Troll Blood (32 page)

B
y dusk the next day, the war party had covered half the distance to the shore. Sinumkw called a halt in an open glade, a tilted clearing on a hill shoulder, facing east toward the sea. A wind sharp as a skinning knife sliced between the trees, ruffling the black fur of pines and spruce, moaning through the skeletal arms of oaks, chestnuts, and maples.

Peer looked at the war band. Nearly fifty men had set out from the village for the two-day walk to the shore. All wore red on their faces. All were wrapped in thick clothes against the cold: double layers of beaver robes, long leggings, and hide boots. All moved quickly and easily over the snow on wide, flat snowshoes that they tied to their feet.

“There’s no shelter here,” he said in a low voice to Ottar. Ottar had insisted on coming. The young men treated him as
a favored little brother with a right to be here.

“There soon will be,” said Ottar confidently. “Like this!” He kicked off one of his snowshoes and started using it as a shovel to scoop out a hollow from the snow. Kwimu and Peer joined in, flinging out more and more snow to make a hole four feet deep and seven or eight feet across. All the men were digging shelters. They broke branches from the fir trees and threw them in to layer the bottoms of the holes with a springy crisscross. Larger boughs partly roofed the shelters. And soon small fires were spiraling upward.

The shelter had a cozy feel, like a snow nest. The wind sped by overhead but couldn’t reach them. Peer leaned back on the branches, fed Loki a strip of dried meat, and, chewing on one himself, stretched out his feet to the fire.

While the other young men chatted, checking their bows, axes, and clubs, Peer worried about his role tomorrow. To try and get Hilde out before the fighting started, he’d volunteered to carry Sinumkw’s declaration of war. Anything could happen in an attack. Sinumkw had agreed not to harm the girls, but Hilde would certainly defend herself, and then what? It gave him a chance to explain to her what was going on. But it meant walking openly into the house and talking to everyone.

Grimly he foresaw how his news would be received.
Even if Harald doesn’t skewer me straight off, Gunnar won’t let the girls leave. He won’t trust me, and he certainly won’t trust the “Skraelings,” and he’ll never give up Harald
.

They’d be killed in the end, of course—eight men against fifty. But with their steel-edged weapons, they’d do some damage first. He pictured Kwimu or Ottar falling, sliced down by Harald’s sword. Blood spreading in the snow. Death and injuries and pain and misery. What was the point?

The stars looked like frost crystals in the black sky. In the light of the small fire, the young men’s painted faces glowed a startling, fearsome red. But their expressions were thoughtful as they talked together quietly. He wished he could join in. These could be friends—if they weren’t going to war against his other friends.

Ottar turned to Peer. “Do you believe in Valhalla, Peer? Where do you think we go to when we die? Kwimu says the People walk along the Ghost Road to the Land of Souls. Look, you can see it up there.” Kwimu pointed upward. A-glimmer above the trees was the line of the Milky Way, spangled and studded with stars. A royal road for the feet of the dead. Peer’s breath caught.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “My father used to say we cross over a bridge.”

“It looks like a bridge, doesn’t it?” said Ottar, staring up. “I hope it’s the same one. Wherever Kwimu goes, I want to go there, too.”

Crossing a bridge … floating away down a dark river … Perhaps all the journeys ended at the same bourne. Peer thought of his father and was comforted.

Snow fluttered down again. Shadowy flakes whirled into
the fire like moths. Peer’s breath smoked. The wind wailed. Or was it a wolf or some other animal, crying?

Kwimu cocked his head, listening. He took off the fox-skin pouch that usually dangled from his belt. It had the face and paws and tail all attached, and Peer had sometimes seen him playing with it, stroking it and pretending to make it pounce. Now Kwimu scrambled lithely out of the shelter and disappeared into the snow. He came back almost immediately, without the pouch, said something, and lay down. The others followed suit.

“What’s that about?” Peer whispered.

Ottar yawned. “It’s all right. He’s leaving Fox on a tree branch not far away. To warn us of danger.”

“Fox? You mean his
pouch
?”

Ottar scowled. “It’s his
tioml
. His power. You don’t notice much, Peer. Haven’t you seen how it comes alive?”

“But …” Peer shut his mouth. He wasn’t sure of anything, he decided. And, about midnight, they were woken by a shrill, yapping bark from close above. Loki stirred and grumbled. Peer sat up and saw Kwimu and the others, dark shapes against the snow, heaving up on their elbow.

The fire was out. On the cold wind came a distant howl, a lonely, hungry sound. It drew nearer. Beside him, Peer saw Ottar’s eyes gleam wide.

Out of the woods, into the clearing, a moose came leaping in an arc of snow—running for its life. Peer rose to see it better. Without checking, it lifted over the shelter in a single
bound, kicked a freezing dust of powder snow into Peer’s hair, and galloped into the trees on the downhill side of the glade.

After it something came rushing through the trees, with crashing of undergrowth and explosive cracks of branches. It must be enormous to make such a noise. Wolf? Bear? Impossible.
Here it comes
, he thought in growing apprehension,
and it’s big. It’s very big—

“Down! Get down!” Ottar grabbed his leg and jerked it. In disbelief Peer saw the tops of the pine trees shiver and sway apart. He sat down hard.
It’s here!
It was overhead—a striding shadow against the stars, a yell that threw them to the ground, a double shock of mighty footsteps leaping over them.

It was gone. The woods swallowed it. An odd musky smell blew back on the wind.

And a small animal slunk light-footed over the edge of the snow shelter, dashed to Kwimu, and disappeared under his cloak.

A murmur of voices rose. In the eerie snow light men scrambled from the dugouts. Peer too clambered up into the cold. Ottar pulled him over to see a great shapeless tread mark stamped into the snow on the very edge of one of the other shelters. They all grouped around it, excited and afraid.

“Jenu”
Peer heard.
“Jenu
…” He turned to see Kwimu standing somberly, staring into the trees. The fox pouch hung limply from his belt, dark-eyed and grinning.

“What was it?” Peer asked quietly.

“A sort of—ice giant.” Ottar’s teeth rattled. “That’s the
s-second time I’ve seen one. I’ll t-tell you about it—but not out here.”

Again and again that night, huddled in the snow shelters, they smelled the strange musky smell on the wind and heard the
jenu’s
distant scream as it quartered the woods in search of game, but it never came so close as that first time.

“Doesn’t it ever rest?” Peer whispered.

Ottar whispered back, “Kwimu says never.”

With the dawn, they clambered out of their snow holes, stiff and shaken. It wasn’t a good omen for the day ahead, Peer thought, hoping they might give up and go back to the village. But his companions were strapping on their snowshoes and setting off, and with a heavy heart he knelt to do the same. As Kwimu bent beside him, Peer got a good look at the fox pouch. Whatever it had done in the night, it was definitely not alive now. The eyes were made of little black shells.

And the day passed in trudging along slanting hillsides, under the lee of rocky ridges and over open tracts where fire had swept through the woods and tree stumps poked through the snow like black teeth. Peer couldn’t recognize anything from his autumn journey. Apart from their own passing—the creak of the snowshoes, and the swish of robes—the woods were abnormally silent. White spines of snow lay along every branch and twig. Snow spread endlessly under the trees till the woods looked like a white cavern held up by dark pillars. His eyes ached from the whiteness, and his ears ached from the lack of sound.

At last, in the blue dusk, they descended one last slope. At the bottom, snow curled over the banks of a river, frozen over except for black cores and sinkholes out in the middle, where the ice was still treacherous. Following the bank, they came out to frozen marshlands where the snow was thinner, swept by a wind that drove it like dust before a broom. Beyond the marshlands, Peer could hear the pounding of the sea.

Serpent’s Bay!
It looked different under the snow. Ottar pushed alongside, staring. “What have they done?” he said hoarsely. “They’ve pulled down our old house.”

Only Gunnar’s house was left. Peer stared hungrily at it. Hilde was there.
So close!

The sky was dark over the sea, shading to a lingering paleness over the forest in the southwest. A fingernail moon clung there, setting into the trees. Sinumkw led the war party silently along the edge of the woods, the frozen flats on their left, till they came to the spot where in summer the brook rushed down the slope. Now it was a white cascade of leaping ice—intricate and silent. With Thorolf’s house no longer in the way, there was a clear view to the doorway of Gunnar’s. Sinumkw signed to his men to stop. It was a good position, a little uphill from the house, and camouflaged against the dark trees.

Ottar shivered—with old memories, Peer thought, not with cold. Kwimu put an arm around his shoulders. Sinumkw turned to Peer. Peer couldn’t read his face under the dark war paint, but his eyes gleamed. Ottar translated. “Sinumkw says,
‘Now do what you came for. Carry our challenge. Tell them who they killed and why we have come.’ And he says if you can get the girls out, do it before the moon sets. That’s when we’ll attack.”

“It’s mighty cold tonight,” said Arnë to Hilde. He wiped the last of the broth from his bowl with a lump of bread. “It will be a long winter.”

“I know,” said Hilde, rousing herself with an effort.

She looked around. Astrid sat on the floor close to the hearth, mending clothes in the firelight. At the far end of the fire Harald sprawled moodily in his father’s chair, a low trestle table in front of him. He ignored his food, playing with his knife, twiddling it on its point and catching it before it fell over. The rest of the men were eating silently, heads down. Sometimes one of them coughed, or nudged his neighbor to pass the bread. Floki had a bad cold, and sniffed steadily—juicy, bubbling sniffs. “Can’t you stop doing that?” Magnus grumbled. No one else spoke. Nobody had much to say these days.

Somewhere in the rafters, Hilde supposed, the Nis perched, swinging a leg and watching them. If it wasn’t dying of boredom.
There’ll be months of this
. Months of monotonous, dark indoor life. She wondered how she could bear it.

Arnë watched her. He cleared his throat. “It would be easier, maybe, if we two could help each other.”

She turned drearily. “What do you mean?”

“Peer’s not coming back, Hilde,” Arnë said quietly. “You know that. Not after all this time. I know you were fond of him—but aren’t you fond of me, too? You’ve known me for a long time. If you’ll marry me, I’ll take care of you. I won’t let you worry about anything.”

Hilde felt a twisting sensation inside her chest, as though he had taken her heart in both his hands and wrung it out. She met his clear blue eyes and remembered Astrid’s words:
Arnë’s quite ordinary
. It was true. Nice, yes, but ordinary. She wondered why it had taken her so long to notice.

“Of course I like you, Arnë, but you can’t ‘take care’ of me.”

“I’d like to try.”

“You don’t understand.” She closed her eyes and saw, as if by lightning flashes, picture after picture against the darkness. Peer gripping her arm on the ship and dashing off to deal with the Nis. Peer telling Harald the lie about the seagull. Peer facing Harald down not once, but many times, armed only with his bare wits, and, finally, with a burned dragon-head. She opened her eyes. Dammed-up tears spilled out. “Peer never tried to take care of me. He just took it for granted we’d do things together. You say you’d look after me. But in all this time, the only person who’s stood up to Harald—the only person brave enough—has been Peer. And I miss him—so much.”

Arnë rubbed his eyes. On the back of his wrist Hilde saw the scar where he’d turned aside Harald’s harpoon.
Arnë’s a good friend. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be nice to him
?

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, ashamed. “But it’s no good, Arnë. Don’t ask me.”

“I see it’s no good asking you now,” said Arnë. “I spoke too soon. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.”

Though he looked sorry for her, she sensed he was confident that she’d change her mind. She began to protest, and fell silent. What was the use? Maybe he was right. Maybe Astrid was right. If the person you wanted died, you just had to accept it and move on. Didn’t you?

No
, she thought passionately.
No!

“Floki,” said Harald in a cutting voice. “Will you stop that revolting sniffing? You sound like a pig.”

A slight ripple went down the room—men lifting their heads and then deciding not to look. Floki flushed and smeared his nose with the back of his hand. “Sorry,” he muttered, and sniffed again almost at once.