“That’s because we’re no fools,” I said. “You’ve forgotten the unborn at the circus? Edris and his hired men, and what they became when you killed them?”
“Someone is seeding our path to stop us, but they’re not chasing us.”
“But the thing in Vermillion—it escaped, Sageous said we would meet it, he—”
“He told me the same thing.” Snorri nodded. “You don’t want to believe much that man says, but I think he’s right. It did escape. I suspect the creature you saw in the opera house was an unborn, one grown old in its power, the target of the Silent Sister’s spell. Probably an important lieutenant to the Dead King. A captain of his armies maybe.”
“But it’s not following us?” It was following us. I knew it.
“Did you not listen to the dream-witch, Jal?”
“He said a lot of things . . . Mostly about killing you—and how I could go home if I did.”
“The curse, the Silent Sister’s spell? Why’s it still on us?”
That did ring a bell. “Because the unborn wasn’t destroyed. The enchantment is an act of will. It needs to complete its purpose.” I crossed my arms, pleased with myself.
“That’s right. And we’re heading north and the spell is giving us no problems.”
“Yes.” I frowned. This was going somewhere bad.
“The unborn isn’t chasing us, Jal. We’re chasing it. The thing’s gone north.”
“Hell.” I tried to calm myself. “But . . . but, come on, what are the odds? We’re headed for the same place?”
“The Silent Sister sees the future.” Snorri touched a finger to his eye. “Her magic is aimed towards tomorrow. The spell sought out a way to reach the unborn—it followed the path that would see it carried by someone, some somebodies, who would end up in the same place as its target.”
“Hell.” I hadn’t any more to say this time.
“Yup.”
We skirted the Gowfaugh until we found a trail, too wide for a deer path, too narrow for a woodsman’s track. On reflection, as we pushed our way along it, leading the horses and trying to avoid getting a branch in the eye, the Gowfaugh wasn’t the kind of forest you’d hope to find deer in. Or woodsmen.
“Forests.” Snorri rubbed at three parallel scratches on his bicep and shook his head. “I’ll be glad to be free of this one.”
“Woods where a man can hunt stag and boar, that’s what we have in Red March, with proper trees, not all this pine, with charcoal burners, timber cutters, the occasional bear or wolf. But in the North . . .” I waved at the close-packed trunks, branches interlaced so a man would have to cut his path every yard of the way. “Dead places. Just trees and trees and more trees. Listen! Not even a bird.”
Snorri shouldered his way ahead. “Jal—this one point I’ll cede you. The south has better forests.”
We crumped along, following convoluted paths, footsteps muffled by the thick blanket of old dry needles. It didn’t take long to become lost. Even the sun offered few clues as to direction, its light coming diffuse from louring clouds.
“I do not want to spend a night in here.” The darkness would be utter.
“Eventually we’ll find a stream and follow it out.” Snorri snapped a branch from his path. Needles fell with a faint patter. “Shouldn’t take long. These are the Thurtans. You can’t take three steps without finding yourself ankle-deep in a river.”
I made no reply but followed him. It sounded like sense, but the Gowfaugh lay tinder-dry and I imagined the woven roots drinking up any stream before it penetrated half a mile.
The forest seemed to press closer on every side. The slow lives of trees overwhelming all else, insensate and implacable. The light started to fail early and we pressed on through a forest twilight, though far above us the sun still scraped across the treetops.
“I’d swap a gold coin for a clearing.” I would have paid that much for room to stretch my arms. Ron and Sleipnir followed behind, heads down, brushed on both sides, miserable in the way that only horses can be.
Somewhere the sun had started to sink. The temperature dropped with it, and in the half-light we struggled against unyielding walls of dead branches in the airless gloom. The noise when it came was startling, shattering the arboreal silence through which we had laboured so long.
“Deer?” More in hope than belief. Something big and less subtle than a deer, snapping branches as it moved.
“More than one.” Snorri nodded to the other side. The sound of dry wood breaking grew louder from that direction too.
Soon they were flanking us on both sides. Pale somethings. Tall somethings.
“They had to wait until it got dark.” I spat out dry needles and drew my sword with difficulty. I’d have no hope of swinging it.
Snorri stopped and turned. In the gloom I couldn’t see his eyes, but something in the stillness of the man told me they would be black, without feature or soul.
“They would have been wiser to come in the light.” His mouth moved, but it didn’t sound like him.
All of a sudden I wasn’t sure whether the path might not be the least safe place for me in the whole of Gowfaugh. One of the creatures flanking us drew momentarily closer and I saw a flash of pale arms, a man’s legs but naked and whitish-green. A glimpse of a white face, gums and teeth exposed in a snarl, a glittering eye fixed for a heartbeat on mine, betraying an awful hunger.
“Dead men!” I may have shrieked it.
“Almost.” And Snorri swung his axe in a great loop, shearing off branches in scores. I would have bet against even a blade of razor-honed Builder-steel carving through like that. Again, another huge loop. I lunged away, stopped only by Ron’s blunt head, blocking the path we’d forged. Snorri sang now, a wordless song, or perhaps a language lay behind it, but not of men, and he carved a space, ever more wide, until he strode from one side to hack deeper and then four paces to the other, five paces, six. The stumps of trees, some thicker than my arm, studded the space, poking up knee-high through drifts of fallen timber. In the clearing, despite open sky above, twilight-blue and cradling the evening star, it was darker than the forest. And the darkness trailed his axe.
“Wh—what?” Snorri came to a halt, panting. The twilight had taken on a new quality. The sun had set. Aslaug confined once more to whatever hell she inhabited. He looked down at his weapon. “It’s not a wood-axe! Gods damn it!”
I stepped closer, smartish, worried that corpse-white arms might reach for me from the darker shadows.
“Make a light, Jal. Quick.”
So with Snorri standing over me and the horses nervous, wedged along the trail, I fumbled in my pack, whilst all around us branches broke and pale men moved between the trees.
“Come out. I’ll bet you cut easier than wood,” Snorri called to them, though I detected an edge of fear in his voice—something I’d never heard before. I think the forest unnerved him more than the enemy within it. I found tinder and then flint, managing to drop both in the darkness, finding them again with trembling fingers. The scent of pine sap grew around us, strong and sickly, almost overpowering.
I struck spark to tinder as Snorri swung at the first of the men to rush from the trees. Branches snapped on all sides, more of them pushing through. An ill-advised glance upwards showed them lean and naked, pale greenish-white ghosts in the dimness. The passage of Snorri’s axe carved a great furrow through the creature from left hip to right nipple, slicing through gut, ribs, sternum, and lungs. Evidently the axe retained some edge despite being used to cut timber. Still the pine-man came on, the stink of sap overwhelming as the stuff oozed from his bloodless wound. At the last he tripped on a stump, crashed down, and became snarled in a mess of loose entrails and stray branches. By then Snorri had plenty of other problems to worry about.
Success! Spark became glow became smoke became flame. A month earlier it would have taken m
e half an hour to get the same result. Crouched close to the ground and with Snorri swinging and grunting above me, and the scream of terrified horses, I managed to transfer the fire to one of the pitch torches I’d bought back in Crath City, offered there for exploring the extensive municipal catacombs.
“Burn it!” A pale, twitching limb landed beside my foot.
“What?”
“Burn it!” Another grunt and a head dropped close by. A pine-man leapt onto Snorri’s back.
“Burn what?” I shouted.
“Everything.” He fell backwards, impaling his passenger on several stumps.
“That’s madness!” We’d burn up too.
Snorri’s move, whilst genius in the short term, left me exposed, and at least four pine-men were pulling free of the trees to enter the clearing, more behind them. The look in their eyes frightened me more than the fire. I shoved the pitch brand into the mass of broken branches before me.
Flames rose up almost immediately. The pine-men took two or three more steps before halting, each with their face to the fire. Behind me Snorri tore free of his opponent and rose with a groan. “Follow the horses!”
Already the flames were spreading, a fierce crackling building as needles popped in the heat and the fire raced along desiccated branches, quickened by pine-men’s blood. Terrified out of whatever wits horses possess, Sleipnir and Ron bolted, stampeding across the small clearing Snorri had carved, scattering both pine-men and fire. I managed to follow Snorri’s example and roll clear, very nearly impaling myself on a couple of inch-thick stumps.
The two horses punched their own passage through the trees. I hoped they’d avoid being blinded, but it seemed a damn sight better than being barbecued. Snorri gave chase and I stumbled along in their wake. Behind me the fire roared like a living thing and the pine-men answered it with thin cries of their own agony.
For a brief while we left the fire behind us, plunging unseeing along the horses’ path. As my breath grew short I paused for a moment and, glancing back, saw the whole forest lit from within by an orange glow, countless trunks and branches in black silhouette. “Run!” I shouted uselessly, thereafter saving my breath to better follow my own order.
The inferno leapt through the trees with spectacular speed. It jumped between treetops faster than it moved on the ground, and several times we found ourselves beneath a roof of flame whilst the beast roared behind us. Trees exploded within moments of the inferno wrapping them. Literally blown apart, great swirls of orange embers rising above them. The flame rushed through the needled branches like a wind, consuming everything. A burning hand pressed against my back, driving me to greater exertions. Ron’s path split from Sleipnir’s; I chose the one to the left. A hundred yards on I saw my horse through the trees to the side, snared on something, hook-briar most like, screaming. It takes a lot to snare a horse, and Ron was a strong one, fuelled with terror of the flame. But he hung there and I raced on, cursing. At least the fire put a quick end to him. The gelding would have been molten fat and charring bones before he knew the firestorm had him.
I saw Snorri up ahead, fire-lit. Sleipnir’s strength failing her, both of them toiling up a steep slope.
“Run.” A gasp, little louder than my rasping breath.
We made the ridge before the flames, save those dancing high above us in the treetops. “Hel be praised.” Snorri leaned against a trunk, gasping. The slope ran away from us, just as steep on the way down as it was on the rise, trees thinning yard by yard and where the ground grew level, stretching out before us, mile upon mile of moonlit grassland.
TWENTY-ONE
A man can drown in the grass seas of Thurtan. In the swaying green, wind-rippled, with twenty miles and more of cold bog and saw grass on every side, it can seem that you’ve been set adrift in an ocean without end.
The fire at our back at least provided a reference point, an idea of distance and measure. These are things easily lost in the grass. As we walked, Snorri had told me the men of the pines had haunted forests like Gowfaugh for generations. The stories differed on the source of the original evil but now they perpetuated themselves, letting out the blood of their victims and replacing it with the sap of the oldest trees. The creatures kept some measure of intelligence, but if they served any master other than their own hunger it wasn’t spoken of. It seemed hard to credit, though, that the Dead King hadn’t steered them into our path.
“No more forests,” I said.
Snorri wiped the soot from his eyes and nodded.
We trekked a mile, another mile, and collapsed on the side of a gentle rise, looking back to watch the smoke and flame swirl above the burning forest. It seemed inconceivable that such an inferno, lofting embers into the heavens and scorching the clouds themselves, could have started with the tiny spark struck from my flint and nursed by my breath. Still, perhaps that’s all lives are, all the world is, a collision of vast conflagrations, each sparked from nothing. It might be said that the whole course of my own adventure sprang from a die that should have rolled a five or a two, landing instead with a single snake eye pointing at me, a pitiless eye watching me plunge further into Maeres Allus’s debt.
“That,” I said, “was close.”
“Yes.” Snorri sat knees to chest, watching the fire. He pulled a stick loose, tangled in his hair.
“We can’t go on like this. The next time we won’t be so lucky.” He had to see sense. Two men couldn’t carry on against such opposition. I’d gambled on long odds before—not my life, but my fortune—but never on so hopeless a bet as Snorri offered. Without prize or purpose.
“I would have given Karl such a pyre.” Snorri waved a hand at the burning horizon. “I built his beside the Wodinswood from deadfall. The trees were too heavy with the winter’s snow for the fire to spread, but I would have burned them all.
“He should have had a ship, my Karl. A longship. I would have laid him before the mast with my father’s axe and such armour as would serve him in Valhalla. But there was no time and I couldn’t leave him for the dead to find and use. Better wolves have him than that.”
“He told you about a key?” I said. Snorri had spoken of it back in the ruins of Compere but fallen silent. Perhaps now, with mile upon mile of blazing forest burning as Compere had burned, he would speak again. His eldest boy broke bones to escape his shackles and his last words to Snorri had been of a key.
And in the darkness of the grassland, with Gowfaugh burning red behind us, Snorri told me a story.
• • •
“My father told me the tale of Olaaf Rikeson and his march to the Bitter Ice. I heard it by the hearth many times. Father would spin it out on the deepest nights of winter when the ice on the Uulisk made sharp complaint against the cold.
“It takes more than a warrior or a general to lead ten thousand men into the Bitter Ice. Ten thousand who were not Viking would die before they reached the true ice. Ten thousand who knew enough to survive would know enough not to go. There is nothing there for men. Even the Inowen keep to the shore and the sea ice. Whale, seal, and fish is all that will sustain men in such places.
“It might be that no jarl ever had more longboats at his command than Olaaf Rikeson, or had brought more treasure across the North Sea, won with axe and fire from weaker men. Even so, it took more than his word to gather ten thousand from the bleak shores of the fjords where a hundred men were counted an army, and to march them into the Bitter Ice.
“Olaaf Rikeson had a vision. He had the gods at his side. The wise echoed what he said. The rune stones spoke for him. And more than this. He had a key. Even now the völvas argue over how he came to own it, but in the tale Snorri’s father told, Loki had given it to Olaaf after he burned the cathedral of the White Christ at York and slaughtered twice a hundred monks there. What Olaaf had to promise in return was never told.
“The fact that the god’s gift had been a key had always dis
appointed Snorri, but then Loki was the god of disappointment, amongst other things, things such as lies and trickery. Snorri would have preferred a battle ram. A warrior destroys the door—he doesn’t unlock it. But his father told him that Olaaf’s key was a talisman. It opened any lock, any door, and more than that—it opened men’s hearts.
“The oldest legends have it that Olaaf marched to open the gates of Niflheim and beard the frost giants in their lair, to shame the gods and their false Ragnarok of many suns, and to bring about the true end of all things in a last battle. Snorri’s father never denied the tale but spoke of how one thing might hide another, like a feint in combat. Men, he said, were more often moved by more basic wants—hunger, greed, and lust. Stories grew from seed and spread like weeds. Perhaps the gods touched Rikeson, or perhaps a bloody-handed reaver took a few hundred men north to raid the Inowen and from his failure sprang a song that bards wove into a saga and placed amongst the treasured memories of the North. Whatever truth there was, years have stolen it from us.”
• • •
Snorri left his son’s pyre, the last logs still blazing, the snow on all sides retreating to expose the black earth of the Wodinswood. Behind him embers swirled skyward amidst dark smoke. He trekked the hills of the hinterland, leaving the Uulisk far behind, tracking Sven Broke-Oar and the men of the Drowned Isles across the boulder fields of Törn, where vicious winds shape the rocks themselves. Above Törn the Jarlson Uplands, and beyond those, the Bitter Ice.
What he would do when he reached his enemy, Snorri had no idea, other than to die well. Grief and guilt and rage consumed him. Perhaps any of these on its own would have destroyed him, but in conflict, each with the next, they achieved a balance within him and he carried on.
The pace the raiders set was fierce and Snorri couldn’t think it one that Freja or Egil, with just ten years to his name, could match. In grim visions he saw them dead, marching with the tireless corpses that had come ashore at Eight Quays. But Karl had been alive; they had shackled prisoners—it made no sense to be taking them inland, but the necromancers had wanted live prisoners, that much was clear.