The village was silent, held in frozen night. Only the drum still beat, an ominous reminder of time passing. Jessa led them to the wharves; there she crouched down and nodded out onto the lake.
“That’s our way off.”
“The ice!” Moongarm raised his eyebrows. “Ingenious. But will it bear our weight?”
“I don’t know, but it’s our only way off this island.”
“And Skapti?”
“We wait until they bring him, at the bog. We’ll see them coming. Then we attack.”
“Yes, but the horses!” Hakon was aghast. “We can’t leave them!”
There was silence. Each of them knew they could never get the horses out without rousing the entire village.
“It’s a heavy choice,” Brochael said grimly, “but Jessa’s right, this is the only way. I think we’re on foot from now on.”
They climbed down over the edge of the wharf to the timbers beneath. Jessa stepped off first, carefully. The dawn cold was bitter; her breath clouded and froze on her knotted scarves. The lake lay before her, a rigid, shimmering mirror, white under the crescent moon, with the long blue shadows of the buildings stretching across it.
The night was silent. Stars glittered, clear and hard.
As she put her toe on the ice she felt the coldness underfoot, expected the slab to tip, to crack, but although her growing weight made strange wheezing sounds deep under the surface, it stayed solid. She stepped out and stood still, her footsteps ringing.
“It’s thick.”
Carefully, testing every step, she walked out into the lake, the others slipping behind her. In the hard frost every step and creak sounded loud, every slither enormous. She found herself holding her breath, and let it out in a cloud of mist. Every moment she expected the crack—the darkness underneath to open and swallow her. And why not, because it was the darkness they were defying, the darkness that wanted Skapti.
You won’t get him, she thought. Looking back, she saw the others; Kari was light, and Hakon too. But Brochael was taking careful steps, as if he feared his own weight would bring him down. Silent and surefooted, Moongarm was a gray shape under the moon.
Halfway over, she heard voices. Lights flared on the causeway.
She crouched, hearing Hakon slither up beside her. “Brochael says hurry. They’re coming out.”
She nodded and crawled on, keeping on hands and knees now, until the plate of ice under her wet glove suddenly shifted, and she stopped. “It’s the edge.”
“Be careful, Jessa!”
They were already among the rushes on the edge of the bog. Here the ice thinned to a lace-fine fringe that crackled and splintered under her. Then her feet were in brown brackish water, knee-deep, the reeds high above her.
“Why doesn’t it freeze?” she breathed.
“I don’t know and I don’t want to know,” Brochael growled out of the dark. “Keep to the edge. It’ll be treacherous farther in.”
They waded through the ice-cold muck, working their way around to the causeway. Once Hakon’s foot went deep and he staggered; Moongarm hauled him out silently. Shadows among the reeds, they crouched and watched the torches approach from the village. The stink of stagnant rotting growth hung about them.
A small group were crossing the causeway.
“How many?” Brochael said.
“Four.”
Behind, well back, the villagers stood, as if they dared come no nearer.
“Where is he?”
“In front,” Moongarm murmured. “With the Speaker.”
She saw him then, his thin, upright figure, that lanky walk. They had taken his coat off; his shirt was open and about his neck was a great noose of hemp, knotted strangely. He was silent, maybe gagged. He was alert though, she thought. He was probably wondering where they were.
But Skapti knew exactly where they were. He also knew what was happening; as Brochael had guessed, he had heard of such things before. And as he stumbled on, pushed from behind and shivering with cold and fear, he tugged and twisted his bound wrists uselessly to red sores until the voice spoke quietly inside his mind.
“Get ready, Skapti. You weren’t afraid we would leave you?”
He grinned, unable to help it.
The voice had been Kari’s.
The Speaker and his prisoner and two torchbearers came right on into the swampy ground, the morass of clotted peat and moss squelching under them.
“Ready,” Brochael whispered.
Each of them had their weapons to hand; Hakon gripped his sword tight.
“Here’s your chance to name that,” Jessa breathed.
He wondered how she could joke; his own chest was tight with tension.
“I’ll take the Speaker,” Brochael said. “You two, the others. Jessa, get Skapti.” He looked at Kari. “You’ll have to deal with the rest—the people on the causeway. If they cross…”
“Leave them to me.” The ravens had come down; one was perched on his shoulder, gripping the dark cloth with its great talons.
“What will you do?”
“Keep them back.”
“Yes, but how?”
“Like this.”
As he said it the night seemed to crack open. The Speaker spun around as a white gate of searing flame leaped up to bar the causeway; it spat and sparked like lightning. People screamed.
“Now!” Brochael urged.
They leaped out, yelling, flinging the torchbearers aside, the flames falling and hissing out in the black water.
The Speaker cried out something in rage. Jessa saw him turn at her, but Hakon was there; he sliced the air with his sword between them and the shaman jerked back, stumbled, twisted away from Brochael’s ax. He fell, full length, floundering in the black ooze.
Jessa grabbed Skapti, sliced his bonds. “It’s us!”
He grinned. “Thought you’d abandoned me.”
“Not us.”
As she turned she thought the Speaker would be up, but he wasn’t; instead she saw the marsh was bubbling and churning around him, and a blackness seemed to rise and gather from it, covering him as he screamed and struggled, bending over him, a dark form. His voice choked, broke, bubbled. Half a cry hung endlessly on the silent air.
Skapti grabbed her arm. “Come on!”
As they fled, the sudden silence behind chilled them. Only Kari’s fire gate crackled under the moon, the people behind it watching, without a sound.
Along the road they raced, into the darkness, laden with packs and weapons, always looking back. Snow, deeper than before, slowed them, and then, just ahead, they heard the howl of wolves, a pack, hungry.
Jessa stopped dead, the others slamming into her.
“Get up the hill!” Moongarm yelled. “Leave these to me.” He flung his pack at Hakon and drew his sword.
“Not alone,” Brochael growled.
But the man was gone, transformed suddenly to shadow.
Kari turned away. “Let him go. Come on!”
Uphill they raced, to a stand of pines that rose in a dark line against the stars. Once there, they leaned against the trees, gasping for breath.
The rune gate still burned below, the searing light from it crackling above the lake. But Kari was looking elsewhere, at the wolves hurtling after them up the slope, at least ten low, misty shapes.
“Give me my sword!” Skapti yelled.
“You won’t need it.” Kari pointed. “Look down there.”
A gray shape sat waiting on the hillside. It too was a wolf, but larger than any Jessa had ever seen, and it sat as still as a stone under the stars. Its amber eyes glinted in the rune light.
The wolf pack saw it. They slowed, stopped, yelping.
Then one by one they slunk away from it, in terror.
Eighteen
The wolf is loose.
Miles away and hours later, huddled under an overhang of rock, the travelers watched the sun strengthen.
They were silent, breathless from the long scramble into the hills. No one wanted to ask the question; it was Hakon who finally couldn’t bear it anymore.