The Long War 02 - The Dark Blood (37 page)

The response was mumbled. Wulfrick, Oleff and Halla had to lean in to hear her. ‘The Ice Giant can’t talk to us any more... the blood is almost spent... the blood is almost spent... but the shades come.’

She babbled the same few sentences over and over until Halla stood up and faced Wulfrick. ‘What’s she talking about?’

The axe-master shook his head. ‘No idea. It sounds doom-laden, though.’

‘Hey, woman...’ snapped Oleff, ‘get out of the road.’

‘Enough!’ said Halla. ‘It’s as much her road as ours.’ She knelt back down in front of the old woman. ‘Throw them again,’ she said.

The woman gave her another strangely intense stare and nodded. She picked up the ceremonial bones, shook them, and threw them to the ground again. ‘They always say the same,’ she repeated in a shrill voice.

Halla raised her eyebrows at the bones. They had indeed fallen in precisely the same position as before.

‘Now, that’s a little eerie,’ said Wulfrick to Oleff. ‘Algenon used to say that some women could read the future in fish entrails or the pattern of a bird’s flight... I don’t think he ever put much faith in bones, though.’

‘Depends who’s reading them,’ said a loud voice from above.

Halla and her two captains looked up and saw the distinctive features of Rexel Falling Cloud. The axe-master of Hammerfall was standing on the plateau, ten feet above the narrow, icy trail.

‘Shouldn’t sneak up on a man,’ said Oleff. ‘Wulfrick could have shit himself.’

‘Don’t make me push you into the river, piss-stain,’ replied Wulfrick, with a boisterous laugh.

Halla shielded her eyes from the glare of the snow. ‘What does the ground look like up there?’

Falling Cloud scanned around from his elevated position and puffed out his cheeks. ‘Well, there’s enough cover up here, but it’ll be cramped for five hundred. We’d better start moving everyone up out of the gully.’

‘Right,’ agreed the axe-maiden. ‘And, Rexel...’

‘My lady?’ he responded.

‘Do you know this woman?’

He nodded. ‘Her name’s Anya Coldbane. We used to call her Lullaby... something to do with a brew she used to make that sent you to sleep.’ He paused and smiled down at the woman. Hearing her name, she looked up and squinted into the light to see who had spoken. ‘She was old when my father was a boy,’ said Rexel. ‘I wouldn’t offer any guarantees about her sanity, though.’

Anya frowned and made a series of crotchety, mumbled sounds. ‘That’s enough cheek from you, Mr Falling Cloud.’

It was the first sign that the woman was even vaguely aware of herself and her surroundings. She retrieved the bones and stood up. Her back made a creaking sound, and at her full height she barely reached Halla’s shoulders.

‘You know Rexel?’

‘Of course,’ she barked. ‘Silly girl.’

Oleff and Wulfrick stifled a laugh.

Halla crossed her arms. ‘What brings you out here... old woman?’ she asked, angry at being called a girl, silly or otherwise.

Anya stared at her, apparently oblivious to the five hundred Fjorlanders waiting impatiently behind her. ‘Where’s your father, young lady? I’d like a serious word with him about how you were raised.’

Wulfrick and Oleff stopped laughing. For a moment they looked worried that Halla would take offence at the reference to Aleph Summer Wolf.

‘My father is dead... as is my mother,’ replied Halla. ‘If you wish to chide someone, chide me.’

‘I knew young Falling Cloud when he was a crying, pink bundle in his mother’s arms,’ Anya snapped, peering at Halla through beady eyes.

All three looked up at Rexel, who was tapping his feet in embarrassment. ‘She was an adviser to Oreck Silver Tongue, back in the days when Ragnar Teardrop was high thain,’ said Falling Cloud.

‘Well, she’s coming with us,’ said Halla in resignation. ‘We can’t leave her sitting in the snow this close to the Bear’s Mouth.’

Anya Lullaby scowled at the warriors standing round her. Wulfrick and Oleff towered over the shrivelled old woman, but she didn’t seem to care, looking at both the men as if they were naughty children.

‘Where are we, young men?’ she asked.

They exchanged glances, and Oleff, slightly the older of the two, said to Wulfrick, ‘I think she’s talking to you.’

‘This is the Bear’s Mouth, mother,’ said the axe-master of Fredericksand. ‘The plateaus of Ursa.’

Anya screwed up her face and looked skywards. ‘Hmm, I seem to have wandered further than I intended.’

The day was wearing on and Halla knew that the temperature would begin to drop even further within the next few hours. She looked up at Rexel and couldn’t immediately see an easy path up to where he stood. ‘We can discuss it later, Mistress Lullaby,’ she said. ‘We need to move everyone up out of the gully and get some fires built.’

With surprising speed, Anya slapped Halla hard in the face. ‘You will not address me by that name... my tea is very nutritious and good for you.’

Everyone froze. Halla stood, stunned and with the taste of blood on her bottom lip.

‘Oh, yeah, she’s also a moody old bitch,’ said Rexel with a laugh. ‘Don’t take it personally, Halla.’

‘Don’t think I won’t hit you, Mr Falling Cloud,’ snapped Anya, shaking her fist at the axe-master of Hammerfall. ‘I’ll knock some respect into all of you youngsters.’

‘I’m approaching fifty years, you miserable old sow,’ growled Oleff. ‘Don’t think I won’t give you a smack either, woman.’ The chain-master snorted with annoyance and marched off, back towards the column. ‘I’ll start to get everyone moving.’

Rexel nodded. ‘And I’ll organize getting fires built.’ He disappeared out of view and on to the plateaus of Ursa above.

Wulfrick remained with Halla and Anya. The huge man of Fredericksand had been more amused than Oleff, and he put a kindly arm round the old woman’s shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, mother, we’ll teach them some respect. Now, let’s get you out of this weather and in front of a nice warm fire.’

‘Yes, thank you, young man,’ replied Anya, nuzzling into the embrace of the axe-master.

They made a comical pair as Wulfrick walked her away. Halla touched a spot of blood from her lip. ‘Well, at least she didn’t call me
one-eye
.’

* * *

The wise women of Fjorlan were an oddity among oddities. Old Father Crowe used to claim that, due to the sheer number of them, they had only a tenuous connection to the Ice Giant and received the will of Rowanoco in portents and vague omens. They stood in sharp contrast to the priests of the Order of the Hammer, who were few in number and powerful in consequence. The old man of Tiergarten thought that when the Ice Giant spread out his power it became less concentrated.

Halla had met a few wise women in her time and had found them to be useful and annoying in equal measure. Whatever else they might be, they were skilled herbalists and were often to be found ministering to the sick and using their concoctions to aid in birth and death. Their obsession with fish entrails and reading the bones was harder to respect. As Wulfrick had said, the old pagan superstitions of Ranen, their earliest beliefs from before the Order of the Hammer, were generally viewed with condescension.

Anya did not seem to care, or even to notice, that most of the Fjorlanders considered her a mad old woman. She stayed close to Wulfrick. She had bonded with him quickly and nestled into his huge presence next to the fire. The rest of Halla’s company were seated round campfires, spread out along a low plain. They were a short distance from the gully, with their backs to a small, rugged line of rocks. The accommodation was cramped, but provided adequate cover for all five hundred of them. They were situated well above the frozen river that ran along the bottom of the gully. The plateaus of Ursa were one of the higher points of Fjorlan. Only the mountains of Trollheim and a few peaks of the Deep Cross stood taller. Falling Cloud was a good man to have around in such terrain, because his upbringing, travelling the wilds of Hammerfall and the Wolf Wood, had gained him a mastery of outdoor survival, which had become a lost art among the city- and town-dwelling Fjorlanders.

‘How many, do you think?’ Wulfrick asked, pulling Halla back to the present.

‘What?’ she retorted, wrapping her thick cloak around her shoulders and rubbing her hands together next to the fire.

‘How many of our new followers will fight?’ he asked. ‘A few carry axes, but I don’t fancy their chances at the Bear’s Mouth. We’ve got the original two hundred, and maybe a hundred more from the estuaries, but what are we going to do with the women and children?’

They had tried not to think too much about the common people who had joined the company. They had been rescued from burning villages or had latched on to the column as it passed their dead livestock and burned crops. Their chances of survival if they stayed in Hammerfall were negligible, but their path through the Bear’s Mouth was almost as dangerous.

‘If we take the three hundred warriors and clear Grammah Black Eyes and his men, they can follow when it’s safe,’ she said.

Wulfrick raised an eyebrow and handed her a wooden bowl of steaming stew. Falling Cloud had rustled up something from dried vegetables and Gorlan legs. It tasted horrible, but it was hot and vaguely nutritious.

‘I appreciate that we’ve been driven by passion and the desire for vengeance, but those things won’t help when Black Eyes is throwing rocks at us.’ Wulfrick was wiser than he often appeared, and Halla occasionally had to remind herself that the axe-master of Fredericksand was no frenzied berserker. ‘The Bear’s Mouth is like a fortress and we don’t have enough men to storm it... passion or no passion,’ continued Wulfrick, slurping stew from his own bowl.

Halla was thinking. She had not had leisure to formulate a plan, and never having seen the Bear’s Mouth, she felt out of her depth. Still, Wulfrick and her captains looked to her with trust and loyalty, and she didn’t want to admit that she was at a loss for a strategy. She was also a little afraid. She had become the leader of a mixed company of battle-brothers, women, children and the elderly. She had never expected this when she washed ashore after her encounter with the Krakens of the Fjorlan Sea.

‘How many men will Grammah have, do you think?’ she asked Wulfrick, stirring her stew with a wooden spoon and trying to identify the roots and vegetables that floated to the top. ‘Rulag wouldn’t know we survived, so he might not have stationed many men there.’ It was a forlorn hope.

Wulfrick spat out a chunk of something that resembled a Gorlan leg bone. ‘It’s the southern border of Jarvik... where else would he put his men?’

‘We’ll be there in a few days, so I suppose we’ll see,’ she said. ‘Maybe Rexel can get close enough to scout out their numbers.’

Wulfrick raised an eyebrow and nodded, though there was a note of sarcasm in his manner. ‘And maybe we won’t get killed,’ he replied, glancing across the plain to where Rexel sat with Oleff and Heinrich Blood, the novice of the Order of the Hammer.

‘Pessimism – that’s helpful,’ she said with a smile.

‘You’re a silly little girl,’ said Anya through a throaty chuckle. The wise woman had been silent up to this point and appeared to be enjoying Rexel’s stew.

Halla did not feel offended this time. Instead, she barely stifled a laugh. She was indeed being a
silly little girl
and she couldn’t disagree with the wise woman.

‘You’ve found your sense of humour, my Lady Summer Wolf,’ said Wulfrick, genuinely surprised at her reaction.

‘Maybe she’s right,’ Halla responded with a broad grin. ‘I have no idea what we should do, where we should go, who we should be looking for... none of it. I just know how to swing an axe.’

Wulfrick smiled back and for a moment the atmosphere was as relaxed as it had ever been since the dragon fleet launched from Fredericksand. Time had meant little and Halla was unsure how long they had been moving northwards or how long it was since they had released the king. That realization amused her all the more, and they shared a gallows humour round the campfire as it dawned on Halla that she was really not cut out to be a leader.

‘You’re better than you think,’ said Anya without turning from the fire. ‘These men are true to you.’ She looked up at Halla with her strangely intense stare. ‘Have faith in the Ice Father, young lady.’

The axe-maiden turned slowly to look at the wise woman. Wulfrick was hulking over her, providing cover against the cold wind, and she looked tiny in comparison.

‘You know things, Lullaby,’ said Halla suspiciously, ‘things you shouldn’t know.’

Anya moved her hand quickly to slap Halla, but the axe-maiden grabbed her wrist and held the old woman securely.

‘Easy,’ said Wulfrick protectively. ‘She’s just a bit prickly, no need to hurt her.’

‘She knew what I was thinking,’ Halla replied, not looking away from Anya.

The wise woman smiled, an unpleasant sneer that made her wrinkled face crease up even more. ‘I did... and I do... if you want to know how... or why,’ she said mysteriously. Her eyes narrowed into a mischievous expression. ‘You’ll take my advice, won’t you, Halla Summer Wolf?’

Wulfrick looked at the axe-maiden and his eyes showed that he had become suddenly wary. He backed away from the wise woman. ‘Explain yourself, mother.’

‘Fear not, axe-master.’ Anya seemed dangerously aware all of a sudden. ‘I speak only what appears in my head, only what the Ice Father says to me.’ She flicked her eyes between Halla and Wulfrick. ‘He cannot talk to us any more, so he throws his thoughts out to reach a man, or a woman, of Ranen.’ Her face softened now. It took on a warm expression that caused Wulfrick and Halla to relax. ‘I hear a little, and you youngsters should listen. I know the way.’

The snow no longer made Halla shiver. She frowned and involuntarily her mind relaxed. The old woman’s words had changed from obscure ranting to wise reflection. Suddenly, she was someone to listen to. Across the camp, Heinrich Blood, the young novice, looked towards them with wide eyes. He was still learning to be a priest, but he had demonstrated on numerous occasions that he was deeply devoted to the Ice Giant.

‘We know our path, mother,’ said Wulfrick, still on guard, but letting his words sound gentle. ‘For good or ill, we assault the Bear’s Mouth.’