Hreyth could have picked up Anbjorn’s shield and joined them, for what little good it might have done. Instead, she ran for her cloak through the thickening mist. It swirled about her legs, made her mail-coat glisten silver, and cooled — chilled! — her flesh.
“I’ll take your heads back to Gunnleif in a bag,” snarled Ulfvir. “We’ll set them in a row and piss on them in turn.”
“You’ll have to come get them,” Valhild replied.
“With pleasure,” he said. Yet he and his men hung back, hesitant to again throw themselves against the formidable strength of Valhild’s and Egil’s swords.
“Hreyth?” Egil spoke with low urgency.
“I’m here.”
For a terrible moment, she felt the fog congeal dense and heavy against her skin, weighing on her limbs like damp wool, and she thought she was too late. But another step brought her into the clearness. She bent and seized the edges of the wolf-pelt, scooping its contents into a bundle as best she could with one hand.
“What’s happened to the sun?” someone asked, one of Gunnleif’s men, anxious.
“Never mind the sun,” Ulfvir told him. “Kill them, or I’ll bring your heads back to Gunnleif!” He raised his sword, and howled. “Kill them!”
As they howled in return, emboldening their spirits to renew battle, Hreyth ran back to the close cluster of her companions. She let go an edge of the wolf-pelt, casting the rune-marked bones in an arc at their feet and hoping it would be enough.
Then Egil swept her behind him, and their small shield-wall braced for the overwhelming charge.
The overwhelming charge did not come. It ended in a dark whorl of mist, a chill breeze, a shiver, and a sudden hush.
Hreyth, who had closed her eyes in wincing anticipation, opened them. Valhild cautiously lowered her shield. The others did likewise.
At their feet lay the rune-marked bones. Around them, already, the mist was lifting, dispersing, giving way again to mild spring sun and clear blue sky.
In front of them, mere paces from their line, several tall grey shapes jutted from the earth at canted, slanted angles. By some, shields painted half yellow and half black had fallen. By some, swords and spears.
Crumpled at the base of the nearest was a dire-hound’s shaggy pelt, knotted at the forepaws.
No one spoke. Their throats worked as they swallowed, their mouths faltered at forming words, but no one spoke.
The dead, those slain in the battle, were as they had been. Unaffected. So too were the horses, nosing in the grass. Atli barely clung to life, and Anbjorn was little better.
Of Ulfvir, and his men…
Only stones left in their place.
Valhild found her voice first, looking at Hreyth. “Your runes protected us?”
“I hoped they might.”
A nod, and the firm squeeze of Valhild’s big hand on Hreyth’s mail-clad shoulder, conveyed her thanks. Then she stepped toward the group of stones, though made no move yet to touch.
“Wh-what happened to them?” stammered Thrunn.
“The stanvaettir stole their breath,” Egil said.
“Not just stanvaettir,” Hreyth said. “Another power.”
“And it did this?” Valhild indicated the valley. “All this?”
“With each theft, growing stronger. Growing hungrier, more ravenous.”
“How do we kill it?”
“Kill it?” Thrunn gaped. “How?”
“That’s what I’m asking,” she told him. “Can it be killed?”
“I don’t know,” Hreyth said. “Perhaps.”
“If not?”
“If not,” said Egil, “this valley won’t contain it long.”
Hreyth thought of farm-steads and villages… of Jorfyn’s war-camp and Gunnleif’s forces at the town — two armies, and more men arriving every day in answer to the summons of their earls.
“It emerged from those fissures in the rock, and that broken boulder’s cleft,” she said. “There must be something under us, underneath the ground. A cavern, pit, or tunnel.”
“A lair,” said Valhild with a grim smile.
“My runes stopped it once. If I can find where it came from, I might be able to block its way and trap it in the earth.”
The grim smile widened. “Well then, what are we waiting for? It’s gorged itself and gone to rest; let’s finish this before it wakes again.”
Egil shook his head. “We cannot all go. We have injured men.”
“And the king must be warned,” Hreyth said. “Gunnleif, too, for that matter; they’ll have greater worries if this evil descends.”
“You heard them,” Valhild said to Thrunn. “Get horses. Take our wounded, and the bodies of our dead, and ride for Langenvik.”
Egil bound Hreyth’s arm with two sticks, and strips cut from her cloak. “You’re hurt,” he said, tying more of the grey cloth into a sling. “Are you certain?”
The pain was considerable. It gnawed the way the wicked squirrel Ratatoskr gnawed the bark of Yggdrasil as he ran up and down its great ash trunk, but she could not let it dissuade her.
“I work the runes. It must be done.”
Valhild approached, settling her helm securely in place. “Thrunn’s off,” she said. “Gods willing, Anbjorn and Atli survive the journey, and the tale be believed when they get there.”
“Gods willing, we survive our journey as well.” Egil donned his own helm and helped Hreyth to her feet.
“What a tale we’ll have to tell if we do!” Valhild clapped him on the back. “Over mead-bowls in the king’s feasting-hall! Hailed as heroes, shining with silver and gift-given gold, our names long remembered in saga and song.”
“And if we don’t survive?” asked Hreyth, clutching her bag of rune-marked bones in her sling-bound hand.
The big woman laughed. “Then I trust you’ll put forth a good word to the All-Wise All-Father for us, so that even if we do not fall in battle, we’ll still tell our tale over mead-bowls in his feasting-hall!”
They’d left their three horses loosely tethered with some that had belonged to Ulfvir and his men, and proceeded to the rocky ridge from behind which the first hail of arrows had come… and from fissures in which Hreyth had noticed the curling, coiling, issuing mists. The broken boulder reared there, cracked nearly in half to reveal a narrow crevice running throat-like into the earth.
Its wound looked recent, perhaps frost-made over the past winter, perhaps sundered by tremor-quakes as Ymir stirred in his giant-god sleep. Scree and shards gritted underfoot at each step, stone chips and flecks sifting loose as they passed.
“I go first,” Egil said in a tone brooking no argument.
Hreyth followed him, and Valhild brought up the rear. The way was narrow indeed and grew narrower still, until Valhild could not even have drawn her great blade. Her shoulders and Egil’s scraped the rough passage walls. The air was cool, heavy with moisture. Thin shafts through the rock let in weak threads of sunlight; otherwise, they went in a deepening darkness.
Until Hreyth, with one of her mismatched eyes, again glimpsed the waxing and waning strange glow, etching lines not unlike runes themselves in the misty shadows opening ahead.
Here was a roundish cave-chamber of tapering formations, joined columns, and shallow ridge-lipped pools where drips plinked and rippled. At the heart of it brimmed a well — a well rich with power, seidr-magic.
This, yes, this was the source of it. This cousin to Mimir’s Well, where Odin had made sacrifice in exchange for knowledge. This well, which drank rather than quenched, which took rather than gave, which stole and consumed rather than bestowed.