Heroes of the Valley (24 page)

'No, actually, I don't.' She had her hands on her hips, glaring at him now. He stood at a distance, tense with anger and agitation, knuckles gripping white upon his pack strap. She shook her head again. 'Halli – whatever was in that cave, it died a long while ago. Hundreds of years, maybe. The bones were ancient. We shouldn't panic.'

He moistened his lips, rubbed at the side of his face. 'Maybe.'

'I'm right, you know. Would Svein or Arne have run in fear because of a few old bones?'

Halli exhaled slowly. 'We need to talk about this. Let's get away from the cave.'

During their climb back up the little hill, the argument continued, neither giving any ground, yet neither perhaps wholly sure of their own position. For his part, Halli was torn between his natural caution and a deep reluctance to appear more fearful than Aud. This tension made him sharp-tongued; Aud likewise was jittery and scathing. By the time they reached the summit, the atmosphere was sour. Even so, hunger drove them to sit upon a stone for lunch. From the position of the sun they realized it was already early afternoon.

For a while neither of them spoke. Then Halli said, 'We should go back soon.'

Aud was tearing on a strip of smoked meat. She spat a piece of gristle into the grass. 'No. We've got hours yet.'

'To do what? Where shall we look?' He gestured at the immensity around them. 'We won't find the path today. We'll need to come back another time, look again.'

'You're just scared of a few old bones.'

'Oh, shut up.'

Aud hurled her meat aside. 'If I have any more of this, I swear I'll vomit. All winter there's been nothing else.' She put her hands in the pack, rummaging among the weapons. 'Surely you packed some cheese or something . . . What's this?'

Frowning, she drew out an odd black object, sickle-shaped, knife-thin, its lumpy, rounded base shapeless as a pig's knuckle. Light gleamed on the serration of the inner, shorter edge and the vicious curve of the blade.

'It's that Trow claw I was telling you about,' Halli said. 'The one the trader tried to kill me with. Careful with it.'

'Why? It's fake, isn't it? Why did you bring—
Ah
, Arne's blood, it's sharp!'

She jerked her hand away and sat back, sucking the side of one finger with an expression of shock. After a moment she took the finger out of her mouth and held it up; dark blood dripped down it and ran like water across the back of her hand. It pooled in the hollow between her fingers and fell in thick droplets onto the ground.

'You
idiot
, Aud.' Halli took the claw by the lumpen base and dropped it in his pack. He snatched up her hand quickly, drew it to him and folded it in the loose fabric of his tunic, squeezing it tight, staunching the flow. 'What were you doing, grabbing at it like that? Why do you think he tried to kill me with it? It's sharp. That's why I brought it.'

Aud's face had gone white; her shoulders shuddered. 'I feel quite sick,' she said in a shaky voice. 'And now I'm ruining your tunic. Look at all the blood.'

'You'll be all right. What were you playing at, grabbing at—?'

'Don't snap at me. Shut up about it.'

'Well, it's your stupid fault. Will you just keep
still
?'

They sat in silence, Aud rigid, staring; Halli gazing gloomily off across the waste, still holding her finger tight. His eyes wandered. For a time he focused on nothing, then his attention was caught by something halfway up a distant slope, amid an otherwise unbroken line of cliffs and crags. A narrow band of grass, scarcely visible under the snow, rose diagonally towards a little notch upon the skyline. Halli squinted, frowned. It was very distant; he could not be sure . . . But it was just possible to see it as a passable way onwards, out of the moors, onto the high mountains . . .

He made this observation to Aud, who had tentatively withdrawn her hand and was examining her bleeding finger.

'Let's go and see, then,' she said curtly. 'That's what we're here for.'

'Well. we obviously can't do it
now
,' Halli said. 'It's late, and you're injured, and after what we found . . .'

'Oh, what is
wrong
with you?' She rose abruptly to her feet, stony-faced. 'When are we going to get the chance again? My father will send for me any day, and that will be that.'

'No, he won't! The torrents will start soon. He won't come up-valley for weeks.'

'I'm not risking it. 'Whether it was the pain of her wound, or the shock of the discovery in the cave, there was a brittleness in her voice he had not heard before; she did not look at him. 'You stay here, or go back,' she snapped. 'I don't care. I'm going to look.'

'Oh, don't be so pig-headed.' He had sprung to his feet now. 'You'll never get there on your own.'

'Just watch me. 'And she was striding down the slope, hand wrapped in her fleece, face imperious, lips set.

Halli gave a snort of rage. Following her, he snatched at her hood to pull her back. Aud squealed, pulled herself free, dashed his hand away; she gave a little run to get clear of him, slipped upon a patch of ice, stumbled and caught her boot in a hole. She lost her balance and fell heavily into the grass, twisting her leg awkwardly.

The cry she gave made Halli's heart lurch. He hurried over, anger dissolving into anxiety. 'What happened? Are you all right?'

'No thanks to you. Ankle hurts a bit.' She flexed her foot experimentally. 'It's all right. For a moment there . . . Help me up.'

'Sorry,' he said, helping.

She breathed hard. 'Me too. It's just—' She was standing upright now, resting her weight cautiously upon her leg. 'It's just I can't bear the thought of going home. You don't know what it's like with my father. He drives me mad.'

'I wasn't
saying
we should give up,' he said. 'Just stop for today. That gap in the cliff is promising. We'll come back soon and find a route to it, I promise. But now—'

Aud cried out. She had tried to walk away, back up the slope, and her ankle had almost collapsed under her. He grasped her arm, stopping her from falling.

Halli's eyes were round. 'You can't walk, can you?'

She nodded, wincing. 'Don't worry – it's a little sore, that's all. It'll be fine soon.'

He looked at her. 'You think?'

'Oh, yes.'

'So you're not going to have any trouble getting back to the boundary?' he asked. 'Before nightfall, for instance?'

Aud gave a slightly high-pitched laugh. 'No, no, of course not! How unlucky would
that
be?'

O
N MOONLIT NIGHTS, WHEN
Svein grew tired of sitting on the Law Seat and dictating business to his people, he took up his belt and sword, and climbed to the ridge to hunt for Trows. They were not so numerous down by the House, being wary of his presence, but on the moors were plentiful still. One by one they came, grey shadows clambering from the ground or sidling through the gorse, and he fought with them under the cold moon, and took their heads and skins to decorate his hall.

Even Svein often came back bruised and torn from these adventures, and he forbade his people to climb upon the moors under any circumstances. 'The Trows are too strong up here,' he said, 'and you'd be too far from help. Stay close to the home I made you.'

Afternoon became evening; in the east the sky merged with the land; light bled away into the west. The snowy moor grew dim and purple, its folds and depressions filled with pools of dusk. Here and there the rocky outcrops rose like great black nails rammed into the earth.

A flock of geese flew high above them, beneath the first bright stars.

They were still a long way from the cairns.

Halli said brightly, 'It's a good job we don't believe in the Trows, isn't it?'

'Very.' They shuffled on a few more steps. His arm was tight around Aud's waist, keeping her from falling; her arm hung heavy across his shoulders. She swung herself forward by little hops and jerks, her bad foot raised above the grass. In such a way they had already negotiated the slope of the little hill, and more than half the moorland. But the going was dismally slow.

Periodically Halli attempted light conversation, which he found almost as tricky as the physical exertion. It was hard talking of favourite meals and invented gossip when his mind kept returning to images of Trows stirring beneath the earth. He scanned the landscape around them; even as he watched, it faded. He could not see the boundary.

They had just passed under the shadows of one of the great protruding crags and were setting out again amid the emptiness when Aud glanced up, scanning the flat grey half-light. 'Halli,' she said, 'what was that noise?'

He hesitated. 'I didn't hear anything.'

'No? Perhaps I didn't either. I thought that— No, but it's hard with this wind.'

'Exactly. Let's not halt and discuss it, eh? Let's keep going.'

'Good idea.'

They pressed on amid the gathering dark. The little light remaining hung pale and faint above the western mountains; the nearby crags grew hazy and indistinct. There was still no sign of the cairns ahead.

Snow crunched beneath their stumbling feet; the air was growing cold. Aud leaned heavily against Halli, gasping whenever her foot brushed the ground.

A thought occurred to Halli. 'You've got your hand bound up, haven't you?' he asked. 'I mean, you're not leaving a trail of blood behind us or anything?'

'Of course I'm not. Shut up.'

'Just checking.' Halli was quiet for a few paces, then began whistling a jaunty, raspy, intensely repetitive tune between his teeth. He kept this up for a long while. Finally Aud gave an angry cry.

'Will you just
shut up
? If I hear that dirge one more time I swear I'll slap you.'

'I was trying to keep our spirits up.'

'By showing how scared you are? Great idea.'

'Me scared? Look at my face; look at it – is that the face of someone scared?'

'I don't know, Halli. I can't honestly tell. Why? Because it's dark and I can't see a thing. It's
dark
, Halli. And we're still not over the boundary, thanks to you!'

'Thanks to
me
? You're the one who fell over!'

'You practically pushed me.'

'Oh,
this
is rich,' Halli cried. 'First off, I thought you didn't care a bent pin about the boundary or the Trows. Secondly, might I remind you that if you hadn't got so stroppy, we wouldn't be in this mess right now and you wouldn't be panicking.'

Aud uttered a whoop of rage. 'Me? I'm perfectly relaxed!'

'Sorry, I didn't quite catch that – your voice was a little too shrill.'

There was a brief whistling sound. Halli said: 'What was that?'

'Me trying to slap you. I missed.'

'No, not that. Something further away.'

They stood in the darkness and listened to the movement of the winds across the blank surface of the moor. Aud said in a small voice: 'I can't . . . I don't . . . I don't
think
there's anything . . . Are you scratching yourself?'

'What? No. What kind of question is that?
Am I scratching
myself
. That's the noise I
heard
, Aud. Where's it coming from?'

They listened, eyes staring blindly at the dark. No doubt about it: faintly, carried on the wind, scarcely audible above its howling, but certainly not of it, there came a low scrabbling sound. Several times it broke off, only to start again almost immediately; it rose and fell, but even when it diminished almost to nothing it was still there – a thin persistence on the edge of their hearing. Where it came from was impossible to say.

Halli felt something grasp his arm. 'I hope that's your hand, Aud.'

'Of course it is. What
is
that sound, Halli?'

'Well . . .' He tried to seem cheerful. 'I don't think it's wolves.'

'I
know
it's not wolves, Halli. What
is
it?'

'It's . . . the wind on the stones.'

'Oh. Really? What do you mean exactly?'

'Erm . . . Let's keep going. I'll tell you as we walk.' Grappling each other close, they continued through the snow. Every now and then they halted and listened hopefully, but the noise remained. At last Halli, who had been thinking hard, said: 'Here's how it works. The wind blows little pebbles down the crags and cairns. They skitter and slide down natural gullies, causing the sound we hear. I hope this is the right direction.'

'Of course it is. We haven't turned, have we? The boundary's straight ahead. 'Aud was panting a little; they were hobbling rather faster than before. 'So, pebbles in gullies, you think it is? You don't think it's more like a kind of
burrowing
, like claws coming up through earth?'

'Well . . . it could be that too.'

'Oh, great.'

'But, Aud, remember. Those bones were old. So you don't believe that Trows—'

'No. That's right. I don't. And nor do you. Ah, this ankle – I
wish
I could run on it. Even a little.' She reached up, squeezed his hand. 'Thanks for being reassuring.'

'All part of the servi—
Svein's ghost
! What's that?' Halli lurched sideways, clutching at Aud, who stumbled and almost fell.

Aud had stifled a scream. '
What?
'

'There! Where I'm pointing.'

'But where the hell's that? It's dark. How could you see—'

'I sensed something. Big. Very big, there to our left.'

They clung together, staring. In the western sky the faintest paleness lingered after the vanished sun. Against this glow it was possible to sense, by looking indirectly at it, a hulking outline of darkest black. Aud forced out a pent-up breath. 'That's just one of the
crags
, you fool. Probably the last one before the cairns. Great Arne, Halli; I nearly
died
.'

An embarrassed laugh in the dark beside her. 'Sorry. False alarm.'

'So will you let go of me now?'

With a flurry of manly coughs and brusque adjustments of clothing, Halli drew away. There was a brief silence.

'Come on,' Aud said. 'We must almost be there now.'

'And did you notice?' Halli put in. 'That weird noise has stopped too.'

'Thank Arne for th—'

Somewhere in the blackness, not too distant, there came the gentle crack and scrape of shifting rocks. It ceased abruptly.

Halli and Aud froze as motionless as stones embedded in the moor. Every nerve and sinew strained against the dark.

Now there was nothing. But this fresh silence did not greatly reassure them.

Halli ventured a whisper. 'You know what I think that was? I think the wind dislodged a biggish stone, which tumbled abruptly down a cairn, giving the uncanny illusion of a sinister and stealthy footstep.'

'You don't think that at all, do you?'

'No. How fast can you hop?'

'Let's see.'

Onwards together, Aud lurching, Halli supporting her as best he could. His pack bounced roughly on his back; her breath came in frantic gasps. Twice they nearly tumbled; once Aud floundered in a snow-filled hollow. The darkness flowed against them like a river in spate, and still they had not reached the cairns.

All at once, close by: an odd swift skittering, something hard moving upon rock.

They drew up short. Halli put his mouth against Aud's ear. 'I'm going to open the pack, get out the weapons.'

'You do that.'

With Aud leaning on him, Halli flung off the backpack, dropped it down onto the snow and set to untying the knotted string. As his fingers were numb with cold, his hands shaking with fear, and he was doing it blind, it was not as straightforward a task as he might have wished. Also, the knot had slipped.

From somewhere close came a curiously unpleasant creaking, then a loud, thin crack, as if brittle stone had snapped under sudden weight.

'Halli,' Aud hissed. 'Come
on
. . .'

'It's this bloody knot.'

Now, from just a little closer: the surreptitious, delicate crunch of trodden snow.

'What do you mean,
the knot
? You tied it, didn't you? Get it undone!'

'Stop hassling me— There . . . Oh, no – it slipped again.'

'
Halli
. . .'

Another sound, this time behind them: crisp snow broken, knocked aside. It held the suggestion of slightly faster movement, a growing eagerness . . .

'Curse it, now I've snagged a nail.'

Aud pressed close beside him. 'Please tell me that the bag's open now.'

'Yes, finally. What do you want? The billhook or the turnip knife?'

'I don't care! Anything with a blade. Quick.' Fumbles of cloth, a clink of metal.

'Here.' Halli held a weapon out, handle first; he sensed Aud's hands patting the air frantically, connecting with the wood, closing on the hasp. She wrenched it away from him and gave a cry of pain.

'Ah, my
hand
.'

'Hold it in your left, then.' He had the billhook now; he rose from his crouch, feeling its weight, swishing it briefly from side to side. Away to his right, but not too far, he heard a hurried noise in the snow. 'Put your back against mine,' he said. 'I'll help support you. And be very quiet. We'll hear when it comes in.'

'What then?'

'Swipe. Hard as you can.'

Her back, narrow, slender, pressed firmly against his. He drove his legs deep into the snow, scrubbing his boot soles against the grass beneath, seeking better purchase. He closed his eyes, listened, trying to concentrate. Shuffling steps, odd creaking sounds . . . Now they were on his left, now straight ahead of him . . . Something was moving quickly, circling them, edging inwards all the time. It didn't seem to be at all slowed by the utter dark. Halli knew that it could see them.

All at once the pattering drew back, faded. He could hear nothing.

Halli ventured a whisper. 'You all right, Aud?'

'Oh, I'm very well. You?'

'Not so ba—'A sudden confusion of noise: snow threshed outwards at a run, grass crushed. Aud sucking in a scream. Her back jarred against his; even through the padding of their clothes he felt her shoulder-blade wrench violently round – she had swung her arm out, slashing with the knife. Then a blow, something somewhere connecting hard: the impact jolted through her, through him, so that his legs almost buckled under him. There was a spattering of snow on either side, and a horrid snarling. Steps receded into darkness.

Silence. Aud's head rolled back against his shoulder.

Halli reached up a frantic hand, touching her hair and hood. 'Aud—'

A small voice: 'I hit it, but I lost the knife.'

'Did it hurt you? Aud,
listen
to me – are you hurt?'

'No, no. I felt so cold when it grabbed me. I struck it, but I dropped the knife.'

'It doesn't matter. Maybe you've driven it off.' He was staring this way, that way, eyes darting vainly all about. Meaningless lights and swirls distracted him. Wait – what had Svein done on Battle Rock when the moon was covered? He'd closed his eyes. Halli forced himself to do the same. Better. The lights had gone. When he listened he couldn't hear anything but Aud's gasping breaths. Her back shook against his.

'We're going to have to make a move for the cairns, Aud,' he said softly, patting his hand against her hood. 'Can you do that, do you think?'

'Of course. Don't patronize me!' Her sudden anger reassured him. 'I don't know
where
the knife's gone.'

'Forget it. Take my one.' He half turned, fumbling for her arm. 'Quickly.'

'But what'll you—?'

'I'll use the claw.' He bent over the pack, pushed careful fingers to the bottom. They closed swiftly on the solid knuckle-thick base of Bjorn the trader's Trow claw. He straightened. It was probably sharper than the billhook anyway, though harder to hold. Might give the thing a shock, if it saw it – might think it was a real one. 'Ready?' he said.