Snow-Walker (34 page)

When Jessa tapped on the door a little later, he was still sitting on the edge of the bed, his wine-stained coat held tight around him.

“Well?” he said, without turning.

She came into the room, Skapti behind her.

“Kari says it was some kind of supernatural attack.” The skald leaned against the shuttered window. “I think he's right—there are no footprints outside, no horse tracks, no evidence of any armed force.”

“But we saw them! Some of the men are wounded.”

“I know, but what we saw were visions, Wulfgar, mind shapes, nothing that was real. Everyone seems to have seen different things. Some of the men may have fought one another, or against wraiths and shadows—none of us knew what was real. We were all spell blinded.”

“Can you remember,” Jessa said slowly, “what you dreamed?”

Skapti looked at her absently. “No. Not really. Except that it was full of pain.”

Wulfgar got up suddenly and stormed around the room. “How could she do this! And why Signi? She's never even met Gudrun! If the witch wanted revenge on us why didn't she kill us all there in the hall?”

Jessa stirred, on the bench by the fire. “This is what she said she would do.”

They both stared at her blankly, so she dragged the loose brown hair from her cheek and said, “Don't you remember the night we all saw her, in that strange vision? The night the creature came? She was standing in a snow-field. She said she wanted Kari to come to her, and he wouldn't. Then she turned to you.”

“I remember.” Wulfgar stared darkly across the room. “She said, ‘What you love best, that thing I will have.' But I never thought it would be this.”

He looked down at the girl on the bed. Her eyes were closed now, as if she slept.

“Sit down,” Skapti said gently. “We need to think.”

Wulfgar came over and slumped beside Jessa on the bench. All his usual lazy elegance had left him. He put his head in his hands and stared hopelessly into the fire. “What can we do?”

Neither of them could answer.

In the awkward silence they heard footsteps outside. Then Brochael opened the door and ushered Kari in.

The boy looked frail; he went and gazed down at Signi, and they saw the deep raw cut across his forehead.

“You should be in bed,” Wulfgar muttered.

“That's what I said,” Brochael growled.

Ignoring them both, Kari came and sat by the blazing logs.

“What do we do?” Wulfgar said again.

Kari watched him bleakly. Then he said, “It's only too clear what we have to do. Gudrun has made sure we have no choice. We have to go to her.”

“Why?”

“Because that's where Signi is.” He glanced again at the still shape on the bed. “That isn't her, it's just her body, her shell. It's empty. She's not there.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I've been into her mind, Wulfgar, and it's blank!” He ran long fingers through his hair and then said, “Gudrun has done this to make me come to her.”

“Come where?” Jessa asked, remembering her dream.

“I don't know. Far away.”

“The land of the White People.”

He shrugged. “Wherever that is.”

Skapti came forward, intrigued. “They say it's beyond the end of the world. A place of trolls, a giant haunt. They say the ice goes up to touch the sky. No one could live up there.”

“The Snow-walkers live there. My people,” said Kari grimly.

Wulfgar looked up suddenly. “All right. If you say that's what we have to do to get her back, we'll do it. I'll take as many shiploads of men as I can get; a war band—”

“A war band is no use,” Brochael said unexpectedly. His huge shadow loomed on the wall, the firelight warm on his tawny hair and beard. “The last Jarl sent a war band up there and no one ever came back.”

“He's right,” Kari said. “Besides, only I need to go.”

There was an uproar of protest, everyone speaking at once until Brochael's strong voice silenced them. “You can't go! Even if you got there, she'd kill you!”

“She could have killed me here.” Calmly Kari rubbed his forehead. “She doesn't want that. She wants me alive.”

“You're not going!” Brochael was angry now and obstinate; his face was set.

“There's no alternative.” Kari looked at him hard. “Think of it, Brochael. Signi will just lie like that for months, for years, never speaking, never knowing any of us. We could all grow old and die, and she'd just be the same. Gudrun has plenty of time. Gudrun can wait for us.”

Silent with pain, Wulfgar clenched his fingers.

But stubbornly the big man shook his head. “It's folly. She may wake; we don't know.” He came over and crouched down, his strong hands on the boy's shoulders. “And I didn't bring you out of her prison for this. I don't want you to go.”

“I have to.” Kari's eyes were clear and cold; he looked like Gudrun, that secret, tense look.

Brochael stood up and stalked across the room to the door. He slammed his fist against the wood.

“We've never quarreled before,” Kari said bleakly.

“And we're not now. If you go over the world's edge, I'm going with you, and you know that well enough. But we're walking into her trap. How could she steal the girl's soul?”

Kari was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “She's learned how. She's been powerful for too long.”

Brochael's scowl deepened. He glared at the poet. “You're very quiet. You usually have some opinion.”

The skald shrugged his thin shoulders. “I think Kari is right, we have no choice. And for a poet, such a journey is enticing. A dream road. They say there are lands of fire and ice up there. Someone would have to make the song of it, and it might as well be me.”

“I won't be left behind either,” Jessa said firmly. “Don't even think it. I'm coming.”

Her scowl made them all smile, even now. When Jessa made up her mind, they all knew nothing would shift her.

Wulfgar stirred. “Then it's settled. A small group of us—we'll travel more quickly and secretly that way, and need less....”

They glanced at one another, wondering who would say it. Finally Skapti did. “Not you,” he said quietly.

Wulfgar stared at him.

“Skapti's right.” Jessa leaned forward. “You can't come with us, Wulfgar. You know that. Your place is here.”

“My place,” he breathed, “is with Signi.”

“It isn't. It can't be.” She stood up and faced him. “Look. I'll tell you this straight out, as no one else will. You're the Jarl. You rule the land, keep the peace, settle the disputes. You order the trade, keep the frontiers, hunt down outlaws. The people chose you. You can't turn your back on them. If you came with us and we were away months, even years, what would be here when we came back?” She smiled at him sadly. “Famine, blood feuds, cattle raiding. Black, burned farms. A wasteland.”

He looked away from her, such a hard, desolate look as she had never seen on him before. The room was silent. Only the flames crackled over the logs. Then Wulfgar looked back at her bitterly. “I think I'll never forgive you for this, Jessa.”

“You will.” She sat down and tried to smile at him. “And think of it this way. When she wakes, it's you she'll want to see.”

All the next day Wulfgar avoided everybody. He spent hours sitting in Signi's room, watching her still face, or staring silently out of the window. At mealtimes he called for his horse and galloped away from the hold, riding hard for the hills.

Jessa watched him go, leaning against the corner of the hall. She could guess how he felt; Wulfgar was impulsive, always the one to act. It would be very hard for him to stay behind.

Over her shoulder, Skapti said, “The trouble with him is that he knows you were right.”

“I wish I hadn't said anything. I should have let him think it out for himself.”

The skald laughed. “Always spilling your wisdom, little valkyrie.” He turned her gently. “Now let's go and see Kari, because I think he wants us. One of those spirit birds of his just came and croaked at me. The creature almost ordered me in.”

She walked along beside him gravely. “Things are different in the daylight, aren't they?”

“Lighter, you mean?”

She thumped his arm. “You know what I mean. Last night, in all the confusion, everything seemed so unreal. Signi, those dreams, the cold. The idea of a journey seemed … exciting.” She looked down at the longships moored at the wharf. A chill breeze moved them. “Now it's more frightening. It will be so cold up there. And no one has ever come back, and even if we get there…”

“There's Gudrun.”

“Yes.” She looked up at him. “Do you think it's the right thing to do?”

“I don't,” he said abruptly. “But I think it's the only thing we can do.”

“Skapti, you're mad.”

“I'm a poet,” he said, opening the door of the hall. “Pretty much the same thing.” He grinned at her, lopsided. “You're not usually so wary.”

“Dreams,” she said absently. “Those dreams. They hang around.”

Kari was out of bed and sitting at a table near the fire, carving a small piece of bone into a flat disc. He looked up at them.

“At last!”

“Feeling better?” Jessa tipped his head sideways and examined the cut critically. “Brochael was worried about you. He said you'd lost a pint of blood and you were a thin, bloodless wraith and couldn't afford it.”

Kari shrugged. “He's given me orders not to stir out. That's why I sent the birds.”

One of them flapped in at the window just then, hopping awkwardly down from the sill. It had a red, dripping object in its beak that might once have been a stoat. Delicately the bird picked it apart.

“Corpse carver,” Skapti murmured ominously.

They were watching it when Brochael came back. Hakon was with him; they staggered in carrying a large wooden chest.

“Just here,” Brochael grunted, putting his end down easily. Hakon dropped his with relief.

“No sword?” Jessa said sweetly, behind him.

He crumpled, breathless. “Not in the hall. Jarl's orders. I can live for an hour without it.”

“Not much longer, though.”

“Now.” Brochael wrenched the key around in the rusted lock. “This should be what we want.”

He put both hands to the lid and heaved it open; it crashed back on the leather hinges and a great cloud of brown dust billowed upward.

“What's all that?” Jessa murmured, looking down.

“Maps. So Guthlac says.”

He began to rummage around with his great hands, tugging out rolls of withered brown parchment and skins, worn to dust at the edges, some of them tied and sealed with red, crumbling wax.

“Clear that table,” he muttered. “Let's see what's in here.”

Each of them dipped in and took a handful of skins, unfolding them carefully. Most were so old the dyes and inks had faded; there were deeds and agreements, land holdings, some old king lists that made Skapti mutter bitterly.

“These should be recopied.” He held one up to the light. “This is a family list of the Wulfings; it goes back ten generations.”

“But the poets know all those things, don't they?” Hakon said.

“Yes, passed from teacher to pupil. But there's always the chance they'll be lost. I never even knew these existed.”

“They were here before Gudrun's time,” Brochael said, “but no one seems to have looked at them for years. There don't seem to be many maps.”

They found land holdings for dead farmers, agreements swearing the end of blood feuds, promises of wergild, tributes and taxes from southland kings none of them had ever heard of. There were poems and fragments and even a piece of deerskin inscribed with tiny red runes that Jessa handed to Kari. “What do you think that is?”

“It's a spell,” he said, staring at it in surprise.

“What for?”

“I don't know. I can't read it. But I can feel the power in it faintly.”

Skapti took it off him and bent his long nose over it. “It's old. It's for making a goat give more milk.”

“Useful,” Jessa remarked drily.

“There are others.” Brochael gathered a great sheaf out of the bottom of the chest. “As you say, not of much use to us.”

“This might be.” Hakon was sitting with something open on his knee. He lifted it onto the table and spread it out.

It was a map, drawn on ancient sealskin, dried out and fragile. The corners were charred as if it had been once dragged from some fire. Jessa leaned forward, curious.

Marked at the bottom of the map was the jagged coastline of the Cold Sea, with the long narrow fjords they all knew so well reaching upward into the land. The Jarlshold was clearly shown, a tiny cross with the rune
J
underneath. All the ports on the coast—Ost, Trond, Wormshold, Hollfara—had their names under them, and rivers and larger lakes were marked with blue lines. Drawn in red dye was the old giant's road that led from the Jarlshold to Thrasirshall, and branching off from it, another red line north, straight up to the top of the map.

“What's that?” Jessa asked, putting her finger on it.

“It looks like another road,” Hakon said.

Brochael nodded. “It is. I know where it begins, but like most of the giant road it's a ruin, lost under forests. Here and there are stone-built sections, poking through the snow. I've never traveled it. I don't know anyone who has.”

“Now's your chance,” Hakon said wistfully. “You could follow it north.”

Jessa looked at him sidelong. He was scratching his cheek with his thumbnail and looking strangely at the map; almost a hungry look. She could guess why. Hakon had been a thrall for most of his life, a slave on a greasy little hold, and had never been able to leave it. Now he was free. But he was also Wulfgar's man, one of his war band. And if Wulfgar wasn't going…