The Book of the Sword (Darkest Age) (7 page)

Edmund fell in behind her at once, placing Cathbar ahead of him. The captain seemed fresher this morning, but his face was still an angry red all down one side, and his movements were slow and stiff. Elspeth, forced to take up the rear, felt a fierce impatience with their cautious pace: she could almost have wished she was travelling alone.

They trudged through the white wasteland in single file, following Fritha. The sun rose above the tallest peaks, driving away the blue shadows until the snow was dazzling white on all sides. There was no talk now, only the crunch of their boots in the snow. Elspeth kept her gaze fixed on the mountains, willing them to come closer, but their progress seemed maddeningly slow. Once, as Fritha stopped to test the ground, she glanced behind her: the trees were a dark smudge in the distance, and the snow stretched all around, broken only by the wavering line of their footprints. The size and emptiness of it dizzied her, and she turned quickly back to the others.

The mountains had grown closer; they stretched out now like arms to each side of the travellers. Fritha had turned northwards, heading for the centre of the range. Elspeth stared at the jagged peaks, wondering if she would somehow recognise her destination when she saw it. The sword had fallen silent, but before she could try to raise the voice in her head she was startled by a cry from Edmund.

‘Look! There’s smoke!’

Fritha nodded. ‘
Fiskimathar
– fish-mans,’ she told him. They were near the mountain lakes, she explained, long, narrow run-offs from the glaciers, covered in ice now. Some of the bolder fishermen came here throughout the winter, melting holes in the ice with fire-pans to reach their catch.

‘I thought there’d be fishing here!’ Cathbar exclaimed. ‘Are they hospitable, these men?’

Fritha looked grave. They were not bad men, she said; but they would be suspicious of strangers, especially in this place. She agreed to stop by the lake and make camp, but Elspeth could tell that she was nervous, whether of the men or of the place she could not tell.

The fishermen’s camps soon appeared: a cluster of orange sparks which became smoky fires, and an uneven row of makeshift hide tents with tiny figures moving between them. The lake itself was mostly covered with snow, but near where the tents were thickest Elspeth could see great dark patches beneath the whiteness. Fritha saw them too: the fair-haired girl stood very still for a moment before she moved them on
again. She walked slower now, treading lightly and prodding the ground ahead of her with a long branch. Finally she stopped, a good way away from the closest tents. The sun was dipping low in the sky behind them, and the blue-grey mountains reared around them on all sides.

‘We have reached the lake,’ Fritha told them. She used her branch to sweep away snow from the ground in front of them, uncovering a surface of dully gleaming ice. ‘We’ll camp here, and if we can break the ice, we can fish.’

They gratefully dropped their packs and firewood bundles. Cathbar showed Edmund how to scoop a hollow in the snow at the lake’s edge and line it with thick branches before laying out charcoal for a fire, while Elspeth helped Fritha to peg together a set of short wooden rods from her pack as tent poles. Ahead of them, the evening sun struck glints from the ice and lit the upper slopes of the mountains. One peak stood out above the others. What looked like a river of ice ran down it to one side, glowing in the yellow light and making the rocks around it look black in comparison. Elspeth felt her hand throb.
There!
came the voice in her head.

‘Is that
Eigg Loki
?’ she asked.

Fritha nodded. ‘You can see the glacier running down it to the lake.’ To Elspeth’s surprise she started to hum. ‘It’s a song my mother sang to me when I was little,’ she explained. ‘It says,
Ice spirits in the glacier, water spirits in the lake; cold brothers
. It didn’t make me scared then because the tune was so
sweet. But since my mother died, I don’t like it so much.’ She turned abruptly to the packs and started shaking out blankets to drape over the tent poles. Elspeth felt a sudden longing to go to the older girl and take her hand, to tell her about her own father, drowned so short a time before. But she felt awkward, and busied herself instead in helping Fritha with the tent.

They joined Cathbar and Edmund around the small fire, and ate some of their dwindling supply of bread and dried meat. Elspeth realised for the first time how hungry she was and thought longingly of fresh fish – but Fritha explained that they could not melt the ice as the fishermen did: the men did not light fires on the ice itself, but used hot charcoal in a metal pan with a long handle, which she did not own. They could try to fish if they liked, for tomorrow’s meal, but they would have to break the ice with knives, if they could. After the scanty dinner, Fritha found a spot where she thought the ice was thinnest, and Edmund gladly began to chip at it with his knife. But after a dozen blows, he looked up in frustration.

‘I’ve barely scratched it!’ he complained, looking ruefully at the pitted surface. ‘Elspeth, couldn’t the sword help us?’

Elspeth started towards him, but something held her back. She felt – what was it? A strange sense of reluctance, almost fear. Why shouldn’t she use the sword? She knew well enough that it could cut through anything.
Not this
, the voice in her head said.
Better not…

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it’s not right to use the sword just to get food.’

‘Just!’ Edmund retorted. ‘What use is the sword to us if we starve to death?’

‘Right,’ Cathbar agreed. ‘Come on, girl; you’re not going to blunt it.’

Sword?
Elspeth asked in her head. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then the sword flared out.

‘Cut here!’ called Edmund, stepping back from his place on the ice and pointing.

Elspeth reached the spot in two strides and plunged the blade down. It sliced through the surface – like cutting meat, she thought. She brought the blade around in a circle and withdrew it, leaving a round hole like an eye in the scratched grey ice. Elspeth looked down in triumph, about to call to the others, but her voice died in her throat.

There were people in the water! Dim, drifting, near-transparent figures, their great eyes reflecting the cold light of the sword. They raised slender arms towards her, calling her name. No – not her name.
Ioneth
, the faint voices chanted.
Ioneth, come to us …
There were so many of them … all the way down to the depths…

Hands grabbed Elspeth’s shoulders and pulled her backwards. The sword flickered and died as she staggered, colliding with Fritha and Edmund, and sat down hard in the snow.

‘What were you doing?’ Edmund demanded. ‘Another moment and you’d have fallen in!’

‘Didn’t you hear …?’ Her voice trailed off as they stared back at her. Edmund looked puzzled and concerned; Cathbar exasperated.

Only Fritha showed the beginnings of alarm. ‘What?’ she asked, her face tense. ‘What did you hear?’

Elspeth hesitated, then risked another glance at the ice-hole. The water beneath lay black and undisturbed. ‘Nothing,’ she said finally. ‘I was afraid the ice was cracking, that’s all.’

Fritha did not look convinced, but she asked no more questions. She produced a thin rod from her pack and settled down by the hole to fish, watched by Edmund. Cathbar went to tend the fire. Elspeth turned away from them all and tried to calm her thoughts. She had lied to them. Well, she told herself, Cathbar would not have believed her. Edmund would think her dreaming, probably. And Fritha … Fritha would believe her all too well, and would be afraid. Surely the things she had seen, whatever they were, were too insubstantial to hurt anyone! But what were they? Fritha’s evil spirits?

Elspeth found herself wandering along the edge of the lake, as if movement could ease her confusion. The sun was getting low now, the little fires that dotted the shoreline glowing in the gathering shadow, but she walked on restlessly.
Fritha believes in spirits under the ice – but she didn’t see them. I did; and they called to me. Why?
And what was the name they had called: Ioneth? It seemed somehow familiar, but she could not remember ever hearing it before.

‘
Thu, myrk-har!
’

She jumped. The deep voice made her think of Fritha’s father, Grufweld, and for a moment, disorientated, she looked around for him. But this speaker had called her
myrk-har
, black-hair, not by her name – and his voice held none of Grufweld’s gentleness.

Now that she looked around, she saw that she had wandered some distance from her camp toward the tents of the fishermen. Three big, bearded men in heavy furs were standing around her. The largest was speaking again, but she could not understand him at first; something about fire. When she did not reply, he repeated himself with a scornful lilt, as if talking to an idiot. He stood a little unsteadily, she noticed, as if he had drunk too much ale.

‘You’re a stranger here – you should not be fishing in our lake. But Olafr here says you have a fire-stick to break the ice.’

The second man nodded and grinned, showing blackened teeth. ‘It burned white, not red,’ he said. ‘And cut through the ice like reindeer fat!’

‘So,’ the first cut in, ‘here’s a bargain for you. Give us the fire-stick, and we won’t stop you taking our fish.’

His tone was cheerful, but Elspeth had seen men like this before at the harbours. The word ‘bargain’ in their mouths meant: give me what you have, and I may not hurt you. Her father had been adept at sending them off without violence, but her father had been a grown man, whose position gave him respect. She could feel the sword trying to burst free,
sending sparks shooting up her right arm.
No!
Elspeth thought urgently.
This is the trouble we have when just one person sees you
. But the third man, wide as a hut, was blocking her way back to her own camp.

‘I don’t understand you!’ she said, making her voice as loud as she could. Maybe Cathbar and the others would hear her – she could not see them past the wide man’s shoulders. ‘My … my father has a sword. That’s how we broke the ice.’

The first man gave a bark of laughter and took a step towards her. ‘That’s not what Olafr saw,’ he said. ‘He says
you
have the stick. And as for your father’s sword …’ He half drew the long knife tucked into his belt; Olafr, beside him, sniggered and did the same. ‘But we don’t want a fight, do we? You’re just a girl. Give us the stick now –’

A hand like a bear’s paw gripped Elspeth’s arm. The third man had been edging towards her as she kept her eye on the knives, and now he dragged her towards him while the other two lunged triumphantly forward. She threw herself back, trying to twist away from the fat man’s grasp, and felt her feet slide out from under her. She flailed for balance, lost it and came down hard on the ice, the breath knocked out of her. A thump and a volley of curses nearby told her that the fat man had fallen with her, but the other two were bending over her, laughing. Rage filled her, and the sword flared in her hand.

She had time to see the expression in her attackers’ eyes – shock, then terror – before the ground shifted under her. There was a dreadful creaking, a panicked cry from the man on the
ground behind her, and then she was sliding helplessly downwards, plummeting down a shard of steeply sloping ice straight into the lake. Commotion rose all around her: screams, splashing and running footsteps. Then she was in icy water, and all sound stopped as the blackness closed over her head.

She was sinking into darkness, all light and motion fading above her. There was no air left in her: next moment she must take the ice water into her lungs … And then her father’s voice came to her, from the days when she was small and safe, when water had been her friend:
Kick, Elspeth! Kick at it and the water will let you go the way you want. Use your arms to point the way
.

Elspeth kicked hard, casting her eyes upwards. Her arms were above her head, and over them was a greenish light … the sword! It still glowed, and it was pointing the way to safety. She clamped her lips shut: she
would
reach the surface …

Something brushed against her. She ignored it, straining upwards, but there was another touch, and then another, twining around her legs. They were all about her: the slender, translucent figures she had seen before: insubstantial but clinging; swarming up her body towards the surface … or else pulling her down. And a hundred soft voices sounded in her ears:
Ioneth … Ioneth!

Let me go!
Elspeth could not tell if it was her voice that spoke or the sword’s, but her lips were still pressed together, though her lungs were on fire. Was it growing lighter above
her? The whispering in her ears had become an indistinct roaring, and her body was melting with the ice.

Something wrenched painfully at her wrist. Her hair was being pulled out of her head. There was a violent yank upwards – and she was out in the blessed air, blinking in the red remains of the light, trying to breathe and coughing instead, and clinging for her life to the rough wool of Cathbar’s jerkin.

‘I’ve got you, girl,’ he muttered. ‘Try and stand for me now, will you? We need to get moving, fast.’

His words made no sense to her at first. She was not drowned – surely that was enough? Could she not just lie here while her body came back to her? But then she heard the other sounds, and began to see again. Edmund was standing over her, clutching his knife and looking hunted. Fritha stood nearby, an arrow fitted to her bow. Elspeth followed their gaze to see the fat man who had grabbed her lying flat on his back in the snow, wheezing and dripping wet. He must have gone through the ice as well, and his companion, the tall fisherman who had first threatened her, had only just succeeded in pulling him out. He was crouching over the fat man, very nearly as wet as he was, clutching a sodden cloak around himself and cursing at Elspeth through violently chattering teeth. And along the edge of the lake Olafr, abruptly sobered by the look of it, was leading a band of grim-faced fishermen towards them. Most of them had gutting-knives like his, and one or two had drawn them.