King of Thorns Page 15

  The Halradra is not so tall as its sons, but it is tall. Its lower slopes are softened by the years, black grit in the main, crunching under hoof, the rocks rotten with bubbles so that you can crumble them in your hands, the fire so long gone that no sniff of it remains. Through the ash and broken rock, fire-weed grew in profusion, Rosebay Willowherb as they had it in Master Lundist’s books. The first to spring up where the fire has been. Even after four hundred years nothing much else wanted to push its way through the black dirt.

  “Do you see them?” Gorgoth rumbled at my shoulder. The depth of his voice took me by surprise as always.

  “If by ‘them’ you mean mountains, then yes. Otherwise, no.”

  He pointed with one thick finger, almost the width of Gog’s forearm. “Caves.”

  I still didn’t see them, but in the end I did. Cave mouths at the base of a sharp fall. Not that dissimilar from Gorgoth’s old home beneath Mount Honas.

  “Yes,” I said. “They are.” I thought that sometimes perhaps Gorgoth should just keep holding on to those precious words.

  We pressed on. Higher up and the going gets too steep and too treacherous for horses. We left our mounts with Sim and Grumlow, continuing on foot, trudging on through a thin layer of icy snow. The peaks of Halradra’s sons look broken off, jagged, forged with violence. The old man could pass as a common mountain with no hint of a crater until you scramble up through snow-choked gullies and find the lake laid out before you, sudden and without announcement.

  “Happy now?” Sindri climbed up beside me and found a perch where the wind had taken the snow from a rock. He looked happy enough himself despite his tone.

  “It’s a sight and a half, isn’t it?” I said.

  Gorgoth clambered up with Gog on his shoulder.

  “I like this mountain,” Gog said. “It has a heart.”

  “The lake is a strange blue,” I said. “Is the water tainted?”

  “Ice,” Sindri said. “The water’s just meltwater, a yard deep if that, run down off the crater slope. The lake stays frozen all year, underneath.”

  “Well now. There’s a thing,” I said. And I had two facts by the corners.

  We hunkered down in the lee of some rocks a little way below the crater rim and watched the strange blue of those waters as we ate a cold meal from Alaric’s kitchens.

  “What kind of heart does the mountain have, Gog?” I threw chicken bones down the slope and licked the grease from my fingers.

  He paused, closing his eyes to think. “Old, slow, warm.”

  “Does it beat?” I asked.

  “Four times,” Gog said.

  “Since we started climbing?”

  “Since we saw the smoke as we rode in from the bridge,” Gog said.

  “Eagle.” Row pointed into the hazy blue above us. He reached for his bow.

  “Good eyes as always, Row.” I held his arm. “Let the bird fly.”

  “So,” said Sindri, huddled, braids flailing in the wind. “What next?”

  “I’d like to see those caves,” I said. Gorgoth’s observation felt more important all of a sudden. Precious even.

  We started to make our way down, strangely a more difficult proposition than the climb, as if Halradra wanted to keep hold of us. The rock seemed to crumble under every heavy downhill step, with the ice to help any faller on his way. I caught Sindri at one turn, grabbing his elbow as the ground broke away under his heel.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Alaric wouldn’t be pleased to lose another son up here,” I said.

  Sindri laughed. “I would have stopped at the bottom.”

  Gorgoth followed, kicking footholds for himself at each step; Gog scampered free rather than risk getting squashed if the giant fell.

  We found Sim and Grumlow sharing a pipe, sprawled on the rocks in the sunshine all at ease.

  The caves were almost harder to see as we drew closer. Black caves in a black cliff with black interiors. I spotted three entrances, one big enough to grow an oak in.

  “Something lives here,” Gorgoth said.

  I looked for signs, bones or scat around the cave mouth. “There’s nothing,” I said. “What makes you say there is?”

  Expressions came hard to a face like Gorgoth’s, but enough of the ridges and furrows moved to let a keen observer know that something puzzled him. “I can hear them,” he said.

  “Keen ears and keen eyes. I can’t hear anything. Just the wind.” I stopped and closed my eyes as Tutor Lundist taught me, and let the wind blow. I let the mountain noises flow through me. I counted away the beat of my heart and the sigh of breath. Nothing.

  “I hear them,” Gorgoth said.

  “Let’s go careful then,” I said. “Time for your bow, Brother Row, good thing you didn’t waste an arrow on that bird.”

  We tethered the horses and made ready. I took my sword in hand. Sindri unslung the axe from his back, a fine weapon with silver-chased scrollwork on the blade behind the cutting edge. And we moved in closer. I led in from downwind, an old habit that cost us half an hour traversing the slopes. From fifty yards the wind brought a hint of the inhabitants, an animal stink, faint but rank. “Our friends keep a clean front doorstep,” I said. “Not bears or mountain cats. Can you still hear them, Gorgoth?”

  He nodded. “They’re talking about food, and battle.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” I said. I could hear nothing.

  We came by slow steps to the great cave mouth flanked by two smaller mouths and several cracks a man might slip through. Standing before the cave it seemed impossible that I had missed it from across the slopes. Apart from one shattered bone wedged between two rocks there was no sign of habitation. Except for the stink.

  Gorgoth stepped in first. He carried a crude flail in his belt, just three thick chains on a wooden haft, set with twists of sharp metal. A leather apron kept the chains from shredding his legs as he ran. I’d never seen him take the weapon in hand, and somehow he seemed more scary unarmed. Gog walked behind Gorgoth with Sindri and me to flank him, then Sim and Grumlow, Row at the rear eyeing everything with suspicion.

  “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, no
t 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 Ragnarök. 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? Let 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 völva from the north. She doesn’t come often. Twice when I was young.”

  “Völva?” 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.