Jack yearned to touch it. He didn’t dare. The rune could only be given freely. It burned whoever tried to take it by force, as it was burning the moss now and keeping it from covering Thorgil’s face.
He racked his brains for a solution. He knew how to call up fog and wind, find water, kindle fire, and (once) cause an earthquake. None of these would do him any good now. If only I could wake her, thought Jack. She could will new strength from the rune. He stroked her forehead and called her name, but she slept on.
“Can I help?” said Pega from the rock.
“You don’t know magic,” Jack said impatiently. He didn’t want to be interrupted.
“I could sing.”
Jack’s head snapped up. Sing! Of course! What was the one thing most likely to rouse Thorgil to action? Without bothering to explain, he began:
Cattle die and kin die.
Houses burn to the ground.
But one thing never perishes:
The fame of a brave warrior.
“That’s an odd thing to tell someone who might be dying,” Pega said.
“Be quiet,” said Jack. He went on:
Ships go down in the sea.
Kingdoms turn into dust.
One thing outlasts them all:
The fame of a brave warrior.
Fame never dies!
Fame never dies!
Fame never dies!
As he sang, the memory of the Northmen came back to him. They were in Olaf One-Brow’s ship with a wind filling the red-and-cream-striped sail. Their lives were violent, they were thugs of the worst kind, foul, half crazy, and stupid, and yet… they were noble as well.
Jack began the song again, and Pega joined in—she was a quick study for music. “Fame never dies! Fame never dies! Fame never dies!” Thorgil’s face lost its deathly pallor, and her lips trembled as though she was trying to join in. Her eyes flew open.
“Jack?” she whispered.
“You’ve got to live,” Jack said, so delighted that he could hardly contain himself. Her eyes lost their brightness and began to close. “What kind of oath-breaking coward are you!” he shouted. “Is this an honorable death? Sleeping on a soft bed like the lowest thrall? Faugh! You deserve to go to Hel!”
“Jack!” cried Pega, shocked.
“Be still. I know what I’m doing. Thorgil Chicken-Heart is what they’ll call you,” he told the shield maiden. “Thorgil Brjóstabarn! Suckling baby!”
“I am not a brjóstabarn,” snarled Thorgil, her face flushing red and her body quivering under the moss.
“Then live, you sorry excuse for carrion!”
The shield maiden’s mouth contorted as though she had so many vile curses to utter, she couldn’t get them out fast enough. The moss on her chest began to turn brown and flake away. The line of destruction moved down her arms and legs. She wrenched herself up and felt for her knife. Then weakness overtook her, and she collapsed to her knees, shaking violently.
“That’s better,” Jack said.
“Let me help you,” Pega cried, bounding to Thorgil’s side.
“No one…”—the shield maiden stopped and panted, so great was her exhaustion—“needs… to help me.”
“Look at you. You can’t even talk straight. ’Course you need help.” Pega attempted to lift her, but Thorgil gave her a feeble slap.
“Leave her alone,” Jack said. “Thorgil Brjóstabarn can crawl if she can’t walk.”
“Hate… you,” said Thorgil, breathing heavily.
Jack went back to sit on the rocks. He felt as light as a sunbeam. “I’d get off that moss if I were you. Your choice, of course.” Pega looked up at him in consternation. “I know you think I’m horrible, Pega, but I learned my manners from Northmen. They can hardly get through the day without ten insults and at least one death threat.” Pega, after getting slapped—weakly—a few times, retreated to the rocks to sit by Jack.
Together they watched the shield maiden drag herself forward on hands and knees. Jack’s heart, in spite of his harsh words, ached to see her struggle, but he also knew it was useless to interfere. Thorgil would have to rescue herself. Otherwise, she would feel humiliated and be even harder to deal with. Finally, she crept onto the lowest layer of stone, beyond the reach of questing tree roots.
“I… did it…” she wheezed. “No… thanks to you.”
Now Jack did scoot down to sit by her side. “You need water,” he observed. “Wait here.” He ran to a small rivulet trickling from the mountain nearby and filled his hands. Some of the water leaked out on the way back, but he managed to get a little into Thorgil’s mouth. Back and forth he went, with Pega helping, until the shield maiden sighed and shook her head.
“Enough,” she said.
Jack produced one of the rounds of cheese, and Thorgil almost bit him in her eagerness to get it. “Take little bites,” he advised. “It’s not safe to bolt your food after starving.” But Thorgil paid no attention. When she was finished, she leaned back against the rock and closed her eyes.
“Is she going to faint again?” whispered Pega.
“I imagine she needs time to recover,” said Jack. “I don’t know how long she’s been here.” He noted that Thorgil’s clothes were stained dark green and her boots were the color of tree bark. It was as though she’d been turning into part of the forest. Perhaps she had been.
“One of my owners refused to feed me for three weeks for spoiling one of his shirts,” Pega remarked. She was huddled in a fold of the rock with her arms hugging her knees for warmth. The sun had gone behind the mountain, and the air had turned chill. “All I had was what I could find in the rubbish heap. You can’t believe how good fish heads taste after three weeks.”
Thorgil opened her eyes and looked straight at the girl. “You’re a thrall,” she said.
“What’s a thrall?” asked Pega.
Jack swore under his breath. “Pay no attention. Northmen like picking fights more than bears like honey. Even their gods insult one another.”
“‘Thrall’ means ‘slave’,” Thorgil said in perfectly clear Saxon.
“I am not! Jack freed me!”
“I was a slave once,” Jack said. “I’m not ashamed of it.”
“You should be,” Thorgil said with a wolfish smile.
You were too, thought Jack, but he bit back the words before they slipped out. Taunting Thorgil was a sport that had to be conducted very carefully. “Perhaps we should look for a place to sleep,” he said. “Anyone want a bed of moss?”
“No!” Thorgil cried, which showed Jack how terrified she’d been. It wasn’t like her to admit fear.
“I don’t understand. We’ve spent two nights in the forest, and nothing happened to us until this morning,” said Pega. “It’s like the trees suddenly woke up.”
“Or we ran into the wrong trees,” said Jack. “I suppose some are good and some are bad, like people. Anyhow, we need shelter before it gets completely dark. I saw a cleft in the rocks earlier.”
Chapter Twenty-two
THORGIL’S SAGA
The cleft turned out to be a tiny valley hidden in the side of the mountain. On one side of a stream was a shelf of rock wide enough to sleep on. At the upper end was an ancient apple tree so coated in lichen, it appeared almost silver. It was covered in white flowers that added to its ghostly appearance. For a wonder, it bore masses of pale yellow fruit as well. Or at least Jack thought they were yellow. The night was coming on so rapidly, it was difficult to tell.
“Do you think it’s safe to eat them?” whispered Pega.
Jack climbed up to the tree. The air around it was filled with a wild sweetness unlike the flowers of the lime trees the night before. Those lulled you into sleep while these made you feel like something exciting was about to happen. “I think this is one of the good trees,” he said.
Pega gathered some of the apples littering the ground. “Thank you kindly,” she said, bowing to the tree.
Thorgil snorted. Jack guessed she thought
it demeaning to say thank you to a tree. Once again, they could build no fire, but the air in the tiny valley was still and not too cold. They feasted on apples and the remaining round of cheese, with water from the stream. Pega sang a song about a fox and a hen who kept foiling the fox’s plans to eat her. It had many verses, and both Jack and Thorgil joined in for the chorus. “My mother used to sing this when I was very small,” said Thorgil.
“Mine too,” said Jack, strangely moved. Thorgil almost never mentioned her mother, who had been sacrificed in the Northman lands.
“Mine too, probably, if I could remember her,” added Pega.
They snuggled together for warmth and slept soundly in spite of the hardness of their bed. Jack woke in the middle of the night to see the full moon flooding down into the narrow valley. The apple tree shone with an unearthly brightness, and then it did, indeed, appear to be made of silver. That’s odd, thought Jack, settling back beside Pega and Thorgil. I could have sworn the moon was full two nights ago.
Thorgil’s shout awakened Jack and Pega. They scrambled to their feet and saw the shield maiden, knife drawn, staring at the apple tree. “Something was here,” she said. “I saw it just as my eyes opened, but it disappeared.”
Jack joined her in looking around. “What did it look like?”
“Hard to say. It moved so quickly. It was speckled green and brown, shorter than a man, and it had a face.”
“Face?”
Thorgil smiled, as she tended to do when she had something unpleasant to say. “It was like a toad or a newt—wide, flat nostrils and a lipless mouth. I forgot to mention it was standing over Pega.”
“Bedbugs!” cried Pega.
“It was stroking your hair.”
“Stop trying to frighten her,” Jack said. He climbed up to the apple tree and searched. There was nothing. Behind the tree the rock was seamed with many possible footholds. Whatever it was could easily have escaped.
“I swear by Odin I saw a creature,” said Thorgil. Jack didn’t doubt her. She was no liar, even if she took a malicious pleasure in frightening people. In a way he was glad she’d seen something. A giant toad was better than some of the things he’d been imagining.
“It’s left us more of those pots,” he said, kneeling by what appeared to be large mushrooms sprouting from the base of the tree.
Pega and Thorgil climbed up beside him. As before, the pots contained warm bread, butter, honey, and cheese. “This is a wonder,” said Thorgil, letting the mouthwatering smell of bread waft over her face. “What magic brought these here?”
“I suppose our visitor left them,” said Pega.
“I’ve heard that some creatures charm mud to look like food,” remarked the shield maiden. “It turns back into mud in your stomach.”
“Don’t you ever have anything good to say?” Jack snapped.
Thorgil grinned.
They carried the food down to the shelf of rock by the stream and made a pleasant meal, with apples for dessert. “Now I want to know how you got here and how you got trapped in the moss,” Jack told Thorgil. “I didn’t ask you yesterday because you looked… tired.” He’d been about to say frightened, but he knew that would only make her angry.
“We were on a quest,” the shield maiden began.
“We?” queried Jack.
“Skakki, Sven the Vengeful, Eric the Rash—the usual crowd.”
“And a boy I didn’t recognize.”
Thorgil straightened up in surprise. “How did you know that?”
“I’m a skald,” Jack said airily. “It’s my business to know such things.”
“Then you can figure out the rest of it,” snarled Thorgil.
“Please. I don’t know beans,” interrupted Pega. “I’d like to know what such a famous warrior is doing on our shores.”
Jack mentally congratulated the girl for hitting on the one compliment likely to make Thorgil cooperate.
“We were doing our usual harvesting of cowardly Saxon villages,” the shield maiden continued. She paused to let the insult sink in. Jack heroically kept silent. “But we had a tip about a secret passage into Elfland. Rune overheard it at the slave market—you remember the place, Jack.”
“Go on,” he said tensely.
“Skakki was bargaining with the Picts, and they didn’t have enough weapons to trade for what we’d got. They offered to leave the shortfall on a deserted beach. Well, that kind of promise is worth about as much as a handful of dirt. But before Skakki said no, Rune pulled him aside. He’d been listening to the Picts argue. They didn’t want to reveal the location of the beach because a cave on it led to Elfland. When Skakki heard that, he decided to take the chance.”
“Why would you want to go to Elfland?” Pega asked.
“For the plunder, of course! They have silver and jewels, fine horses, too. We put ashore, and believe it or not, the weapons were there. We searched the beach, and Eric Pretty-Face found the cave—”
“Eric Pretty-Face?” said Pega.
“It’s a Northman joke,” Jack explained. “He has awful battle scars. His leg was practically chewed off by a troll.” Pega’s eyes opened very wide.
“But Rune had heard some lore about Elfland. Seems it isn’t safe for adults, but children can get in and out,” said the shield maiden.
Jack remembered the Bard telling him the same thing. I think you’re young enough to resist the lure of elves, the old man had said. It’s a curious thing, but this is one area where children are stronger than adults. They aren’t taken in by illusions, and elves, above all else, are masters of illusion.
“Heinrich and I were chosen to go.”
“That’s the boy I don’t know,” said Jack.
“He was a nephew of Ivar the Boneless,” said Thorgil. “He’d just turned twelve, and Ivar insisted we take him. You know how one person can simply ruin an outing? Heinrich had been spoiled rotten by his mother. He whined constantly. He wanted to be first on shore for the raids. He hogged the bog myrtle and demanded the first pick of plunder. And he insisted we call him Heinrich the Heinous, a title he had not earned. He was no more heinous than any other twelve-year-old, in spite of torturing thralls—”
“That’s enough,” said Jack, who didn’t want to get into torturing thralls with Pega there. She was staring at Thorgil with frank horror. “Tell us about your quest.”
“Heinrich insisted on going first to show off his weapons. Honestly! A sword, a spear, a shield, and a reserve shield when you’re practically going down into a mine. How stupid can you get? Anyhow, on the second day Heinrich wanted to explore a side passage. ‘You know what Rune said,’ I told him. ‘No side passages.’ He called me a coward and went in.” Thorgil swallowed and took a deep breath. Jack had an awful feeling he knew what was in the side passage.
“He—he called out that he was stuck,” said the shield maiden. “I was lagging behind with the supplies, and I heard Heinrich scream. I held up the torch and saw—” Thorgil broke off.
Jack and Pega waited. The shield maiden was clearly having trouble saying exactly what she saw. The sun had finally found its way into the narrow valley and roused a family of otters. They slid past on the stream, bobbed down, and came up with small silver fish in their paws. They were not in the least afraid of the humans on the bank.
“When I was very small,” Thorgil said, gulping, “I found a nest of snakes while digging for wild garlic in the forest. They were slithering all over each other, hissing and baring their fangs. I ran home and was beaten for not fetching the garlic. That’s what I saw in the cave, only this nest was much, much bigger. There were hundreds of serpents, and in the middle was Heinrich. They were wrapped around his arms and legs, and as I watched, one went down his throat. But before I could do anything, the ground started shaking! I’ve never felt anything like it. The rocks tumbled down, and I couldn’t stay on my feet. Then something struck me from behind. When I awoke, the tunnel we’d come through had collapsed and a hole had opened up in the roof.”
“And Heinrich?” said Pega.
“Gone. Buried behind the rocks.” Thorgil looked down at her hands.
“He fell into a knucker hole,” said Jack. “We were almost trapped by one too. It looked like a giant tick.”
“No. A bedbug,” Pega insisted.
“I swear by Odin it was a nest of snakes,” said Thorgil.
“We’re all probably right. I think a knucker looks like your worst nightmare,” Jack said wisely.
Chapter Twenty-three
THE BUGABOO
By this time the sun was flooding into the little valley. All three children were depressed by Thorgil’s tale, and Jack suggested they share the rest of her story later. He had filled his pockets with the excess cheese, which was fortunate, for the mushroom-shaped pots had vanished.
“It gives me the creeps to know that some creature can come and go without us seeing it.” Pega shivered.
“It seems friendly,” Jack said.
“Yes, but it won’t come out into the open. How am I going to sleep with that thing tiptoeing around? And why was it hanging over me?”
“Perhaps you looked the most edible,” suggested Thorgil.
“Stop that,” said Jack. He was reluctant to leave the crevice in the mountains. It seemed so safe after the whispering trees and the shock of finding Thorgil half devoured by moss. But they had no choice.
They continued to follow the strip of meadow between the rocks and the forest. No one said anything. No one made the decision to go on. It was simply the easiest thing to do.
They passed groves of aspen, birch, alder, and ash, broken up by gnarled, lichen-encrusted oaks and lime trees that cast an eerie green shade. Presently, Jack noticed that the sun, instead of being behind them, was on their left. They had come to the end of the valley and were following the mountains around to the other side. Yet still there was no way out, and the rocks were still too steep to climb.