A Mankind Witch (27 page)

"There's bound to be a last attempt to stop us," said Erik, as they set out again, "even if they are more afraid of trolls."

"Bakrauf is coming to get us," pronounced Cair loudly, reverting to Norse. And then in Frankish, "Walls have ears. Talk about Bakrauf."

To Cair's amusement he'd swear Erik actually blushed under all the dirt. "That's not a polite word, you know."

"I've been told trolls aren't very polite," said Manfred with a grin. "And I'm feeling pretty coarse myself. Bakrauf! Bakrauf!" he yelled, as they raced toward the opening.

The handful of kobolds seemed more inclined to flee than to fight.

They broke out into the light.

And stopped.

They were on a broad ledge, perhaps half an acre wide, on a cliff. Ahead was the ruin of a bridge. Behind them kobolds were coming nervously forward. They might be nervous, but they also outnumbered the three men by fifty to one, and more were coming down the tunnel.

"And now?" asked Manfred.

"I don't know," admitted Cair. "I've never been this far."

"Unless you add flying to your tricks, you're not going a lot farther either," said Manfred. "Even the rope you hauled me out with is far too short. And we left that behind."

The gorge was a good two hundred yards across to the point where the other buttress of the bridge hung. And it was a lot farther down to the ribbon of water.

"There's a trail off to that side," Erik pointed with a bloody sword.

"Let's go."

It wasn't much of a trail, just a narrow ledge sloping downward. But it was better than staying here.

Cair would have liked it better if the kobolds had tried to follow them. Or even if they hadn't laughed and jeered.

Erik led the way down the ledge. It was not wide—sometimes barely a cubit—and without any form of rail, but it was worn, as if others had come this way before. It zigzagged downward, and had been cut where nature did not provide. Looking down Erik could see that there was something of a quay—and a towpath—leading upstream. A couple of laden barges were tied up at the key. And now, kobolds were pouring out of an entry from the cliff onto that quay. No wonder they'd been laughing.

"There is a sequence of hoists inside the mines," said the thrall. "They can move faster than we can, edging along this ledge."

That much was obvious. But at least the rock wall above overhung, so they were safe from rocks or other missiles from above. The water below was dark and wide—and there was no landing on the far side either. Still, in Erik's opinion, that was their best hope.

"Come down," yelled the kobolds.

"Stop here. Boots off, gentlemen," said Erik. "When we get to that far point over there we're going to have to jump. Jump and swim. We'll be upstream of those barges. See if we can get up onto the first barge and cut her loose."

"It looks deep enough," was the thrall's only comment.

"And cold enough," said Manfred.

"You can swim, thrall—I don't know your name?" asked Erik.

The thrall smiled wryly. "You can call me Cair. It is as near as these Norse barbarians get to calling me by name. And I swim well. Better than you, probably. And at least they don't appear to have bows. But they may throw those little spears."

"A chance we'll just have to take," said Manfred. "When we get to the corner, on the count of three, jump together."

The water went beyond just "cold." Cair found that it was almost paralyzingly so. From thirty feet up he went a long way under water. He kicked hard for the surface. The current was frighteningly strong. He was nearly at the bow of the ore-barge before he broke water. He grabbed for it, and missed.

The current was sweeping him on, past it. Distantly he could hear the kobolds yelling, and as he stroked frantically, the cold eating at his strength, he saw the barge swing into the current ponderously, and begin drifting down on him. A rope splashed into the water next to him. He grabbed at it with numb hands and wrapped it around his arms. Suddenly he was hauled toward the barge so fast he actually skimmed out of the water like a dolphin.

Manfred reached down and fished him out. "You might swim better than Erik, but he's more used to Iceland's cold water, by the looks of it," said the big man with a grin. Erik was already at the stern of the laden craft, hauling at a clumsy rudder.

"We want to lighten her a bit," he yelled. "You two had better start off-loading." They got to work throwing heavy chunks of ore overboard into the racing icy water. It was hot work, to counter the bone-numbing cold of the swim they'd had. Erik was plainly feeling the cold, by his color. Cair went aft. "I can steer. See what you can do about drying off your gear."

"Seaman, are you?" said the Icelander, handing him the rudder bar.

Cair nodded. He was a little more wary about what he said, after the swim. For the first time he was able to take a considered look around at their position. The river ran deep and fast, and the gorge was still high and steep walled. The barge had never been intended for this sort of water. He began swinging her away from the main current. Closer to the margins the flow might be slower. Of course there was a better chance of underwater obstructions, too.

Erik wrung the tunic out, and went to help Manfred. "We need some ballast, I reckon," said the prince, working like a stevedore.

"If we hit a waterfall or real rapids in this tub, it won't help," said Erik, tossing mattock-hacked lumps off the boat.

Manfred shrugged. "We didn't have a lot of choices, did we?"

Erik smiled wryly. "My tunnel was warmer and drier."

"Ah, but the fresh air. The views. The company," said Manfred, expansively. "Think how bored we'd be in Mainz. Nothing to do but eat, drink, and seek out brothels. This is so much better for the Icelandic soul than that would be."

"True," said Erik. "At least here I don't know with a sort of horrible inevitability where I will find you. I don't even know where we are right now. Unless you do?" he directed a look at Cair, who was steering, peering ahead.

Cair shrugged. "Norway. Some river called the Gjöll, I think."

Erik paused midthrow. "Gjöll. Who told you that?"

"Those kobold-creatures called it that. With any luck there won't be any rapids or waterfalls before we reach the sea. It is widening ahead. We can't be that far off sea level."

Erik raised his eyes to heaven. "If this really is Gjöll, we're already well below sea level. You don't know much about the Norse, do you, Cair? Where are you from?"

Cair stepped cautiously here. It might be that Manfred or his bodyguard might see their first duty to be to rid the Empire of Cair Aidin, rather than surviving first and taking their mutual chances later. And he no longer underrated these two men. "Lesbos. A Greek island." It was true enough. It wasn't Turkish at the moment. He had been born there. "And other than the fact that the Norse are gullible barbarians, no, not a lot. And I care less."

Erik looked around them and at the water racing under the bow. And laughed. There was not a lot of humor in it. "When you are in their world, Master Cair, the one thing you'd better learn is some respect. Or you're going to die here, in spite of being a good man with a weapon, and as slippery as a stoat. The Gjöll is supposed to be one of the rivers of the underworld."

It was Cair's turn to raise his eyes to heaven. Their view of the sky was at least a bit wider now. "There is usually a real mountain or river at the base of every barbarian myth, Ritter. From far off it is a magical place, an abode of gods. When you get there it is just another river or mountain, lacking in either magic or gods."

Manfred laughed. "We have a hardened sceptic among us, Erik."

"A sceptic that I still want to know more about . . . like what is he doing here?" enquired Erik, going back to off-loading ore.

"Being a fool. I was following Princess Signy." Cair was surprised at the pang that mentioning the little princess brought him.

"A loyal thrall, following his witch-mistress?" There was a hardness in Erik's voice. "Pardon my saying this, Master Cair of Lesbos. I never met anyone less thrall-like in my life. Tell us another one. The truth this time."

Cair bit his lip. "The truth is too ridiculous for even me to accept, Ritter, let alone you. I
am
her thrall. I'll admit I wasn't planning to stay anyone's thrall. But the child is in trouble. I couldn't just leave her to it."

"She's messed with some very black magics, Master Cair," said Manfred, with a gentleness that surprised Cair. "Murders. Politics, schemes, blood sacrifices. Not only men get involved. Ask Eric. Women—even young, pretty, good-seeming women get drawn in. There was a nun, Sister Ursula, back in Venice, who was one of the most evil people in the world."

Cair shook his head. "
No
," he said firmly, surprising himself with his own vehemence. "I'll believe nearly anyone else could be neck deep in murdering people, or any other kind of scheming in that court. I'm sorry, Prince. You didn't know her at all. But it isn't possible." He grimaced. "I was a stable-thrall. I suppose a murderess might treat old horses like, like their loyalty was worth something, Prince. She was as soft as goose grease with them, and the dogs, too. I suppose a murderess might love her dogs. But it just doesn't fit. She was . . . I don't know how to explain, but I know schemers." He gave a half-smile. "I am one. I could have done it, but not her. It is not possible. All Princess Signy was doing was surviving. They made it hard enough for her to do that much."

"No offence, Master Cair, but according to her brother, she was bitter that she as a woman could not inherit. He said that she was always plotting. That she was rotten to the core," said Erik, in what Cair read as a carefully neutral voice. "The stables did make me wonder. But the Christian mages did pinpoint her, Master Cair. As Manfred said, people are drawn into things that they don't mean to get into."

Cair had made split-second judgments all his life. He'd lived this long by not getting them wrong. He decided that he believed the Icelander—that he, at least, had no part in framing Signy with the theft. "Ritter. I have made myself into something of an expert on 'magic.' It's a lot of trickery. I can do that wand trick myself. Mostly, you play on people's fears. I think you'd all been fed a lot of tales by the princess's stepmother, and the nun decided to see if guilt would spook her into confessing. It wouldn't have worked. Those fellows in bearskins stole her away before there was time to prove her innocence. It was all a fake. A put-up job to allow the real guilty party to get away. With appropriate stories of bear-monsters—that turned out to be men."

Manfred was about to answer when Erik held his hand up for silence.

They could all hear it.

The grumble of rapids.

Big rapids.

Gjöll translated as "scream."

They did eventually bring her food—dried smoked salmon and water in a small leather bottle, passed up on a long pole. But other than that there was nothing for Signy to do but sit and think. What Signy principally thought about was escape. Eventually, she considered her bracelets. They were very much a part of her. She'd worn them day and night since she was thirteen. The reason was simple enough—they would no longer fit over her hands. The little interlocked bear figurines were indeed sharpish-edged. Would the silver be hard enough to cut the bars of her prison? She doubted it. But . . . she could sit in dimness and brood, or she could try.

She tried to get her hands out of them. And failed.

She tried just snapping them. It hurt her fingers and wrist, and didn't even bend the thin silver. It was a lot stronger and harder than it looked. Perhaps it would cut the wood after all—if she could get it off. She looked around for something she could hook and jerk at it. The edge of her pallet? Or—looking up—one of the bar ends? The woodworking on her cage was rough. Standing on the pallet she could probably reach one of those. But the thought of touching the cage wood made her flesh creep. Eventually, she steeled herself to do it. Gritting her teeth, she pushed her hands through. She hooked the bracelet onto a sharp end, her bare skin burning where it touched the wood. She kicked her feet off the ground, expecting pain. Expecting it to fail.

A moment later she was struggling to grab the bracelet before it fell through the slats. She fumbled it. She was never any good at that sort of catch. But luck was still with her despite her expecting it to fall through the bars, it landed on one, and hung there. Squinting to see it clearly she retrieved it from the wooden slat. The silver proved soft and flexible now. She had no trouble straightening it into a sort of blade.

It was virtually ineffectual as a saw. Eventually she did the same with the second bracelet. This time she had the sense to tie it to her wrist with a thread from her dress.

It didn't cut effectively either. But she felt much better for doing something. Or maybe she just felt much better.

Juzef Szpak was feeling just as much ;a prisoner as Manfred was now supposed to be. Snow was drifting down around Kingshall, thick and soft. It was no longer the near blizzard they'd fought their way back from Svartdal in, but it was still not plausible to go out into the snow again. And, Szpak noted, their quarters were now under guard. Even going to see their horses, they were constantly accompanied.

He'd gathered the monks and nuns in his chamber for a conference.

Szpak found new heart as brother Uriel led them in prayer. The monks placed their candles, invoked the wards of silence and raised a veil of privacy around them, deadening the sounds and muting their voices.

Yes. They were trapped by the weather, and possibly by the heathen horde. But he had been trapped before. And the soldiers of the cross had saved him then. They still had their swords and armor. If it came to a fight, their foes would pay a steep price.

Brother Uriel stood up. "We can speak freely now, Ritter. I warn you, Ritter, that we are being spied on, night and day."