Snow-Walker

Seventeen

Oaths were broken, binding vows,

Solemn agreements sworn between them.

The guest hall was their prison now. Each of them was bound firmly, hand and foot, with ropes of hemp. Where Skapti had been taken none of them knew; the villagers had dragged him from the hall. He had been silent and dignified, with only a quick, hopeless glance at the others. Now the Speaker came in and looked down at them all. His eyes were bright, his face flushed. But his words came clear enough.

“I regret it had to be your friend; there’s never any way of knowing. You won’t be harmed, any of you. Tomorrow, when the giving is over, you can go.”

“Where’s Skapti?” Brochael roared. “What are you doing with him?”

The shaman looked at him gravely. “The darkness will eat him.”

He glanced at Kari. “As for you, enchanter, I’ve made sure you can’t harm me, and I’ll be with him from now until the end. If there’s any disturbance, any hint of trouble, I’ll kill him at once. Do you understand?”

Kari nodded unhappily.

The Speaker turned and went out. They heard the door being bolted behind him.

Silence hung heavy around them. Finally Moongarm broke it.

“They’ll kill him anyway, and it won’t be a clean death.”

Brochael shook his head. “I’ve heard of this,” he said heavily. “The victim is chosen by chance—whoever gets the sacred seed, or whatever. Skapti would know more. They’d say the earth mother chose him. Then they give him to her—I don’t know how.”

“I do.” Kari leaned his head back against the wall. “They’ll take him to the bog, tie a garrote about his throat, and choke him—but not to death. Then they throw him in.”

Aghast, Jessa said. “Is that what you dreamed?”

He nodded. “I didn’t know what it meant till now.”

“But when? How much time have we got?”

“I don’t know.”

“They might be doing it now,” Hakon whispered.

The door bolt slammed; they were silent instantly. The girl Lenna came in, carrying a heavy tray of hot, steaming food. The feast must have really begun now, Jessa thought, now they all knew they were safe. Two men with spears were behind her.

She put the tray down.

“How are we supposed to eat?” Hakon asked.

She looked at him. “I’ll untie one hand for each of you—the left. But not him.” She glanced at Kari, a frightened look.

He shrugged. “I’m not hungry.”

She undid the ropes very carefully, keeping well back. They looked at the food but no one had any appetite.

Then Brochael reached out. “Eat it,” he ordered. “We need to be ready for anything. Starving won’t help.”

The girl crouched by the fire, putting on wood. The flame light shone on her glossy hair, the thin fox outlined on her face.

Jessa said, “Don’t you care about him?”

The girl paused, her hands sticky from the fresh logs. Then she went on piling them up. “It will be for the best,” she said in a low voice. “His blood will enrich the land. He’ll nurture our crops, feed our cattle. Because of him the dark one will be pleased.”

Jessa felt rage swelling in her; she wanted to shake the girl and scream at her. “But he’s not one of your people!” she yelled. “He belongs with us, and we came here as guests; we trusted you! You lied to us....”

“No.”

“Yes! Lied! And now you’ll murder him!”

“Not murder … no.” The girl shook her head hastily.

“And he had no say,” Hakon said, watching her closely. “He didn’t know. None of us did.”

“He has to do it!” Lenna jumped up, her eyes wide with terror. “If he doesn’t, it will be one of us; don’t you see? One of us! And everyone is so happy now, so relieved. Every year this terror comes around … if the dark one isn’t given her choice, there is famine, death, disease. It’s for the best. I’m sorry. But it’s for the best.”

She hurried to the door, saying to the guards, “Tie them up. Quickly.”

“Wait.” Jessa looked up. “One question.”

The girl did not turn.

“When will it be?”

Lenna paused, her hand on the door. The long ends of her hair swung down and hid her face; her dress swished around the soft boots she wore.

“Dawn,” she said. Then she opened the door and went out.

They waited till the men had tied up their hands and left before anyone spoke again.

“Neatly done.” Moongarm looked at Jessa and Hakon. “Quite a team.”

“I can’t do anything with the ropes,” Kari said simply. “There’s some sorcery about them—they won’t burn or untie for me. Someone else will have to untie us.”

“Where are the birds?” Jessa asked.

“Outside. They can’t get in.”

“Even if we could get free”—Moongarm pointed out from his corner—“how could we leave the village? There’s a man outside, and the only way off is across the causeway. That will be guarded. So will the skald.”

“You seem keen to point out difficulties,” Brochael muttered. “Can’t you do anything else?”

“These are truths, tawny man.”

“There’s another way out.” Jessa had an idea; her face lit with thought. “Listen, Kari, we have to get free, but not yet. After all, they may look in on us. It needs to be just before dawn. Is there anything you can do then?”

He smiled at her sideways. “Oh, I can do something, Jessa. No matter what the Speaker says.”

It was difficult in the dim room to keep track of time. The night seemed endless. Outside the wind had dropped; the faint sounds of voices and music drifted from the hall. Later a drum began, just one, a low muffled beat like a pulse from somewhere nearby. Kari recognized it; he had heard it before, like a warning. They all lay awake listening to it, a shaman’s drum, like the beat of a heart. They came to wait for each beat, dreading it, yet fearing it would stop. Lying in the dark, Hakon thought it was the beat of Skapti’s heart, and he wondered in what hut the thin poet was lying, and if he had guessed what was happening to him. Knowing Skapti, he had. And he must know they wouldn’t desert him. Hakon smiled sadly. The skald’s acid remarks had cheered him up many a time; his sly teasing, his songs, his endless, useless knowledge. Already they were missing Skapti.

Finally Moongarm, who had some strange instinct about time, told them it was near dawn. Jessa sat up, restless. “Right. We go now.”

Each of them looked at Kari, not knowing what to expect. But he sat against the wall, unmoving.

“What can you do?” Hakon asked at last.

“Quiet!” Brochael growled. “Look!”

The door was being unbarred, quietly and smoothly from the outside. A figure slid around it, well muffled against the cold. It was the guard. He leaned his spear against the wall and came forward; they saw his eyes were wide with terror.

“Don’t make me do this,” he pleaded hoarsely. “How can you be here in my mind?”

“I’m sorry.” Kari shifted from the wall. “I have no choice.”

The man bent; despite his own will his hands went to the ropes about Kari’s wrists.

“Hurry up,” Jessa said, “or they’ll notice he’s missing!”

When they were all untied, the man stood still, as if Kari had forbidden him to move. His eyes watched them as they gathered their belongings, buckled on belts and weapons, picked up the sacks of supplies.

“Now,” Kari said to him gently. “Outside.”

At the door, he picked up his spear again; Hakon looked out cautiously. “No one about.”

In the snow the man bolted the door and stood against it. Even in the cold he was sweating. Kari reached out and touched him lightly, once, on the forehead.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

Then he turned and walked away between the houses. The others followed; they paused in the shadow of a wall.

“Will he remember?” Jessa whispered.

“No. When they find us gone, he’ll be as surprised as the rest.” He sounded disgusted with himself. Moongarm looked at him with a strange respect. “I fear you more than them, Kari.”

Kari glared at him, his eyes cold as frost. “So you should,” he said bitterly.

The village was silent, held in frozen night. Only the drum still beat, an ominous reminder of time passing. Jessa led them to the wharves; there she crouched down and nodded out onto the lake.

“That’s our way off.”

“The ice!” Moongarm raised his eyebrows. “Ingenious. But will it bear our weight?”

“I don’t know, but it’s our only way off this island.”

“And Skapti?”

“We wait until they bring him, at the bog. We’ll see them coming. Then we attack.”

“Yes, but the horses!” Hakon was aghast. “We can’t leave them!”

There was silence. Each of them knew they could never get the horses out without rousing the entire village.

“It’s a heavy choice,” Brochael said grimly, “but Jessa’s right, this is the only way. I think we’re on foot from now on.”

They climbed down over the edge of the wharf to the timbers beneath. Jessa stepped off first, carefully. The dawn cold was bitter; her breath clouded and froze on her knotted scarves. The lake lay before her, a rigid, shimmering mirror, white under the crescent moon, with the long blue shadows of the buildings stretching across it.

The night was silent. Stars glittered, clear and hard.

As she put her toe on the ice she felt the coldness underfoot, expected the slab to tip, to crack, but although her growing weight made strange wheezing sounds deep under the surface, it stayed solid. She stepped out and stood still, her footsteps ringing.

“It’s thick.”

Carefully, testing every step, she walked out into the lake, the others slipping behind her. In the hard frost every step and creak sounded loud, every slither enormous. She found herself holding her breath, and let it out in a cloud of mist. Every moment she expected the crack—the darkness underneath to open and swallow her. And why not, because it was the darkness they were defying, the darkness that wanted Skapti.

You won’t get him, she thought. Looking back, she saw the others; Kari was light, and Hakon too. But Brochael was taking careful steps, as if he feared his own weight would bring him down. Silent and surefooted, Moongarm was a gray shape under the moon.

Halfway over, she heard voices. Lights flared on the causeway.

She crouched, hearing Hakon slither up beside her. “Brochael says hurry. They’re coming out.”

She nodded and crawled on, keeping on hands and knees now, until the plate of ice under her wet glove suddenly shifted, and she stopped. “It’s the edge.”

“Be careful, Jessa!”

They were already among the rushes on the edge of the bog. Here the ice thinned to a lace-fine fringe that crackled and splintered under her. Then her feet were in brown brackish water, knee-deep, the reeds high above her.

“Why doesn’t it freeze?” she breathed.

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know,” Brochael growled out of the dark. “Keep to the edge. It’ll be treacherous farther in.”

They waded through the ice-cold muck, working their way around to the causeway. Once Hakon’s foot went deep and he staggered; Moongarm hauled him out silently. Shadows among the reeds, they crouched and watched the torches approach from the village. The stink of stagnant rotting growth hung about them.

A small group were crossing the causeway.

“How many?” Brochael said.

“Four.”

Behind, well back, the villagers stood, as if they dared come no nearer.

“Where is he?”

“In front,” Moongarm murmured. “With the Speaker.”

She saw him then, his thin, upright figure, that lanky walk. They had taken his coat off; his shirt was open and about his neck was a great noose of hemp, knotted strangely. He was silent, maybe gagged. He was alert though, she thought. He was probably wondering where they were.

But Skapti knew exactly where they were. He also knew what was happening; as Brochael had guessed, he had heard of such things before. And as he stumbled on, pushed from behind and shivering with cold and fear, he tugged and twisted his bound wrists uselessly to red sores until the voice spoke quietly inside his mind.

“Get ready, Skapti. You weren’t afraid we would leave you?”

He grinned, unable to help it.

The voice had been Kari’s.

The Speaker and his prisoner and two torchbearers came right on into the swampy ground, the morass of clotted peat and moss squelching under them.

“Ready,” Brochael whispered.

Each of them had their weapons to hand; Hakon gripped his sword tight.

“Here’s your chance to name that,” Jessa breathed.

He wondered how she could joke; his own chest was tight with tension.

“I’ll take the Speaker,” Brochael said. “You two, the others. Jessa, get Skapti.” He looked at Kari. “You’ll have to deal with the rest—the people on the causeway. If they cross…”

“Leave them to me.” The ravens had come down; one was perched on his shoulder, gripping the dark cloth with its great talons.

“What will you do?”

“Keep them back.”

“Yes, but how?”

“Like this.”

As he said it the night seemed to crack open. The Speaker spun around as a white gate of searing flame leaped up to bar the causeway; it spat and sparked like lightning. People screamed.

“Now!” Brochael urged.

They leaped out, yelling, flinging the torchbearers aside, the flames falling and hissing out in the black water.

The Speaker cried out something in rage. Jessa saw him turn at her, but Hakon was there; he sliced the air with his sword between them and the shaman jerked back, stumbled, twisted away from Brochael’s ax. He fell, full length, floundering in the black ooze.

Jessa grabbed Skapti, sliced his bonds. “It’s us!”

He grinned. “Thought you’d abandoned me.”

“Not us.”

As she turned she thought the Speaker would be up, but he wasn’t; instead she saw the marsh was bubbling and churning around him, and a blackness seemed to rise and gather from it, covering him as he screamed and struggled, bending over him, a dark form. His voice choked, broke, bubbled. Half a cry hung endlessly on the silent air.

Skapti grabbed her arm. “Come on!”

As they fled, the sudden silence behind chilled them. Only Kari’s fire gate crackled under the moon, the people behind it watching, without a sound.

Along the road they raced, into the darkness, laden with packs and weapons, always looking back. Snow, deeper than before, slowed them, and then, just ahead, they heard the howl of wolves, a pack, hungry.

Jessa stopped dead, the others slamming into her.

“Get up the hill!” Moongarm yelled. “Leave these to me.” He flung his pack at Hakon and drew his sword.

“Not alone,” Brochael growled.

But the man was gone, transformed suddenly to shadow.

Kari turned away. “Let him go. Come on!”

Uphill they raced, to a stand of pines that rose in a dark line against the stars. Once there, they leaned against the trees, gasping for breath.

The rune gate still burned below, the searing light from it crackling above the lake. But Kari was looking elsewhere, at the wolves hurtling after them up the slope, at least ten low, misty shapes.

“Give me my sword!” Skapti yelled.

“You won’t need it.” Kari pointed. “Look down there.”

A gray shape sat waiting on the hillside. It too was a wolf, but larger than any Jessa had ever seen, and it sat as still as a stone under the stars. Its amber eyes glinted in the rune light.

The wolf pack saw it. They slowed, stopped, yelping.

Then one by one they slunk away from it, in terror.