Snow-Walker

Four

When Ymir lived, long ago.

All the next day Wulfgar avoided everybody. He spent hours sitting in Signi’s room, watching her still face, or staring silently out of the window. At mealtimes he called for his horse and galloped away from the hold, riding hard for the hills.

Jessa watched him go, leaning against the corner of the hall. She could guess how he felt; Wulfgar was impulsive, always the one to act. It would be very hard for him to stay behind.

Over her shoulder, Skapti said, “The trouble with him is that he knows you were right.”

“I wish I hadn’t said anything. I should have let him think it out for himself.”

The skald laughed. “Always spilling your wisdom, little valkyrie.” He turned her gently. “Now let’s go and see Kari, because I think he wants us. One of those spirit birds of his just came and croaked at me. The creature almost ordered me in.”

She walked along beside him gravely. “Things are different in the daylight, aren’t they?”

“Lighter, you mean?”

She thumped his arm. “You know what I mean. Last night, in all the confusion, everything seemed so unreal. Signi, those dreams, the cold. The idea of a journey seemed … exciting.” She looked down at the longships moored at the wharf. A chill breeze moved them. “Now it’s more frightening. It will be so cold up there. And no one has ever come back, and even if we get there…”

“There’s Gudrun.”

“Yes.” She looked up at him. “Do you think it’s the right thing to do?”

“I don’t,” he said abruptly. “But I think it’s the only thing we can do.”

“Skapti, you’re mad.”

“I’m a poet,” he said, opening the door of the hall. “Pretty much the same thing.” He grinned at her, lopsided. “You’re not usually so wary.”

“Dreams,” she said absently. “Those dreams. They hang around.”

Kari was out of bed and sitting at a table near the fire, carving a small piece of bone into a flat disc. He looked up at them.

“At last!”

“Feeling better?” Jessa tipped his head sideways and examined the cut critically. “Brochael was worried about you. He said you’d lost a pint of blood and you were a thin, bloodless wraith and couldn’t afford it.”

Kari shrugged. “He’s given me orders not to stir out. That’s why I sent the birds.”

One of them flapped in at the window just then, hopping awkwardly down from the sill. It had a red, dripping object in its beak that might once have been a stoat. Delicately the bird picked it apart.

“Corpse carver,” Skapti murmured ominously.

They were watching it when Brochael came back. Hakon was with him; they staggered in carrying a large wooden chest.

“Just here,” Brochael grunted, putting his end down easily. Hakon dropped his with relief.

“No sword?” Jessa said sweetly, behind him.

He crumpled, breathless. “Not in the hall. Jarl’s orders. I can live for an hour without it.”

“Not much longer, though.”

“Now.” Brochael wrenched the key around in the rusted lock. “This should be what we want.”

He put both hands to the lid and heaved it open; it crashed back on the leather hinges and a great cloud of brown dust billowed upward.

“What’s all that?” Jessa murmured, looking down.

“Maps. So Guthlac says.”

He began to rummage around with his great hands, tugging out rolls of withered brown parchment and skins, worn to dust at the edges, some of them tied and sealed with red, crumbling wax.

“Clear that table,” he muttered. “Let’s see what’s in here.”

Each of them dipped in and took a handful of skins, unfolding them carefully. Most were so old the dyes and inks had faded; there were deeds and agreements, land holdings, some old king lists that made Skapti mutter bitterly.

“These should be recopied.” He held one up to the light. “This is a family list of the Wulfings; it goes back ten generations.”

“But the poets know all those things, don’t they?” Hakon said.

“Yes, passed from teacher to pupil. But there’s always the chance they’ll be lost. I never even knew these existed.”

“They were here before Gudrun’s time,” Brochael said, “but no one seems to have looked at them for years. There don’t seem to be many maps.”

They found land holdings for dead farmers, agreements swearing the end of blood feuds, promises of wergild, tributes and taxes from southland kings none of them had ever heard of. There were poems and fragments and even a piece of deerskin inscribed with tiny red runes that Jessa handed to Kari. “What do you think that is?”

“It’s a spell,” he said, staring at it in surprise.

“What for?”

“I don’t know. I can’t read it. But I can feel the power in it faintly.”

Skapti took it off him and bent his long nose over it. “It’s old. It’s for making a goat give more milk.”

“Useful,” Jessa remarked drily.

“There are others.” Brochael gathered a great sheaf out of the bottom of the chest. “As you say, not of much use to us.”

“This might be.” Hakon was sitting with something open on his knee. He lifted it onto the table and spread it out.

It was a map, drawn on ancient sealskin, dried out and fragile. The corners were charred as if it had been once dragged from some fire. Jessa leaned forward, curious.

Marked at the bottom of the map was the jagged coastline of the Cold Sea, with the long narrow fjords they all knew so well reaching upward into the land. The Jarlshold was clearly shown, a tiny cross with the rune J underneath. All the ports on the coast—Ost, Trond, Wormshold, Hollfara—had their names under them, and rivers and larger lakes were marked with blue lines. Drawn in red dye was the old giant’s road that led from the Jarlshold to Thrasirshall, and branching off from it, another red line north, straight up to the top of the map.

“What’s that?” Jessa asked, putting her finger on it.

“It looks like another road,” Hakon said.

Brochael nodded. “It is. I know where it begins, but like most of the giant road it’s a ruin, lost under forests. Here and there are stone-built sections, poking through the snow. I’ve never traveled it. I don’t know anyone who has.”

“Now’s your chance,” Hakon said wistfully. “You could follow it north.”

Jessa looked at him sidelong. He was scratching his cheek with his thumbnail and looking strangely at the map; almost a hungry look. She could guess why. Hakon had been a thrall for most of his life, a slave on a greasy little hold, and had never been able to leave it. Now he was free. But he was also Wulfgar’s man, one of his war band. And if Wulfgar wasn’t going…

Sadly she turned back to the map. The road ran north, clearly marked. Mountains and lakes and a large river were shown, but the farther north it went the more empty the map became, until there was nothing but the road, as if whoever had drawn it had no knowledge of what lay up there lost under the snows.

Or perhaps he had heard stories. For at the very top of the map, right across the sealskin, was a great black slash, as if some enormous chasm or crevasse opened there, and the road ran right to its edge, or into it. Some words were scrawled nearby, and Skapti read them out.

“The end of the road is unknown.”

The black chasm also had a word in it, written loosely and untidily.

Gunningagap.

They stared at it in silence. Then Brochael looked up.

“What do the stories say?”

“You know what they say.”

“Remind us. Earn your keep.”

Skapti linked his long fingers together and flexed them. “Gunningagap is a howling emptiness,” he said simply. “It’s the place where the sky comes down to meet the earth. It’s a great chasm that encircles the earth—here in the north its edges are heavy with ice; and eternal wind roars out of it, night and day. Long ago, they say, there was only the gap. Then a creature crawled out of it, a frost giant called Ymir. The gods killed him. From his body they made Middle-earth, the rocks from his bones, the stones from his teeth. His skull is the blue sky—four dwarves sit at the corners to hold it up. So the poets say. But one thing is sure, the gap is still there.” He was silent a moment, then added some lines quietly.

“When Ymir lived, long ago,

Was no sand or sea, no surging waves.

Nowhere was there earth or heaven above,

But a grinning gap, and grass nowhere.”

“So what’s beyond it?” Jessa said.

He stared at her in surprise. “Nothing. That’s what they say. Nothing. It’s the end.”

The thought of it silenced them—the frozen wastes of snow, the howling winter blackness of the world’s brink. Jessa brought her mind back to the warm room with an effort.

“But everyone says the White People live beyond the world’s end. And they come here, from time to time, so…”

“I don’t know!” Skapti said, exasperated. “I’m a mere songster. A lackwit. A plucker of strings. How should I know? Perhaps there are worlds beyond this. No one has ever tried it and come back, that’s the truth.”

She tapped the map, its worn mountains and half-erased rivers. “Then we’ll be the first.”

“Well spoken, Jessa.”

Wulfgar stood in the doorway, his face flushed from the wind, his eyes bright. He came in, brushing the dust from his hair, then tugged off his coat and threw it at Brochael. “You will. We’ll make sure of that. This expedition will come back because none like it will ever have set out before. Sorcery, guile, strength, cleverness. You four have all those things. But I’d like to send one more thing with you. A sword.”

They looked at him, uncertain, but he smiled at them, his old lazy smile. “No, not me. You were right about that.” Sitting down, he leaned back in the chair, gripping the arms. “I am the Jarl,” he said proudly, and a little sadly, “and I won’t desert my people. No, I want you to take Hakon. You’ll need another swordsman.”

Amazed, Hakon gaped at him. “But I’m not… I mean, I’ve been training hard, but my hand is still not as…”

Wulfgar leaned forward. “Hakon Empty-hand, you’ll do as your lord tells you. Someone has to keep an eye on Jessa.”

She glared at him, then laughed. “Five then.”

“Five. And a better five I couldn’t have. Because it all depends on you,” he added softly. “Signi’s life. All of it.” He rubbed his hair again. “I don’t know what I’ll do when you’re all gone.”

In the silence Kari caught her glance. He was watching Wulfgar apprehensively, as if there was something else he had not told him, but when he saw her looking, he smiled and shook his head. She felt awkward. For a moment she had been wondering if Kari had changed Wulfgar’s mind for him.