“I heard nothing,” the old man began, but Brochael waved him silent.
At the window Skapti eased back a corner of the shutter. It was getting dark outside. The trees were black shadows.
“Can’t see anything.”
“They’re out there,” Kari muttered. “A lot of them.”
In the silence, they heard a strange, quiet rattle and caw from the roof. “Send the birds off,” Brochael snapped. “They may follow.” He turned to Asgrim. “Is there a back door?”
“They’ll see you.”
“We’ve no choice.”
“He could hide us,” Thorkil put in.
“And have that witch torment me for it?”
Skapti laughed. “No hero this, is he? There’ll be no songs about Asgrim, I can see that.”
With a sliver of steel Brochael drew a long knife. “Decide now. And be quick.”
“No.” Wulfgar caught his arm and forced it down. “No. Let him choose freely. I’ll not raise my hand against my host.”
For a moment Brochael glared at him. Then he nodded, and put the knife away. “As you say. But you may have doomed us all.”
“I don’t think so.” Wulfgar turned to the Dwarf. His voice was slow, almost lazy. “Now. Where’s this loyalty to the Wulfings that you boast of?”
The old man scratched his beard and laughed ruefully. “It’s over here, lord, behind this wall.” He led them through the dark room into the cow byre next door, its floor covered with filthy straw and smelling of rats. One wall was boarded with wood; he pulled a plank away to show a large space behind. “My bolt hole. I’ve used it myself before now. You may not all fit.”
Brochael pushed Kari in without a word, and then Jessa. Skapti followed, folding himself up, and then Thorkil and Wulfgar. When Brochael squeezed in too, there was barely room. Hurriedly Asgrim put the plank back; they heard him fling straw against it.
There was a loud thump on the outer door. Then it burst open. Voices came through, loud and threatening.
“Be ready,” Brochael whispered. “We may have to take them by surprise.”
Jessa heard knives drawn in the darkness. Useless, she thought. If he betrays us here, we’re finished. Some light filtered through a knothole in the wood. Brochael leaned forward and blocked it, putting his eye to the hole. “Six … seven,” he mouthed. “More outside.”
“Outlaws,” they heard a voice saying. “Traitors to the Jarl.”
“I’ve not seen them.” Asgrim’s voice sounded near; in the doorway to the byre. “And why should they come here?”
“They’d need food.”
“I don’t have enough for myself, master, without giving to passersby.”
“I see. And so what are these?”
Brochael jerked back from the hole.
“What is it?” Jessa asked. She saw him turn his head in the dimness.
“We left the clothes by the fire,” he breathed. “They’ve found them.”
Eighteen
After nightfall I hurried back,
But the warriors were all awake.
Lights were burning, blazing torches,
So false proved the path.
Asgrim didn’t hesitate. “All right. I stole them.”
“Where from?”
“Out near the river. Behind some rocks.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
They heard the Dwarf laugh. “I’m a poor man, master. That’s good cloth—well, some of it is. Your quarry must have whipped off their wet clothes and dressed in dry, then sped off and left these. They’ll be halfway up the pass by now.”
There was a pause. He doesn’t believe it, Jessa thought.
Then they heard Asgrim yelp in pain. “You’re a poor liar,” the warrior growled. “They’ve been here, haven’t they? Any idea what she’ll do to you for this? I believe the silver mines beyond Ironwood always need men.”
“Believe me,” the Dwarf gasped, “I can imagine. But no outlaws have been here, I can say that for a truth.”
“Back!” Brochael muttered. “They’re coming in.”
“Search this!” The leader’s voice was so near it made Jessa jump. “All of it. Burn the place if you have to.” The noise of smashing wood and flung furniture made Wulfgar grit his teeth.
“We can’t let them do this.”
“I think,” the skald remarked drily, “I can let them, if I force myself.”
The noise came nearer. Something began to thump the panels of their hiding place. Jessa bit her lip. No one breathed. The hand slithered along the wood, feeling. Brochael raised his ax; it glinted in the dimness.
But before he could move, there was a sudden commotion and yells from outside. A breathless voice rang in the byre.
“The birds! They’re up over the pass!”
Scuffles, the slam of a door, running footsteps. Then silence.
Brochael moved first. “Now,” he growled. He kicked down the panel with one blow and was out, pulling the others after him. A shuffle in the next room made Wulfgar turn, but it was only the old man, his head around the door.
“Hurry,” he said. “They may be back.”
Wulfgar gripped his hand. “I don’t forget my promises.”
The small man grinned. “You’ll probably be dead. And I’ll get no horses from her, either.”
Wulfgar thumped his arm and was gone. As the others passed, Asgrim spoke to Kari. “She must fear you. You must be the one who can defeat her.”
Kari turned bleakly. “What about my fear of her?” he said.
Then Brochael pushed him out. “Will you be safe, old man?”
“Safer than you.”
Brochael nodded ruefully. “There may be songs about you, after all,” he said. Then he raced after the others.
They ran through the trees until the ground began to slope upward. Behind a pile of boulders Brochael stopped them. He crouched, one great arm around Thorkil’s shoulder. “Listen. We go silent and we go swift. They’re ahead of us, and will have men watching every path. They’ll also be waiting at the pass, but there’s no other way over, and we must take it. Be wary; keep your eyes open.”
They nodded.
“No one is to carry anything. Throw those empty packs in here.” He pulled some bushes apart and they tossed in the bags, the springy growth swishing back as he let it go. “Now. Take care.”
They climbed slowly, following the course of a narrow rocky stream that tumbled down the slope into the river. It cut deep into the peaty soil; thick tangles of gorse and bramble sprawled across it. They went carefully in the gathering darkness, often on hands and knees, keeping their heads low, below the level of the bank, splashing through the brown tumbling water chock-full of rocks. When the stream became smaller and dwindled to a trickle things were more difficult. This high up, the ground was open; only boulders and the shadows of stunted trees offered cover. They crawled in the dark over the boggy ground, flattening at any sound, until Jessa’s clothes were wet and her nostrils full of the smells of the mosses and the tiny creeping plants, the tussocky grass and the sundew that clung to her hair.
As the mountainside rose and became rockier, they began to clamber among the loose boulders that dislodged and tumbled underfoot, and scree that slid treacherously. Once, the skald nearly fell, and only Thorkil’s quick grip kept him up. The wind became colder, the air damp with thin rain. There were few signs of Gudrun’s men. Wulfgar thought they had crossed the mountains already, but Brochael just grunted. Jessa knew he was worried about the pass, that the danger would be up there, in the narrowest place.
He was right.
As midnight crept on and the sky turned black, they saw up ahead of them in the rainy air the red sparks of fires, the flickering shadows of watchers.
Finally, crouching behind a tower of rock, they saw the pass. It was a very narrow place, where the path dwindled to a thread between two pinnacles of the mountain, sheer and jagged. In the very middle of the path a fire had been lit; men sat around it, talking, the edges of their faces red in the flame light. Beyond, in the darkness, the path must run on, over the lip of the hill, down and down, into the flat marshy country of the Jarlshold.