be through in seconds. Wulfgar and I will hold the pass until you're down.” He grinned at the dark man sprawled elegantly in the mud. “What do you say, my lord? We'd have some good fighting.”

Wulfgar nodded, but the skald said softly, “I thought the point of this was a new Jarl. Not much use to us if he's dead.”

Wulfgar ignored him. “So it depends on you, runemaster,” he said to Kari.

Kari turned and gazed over the rocks at the blaze of fire. “Let's move up closer, then.”

Shadows in the darkness, they drifted from rock to rock, silent as ghosts. Now they were so near they could hear the soft speech of the watchers and the crackle and spit of flames. A sentinel moved past them; they waited, flat against rock. Kari, a darker shape in the darkness, edged out so that he could see the flames. Jessa saw the light of them glimmer on his face.

They waited, unmoving. For a while nothing changed; they had time to know they were crouched in a dark, damp place high up on a mountain, pinned down by the wind.

And then Jessa began to feel it, a slow accumulation of darkness, a gathering up of night from all its cracks and holes and crannies. Kari was conjuring with black air; as he lay flat against the rock, unmoving, she could sense his mind searching, gathering, piling night on night.

The fire glimmered. A man muttered something and threw on kindling; sparks flew and went out. Above the flames the air seemed a web of blackness, descending, drifting down. The red light grew less. The flames sank. Kari clenched his fist, his face intent. “Go on,” Jessa breathed, half to herself. “Go on.” Slowly the fire was dwindling, shrinking to small cold blue flames. Someone shouted angrily; the charred sticks were stirred into a cloud of ash. Kari gripped Brochael's sleeve.

“Now,” he said. And the fire went out.

It was gone so suddenly that Jessa was barely ready. In the blackness someone pushed her. She sprang up and ran up the steep path, slipping between shadows in a confusion of shouts and the clash of swords. Someone grabbed her; she thumped at his chest and shoved him away, and then she was over the pass and racing downhill over loose stones that clattered and spilled under her feet, down and down into the darkness of the land below. Breathless with speed, she slid and rolled and grabbed at the scree to steady herself, hearing the stones rattle down and fall a long way. She crouched on hands and knees. Someone was kneeling at her side. “All right?”

She recognized Thorkil's voice. “Yes.” She scrambled up. “Where are they?”

The top of the mountain was black against the dim sky. Figures moved up there; there were shouts, the ominous clang of metal.

“Brochael's holding them.” Thorkil sounded breathless, choked with excitement. “He and Wulfgar, like they said!”

“They'll be killed! Where's Kari?”

“I don't know.”

She looked up. “We must do something!”

But as they watched it, the sky split open. An arch of blue light flamed suddenly over the hilltop, and under it they saw Brochael clearly, wielding his ax, scattering men, and Wulfgar, his sword flashing blue and purple. Then out of the arch shot strange shafts of eerie fire, glimmering down like a net of light. Gudrun's men leaped back, one yelling, as the blue flames scorched him, until the rippling curtain of light had closed the pass. Wulfgar and Brochael were already hurtling down the path to where Jessa and Thorkil waited.

“Where's Kari?” Brochael gasped.

“Here.” He was standing farther down the slope, the skald at his side.

In the eerie blue light Brochael stared at him. “Did you do that?” he said, his voice gruff. “How could you have done that?”

Kari was silent. Then he said, “I didn't want you to be hurt.”

Brochael shoved his ax into his belt. For a moment Jessa thought she saw something new in his face; some fear. But when he looked up at Kari it was gone. “Let's get on,” he said.

They moved down the hillside, a line of shadows in the darkness. No one pursued them. For hours, looking back, they could see the strange gate of blue light on the hilltop, dwindling behind them, until they came down to the trees and it was lost among the branches. Jessa was at the back, near Brochael. “What happened up there?” she asked quietly.

He shrugged. “It came down between us—between her men and us. Fire, sparkling, spitting, crackling. It was like lightning that stayed. I tell you, Jessa, it scared me. I never thought he could do that.”

Silent, she nodded. But it didn't scare her. It filled her with secret, fierce delight. Oh, Gudrun, she thought, wait until you see what we're bringing you!

That night they stopped and slept near the banks of a stream, lulled by the wind in the trees and the trickle of meltwater. In the morning they moved on, always down, into the endless forests. As the day went, on the sky darkened. A coldness in the air seemed to thicken and drift together; it made a low mist that wrapped itself around the boles of trees. As the travelers walked it swirled cold and wet about their legs, soaking coats and cloaks and Jessa's skirts.

“Witch mist,” the skald remarked over his shoulder. “This is her welcome.”

Brochael called them to stop and looked, as he always did, at Kari. “Is he right?” he asked.

Kari was leaning against a tree. He seemed to grow more silent the farther they went. As he nodded, drops of dew ran from his hair. “She's watching us. Her face is white among the candles. She'll deal with us herself now.”

As he spoke the mist drifted between them, muffling sound, ice-cold on the skin. “Keep together,” Brochael said quickly. “Within touch, or we're lost.”

Jessa felt his strong fingers fasten on her belt. She gripped Thorkil's wrist. “Where's Wulfgar?”

“Right here.” A shadow moved at the skald's side; his voice strangely echoless in the murk.

“What now?” Thorkil said.

“We go on. Hand in hand, if necessary.”

“We can't move in this, Brochael,” Wulfgar said quietly. “We've no way of telling our direction; we could go miles out of our way.”

“We can't afford to wait either,” Jessa put in. “Not if you want to be the next Jarl.”

She heard Skapti chuckle. “Sharply put,” he whispered in her ear.

She turned to Kari. “What about the birds? They'll fly above this—can't we follow them?”

She saw him nod. He gave a call and the two black shapes dropped heavily through the trees, one with its huge talons digging into the leather of his gloves. The other hopped to a fallen log and screeched.

“What are these creatures?” Wulfgar asked. “Birds or spirits?”

Kari glanced at him. “They say Odin has two ravens. One is Thought, and one is Memory. They see all that passes in the world.” He threw one up into the mist and the other followed.

When they moved on they kept together, following the high, distant kark of the two ravens. Fog clung to their faces and drifted into their mouths when they spoke; it slithered about them, cold and white. None of them could see where they were going or noticed that the forest was beginning to thin out, until the ground underfoot became marshy, with tussocks of grass that tripped them up. Their feet sank into soft mud.

The croaks of the ravens were growing fainter, far to the left. Then they faded away. Kari called, twice, but nothing answered.

Finally they stopped. Silence and cold closed in around them, like a silver ring. Jessa remembered Mord's tale of the white mist that had swallowed the Jarl's men long ago, of how they marched into it and not one had come out. Was that how it would be now, for them? A crystal of snow floated down onto her glove, a strange star with seven points. It melted slowly into the soft leather.

“We're out of the woods.” Brochael pulled his hand from his glove and rubbed his beard and hair. “No more than a few miles from the Jarlshold. There will be men waiting.”

“How do you know?” Thorkil asked curiously.

“Salt, lad. I can smell the water of the fjord. I've been a long time away from it.”

He grinned at Jessa, but she only said, “It's snow.”

They stared at her.

“She's sending snow.” Jessa looked up. “And the birds are lost in it.”

Silent, they watched it come spinning down around them; soft wet flakes falling on hair and in the folds of clothes. It glittered, like silver.

“Don't taste it,” Kari said slowly. “Don't let it touch your lips.”

Wulfgar untied the scarf from his neck and wrapped it around his face. They all did the same, muffling nose and mouth.

“Now keep on,” Brochael snapped. “This witchbrew won't keep us back.” He pushed Thorkil forward and they hurried behind him, splashing into freezing pools and marsh mire. Already the snow was horizontal; it was a white storm in their eyes and faces.

Jessa saw Kari slip, and waited. “All right?”

He nodded, his eyes shards of gray. “This is for me.”

“This?”

“The snow. All of it.” For a moment he stood still. “And the worst will be seeing her. All those silent days…”

“That's all over.”

He shook his head. “That silence lives with you. You can never fill it.”

She nodded, not knowing what to say. They moved on slowly, behind the others.

“What do you want,” he said, “if we get through all this?”

“Wulfgar to be Jarl. And my farm back. Horolfstead. It's near the sea. What do you want?”

Snow stuck to his hair and eyelids. “I want not to be like her.”

“But you're not!”

“I am. I'm afraid she will make me part of herself.” He turned to her. “Does that sound strange? But she can do that. Suck you in, burrow into your heart—”

A yell interrupted him. As Jessa whirled around she saw men leap out of the snow. Two of them clung to Brochael, who roared and flung them off, but before he could tug out his ax they had grabbed him and pulled him down.

“Keep still,” Kari muttered.

Wulfgar and the skald were already surrounded; Thorkil had his sword knocked scornfully into the marsh—he swore and struggled, but a blow in the chest silenced him.

“Only six,” Kari muttered.

“Can they see us?”

“Not us.”

They were Gudrun's men; they wore the snake rings on their wrists. One of them dragged Thorkil up. “The Jarl's son. Where is he?” Breathless, Thorkil shook his head. The man flung him onto Brochael. “Spread out. She said we might not see him.”