Snow-Walker (16 page)

“Where's Kari?”

“Inside.”

They surged past her. She saw Gudrun's men standing uncertain outside, but she left them and followed Thorkil.

“Where's Gudrun?” he asked.

She shook her head, suddenly tired.

Wulfgar had picked the object off the floor. He gave it to Kari, who fingered the knotted snakeskin.

“Search the hold,” Brochael said, but Kari shook his head.

“You won't find her. She's gone.”

“But where?”

“Back. Wherever she came from.”

“For good?” Brochael asked gruffly.

Kari shrugged. “That's more than I can say.” Suddenly he turned to Wulfgar. “Well. Here we are in your hall. It seems the Wulfings have come home at last.”

The skald went over and kicked the frozen mass of the fire.

“And not a moment too soon,” he remarked.

By morning the whole of the Jarlshold had been searched, but there was no sign of Gudrun or Grettir. How she had vanished from among them no one knew, but it was said later that a man who farmed up on the fells to the east had seen a woman, dressed all in white, walking swiftly and tirelessly over the snow, with a dark figure like a shadow behind her. Terrified, he had hurried indoors to the firelight.

First thing in the morning the men of the Jarlshold and all the surrounding settlements had gathered in the great hall, staring at the travelers curiously. Many of them could not tear their eyes from Kari as he sat quietly talking to Brochael and Wulfgar. Jessa knew that the presence of so many people was making him uneasy; she caught his eye and smiled and he did the same. Wulfgar was voted Jarl with a great roar of approval, no one disagreeing, but afterward, in the crush and excitement, Kari was missing. She searched for him, pushing her way to Thorkil.

“Have you seen Kari?”

He shook his head. “Elsewhere, I suppose. Not used to all these people.”

But when she asked Brochael, he paused for a moment and shrugged a little unhappily. “I have an idea where he might be. Come on.”

As she followed him out of the hall, she heard silence fall behind her, and into it came the skald's voice, clear and sharp, chanting an old song in praise of the Wulfings, a chain of words, lilting and proud. Looking back, she saw Wulfgar sitting in the Jarl's chair, relaxing in it lazily, his fingers moving over the worn arms as Ragnar's had done. Behind him, Thorkil leaned.

She followed Brochael. They went down into a part of the Jarlshold she had never seen: a long dark corridor at the foot of a flight of damp steps. On each side were small rooms, their windows barred, and the stench from them stale and fetid.

“Her prisons,” Brochael growled. “Full, till this morning.”

His voice echoed in the stone tunnel.

She followed him to the very end, deep in the rock under the hold. The door of the last room was ajar, and he pushed it open. They saw a very small cell, long neglected. The walls were dark with grime and soot. Old straw rustled under their feet; one tiny window let in the light.

Kari stood at the far end of the room, looking at something on the wall. Jessa saw it was some faint scrawl of circles and spirals, almost worn away with age. His hair shone pale and clean, and he wore the new clothes that Wulfgar had given them all from the Jarl's store. He turned around when he heard them.

“Why come here?” Brochael asked gruffly.

“Just to look. To see if I remembered it right.” After a moment he took the snakeskin bracelet from his pocket and fingered it, dropping it silently into the cold ashes in the fireplace. Then he came out and closed the door.

Brochael put an arm around him. “Come on. The lord Jarl will be having his first feast tonight. Everyone will want to stare at you as he loads you with gold and gives us all rings and horses. Asgrim will be here within days, when he hears.”

“I don't want his gold,” Kari said. “But I would like Thrasirshall—whatever is left of it.”

Brochael nodded. “You'll get it! Who else would want it?” He grinned at Jessa. “And the new lady of Horolfstead will be wearing her best, I expect?”

“All borrowed.” Jessa laughed.

Kari laughed too. Then he turned and raised his hands, and made a small movement.

As they watched it, the door faded out of sight.

To Joseph

The creature moved down from the north, traveling quickly. All the long night it had blurred and flickered through blizzards, leaving its prints briefly on the open tundra, until the snow clogged them. It was a gray wraith on the glaciers, a shadow that trudged under black, frosted skies.

Hunger drove it—aching hunger. And a voice, a clear, cold voice that had called it out of some unremembered darkness, had knotted and woven its atoms together with spells and words and runes, and had sent it south tormented by this emptiness nothing could fill. Who the voice was, it did not know. It hardly knew anything, even where it was going.

The creature made a low moan that rang through the ice chasm around it. Sharp edges of snow fell soundlessly through its body. It climbed up and paused, turning its head north wearily, but the voice was still there, silent, insistent. It turned and trudged down the fellside.

There had been a feathered thing on a frozen lake days ago, but that had been stinking and tasteless, a picked skeleton. Silver shapes under the ice had flicked away, unreachable. Head down, the rune beast stumbled on without thought. Stars glinted through it.

Then it stopped and lifted its head.

Dark shapes crowded the hillside below. The creature had seen nothing like them before. They stood, huge and rigid, sighing in the raw wind. The voice put a word, like a cold drop, into the creature's ear.

Trees.

Dimly it realized that the air had been changing for a long time. Days ago there had been bitter roaring winds at the uttermost ends of the earth, high snows and glacial emptiness. Now it was less cold. Down here things grew.

The rune creature glimmered between the trees and paused, deep in shadow. The wood was silent. There were strange new smells, teasing pleasures that tore at its hunger; pine and rotting wood and leaves and fungi; rich, decaying sensations. And beyond that, small, musky scents.

Animals.

The voice told it about animals, the sweetness of meat, the warmth of blood.

It hurried on, eager, drifting and glinting through the tangled undergrowth. Snow fell through its body silently.

Oh, the fish was fresh all right. She wondered if it was even dead, it glared up at her so balefully from the wooden plate.

And the ale was worse. Grimly she swallowed one mouthful and turned on the man mending nets on the step.

“You'd better get me something else. Water, even.”

“Water! Lady, you'll poison yourself!”

“I think I already have.” Jessa poured the thin pale liquid deliberately onto the straw. “I wouldn't give this muck to my worst enemy.”

Unruffled, the man stood up, gathering the torn net in his arms. “There's another cask. It'll cost you, though.”

“I thought it might.” She pushed the platter across the table. “And while you're there, you can do something to this. Cook it, preferably. If I'd wanted it raw, I could have speared my own.”

The innkeeper nodded sourly. “With your tongue. It's sharp enough.”

He gathered up the plate in disgust and disappeared behind a woven blue curtain.

Grinning, Jessa leaned her elbows on the table and folded her fingers together. It had been a good day. The market had been the best for a long time—they'd sold all the livestock, and the men had gone back to the farm with spices and yarn and leather and new swords. Under her coat hung a full pouch of silver. And Skapti was coming to meet her, the Jarl's tall, thin, sarcastic poet. In fact he should have been here by now. They were sailing to the Jarlshold on the next tide, and she was looking forward to it.

Someone came in, and she glanced up, but it wasn't the skald. A small, scrawny man. He sat in a corner and called for ale.

The room was warm; it smelled of food and dogs and smoke. All day it had been thronged with traders and peddlers and market women, but now she was the last of them. She gazed idly out over the wharf. The sun still hung above the horizon; a cold red globe, steaming over the sea. The nights were already getting shorter. Through the uncurtained doorway she could see the keels of upturned boats in the lurid light; gulls screamed and fought over the drying nets. As she listened, the clang of metal on metal from the smithy stopped, leaving a sudden stillness of sea wash and birds.

The innkeeper came back and dropped the platter on the table without ceremony. “It's well cooked now.”

Jessa flicked the fish over with her knife. “Charred, I'd say.”

“You would.”

He put the cup of ale next to it and turned, straight into the blunt end of a knife that cracked viciously down. He crumpled and crashed among the tables.

Halfway to her feet in astonishment, Jessa froze.

Then, slowly, she sat down.

“Wise. Very wise.”

The scrawny man watched her for a moment. He had very small eyes, dark and beady, and his face was thin and stubbly around the chin. A rat's face.

He reversed the weapon easily and let the point flicker toward her in the red light. “Over there. Against the wall. Don't scream.”

She got up and moved in front of the table, her hands sliding smoothly behind her for the knife.

“Leave that!” He reached out and grabbed her arm. “Over there.”

Furious, Jessa shook him off. She walked to the wall and stood there, arms folded, icy with rage. But she had to be calm. She had to watch for her chance. There would probably only be one.

The man backed quickly, slammed the door, and dropped the bar of wood across it. The room went dim, with only the window now to give light, but he left that unshuttered and kneeled by the innkeeper, his free hand rummaging deftly among the man's clothes.

“Have you killed him?” she snapped.

“Not yet.” He dragged out a handful of coins, thrust them into a leather sack that hung around his neck, and heaved the heavy body over.

“Well flattened, like all his kind.” He gave her a swift, evil look. “Why didn't you go when everyone else did?”

“I'm waiting for someone.” She said it firmly, taking quick glances around the dark room, but always meeting his eyes when he looked up. “They'll be here soon.”

“They will, will they?”

“Why else would I stay?”

He wasn't listening. He got up and stepped over the still shape. “Where's his money? He did good trade today. Where does he keep it?”

“I've no idea,” she said coldly.

Suddenly he turned, ran to the hearth, and rummaged there, clearing it of cooking pots with one sweep. Grabbing the lid of a nearby chest, he wrenched it open and threw out clothing and belts and fishhooks into a great heap by the smoldering fire.

Jessa took one step toward the window.

“Keep still!”

He was upright, with a small metal box in his hands. Jamming the point of the knife into the lid he forced it back with a crash. Then he grinned, showing broken teeth.

Jessa edged another step. Skapti must be here soon! And yet maybe that wasn't such a good thing. He wouldn't be expecting anything, and this scum looked murderous. She glanced at him thoughtfully as he poured a rain of small silver coins through his dirty fingers.

“You'd better go now you've got what you want. My friends will be here.”

He slammed the box shut and scuttled toward her through the dimness. Close up his skin was gray with dirt; his breath stank. “And you must have some coins too, with a coat and boots of such nice soft leather.” He narrowed his eyes. “A wealthy lass, by the look of you.”

Icily Jessa glared at him. “The men I'm meeting are the Jarl's men, I warn you. The Jarl's poet himself. He and I are friends.”

She had thought that would make him pause, but to her surprise he grinned, thin-lipped. “Jarl Wulfgar himself! So we both have important friends. Just give me the money you've got, now.”

“Kari Ragnarsson is also my friend.” She said it at random, but just for a second caught a sudden wariness, even fear, in the thief 's eyes.

“That one? The sorcerer? The Snow-walker?” He touched a greasy amulet quickly. “Well, it's a pity he's not here, then.”

“He can see things that happen far off. He may be watching us. Remembering you.”

Nervously the man's eyes shifted. His tongue flickered over his lips. “I'll have to take my chance.” He held out his hand. “The purse.”