1633880583 (F) (26 page)

Crowbeard’s wife said much then, the word “harlot” prominent in her speech. The wards advanced.

“I may be outnumbered,” Gaunt said in Roil, “but I promise you this arrow will claim a life.”

Crowbeard raised his hand, commanding the young men to halt. “You mock me,” he said, “in the form of a praise-poem.”

“It’s said Muninn Sure-Hand was honorable. But Crowbeard is not.”

“Your man didn’t fight half as well as you claim.”

“There is a thing,” she said, “called poetic license. And you’re hardly one to talk about fighting well.”

“There is no dishonor in selling a knave into slavery,” Crowbeard said. “Your man is a coward and a thief.”

“He is no coward. But we are not talking about him. We are talking about the man who ripped a husband and father from his family, by means of a cruel trick.”

“The method was not mine—”

“Is it better that you trusted in the wiles of slavers? They tricked us. Playing on our feelings for children. When we tried to save a boy and girl in trouble, we were ambushed.” Gaunt laughed. “So glorious. I know there are songs about you, Muninn. Songs of Sure-Hand’s valor. They will be completely forgotten, buried under the song of Muninn Fartsnore.”

“I can silence the voice that sings it.”

“You could try,” she said, grateful for her leather armor and the roundshield at her back. “Except that I have already transcribed a dozen copies, and hired many singers, and left instructions that it be performed if I do not appear again tomorrow in Gullvik. And believe me, it is a catchy tune.”

Muninn was silent. His wife began hectoring him in Kantentongue and he snarled in response. Weapons were dropped into the snow. Gaunt lowered the bow, a little.

In the stillness that followed, Muninn said, “You must want something.”

“I want my husband. You will help him escape.”

“What? You must know they were going to sell him to the Gull-Jarl! I would rather be known as Fartsnore than as that one’s foe.”

“I am not so sure. The Gull-Jarl is away now, and the man in charge is the honorless Skalagrim the Red.”

“An honorless axe kills as well as a famed one.”

“You spoke of a straw death before. That is surely what you’re headed for. I don’t think you wanted to hurt us, half so much as you wanted a place on a foamreaving ship. I think you hear death coming on the wind, and you don’t fear it half as much as you fear the empty days that herald it, a whistling wind spinning the ashes of the fire.” Gaunt took a chance, taking one hand from her bow, raising it to hail him. “You were somebody once. You could be again. You could be a man who raided the house of Skalagrim, who in old age walked into an adventure involving strange magics, and warriors of the distant East, and vessels that fly like ships of the old gods.”

“Lies,” said Muninn. But he wet his lips.

“Lies or not,” Gaunt said, “you know I can sing the songs.”

Once there’d been a moment when Gaunt told the bards she would rather be exiled than submit to their rules. . . .

Or when she’d seen her newborn son and spoken his name for the first time. . . .

Or when she’d told Imago Bone she would marry him after all. . . .

In none of those moments did the silence stretch farther than now, in the snow of the Bladed Isles.

“Wait here,” said Muninn Crowbeard.

“This is madness,” Muninn said for the third time under the moonlit boughs at the forest’s edge, the third day after he’d joined her. “There are five guards at this farm, many more in the other farms and in the great hall above. This is a job for a berserker, not an old man with palsy and a madwoman.”

“This madwoman also spies much snow swirling about this night,” Gaunt said. “The guards will have difficulty seeing us.”

“Did you witch it up somehow?”

Gaunt just smiled, for truly, what else could she do? “We’ll leave the supplies here,” she said, setting down her bow and removing her pack. “This is the best path into the woods, and this big tree the best . . .” she paused.

“What?”

“. . . hiding spot. There’s something else here, Muninn.”

The old man muttered and joined her. He peered at four dark pairs of wooden planks. Each pair was accompanied by two long, straight, broken branches.

“A firewood pile?” Gaunt asked.

“Skis.” Magnus spat into the snow.

“What are skis?”

“What hole did you crawl out of?”

“I fell out of the sky, remember?”

“They’re skis. You put them on your feet and, ah, Torden’s breath, never mind. They’re probably supplies for a hunting party. Someone from the great hall might come this way.”

“If these whatevers are from the hall, why do they look like junk?”

“Who can understand Skalagrim’s ilk? The rescue’s too risky now.”

“No, this is confirmation we have a good path. We can’t abandon the plan now.”

“I can hardly believe we are calling this lunacy a plan. Or that I am here.”

“I can, Muninn the foamreaver.”

“What are you doing?”

“Moving the wood-things so pursuers won’t find them.”

“They are called skis, woman.”

“Is this how it is in Kantenjord? Women do all the work and men correct their vocabulary?”

Muninn shared more of his vocabulary, but he helped. Then they set out.

They’d spied Bone from afar and knew which barn was his. It was near a midden and a stable. Gaunt led them toward the first, until she was within range of the second, able to see dry straw through an upper window.

She removed a set of special arrows and set them upon the snow. Next she removed a flask containing the foulest alcohol she’d found in Gullvik. The hard part was kindling it, but she had an ingenious fire-starting device from Qiangguo that served her well.

“Magic,” muttered Crowbeard.

“Civilization,” answered Gaunt, as her first fire arrow lit up. “You should try it sometime.”

Her first shot missed and landed uselessly in the snow. The next four found their target. The stable was alight.

Shouts of alarm and quivering firelight echoed and flared in the night.

“Move,” Gaunt said.

Someone in the barn had already opened the door to investigate. A wispy-haired man younger than Muninn but with a face more weathered looked out at the fire. Gaunt was surprised to see no guards but was not about to argue.

The young-old man shouted and bellowed orders into the barn. Soon, a group of thralls departed, rushing toward a group exiting the farmhouse.

The young-old man watched them go, murmuring something to someone back in the barn.

“You are mine,” came a cold voice behind Gaunt.

She whirled and beheld an immense, red-bearded man in a byrnie and crimson robe, spiked mace raised.

“Skalagrim,” hissed Muninn. “This witch-woman ensorcelled me. She has powers of fire and ice—”

“Oh shut up,” Gaunt said, and loosed an arrow at Skalagrim the Bloody.

It pierced him in the shoulder, but the byrnie blunted the blow. Skalagrim roared and staggered, but in another moment he was upon her.

Even forewarned, his ferocity amazed her. She brought the bow up instinctively to block him, and he swatted it aside. With a twang it arced out of sight.

She dove sideways into the snow (away from Fartsnore) and drew Crypttongue. She rose just in time for Skalagrim’s fresh lunge. She blocked the mace and edged backward, losing her footing and falling to one knee.

“Where are your powers now?” said Skalagrim, raising the mace.

“Don’t believe anything Crowbeard says,” Gaunt answered, drawing and throwing a dagger.

Skalagrim had good reflexes; her clear shot only grazed his cheek.

The seeping wound seemed to make him see her clearly for the first time. “You . . . you are not the one in my dreams.”

“I should hope not,” she muttered, scrambling backward and searching for her bow.

Listen
, came the voice of Floki, the slaver whose spirit was imprisoned within Crypttongue.
I mean to pay back my former associates, who cared nothing for my blood-price. Skalagrim has a weakness. He can’t abide being mocked
.

Suddenly Skalagrim staggered, for an unexpected foe had appeared.

Muninn Crowbeard stood shivering, his quivering hands gripping a bloodied axe.

Skalagrim whirled. His mace knocked Muninn aside like an old chess piece. But now Gaunt had her bow, battered but still worthy. She sheathed Crypttongue, found another arrow, and shot Skalagrim in the back.

“You!” he bellowed, spinning. “You must know about her. Tell me who she is, where she is. Is she laughing at me?”

“I should think so,” Gaunt said, her cold hands seeking a new arrow. “I would.”

Bellowing curses, he lunged, wild, heedless—but now a third foe leapt upon him from the barn roof.

“You!” roared Skalagrim.

“Is my name so forgettable?” the newcomer said.

“Bone!” Gaunt called out.

“That’s more like it.” Bone grabbed Skalagrim’s beard and yanked. Gaunt did not think she dared hit Skalagrim under these circumstances, at least not with the bow. And Crypttongue would take time to redraw.

She dropped the bow and clutched the arrow, rushing forward to poke at Skalagrim’s eyes.

“You!” Skalagrim told them. “Both! Will! Die!”

“They’re never very original are they, Bone?”

“Not when their backs are against the wall, Gaunt.”

Skalagrim roared backward and slammed himself against the barn.

“Why don’t I learn to shut up?” Bone moaned from where he’d fallen off Skalagrim’s back.

Skalagrim laughed and raised the mace.

Gaunt had her third surprise of the fight. The young-old thrall appeared and whacked Skalagrim with a wooden bucket from the barn. Two more thralls joined him, striking with timber and shovel. Muninn was there too, for all that his hands shook, and he shouted bloodcurdling oaths.

Skalagrim shoved them all aside and buried his mace in the stomach of the young-old thrall.

“Go!” gasped the rescuer as he fell, coughing up blood. “I regain my family’s glory. . . .”

“Come,” said one of the newcomers, a tall, deep-voiced man. “I will get your bow.”

Gaunt was not even sure how he could have seen the bow in the moonlit snow, but she gripped her arrow in one hand and took Bone’s in the other. They ran like rabbits into the snow.

“I expected—” Gaunt gasped as they reached the woods, “more guards.”

“Skalagrim wasn’t enough, woman?” panted Muninn.

“You shut up,” she told him. “You almost betrayed us—”

“I saved you.”

“That’s why you’re still alive.”

“We didn’t count on Skalagrim,” Bone interrupted with heaving breaths. “But they didn’t count, ugh, on my putting dung in the stew. The guards were, uh, indisposed.”

“You had your own plan,” Gaunt realized.

“Oh, it wouldn’t have worked. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“It may still not work,” said a short Swanislander with bandaged hands. “Vuk, the skis are gone.”

“The whats?” Bone said.

“You had your ploy,” said the tall man, handing Gaunt her bow and joining the Swanislander beside the great tree. “We had ours. But someone has moved our gear and added their own.”

“I stand guilty!” Gaunt said. “Let me show you.”

Soon they had possession of two sets of gear. Gaunt got her pack on, after lightening it by giving Bone the armor pieces she’d gotten with Roisin’s guilt-money, a breastplate and guards for elbows and knees.

“Thank you,” he said, sounding truly impressed. “They swing heavy weapons in this country.”

“Let’s hear no more quibbling on how I spend our money,” she said, tightening his last knot. “Or about extra weight.” On that note she gave him Muninn’s pack, as the Kantening had been battered by the fight.

“We have four sets,” said the tall fellow named Vuk. “But Havtor has sacrificed himself. I am quick-footed and used to snow. The rest of you will ski.”

“Uh,” Bone said. “What will we see?”

“No, no, you will ski. You will use two planks, each attached to one foot, to slide along in the snow.”

“This is so we will look especially ridiculous to Skalagrim’s men when they catch us. Yes?”

“No,” Vuk said, “this is so they won’t catch us. Trust me.”