Roric closed and opened his eyes. It would not have made much difference anyway. “But I am still Karin’s lover.” He looked up toward the mountains, the sharp stones and cliffs bathed in morning light. Hadros’s warriors were ready to start, the hounds leashed now and sniffing excitedly at the ground. “If she is still alive.”
CHAPTER TEN
1
Mist lay over the midnight mountainside. The moon had already set, and burning torches on either side only made the landscape darker. Karin tried to pick out landmarks or at least determine which way was south, back toward the river and her father, but it was impossible.
The door through which they had emerged was at the end of a long tunnel cut into the rock, and the transition out into the cold night air-Eirik peering around carefully before motioning to the torchbearers behind him to follow-had come like a slap after the smoky hall. They seemed now to be near the bottom of a deep dish-shaped depression. A pool lay before them, steaming and reeking with sulfur.
“Some say that Hel lies at the bottom of this pool,” said Eirik, holding her arm more firmly than ever. She could picture rather than see the mocking sneer of his scarred lip. “Do you believe it, Princess?”
Behind them, the rest of the warriors emerged from the tunnel, some supported by their comrades as they reeled from ale, followed by the women, and last of all six men carrying the naked bodies of the slain.
They arranged the bodies, feet together, on a relatively level surface of stone near the steaming pool. Eirik released Karin then, but the tall green-eyed woman immediately took hold of her arm, and her grip was even stronger.
The outlaw king took first a basket of barley from one of the other women and sprinkled it liberally on the bodies. Next he took an ale horn and slopped some ale on each of their faces. There had been total silence at first among the warriors, but at this several of them chuckled, and one said, “That’s right, he always did like his drink.”
But when someone handed Eirik his lyre everyone again fell silent. I have as long to live as it takes to sing the warriors’ praises, thought Karin. Her heart was pounding so hard that the woman must surely feel it through her arm.
He plucked the strings for a moment, a dark shape under a clouded midnight sky, then began to sing. His voice resonated over the mountains until it seemed the stones themselves vibrated.
“In fearsome fighting six have fallen,
“Overcoming foes when dread death found them.
“Brave in battle, honored by brothers,
“Enemies in Hel will grovel before them.
“Ferocious their war cries, swift their swords,
“Yet fate ended their stories as it ends all men’s.
“Welcome them, Death! Welcome our brothers,
“Make room for them in Hel’s dusty hall.
“Gone from the sunlands, yet not from our songs,
“Remembered wherever the fighting is fiercest.”
When he ended his song, there was a moment of stillness in which a few low voices could have been the sound of the wind. Then, at a gesture from the king, the men holding the torches took them to the steaming pool and plunged them beneath the surface. There was a great hissing, a cascade of sparks, and then the mountainside was almost completely dark.
The woman beside Karin spoke into the silence, so unexpectedly that she jumped involuntarily. “We call on the lords of death,” the woman said in a deep voice. “We call on those who take whomever fate strikes down. Come, powers beyond voima! Come, nameless ones of the night!”
“We call. We call. We call on them,” went voices up and down the hollow.
“We call the lords of death,” cried the woman, “to take our brothers, to strike down those who struck them down, and to drink and eat what is offered!”
Karin stood immobile, not sure if she could have moved even if the woman had released her arm. Her heart was bitterly cold within her as she waited for what must surely happen next.
And then there came a soft blurping noise, something very familiar although she could not at once identify it, a sound like- It was the sound a stewpot made when on a low boil. The steaming, sulfurous pond at the bottom of the hollow was beginning to bubble.
She strained wildly to see and thought she could glimpse through the starless darkness the pond rising, a wave breaking up out of it, slithering up onto the surface of the stone as though alive- Someone yelled and jumped, brushed by boiling water, but the rest shushed him instantly.
The wave fell back into the pond, but the splash itself gave a dull boom, a sound that could have been a voice, a voice saying, “We come.”
“No man escapes you,” called the tall woman, her voice ringing and echoing off the encircling mountains. “No woman evades you. Dark death below, we make offering to honor you!”
This must be it at last, thought Karin, closing her eyes, the moment when they slit her throat.
But instead she heard again the blurping of the boiling pond, then a lapping of waves. Images flashed across the inside of her eyelids as though she was seeing into someone else’s dream: bones, dried blood, skulls with nothing left but the hair. Against her will she opened her eyes to see a little stream of water, running uphill against nature, moving slowly toward the dead men. And then the mist became thicker, and even the stream was hidden. For several minutes there was no sound but a constant lapping of waves. A final belch, then, and the pond went still, though its rising steam continued to thicken the mists of night.
No one moved or spoke. The scent of fear was strong in the hollow, and the only sound was the wind and the faintest creaks as the warriors shifted then again went motionless. Then someone, Karin thought Eirik, broke away from the rest and opened the door back into the castle. Light from a torch within laid a path of brightness across the stony hollow to the pool. The bodies were gone, leaving only a single arm band lying at the edge.
Though everyone pushed each other in desperate haste at the narrow doorway, still no one spoke. The green-eyed woman held Karin back until all the others had passed through. When the door slammed behind them at last, several of the warriors let out their breaths loudly, and the woman released Karin’s arm.
As they all stumbled back toward the firelit hall, she found the outlaw king beside her. “So, how did you like your first meeting with the lords of death?” he said mockingly, though none of the rest of his men had yet spoken. “I realize now that something I may have said could have made you think you were about to be killed yourself! I must apologize, Princess, if our rough ways caused you any distress.”
She whirled in the narrow passage, furious and nearly in tears, and slapped him hard across the face. “How dare you!” she cried. “How dare you terrify me like that and then come to me with these false apologies, when it was all deliberate!”
He grabbed her by the wrist and twisted her arm until she cried out. “Mountain cat, my men called you,” he said between his teeth. “Good term. But maybe I can make it up to you!” He jerked her to him and kissed her hard, though she tried to turn her head aside. “Wouldn’t you rather have a king for your lover than some young warrior?”
She drove a knee toward his midsection, but he twisted out of the way. “I can see this one will take a little taming!” he said with a laugh, twisting her arm again.
She took a deep, sobbing breath and went limp. Queen Arane was right. It was no use trying to use strength against a strong man-especially when it only excited him.
Her sudden slump surprised him. “Please, I need to go to the women’s loft,” she said through entirely unfeigned tears. “I am with child, and I fear this has- I need the women to help me now.”
He let go of her at once and squinted at her suspiciously, then took her arm again, much more gently this time. “Come on, then.” The green-eyed woman was waiting at the end of the passage. She gave the king a very bitter look as he handed Karin to her, mumbling something about women’s troubles. She then marched Karin off before her, down more narrow stone passages, deep into the castle.