Runemarks (16 page)

4

In the fields to the west of Little Bear Wood, Odin One-Eye was watching birds. One bird in particular, a small brown hawk, flying fast and low across the fields. Not in a hunting pattern, he thought—although there was surely plenty of prey. No, this hawk flew as if it sensed a predator, though there were surely no eagles this far from the mountains, and only an eagle would bring down a hawk.

A hawk, but what kind?

That was no bird.

He had
sensed
rather than
seen
it almost at once. Its movement, perhaps, or the speed of its course, or its colors scrawled across the sky—half obscured by the setting sun but as familiar to One-Eye as his own.

Loki.

So the traitor had survived. It came as no great surprise to him—Loki had a habit of beating the odds, and that hawk had always been a favorite Aspect of his. But what in Hel’s name was he doing here now? Loki, of all people, should have been fully aware of the recklessness of flaunting his colors in World Above. But here he was, in broad daylight—and in too much of a hurry even to cover his tracks.

In the old days, of course, Odin could have brought down the bird with a single mindrune. Today, and at such a distance, he knew better than to try. Runes that had once been child’s play to him now cost him an effort he could ill afford. But Loki was a child of Chaos; its harmonies were in his blood.

What could have forced him to leave the Hill? The Examiner and his invocations? Surely not. No single Examiner could have flushed out the Trickster from his stronghold, and Loki wasn’t the type to panic. Besides, why would he leave his base? And why, of all places, make for the Sleepers?

One-Eye left the fields by a gap in the hedge and, skirting the edge of Little Bear Wood, squinted after the fleeting hawk. The western road was completely deserted; the sun’s rays shone low across the brindled land, sending his long shadow sprawling behind him. On the Hill a bonfire was lit: the folk of Malbry were celebrating.

Briefly One-Eye hesitated. He was reluctant to leave Red Horse Hill, where Maddy would surely look for him. But Loki’s presence in World Above was much too disturbing to ignore.

He took out his bag of runestones and cast his fortune quickly, there on the side of the western road.

He drew
Ós,
the Æsir, reversed—

—crossed with
Hagall,
the Destroyer—

—with
Isa
and
Kaen
in opposition—

—and finally his own rune,
Raedo,
reversed, crossed with
Naudr,
the Binder, rune of the Underworld—rune of Death.

Even in the best of circumstances such a fortune would not have made for cheerful reading. Now, with an Examiner of the Order on Red Horse Hill, with Loki in the world again, with the Whisperer in unknown hands, and with Maddy still missing in World Below, it seemed like a taunt from the Fates themselves.

He gathered the runestones and stood up. It would take him the best part of the night to reach the Sleepers unobserved. He guessed Loki could do it in less than an hour. That couldn’t be helped, and staff in hand, One-Eye began the long trek toward the mountains.

It was then, just then, that the possemen struck.

He should have known, One-Eye told himself later. That little wood, so convenient and well placed on the edge of the fields, was the perfect site for an ambush. But he had been preoccupied with thoughts of Loki and the Sleepers; blinded by the sinking sun, he never saw them coming.

A second later they were out of the trees, running low to the ground, a posse of nine, armed with staves.

One-Eye moved surprisingly fast.
T
ý
r,
the Warrior, shot out like a steel dart from between his fingers, and the first man—it was Daniel Hetherset, one of Nat’s prentices—fell to the ground with his hands clasped to his face.

Time was when that would have been enough. This time it was not, and the eight remaining posse members barely halted, exchanging rapid glances as they fanned out across the road, staves at the ready.

“We don’t want a fight.” It was Matt Law, the constable, a large, earnest man not built for speed.

“I can tell,” said One-Eye softly. At his fingertips
T
ý
r
was a blade of light, rather short for a mindsword but keener than Damascus steel.

“Come quiet,” said Matt, whose face was cheesy with fear. “I give you my word you’ll be fairly treated.”

One-Eye gave a smile that made the lawman shiver. “If it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I think I’d rather be on my way.”

That should have ended it. As it was, the possemen drew back a little. Matt, however, stood his ground. He was fat but not soft, and under the gaze of his fellow villagers he was very conscious of his duty as an officer of the Law.

“You’ll come with us,” he said, “whether you want to or not. Be reasonable. You’re outnumbered. I’ve given you my word that your case will be treated according to due process and with every…”

One-Eye had been watching Matt and had missed the man who shifted—oh, so slyly—into the line of his blind eye.

The others stayed where they were, spread out against the sun, so that One-Eye’s vision was blurred and their faces, which might have given them away, were lost in shadow.

Daniel Hetherset, who had fallen beneath the Outlander’s blow, was recovering. The mindsword had not cut him badly, and now he began to struggle to his feet, blood still flowing from the ugly scratch across his cheek.

One-Eye’s gaze had dropped fractionally; Matt was standing directly in front, and the man who had blindsided him—it was Jan Goodchild, a father of two from one of the most right-thinking families in the valley—now swung out his staff and struck at One-Eye’s head as hard as he could.

If the blow had connected properly, the fight would have been over there and then. But Jan was excited, and his strike went wild, hitting One-Eye on the shoulder and knocking him off balance into the group of possemen.

There followed a messy scuffle, with weapons flailing wildly, Matt Law calling for order, and the Outlander,
T
ý
r
in hand, swiping and feinting just as cleverly as if it had been a real short-sword and not just a glamour held in place by nothing but the force of his own will.

One-Eye, unlike Loki, had always been a natural with weapons. Even so, he could feel his glam weakening; it takes a great deal of power to use a mindsword, and his time was running short. Jan swiped at him again, hitting his right arm with sickening force; the strike that would have speared Jan went astray and hit Matt Law instead, a messy blow right in the midsection.

One-Eye followed up with another strike, this time spearing Jan through the ribs, a clean thrust, and One-Eye had time for a single thought—
You’ve killed him, you fool
—before
T
ý
r
guttered and died in his hand.

Then they were on him, seven men with staves, moving together like reapers in the corn.

A blow to the stomach doubled him up. Another to the head sent him sprawling across the western road. And as the blows fell—too many to count, far too many for the crooked fingerings of
ýr
and
Naudr
to disperse—One-Eye had time for one more thought—
This is what you get for helping the Folk
—before one final crashing blow fell across the back of his head and pain and darkness swallowed him whole.

5

Meanwhile, Loki was not finding his task quite as straightforward as he’d hoped. It had been many years since he had approached the Sleepers by this route, and by the time he reached the mountains it was dark. Beneath him the slopes were blank and featureless in the starlight. A waning moon was rising; small clouds flirted across it from time to time, painting the sky silver.

He flew onto a spar of rock that jutted out above a broad belt of scree. Here he regained his Aspect and rested—his shift to hawk guise had stolen more of his glam than he had expected.

Above him the Sleepers were icebound and forbidding; below were scree and stark rock. Down in the foothills, narrow paths crisscrossed the scrubby brushland; blackthorn trees grew; wildcats had their lairs here and sometimes fed on the small brown goats that ran freely across the heather. Afew huts had been built on the slopes of these foothills—mostly by goatherds—but as the land grew bare, even these few signs of habitation ceased.

He stood and looked up at the Sleepers. The entrance was maybe two hundred feet above him, a deep, narrow crevasse buried in snow. He’d been through once but would not have chosen to take the same route again if there had been any other choice.

There was not, and now he stood shivering on his spar of rock and quickly considered his position. The great disadvantage of his type of shapeshifting was that he took nothing with him but his skin—no weapons, no food, and more importantly, no clothes. Already the bitter cold had begun to work on him; much more of it and it would finish him quick.

He thought of shifting to his fiery Aspect but dismissed the idea almost at once. There was nothing to burn above the snow line, and besides, a fire on the mountain would attract far too much of the wrong sort of attention.

Of course, he could always fly up to the crevasse, sparing himself a long, exhausting struggle up into the icy regions. However, he was aware that his hawk guise made him vulnerable—for a hawk can speak no cantrips, and a hawk’s claws are useless if fingerings are required. Loki did not relish the thought of flying blind—not to mention naked—into the Sleepers and whatever ambush might be waiting.

Well, whatever he did, it would have to be fast. He was too exposed out on the blank rock, his colors visible for miles. He might as well have written
LOKI WAS HERE
across the open mountainside.

And so he regained his bird form and flew to the nearest goatherd’s hut. It was abandoned, but in it he managed to find some clothes—little more than rags, but they’d do—and skins to bind around his feet. The skins smelled of goat and were a poor substitute for the boots he had left behind, but there was a sheepskin jacket, rough but warm, which should keep out the worst of the cold.

Thus attired, he began to climb. It was slow, but it was safe, and over the last five hundred years Loki had learned to value safety more than ever.

He had been climbing for nearly an hour when he met the cat. The moon had risen, scything over the frozen peaks and throwing every rock, every spur into sharp relief. He had passed the snow line. Now his feet crunched against the skirt of a glacier, which looked frilly white from a distance, but which closer inspection revealed to be a grim hardpack of snow, stones, and ancient ice.

Loki was tired. He was also aching with cold; the skins and rags he had stolen from the goatherd’s hut might have served him well enough on the lower slopes but did little against the bitter cold of the glacier. He had tucked his hands into his armpits for warmth, but even so they ached viciously; his face was sore; his feet in their skin bindings had long since lost all sensation, and he stumbled drunkenly across the crust of snow, hiding his trail as best he could.

Once more he considered reverting to his fiery Aspect, but the cold was already too intense. Shifting to his fire form would simply burn up his glam all the faster, leaving him helpless.

He needed rest. He needed warmth. He had already fallen half a dozen times and found it harder on each occasion to struggle to his feet. At last he fell and could not stand up again, and he realized that he no longer had a choice: the possibility of his freezing to death by far surpassed the risk of his being seen.

He cast
Sól
but clumsily and winced at the pain in his frozen fingers. Shifting to hawk guise was no longer an option; his strength was gone, and he was down to his last cantrips. The rune lit up but gave little heat.

Loki cursed and tried again. This time the warmth was more focused, a glowing ball the size of a small apple that shone against the dull snow. He held the fireball close, and little by little he felt the life return to his crippled hands. Pain came with it. Loki yelped: it felt like hot needles.

Perhaps it was this cry that alerted the cat, perhaps the glow; in any case it came, and it was
large
—five times larger than a common wildcat and brindled brown as mountain stone. Its eyes were yellow and hungry, its claws soft-sheathed steel in the shaggy pads of its feet.

Further down the slopes, where prey was plentiful, it would most likely have given Loki a wide berth. But here on the glacier prey was scarce. This human—helpless, on his knees in the snow—seemed like a gift.

The cat moved closer. Loki, who could feel the sensation returning to his feet as well as his fingers, tried to stand up, then fell once more, cursing.

The cat moved closer still, wary of the fireball between Loki’s hands, wondering in its dim fashion if this were a weapon that might harm it if it sprang. Loki did not see it and continued to curse as
Sól
sent its knives into his fingers.

He might be big, the cat thought, but he was slow, he was tired, and more importantly, he was on the ground, where his size would be of no advantage to him.

All in all, it fancied its chances.

The cat had never attacked a human before. If it had, it would have gone for the face and would most likely have killed him with a single bite. Instead it leaped onto Loki’s back, caught him by the scruff of his neck, and tried to roll him over.

He acted fast. Surprisingly fast for a human—though Loki was not
precisely
human, the cat sensed—and rather than try to grapple with his attacker, the man hauled himself upright, ignoring the claws that gouged into his ribs, and deliberately flung himself as hard as he could onto his back.

For a second the cat was stunned. Its jaws loosened and Loki broke free, boosting himself away and onto his knees so that now he faced the creature head to head, his fire green eyes reflecting its yellow ones, his teeth bared.

The cat squalled, a terrible, ratcheting sound of rage and frustration. It faced him, ready to spring if he made the smallest move. Such battles of will could last for hours among the cat’s own kind, but it sensed that the human’s strength would fail him before long.

Loki knew it too. Numbed as he was with cold, it was hard for him to judge the damage done by the cat’s claws, but he could feel warmth flowing down his back and knew he might collapse at any time. He had to act—and quickly.

Eyes still locked on those of the cat, he held out his hand. In it shone
Sól,
fading a little but still alight. Very gently Loki moved from his knees to the balls of his feet, so that now he was squatting on his haunches, the sun rune outstretched. The cat squalled and bristled, ready to pounce.

But Loki pounced first. With an effort he sprang to his feet, and at the same time, gathering the last of his glamour, he flung
Sól
—now a white-hot firebrand—at the snarling creature.

The cat fled. Loki saw it go, a streak against the glacier’s breadth, and heard its cry of defiance as it went. It did not go as far as he would have liked, however, but settled at a distance of about three hundred yards, where the edge of the glacier met a nest of rock.

Here it waited, immobile. It could smell blood—and that made it growl softly with frustrated hunger—but more importantly, it could smell weakness. The human was wounded. At some point soon he would relax his guard.

And so it watched, and when Loki began once more to climb, slowly and laboriously, toward the dim blue cleft between the Sleepers, the cat climbed with him, keeping its distance but gradually closing as his steps faltered, his shoulders slumped, and at last he fell, headfirst and senseless, into the moonlit snow.