Snow-Walker Read online

  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.

  Nineteen

  Learned I grew then, lore-wise,

  Waxed and throve well.

  Word from word gave words to me,

  Deed from deed gave deeds to me.

  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.”

  They moved quickly, making a ring of swords. Kari and Jessa were inside it.

  “Cut the air. Use your swords. He’s here.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Brochael snarled, but they took no notice and began to close in, moving together through the blizzard. Blades sliced the swirling snow.

  Jessa took a step back. “The one on the left,” she breathed.

  But the man heard; his eyes widened with terror. “Here!” he yelled, flinging one arm out. He touched Jessa’s hair and grabbed at it. She screamed and kicked him, and as he staggered back Skapti stuck out his long leg and tripped him so that he crashed to the ground. At once Jessa and Kari had leaped through the gap and raced into the flying web of snow.

  “Run!” Brochael yelled.

  They ran blindly, stumbling through the wet fen, the cries and shouts behind them dying into wind and silence; ran until their lungs ached, and they collapsed behind a heap of stones, coughing and dragging in breath.

  “We can’t go back for them.” Kari gasped. “There’s no time.” She saw him turn, his hands clenched.

  “Can you hear it?” he asked savagely.

  “The wind?”

  “It’s not the wind, it’s her, taunting me. She’s waiting for me to come. She wants it!”

  Jessa shoved the knife back in her belt. “I know. And we’ve all helped her.”

  “You?”

  “Even me,” Jessa said bitterly. “I was so proud—I thought I’d outwitted her. I wouldn’t let her use me—I threw the arm ring away. But it didn’t matter. She made us bring you—she’s let us come, through the snow and the mist, through the fingers of her men. She wants you for something.”

  Kari gave her a strange look. “You think so?”

  “So does Brochael.”

  He lifted his head. “Then let’s not disappoint her.”

  It was her snow. They walked through a white moving tunnel of it, and it stung on the skin like venom. Dimly, on each side, shapes flickered, shifted, and came to nothing—wolves, worms, troll shadows that danced in the corners of their eyes—but they walked on swiftly to the place where the snow ended and stepped through the edge of it, into darkness.

  Before them the sky was purple, dotted with faint stars. They looked over a wide stretch of marshy ground, misty with gases and smokes that rose from the earth, the smell of them drifting on the wind. Not far off the plop of some creature into a pool sounded loud and strange.

  Across the marsh stood the Jarlshold: a cluster of black roofs, with the carven ends of the hall gables clear against the sky. There were no lights down there, no sounds. Not even the barking of a dog.

  Without speaking, they began to move forward, helping each other over the treacherous mire. The water was brackish and icy, with a sharp smell of weed and decay. Strange tiny lights, purple and green and blue, moved among the reeds and mists, always at a distance.

  Jessa’s s
kirt slopped against her boots; her hair was muddy and clung to her back. The fumes of the marsh made them cough, and the sound echoed through the stillness.

  Gradually the ground rose, became drier. They climbed a long slope of thorn and black, spiny bushes, and pushed through them onto a track paved with flat stones.

  As they followed it between the first houses, their footsteps sounded loud in the stillness. There was no watchman, no challenge. Jessa wondered how late it was, whether everyone was asleep, but the silence was not normal. And no smoke. That meant no fires in the houses.

  They passed Mord’s house, but the door was closed and she dared not try it. The shadows between the buildings were black; as they came silently under the walls of the great hall, Jessa saw that the windows were shuttered, and no light leaked from them. The two ravens, like gargoyles, were perched on the roof. One gave a short kark.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked. “What’s she done with them?”

  “Nothing. They’re here.”

  “How do you know?”

  Kari did not seem to hear. He took her hand, and they moved silently along the black wall.

  At the door the watchman’s stool was empty, and there was no dog. Jessa put her hand to the door and lifted the latch. It moved easily, with a tiny creak that made her wince. Both together, they pushed it ajar, and slipped inside.

  Twenty

  Offered, myself to myself.

  Gudrun was waiting for them.

  She was standing with her back to the fire; the smoke of it hung about her in the dark spaces of the hall.

  No one spoke. Kari leaned with his back against the door, hands behind him; then, slowly, he walked out into the firelight. Jessa stayed where she was.

  He stopped a few yards from Gudrun and they stared at each other in silence. To Jessa the likeness they shared was astonishing: the same thin paleness, the same sense of hidden power—even the same straight, shining hair, though Kari’s was ragged and muddy, and Gudrun’s arranged in long elaborate braids.