In dreams, things happen slowly. It was like that still, this unending frozen nightmare. I could see the Skaldi’s face, distorted with rage, shouting curses I couldn’t make out in the rising wind. Selig wanted me alive, Harald had said; I could guess his second choice. He would take me dead. At twenty yards, I saw the Skaldi cock his arm, spear at the ready. At fifteen, he cast it.
I closed my eyes and lifted Trygve’s buckler.
The impact jarred my arm to the bone, knocking me off my feet. Opening my eyes, I saw him above me, blotting out the winter sky atop his horse. Still strapped to my arm, the shield was useless, cracked beneath the force of the blow, the lethal, leaf-shaped tip of the spear gone clean through to the inside.
If he had had a second spear, I would have died then. I know this. But what spears he’d had, he had already cast. He dismounted and drew his sword.
"No!" Joscelin’s shout split the air, and the Skaldi turned, hesitating at the now-mounted Cassiline’s approach. I struggled to free myself from the useless shield, scrambling backward through the snow. Face grim, Joscelin lashed his borrowed horse forward, nigh on us.
Too hard, too fast. The horse stumbled, slid, losing its footing; it went down hard, head low, the mighty body crashing to the snow-covered earth. Sword in hand, Joscelin was flung free and fell no less hard, some distance from the thrashing horse.
The Skaldi looked back at me and grinned, the fierce, savage grin of a warrior with nothing left to lose. "You first," he said, and raised his sword high above his head, preparing to bring it down two-handed upon me.
"Elua," I whispered, and prepared to die.
The blade never fell.
It slipped, instead, falling away from his nerveless fingers to fall with a soft thump into the snow. The Skaldi stared down at himself, where the bloody tip and a handspan of Joscelin’s sword protruded. No one, I think, fails to be surprised at the death-blow when it comes in battle. He turned about slowly, his hands going to the blade’s tip. I saw the hilt and the rest of the blade standing out from between his shoulders. Joscelin was still down, propped on one arm; he’d thrown it from where he’d fallen. The Skaldi stared at him in disbelief, sinking slowly to his knees. Still clutching the tip of the sword lodged in him, he died.
It was quiet then, but for the wind and snow. Joscelin got painfully to his feet and came toward me, staggering. I saw when he drew near that he had a cut on one cheekbone, already frozen, and runnels of blood in his hair. He turned the last Skaldi on his stomach and tugged his sword free, bracing one foot on the body to get it loose. I stood wearily, and we held each other upright.
"Do you know what the odds of making that throw were?" Joscelin murmured, wavering on his feet. "We don’t even train for it. It’s not done."
"No." I swallowed, and nodded at Harald, motionless by the promontory, a dusting of snow already covering him. "Do you know he gave me his cloak? He never even asked for it back."
"I know." With an effort, Joscelin released me and stood on his own, passing one hand to his side. "We have to keep moving. Take…take anything we can use. Food, water, fodder…we could use more blankets. We’ll take a pack-horse, use whichever mounts are freshest. We need to gain some distance before we rest."
Chapter Fifty-Three
Stripping the dead of spoil is a grim business. I have heard that Skaldi women sing as they do it. I tried to imagine kind-hearted Hedwig doing it, and could not; then I remembered how the women of Selig’s steading hated me, and I could. We did not sing, Joscelin and I, working together in numb horror. We did not even speak, but only did what was needful.
One of the Skaldi horses, the one that had fallen, had broken a leg and had to be put down. Joscelin did it with his daggers, cutting the large vein on the neck. I could not watch. We took two of their horses, and left the others to fend for themselves, hoping they would find their way to a steading before the wolves found them; they were nigh as tired as our own mounts. I kept my pony, though, unable to bear leaving him for the wolves. And in truth, he was hardier than the horses, quicker to regain strength. I learned, later, that the breed was native to the Skaldic lands; they’d bred for the larger mounts with strains of Caerdicci and Aragonian horses, better for battle, but not for enduring the cold.
So it was that we set out once more.
It had been my intention, when we reached it, to follow the Danrau River, keeping it in sight until we reached the Camaelines. It was Joscelin’s idea to follow the riverbed for a time, rendering our trail invisible, then cut to the south and throw off any other pursuers. We had no way of knowing whether there were others, or how many or how far behind they might be, but I suspected Selig would send more than one party.
We followed his plan, our horses picking their way cautiously through the cold, fast-flowing water, and he did as he had before, backtracking to erase our trail where it emerged from the river. How he did it, I do not know, for by then the cold and exhaustion were so deep in my bones that I could barely think. It wasn’t until he returned, hollow-eyed, that I realized he was worse off than I. It is a strange thing, human endurance. After the river, I would have said I was done in, but when I saw his condition, I found a bleak pocket of strength that kept me going, taking the lead to forge a trail through the gathering dusk. The wind had picked up again and there was no shelter to be found, only barren rock and thin trees. I knew, by then, how to look for a campsite. There was no place to be found, so I kept going.
I don’t know what all I thought of, trudging through the endless winter, leading my horse while Joscelin followed, hunched in his saddle, the heavily laden pony trailing. A thousand memories of home, of fêtes I had attended, of patrons, of Delaunay and Alcuin. I thought of the marquist’s shop, of the healing springs of Naamah’s sanctuary, of Delaunay’s library, which I had once thought the safest place in the world. I thought of Hyacinthe and the Cockerel, and the offering we had made at Blessed Elua’s temple.
At what point I began to pray, I don’t know, for it was a prayer without words, a remembrance of grace, of Elua’s temple, scarlet anemones in my hands, the earth warm and moist beneath my bare feet, cool marble beneath my lips, and the priest’s kind voice. Love as thou wilt, he had said, and Elua will guide your steps, no matter how long the journey. I clung blindly to the moment, along my endless journey, until I could go no farther and stopped to look about me, realizing in the gloaming and snow that I had walked straight into a wall of stone.
This is the end, I thought, putting out my hands and feeling the stone before me. I can go no further. I dared not look behind me.
My left hand, sliding sideways, met no resistance. Darkness opened in the rock before me. Groping, I felt my way forward, trusting that my mount was too exhausted to run.
It was a cave.
I went into it as far as I dared, sniffing the air for scent of wolf or bear. The sound and force of the wind died inside the stone walls, leaving a strange black stillness. There was no sense of any living thing. I emerged, fighting my way through the snow to Joscelin’s side. He looked blearily at me through frost-rimed lashes.
"There’s a cave," I shouted, cupping my mouth against the wind, then pointing. "Give me one of the torches, and I’ll look."
Moving as though it hurt to do so, he dismounted, and we led the horses into the overhang. With a faint, dim light still filtering through the opening, we unpacked the tinderbox and the branches swathed in pitch soaked rags we’d taken from the fallen Skaldi. I struck a spark and a torch flared into light.