A Mankind Witch, page 33
"In the meanwhile, I think the need to survive is the immediate problem," Cair pointed downslope. "We're not unlooked for, it would seem."
Looking down the hill, they could see a party of warriors who were pointing back up at them, and grabbing for weapons and rushing for horses.
"Either we're after Yule, or they're not planning to pay much attention to the truce," said Erik, wishing for armor, a good lance, and his Algonquin war-hatchet instead of a stolen sword that he didn't like the balance of. There were at least twenty warriors down there—and one was already on a horse, heading away, obviously a messenger going to bear news to someone, probably Vortenbras.
Manfred grunted sourly. "So much for a quiet arrival."
"Well," said Cair. "I doubt if we could have sneaked in. It would seem the dwarves tipped someone off about our coming."
Erik shook his head. "Not likely. Think about it, Cair. They'd have been up here, instead of camped down there if they'd known for sure. Most probable thing is that these were sentries. Bifröst joins to this world at certain known places. Mostly mountains."
Cair nodded. "So. I think we run?"
"Not very fast in this snow," said Erik. "The only clear trail is where they're coming up—and look at how they're sliding."
Signy snorted. "They're Vortenbras's foreigners. No local would try coming up an ice flume. Look." She pointed at the cut logs stacked off to their left. "The loggers come up here in winter and send the logs down the gully to the lake. In summer the logs would have to be dragged out—a long way around. So the loggers come up with barrels of water when it starts to freeze at night, and pour the water down the gully. It freezes and the logs slide all the way down."
Cair had already dismounted. Erik held his hand over his eyes. "Oh no!"
Manfred jumped down grinning. "Hell, why not? Even if it isn't after Yule if someone is stupid enough to get in the way of a log, that's their problem. That should even the odds a bit. And there doesn't seem to be anywhere to run to, except the bare patch on the top of the mountain. There simply isn't enough forest here to hide in. Let them get in the way at their peril."
"Ah," said Cair. "But what if we simply got out of their way, instead of them getting out of ours, in the same way? Lift that one so that we can lash it onto this one."
"I said 'Oh no!' because I recognize that evil look in his eyes," said Erik. "Can't you see what he's planning?"
Manfred paused in what he was doing. "Are you proposing to sled down on them, Cair?"
Cair nodded. "Down and past. There seem to be some horses in their encampment."
"Do you have any idea," asked Erik, "just how fast and how dangerous a sled like that could be? Sliding down an ice chute?"
"More dangerous than staying here?" said Cair, sardonically. "My head and the princess's are already forfeit. You two they might spare. Stay if you choose."
"He's got us out so far, Erik," said Manfred, hefting the logs with Cair. "Give us a hand."
"It's how close-run his crazy ideas have been that is worrying me. There are absolutely no explosives involved here, are there, Cair?"
"I have a few glass grenades saved for emergencies," admitted Cair. "This could become one if we don't get away."
Erik dismounted. "Given that sort of choice, an ice log flume is the safer option," he said wryly.
The warriors had about three hundred and fifty yards of snow to struggle through, and the leaders were down to the last fifty when Cair's latest mad invention was ready. Three logs were lashed together, the lead edge coarsely chopped into an upward-facing point. There were several leashes or reins to cling to.
They hauled it to the lip, just a few cubits away from the stack. And heaved it over. It didn't instantly begin sliding, but bogged down in the fresh snow. "We'll have to run with it. Get it moving," yelled Manfred, grabbing a leash and hauling, while below them the warriors attempted to urge their horses forward.
Cair's contraption began to slide. Reluctantly at first, and then with increasing pace.
"On, everybody!" Manfred shouted.
They dived for the logs, clinging, as the makeshift sled bucked and bounced over small obstacles, gathering speed, building momentum.
Fortunately—for them—the warriors had moved out of the gully a long time back and had been making their way up the sides of it.
The log sled passed them traveling faster than a crossbow bolt, in a shower of fresh snow and screaming. Erik knew he was but one of the screamers. The sled leapt like a salmon and did not quite flip over. And hurtled onward. Surely no mortal was intended to go this fast—blinded by snow—and live!
Yet they did . . .
The sled slowed. And, wiping the snow from his eyes, Erik realized that Cair's crazy idea had had several unexpected consequences. The first one was that they had absolutely no chance of taking horses from their enemy's camp without a long trip back. The second was that if one unladen log was intended to reach the lake, three logs, plus the weight of four humans would go farther. A lot farther. The sled was still slithering along and the far side of the frozen lake was now looming, coming up relatively fast. The occupants of the small manor on the far side of the lake were disappearing into the trees as fast as their legs could carry them.
As a getaway device, the only two faults Erik could see were that it had carried them far from horses—and affected Manfred and Cair's brains.
"That has to be the greatest experience of a lifetime! A sport of kings!" said Manfred cheerfully. "I wonder if they'd mind if we went up and did it again?"
Cair patted the sled proudly. "And imagine if we could harness that speed. A ship moving that fast to Vinland! Why, we were moving faster than a gazelle . . . faster than a leopard, even."
"Why don't you just get them to fire you out of a cannon?" asked Erik, unclenching his hands from the makeshift leash. And then, seeing the look in Cair's eyes, he hastily said: "No. Forget I even mentioned the idea. Not that I'd mind firing you out of a forty-eight-pound bombard, but you would probably find some perfectly good reason for us all to join you. Now come on. Let's see if we can find some horses before we get joined by that bunch of warriors."
They didn't find enough horses. But they did at least find two sturdy horses and a sleigh. "If we live through this lot, we'll pay them for it," said Manfred. "Now let's get out of here before the owners get back, or those warriors get here."
"I wonder how something like this would do going down the ice flume?" said Cair speculatively.
Erik closed his eyes in horror.
* * *
"They'll be able to track us easy enough," said Cair, looking back.
"Not for long," said Signy, smiling. Being back in Telemark made her feel . . . complete. As if she'd been missing something and had not known it was gone all these years, but now it was back. Perhaps it had been the thrall bracelets. Perhaps it was knowing that she was able, and valued. Perhaps it was both. But the crisp cold air was as heady as wine. She felt ready, right now, to challenge the entire world, let alone her half-brother. They swung onto a sled trail cut with the runners of many other travelers. "It's the main road to Kingshall," she said cheerfully.
"Uh. We might want to go a little cautiously," said Erik.
"We are still before Joulu—yule as you say it," said Signy. "The decorations are still up on that manor door. No good housewife would leave them there after the holy night."
"There are occasional bad housewives," said Manfred. "And a bit of caution costs nothing. I wouldn't be in the least surprised, Princess, if there were orders to kill you on sight. I'd like to avoid that. Erik will doubtless insist on returning this equipage, and cleaning blood off them is such a job."
Signy hadn't come to terms with anyone wanting to kill her. It just seemed impossible to accept that her old life hadn't belonged to someone else. "I suppose you're right, " she admitted. "Well, what do we do now?"
"Find a spot to lie low and send a scout out," said Erik. "Me, I think. I could pass for a local." He looked sardonically at Cair. "So long as I wasn't pretending to be a thrall, that is."
Cair chuckled. "A local franklin. Long on pride, even if short a few pence in the pouch."
"Describes the Clann Hakkonsen perfectly," admitted Erik. "Now, all we need is a place to lie low."
"I know just the place. It was where the man and his sheep were murdered by the monster in the fall," said Signy.
"Just our sort of place!" said Manfred. "Maybe it has a few trolls, too. Or kobolds . . . Lovely, peaceful part of the world, this!"
"It'll mean that no one goes near it now," Signy said, as sternly as possible. "I wouldn't like to spend a night there myself. And Erik has put me in mind of something, Cair. You'd better give me that sword and my knife again. It is bad enough that I am in trouble, without someone hanging my thrall for carrying edged steel."
* * *
Cair couldn't say that it felt good to unbuckle the sword. It made him feel naked. But in an odd way she was quite right. His thrall brand was quite visible. A thrall might easily be punished for no good reason. But killing one was wasteful. And, while he might be a better swordsman than most, he knew that his deadliest weapon was his mind. With that and his hands free he might just achieve a lot more than he could have by relying on the sword as his first option. The sword was the choice of those who could not think.
He handed back her knife with a little more reluctance. "Be careful with the blade, Princess. Whatever you do, don't touch it or eat with it."
"Why?" she asked, looking at it.
"There is crushed arsenic stuck to it with a mixture of flour and water," admitted Cair.
Erik turned to Manfred. "I said he looked like an assassin!"
Cair acknowledged the hit. "I am an exemplary one, giving away the tricks of the trade. I used arsenic to clarify the glass, and I thought that having a few extra surprises in store never hurt," said Cair with a laugh, as they took the sled off the main trail into new snow and off toward the abandoned bonder's hut.
Now they had shelter—and two horses, and a sled, but they had no other tack. Erik tied off the traces, making himself reins, but he would have to ride bareback. That in itself was no problem to Erik, but it would make him stand out.
The other problem was food. But after Erik had ridden out, Cair found the dead bonder's apple barrel. Manfred munched as they sat and watched for trouble. "You couldn't find his ale barrel, too, could you?" asked Manfred cheerfully. "Not that these aren't good apples. Just that they'd be better as cider."
Cair had to sympathize a little with Erik, trying to mentor Manfred.
Erik was a long time in returning. But eventually he came. "Our timing is good and bad—it's Joulu—Yule tomorrow. It's bad, because if we'd been faster we might even have got into Kingshall. But it looks like Vortenbras has every warrior he can find guarding Kingshall and the Odinshof. Rumor is flying. I even had a chat with another franklin. Signy, you are the Hag of Jarnvid, by the way. You descended from the mountain on a snow snake that killed a hundred warriors this morning. You are coming to disrupt the Yule celebrations and thus destroy Telemark forever. You and I, Manfred, are evil fylgjur, not truce-protected men." He pointed at Cair. "He is a Svartalfar and evil to the core. The warriors have orders to kill us all first and ask questions later."
"But . . . we never killed anyone!" protested Signy.
"When did the truth ever get allowed to spoil a good story?" asked Erik with a shrug. "Kingshall is shut siege-tight, and the rest of the knights are trapped inside it."
Signy bit her lip. "At a guess," she said, "after the ceremonies in the Odinshof, Vortenbras will kill your men. If there is no arm-ring, the oath will not be renewed."
"Then we'll just have to get there before these ceremonies are over, won't we?" said Manfred.
Cair realized that they were all staring at him.
"Me?"
"You. Even if it means putting up with your explosives," said Erik.
"I don't have much left. But why me?" Cair found this amusing. They were all capable people in their own right, after all. And up until very recently they'd regarded him with some suspicion. He had to admit they had justification for that.
Erik found it smile worthy, too. "Because doing the impossible, or at least improbable, is your sort of trick."
Cair shrugged. "I just look at things slightly differently."
"Well, look at this one differently then," Manfred said firmly. "I'm open to suggestions, Cair—even including explosions, as Erik said. I've men I owe loyalty to, as well as my duty to my uncle and the people of the Empire."
* * *
Erik, after working with Cair, had found he could read when the corsair was dreaming up something particularly fiendish. Cair's eyes took on a lazy half-lidded look. And when he started to smile it was a good time for wise men to go elsewhere.
He was smiling now. "Tell me about this ceremony, Princess. It involves a new fire being lit in the temple, doesn't it?"
Chapter 43
A snowy vidda, Telemark
Conditions were not ideal for raising a draug. Moonless nights and thunderstorms were the best. And the time—so close to Joulu when ghosts, disir, and draugar walked anyway—gave them far too much liberty. But Bakrauf did not have the latitude to choose her times. She needed to find Signy and her companions, and find them now. So she had raised him up, hoping that the cold had kept good people indoors.
The troll-wife looked at the draug with vast distaste. It was not only that burial in the bog had not been kind to King Olaf. She could endure the sight of his peat-stained visage with equanimity, if not pleasure. He'd held out against her spells far longer than any mortal ought to. It was what he had said that had angered her. The constrained dead do not lie. Some may take a positive pleasure in telling the truth. They could, she knew, be selective about which truths they told.
"She can hold draupnir without pain. It is her birthright. She can set its bounds."
"You didn't tell me that," said Bakrauf, accusingly.
King Olaf's chest gurgled swamp water. "You didn't ask. She is of my blood. He," the draug gestured at the hulking monster that was her son, "is not. I know that now. You could fool me when I was alive. Not anymore. She will avenge me, Bakrauf. She will cleanse your filth off our clan's land. She will undo the shame I have brought on my house with that." He pointed to her son.
Too late she raised a hand to try to stop her son hitting the draug. His claws tore into its face and throat.
That was what it had wanted. That would give the dead king a way to deny her the information she needed. Curse it. And curse his stupidity! It was a corpse, and could feel no pain. But now he had seen to it that it could not speak either. It would take much tedious sewing to have it fit to use again. And she did not have the time.
Instead, she must muster her forces around the arm-ring. They only needed a little more time and the oaths sworn on it would be gone like last night's dinner.
She got to her feet. As for its prophecies: draugar could only know what the earth they lay in knew, and what the dead knew. They did not know the future. At Joulu the truce-oath would be gone. Each of the surviving Christian knights could be sacrificed. The blood-eagles would be pleasing to Odin.
"Come," she said. "We still hold the key. They must come to us, and then we can deal with her."
"And the thrall," said her son grimly.
She ground her big square teeth. "Definitely. Especially the thrall that did so much damage to my castle. I want him maimed, like the smith Völund. His dying must be a long, slow, and shameful thing."
"If I catch him it will be so, indeed," said the great white monster.
Chapter 44
Telemark
Deep inside Telemark, Fleet Captain Lars McAllin of Vinland's dogsled teams surged ahead, scouting. The horse-drawn sleds were slower. McAllin swore by those dogsleds and those small bombards of his, but Francesca liked having the solid Danish soldiery in their sleds along as well. Several of them had volunteered—with remarkably little persuasion—to serve as confreres with the Knights of the Holy Trinity. It appeared that the Ritters had impressed while in Copenhagen. And the fact that they were under the command of a young Pole, not a Prussian, had helped still more. As long as the vile weather held off, the expeditionary force would be a surprise visitor to Kingshall. Foolish penmanship in that invitation from King Vortenbras gave them at least a semilegitimate reason to be there. If it proved less than acceptable, then Francesca knew that they had enough force to race through anything but serious opposition.
One of the Danes came back to her sleigh—the tip of her nose protruded from a fur mountain.
"Bad news, I'm afraid, milady," he said apologetically. "The lake hasn't frozen hard enough to cross it, as we expected. It'll mean going back a bit to where we can definitely cross."
"And that means a further delay. You do know that we're racing against time here," said Francesca worriedly.
"Yes, milady. You've said." The Dane smiled ruefully. "We should never have taken directions from that one-eyed man, but he seemed trustworthy. He said that this would be shorter."
Francesca sighed. "Well, we just have to do what must be done then. I hope we're not going to be too late."
"We'll do our best, milady," said the Dane.
Chapter 45
Kingshall
Kingshall and the Odinshof were surrounded by a triple ring of warriors. Nothing was going in and nothing coming out. But this was Joulu. One thing had to pass through. The Joulu log must be kindled with needfire and fragments of the old log. The priests carried the huge oak log, garlanded with green swags, in through the barrier. And the warriors stood respectfully aside, allowing the priests clad in their wolf skins passage toward the Odinshof. Without the kindling of the fire on the Joulu log there would be no fertility for the fields, no protections against harm.
All across Europe variations of the same ancient pagan Yule ritual, sometimes with a little Christian top-dressing, were taking place.
