by Cate Martin
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because we've already crossed into the deeper realms. My brothers know we are here," he said. "Any of the five of us can sense it when one of us goes this deep."
"But you've gone deeper than this before?" I asked.
He stopped abruptly, and I realized we had reached the far edge of the forest. The trees didn't taper out, they just ended all in a line. But there were no stumps anywhere to suggest they were cut down for lumber. There was nothing more than bare rock and some kind of dried ground cover I didn't recognize except to know that it wasn't like the usual grass of northern Minnesota.
"You've been deeper than this?" I asked again. Thorbjorn turned to look at me, and there was something inscrutable in his eyes.
"Two of my brothers have," he said. "But not I."
"Why did Solvi come this way if it's a place even you five don't go?"
"That is a question I'd like to ask him myself," Thorbjorn said, then led the way further up the hillside.
The hill was steeper here, and far rockier. But these weren't the glacier-smoothed rock faces of the North Shore. These were jagged, sharp, and even in the poor light of the mostly overcast night, they looked darkly volcanic.
"Where are we?" I asked, scanning the horizon behind us for any sign of the lake. I could just see water off to the east, reflecting a bit of light that wasn't reaching us on the hillside. "This doesn't look like Minnesota, but I don't think it looks like Norway either. It's like Iceland?"
"That's one theory," Thorbjorn said. "That is where Torfa was trying to take her people. Parts of it could've been caught up in her spell, even though that's not where the people ended up."
Then he caught my sleeve, indicating we should rest for a moment against one of the larger boulders. I wasn't going to argue with that. It was hard enough work climbing the hill without also trying to talk, and I was quite out of breath. I turned to rest my backside against a protrusion of rock and looked back over the lake.
Or was it the lake? If we were in a sort of Iceland, might it be the ocean I was looking at? How could I know? Either would reach the horizon.
I was about to ask Thorbjorn about the other theories when there was a sudden skittering of pebbles sliding down over a rock-face. We both turned and peered around the boulder towards the top of the hill.
But it wasn't just one hill. It was two. I had been so focused on where I put my feet as we climbed and in looking back towards the lake or whatever that I had never looked where we were going. But I recognized it now.
We were standing just where I had drawn us in my sketch of Solvi, and towering over us was a pair of hills. The path gleamed dully in the cloud-obscured moonlight, but I could pick it out as it wound its way through a pass between those two hills.
And scrambling up that path, just about to disappear between two immense boulders that flanked the path like sentinels, was a dark figure I just knew was Solvi.
"He's getting away!" I hissed to Thorbjorn, but it's not like he needed me to tell him that. He made a vague motion for me to stay where I was, but didn't wait for me to acknowledge it before he started racing up the hillside.
You would never guess he'd been winded just a moment before, not to judge by the speed he was climbing that hill.
I heard another skittering of rock, and at first I thought it was coming from under Thorbjorn's feet as he churned things up. But then I saw Thorbjorn throw an arm across his eyes as if to ward off a blow and realized it was coming from higher up.
Was Solvi creating a landslide?
I looked back up towards the pass, but Solvi was no longer in view.
And yet I could hear rocks raining down from above. Some hit other rocks and smashed in an explosion of shards, others buried themselves in the softer earth like a shot put thrown by an Olympic athlete.
But most were striking Thorbjorn. The bracers on his arms were protecting him from the smaller rocks that were pelting him, but if one of the larger ones should fail to miss?
He must've had the same thought I did, because he turned and ran back to the protection of our boulder.
"Something is up there!" I said, trying to peek around the side of the boulder. There were shadows, so many shadows, and yet my eyes wouldn't bring them into focus in the poor light.
Then Thorbjorn grabbed the bag of my windbreaker and yanked me down to sit beside him. I was about to object when one of the larger rocks struck the boulder above me, showering us both with rock shards, and I had to cover my eyes with my hands.
"He got through the pass. He's getting away!" I said to Thorbjorn.
"No, he isn't," Thorbjorn said with iron resolve.
"But there's something up there throwing these rocks at us," I said. "This is no rockslide."
"No, it's trolls," he said.
"There must be dozens of them!" I said as more rocks struck the ground all around us. We were safe, providing they didn't leave the ridge.
And I didn't think they would. They seemed to be pinning us down to buy Solvi time to escape.
"Maybe twelve," Thorbjorn said, brushing at his face then frowning at the blood that was smeared across his hand. One of those stones had hit him just by the hairline, but he pulled away before I could take a closer look at it.
"We should go back," I said.
"No," he said, shifting his weight so that he could reach something at the back of his belt. His axe? His sword? What good would they do against rock-wielding trolls who were so far away? Maybe if one of us had a bow, although in the time it took to aim, we'd probably have our heads smashed in.
"What else can we do?" I asked. "He knew we were after him, and he rounded up his troll friends. He beat us."
"No!" Thorbjorn said. "This isn't over."
Then he got up on one knee. I reached out to hold him back, thinking he was going to try to run up the hill again, but he wasn't facing the right away for that. He was facing back behind us, back towards Villmark.
And what he had taken from his belt was not a weapon. It was a horn. He brought it to his lips and blew a single blast of sound.
The whole world stood still while that sound rang out around us, echoing over the hills and carrying through the forest below. It was like every creature in this between-world space was holding its breath at that clear tone until Thorbjorn's lungs gave out and the sound faded away.
For a moment, nothing happened. Nothing at all. Everything was still and quiet.
And then the rocks were raining down on us once more.
Chapter 23
I looked longingly back down the hill towards the forest. The trees that had been so darkly ominous moments before were looking like a haven of safety to me now.
They also looked about a million miles away. And the ground between where Thorbjorn and I sat and the tree line was getting pounded by rock after rock.
We couldn't go back. But we couldn't go forward either. Solvi was getting away, but that had become a minor point now. How were we going to get away?
"I'm going to divert their attention," Thorbjorn said to me. He had his sword in one hand and his axe in the other.
"What? Why?" I asked.
"So you can get away," he said. "Run, back down the path. Don't stop until you reach Villmark."
"I'm not leaving you," I said.
"You'll be perfectly safe," he said.
"That's not what I'm talking about and you know it!" I said. I shifted my position to pull my messenger bag onto my lap. "There must be something I can do. Something I can draw to help us."
But even as I dug through the bag for my sketchbook, I didn't know what that could be. Or how I would see to do it. The clouds between us and the moon were getting thicker by the minute.
"Ingrid, you have to go," Thorbjorn said. "I'll be fine."
"I don't believe you," I said.
"My brothers will be here-" But then he broke off, squinting down at the trees below us.
And then he started to smile, a wide, crazy smile. It was almost fright
ening, that smile.
"What is it?" I asked, gazing down the hill. Then I saw it. Something was moving through the trees.
No, several somethings. I scanned the top of the forest and saw four distinct lines where the leaves were shaking as if the trees themselves were being pushed out of the way only to snap back into place.
Then they burst out of the trees, four dark silhouettes. All I could tell in the dim light was that they were tall, and they were carrying weapons. They paused for a moment as if getting their bearings, then raised their weapons into the air with a mighty yell.
I nearly jumped out of my skin as that yell was echoed right beside me. Thorbjorn was on his feet, sword and axe thrust into the air, hair blowing wildly around him as he bellowed up towards the sky.
Man, I hoped these were his brothers.
"We fight!" Thorbjorn called, and the four below roared back. Then he bent down to speak to me, his voice calmer but his eyes still wild, "stay here."
Before I could answer, he was gone, launching over the top of the boulder and disappearing up the hillside.
I stayed where I was, pressing back against the rock as the four silhouettes below also raced up the hill. They drew ever closer, swords and axe blades flashing in the light as the moon found little gaps in the cloud cover.
Then the moon burst free, bathing the hillside in silvery light, and I saw all of Thorbjorn's brothers as clear as day. They looked like him, with the same oversized build and strawberry-blond hair. But there were differences.
One had his head shaved on the sides, with intricate blue tattoos tracing out a knot work pattern that arced over his ears. He had a short sword like a Roman legionnaire would use, but the axe in his other hand was massive.
Another had no beard and short, spiky hair and carried two curved knives.
The third had his hair divided into three thick braids, and his beard was divided into two braids. He had a spear in his hands, the shaft so thick and heavy it seemed impossible it could be thrown.
The last had shaved all the hair from his head, his scalp and face heavily tattooed with blue ink in a complex pattern I wanted a better look at. His beard was left long, so long that he wore it tucked into the strap that crossed his chest. He had a sword in each hand.
They were past me almost before I could note all those details. With my sketchbook right there on my lap it was difficult not to start sketching them while the images were fresh in my mind, but I could hear Thorbjorn fighting further up the hill, and the roar as his brothers joined him. Now wasn't the time.
I put away the sketchbook and pushed the messenger bag back behind me before risking a peek over the top of the boulder. The trolls had stopped throwing rocks and had come out of their hiding places to close in on the brothers. The trolls weren't so tall as the brothers, but they were possibly more heavily muscled. And they were using those muscles to swing clubs that looked like the trunks of trees. If throwing all those rocks had tired them at all, they weren't showing it.
They outnumbered the brothers by more than four to one, but they were still outmatched. They couldn't use their numbers to good use, tripping over each other and getting in each other's way, and even on more than one occasion braining one another with their clubs. This fight only had one outcome, and it was just a matter of time.
Then a flicker of motion caught my eye, something ducking out of sight in the pass between the hilltops. Solvi? Had he lingered to watch the fight rather than make good his escape?
I gripped my spear and bent low as I ran up the hill, circling the combat as widely as I could before angling back to reach the path between the boulders at the top of the pass.
"Solvi?" I called as I approached the boulders. It felt like a great place for an ambush. But there was no sign of him. Had I imagined it?
Then I heard a skitter of pebbles on rock coming from the path on the far side of the pass. I ran past the boulders to see Solvi jogging away from me.
"Solvi, stop!" I called after him, but he didn't slow down. He didn't speed up either; it was like he was in no particular hurry. Like the idea of being caught didn't strike him as likely enough to worry about.
I remembered my grandmother's command voice, the one she had used that morning to tell the Sorensens and Nelsens to quiet down. Could I do that voice? I had sensed her magic in that moment. There was no way to draw a sound, though. I was going to have to try imitating what she had done.
"Solvi!" I said, and to my surprise I heard something different in my own tone. It was bright and silvery, like a bell in the thin air of a mountaintop village. "Stop!"
He stopped. He really did. I knew I was grinning like a fool, but I had earned the right to be a little proud in myself, hadn't I?
"Solvi, come back!" I said in that same magical voice.
But Solvi only turned to look up at me. He didn't come back. Then he gave me a little bow. It looked genuinely solemn, not like he was mocking me. And yet, when he spoke, all he said was, "I regret that I must decline."
And then he was jogging down the hillside path again. I had failed.
"Thors!" I called, a bit startled to hear I was still doing the magic voice. I wasn't sure how to turn it off.
But it wasn't working on them either. I could hear the fight continuing, even as I could hear the sound of Solvi's footsteps getting ever farther away. I went back between the boulders to look down the slope of the hill to where the battle raged on.
The brothers were clearly having the time of their lives, sending troll after troll tumbling down the hill. But the trolls at the bottom of the hill were shaking themselves off, reaching for their fallen clubs or uprooting a tree to make another, and charging back up to rejoin the fight.
This could go on all night. But I really needed them to stop and listen to me.
I had a magic voice like my grandmother's, but that was not enough. A large measure of why my grandmother had gotten the response that she had was that the people of Runde, like the people of Villmark, already respected her. She didn't need to magically make that part happen. And if she needed their attention in a hurry, she only needed to give them a little magical nudge, since they were inclined to listen to her anyway.
Me, on the other hand? I was a long way from getting that level of respect from anyone. I hadn't earned it yet.
I wished my grandmother were there, but it was nowhere near midnight. And until midnight passed, she would be tied up in the meeting hall, maintaining the spells that held that impossible community together. I was on my own.
I was clearly not ready to take up the mantle of a volva. And yet that was what I had to do, or else Solvi was going to slip away to where no one would ever find him again. Not the Thors. Not even my grandmother.
I slumped down on a rock, but one thought kept me from slipping into a dejected funk.
The mantle of volva.
That was how I had phrased it a moment ago. And in fact my grandmother had an actual mantle she wore for official occasions, a cloak of feathers and a brass wand both. Those things were miles away, back in Villmark, back in that entirely different world.
But maybe there was a way around that.
I took out my sketchbook again and turned to a blank page. Then I began to draw. I wasn't swept up in a furious flow of creativity. It felt like work the entire time, but it was work I knew well.
I sketched out myself, sitting on a rock much like the rock I was sitting on as I drew. But the me on the rock was wearing a magnificent cloak of feathers. Not ancient and worn like my grandmother's, but fresh and new. Even in the pencil sketch, they had a glow to them like they were from some golden hawk.
And I put a wand in my hand, a wand the size of a sword. And that wand was radiating power as sketch-me held it aloft.
When I could think of no more details to add I looked up, then raised my pencil overhead as if it were that sword-wand.
"Stop the fighting!" I said. My voice still had the quality of bells to it, but these were fearsome bell
s. Massive call-to-war bells.
The Thors didn't react at all.
But the trolls did. And when every troll threw down their club to plop down on the dried grass of the stony hillside, the Thors lost all of their combat partners. Then they too lowered their weapons and turned their attention to me.
"Thors," I said, and this time I was speaking in my normal voice once more. "Solvi is getting away. You need to go catch him."
They looked at me blankly for a moment, all five of them breathing too hard to speak. But then they nodded and ran past me, down the far side of the hill, after the receding silhouette of Solvi.
Chapter 24
As I watched Thorbjorn and his brothers catch up with the still-jogging figure of Solvi down in the valley below, I sensed movement around me. The trolls were still sitting on the dried grass, but they were scooting closer until they were sitting all around me, watching me with open, if ugly, faces. They were like children at some library's story time, and they were all waiting for me to start reading them the story.
"Do you know who I am?" I asked them.
"You are the volva," one of them said, and gestured as if at something around me. They were still seeing me as I had drawn myself, I guessed. I adjust the ends of my windbreaker, to let it drape a bit more like that cape.
"That's true, but you can call me Ingrid," I said to the trolls.
"Ingrid," they all chorused, nodding as if my name confirmed their suspicions about me.
"Why were you helping Solvi escape?" I asked.
"Escape?" They looked at each other to see if any of them knew what I meant.
"There has been a murder. Thorbjorn and I wanted to talk to Solvi. But then he ran away, and you were helping him escape," I said.
"Solvi is our friend," one of them said, and then they were all nodding their agreement with that fact.
"So he ordered you to stop us from following him?" I asked.
"Ordered? No," the one in front said. "Solvi is our friend. He asked."
"And we helped," another said. "Because Solvi is our friend."