A Mankind Witch (43 page)

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."

* * *j

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?"

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.

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.

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.

Nobody would have dreamed of stopping it. Not for anything.

"It's sacrilege!" Signy had protested, when Cair had pointed this out.

"Why?" asked Manfred, grinning. "As far as I can work out, your corsair doesn't plan to blow up the log, or stop it getting to the temple. All he wants to do is to join in the hard labor of carrying the thing. You'd think they'd be grateful. And to be honest, Princess, none of us are of your faith, and so it is not sacrilege to us. And I need to get into that temple. Erik and I are going whether you do or not. I've helped to carry Yule logs in Carnac. No gods flung lightning bolts at me."

She looked at him, amazed. "You have? But you're Christians!"

"It's part of a pre-Christian tradition that has endured," explained Erik. "It still happens all over the place."

"But then you must know that no woman could do that!" She colored. "It's . . . it's men's work to carry Odin's holy log."

Manfred, of course, caught on quickest. He gave a shout of laughter. Patted Signy, with a great deal too much familiarity, thought Cair. "Don't worry, my dear. I'm sure if I were Odin I'd
insist
on female log-carriers."

Erik joined Signy in blushing. "I hadn't realized the symbolism. They scatter the ashes over the fields, don't they? You can just pretend to be carrying. We'll put you opposite Manfred. Let him do all the work."

Cair was the only one who had kept a straight face. "Princess, what would be better? To wait here, and be hunted at their leisure, or to go and beard them in their lair?"

Signy lifted her chin. "The latter of course, but can't we do it in a more . . . some other way? It . . . it doesn't seem honorable."

"And to allow Vortenbras to succeed is honorable?" asked Cair. "We can try an open charge, but that would just end up with us all dead. Or we can join the priests at dusk. Who counts priests? They're like flies on a corpse."

"But surely they'll notice us joining them?" said Erik, ever pragmatic.

"There are wolf skins here," said Cair. "Not very well tanned by the smell of them, but then that's just too bad. We can disguise ourselves—there is not much more to Odin's priests' garb that we can't deal with in the twilight. I will arrange a little distraction and then we can join the procession."