Snow-Walker (28 page)

Kari stared at him, almost in astonishment; then the men surged forward, overpowering Brochael with difficulty, two of them staggering back, the rest leaping onto him and Kari, striking with fists and hilts until Skapti pulled them off, yelling in his loudest hall voice.

On the floor Kari slowly uncurled. The skald crouched. “Leave him! This is Wulfgar's hold and under his law! He's not dead yet!”

Some of the men helped Vidar up. Ashen and shaking, he straightened out of their arms. For a moment he seemed unable to speak. Then he said, “Take them both below. Chain them.”

Skapti stood up. “Not that.”

“We must! Don't you see, the boy has power. He attacked me with it. He must be held secure or he could do anything.”

Brochael struggled furiously in the grip of two men. “Lying fool,” he muttered. “Skapti, for Thorssake…”

The skald bent and picked Kari up gently. “I'll carry him myself, Brochael. No one else will touch him. And I swear no one will harm either of you. Not until Wulfgar speaks on this.”

“And if he dies?” Brochael snapped.

“There'll be a new Jarl,” Vidar said. He turned to the door, and only Hakon glimpsed his small, hard smile.

The smell of blood was in the forest.

Raising its dripping mouth from the pool the spellspun creature sensed it, the edges of its nostrils widening.

Blood. And more.

Men, horses, dogs. And more.

Anger.

The creature let the complex wash of fear and wrath into its mind. Excited, it roared and thrashed, tearing the branches from a young spruce, crushing the pungent leaves in one clenched fist.

Then it tossed them down and followed the scent. In these last days it had moved always upright, rarely crouching as at first. It walked, an eerie glimmer in the murk, and the birds fled before it. Pushing between branches it came to its high vantage point and looked down. About it the forest breathed and murmured in the breezy afternoon, the cold wind strengthening ominously. Gray heavy cloud gathered in the west. The thing sniffed, recognizing the signs of rain.

And there it was, something else, something faint on the wind, a new scent. Human. Not too far away.

Find it,
the voice instructed firmly.

Stalking forward, the sending moved downhill. Its head was high now, tall among the trees. Clouds of whining gnats tormented it, so that it snarled and beat them off. Among the clefts and broken hillsides of the steep wood, it slid back to all fours awkwardly, snapping boughs with its weight, dragging out a shallow-rooted sapling in a shower of soil as it steadied itself. Far into the trees the noise rang, a cracking, splintering progress.

And then the rain came, silent at first, then a steady hard beat of drops pattering among branches, rolling from leaves and stalks. The wood dropped into a blurred, trickling place; the pelt of the rune beast clotted, became sodden, water dripping into its small eyes. Oblivious, it strode out of the trees onto the lakeside. Then it stopped.

Scents drifted, faint in the wet air. Rain fell on the water, dimpling the surface with millions of dancing ripples, appearing and disappearing so that the creature gazed, half-entranced, until the voice snapped at it and the sudden, sharp hunger made it turn away.

It moved around the lakeside to a place of rocks, clefts, deep rubble. This was where the scent was. Among these slippery, wet stones. In this cliff face.

A blur in the rain, the creature slipped between the boulders. Then it crouched.

Somewhere near, its prey breathed.

The creature turned its head, and saw a small, dark cleft, a cave with a narrow entrance.

In there.

Jessa crouched absolutely still.

The cave was a tiny, dark space, the entrance just a slit among rocks. Too narrow for the creature to get in, she was sure. But she knew it was out there. She had heard the slow crack and snap of branches, heard its footsteps, and once a strange snuffle, like a dog makes after meat.

All at once something blurred past, out there in the rain; then, with a suddenness that snatched her breath, the entrance went dark.

She slammed back against the rock wall, knife in hand.

Slowly the creature put its arm into the cave.

She saw a great, heavy limb, pale with wet fur. Its hand was huge, not human, but with five thick stubby fingers, each with a curved claw that slashed across the dark, gripping at nothing.

Flat as she could be, she watched it, fascinated. The beast must be far stronger than she'd imagined. As the hand swung past her cheek she turned her head with a gasp, smelling it close, the wet, forest smell, the fur clotted with moss and rain and blood, the claws split and raw.

It roared, restlessly groping for her. She hardly breathed; her stomach and shoulders ached with taut fear, and still the hand stretched closer, the muscles straining under the thick pelt.

Then it pulled back.

And was gone.

She dared not move. For what seemed like hours she stayed there, waiting, letting her breath out slowly, shivering with aftershock. At last she peeled herself off the wall, and found the back of her jerkin soaked with sweat and running damp. Before her legs gave way she sat down, huddled in the far corner, her arms tight about her knees.

Gods, she thought. What a mess.

Was it still out there? There were no sounds now. Yes, there were, scraps of movement, rustles. Nervously she counted them off, a bird screech, rain splatter, the slither of soil.

Any of them might be the beast.

The cleft entrance showed dimness. It was getting dark. Skapti and the men would be home by now. There'd be panic about Wulfgar, lies about what had happened to her. And here she was, stuck in this hole!

She stabbed both knives savagely into the mud before her and flung her arms back around her knees. She had to be calm. She had to think! There were two choices: Go out, and try to get through to the nearest farm—probably Skulisstead. Or stay the night here, without a coat or water or any way of making a fire.

But that was only one choice really, and she knew it. The forest at night was far too dangerous to risk—wolves, boar, morasses, cliffs—far too easy to get lost in, and the spell beast might be sitting out there with its back against a tree just waiting for her. No, she'd have to stay, at least until daylight. She shook her head bitterly. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink except trickles of rain, and worst of all, the cold. The cold would be bad, but not enough to kill her. There was just room to stand, move her arms, walk a few steps. She'd be in a bad way, but it might have been worse, she told herself. A few weeks earlier, and she'd have frozen.

Laying her head sideways on her knees, she began to think carefully. Vidar had struck Wulfgar down coldly and viciously. It had been planned, the whole thing, probably for a while now. Skapti had never trusted the priest, had he—and he'd been right. And it was easy to see Vidar's next step. He had to finish Wulfgar, and then get rid of Kari.

Only Kari and Brochael could stop him now.

But even Kari might not know what the priest had done. If only she could have warned Wulfgar! But you did, she told herself sharply. And all it did was make things worse, make the priest notice you. “Stupid,” she said aloud, and instantly a leaf rustle close outside set her heart thudding.

Nothing came near the cleft.

After a while she forced herself back to her thoughts. Kari was in danger, and so was Wulfgar, and everyone would believe she was dead, even Vidar. Yes! Maybe even him. And that might be the one chance, the only chance, that would save her. If he thought she was dead he wouldn't be searching for her. He wouldn't be worried. If she could get back to the hold unseen; if she could only get back in time, then everyone would believe her. She grinned, there in the dark. Her safety depended on the thief 's lies. And his cowardice. Now there was an irony.

Sometime later she jerked awake, gripping the knives hard.

Something had moved and splashed down at the lake. As she sat there she felt the stiffness of cold in her back and arms, the dragging ache. After a while she scrambled up wearily and paced up and down, shivering, in the tiny space. Thorsteeth, she was cold! Bitterly cold. And hungry. Strangely, hugely hungry.

Carefully she crept to the opening. Sleet pattered against her face; she licked it from her lips gratefully. Then she reached out and tore a limp piece of moss from the rock, tugging it free and stepping back quickly into the dark.

Head back, she squeezed the water out of it; it slid down her throat and tasted foul, but did something for her thirst. She squeezed the handful dry, then looked thoughtfully at the green fronds. Reindeer ate it. It couldn't be poisonous, could it? And she was sore with hunger; it churned like a blackness inside her and around her, as if it was an enormous creature itself.

Reluctantly she nibbled the moss. It tasted wet, coarse, and bitter. She flung it down, thinking bitterly of hot, spicy meats, steaming fish. There were plenty of fish out there in that lake; fungi she knew how to find. But she was stuck in this hell pit, this earth swallow… Skapti would have found a string of good names for it.

She settled back on the earth floor, curled against the cold. For a long time she lay awake; then sleep came, or a kind of half sleep, and she drifted between her aching body and bitter, disjointed dreams about Kari, and Skapti, and endless forests, and Wulfgar, always falling, falling slowly into the moss. And once she thought she dreamed of a white snake, which crawled into the cave and twisted itself around her wrist, so that she woke in horror, flicking it off.

After waking for the fourth or fifth time, she saw daylight outside, gray and blear. She was unbearably cold now; her breath made clouds about her, and the edges of the knives and her hands and face and clothes were frosted with a fur of tiny crystals.

Painfully she staggered up. Now she had to take the risk.

For a moment she massaged the blood back into her legs and fingers. Then, knives in hands, she glided through the narrow crack into the dawn.

The rocks, glinting with frost, were bare. Nothing watched her, even from above, where thin pine saplings sprouted from the crevices. Below, the lake was still, its waters dull as the sky. Nothing moved among the trees; the wood was ominously silent.

After a moment of waiting she noticed the creature's prints beside her; they led into a tangle of bracken, then out, away into the wood. Had it gone, then?

Finally Jessa crept quietly down to the lake. She was too thirsty to care now. She drank hurriedly, snatching the icy water up in her palms, always watching the forest.

It had gone. Probably its hunger had been too urgent. And for the moment, she didn't care where it was.

She glanced about, working out her direction, tugging the wet, stray hairs from her face. She had to find a farm, and it might take all day. Picking out something that wriggled in her hair, she sucked cuts and briar tears on her filthy hands.

All day. And by then, she might be too late.

Hakon staggered into the storehouse and dumped the logs onto the floor. They toppled and rolled; he kicked them to stillness and wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his good hand. Wearily he crouched, dragged the wood out, and began to arrange it crisscross.

His back ached and his shoulders felt like knots of pain and he'd only been back since last night. They'd been saving all the filthy jobs up; Gretta, Skuli's wife, was good at that. Even though it took him twice as long as anybody else … but then she had something to moan about. All day he'd been lugging wood, cutting peats, dragging food out for the pigs and even now, when the children were in bed and the wine jug going around, he still hadn't finished.

He threw the last log down and sat listening to the ragged singing in the house. Celebrating Skuli's luck. Skuli, Vidar's man.

Then he turned quickly. Something had stirred in the dark corner where the horse harness hung, some slight movement, a chink of metal. He backed to the door.

“Stay where you are, Hakon. And don't shout.”

Something rose from the straw, a shadowy wraith. As it came forward through a slant of moonlight, he saw her, a girl, splashed and bedraggled. Shadows flowed over her. His fingers clenched with fear.

“Jessa? Gods, Jessa, how can it be you!”

She grinned at him. “Thought I was a ghost, did you?”

“You ought to be! Vidar said you were dead. He said he saw it happen!”

“The creature tore me to pieces, I suppose.”

“He's even got your coat. It's all slashed.”

She shook her head and sat down wearily, leaning forward over her knees.

He crouched beside her. “You mean it was all a lie?”

“Of course it was, weak brain!” She looked up fiercely. “For Thorssake, Hakon, haven't you got something I can eat? I'm dying of hunger!”

He grinned at her happily. “I'll bet you are. And look at you! Where have you been?”

She was filthy, her hair tangled, torn from its braids; her face and clothes stained and soaked with rain.

“Come into the house with me. They'll be glad—”

“No.”

She watched him; he saw the sudden wariness.

“No one is to know I'm here. No one. It's vital. Is Skuli back?”

“He's still at the Jarlshold. He sent me back by myself.”

“All the better.”

“Jessa,” he said urgently, “what's going
on
?”

“Get me some food and I'll explain.”

He pulled a doubtful face. “I'm a thrall, remember. I only get what they give me.”

“You'll manage,” Jessa said, scratching her hair. “If you don't, I may end up eating you.”