Snow-Walker (43 page)

He came forward and offered his hand to Brochael. Brochael leaned down and gripped it. “Our thanks.”

The man nodded. “You'll need to lead those beasts of yours. The causeway is slippery with ice. Follow me.”

They dismounted into the soft snow.

“Can't see much of them,” Hakon muttered.

“Well, they can't see much of us.” Jessa winked at him. “They might not like your face when they do. Keep your sword handy.”

The causeway began in the snow and stretched out over the bog, a narrow, railed walkway, built of split logs caulked and spread with what smelled like resin or pitch, a sharp smell. The horses thudded over noisily. Below them the marsh spread, its stiff stalks and frozen rushes purple in the aurora light, with strange wisps of blue that rose and drifted in the mist. Somewhere waterfowl quacked. The marsh smelled dank, of decay, of a million rotting stems.

As they walked farther out, black water glinted beneath them. Jessa saw how the snow lay in a thin film across it, already freezing in patches. Tomorrow the lake would be sealed under a frozen lid.

At the end of the causeway was the gate. The wand man knocked and called; the heavy wooden door swung open. Inside, figures came running out from nearby houses, some to stare, others to help, pulling the horses into a low building lit with lanterns, its empty stalls spread with fresh rushes and shavings.

“Unload your goods,” the man said, “and bring them with you, whatever you need. These men will see to your horses.”

He waited for them, after whispering something to a small figure who slipped out at once. A girl, Jessa thought. She slung the bag on her sore shoulders and moved up next to Kari.

“Are we safe here?” she asked quietly.

He pushed his hood off and looked at her gravely. “I don't know, Jessa! I don't know everything.”

“Sorry.” She grimaced. “We'll find out soon enough, I suppose.”

“No one attacks their guests.” Hakon sounded shocked.

Skapti shrugged, behind him. “It's been known.”

“Only in sagas!”

“Sagas are real, I've told you that. As real as your sword, dream wielder.”

The stranger led them out of the byre, across the trampled snow. A low, rectangular building was nearby, the door so sunken that the snow was already banked against it. The man stopped and opened it, trudging down a pathway. He beckoned them in.

The smoke caught Jessa's throat as she straightened, making her eyes smart; as she coughed, the light of many candles flared and danced around her. Then they steadied. She saw a small, airless room, acrid with smoke. After the clear cold air outside it felt stiflingly warm. The hearth was in the center; a great bronze cauldron hung over it on a triple chain. Above, the thatch was yellow, pale as gold.

Sitting around the cauldron, staring at her, was a small group of men and women, obviously one family. They were all heavily tattooed. Each of them had some thin blue creature crawling down his or her cheek, a boar or a fox or a fish. A small, elderly man, the man who stood up, had a strange coiling beast of curling dots. Their hair was dark and glossy, their clothes brilliantly colored—woven wool and dyed sealskin in reds and greens and blues, all hung with knots and luckstones and feathers.

“Welcome,” the chieftain said warmly, his accent strange. “Come to the fire, all of you.”

For a moment no one moved. Then Brochael dumped his pack against the wall and came forward. The others followed, pulling off coats and wrappings and gloves, scattering snow on the floor and benches.

“Come close, come,” the old man insisted, waving them in. He said something quietly; a woman and a girl got up and poured out a drink for each of them, handing out small horns of yellow-colored liquid.

Skapti tasted it and smiled in surprise. “Mead?”

“We call it honey brew. Sit down now, be comfortable.”

There were low benches near the hearth; the travelers perched themselves in a thankful row. The man who had brought them in pulled off his own faceguard and coat; now he came and sat near them, laying the quartz-headed wand carefully at his feet. The bells gave a strange, silvery chink. Not a weapon, Jessa thought suddenly. Something magical.

She looked at him curiously. He had a lean, sharp face, with a ragged fringe of brown hair. A tattoo uncoiled on his cheek, ran down his neck and under his clothes. Two others crawled on the backs of his hands. The silver bells showed that he was someone special, a shaman, she thought firmly, noticing the strange pierced bones that hung from his belt.

Food was set before them and they ate hungrily. Hot roast spicy meats, possibly duck; fish, fresh from the lake; crumbly oatcakes and honey; cheese and beer. It was a feast, and Jessa enjoyed it to the full, despite the stifling smoke. It had been weeks since they'd eaten properly; she noticed how thin and gaunt they all looked, how travel worn. Filthy, long-haired, wild.

The chieftain watched them. His eyes were light blue, his face beginning to wrinkle. He smiled. “My name is Torvi, father of the people. This is my wife, Yrsa, and my daughter Lenna. The Speaker is our wiseman, our shaman to the dark. His own name may not be known.”

As he said that, the family made a brief sign, a touching of their lips. Jessa nodded to herself. Knowing his name would give them power over him. Or so these people would believe.

Skapti gave their own names courteously and the tattooed people gazed at them all. If they recognized what Kari was, they said nothing. Jessa had the feeling they didn't, which was surprising. Although, a lake people like this had no reason to travel far. They had all they needed here.

“It's fitting you came tonight,” the woman was saying. “Tomorrow is the feast of giving; the opening of the darkness. We'd be honored if you would join us.”

“If the food is as good as this,” Skapti said drily, “I'm sure we will.”

They all laughed, and there was an awkward silence.

Then the Speaker leaned forward. “So you're traveling. From beyond the wood, by the look of you. And where do you travel to, may we know?”

Skapti shot a look at Brochael, who shrugged.

“A long way,” the poet said carefully.

“To my country.” Kari's voice was unexpected; the shaman turned to him. A strange look passed between them.

Then the Speaker nodded. “A long way indeed, to the land of the soul thieves.”

Jessa caught her breath. So
he
knew, at least.

Kari nodded but said nothing. He drank from his cup.

A woman came in and spoke to the chieftain; he turned to Skapti. “A guest hall is ready for you all; Sif will show you the way. Sleep well, sleep late. Rest and eat well. Tomorrow we will talk.”

“Tomorrow we should leave,” Brochael said uneasily. “We have an urgent errand.”

The old man shook his head. “I fear the weather will keep you here. But the choice is yours. Do exactly as you wish. We will sell you food and ale and grain, as much as you want.”

Awkwardly Brochael stood and nodded. “We appreciate that.”

The guest hall was a copy of the eating hall, but smaller. Equally smoky, Jessa thought irritably. “It's a wonder these people can breathe,” she said aloud.

Hakon fingered the brightly woven hangings and lifted one aside. “Furs!” He flung himself down with a groan of comfort.

Jessa crawled scornfully into the next booth and dumped her bag. She lay down, just for a moment, to try out the bed.

In seconds she was asleep.

Kari lay in the darkness. Slowly the absence of feeling came to him. He saw nothing, heard nothing.

But there was a tightness about his neck; he put his hands up and felt for it, and touched rope, a great noose of frayed, damp rope. Desperately he pulled at it, but it was coiled and cabled with heavy knots, and something crisp, like feathers, were stuck and threaded into its skeins.

He spread his hands out into the darkness, fighting down fear. This was no dream, he knew that. It was a vision. But of what? Terror touched him; he tried to sit up, and couldn't, and then he knew the darkness on top of him was heavy, wet with peat and matted lichens and the seeds and spores of generations. It weighed on him, suffocating him like a dark hand over his mouth and nose, and though he writhed and struggled and flung his head from side to side, she would not let go of him; she was drowning him in soil, her hand forcing him down and down.

He choked and retched and the darkness broke; it shattered into glints of candle flame and a fire red roof, and Jessa and Moongarm bending over him.

“Are you all right?” Jessa whispered anxiously. She pulled him up, knowing he wasn't; he was white, his lips a strange blue; he struggled to breathe, bent over, dragging in long, painful, choking breaths.

“Shall I call Brochael?”

He shook his head. After a moment he managed, “No… I'm … all right.”

“You don't look it.”

“I … will be.” He looked at Moongarm.

“You seemed to be stifling in your sleep,” the gray man said somberly.

“He woke me,” Jessa whispered. “He was worried. Was it a nightmare?”

“I hope so.”

“A warning?”

Kari shrugged, rubbing his throat with thin fingers. “I don't know. They seem friendly.”

“Very friendly,” Moongarm muttered.

Jessa glanced at him. “You don't trust that?”

“I'm wary. The comfort here will be hard to leave. And if your errand is so urgent, you should beware of that.”

Kari looked up at them suddenly. “There's one thing I do know about them, and that's strange enough.”

“What?”

He coughed and swallowed painfully. Then he said, “They were expecting us. They knew we were coming.”

The old man had been right.

They woke late, to a blizzard that howled around the village all morning, blotting out even the wall of the nearest house in a storm of white driven flakes. Travel was impossible. Hakon took one look outside and went back to sleep. He had a lot to catch up on, he said.

Jessa and Kari played Hunt the King on a board made by scratching out the squares with a knife. Kari did it; he was clever at carving. For counters they used some of Brochael's coins. The chieftain's daughter Lenna, who brought breakfast, stayed in the house to watch, fascinated. Jessa explained the rules.

Brochael had nothing to do. His shoulder no longer bothered him; he prowled restlessly for a while, and then pulled on his bearskin coat and went out into the flying snow.

“Where's he gone?” Skapti muttered absently.

“To look at the horses. What else is there?” Moongarm was sharpening his sword with a long whetstone borrowed from the villagers. He gazed curiously across at the poet, who lay on a bench, wrapped in his blue cloak. Skapti had the kantele out and had tuned it carefully, adjusting the harpstrings and checking the birchwood frame for damage. Now he plucked notes with his supple fingers.

Jessa looked up from the board. “Out of practice?”

He grinned at her. “A feast needs a song. Even from visitors.” He looked at Lenna. “You must have poets of your own. Storytellers? Rememberers?”

She looked confused, her long black hair swinging. “The Speaker. He knows the past.”

“Is he a shaman?”

The girl nodded, reluctant. She pushed back her hair nervously and gathered the dishes. Skapti let the notes fade. Then he said, “I have a good song of thanks for hospitality. Would they let me sing it tonight?”

Lenna paused, her head bent. “I don't know.... It's not that sort of feast.” Kari raised his head and looked at her quickly, and she scrambled up. “I'd better go. My mother will want me.”

They watched her hurry across the hazy room, the brilliant reds and blues of her dress delighting their eyes. She pulled on her coat and went out.

“She was scared,” Jessa said. “Now why was that?”

Kari moved a piece. “Skapti's song. The prospect of hearing it.”

Jessa giggled, but wondered what he really thought.

The skald ignored them. He wrapped his cloak tight around him and leaned back against the wall. “Don't disturb me. I'll be working.”

Then he closed his eyes and was still.

Jessa had seen him do this before. Making the song; fitting the words and notes and kennings together, knotting them into intricate lines and rhythms, charging them with power, memorizing them—it was an intense, concentrated process. He would lie there now as if in a sleep for hours, with just the soft touch of a finger on a string now and then to remind them he was alive; later he would begin the music, working out patterns of sound to weave with the words.

For a long time the room was quiet. Just the click of the moving coins, the whirr of the whetstone.

Then Brochael stormed in, scattering snow. He stamped it from his boots, looking more cheerful. “It's clearing up. I've been buying supplies from the old man—they're surprisingly generous.” He dumped three sacks in a corner. “We should be able to leave tomorrow.”

From his bed, Hakon groaned.

Jessa laughed; she knew what he meant. The warmth, the food, the chance to rest were enticing. And just being indoors without having the eternal wind and sleet in her face, chapping her skin, stinging her eyes, without the constant stumble of the horses, the stiff, freezing nights. But they had to keep on. Signi was depending on them. She thought suddenly of the slim girl asleep in the dim room, her hair spread. Wulfgar too; by now he must be aching with worry.

“I could show you how things are there,” a voice said. “If you want.”

She looked up at Kari, startled and furious. “Don't do that to me!”

He looked down. “I'm sorry, Jessa.”

“It's too dangerous....”

He shook his head bitterly. “You don't need to tell me. But sometimes, I can't help it. That picture of Signi was so strong.”