Stirred, the creature shook its head, rocked itself, shivered. It felt eager, and afraid. Something was there that burned with power.
But later, when the moon had slid under a great swelling of cloud, the thing moved down into the settlement. It prowled silently among the shadows, from house to house, drifting like a ghost by shuttered windows, the rattling doors of byres, to the very walls of the stone-built hall, where the grim dragon heads roared silently down upon it. All the windows were barred, the doors secure, a building of blank eyes, holding secrets. Here was the end of its long journey. But the hunted thing was safe, locked in here, untouchable.
Wrathful, the rune beast swayed upright. Its eyes glinted; moonlight touched its snow-pale hands. Then it turned, swift as thought, and crouched in the lee of the wall.
When the watchman came around the corner, he had no time even to scream.
Thirteen
Along the wide highroads the chiefs of the
clans came from far and near to see the foe’s footprints.
Jessa opened her eyes and lay stiff. Not again, she thought. But the hold was silent. Across the dark room the brazier threw a dim light into the rafters. She lay there a moment, trying to find the small noise that had woken her; then she turned over and curled up, comfortably warm.
Outside, something shuffled and slid in the wind.
She thought about Vidar. Tomorrow she would tell Kari all about it—about the thief in the inn and the man who had opened the door. As she remembered, the cold point of an invisible knife touched her throat. She rolled over angrily. Yes, Kari would be able to help. They could certainly try that house again.
Below the window something scraped along the wall. She thought of Wulfgar’s men, watching the fences and gateways, their swords sharp in the frost. Then she thought about Kari. He had grown, somehow. He was more silent, though he’d never said much, and there was a new aura about him, a hidden tingle of power, an invisible coat. It reminded her of something, and sleepily she searched caves and hollows for the memory until the shock of it made her open her eyes in the dark. Gudrun. Of course.
Then she sat up. For a moment she thought she had heard a low sound outside, almost a moan, an eerie murmur.
Pushing the bedclothes aside she went to the window and tugged open the shutter. Moonlight flooded her face; a cold wind blew her hair back, and putting out her head she looked down. The stone wall of the hold glittered with frost; at its foot a pool in the dark mud glinted.
No one was about.
The houses were dark masses of shadow, the sky overcast, dragging cloud over the moon. For a moment she waited there, listening, but the wind was too cold, and soon she latched the window, slammed the shutters, and leaped back into bed, shivering, her feet like ice. It took her a long time to get back to sleep.
In the morning she was halfway into her coat when the door thumped wide. Skapti called, “Jessa!” and was gone, racing along the wooden floorboards. Grabbing her boots she ran after him, into Kari’s room.
Brochael, bare chested and tousled with sleep, had the ax in his hands already. “What’s wrong?”
Hurtling in behind him, Jessa heard the skald say, “Your creature. It’s been here.”
Kari jumped down from the windowsill, the ravens rising outside.
“Not ours!” Brochael snapped.
“Listen!” Skapti’s hiss silenced him. “There are tracks, all over the hold. Big, spread prints. And one man is missing.”
Brochael flashed a glance at Kari. They all did.
He shook his pale hair quickly. “I don’t know anything.”
“We still need you.” Skapti turned. “Wulfgar’s going after it now, while the trail is fresh. He’s furious.”
Lacing up her boot, Jessa said, “I’m coming too.”
Brochael gave a quick snort and grabbed his shirt and coat. “There’s nothing to eat, I suppose?”
“No time.” Skapti was already halfway down the stairs.
Brochael scowled after him. “If I was as thin as a worn-out bowstring, I don’t suppose I’d care either!”
The courtyard was chaotic. Ponies were waiting, men were running, shouting. Wulfgar, on his black Skarnir horse, swung around and looked down at Kari. They could see how upset he was.
“Your warning was barely in time,” he snapped. “Look.”
But Jessa was already crouching over the prints in the mud. They were close under the wall, large and splayed, five toed. As Kari kneeled beside her and touched the spoor lightly, she whispered, “I think I heard it.”
He looked at her.
“In the night. I was half asleep. I heard a sort of … whimper.”
His colorless eyes looked through her for a second.
“Hunger,” he said.
“What?”
“Hunger, Jessa.”
Puzzled, she wondered if he was talking about himself, or Brochael, or … but there was no time to ask. Wulfgar was bitterly impatient, and when they were all on horseback, he led them out at a gallop, their hooves ringing on the cobbled track.
The morning was cold; the grass and mud stiff with frost. The prints were set hard, leading into the marshy land behind the hold, but once in there the horses sank fetlock-deep into the soft mud, stumbling over tussocks of wiry grass. Finding the trail here was impossible, the riders spread out in a wide fan and moved quickly up to firmer ground, the dogs running and snuffling in all directions.
Jessa stayed close to Kari, but neither of them spoke. He was unused to riding, but the pony seemed to understand him; Jessa noticed how it moved and paused when he wanted it to, without rein or spur.
A shout from the left brought them all galloping over; one of the men pointed to the prints. Half full of water, the marks were still soft, recent. Something heavy had been dragged here; the grass was flattened, its stems broken, the mud scored smooth.
Brochael leaped down and tugged something from the mud. He wiped it on his sleeve and saw it was a sword hilt, snapped clean in half. There were dark stains on the leather grip.
Grimly Wulfgar stared down at it. Then he looked ahead. Before them the ground ran uphill to the edges of the forest; boulder-littered turf with a small stream leaping down over the stones.
“Up there.”
The dogs slithered and slunk around the rocks. Jessa knew they were behaving strangely. Most of them would have been racing into the wood by now, barking and yelping.
“They’re scared,” she said to Brochael.
He leaned over and looked at them. “You’re right. They’ve got the scent and they don’t like it.”
The trail led high into the hills, winding along the bank of the stream. At the end of the valley they climbed higher, and all the way up, the horses were nervous.
At the fringe of a dark rank of trees they stopped.
“Spread out,” Wulfgar ordered. “But stay within sight of those on either side.”
“We’ll just drive it out ahead of us,” Vidar muttered, peering into the green dimness.
“Maybe. But I don’t want to corner it. There aren’t enough of us here for that. It’s Halldor we need to find.”
He knew, they all knew, that the man was dead. No one said it. Anger and a cold fear hung over them all, subduing the dogs, unnerving the horses. Riding close to Brochael, Jessa moved her horse among the narrow, silvery trunks of birch, hearing the unnatural silence of the wood, no breeze, no birdsong.
They rode slowly, the horses crushing the new shoots of bracken, tall bare stems curled at the top like shepherds’ crooks, cracking the winter’s fallen twigs. The smell of fungi and cold damp soil rose among the fresh growth; above, the leafless trees let gray light filter down.
On each side of her, riders moved: Skapti far off to the left, and nearer, on the right, Brochael, and beyond him Kari. The big man was keeping them both close to him, and that was wise, Jessa thought, because if the creature came roaring out of the wood, they’d need him and his ax. Her fingers tightened as she glanced nervously around. The ground was uneven. Now the trees were mixed; spruce and fir massed in heavy banks. The light became gloomier, greener. She lost sight of Skapti and called out to him in alarm.