? ? ?
Towards evening of that second day we reached a great work and wonder of the Builders, high amongst the peaks. A huge dam wall had been constructed, spanning a valley, taller than any tower, thick enough at the top for four wagons to drive along it side by side, and wider still at the bottom. A vast lake must once have been held behind it, though to what purpose I couldn’t say.
“Wait!” I needed a rest and the ruins provided the perfect excuse.
Snorri came back along the slope, frowning, but he allowed that we might stop for a few minutes whilst I satisfied my aristocratic curiosity. I satisfied it from a sitting position, letting my gaze roam along the valley sides. Enormous stone pipes ran out through the bedrock beneath the dam, obviously to control the flow of water, but why I couldn’t guess. The whole place was built on the scale of the mountains, each structure huge enough to make ants of men. Even the pipes would accommodate several elephants walking side by side, with headroom for riders. In such a place you could believe the Norse stories of frost giants who shaped the world and cared nothing for humanity.
I sat on my pack beside Tuttugu, staring out across the valley, both of us munching on apples he’d dug from his pack, wizened but still sweet with the taste of summer.
“So every Viking name seems to mean something . . . Snorri means ‘attack,’ Arne is ‘eagle,’ the quins came out numbered . . .” I broke off to let Tuttugu supply the explanation of his own, something heroic probably. If they applied names with any accuracy, Tuttugu would mean “timid fatty” and Jalan would mean “runs away screaming.”
“Twenty,” he said.
“What?”
“Twenty.”
I glanced towards the huddle of quins. “Good God! Your poor mother!”
Tuttugu grinned at that. “No, it’s not my birth name, just what people call me. There was a contest at Jarl Torsteff’s feast after the victory over Hoddof of Iron Tors, and I won.”
“A contest?” I frowned, trying to puzzle how Tuttugu won anything.
“An eating contest.” He patted his belly.
“You ate twenty . . .” I tried to think of something a person might reasonably eat twenty of. “Eggs?”
“Close.” He rubbed his chins, short fingers buried in ginger fuzz. “Chickens.”
? ? ?
It took four days rather than the promised two before we looked down upon the sparkling length of the Uulisk from a high ridge, endless miles of mountain trekking to our rear. Snorri pointed out a dark spot along the shoreline.
“Einhaur.” I could tell nothing of its fate from our remove, save there were no fishing boats at its quays.
“Look.” Arne pointed out along the fjord, further seaward. A longship, tiny from where we stood, a child’s toy out on the flat waters of the Uulisk. Near the prow a red dot . . . a painted eye?
“Edris and his Hardanger friends, I’m guessing,” Snorri said. “Best press on.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
The trek to the Black Fort proved much as Snorri had described it. Only a lot worse. Although Edris might have followed us, or have been ahead in the race to the fort, in such a huge and empty expanse it’s impossible to think of yourself as chased or chasing. You are either alone, or not alone. We were alone, and our enemy pressed us on every side. The wind and the cold of the Uplands are things that must be experienced; words will not tame them into something that can be given over. We left behind trees, then bushes, then even the hardiest of grasses until the world was nothing but rock and snow. The snow patches joined each to the next to become unbroken. The days grew shorter with frightening speed, and each morning Baraqel would no longer harangue me but merely unfold his wings, golden with the dawn, and bid me be worthy of my line. Snorri would sit apart from us when the sun fell, plunging from the sky and drawing the long night behind it. In those moments, as ice devoured sun, I could see her walk about him: Aslaug, a lean beauty fashioned from the gloom, her spider form scurrying in her footsteps, black across the snow.