SNAFU: Hunters

by James A. Moore

  All that moved was the rippling current of the water, shining like glass; a few fish leaped, a few birds flew. Here and there, horses grazed.

  Horses… many still saddled and bridled… the buckles glinting in the sun… other glints and flashes of metal showed from the grass… as if from sword-blades or bright-polished helms.

  “I see no corpses,” Valhild said.

  “I see no one at all,” added Osig. “They aren’t here.”

  “But they were,” Anbjorn said. “I know these horses. I know this gear. That’s Kjarstan’s war-stallion! And, there, his banner, by those stones! Stefnir would never have let it fall so long as his arm held strength.”

  “Unless they fled,” said Inglar.

  “They did not flee!”

  “What, then? Did they surrender? Were they taken, meekly, without a fight?”

  “I’ll give you a fight, you–”

  “Come and try–”

  Valhild nudged her horse between them, a one-woman shield-wall with a dangerous scowl. “Settle it later,” she said. “Or I’ll settle it now.”

  There were no corpses, no indications of struggle, only wandering, riderless horses; shields and spears and a banner-pole as if carelessly cast aside, dropped swords or cloaks simply strewn here and there among the random scatters of stones.

  “Could they have...” Thrunn trailed off, as if unable to bring himself to utter the words.

  “Vanished?” Egil suggested.

  “Pff, vanished,” muttered Inglar, then subsided as he caught Valhild’s look.

  “They were here,” Thrunn said, in a slow but solid sort of reason. “Now they aren’t. So, they must have gone somewhere.”

  “Then, Freya’s tits, where?” Anbjorn flung up his arms in frustration.

  They dismounted, one by one, warily. Hreyth last of all swung down from her steed. This was not what she had expected to find, no monster’s slaughter-yard, no grave-barrows or rock-hewn giant’s halls. Some other mischief seemed at work here, a subtler magic, seidr or sorcery.

  “Someone lost a boot,” Osig said.

  Anbjorn held up a helm, undented, undamaged. “This is Udr’s. He had it from his father. He wouldn’t have left it, not while he lived.”

  Atli stooped to a twinkle in the grass and came up with a jeweled brooch in his hand. “And who, winning such a battle, would walk away without taking plunder?”

  “This was no battle,” Egil said. “There’s no blood. Not a drop to be seen.”

  “The king sent skilled warriors,” Inglar said. “Are we to believe none of them so much as wounded a foe?”

  “Or fought foes that did not bleed,” Anbjorn said.

  Osig eyed him dubiously. “Every living thing bleeds. Man, beast, or monster.”

  “And men plunder,” said Atli.

  “Living or dead, men plunder,” Egil agreed. “And beasts devour, and monsters do both.”

  “But, whatever did this, did neither.” Valhild frowned, shaking her head. “I don’t like it.”

  Hreyth unfastened her cloak as the others continued their search. She spread the heavy grey-wool cloth on the ground and laid the wolf pelt upon it.

  “It’s as if they did vanish, plucked from their very saddles as they rode.” Anbjorn turned his friend’s helm over and over in his hands.

  “And from their very boots?” Thrunn glanced uneasily around.

  “While leaving the horses untouched?” Inglar added. He had not joined in the searching, but stayed near Hreyth, watching her.

  For those questions, none of them could offer answer.

  Onto the silver lushness of the wolf’s fur, Hreyth cast a fistful of rune-marked bones from the bag at her belt. They landed with rattling clicks, some atop others, runes showing blood-red, soot-black, and gold. She studied them, the patterns of them, the arrangement they’d made, their meanings and messages.

  Earth-Smoke-Man-Stone-Breath-Change-Theft-Danger.

  She rose slowly, gaze sweeping over their surroundings. The peaceful river valley, green with new grass… its sloped sides curving up toward rugged, rocky peaks… the spring-blue sky overhead now gone pearly-pale… skeins of mist lingering in dark fissures and clefts, wafting in curls around the bases of the many tall and scattered standing stones…

  The stones.

  The standing stones, akin to those erected by the Old People of half-forgotten days, but these not towering huge and set in henges with altar-slabs and crosspiece lintels.

  These, of smoother texture and lighter hue than the rocky peaks above or crag-ridges and dark boulders jutting from the earth; these were each at the most not much taller than a man, and of a random, straggling-line order… but for the cluster, almost a ring, near to where Anbjorn had found his war-brother’s helm…

  The stones.

  An apprehensive silence had fallen, creeping with the same soft, insidious stealth as the fog seeping from the shadows. When she spoke – “The stones!” – her words came louder than intended, a sharp cutting of that silence. Everyone started, some gasped, and several hands went to hilts.

  “By Odin, woman!” Inglar thumped a fist against his chest, as if to correct his heart in its cadence. “Are you trying to shock us to death?”

  She turned her gaze upon him, and judging by the way he blanched, whatever Olla’s man saw in her mismatched eyes made him regret his choice of words.

  “Stanvaettir,” she said.

  “What?” he asked, scowling at her.

  Egil’s own eyes widened beneath his scar-creased brow. “Creatures of the deep earth.”

  “Breath-stealers,” Hreyth said. “They draw out the life of men, transform them, and leave only stones in their place.”

  Another silence fell, this one filled with dread and understanding. Even Inglar, hand still held over his heart, showed a reluctant, dawning comprehension.

  “Are you telling us,” Anbjorn began at last, his voice low but shaking, “that these… these stones all around us… are… my earl, my war-brothers, my friends?”

  Before she could reply, a whirring rain of arrows smote into their midst.

  One struck Thrunn in the shoulder, piercing through his mail-coat. He shouted with mingled pain and surprise. Another nailed Inglar’s wrist to his torso; he fell back, uttering a strangled cry. A third grazed Valhild’s leg, slicing the leather and the skin beneath.

  “Shields!” the big woman bellowed.

  Egil raised his, stepping in front of Hreyth as another volley flew. Arrows thunked into heavy limewood or buried their iron heads in the grass.

  Atli and Anbjorn raised their shields as well, overlapping their rounded edges, forming a line to either side of Valhild and Egil. Thrunn, swearing ferociously, ripped the arrow from his shoulder and joined them. Blood gushed from his wound, coursing over and dulling the shine of his mail and his bright silver arm-ring.

  Blades sang from their scabbards. The nearest horses, no longer placid, whinnied and ran, stirring whorls and eddies in the low, rising ground-mist.

  “Inglar?” called Valhild.

  “Down but living,” Osig said, crouching beside the wounded man, then seizing his other wrist as he reached for the protruding arrow-shaft. “Don’t pull it! You’ll just die all the sooner.”

  Inglar coughed. Red bubbles burst on his lips. He fumbled at an awkward angle with his left hand for a spear, unwilling to face death without a weapon in his grasp.

  “Gunnleif’s yellow-dog bastards!” Atli peered through a gap in their small shield-wall. “Behind the ridge by that broken boulder… fifteen, maybe twenty.”

  “Outnumbered and they have archers,” said Valhild. “The gods must have thought we needed more of a challenge.” She eyed Thrunn’s blood-soaked mail. “How’s your arm?”

  He grimaced. “Still attached, and it’s only my left.” In his right hand he held a short-handled ax with a wide, sharp double-blade.

  “They’ll be coming for us,” she said, after another flurry of arrows struck
their shields.

  “Let them come.”

  “Then why aren’t they?” asked Anbjorn. “They’ve stopped shooting.”

  “No sense wasting arrows on limewood,” Osig said.

  “Come on, you ass-sniffing curs!” Atli shouted at their foes. “Fatherless bitch-whelps! Come and fight! Come and die!”

  “They’re afraid,” Egil said.

  “They should be,” said Thrunn.

  “Not of us.”

  “They should be!” he repeated.

  “They suspect something,” Hreyth said. “They know something is wrong here.”

  From behind the ridge came a man’s voice. “Drop your swords and surrender!”

  “Fuck your sister!” Atli retorted.

  “We want to talk!”

  “We want to fight!”

  Anbjorn nudged Atli with an elbow. “They might know what happened.”

  “They might shit amber, too, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  “Enough,” Valhild told them. She lowered her shield enough to poke her helmed head up over it. “Talk, then!”

  “We’re looking for some missing men.”

  “As are we, but there’s no one, only horses.”

  “Do you take Ulfvir Sneasson for a fool? We know Earl Kjarstan was coming this way.”

  “We’ve not found him, either.”

  A pause followed, no doubt marked by hasty conference behind the ridge. Then the man – Ulfvir – spoke again. “But we have found you.”

  More bowstrings twanged, more arrows flew. So did a hurled spear, which struck, shaft quivering, in Valhild’s shield.

  “So,” said Atli as they hunched behind their limewood wall. “We talked.”

  “You didn’t tell them about the stones,” Hreyth said.

  “You didn’t finish telling us about the stones,” Anbjorn said. “What about the stones?”

  “Forget the god-fucked stones!” Valhild ducked a second spear then hefted her great sword, its long blade sheened silver in the fog-dimmed sunlight. “Stand ready!”

  Gunnleif’s men charged with their yellow-and-black shields held high, weapons drawn, uttering full-throated war-cries. As they came, Egil and Atli stepped forward and met the first two with a tremendous crack of wood and iron.

  Then the battle was upon them.

  Thrunn reared back and flung his ax; it spun whickering through the air and caught a brown-haired man squarely between the collarbones. Valhild’s sword swept in a deadly arc. Her foe shield-turned the blow, leaving his body exposed, and Anbjorn sank his blade deep into the man’s belly.

  Ulfvir, the leader of the enemy, the one who’d said he wanted to talk, wore the shaggy yellow-brown pelt of a dire-hound for a cape. Its forepaws were knotted at his neck and its head, still with skull and jawbone and muzzle of snarling teeth, jounced on his shoulder as if snapping to bite. He, like Thrunn, carried an ax. Unlike Thrunn, he did not throw it, but brought it down in a furious slash that cleaved Atli’s shield into kindling – and Atli’s arm at the elbow.

  Atli screamed even as he thrust his sword at the dog-pelted man’s face, but missed, and stumbled to a knee with his stump gouting crimson and the fingers on the severed portion twitching and clenching convulsively in the grass. Ulfvir again lifted his ax, meaning to take Atli’s head, but Egil bashed his shield’s boss into the man’s chest, making him stagger.

  A younger man, lean and lithe and quick, darted around his companions, perhaps thinking to get past Valhild and Anbjorn, and strike from behind. But Valhild, for all her size, was almost as quick as him. She side-kicked, shattering his kneecap, tripping him. He went sprawling near Hreyth, who gripped her seax two-handed and seated it hilt-deep in the small of his back, the blade’s edge grating against his spine.

  “You were right,” Valhild said with a grin. “It does get the job done.”

  “We haven’t time for this,” Hreyth told her. “We’ll disturb the stanvaettir, and end up stones ourselves!”

  “You’re the rune-witch!” Whirling, Valhild swung in another great slicing arc, shearing mail and leather like thin cloth, opening a foe’s torso from shoulder to hip so that his entrails bulged obscenely from the gore-purple cut. “Think of something!”

  The chaos and clangor filled the world. Sounds rang, echoing strangely in the gathering mist. War-cries and death-cries trembled the air. Osig fell with his thigh slashed to the bone, the blood a torrent. Anbjorn dodged a sword-thrust then went reeling from a helm-cracking blow to the head.

  Think of something. She was the rune-witch; she must think of something.

  Inglar had somehow gotten to his feet, despite his right arm still arrow-pinned to his body. He’d shed his shield and picked up a spear in his left hand, and now ran at their enemies, shrieking like a berserk out of legend. He ran at Ulfvir, the dog-pelted leader, who’d retreated already from Egil’s relentless defense of the stricken Atli; Ulfvir scrambled back further, his courage deserting him in the face of Inglar’s ferocity.

  Another of Gunnleif’s men moved to meet Inglar’s charge. The spear-point rammed through yellow-and-black painted wood, splintering both shield and shaft with loud cracks, fouling them entangled and useless. Still like a berserk, Inglar ignored the man’s desperate sword-strokes. With another enraged shriek, he flung himself full on his foe. As they crashed together to the ground, Inglar tore free his arrow-pinned arm from his chest – the dark jet of heart’s-blood leaped in a fountain – and buried the arrowhead in the other man’s throat.

  The mist roiled, the mist churned.

  Hreyth ducked the wild swing of a black-bearded man’s blade. She heard Egil shouting, and Valhild’s war-cry as the big woman’s great sword claimed another quick kill. Hreyth heard screams and insults, and Ulfvir demanding their deaths. She saw bodies writhing in pain amid motionless corpses.

  She saw the mist, a thick fog now, not rolling in from the sea or river but issuing like cold smoke creeping and seething across the earth. Wisps flowed down from fissures in the rugged rock-ridges, and a billowing undulation from the broken boulder’s wide rough-edged cleft.

  Stanvaettir, she had thought, but she had been wrong.

  A black-bearded man swung again, hilt-first for her temple as if meaning to stun her senseless. Hreyth caught the blow with her left forearm – she felt the snap reverberate all the way to her toes – and Rook-Talon’s sharp, sturdy blade stabbed up through the man’s beard and chin-underside, scraping teeth, cleaving tongue, to impale his brain through the roof of his mouth.

  He collapsed in a violent, blood-vomiting gurgle. Hreyth wrenched Rook-Talon loose, the seax dripping. She tried to raise her left hand to swipe the scarlet mess from her face but it would not obey her. She blinked, shaking her head frantically, clearing her eyes.

  With one, that of blue, she saw only what anyone would – the fog, wafting thick to surround them.

  With the other, that of gold, she saw more.

  Things moved in the mist, shapes and forms, lines and symbols, dancing like wyrm-work embroidery, a glow of strange colors pulsating the way embers waxed and waned through a coating of ash.

  Not stanvaettir, no.

  Something else. Something bigger, something more.

  And it was coming, coming for them. Caring nothing for which lord, king, or earl they might serve.

  The others, friend and foe alike, did not notice. Their sole concern was the battle, fiercely fought and costly on both sides.

  Think of something, rune-witch, think of something!

  Rune-witch.

  She spun. There, undisturbed amid the combat and carnage, was her grey cloak, laid out on the ground with the wolf-pelt spread upon it. No one had trampled or trodden upon it. The rune-marked bones seemed faintly to flicker with their own inner light. The air above and around them was clear. Even as she watched, tendrils of eddying mist wafted near to the bones then curled away.

  “Gather!” Valhild bellowed, standing over Anbjorn – whether he was dead or merely
unconscious, Hreyth couldn’t say. “Gather, fall back, and shields!”

  Those who could, did. Egil all but carried Atli, who had bled to a whey-water pallor from his severed arm. Thrunn came limping, fending off two warriors, many small wounds making him resemble a hound-harried boar near the end of the hunt.

  For Osig and Inglar, there was no question; they had gone to the mead-benches of Odin’s golden hall. Gone, but with glory, and far from alone. If Ulfvir had led twenty, he’d lost more than half. But he, and his remaining men, looked largely unhurt, and still outnumbered the paltry defense of Valhild, Egil, and Thrunn’s three-shield wall.

  Hreyth could have picked up Anbjorn’s shield and joined them, for what little good it might have done. Instead, she ran for her cloak through the thickening mist. It swirled about her legs, made her mail-coat glisten silver, and cooled – chilled! – her flesh.

  “I’ll take your heads back to Gunnleif in a bag,” snarled Ulfvir. “We’ll set them in a row and piss on them in turn.”

  “You’ll have to come get them,” Valhild replied.

  “With pleasure,” he said. Yet he and his men hung back, hesitant to again throw themselves against the formidable strength of Valhild’s and Egil’s swords.

  “Hreyth?” Egil spoke with low urgency.

  “I’m here.”

  For a terrible moment, she felt the fog congeal dense and heavy against her skin, weighing on her limbs like damp wool, and she thought she was too late. But another step brought her into the clearness. She bent and seized the edges of the wolf-pelt, scooping its contents into a bundle as best she could with one hand.

  “What’s happened to the sun?” someone asked, one of Gunnleif’s men, anxious.

  “Never mind the sun,” Ulfvir told him. “Kill them, or I’ll bring your heads back to Gunnleif!” He raised his sword, and howled. “Kill them!”

  As they howled in return, emboldening their spirits to renew battle, Hreyth ran back to the close cluster of her companions. She let go an edge of the wolf-pelt, casting the rune-marked bones in an arc at their feet and hoping it would be enough.

  Then Egil swept her behind him, and their small shield-wall braced for the overwhelming charge.