“Come out. I’ll bet you cut easier than wood,” Snorri called to them, though I detected an edge of fear in his voice—something I’d never heard before. I think the forest unnerved him more than the enemy within it. I found tinder and then flint, managing to drop both in the darkness, finding them again with trembling fingers. The scent of pine sap grew around us, strong and sickly, almost overpowering.
I struck spark to tinder as Snorri swung at the first of the men to rush from the trees. Branches snapped on all sides, more of them pushing through. An ill-advised glance upwards showed them lean and naked, pale greenish-white ghosts in the dimness. The passage of Snorri’s axe carved a great furrow through the creature from left hip to right nipple, slicing through gut, ribs, sternum, and lungs. Evidently the axe retained some edge despite being used to cut timber. Still the pine-man came on, the stink of sap overwhelming as the stuff oozed from his bloodless wound. At the last he tripped on a stump, crashed down, and became snarled in a mess of loose entrails and stray branches. By then Snorri had plenty of other problems to worry about.
Success! Spark became glow became smoke became flame. A month earlier it would have taken me half an hour to get the same result. Crouched close to the ground and with Snorri swinging and grunting above me, and the scream of terrified horses, I managed to transfer the fire to one of the pitch torches I’d bought back in Crath City, offered there for exploring the extensive municipal catacombs.
“Burn it!” A pale, twitching limb landed beside my foot.
“What?”
“Burn it!” Another grunt and a head dropped close by. A pine-man leapt onto Snorri’s back.
“Burn what?” I shouted.
“Everything.” He fell backwards, impaling his passenger on several stumps.
“That’s madness!” We’d burn up too.
Snorri’s move, whilst genius in the short term, left me exposed, and at least four pine-men were pulling free of the trees to enter the clearing, more behind them. The look in their eyes frightened me more than the fire. I shoved the pitch brand into the mass of broken branches before me.
Flames rose up almost immediately. The pine-men took two or three more steps before halting, each with their face to the fire. Behind me Snorri tore free of his opponent and rose with a groan. “Follow the horses!”
Already the flames were spreading, a fierce crackling building as needles popped in the heat and the fire raced along desiccated branches, quickened by pine-men’s blood. Terrified out of whatever wits horses possess, Sleipnir and Ron bolted, stampeding across the small clearing Snorri had carved, scattering both pine-men and fire. I managed to follow Snorri’s example and roll clear, very nearly impaling myself on a couple of inch-thick stumps.
The two horses punched their own passage through the trees. I hoped they’d avoid being blinded, but it seemed a damn sight better than being barbecued. Snorri gave chase and I stumbled along in their wake. Behind me the fire roared like a living thing and the pine-men answered it with thin cries of their own agony.
For a brief while we left the fire behind us, plunging unseeing along the horses’ path. As my breath grew short I paused for a moment and, glancing back, saw the whole forest lit from within by an orange glow, countless trunks and branches in black silhouette. “Run!” I shouted uselessly, thereafter saving my breath to better follow my own order.
The inferno leapt through the trees with spectacular speed. It jumped between treetops faster than it moved on the ground, and several times we found ourselves beneath a roof of flame whilst the beast roared behind us. Trees exploded within moments of the inferno wrapping them. Literally blown apart, great swirls of orange embers rising above them. The flame rushed through the needled branches like a wind, consuming everything. A burning hand pressed against my back, driving me to greater exertions. Ron’s path split from Sleipnir’s; I chose the one to the left. A hundred yards on I saw my horse through the trees to the side, snared on something, hook-briar most like, screaming. It takes a lot to snare a horse, and Ron was a strong one, fuelled with terror of the flame. But he hung there and I raced on, cursing. At least the fire put a quick end to him. The gelding would have been molten fat and charring bones before he knew the firestorm had him.
I saw Snorri up ahead, fire-lit. Sleipnir’s strength failing her, both of them toiling up a steep slope.
“Run.” A gasp, little louder than my rasping breath.
We made the ridge before the flames, save those dancing high above us in the treetops. “Hel be praised.” Snorri leaned against a trunk, gasping. The slope ran away from us, just as steep on the way down as it was on the rise, trees thinning yard by yard and where the ground grew level, stretching out before us, mile upon mile of moonlit grassland.
TWENTY-ONE