King of Thorns be-2 Page 15

  “We can’t go far,” Row said. “Too dark.” He didn’t sound upset.

  Gog lifted his hand and flames sprung from his fingertips. Row stifled a curse.

  I looked back out across the mountain slopes. The fan of rocks and dirt spreading from the cave mouth reminded me of something. Random thoughts scratched each other at the back of my mind, fighting for form, for the words to say what they meant.

  “We’ll go on in,” I said. “A little way. I want to hear what Gorgoth hears.” He’d been right about the caves after all.

  Toward the back of the cavern several tunnels led into the mountain. The larger passage led up at a shallow gradient. “That one.”

  We moved in. Underfoot the tunnel lay grit-floored, strewn with small rocks, but the walls were smooth, almost slick. The shadows moved and danced as Gog followed Gorgoth, his burning hand throwing a vast shadow-Gorgoth ahead of us. Fifty yards brought us to an almost spherical chamber with the tunnel leading on behind it, now heading up almost as steeply as the slopes outside. The fire glow gave the place memories of the cathedral at Shartres, our shadows processing over smooth rock on every side.

  “Plato came to such a cave,” I said. “And saw the whole world on its walls.”

  “Your pardon?” Sindri said.

  I shook my head. “See here?” I pointed to a slick depression in the rock close by, as if a giant had sunk his thumb into soft mud and left his imprint.

  “What is it?” Gog asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. But it looked familiar. Like a pothole in a riverbed.

  I ran across to the tunnel at the back and stood at the entrance. Men didn’t make these passages, nor troll or Grendel-kin, goblin, pixie or ghost. The air sat almost still, but moved even so, crawling from the tunnel. Cold air. Very cold.

  “Jorg,” Row said.

  “I’m thinking,” I said, not looking back.

  “Jorg!” he said again.

  And I turned. In the mouth of the tunnel through which we had come stood two trolls. I called them trolls to myself because they looked like the trolls of my imagination, not the rocky lumps the Danes decorated the landscape with, but lean dangerous creatures, dark-stained hide, muscles like knots in rope, laid along long limbs that ended in black talons. Crouched as they were their height was hard to judge, but I guessed eight feet, maybe nine. They moved with quick purpose, hugging the stone.

  “Keep the arrow,” I told Row. I couldn’t see one arrow slowing either of them down unless it went in the neck or eye.

  I would have called them monsters, leucrota, mistakes like Gorgoth, except that there were two of them. A pair speaks of design rather than accident.

  “Hello,” I said. It sounded stupid, one thin voice in that great chamber, but I could think of nothing else to say, and fighting them just didn’t appeal. The only comfort to be taken was that both those pairs of black eyes were fixed on Gorgoth rather than me.

  “Can’t you hear them?” Gorgoth asked.

  “No,” I said.

  The leftmost troll leapt forward without the preamble of feints or growling. He threw himself at Gorgoth, reaching for his face. Gorgoth caught the troll’s wrists and stopped him dead. Both monsters stood, locked together, leaning in, muscles writhing and twitching. The troll’s breath escaped in quick rasps. Gorgoth rumbled. I hadn’t seen him struggle with anything since he held the gate up at the Haunt. Every task since then, be it unloading barrels, shifting rocks, anything, hadn’t so much as raised a sweat.

  Row lifted his bow again. For the second time I caught his arm. “Wait.”

  They held each other, straining, the occasional swift readjustment of feet. Troll claws gouging the rock. Gorgoth’s blunt toes anchoring his weight. Muscle heaped against muscle, bones creaking with the strain, spit flecking at their lips as harsh breaths escaped. Moments stretched until they felt like minutes. My own nails bit into my palm, white knuckles on sword hilt; something had to give, something. And without warning the troll slammed into the floor, a beat of silence and Gorgoth let out a deep roar that hurt my chest and set Row’s nose bleeding.

  Gorgoth heaved in a breath. “They will serve,” he said.

  “What?” I said, then, “Why?

  The troll on the floor rolled over and got to its feet, backing to its companion.

  “They are soldiers,” he said. “They want to serve. They were made for it.”

  “Made?” I asked, still watching the trolls, ready to try to defend myself.

  “It has been written in their dena,” Gorgoth said.

  “By Ferrakind?”

  “A long time ago,” Gorgoth said. “They are a race. I don’t know when they were changed.”

  “The Builders made them?” I asked, wondering.

  “Maybe then. Maybe after.” Gorgoth shrugged.

  “They are Grendel’s children,” Sindri said. He looked as if he thought he was dreaming. “Made for war in the ashes of Ragnarok. They’re waiting here for the final battle.”

  “Do they know what made these tunnels?” I asked. “And where they lead?”

  Gorgoth paused. “They know how to fight,” he said.

  “That’s good too.” I grinned. “You’re talking to them in your head, aren’t you?”

  Gorgoth managed surprise again. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I am.”

  “What now?” Sindri said, still looking from one troll to the other, testing the edge of his axe with his fingers.

  “We go back,” I said. I needed to muse and musing is more comfortable under a duke’s roof than on a windswept volcano or buried in fetid caves.

  “Gorgoth, tell the trolls we’ll be back and to keep our visit to themselves.” I looked the pair over one more time. I wondered what kind of havoc they’d wreak on a battlefield. The best kind I thought.

  “Let’s go back,” I said. And see if our perspectives have changed any after our climb.

  19

  Four years earlier

  The forests in the Danelore have a character all their own, dense pines that make a perpetual twilight of the day and an ink-black soup of each night, moon or no. Old needles deaden every footfall and hoof, leaving the dry scratchings of dead branches the only sound. In such a place it takes no leap of imagination to believe every goblin tale of the long-hall. And in breaking clear once more into open air you understand that it was with the wood-axe man claimed these lands, not the battleaxe.

  We came back to Duke Alaric’s hall early with the cocks crowing and every shadow stretching itself out over the grass as if to point the way. A ground mist still hung in shreds around the trees, swirling where the horses stepped. A few servants were on the move, to and fro between the great hall and the kitchens, stable-boys getting horses ready to ride, a baker up from the nearby village with warm loaves heaped on his cart.

  Two lads from the stables took our horses. I gave Brath a slap on his haunch as they led him off. A light rain started to fall. I didn’t mind.

  The rain made the stonework glisten, falling heavier by the moment. There’s a word. Glisten. Silver chains on holy trees, the gloss on lips for kissing, dew on spiderwebs, sweat on breasts. Glisten, glisten, listen. Say it until the meaning bleeds away. Even without meaning it stays true. The rain made the grey stone glisten. Not quite a sparkle, not quite a gleam, but a glisten to the soaked cobbles, a gurgle from gutters where the dirt ran and leaves twirled in fleeting rapids, bound for dark and hungry throats, swallowed past stone teeth. A piece of straw ran by my feet, arrowing the straightest path; a kayak on white water, it bobbed, plunged, surged, reached the drain, spun twice, and was gone.

  Sometimes the world slows and you notice every small thing, as if you stood between two beats of eternity’s heart. It seemed to me I had felt something similar before, with Corion, with Sageous, even Jane. The air hung heavy with the metallic scent of rain. I wondered: if I stood out there, in the flood, would the rain wrap a grey life and make it shine? Should I stand, arms spread, and raise my face? L
et it wash me clean. Or did my stains run too deep?

  I listened to the fall of it, to the drumming, the drip, the pitter, and the patter. The others moved around me, handing over reins, taking saddlebags, the business of living, as if they hadn’t noticed me step outside such things. As if they couldn’t sense her.

  Rike stumbled from the great hall, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

  “Christ, Rike,” I said. “We’ve been gone a day. How did you grow a beard?”

  He shrugged, rubbing at stubble near deep enough to lose his fingers in. “When in Roma.”

  I ignored his bad geography and the fact that he even knew the phrase, and asked the more obvious question. “Why are you up?” On the road Rike always came last from his bed-roll and would never rise without some kind of threat or enticement.

  He scratched his head at that. Sindri came back from the stables and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “He’ll look good with a beard. We’ll make a Viking of him yet!”

  Rike frowned. “She said to meet her at the end of the lake.”

  “Who said?”

  He frowned again, shrugged, and went back into the hall.

  I looked out across the lake. At the far end, faint through the grey veils of rain, a tent stood, a yurt, yellowed with age, a thin line of smoke escaping through the smoke-hole. The strangeness came from there. That was where she waited.

  Sindri looked too. “That’s Ekatri, a volva from the north. She doesn’t come often. Twice when I was young.”

  “Volva?” I asked.

  “She knows things. She can see the future,” Sindri said. “A witch. Is that what you call them?” He frowned. “Yes, a witch. You’d best go to her. Wouldn’t do to keep her waiting. Maybe she’ll read your future for you.”

  “I’ll go now,” I said. Sometimes you wait and watch, sometimes you walk right on in. There’s not much to learn from the outside of a tent.

  “I’ll see you inside.” Sindri nodded to the hall, grinned, and wiped the rain from his beard. He’d be waking his father before I got to the end of the lake, telling him about the trolls and Gorgoth. What would the good duke make of all that? I wondered. Perhaps the witch would tell me.

  The ground trembled once as I walked along the lake, setting the water dancing. I could smell the smoke from the witch’s tent now. It put an acrid taste in my mouth and reminded me of the volcanoes. The wind picked up, blowing rain into my face.

  Old Tutor Lundist once taught me about seers, soothsayers, and the star-watchers who count out our lives by the slow predictions of planets rolling over the heavens. “How many words would be needed to tell the tale of your life?” he had asked. “How many to reach this point, and how many more to reach the end?”

  “Lots?” I grinned and glanced away, out the narrow window to the courtyard, the gates, the fields beyond city walls. I had the twitchies in my feet, eager to be off chasing some or other thing while the sun still shone.

  “This is our curse.” Lundist stamped and rose from his chair with a groan. “Man is doomed to repeat his mistakes time and again because he learns only from experience.”

  He smoothed out an old scroll across the desk, covered in the pictograms of his homeland. It had pictures too, bright and interesting in the eastern style. “The zodiac,” he said.

  I put my finger on the dragon, caught in a few bold strokes of red and gold. “This one,” I said.

  “Your life is laid out from the moment of your birth, Jorg, and you don’t get to choose. All the words of your story can be replaced by one date and place. Where the planets hung in that instant, how they turned their faces, and which of them looked toward you…that configuration forms a key and that key unlocks all that a man will be,” he said.

  I couldn’t tell if he was joking. Lundist was always a man for enquiry, for logic and judging, for patience and subtlety. All that felt rather pointless if we walked a fixed path from the cradle to whatever end was written in stars.

  I’d reached the yurt without noticing. I made an abrupt stop and managed not to walk into it. I circled for the entrance and ducked through without announcement. She was supposed to know the future after all.

  “Listen,” she said as I pushed through the flap into her tent, a stinking place of hides and hanging dead things.

  “Listen,” she said again as I made to open my mouth.

  So I sat cross-legged beneath the dangling husks, and listened and didn’t speak.

  “Good,” she said. “You’re better than most. Better than those bold, noisy boys wanting so much to be men, wanting only to hear the words from their own mouths.”

  I listened to the dry wheeze of her as she spoke, to the flap and creak of the tent, the insistence of the rain, and the complaints of the wind.

  “So you listen, but do you hear?” she asked.

  I watched her. She wore her years badly and the gloom couldn’t hide it. She watched me back with one eye; the other sat sunken and closed in the grey folds of her flesh. It leaked something like snot onto her cheek.

  “You should look better after ninety winters,” she sneered. She needed just the one eye to read my expression. “The first fifty, hard ones in the lands of fire and ice where the true Vikings live.”

  I would have guessed two hundred just from looking at her, from the slide of her face, the crags, warts, and wattles. Only her eye seemed young, and that disappointed me for I’d come to seek wisdom.

  “I hear,” I said. I held my questions because folk only came to her with questions. If she truly knew the answers then perhaps I didn’t need to ask.

  She reached into the layered rags and furs around her waist. The stench increased immediately and I struggled not to choke. When her hand emerged, more a bone claw than supple fingers, it clutched a glass jar, the contents sloshing. “Builder-glass,” she said, wetting her lips with a quick pink tongue, somehow obscene in her withered mouth. She cradled the flask in her hands. “How did we lose the art? There’s not a man you could reach with five weeks of riding that could make this now. And if I dropped it a finger’s width onto stone…gone! A thousand worthless pieces.”

  “How old?” I asked. The question escaped me despite my resolution.

  “Ten centuries, maybe twelve,” she said. “Palaces have crumbled in that time. The statues of emperors lie ruined and buried. And this…” She held it up. An eye made slow rotations in the greenish swirl. “Still whole.”

  “Is it your eye?” I asked.

  “The very same.” She watched me with her bright one and set the other on the rug in its Builder flask.

  “I sacrificed it for wisdom,” she said. “As Odin did at Mimir’s well.”

  “And did you get wisdom?” I asked. An impertinent question perhaps from a boy of fourteen but she had asked to see me, not I her, and the longer I sat there, the smaller and older she looked.

  She grinned, displaying a single rotting tooth-stump. “I discovered it would have been wise to leave my eye next to the other one.” The eye came to rest at the bottom of the jar, aimed slightly to my left.

  “I see you have a baby with you,” she said.

  I glanced to my side. The baby lay dead, brains oozing from his broken skull, not much blood but what there was lay shockingly red on his milk-white scalp. He seldom looked so clear, so real, but Ekatri’s yurt held the kind of shadows that invited ghosts. I said nothing.

  “Show me the box.” She held out her hand.

  I took it from its place just inside my breastplate. Keeping a tight grip I held it out toward her. She reached for it, quicker than an old woman has a right to be, and snatched her hand back with a gasp. “Powerful,” she said. Blood dripped from her fingers, welling from a dozen small puncture wounds. The fact that there was blood to spill in those bony old fingers surprised me.

  I put the box back. “I should warn you that I’m not taken with horoscopes and such,” I told her.

  She licked her lips again and said nothing.

  “If you must know, I’
m a goat,” I said. “That’s right, a fecking goat. There’s a whole nation of people behind the East Wall who say I was born in the year of the goat. I’ve no time for any system that has me as a goat. I don’t care how ancient their civilization is.”

  She gave the flask a gentle swirl. “It sees into other worlds,” she said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

  “That’s good then?” I said.

  She tapped her living eye. “This one sees into other worlds too,” she said. “And it has a clearer view.” She took a leather bag from within her rags and set it by the jar. “Rune stones,” she said. “Maybe if you go east and climb over the great wall you will be a goat. Here in the north the runes will tell your story.”

  I kept my lips tight shut, remembering my pledge at last. She would tell me about the future or she wouldn’t. What she told me without questions to answer might be true.

  She took a handful from the bag, grey stones clacking soft against each other. “Honorous Jorg Ancrath.” She breathed my name into the stones, then let them fall. It seemed that they took a lifetime to reach the rug, each making its slow turns, end to end, side to side, the runes scored across them appearing and reappearing. They hit like anvils. I can feel the shake of it even now. It echoes in these bones of mine.

  “The Perth rune, initiation,” she said. “Thurisaz. Uruz, strength.” She poked them aside as if they were unimportant. She turned a stone over. “Wunjo, joy, face down. And here, Kano, the rune of opening.”

  I set a finger to Thurisaz and the volva sucked a sharp breath over grey gums. She scowled and batted at my hand to move it, the stone cold to touch, the witch’s hand colder, thin skin like paper. She hadn’t spoken the rune’s name in the empire tongue but I knew the old speech of the north from Lundist’s books.

  “The thorns,” I said.