The Dark Horse (9 page)

37

We stood in the dark for a long time, just outside Horn’s broch. In all that time it never entered my head to think we were doing something strange, so strange that it had to be crazy.

We could sense Horn inside, brooding. He must have left the great broch and come straight back. We wondered whether he would ever come out.

Eventually, after a long wait during which neither Ragnald nor Sif nor I said anything, someone, I do not to this day know who, approached the broch in the shadows.

The figure knocked on the lintel and went in. There were some words spoken, and then they left together, heading for the great broch.

We crept inside.

Only then did Ragnald speak.

“Where’s the box?” he whispered at Sif.

She hesitated. She seemed half asleep.

“You want to see the magic, don’t you?” Ragnald whispered again. “Where is it?”

“Oh,” said Sif. “Yes.”

She rummaged under some furs that lay against a wall. She pulled the box out from the furs.

“Here,” she said.

It looked even more beautiful than I remembered.

“What sort of magic will it do, Ragnald?” I asked. I swear I had completely forgotten that we knew it was empty. That was just one more of Ragnald’s games.

“The powerful sort,” he said. He turned to Sif. “Give me the box.”

She did as he told her.

“Now sit with your backs to the pole,” he said, nodding at the tree trunk that ran to the center of the roof.

And we did.

“Now shut your eyes,” he said.

And we did.

And the next thing I felt was a cord pulled hard around my throat. I jerked my head forward, but he was too quick. We sat back to back, with the cord round our throats and the pole, so tight we could not squeak, let alone speak. In the time it took us to try to pull the cord away with our hands, he had our arms tied fast by the elbows.

He took a long, double-edged knife from his bag.

I remember—how could I forget? I will remember the words he said next till the day I die.

“A single word from either of you and I’ll slit your throats.”

38

Mouse ran, not knowing what was wrong, what was happening, nor who was in danger. But she knew there was danger right in the very heart of the Storn.

She headed for the great broch; she could see lights burning inside in spite of the late hour. Her eyes were wide, but in fear she saw nothing and ran straight into someone in the dark.

She lost her footing and fell on the ground wildly.

“Princess?” said a voice.

“Who is it?” cried Mouse. “Who are you?”

“Are you hurt?”

“No,” said Mouse. “Who is it?”

“Ragnald, my lady,” said the voice. “Shall I help you to your feet?”

Mouse tried to stand and found herself pulled upright by a large, powerful hand.

“You are in a hurry, Lady?”

The tone of Ragnald’s voice slowed Mouse. She could see him now, set against the silver moonlit sky.

“Yes,” she said. She paused. “No, I . . .”

“Would you have a moment?” said Ragnald. “I have something to show you.”

“No,” said Mouse. “I mean, there is something—”

“It will take but a moment,” said Ragnald. “And there is no one else. It is just for you, this thing.”

“For me?” asked Mouse, and for a moment she forgot about finding Sigurd. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” said Ragnald, and he pulled the box from under his arm.

39

Oh, what fools we were!

I think something changed between us then.

As Sif and I sat, struggling for air because of the cord around our throats, unable to speak, I think we realized that no matter how much we disliked each other, we were going to have to think quickly if we wanted to live.

And then! What was he doing? The stranger . . . out in the darkness of the village, reunited with his magic.

Sif made a noise; I could tell only the emotion, not the meaning.

Fear. She was scared, and so was I.

The air was harder to pull into our lungs; the cord bit like fire into our throats.

Fire! A small chance, but it worked. With my left foot I was able to scrape a burning branch from Horn’s fire. It went out as it rolled onto the earth floor, but the tip was still smoldering hot. I pulled it over to where we sat tied against the roof tree.

I could not pick it up, my hands were too tightly bound, but Sif, craning her head around, saw what I was trying to do. She picked the branch up with just her fingertips and managed to raise the other end of it, red-hot, into the air. The point wavered for a moment as she tried to steady the branch, but it was hard to hold. In desperation she let the smoldering point fall against the cord around our necks. It fell at a point midway between us, by the pole, and began to burn the cord, but instantly our skin began to burn, too.

We both screamed silently against the tightness of the cord, but in a few seconds the rope had weakened, and our jerks of pain snapped us free. With one end of the cord broken, we were able to wriggle free of our bonds quickly.

We both pressed our hands to the burns already seeping on our necks.

“Come on,” I said, trying to get off my knees.

“I can’t,” said Sif, choking against the pain.

“We have to find him!” I cried.

She nodded.

“All right,” she gasped. “All . . . right.”

She staggered to her feet.

We stumbled out into the darkness. The cold wind felt good against the screaming, burning pain.

“What do we do? Where is he?” Sif cried

I felt I might panic. I tried to think calmly, to decide what was the best thing to do. “You go to the great broch. Get as much help as you can!” I said.

Immediately she ran toward the great broch.

There she would find Olaf and Thorbjorn, and as fate had it, Horn, too.

“I’ll start looking for him,” I called after her.

I think I sounded braver than I felt.

I looked around in the darkness.

Where was Ragnald?

We didn’t even know what he was doing. I just knew it was something terrible. It had to be, to attack us so brutally, so coldly.

He had some purpose; I did not know what, but it was my belief it involved Mouse.

I was right, though it was the others who found her first.

40

When Horn and Olaf and Thorbjorn and Sif burst into the grain barn, they did not understand what they saw there. They did not understand what they saw, but it looked like evil.

By the dim light of a small candle they saw Mouse and the stranger, Ragnald.

Mouse was on her knees, writhing like a sick dog. Her feet scrabbled in the grain and dust, but her arms were rigid. Each of her hands was placed palm down against the inside of one half of the box, which was being held by Ragnald. Mouse’s hands were held fast, as thought they were stuck to the inside of the box.

Ragnald stood above her, holding the box, whispering unknown words. Mouse was sobbing, her eyes closed, her body trembling.

“What is this?” Horn yelled as they broke in.

For just a moment there was a strange pause as each side regarded the other. Ragnald looked irritated for a moment, but then a smile spread across his face.

“So,” he said, dropping the box.

Mouse fell beside it in the dirt, moaning as if in pain.

Ragnald pulled his long, toothed knife from his belt.

“So!” Horn said, and stepped forward with intent.

But as he drew his sword he remembered that all he had was the broken stump of Cold Lightning.

He looked at it blankly, and as he did so Ragnald took the chance to cut his throat.

Sif screamed.

Olaf stepped forward. He had come unarmed. They had not expected this. Ragnald opened Olaf ’s belly with a single sweep of his knife, and Olaf fell dying in the dirt.

Thorbjorn, who had a moment to gather his wits, shoved the burning flare he was carrying at the stranger’s face, but Ragnald was fast and sidestepped. The torch fell to the ground.

“Ha!” he cried.

He stepped past the burning brand and circled Thorbjorn until his back was to the door of the barn.

He grinned and advanced on the now defenseless Thorbjorn.

Then there was a slight scuffling, the sound of someone entering the barn.

Ragnald began to turn, but before his face was even half toward the light, he was dead.

He slumped forward on the ground, falling onto the flare, putting out its light.

Behind him Sigurd knelt, staring at the broken stump of Horn’s sword, which he had thrust into the stranger.

So, in about six seconds, it was over.

Part Two

THE DARK HORSE

1

To accord Horn the honor due him as Lawspeaker, we left his body on the hillside for the crows to eat.

My father was not so lucky—we buried his body under a single slab of rock on the low hills behind the village.

The death of a Lawspeaker is never a simple matter, but things were more complicated than normal. There was no obvious successor to Horn, just as there hadn’t been when he and my father fought. The difference was that no one really wanted the job this time. No man, that is.

But before the tribe could even think of these things, there was the business of the departing dead to see to.

We took Horn’s body on a wooden stretcher to the circle of rock fingers on the hill above the bay, known as Bird Rock. Everyone went, as is the law. Even Gudrun managed to walk up the hill—her first journey outside the village since her accident.

Mouse walked next to me. I remember she was silent, so silent. Perhaps I should have realized then that something serious had changed in her. Something had happened to her when Ragnald had . . . what? I’m still not sure what he did to her, but he had changed her somehow.

She had never been loud, but now she was quieter than ever. If it had been possible, I would have said she was even quieter than when she first came to us. But I did not realize this fully, my mind empty; I felt little. It was all a dream to me, just as it seems to me now, looking back after all these years.

I suppose something of me died with my father. That seems likely, doesn’t it? Maybe that was why I felt nothing as we walked up the cold hillside.

But Sif cried. I remember that well. I remember being a little surprised by it. I should not have been.

We put Horn’s body on the stone table in the center of the circle, and Gudrun said some words. I do not remember them.

Then Longshank spoke.

“This place is now sacrosanct. It is forbidden to return to Bird Rock until the new Lawspeaker, whoever he may be, returns to light the bone fire.”

Not that anyone ever went up there anyway, except Gudrun, and, I think, Mouse.

Then we left Horn on Bird Rock for the crows to come and clean his bones.

I was not sorry to leave, for my mother and I had our own duties to perform before the day was done.

Once we were back in the village, my mother, keeping her dignity as well as she could, asked two or three of the men to help us. I didn’t really notice who.

We carried Olaf out to the low hill where we buried people. We dug a shallow trench; it was only a foot or two to the bedrock, and then we put Father into the hole. On top we laid the biggest slab of rock we could move, so that people would know there was someone buried underneath.

Then the men left, silently, and Mouse, Mother, and I stood around for a while, thinking our own things.

Mouse, silent since Ragnald had attacked her, finally made a sound. But not exactly a human one.

She whimpered, like an injured dog.

Freya put a hand on her shoulder.

“Shush,” she said gently, and Mouse grew silent again.

Then we returned to the village.

That was how we sent my father on his way to the next world.

“What will happen now?” I asked as we walked back.

Mother shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said.