by Ian Neligh
Asmund took deep gulps of it, trying to calm himself.
When he could hear over the hammering of his own heart, he detected a new sound.
Straining to listen, he made out the muffled noise of boots crunching in snow.
He clenched his jaw to keep it from clattering, tucked his hands under his armpits to keep them warm, and stared up at the small hole of sunlight, his blue eyes bright in the darkness.
He heard the sounds of more men as they trudged past him. A dog barked in the distance. A foot, wrapped in worn skins, half collapsed his shelter. He stared at the foot that nearly stepped on his arm. Light flooded into the snow cave. Asmund pushed himself against the opposite side. He expected hands to reach in and drag him out. He waited but the footsteps and barking dog drew away. They had lost him.Climbing up and half digging himself out of the hole, he clutched his items under his arm. He discovered that, despite the bright sun, the air was chillier than in his snow shelter. Squinting in the light, he tried to make sense of the tracks to see if he could learn anything about his pursuers. As far as Asmund could tell, the group consisted of about a dozen men equipped with snowshoes and at least one small push sled. Their tracks were heavy. They were wearing armor.
He decided to stay low and make as little noise as he could in case they had left someone behind. Asmund made the decision almost from instinct. Egil had drilled many such lessons into his boys.
He’d have to move fast and find the one-eyed hunter before it grew much colder—or he hungrier. He kept his game bag, but knew only the staunchest fire would thaw its frozen contents.
Heading northwest through the hill country and along a small, frozen creek, Asmund went to where he remembered the old hunter and storyteller lived. He’d been to Viktor Holdenson’s cabin a handful of times and so could concentrate less on the terrain and more on where the men might be and what signs he left behind.
The sun shone white through the green needles of the forest and lit the snow blown from the trees like pollen. It would be a rare warm day Asmund decided, leaning his stride into a slippery hillside. Scanning the trees and seeing dozens of hiding spaces, he decided it was easier to know your enemy was behind you than walk forward into the possibility of ambush.
He glanced behind, looking for the telltale sign of a man or unnatural movement among the familiar shapes of the forest. The sloping valley seemed clear. He turned back around to focus on his destination; the hunter’s house wasn’t far now.
Asmund walked down a wooded hillside covered in leafless trees and came to a flat stretch of land. Holdenson’s small cabin lay only a league away. He knew once he got there he would find protection and food.
Sighing through his teeth in relief, he looked over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t leaving obvious tracks. A man stood regarding him a stone’s throw away. He was strange-looking, with unfamiliar and mismatched armor. The man’s face was a terrible collection of scars. Snarling, he showed his brown, chipped teeth.
“Found you, boy,” he said.
Asmund’s heart jumped in his chest and his mouth went dry.
“No more running, eh?” the man said, still not moving but tilting his head to one side. “I want to maybe cut off a few of yer fingers for all the trouble you put me and my mates through.”
More on instinct than anything else Asmund unslung his bow and notched an arrow. He didn’t know how wet the string was but hoped it still had power. Asmund had never fired at a man before but now aimed for his center to give him the best chance of hitting his pursuer. How much different could it be than for a beast?
The man stiffened. “Go on then,” he said, gesturing to his body. “Give it yer best, and you better, boy, ’cause my turn is next and I promise you—”
Heart hammering now so hard he felt almost dizzy, Asmund released the arrow, which jumped forward and whipped its way through the air, hitting the man square in the chest.
There was a loud clang of metal and the man staggered backward, at first looking shocked and then angry at the arrow, which lay at his feet. The string was too wet; it didn’t have enough power.
“No stronger than a tavern wench,” the man said, walking, then running, toward Asmund. Behind him more men appeared in the trees.
Asmund took out another arrow and tried to notch it. His hands weren’t working now. Concentrating, he tried again, fumbled, and dropped it in the snow. He bent to pick it up as the man reached him and kicked him in the stomach. Asmund, all breath gone, fell, his world awash in pain.
Closer now, Asmund could see the man had long yellow hair, tied away from his face with bits of wood. His gray eyes were set in a face ravaged by another’s blade. In one gloved hand he held a small throwing axe, which he had tugged free from a belt.
“I’ll take those fingers now,” he said, reaching for Asmund. The gray eyes were greedy.
Asmund yelled out and scampered in the snow to get away. He got to his feet and then almost fell over again. Bow forgotten, he pulled out the iron sword and held it in front of him, trying to keep his attacker back.
But no sooner had he done that than the man knocked it from his stinging hands with his axe. Before Asmund could think, the man kicked him down again. He tried again to stand, but the man stood on his arm, pinning it to the ground.
Gritting his teeth through the pain, Asmund fought and struggled. He heard the other men, still a ways off, now laughing and jeering.
He couldn’t let him take his fingers. He’d never shoot a bow again. There came a hollow impacting noise with a metallic ring and then a second. The pain in Asmund’s arm was gone. He looked up in relief to see the man with the axe staring over him, mouth open but not making noise. Two arrows stuck up to their fletching in his chest. A third arrow whispered over Asmund and stuck in the man’s forehead, splitting it like a gourd. Steaming blood ran down the man’s face as he toppled backward into the snow. The group of approaching men yelled out in surprise and took cover behind trees about two dozen paces from Asmund.
“Whoever you are—you’ve just made a mistake,” roared the man with the red beard in a voice that sounded like crushed stones. “By Slagfid’s order, lay down your bow,” he yelled again.
The area around Asmund turned a bright crimson from the dead man’s ebbing life. The snow drank up his steaming blood. Red Beard barked orders at his men. One behind a tree screamed and fell to his back, an arrow sticking deeply into his inner thigh.
“Pull it out,” he yelled, trying to dig at the fletching with his dirty fingers and coming away with only feathers sticky with blood. The arrow was rooted; it was nothing more than a nub below the man’s groin.
His senses rushing back, Asmund scrambled to his feet and ran to a group of saplings, his feet slipping in the snow. One of the armed men raised his own bow, tracking him. When Asmund disappeared from sight, the man cursed.
“I’ll hack you apart,” barked the bearded man, steam billowing from his mouth.
The one with the arrow deep in his leg started whimpering; he had grown pale. “Help… bastards.” The forest was silent again as the men ignored him, looking for their new and dangerous quarry.
Asmund peered up and between pines. The archer who’d tried to shoot at him was now edging around a thicket of trees to get a better shot. The three other men, which included their red-bearded leader, were already gone. If he waited much longer, the archer would have an unobstructed view. Asmund once again got to his feet and ran for a large oak, his feet throwing up clumps of snow. He got to the tree as an arrow skittered by, biting off a piece of bark from a tall pine several paces ahead. As he rounded the tree he came face-to-face with a man carrying a long-handled axe. Making eye contact, the man’s face became pinched with determination. He swung out with the axe, hitting Asmund’s pack and causing him to lose his balance and fall. The man hoisted the axe in the air, then an arrow hit the tree next to his head. Surprised, his attacker hesitated as a second arrow pinned his neck to the bark. Asmund couldn’t think but
knew he had to do something. A man screamed in pain from somewhere behind him. Too much was happening too fast. He decided to run.
He ran as fast as he could in a random direction for a dozen paces before a man charged out of a thicket to knock him down, landing heavily on top of him. His attacker wore a dented T-faced helmet. His fingers wrapped around Asmund’s throat, and his fetid breath was strong.
“I’ll drag you back cold and rotten then, won’t I?” the man hissed between wind-cracked lips. Asmund fought, trying to push the man back, his vision dimming. Panicking, he fought harder, but he might as well have moved a mountain. Asmund reached for his gutting knife, freed it from his belt, and stuck it deep into the man’s leg.
As the man gasped in pain, his helmeted head was jerked back so that he faced skyward and a sharpened antler knife hammered deep into his exposed neck four times in quick, brutal succession. Asmund was covered in blood; it was in his eyes and mouth—but at least the pressure loosened and he could breathe. Gagging, he got to his hands and knees and saw the old hunter standing above him. Viktor Holdenson’s face was a mask of rage, but Asmund also saw a terrible joy in his eye. Holdenson spoke softly: “You know where my cabin is?”
Asmund thought at first he wouldn’t be able to speak, and when he did it came out as a croak. “Yes.”
“That is good,” Holdenson said, watching for other attackers. “You go there now, run fast.”
Asmund hesitated a second, trying to find Sigurd’s bow or sword in the snow. Both were gone. He turned and ran, and as he entered the forest, a deep silence remained behind him.
Seven
There was a story about a village not far from a bay where the fishing was good. The problem was the fisherman couldn’t get their boats to the bay because the water was too dangerous. They couldn’t get to it by land either because a witch guarded it.
Many had tried to sneak past where the witch lived in her stone house, but she could see everything. In place of eyes she had ravens nesting in her skull, which peered out at the world, looking to and fro. When she found someone sneaking by her house, she would pull out the traveler’s bones.
Brave men from lands far and near tried to chop off her head, but they died so horribly that soon no one would come. The village’s fishing waters grew depleted, and they had to live on bread alone.
One day a boy dared to face the witch alone and came to her with neither sword nor bow—but being clever, he was not unarmed. In one hand he held a fistful of breadcrumbs.
“Is that all you’ve brought to fight me?” asked the crone, licking her black teeth.
The boy threw the crumbs at his feet. On seeing them, the ravens flew forth from her empty eye sockets to get to the meal. The boy had blinded her and he pushed her over the cliff.
Eight
Asmund woke; images of violence had filled his dreams like maggots. He shook his head.
The cabin was dark and smelled faintly of smoked meat and sweat. By the time he had reached it hours before, careful to hide his tracks, he had been completely exhausted. But the dreams kept him from sleeping. He listened in the dark, hoping he might make out the foot tread of the old hunter as he made his way back. But all Asmund could hear was the creaking of the tall timber and the wind. In the process of looking for shelter, he was afraid he’d led to the death of his family’s long-time neighbor and fearless friend.
He didn’t understand why men would come looking for him. He was nobody. Shifting in the corner furthest from the door, Asmund remembered the man with the red beard and shivered. The man’s anger and sheer desire to see him dead shook Asmund to his core. At the memory, he felt his heart hammering again. Why was he after him?
The front door slammed open, and a large man charged into the dark of the cabin. The moon made the snowy world
behind him glow with white fire.
“Boy,” the man barked, “start a fire.”
Asmund could see Viktor Holdenson by the light of the moon. The hunter began looking for something in the darkness.
Asmund scrambled to his feet in the dim light. Something was wrong with Holdenson—his voice was slurred.
“And make it bright.”
Asmund went in the near dark to the hearth and reached into a battered tin and removed a char cloth. He then reached above the mantel and took down a sharp chunk of flint and an iron striker.
The worn striker resembled a bird, possibly a robin. It was a fancy thing, a thing a woman might have. Holdenson lived alone.
A carefully constructed kindling-and-fire mound was already in the crude fireplace. All Asmund had to do was strike the flint with the iron onto the char rag and place it in the center of the pile. After several false starts, which sent bright orange sparks shooting into the gloom, the rag took and a small flame began to lick around the corners. Carefully, Asmund placed it in the center of the pile of wood, twigs, and dried bark shavings. Soon a fire was roaring. Asmund shut the door; it was then that he saw blood.
Viktor put a heavy spool of thread on the table with a bone needle and, without ceremony, began to sew up a crude cut on his upper arm. He made no sound and worked as fast and efficiently as any seamstress. When the parted sides of his arm were once again whole, he grunted and regarded Asmund from across the room. After a long moment he smiled broadly, his single eye glittering in the dark room.
“You did well, boy,” he said, taking Asmund by surprise. “You evaded the best trackers and killers a king could find.”
Holdenson drank from a skin, and the smell of its strong spirits filled the room. When finished, he tossed it to Asmund, who caught it, the pain in his finger still fresh.
“Why?” Asmund asked after wincing. “Why are they after me?”
It was a question he hadn’t had time to think about, with fear and exhaustion filling every moment of the past day.
“Drink,” Holdenson gestured, and when Asmund did, he stood up and took it back from the boy.
The liquid had the fire of coals; it crept through and warmed his body from the inside. It was then he saw Holdenson had found his sword, which the big man had tossed in the corner of the room.
He grabbed Asmund’s damaged hand, inspected it roughly, nodded, and gave it back. “Let me tell you a story.” Holdenson went to a worn chair and settled his bulk onto it. He took another drink from the skin and by the fire told Asmund the story of a fighter.
“He came alone from the west with no belongings, save a worn axe. The fighter bested all who challenged him, swinging his axe as if it weighed no more than a stick. Such was the strength of this man that he could cleave a man in two.
“The man fought in many battles, and while not always on the winning side, he came through unscathed to fight yet again.
“In those days chieftains, yarls, and men who placed crowns of beaten copper on their scheming heads fought for the land like dogs over a corpse.
“Those who paid and fed the fighter, he called master. The man from the west fought until his beard grew long. But in time his thirst for blood dried like a summer’s snow.
“He started a family and almost turned his back on the world of men and their broken ambitions, when a leader came to unify the north. This man hired the heroes of the warring age, the man from the west chief among them. And they fought for the leader, and one by one the kingdoms fell to the sword and axe and bow.
“When the last beaten crown was hurled at his feet, the leader developed a cunning plan. Afraid of fighters like the man from the west, the leader had his army’s back broken upon the rocks of deceit. His guard murdered them as they slept under a starless night. Few survived, and for this act of great betrayal, his people called him the Mad King.
“Angry with men and the gods, the man from the west began his long journey back home. So wounded was he in his heart that he sought to rid himself of his axe. He came across a giant ash and sought to stick the blade in its hard wood, where it would rust to nothing under the rain of discontent.
“Wit
h a mighty blow, he struck at the tree, but found he cut from one side to the other, felling it. Inside lay an infant. He took the child home to raise with his young son. During his journey his wife had traveled to the underworld to live among her ancestors—leaving his first son to be raised by neighbors.
“The man did his best to raise both boys but wondered if in taking the child from the tree he had angered the gods, who’d then paid him back by taking his wife.
“As this doubt grew, so too did his sons. The youngest was clever as a fox but quiet and distant. The eldest, like his father, was eager to follow the path of battle. One day he left to join an army that would overthrow the king. But the eldest son was not his father.
“The axe wielder went to find the king and repay him for his many betrayals, to make him pay his debts—and it is said that he did. It is also said the axe wielder took off the king’s right arm at the shoulder before being brought low by a host of warriors.
“The crippled king, with none to vent his anger upon, sought the last of the axe wielder’s sons, the one born of a tree in the dark forests to the north.”
After the tale the hunter, Viktor Holdenson, lit a small clay pipe and rested for a time in the shadows of the fire. Behind the smoke, Holdenson’s eye was glassy as his thoughts swam through the cold pools of his memory.
Asmund broke the silence: “How much of the story is true?”
“None of it,” Holdenson said, then coughed. “All of it. What does it matter? Your father’s story has entertained the gods and will be remembered for generations. Will yours? Or will it end as a corpse found in the spring snow?”
“It matters,” Asmund insisted.
“All that matters is that we see that you survive. Your living may be regarded as a ray of hope for people too long at the yoke of a tyrant,” Holdenson said. “I slipped away from your pursuers and led them on a merry chase. But they will find us. Tomorrow we get you across the Järn Mountain range, where Slagfid cannot reach.”
Holdenson blew out a long plume of smoke, which drifted to the fireplace and was sucked up into the chimney.