by ich du
AS HE DRIFTED off to sleep, his flame still burning happily beside him, Kurt's ears picked up a noise from outside the cave. It was a loud snuffling sound, as if a large creature was sniffing close to the entrance. Instantly awake, his heart racing, Kurt sat up. In the flickering light of the fire, he could see something bulky moving around outside. It looked like a bear, but as Kurt rose to a crouch, he saw that it was no ordinary animal. It was like a bear, only larger and stranger. It was easily twice as tall as he was, and five twisted and curved horns sprouted from its head. Its teeth were as long as Kurt's fingers and dripped with saliva that hissed and spat as it dropped on to the snow. Pulling his sword from his sheath, Kurt rose to his full height.
The beast turned and looked directly at him, its large black eyes reflecting the magical flame. A deep growl issued from its throat that reverberated around the cave. Kurt felt utterly calm as the creature took a step into the cave, its bulk almost too much to fit through the entrance.
'Come on then, you ugly thing!' hissed Kurt, raising his sword to a position from which he could thrust or cut.
The beast sniffed the air again, its head turning first towards the fire and then back at Kurt.
'Come on!' Kurt shouted, taking a step forward, sword ready.
The beast gave a grunt and shuffled backwards quickly despite its bulk, a plaintive moaning escaping its throat. Kurt took another step forward and it turned and bolted, ploughing through the snow at some speed. Kurt stood and watched it disappear into the darkness, bemused by this turn of events. He bowed and sniffed the flame. He could smell nothing unusual. In fact, the flame didn't smell of anything at all, not even the burning fur. With a shrug, Kurt propped up his sword against the cave wall and settled back under his furs, wishing for sleep to come, but his tumultuous thoughts of Ursula kept it at bay.
CHAPTER SIX
Falsehoods
South of Tungask, Early winter 1709
SNOW DRIFTED FROM the branches of the trees, scattering like white dust over Ursula. She woke with a start. Her joints ached from the bitter cold and her skin was pinched with the first touches of frostbite. She had made herself a rough bier out of branches and bark, and the fire she had built still smoked fitfully beside her. With a moan of pain, she forced herself to sit up, her frozen limbs protesting at the movement. Standing, she shook off the fine layer of snow that covered her. Her hair was stiff with ice as well, and her face felt numb. Thanking Sigmar for seeing her safely through the night, she gently blew on the fire to get it burning again, her breath coming out as a fine mist. It was still dark under the canopy of the trees, and Ursula had no way of telling how long she had slept. With horror she realised that she might not have woken at all; if she had slept longer, the cold may have pulled her into a painless death.
Cursing herself for running away the night before, Ursula added a few small twigs to the fire. She looked around, but there was nothing recognisable within sight. Last night she had run from the town, her eyes filled with tears, and had headed unthinkingly for the promise of safety offered by the forest. In hindsight, that might have saved her, for out on the plains with no shelter from the snow or protection from the bitter north wind, she may well have succumbed to the freezing cold.
She felt like a silly young girl now, for last night she had been driven by the urge to run away from her sadness, the same instinct that had made her leave home all those years ago and pushed her from town to town throughout her childhood. It seemed ridiculous, as she was cold and hungry now. Suddenly, Ursula thought of Kurt, and the tears welled up again. He had been so angry, so concerned about what the savage Norsemen thought, he had scared Ursula. At the same time, Ursula wondered if her loved one even knew she had left Tungask. Was he looking for her now, or was he no longer concerned?
In her heart, she knew that Kurt still loved her and would be mortally worried, but there had been little evidence of his love lately. For a long while he had been growing more distant, as if the distance from the Empire was somehow connected to the closeness he felt with Ursula. The two of them had reacted in opposite ways to the situation. Kurt had been pragmatic about their exile at first, and now seemed to embrace it as a great adventure. Ursula, however, had become more and more homesick and worried as their exodus had continued. She had little experienced a true home in her life, and to be driven from the one place where she had actually found a small measure of happiness cut her to the soul.
And Kurt was not the only person she was missing. Apart from the solitary vision of Marius and Kurt fighting that she had experienced in Tungask, she had not felt the presence of Sigmar since she had left Badenhof. She had been given little time to pray, and felt that perhaps finally her god had abandoned her. Even now, lost and alone as she had been so many times in her life, Sigmar was silent. Had she strayed too far from him? Had her acceptance of the wickedness of Jakob and his corrupting influence on Kurt turned Sigmar against her?
As she fed more wood to the crackling fire, her sadness turned to grim resolve, as it often had during her most miserable periods of life. She would see the Empire again, she would pray again in a proper church, and she would fight for Kurt to be with her. But she realised that the two of them faced a choice now. As much as she loved him, she could not go north with Kurt and start a life amongst the barbaric Norse. Her heart was in the south and the warmer lands. She wanted contentment and safety, not a constant fight against the elements and the scorn of the people she would be living with. Kurt had to choose if he wanted to share that life with her, or if the strange calling he felt from the north was more important to him.
With this resolve in her heart, Ursula stood up and looked around again. There was no way yet of telling which way was north, south, east or west. The forest looked the same in every direction. In her mind, Ursula had a debate with herself. Would it be better to just choose a direction and strike out, or to remain where she was and hope that others found her?
Almost instantly, she made her decision. She was not the sort of person to wait on others; she would take control of her life. The fitful smoke from the fire was drifting in the breeze and she took this as a sign that she should head downwind. She couldn't explain why this seemed the right choice, and wished that perhaps Sigmar, in his great wisdom, would have granted her a vision of what to do, as he had done in the past. However, he had not, and so with no other better course of action evident, she set off with the wind at her back. As she walked, she thought of other reasons why it was better to keep moving. Firstly, if she stayed in one place too long, there was no way of knowing what sort of animals might be drawn by her fire and her own scent. Secondly, if she walked, she would leave a trail that another person might find and follow, whereas if she stayed where she had been, any searchers would have to come across her, almost by chance. Happier in her heart that she was doing the right thing, she strode more quickly through the snow and bracken.
IT WAS NEARLY noon and Jakob had scoured the outskirts of the forest with little success. Already a whole night and day had passed without finding Ursula and he was trying to work out how long he should search before returning to Tungask to break the news to Kurt. The sooner he quit looking, the less likely she was to be found alive. However, whenever he decided to confront Kurt with the truth, the ex-knight would not be happy and Jakob knew that the longer he stayed out here in the cold, the better his defence against accusations that he had not tried hard enough. He would have to judge it carefully, but decided that if he had found no sign of the wretched woman by sundown, he would turn back tomorrow morning. If he could not find her to deal with her, then the chances were the cruel northern lands had already done his grim task for him. He would be able to go back to Kurt and report her death, and then they could go north. It seemed strange, the path the gods had laid out for him. Only a few days ago he had been arguing to stay in Tungask, wary of travelling in the height of winter. Now here he was, contemplating just that to avoid a confrontation with van Diesl.
Ja
kob worked as methodically as he could, doubling back and forth along stretches of the wood looking for signs of where Ursula might have been. He had been following a good trail for a while yesterday, but the ground had become rocky and more open to the sky, allowing the steady light fall of snow to obliterate whatever tracks she might have made. However, she had been travelling steadily southeast, away from Tungask, and it was in this direction that Jakob concentrated his efforts.
Another hour or so had passed when Jakob came across a clearing, and at its centre was a low log building, its roof sloping down to the ground at the back, with a low door and narrow windows. The stumps of trees all around the clearing showed that this was a logger's hut, but he could see no smoke issuing from the chimney and deemed the place to be empty, perhaps even deserted. Even so, he approached cautiously, noting the pile of firewood stacked up under the lee of the roof to the south, away from the prevailing wind, and the thickness of the snow in front of the door meant that no one had used it for several days, perhaps even weeks. He called out as he got closer, but there was no reply.
Knocking at the door, he shouldered it inwards, spilling snow across a packed earth floor. The inside of the hut was sparse, with an open fire pit in the centre, and a table with two low benches flanking it set to the left. There was no sign of plates or other utensils, and checking the small food store, he found only piles of salted meat. To Jakob, it was obvious that the hut wasn't used in the winter, but supplies of wood and food had been left here for anyone needing shelter at these inhospitable times. Grateful for the chance to rest and eat, Jakob started a fire in the pit using the driest wood from the pile outside, and sat at the bench to chew on a few strips of the cured meat.
As before, he was at a loss concerning what to do. He had only a short amount of light left to search, for this far north the nights were long during the winter. Not as long as in his homeland, where midwinter was shrouded in darkness for almost the entire day, and in the summer the sun still shone close to midnight. As he sat and ate, he considered his options. The loggers cabin was a good base and he would return here tonight if he could. That gave him a little extra time because he was an experienced woodsman and would be able to find his way back here, even after the sun had set. He also knew that Ursula was capable of looking after herself, she would be able to start a fire, and if he searched upwind again, towards the north, he might catch some scent of smoke.
Gulping down another piece of meat, Jakob stood up and stretched his tired legs. Yes, he told himself, a little more searching today, some hunting tomorrow and then he would return to Tungask and face Kurt.
DUSK WAS STARTING to darken the forest when Jakob came across the first signs of life that were not animal tracks. He was only a mile or so south from the logger's cabin, and had stumbled on the trail almost by accident. He had followed a narrow track from the cabin, which had led to a wider path between the trees. He had found a single trail to begin with and at first he thought it might be Ursula, but upon closer inspection, he decided the footprints were too large and the strides too long for a woman. Scouting around the area, he came across more tracks, those of other men and the hoof prints of horses. With a growing sense of unease, the Norseman guessed that the tracks were made by Marius and his warband, nobody else would be travelling in such numbers at this time of year, and that they had been made recently within the last day. There were at least thirty horses, most likely knights, and the same number again of pack ponies. More worrying perhaps, was the mess of footprints that indicated a sizeable force on foot as well. Quite how the witch hunter and his men had not run into Jakob was a mystery, but upon a careful examination of the tracks, Jakob was confident that they had also not captured Ursula because none of the footprints matched those he had seen the day before. That did not mean that she had not been discovered, merely that if they had found her, she had not been brought with them.
With Marius this close to Tungask, Jakob was forced to think through his plans once more. To stay in the town was to invite disaster, but he knew that without any solid news of Ursula, Kurt would not leave. Trying to convince him otherwise would be impossible.
Jakob decided that he must try to find Ursula, kill her and take her body back to the town. With such irrefutable evidence, and vulnerable because of his loss, Kurt would be more easily persuaded to quit the town and evade Marius again. Then a thought struck Jakob. Out on the plains after the troll attack, Kurt had already resolved to make a stand in the town against Marius and his men. If he thought the witch hunter guilty of killing Ursula, there was a good chance he would not listen to Jakob at all, but instead, driven by anger and grief, try to exact some vengeance on the witch hunter. And that would not be good either. For a moment, Jakob considered abandoning them altogether. He could easily slip away to the south and leave them to their fates. It was Kurt that Marius seemed intent upon, judging by the history the two of them shared, he would not be interested in pursuing Jakob, if he even knew who he was.
And yet, Jakob dismissed the idea. He was fully aware of his own shortcomings, and life had taught him that cunning and guile were his best abilities rather than the overblown sense of honour and courage that many of his people seemed to suffer from. Despite this, the gods had presented Jakob with an opportunity to return to his people, whom in his heart he still longed to be with, and to do so in triumph with a mighty warrior at his beck and call. Could he really give up this chance to make a good life for himself, and go back to his former existence scraping and surviving on the edge of society? Surely, the gods would laugh at him for his cowardice.
Resolving to find a way to make his plan work, Jakob followed the trail of Marius for a while, thinking hard about how to best turn the situation to his advantage. Somehow, he had to sever the link between Kurt and Ursula in such a way that the former knight would be happy to accompany Jakob back to his homeland. Saying she was dead, or actually killing her, would not do this. He had to make Kurt abandon her. It was while thinking along this line of reasoning that Jakob was struck by inspiration. One way he could get Kurt to give up on Ursula would be to convince him that she had already abandoned him first. But there was also the problem of Marius. Was there a way he could get rid of Ursula and the witch hunter at the same time?
It was getting dark now, and Jakob was running out of time. Tomorrow Marius and his men could be at Tungask, and there was little hope for Jakob once that happened. How could he forestall that event and at the same time locate Ursula? For once she was under Jakob's control, however reluctantly, it would be easier for him to enact whatever scheme he could devise to extricate himself and Kurt from the dangerous situation they were in. Wracking his brains for a solution, a sudden revelation struck Jakob that made him laugh aloud.
For months, he had been teaching Kurt many of the old ways, the traditional supplications to the gods for strength and guidance. He had even used a few of his powers before now, to guide them through the featureless tundra of the north. How could he have been so blind? The knowledge Jakob needed was within his reach, he had been going about the whole matter in the wrong way. His time in the south had dulled his mind and instincts, he should have been thinking like a northman rather than a southerner all this time. There was no need for all this back-tracking and searching; there was a riskier but quicker way.
Clearing himself a space in the deep snow beneath a towering pine tree, he sat down on the frozen earth. He pulled a pouch from his belt and emptied the contents into his hand: seven rune stones he had carved from whalebone when he had still lived in the north, copying the designs from those he had seen the elders use.
He held the rune stones, each roughly the size of his thumbnail, in both hands, and closed his eyes. Concentrating, he tried to recall the words he had heard spoken in guidance rituals all those years ago. He had attempted it once before, when he had first left the village, and had been unsuccessful. He knew there were dangers associated with calling on the gods in this manner, for they were fickle and
not used to the demands of mere mortals.
Jakob hesitated for a moment, doubts suddenly filling his mind. This was more than just the small tricks that Kurt had so ably learned. This was old, dangerous magic. He snorted at himself in derision, for worrying. He was older and wiser now, and his strength of mind was greater than it had ever been. Though Kurt had some natural ability, Jakob had been dealing with the gods in this way for many years now. Focussing on Ursula, he began a low chant, the words barely a whisper, as he pictured the red-haired woman in his mind. He began to shake the rune stones in his hands, rattling out a rhythm in time to his heartbeat.
He felt the earth beneath him and the air around him closing in, threatening to swallow him, but he fought back his fear and increased the speed of the chanting and rattling. The rune stones began to warm in his grasp as the breath of the gods flowed through them, trying to give them a voice. Jakob's heart was palpitating wildly now and the words that flowed from his lips were of a language long dead and yet living on within the world around him: a primal tongue still spoken by the clouds and the trees, the mud beneath his feet, in the minds of worms and beetles, and in the hearts of men.
The heat from the rune stones flared suddenly, scorching Jakob's hands and he fought the urge to drop them, knowing that to do so would invite all sorts of danger from the backlash of divine power flowing through him. Resisting the pain, he grasped the stones tighter and focussed his thoughts even more, imprinting the image of Ursula into the runes carved on the bone chips.
Feeling the power of the gods passing through him into the stones, he scattered them onto the bare ground in front of him and opened his eyes. The runes were glowing red with energy, vibrating on the frozen ground, which steamed and bubbled beneath them. Calling on Jaenz for the location of Ursula, he read out the names of the runes in the order they had been scattered, starting from the one furthest away and working towards himself. As he spoke each rune-name, the stone glowed stronger, and a web of flickering, multicoloured light linked them together in a complex pattern that shifted and spun, impossible to remember from one moment to the next.
