Hours passed. Noon passed. We got high enough to see across the snow-laden peaks north and south, the going becoming even more vertical and more treacherous, and still no Snorri. It astonished me that without knowing he was pursued Snorri had kept ahead of us. Especially with Tuttugu. The man was not made for climbing mountains. Rolling down them he’d be good at.
Afternoon crawled into evening and I crawled after Edris, driven on by the threat of Alrik’s hatchet and by well-placed kicks from Knui. The peak of the mountain looked to be broken off, ending in a serrated rim. The slopes took on a peculiar folded character, as if the rock had congealed like molten fat running from a roasting pig. We got to within a few hundred yards of the top when Edris’s scouts returned to report. They yabbered in the old tongue while I lay sprawled, willing some hints of life back into limp legs.
“No sign of Snorri.” Edris loomed over me. “Not out here, not in the crater.”
“He must be somewhere.” I half wondered if Snorri had lied, if he’d gone off on some different quest. Maybe the next cove held a fishing town, a tavern, warm beds . . .
“He’s found the witch’s cave, and that’s bad news for all of us. Especially you.”
I sat up at that. Fear of imminent death always helps a man find new reserves of energy. “No! Look—” I forced my voice to come out less shrill and panicky. Weakness invites trouble. “No. I wanted Snorri to give Skilfar the key—but he didn’t agree. Chances are he’ll still have it when he comes out. He’s a hard man to argue with. And then you can trade.”
“When a man starts changing his story it’s difficult to give credence to anything he says.” Edris eyed me speculatively, a look that had probably been the last thing half a dozen men ever saw. Even so, the blind terror that had held me since sighting their longboat had started to ebb. There’s an odd thing about being among men who are casually considering your murder. On my ventures with Snorri I’d been plunged into one horror after another, and run screaming from as many of them as I could. The terror that a dead man inspires, trailing his guts as he lurches after you, or that cold chill the hot breath of a forest fire can bring, these are reactions to wholly alien situations—the stuff of nightmare. With men though, the regular everyday sort, it’s different. And after a winter in the Three Axes I’d come to see even the most hirsute axe-clutching reavers as fairly common fellows with the same aches, pains, gripes and ambitions as every other man, albeit in the context of summers spent raiding enemy shores. With men who bear you no particular ill will and for whom your murder will be more of a chore than anything else, entailing both the effort of the act and of the subsequent cleaning of a weapon, the business of dying starts to seem a bit everyday too. You almost get swept up in the madness of the thing. Especially if you’re so exhausted that death seems like a good excuse for a rest. I returned his stare and said no more.
“All right.” Edris ended the long period of decision and turned away. “We’ll wait.”
The Red Vikings distributed themselves across the slopes to seek the entrance to Skilfar’s lair. Edris, Alrik, and Knui stayed with me.
“Tie his hands.” Edris settled down against a rock. He drew his sword from its scabbard and took a whetstone to its edge.
Alrik bound my hands behind me with a strip of hide. None of them had brought packs, they’d just given chase. They had no food other than what they’d stolen from me, and no shelter. From our elevation we could see along the mountainous coast for several miles in each direction, and out across the sea. The beach and their longboat lay hidden by the volcano’s shoulder.
“Is she here?” The necromancer plagued my thoughts, images of dead men rising kept returning to me, unbidden.