“Could they have…” Thrunn trailed off, as if unable to bring himself to utter the words.
“Vanished?” Egil suggested.
“Pff, vanished,” muttered Inglar, then subsided as he caught Valhild’s look.
“They were here,” Thrunn said, in a slow but solid sort of reason. “Now they aren’t. So, they must have gone somewhere.”
“Then, Freya’s tits, where?” Anbjorn flung up his arms in frustration.
They dismounted, one by one, warily. Hreyth last of all swung down from her steed. This was not what she had expected to find, no monster’s slaughter-yard, no grave-barrows or rock-hewn giant’s halls. Some other mischief seemed at work here, a subtler magic, seidr or sorcery.
“Someone lost a boot,” Osig said.
Anbjorn held up a helm, undented, undamaged. “This is Udr’s. He had it from his father. He wouldn’t have left it, not while he lived.”
Atli stooped to a twinkle in the grass and came up with a jeweled brooch in his hand. “And who, winning such a battle, would walk away without taking plunder?”
“This was no battle,” Egil said. “There’s no blood. Not a drop to be seen.”
“The king sent skilled warriors,” Inglar said. “Are we to believe none of them so much as wounded a foe?”
“Or fought foes that did not bleed,” Anbjorn said.
Osig eyed him dubiously. “Every living thing bleeds. Man, beast, or monster.”
“And men plunder,” said Atli.
“Living or dead, men plunder,” Egil agreed. “And beasts devour, and monsters do both.”
“But, whatever did this, did neither.” Valhild frowned, shaking her head. “I don’t like it.”
Hreyth unfastened her cloak as the others continued their search. She spread the heavy grey-wool cloth on the ground and laid the wolf pelt upon it.
“It’s as if they did vanish, plucked from their very saddles as they rode.” Anbjorn turned his friend’s helm over and over in his hands.
“And from their very boots?” Thrunn glanced uneasily around.
“While leaving the horses untouched?” Inglar added. He had not joined in the searching, but stayed near Hreyth, watching her.
For those questions, none of them could offer answer.
Onto the silver lushness of the wolf’s fur, Hreyth cast a fistful of rune-marked bones from the bag at her belt. They landed with rattling clicks, some atop others, runes showing blood-red, soot-black, and gold. She studied them, the patterns of them, the arrangement they’d made, their meanings and messages.
Earth-Smoke-Man-Stone-Breath-Change-Theft-Danger.
She rose slowly, gaze sweeping over their surroundings. The peaceful river valley, green with new grass… its sloped sides curving up toward rugged, rocky peaks… the spring-blue sky overhead now gone pearly-pale… skeins of mist lingering in dark fissures and clefts, wafting in curls around the bases of the many tall and scattered standing stones…
The stones.
The standing stones, akin to those erected by the Old People of half-forgotten days, but these not towering huge and set in henges with altar-slabs and crosspiece lintels.
These, of smoother texture and lighter hue than the rocky peaks above or crag-ridges and dark boulders jutting from the earth; these were each at the most not much taller than a man, and of a random, straggling-line order… but for the cluster, almost a ring, near to where Anbjorn had found his war-brother’s helm…
The stones.
An apprehensive silence had fallen, creeping with the same soft, insidious stealth as the fog seeping from the shadows. When she spoke — “The stones!” — her words came louder than intended, a sharp cutting of that silence. Everyone started, some gasped, and several hands went to hilts.
“By Odin, woman!” Inglar thumped a fist against his chest, as if to correct his heart in its cadence. “Are you trying to shock us to death?”
She turned her gaze upon him, and judging by the way he blanched, whatever Olla’s man saw in her mismatched eyes made him regret his choice of words.
“Stanvaettir,” she said.
“What?” he asked, scowling at her.
Egil’s own eyes widened beneath his scar-creased brow. “Creatures of the deep earth.”
“Breath-stealers,” Hreyth said. “They draw out the life of men, transform them, and leave only stones in their place.”
Another silence fell, this one filled with dread and understanding. Even Inglar, hand still held over his heart, showed a reluctant, dawning comprehension.
“Are you telling us,” Anbjorn began at last, his voice low but shaking, “that these… these stones all around us… are… my earl, my war-brothers, my friends?”
Before she could reply, a whirring rain of arrows smote into their midst.
One struck Thrunn in the shoulder, piercing through his mail-coat. He shouted with mingled pain and surprise. Another nailed Inglar’s wrist to his torso; he fell back, uttering a strangled cry. A third grazed Valhild’s leg, slicing the leather and the skin beneath.
“Shields!” the big woman bellowed.
Egil raised his, stepping in front of Hreyth as another volley flew. Arrows thunked into heavy limewood or buried their iron heads in the grass.
Atli and Anbjorn raised their shields as well, overlapping their rounded edges, forming a line to either side of Valhild and Egil. Thrunn, swearing ferociously, ripped the arrow from his shoulder and joined them. Blood gushed from his wound, coursing over and dulling the shine of his mail and his bright silver arm-ring.
Blades sang from their scabbards. The nearest horses, no longer placid, whinnied and ran, stirring whorls and eddies in the low, rising ground-mist.
“Inglar?” called Valhild.
“Down but living,” Osig said, crouching beside the wounded man, then seizing his other wrist as he reached for the protruding arrow-shaft. “Don’t pull it! You’ll just die all the sooner.”
Inglar coughed. Red bubbles burst on his lips. He fumbled at an awkward angle with his left hand for a spear, unwilling to face death without a weapon in his grasp.
“Gunnleif’s yellow-dog bastards!” Atli peered through a gap in their small shield-wall. “Behind the ridge by that broken boulder… fifteen, maybe twenty.”
“Outnumbered and they have archers,” said Valhild. “The gods must have thought we needed more of a challenge.” She eyed Thrunn’s blood-soaked mail. “How’s your arm?”
He grimaced. “Still attached, and it’s only my left.” In his right hand he held a short-handled ax with a wide, sharp double-blade.
“They’ll be coming for us,” she said, after another flurry of arrows struck their shields.
“Let them come.”
“Then why aren’t they?” asked Anbjorn. “They’ve stopped shooting.”
“No sense wasting arrows on limewood,” Osig said.
“Come on, you ass-sniffing curs!” Atli shouted at their foes. “Fatherless bitch-whelps! Come and fight! Come and die!”
“They’re afraid,” Egil said.
“They should be,” said Thrunn.
“Not of us.”
“They should be!” he repeated.
“They suspect something,” Hreyth said. “They know something is wrong here.”
From behind the ridge came a man’s voice. “Drop your swords and surrender!”
“Fuck your sister!” Atli retorted.
“We want to talk!”
“We want to fight!”
Anbjorn nudged Atli with an elbow. “They might know what happened.”