by Angus Donald
The scuff marks made by their running feet were clear to see in the virgin snow, and Tor wondered about trying to disguise them somehow, perhaps brushing them away with a tree branch. But there was no time.
The drumming noise was growing louder and louder, even over the whistle of the storm. In a matter of moments, they saw horsemen, perhaps thirty of them, wrapped tight in black cloaks, scale-mail just visible, and pinched faces raw under their ridged helmets, cantering past in a clatter, jingle and great cloud of breath-steam.
Then they were gone.
They waited a while until the rattle of the iron-shod hooves on the rock-hard track had faded into nothing, then very cautiously they emerged again on to the road. The horsemen had been completely swallowed by the grey of the storm. As if they had never been there. But for the hundreds of hoof-marks pitting the snow on the track, each one now filling with fresh flakes, Tor might have imagined the episode.
‘Scholares,’ she said. ‘On our scent from the Red Hart.’
They proceeded with a great deal more caution from then on, walking up the edge of the road, close to the trees, ready at any moment to flee for safety into the vast trackless forest beside them.
Before very long they came to the fork in the road.
The left-hand fork was the larger of the two; the road that according to the crude leather map supplied by Bishop Livinus led to the village of Eggeldorf. Tor peered down the track, straining to see through the swirl of snowflakes, her eyes streaming with the icy wind. She thought she could see a glow of fire, red-yellow, just a prick of light at the very limit of her vision, and a dark line across the road.
‘I think they are just ahead, waiting for us. I can see a light,’ she said.
‘Could that be Eggeldorf?’ asked Bjarki.
‘No, it’s a fair few miles yet to the village,’ said Otto.
‘So… they are waiting for us,’ said Bjarki. ‘Blocking the road.’
‘And there are probably some more of the bastards, Red Cloak infantry coming up more slowly on foot behind us,’ Tor said.
Tor and Bjarki exchanged a glance. Captain Otto said: ‘What then shall we do? Could we surrender? At least they’d give us something hot to eat.’
‘We’ll have to go round them,’ said Tor. ‘Once we get to Eggeldorf we can pay someone to hide us. We’ve plenty of coin. Or we could find a remote shed, or a barn to shelter in. If we stay out in this tonight, we won’t enjoy it.’
‘Come on then,’ said Bjarki cheerily. ‘The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be in Eggeldorf, and somewhere warm. Just three or four miles, you said, Otto, yes? We can make it before nightfall if we step out just a little.’
Bjarki began striding away into the grey blustering weather, up the smaller right-hand fork. His two companions reluctantly started after him.
* * *
Bjarki was cold, wet and completely exhausted. His hunger seemed to have passed but he could no longer feel his toes even inside the boots and woollen hose he wore. Worse, it was getting dark and they were, he knew, lost.
Perhaps the map was faulty – this was the back of beyond, after all, the very edge of Francia, where cartographers were thin on the ground – or they had taken a wrong turn somewhere in the storm. It was pitch dark now, and he spent most of his energy trying to avoid walking into trees looming in the darkness, and not always successfully. He had a lump on his forehead and his face had been scratched by branches. When exactly the sun had gone down was a mystery in the gloom of the forest; it must have been hours ago.
They had walked a mile, fifteen hundred of his counted paces, up the track on the right-hand fork, which had grown progressively narrower and more overgrown as they followed it. Then they had turned left, exactly a half turn, and plunged into the snowy forest aiming to hit the road behind the Black Cloaks’ roadblock and continue into Eggeldorf via that easier route. But whatever happened, whether the map was off, or they had miscalculated, they were now stumbling in freezing darkness through untamed wilderness.
‘That’s it,’ he said, turning to the two huddled forms behind him. ‘We have to stop for the night. We could walk past Eggeldorf and never know it.’
Neither of them disagreed.
Bjarki was no stranger to sleeping out in the snow; he had done so on hunting trips with Ubbi, and he was reasonably certain he could keep them all alive for the night. He began by clearing a small area of snow under a tree, scraping the snow into low walls in a rough circle, then building up the walls with the fall from around the growing shelter. Once he had cleared most of the forest floor he was relieved to find dry-ish sticks, branches and leaf litter, and in a few moments he had a flame kindled and a fire going, with a cooking pot packed with snow suspended over the crackling flames.
‘Aren’t you worried about the enemy seeing the flames?’ Otto said.
‘If we don’t have a fire we’re probably going to freeze to death,’ said Tor. ‘If we have a blaze and the Black Cloaks see it, at least we die warm.’
They managed to get the pot to boil and made a sort of weak venison stew from scrapings of the dried meat and some stores from Tor’s pack. It was watery fare but at least it was hot, and when everyone had got down a good cupful, the three of them lay down next to the fire, pressed close together and covered with all their blankets, cloaks, furs and spare clothes. For the first time that day, Tor felt her bones begin to thaw.
They lay in silence for a few minutes, but Tor was oddly wakeful.
‘You know where we are, oaf,’ she said. She was snuggled right into the comforting bulk of Bjarki’s back, with Captain Otto pressed into hers.
‘We’re lost, Tor. Of course I don’t know where we are.’
‘I do. I know. We’re in the First Forest,’ she said.
Bjarki thought about this. Or perhaps he had already fallen asleep.
Tor continued, murmuring the words quietly: ‘This is the same ancient forest that we travelled through with Valtyr, one year ago next month. This vast woodland stretches right across the world, east to west, and it contains the Irminsul, and the Fyr Skola, and the Lodges… and all that we love. Hundreds of miles to the west of here, perhaps a thousand miles – I don’t know how far – there are boys and girls from the Groves who are out Voyaging, alone in the First Forest, and frightened, with nothing but a scrap of fur to keep them warm. They want nothing more than to discover their own gandr in these woods, to become Rekkr. And here we are, as well…’
At which point, still awaiting a reply from Bjarki, she, too, fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-two
The Beast awakens
The storm passed in the night and the sky cleared to a magnificent blue with the dawn. Even so, when the three travellers awoke and climbed out of their snow-encrusted blankets, somewhat dazzled by the sunlight filtering through the trees, they could feel that the temperature had dropped significantly.
They broke their fasts with dried venison sticks, oatcakes and half frozen ale from Tor’s water-skin. Then, shivering, teeth chattering, they packed up their little camp with as much speed as they could generate.
The trees marched off around them in all directions, their trunks closely packed. There was no sign of any path or track. The snow lay like a smooth, crisp, blanket over the whole earth, untouched by any living thing. Bjarki looked at the shadows the sun cast from the trees, he walked around the trunks looking at patterns of moss, and at which side it grew. Then he said, ‘I think we go this way,’ sticking out his arm to the west.
‘Since we are hopelessly lost, does it matter which way we go?’
Captain Otto had not had a good night. Apparently Tor had thrashed and turned wildly in some sort of sweaty nightmare, and kicked him several times painfully in the shins, each time as he was just getting to sleep. He was not in a pleasant mood.
Bjarki said patiently, ‘The Eggeldorf road is west of the smaller track we took last night. So we should head west. Unless you have a better idea?’
Captain Otto merely grumbled inaudibly to himself and hefted his pack.
‘Well, then, let’s get on…’ And Bjarki turned and began to forge his way through the heavy snow drifts, in the direction he believed to be west.
It was very hard going. The snow was as deep as Tor’s waist in some places and, although she tried to tread in Bjarki and Otto’s footsteps, she could feel her strength and energy draining away with every laboured stride.
The ground began to rise and became rockier, the trees appearing to grow sparser, with wider gaps between the trunks and less tangling undergrowth. They found they had to negotiate huge round boulders, as well as smaller ones covered in snow that turned dangerously under their boots.
On a brief rest, to gulp down a mouthful of ale and an oatcake, Bjarki said: ‘I aim to get us to the top of this hill, then maybe we will be able to see something from there. Even a tiny village should be visible from a decent height. There’ll be hearth smoke, of course, which we must be able to see.’
Neither Tor not Captain Otto offered any comment; they leaned on their spears, tried to steady their breathing and swallowed down their oats and ale.
An hour later, with the white summit of the hill still a fair distance away, they came into a natural hollow in the hillside, a clearing with a wide apron of snow-shrouded turf between walls of silver birch, and saw at the far end, half covered by a curtain of ice-crusted greenery, the dark mouth of a large cave that appeared to burrow horizontally straight into the rocky hillside.
Tor stopped and pressed a fist into the small of her aching back.
‘It might be useful to remember the location of this place,’ she said, ‘particularly if we have to spend another freezing night out in the wild.’
‘I say we stop here now – and make this place our camp,’ said Captain Otto, his face drawn with tiredness. ‘We can make a fire, cook some food, scout out a path to Eggeldorf from here. One of us could climb to the top.’
Bjarki looked up at the sun, it was only a little after noon. But he was very tempted. At least they would be warm tonight if they did camp here…
‘What is that smell?’ said Tor.
Bjarki breathed in through his nose. There was a definite odour on the wind: meaty, musty, a tang of faeces. A smell of old corruption and rot.
Captain Otto had shrugged off his heavy pack and leaned his hunting spear up against it and was clambering up a spill of icy rocks towards the black mouth of the cave. He was smiling happily for the first time that day.
Tor had wandered to the edge of the clearing and was stirring the butt of her spear in the crust of snow at the base of a small huddled shrub.
‘Oh gods,’ she said. ‘Look at this, oaf!’ And she lifted an object on the butt of her spear, something soft and floppy.
It was a boot, the remains of an old military boot, the leather shredded into strips and slimy with mould.
* * *
The monster of Eggeldorf waddled slowly out of the cave interior on all fours, blinking in the light, like an elder awaking from a deep snooze.
It was an enormous creature, almost as big as the stories had claimed, and black as midnight, with a huge square head, small round ears and very pale brown eyes that were almost orange or yellow: the colour of flames.
It saw the humans and gave a long, low warning growl, sounding more exasperated than angry, to Bjarki’s ear. It was a bear, of course, an old she-bear who had lived long past thirty summers and grown to a prodigious size.
Bjarki could not take his eyes off her. He was lost in admiration.
The massive animal reared up on its hind legs and roared: another warning. A blast of sound that seemed to shake the air in the placid clearing; a shelf of snow on the branch of a nearby silver birch slid off with a whump.
The she-bear roared deafeningly once more: ‘Who dares disturb me?’ she seemed to be saying. Indeed, she seemed to be speaking directly to Bjarki, a deep ancient voice inside his head. He saw that her belly and chest were a lighter colour, a paler brown hue, and stood up on her hind legs like this she was twice Bjarki’s height. He noticed something else: jutting from her left flank, below the ribs, was an object that looked like a tree branch, snapped off.
‘Mother Bear,’ he said, his voice shaking with emotion, ‘we greet you as a comrade; Mother Bear, we respect your strength and your wisdom.’
The bear had now fixed Bjarki with her fire-coloured eyes.
‘I see you there, man-child,’ she said, silently inside his skull.
‘Have mercy on us, Mother Bear, we weak creatures, we foolish—’
A long, high-pitched warbling scream – Bjarki jerked his gaze to the right. And there was Otto, with his sword drawn, yelling out a Frankish war cry and charging straight at the she-bear. It was a very courageous move.
And utterly senseless.
The massive animal dropped on all fours again and lollopped to meet the charging captain. The Auxilla captain never stood a chance; his sword swept downward and the blow hit her left shoulder but its power was easily absorbed by the layers of thick, dense black fur and humped muscle, like a man being struck with a goose feather. The sword bounced off, untouched by blood. And the bear’s massive right paw licked out at the same time, four claws extended like a handful of spear blades, and swept across Otto’s body, ripping away his stomach and much of his chest from his spine.
Otto’s eviscerated body wobbled on its legs for a moment. The Auxilla captain looked down at the bloody space where his belly had been, his eyes rolled up and he slumped to the ground. The bear licked the man-blood from her claws, gave a shiver of pleasure, and turned her burning eyes on Bjarki.
‘Wait, no!’ said Bjarki. Now Tor was running in from the left of the clearing towards the bear’s vast black flank. She had the heavy hunting spear levelled and ready to plunge deep into the animal’s side.
‘No! Tor! No! Stay right back!’ yelled Bjarki.
The girl ignored him. She was four strides away from the gigantic animal. The bear turned, faster than seemed possible. The spear blade was only a foot from her black fur when she swept it aside with a casual flick of one huge paw. Tor was committed to her run, and momentum carried her straight towards the she-bear. The animal opened her jaws wide, exposing several long sharp yellow teeth and an ugly purple-tinged mouth.
‘Mother, no – she’s my friend!’
The enormous jaws snapped shut but, at the last moment, Tor managed to twist her slim body out of the way of the creature’s teeth. Instead she crashed hard into the bear’s shoulder, rebounded, just managed to keep her feet, when the bear whacked her with one massive sweeping paw and sent her flying across the clearing to crash into a stand of ash.
Tor’s head smashed directly into the bole of one of the thick trees with a clonk, and she fell boneless in a heap, twitched once, and moved no more.
The bear began to plod towards Tor. Saliva dangled from her jaws.
‘No, Mother Bear, I beg you. Leave her be.’
The bear stopped, turned and looked once again at Bjarki.
‘I will not harm you, Mother,’ said Bjarki, showing his empty hands and spreading his arms wide. ‘But you must not hurt my friend any more.’
The animal was forty feet away from Bjarki. If she chose to, she could leap on him in a couple of bounds and tear him to bloody scraps.
She slowly rose up on her hind legs once more. Bjarki could smell the creature strongly now, the rottenness of her. The tree branch that was jutting from her flank was, he now saw, a spear shaft. The blade was still buried deep inside her body. It had been there for a long time. The wound had festered, the flesh around it was greenish-black and crawling with maggots.
Bjarki could feel her pain. He could smell her death on her.
Yet she lived.
‘You and I are one,’ said the she-bear inside his head.
‘Yes,’ said Bjarki. ‘You are my gandr.’
‘You see my pain, man-child,’ she said. ‘Show mercy. Relea
se me.’
‘If that is what you desire, I will do it gladly,’ said Bjarki.
The bear roared, a vast meaty blast of sound that sent Bjarki reeling backwards several paces with its force. He stumbled over his own pack and baggage, which he had set down by a boulder in the centre of the clearing, and stood up again holding his long, heavy, hunting spear in both his hands.
‘I will release you from this life, Mother, if you wish it,’ he said.
The enormous bear was waddling towards him now on her two hind feet, coming at him fast, her paws held high, in an almost human-like gesture of surrender. She was growling too – not growling, humming, deep in her throat. Bjarki recognised the four-note tune like the greeting of a friend.
He set the butt-end of the heavy spear against the boulder, and took a firm grip on the shaft, keeping the blade low, a foot above the snowy turf.
The bear lumbered forward, gaining speed, the humming rose steadily in volume and became a hard snarl and then a full-on howl of rage and pain.
At the last moment, Bjarki hoisted the blade of the hunting spear, and the charging she-bear barged straight into the steel, impaling herself on the razor-sharp blade. The spearhead entered the centre of the bear’s chest, just below the sternum, and slid deep into her maggot-corrupted lungs, driven deep inside by the onward momentum of the enormous lolloping beast.
The bear screamed then, massive purple mouth open wider than ever, the months of agony she had endured pouring out of her in an avalanche of deafening sound. The thick spear shaft snapped in Bjarki’s hands and he only just managed to dive out of the way as the dying bear stumbled, tripped and fell like a mountain on top of the boulder – and lay there wheezing and slobbering and gurgling, leaking blood and green and yellow pus from its months-old rotting wound. Bjarki got to his feet, ears still ringing from the huge animal’s death howl, and looked into the hot yellow eyes of his gandr.
