“That’s how I know,” Thora said. Even though her voice was only five feet away, Skeggi couldn’t see her at all.
Ostryg crashed into something about nine feet away and swore.
“Watch where you’re going,” Skeggi said.
“I’d punch you for that if I could see you,” Ostryg grumbled.
“Don’t move,” Dyrfinna whispered from nearby. “All of you, walk toward my voice so we don’t lose each other.”
“You just told us to not move and then move? Which is it?” said Ostryg.
“Shh.” Skeggi took four steps toward Dyrfinna’s voice and there she was. And here was Thora, and the girl, Gefjun, then finally Ostryg, who shook a fist at Skeggi. Skeggi wrinkled his nose at Ostryg and took one step back to vanish, but Dyrfinna grabbed his shirt and hauled him back into the circle.
“What do we do next?” Thora whispered, because the Danes had gone absolutely silent behind them.
Dyrfinna nodded her head in the direction they’d been traveling. Slowly, keeping close together, they moved forward. Skeggi had his sword out, as did the rest of the group. She walked with her sword pointing forward into the fog and braced at her hip, as if hoping somebody would run out of the fog at them and impale himself on her sword. The other sword-friends, seeing this, also pointed their weapons outward.
Skeggi listened hard to every whisper, every drip of moisture from the leaves, every creak of the spruce boughs, harder than he’d ever listened in his life.
The girl was wide-eyed in fear, her complexion as sickly-white as the fog.
A whisper in the woods directly behind them. A snap of twig to their right.
The girl’s attention snapped to each sound, in every direction, as she shivered down to the tendrils of her hair.
The girl said, “Give me your blade,” holding her hand open to Gefjun. The healer reached to her hip for her work knife, but then stopped, looking carefully at the girl’s face.
The terror on the girl’s face made Skeggi’s knees weak. It was the face of someone who was not going to wait for someone else to kill her.
“Don’t do it,” Skeggi whispered, laying his hand on hers to stay it.
Dyrfinna put her fingers on her lips, glaring at all of them,
She grabbed for his sword, but he quickly caught her hands in his before she could reach it.
“Don’t give in to despair,” he said. “The moment you do, we are all lost.”
The girl shook her head, a tear flicking from her eye. “I think I know despair better than you do,” she said.
She sprinted away into the fog, vanishing instantly.
Skeggi sprinted after her. This was just reflex from raising four brothers. There was always some kid walking toward disaster at any given moment and he’d often have to go into a desperate full-on sprint.
But he usually caught his brothers. This girl was faster. He leaned forward and poured it on, trying to stay directly behind all the noise she made.
A snap and crackle of boughs ahead. Then he crashed into her, and then into a mess of spruce needles and branches from the tree she’d collided with.
“Stop, stop, stop,” he whispered, trying to trap her flailing hands in his. “Stop. Don’t make noise. He’ll find us.”
“I don’t care,” the girl said, her voice rising in pitch almost into a scream, which she stifled in her arm. Then she started shaking with silent sobs. She reached for his sword. “Kill me, kill me now before he finds me,” she said, mouthing the words just enough for him to hear them.
“No,” Skeggi whispered, trying to hold her, trying to keep her from bolting again into the fog. She struggled. Then, just like that, she fell against him and began to shake silently with sobs.
He held her for a moment. He had a vague idea of the life she’d endured, though he knew that there was no way he could completely understand it. But he was determined not to let her be captured.
But they were in the thickest fog he’d ever seen, and they’d lost the rest of their group. He wasn’t sure which way Skala lay, because the sound of battle came from several different directions around him, and he wasn’t sure which battle noise came from Skala. And he was sure that some of some of Iron Skull’s Danes had to be zeroing in on them in the fog.
But those Danes didn’t have an owl on their shoulders.
“Help me, Smoke,” Skeggi whispered to his owl. “I want to go home. But I don’t want bad people to find me. Can you lead us home? Where’s home?”
The little owl opened and closed her wings a few times, staring at Skeggi with big golden eyes, her pupils dilating.
He’d never asked his owl to find her way home before. She’d never been trained to home, though he knew she must have had a homing sense. Skeggi had asked her the way he’d ask a untrained dog – simply in the wild hope that she might possibly understand what he was saying.
“Show me how to go home,” Skeggi whispered, and took a couple more steps forward, peering through the fog, trying to watch out for danger. “Is this how I go home? How do I go home?”
The little owl looked too. Maybe I’ve asked too much of her, Skeggi thought.
But then he felt the little owl push off from his shoulder. She sailed noiselessly into the fog and vanished.
Afer a long moment, a short “hoo” came from the trees to their right.
A burst of relief in Skeggi’s heart. He exhaled quietly.
He thought, Of course, it’s possible she might not understand the words coming out of my mouth.
All the same, Skeggi turned toward her “hoo,” sword drawn, back hunched to stay low. The girl followed, looking around like a wary deer.
The screams of a faraway berserker rang through the forest. The screams intensified into howls that rang through the trees. A group of men shouted, then yelled at the berserker roared. Metal clashed with metal. There came the booming of shields, then shouts echoed through the forest and hills in all directions. Skeggi listened closely as he walked. There seemed to be a woman shouting in the group, but he couldn’t tell if that was Dyrfinna’s voice or not. The two groups fighting sounded pretty big – was it their group in the fray or somebody else’s? and where were these skirmishers coming from? Was the fighting in Skala overflowing into the forest?
Another quiet “hoo,” ahead and a bit to the right. Skeggi followed in as much of a straight line as possible through the thick fog and the tangled undergrowth and the wide spruce trees that they had to skirt around.
Just then, the owl burst out of the spruce forest in front of Skeggi. He stopped in his tracks. With a chittered quiet alarm call, Smoke shot past on silent wings and cut off his alarm as she flew past Skeggi. She swooped up into a nearby spruce, her taloned feet reaching out ahead of her to catch the branch and land directly over his head. Smoke turned her big golden eyes, pupils wide and black, on Skeggi, and she nervously shifted from foot to foot and clacked her beak.
Skeggi froze. “Where?” he asked his owl, in the quietest voice he could manage.
Smoke swiveled her head almost completely around, paused, then swiveled the other way. The forest had gone dead silent, Skeggi realized, and from the way the girl was slowly scanning the woods around her while silently, slowly drawing her sword, it was obvious that she’d noticed it too. That silence.
15
Iron Skull
Smoke flew on her silent wings to a lower branch, turned her head sideways to look at the girl. Then the owl stretched her wings, turned, and flew ahead a short distance.
The girl put her hand on her chest and a smile slipped onto her face. She seemed to remember herself, and she lowered her eyes. But then another smile made its shy appearance, and she looked up again.
Skeggi caught her arm. They slipped forward, making their way through the pine and spruce needles.
He could see nothing around him but the shadow of a spruce at his right, and a few spruce branches that were right next to him, but the rest of the tree beyond those needles was out of sight
. Skeggi realized he was still holding her arm without permission. He quickly released her.
Both of them held absolutely still, listening, but Skeggi heard only the drip of moisture from the trees, a soft breeze that drifted through the spruces, and quiet spatters of dewfall where it passed. A raven said “crawk.” A good bird, though everybody who heard it would claim that the raven had given them an omen for their victory. It’s in the lap of the gods, he thought.
Then came Smoke’s whinny from the trees ahead, very soft.
He motioned for the girl to move toward the sound.
Smoke’s quiet calls guided them through the thick fog. Neither of them made a sound, as much as possible, but when a branch came out of nowhere and jabbed him in the face, Skeggi grunted.
“Let me see,” the girl whispered as Skeggi grasped his cheekbone in pain.
He shook his head. I’m fine, he thought, though both his hands were on his face and his eyes were squeezed shut.
To his surprise, she gently pulled at his hands. “Come on,” she whispered. He took them off his face, though his cheekbone hurt like fire. The girl looked at the cut, then took a small square of cloth from her pocket and dabbed at it carefully, using it like an old handkerchief. “Press it on here until the bleeding stops,” she whispered.
He dolefully accepted it and pressed it to his face, and she smiled.
Skeggi felt as if a small shy violet on the forest floor had lifted her face and smiled at him.
And now she led the way as they followed his owl. They walked forward, more carefully this time, until his bleeding stopped.
He handed her handkerchief back to her. She made a disgusted face, tongue out, and pushed his hand away. He pantomimed crying and dabbed at his eyes with her sad handkerchief – and she smiled, shaking her head.
And suddenly her eyes looked past him – and widened with horror.
Skeggi started to turn just when something struck him on the back of his head. Stars burst into his vision.
The next moment, Skeggi lay on the ground, stunned, his head ringing and his body unmoving.
The girl screamed, screamed again, cringing from a huge, burly man who stepped over Skeggi’s body and grabbed her arm.
“I found you, my pretty war-prize,” the man said in a harsh voice.
His face wore a smile that did not reach his eyes, a face disfigured by scars from hundreds of fights, and a large, twisted nose that had been broken at some point. His right eye was missing, the lids sealed together and sunken in. His leather shirt was covered with steel scales sewn all over it, as were his leggings.
And the man wore a helmet of iron in the shape of a skull. Empty, mocking eyes looked out from his forehead, and the skull’s jawbone and teeth went around his jawbone and mouth.
Iron Skull.
He’s found her! Skeggi thought, but he couldn’t move. His head was too addled, and he was paralyzed from that blow from the back of the head. He couldn’t move. He knew exactly where to hit me and lay me out, some part of him thought.
Skeggi struggled to move, struggled to clear the fuzz and hissing from his mind.
“No!” With trembling hands, the girl grabbed a dagger out and tried to stab herself in the chest with it, but her hands shook too much. It slipped from her fingers, and she cried aloud.
“Why aren’t you happy to see me?” Iron Skull asked mockingly as he kicked the dagger away. “I thought you should be overjoyed. I know how much you’ve missed me.” He slipped one gigantic hand, brown with dried blood, around her shoulder.
The girl turned her head away, her lips writhing. “Death is more welcome to me than you are, you vile insect.”
In an instant, his eyes blazed with wrath, and Iron Skull brought his face close to hers. She bent her head away.
“You will not die. Do you understand me? You will never die. You will live for many years with me,” he said. “Death will not be welcome in my house.”
The girl tried to shake herself loose, but his hand tightened on her arm, and she cried out. “You should be honored to be in my possession. Honored in every way. But you chose to run. You ran away from me. You will never do that again.”
Something clicked in Skeggi’s brain, and suddenly his legs and arms twitched. His head was still spinning, but now he could move. Skeggi struggled to get to his feet.
The man seemed to remember that Skeggi was there, and now turned to watch, his scarred face bland.
Skeggi knew he must have looked like a newborn goat trying to stand, and his face went red, and his breathing sped up. But he said, “I swear I’m going to run you through,” between clenched teeth, trying to stand up. “I swear it. I swear.” Everything was moving hard to the right. He fell. He tried to force himself up again. He was not going to stop. He was not.
The man just stood there, watching Skeggi with an amused look on his face. And then he chuckled, a rasping sound. “You weak boy. You’re too funny to kill. I’m taking my girl. You can come along, if you like. Maybe you can watch.”
The girl ripped herself free with a cry. She ran, instantly vanishing in the thick magefog that Iron Skull had created.
“Yes!” Skeggi shouted. “Run, run, run!”
Iron Skull swore. Pointing into the fog after her with his bloody hand, he uttered a series of words that crackled in the air. At once, the fog started to thin, and the thick green boughs of the spruce trees slowly reappeared.
“Hey, dumbass, don’t you have an army to lead?” Skeggi yelled at Iron Skull. “Why are you chasing a girl around?”
Iron Skull kicked Skeggi in the teeth, and Skeggi groaned, covering his mouth. “Those idiots who you left behind to defend you? My people killed every one of them. They died in blood. And now, we’re coming for your people.”
“Yeah, right.”
“My army can work without me,” Iron Skull said, standing over him, flexing a hand in its leather glove. “I’ve trained them well to kill.”
Skeggi fought again to get to his feet, and managed to sit up. He spat a bloody tooth on Iron Skull’s leg.
Iron Skull knelt next to Skeggi, grabbed his long hair, and lifted Skeggi up to look in his face. Then, almost as an afterthought. “I’ll make you my thrall too. I’ll come back for you when I’m through with her.”
He dropped him. Before Skeggi could rise again, Iron Skull unsheathed a sword and stabbed it through Skeggi’s leg, pinning him to the ground.
Skeggi screamed, curling convulsively around the sword.
“You can watch me and my girl for the rest of your life, helpless to save her,” came Iron Skull’s harsh voice.
Skeggi was in so much pain that he barely noticed Iron Skull leaving.
But he pulled himself up and yanked once at the sword. It didn’t move. Sweat popped out all over his face, and a wave of nausea left him retching and weak.
He yanked a second time. The pain unwound the muscles in his arms, and his hands could not hold on to the pommel.
Gasping, he yanked a third time.
He fell backward against the ground, the sword in his hands.
Panting, staring at the sword.
It was out. It was out.
But great dizziness overcame him. His sweating skin became clammy and cold.
Weakly, he tossed the sword to the side and sat up to look at his leg.
Blood was running out fast, hot over his skin, puddling on the ground.
“Oh, no. Oh no,” he whispered. He pressed down on it as hard as he could. Pressed with his hands against his leg on both sides where the sword had gone through, trying to stop the blood. It leaked through his fingers like water.
“No, stop. I need that,” he whispered.
He tried to sing one of Gefjun’s healing spells, but his voice was too small and his dizziness was too intense. He couldn’t see. Everything was suddenly dark. He was trying to hold on to his leg. He had to help the girl. He had to get back to his brothers. There was nobody else to take care of them. He had to get back to the
m, but a huge blackness came on too fast, swamping him.
16
“Find Her.”
Something was on his chest.
Skeggi tried to swat at it but couldn’t lift his hands. He felt so cold. He was shivering. He couldn’t believe how cold he felt. And thirsty. He wanted water.
His eyes flickered open.
Smoke stood on his chest, her feathers tickling his chin, her big eyes fixed on his. When his eyes opened, her eyes suddenly went huge and the pupils went all black. “Hoo!” she cried, flapping her wings. She shot up into the air, circling over his head, hooting like a maniac.
“Somebody’s happy,” Gefjun said.
“The damn owl finally got out of my way!” A cloak flew out over Skeggi’s body. “Finally,” Ostryg said, tucking the cloak around Skeggi’s shivering body. “I’ve been trying to make that owl move so I could cover you up, but every time I tried, the little bastard would try and bite me.”
“She was worried,” Gefjun said from next to Skeggi’s leg, where he felt her tighten something.
“I didn’t give a damn. I was more worried about him than that damn owl,” Ostryg griped.
“Are you feeling better?” Thora asked, looking at Skeggi from where she knelt next to his wounded leg, her blonde hair like a nimbus around her head. “We had to put down some heavy-duty magic on your leg. I was sure we’d lost you.”
Skeggi wasn’t sure if she was joking, but he glanced at Dyrfinna, who was sitting on a fallen tree nearby. Her eyes were burning, and he was pretty sure he saw the glimmer of tears in them. Then she frowned magnificently at him and he stopped looking. Okay, then, if he’d made her cry, it must have been touch and go.
But that wasn’t important now.
“The girl,” Skeggi said, trying to sit up, though he was shivering too much. Thora put out her hands and gently pushed him back to the ground, and she covered him again with the cloak. “The girl,” Skeggi said again through chattering teeth. “Iron Skull took her.”
A Whisper of Smoke Page 9
