Snow-Walker

Fourteen

If aware that another is wicked, say so:

Make no truce or treaty with foes.

The horseman stared at Jessa. After a moment he urged the horse with his knees, and it picked its way toward her over the stones. The man’s eyes slid from her; he paused as if puzzled, and then came on again.

“Keep very still,” Kari’s voice said from somewhere behind her. “He can’t see you now, but if you move, it will be more difficult.”

She waited as the horseman rode nearer. Now she could see his face, the blue snake mark in his skin; he looked wary, almost afraid. His eyes took in the moor and the lake; they moved across her without a flicker. It was uncanny, unbearably tense. She moved her foot; a stone clicked.

Again the man stopped, his gaze exploring the lakeshore. She was so close she could have reached out and touched the horse. It turned and looked at her, nuzzling at her shoulder.

Suddenly, as if his nerve had snapped, the rider whirled his mount around and urged it hurriedly back up the track, slithering and scrambling over the loose ground. He rode up to the top of the slope and over it, without looking back. The noise of hooves on stones died away to silence.

A warm hand gripped her. “It’s all right. He’s gone.”

Brochael was there, holding his ax, looking at her angrily. “Why did you stand up? If he’d seen any one of us, one shout would have brought them all over here. Are you mad?”

“I thought he would see Thorkil!”

“Thorkil was well hidden,” Brochael snorted, watching him come down the slope. “Think next time!”

Furious, she pulled away from him. She glared at Thorkil angrily. “Why did you stand up?” she snapped.

He glared back. “I was calling you. I hadn’t seen the rider.”

“But—”

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I climbed up there to get a look around. You can see the line of the old road across the hills. It looks as if it heads south.”

While he and Brochael discussed the route, she turned away, puzzled. She saw Kari watching her. He sat on a rock, with one of the great birds at his feet, the other behind him, picking at something red on the snow. For a moment he looked so like Gudrun that she shivered.

“How did you do it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” His eyes met hers calmly. “It wasn’t easy—for a moment he saw you. I had to make him believe that he was wrong. That there was nothing there.”

“Like the door in the hall?”

“Yes.”

She turned and looked out at the coming sun lighting the clouds and the white mountains. “Is it the runes, the magic the old woman has? Is that the same?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know any runes. This is in me, I haven’t learned it.” He looked over at the lake. “I’ve never seen so much frozen water like that. It has a strange beauty....”

“Has it?” Jessa asked. “It tastes foul.”

They ate some meat and smoked fish and drank the brackish water. Then Brochael outlined his plans.

“We’ll head directly south, keeping near the line of the road, but staying in the forests as far as possible. We’ll be harder to follow there; we might even risk a fire at night.”

“What if they have dogs?” Jessa asked.

“They don’t. We would have seen them by now. It will be rough country, but if we move quickly we could be at Morthrafell in two days, where the river called Skolka cuts through the mountains down to Skolkafjord and the sea.” He glanced at Kari. “We can wait at the hall of the Wulfings, as arranged.”

“Wait for who?” Thorkil asked.

Ignoring him, Brochael pulled the pack onto his back and stood up. “Now, take care. They may still be about.”

It took them all morning to cross the open moor, going cautiously over the boggy, treacherous ground. Finally the land rose a little, and they came into the forest, scattering a herd of elk.

Here the snow was thin; ice glistened and hung from the dark branches. They moved easily through the scattered trees, and as the sun climbed, it became warmer. A few birds sang, far down in the aisles of the wood.

Jessa tried to speak to Thorkil but he was never near her. He kept near Kari, always talking and asking questions that Kari rarely answered. But when they stopped to eat at midday, Jessa saw her chance. Pulling Thorkil away, she shoved him hard against a tree trunk.

“What were you thinking of?” she snapped.

“What do you mean?”

“You know! You called out!”

“To you.”

“But you didn’t see me until after!”

He looked at her. His eyes were blue and clear; there was a hard look in them that was new. “You’re wrong, Jessa. I called you. Who else would I have called?”

She was silenced. She wanted to say “the horseman” but it would be wrong; it would be foolish. But that was what was in her mind.

He pushed past her and went back to the others. She stared after him. It was unthinkable that he should betray them. Why should he? He hated Gudrun.

All afternoon the forest went on endlessly, full of the piping of invisible birds. They traveled along tracks and winding paths, always keeping the sun on their right as it sank among clouds and vapor. Once Kari cried out; Brochael raced back. “What is it?”

The boy stood stock-still, his face white. “She spoke to me. She knows where we are. She has a hand on us, gripping us tight.” He looked up at Brochael; Jesssa saw a strange glance pass between them.

After that they moved more carefully. Twice the ravens karked a warning, and they plunged off the path, hiding in scrub and spiny bushes, but no one passed. Once, far off in the forest, Jessa thought she heard voices and the jingle of harness, but it was so distant she could not be sure.

At sunset they were still traveling over the high, bare passes of the hills. Jessa was desperately tired; she stumbled and her ears ached with the cold. She longed for shelter and hot food.

But now Brochael would not stop. He hurried them on over one ridge and another, perilously outlined against the black horizon. They spent part of the night in a cave high up on a cliffside—a chilly crack in the rocks so cold that they had to risk a fire of wet wood. It smoked so much they could hardly breathe. Brochael was anxious, Thorkil silent and morose. Each of them had a weapon to hand except Kari, who slept silently and completely on the hard floor, with the two birds sitting hunched by his side.

They left the cave long before it was light and climbed up over the highest crags and passes, until at last they stood looking down on a distant green country cracked open by a great fjord of blue water.

“Skolkafjord,” Brochael said, easing the weight on his back. “We’ve done well.”

The wind roared in their ears, whipping Jessa’s hair out of her hood. She watched Kari as he stared with delight at the snowless country, at the expanse of water and the distant glimmering sea. Brochael watched him too, grinning, but Thorkil stood slightly apart, looking back.

Coming down was easier. Soon they came to country Brochael recognized: thin woodlands where the snow was softer, and where small, swift streams bubbled and leaped downhill. By midafternoon they reached the place he had called the hall of the Wulfings.

It rose among the trees ahead of them as they came down the valley of a swift stream—a ruin without a roof and with the walls broken and blackened. Charred timbers rose from tangles of briar and bramble, and openings that had once been doors and windows were choked with black, tangled stems. Thorkil touched a window shutter that hung from one hinge; it slithered and fell with a crash that sent echoes through the wood.

Forcing his way through, Brochael led them in.

Even now they could see where the great hall had been; the large square hearth in the center was still black with ashes, its stones fire-marked under the pine sapling that grew out of it. Jessa threw down her pack and sat on a stone; from the charred ash she pulled a half-burned wooden spoon, its handle carved with a zigzag line.

“What happened here?”

“This was Wulfings’ land,” Brochael said. “The Jarl’s men would have cleared it, and then burned it.”

With a squawk and a flap a raven landed on the high crumbling wall. Thorkil looked up at it. “Is it safe?”

Brochael handed out broken bannocks. “Safe as anywhere—it’s probably been long forgotten.” Jessa noticed his glance at Kari; the boy nodded slightly.

“That witch can probably see us anyway,” he went on cheerfully, stretching out his legs.

They found a sheltered place under the wall and made it as comfortable as they could, tugging out the brambles and flattening the ground. But there could be no fire until after dark, and even then it might not be wise. Jessa and Kari scrambled down to the stream for water. As he bent over it, she saw him pause, and then squat slowly. He watched the moving water with a strange fixity, always one spot, though Jessa could see nothing but the brown stream over its stones.

After a moment she asked, “What do you see?”

Slowly he put his hand out and spread it flat on the surface, letting the icy stream well around his fingers. Then he pulled them out and let them drip. “Nothing.”

Absently he filled the bowl, and she knew he was going to ask her something. She was right.

“You met her, didn’t you, in the Jarlshold?”

“Yes.” She had already noticed that he never called Gudrun his mother.

“You told Brochael she knew you were coming.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her intently, a sudden swift glance. Then he said, “We’re carrying something with us, Jessa, something extra. Some burden. You know that, don’t you?”

She wanted to tell him about Thorkil, but she couldn’t.

In silence he stood up, holding the bowl steady, so as not to spill a drop. They walked back without speaking.

That night they risked a fire and sat around it. The heat was a glorious comfort; Jessa felt it warming her chapped hands and sore face. But she was tired of smoked meat and dry, hard oatcake, and longed for something fresh and sweet. Apples from Horolfstead, or one of Marrika’s sweet honey cakes.

As she rolled in her blanket she noticed Thorkil moving up next to Kari. There was something anxious pushing at the back of her mind, something important that she could not quite grasp, and as she reached for it, it slid away, into a deep dark hole under the earth. Her mind slid after it, into sleep.

A bird screech woke her.

She sat up in the darkness. Something moved beside her; she saw the flash of a knife and she yelled. Quick as an eel, Kari rolled over, but the knife slashed him across shoulder and chest. Then Thorkil was on him, struggling, holding him down. Jessa was already on her feet, but before she or Brochael could move, Thorkil was flung backward with a force that astonished them. He screamed, dropping the knife and shuddering in apparent agony on the charred ground. “Stop it!” he screamed. “Stop him! Stop him!”

Kari scrambled up and looked down at him, his eyes cold and amused, like Gudrun’s.