? ? ?
An hour later and the beach lay far behind them. Snorri had climbed high enough to break clear of the pines, thick about Beerentoppen’s flanks. Tuttugu came puffing from the tree-line a minute later. They turned north and wound around the mountain on a slow and rising spiral. Snorri aimed to bring them to the north face where they could ascend directly, searching for the cave. They saw few signs of life, once an eagle, wings spread wide to embrace a high wind, once a mountain goat, racing away across broken slopes that looked all but impassable.
Within two hours they had the north to their backs and were ready to climb in earnest.
“Troll country, I’d say.” Tuttugu took a suspicious sniff, nose to the wind.
Snorri snorted and put his water flask to his lips. Tuttugu had never so much as smelled a troll, let alone seen one. Still he had a point: the creatures did seem to like volcanoes. Wiping his mouth Snorri started up the slope.
? ? ?
“There!” After another hour’s clambering Tuttugu proved to have the sharper eyes, jabbing a finger toward an overhang several hundred yards to their left.
Snorri squinted. “Could be.” And led off, placing each foot on the treacherous surface with caution. Between their path and the cave lay a dark scree slope where any slip would likely see them sliding halfway back down in an ever-growing avalanche of loose, frost-shattered stone. Twice Tuttugu went down sharply on his backside with a despairing wail. Their luck held though and they made it to the firmer footing at the base of the cliffs into which the cave was set.
Snorri led again, Tuttugu in his wake sniffing. “I can smell something. It’s trolls. I knew it.” He fumbled for his axe. “Bloody trolls! I should have stayed with Jal—”
“It’s not trolls.” Snorri could smell it too. Something powerful, animal, the kind of rankness that only a predator can afford. He shrugged the axe from across his shoulders, and took it in two hands, his father’s axe, recovered from the Broke-Oar on the Bitter Ice. Slow steps took him closer to the cave mouth, the dark interior yielding secrets as it grew to encompass his vision.
“Hel’s teats!” Snorri breathed the oath out before closing his jaw, which had fallen open. In the shadows a monster slumbered. A hound that might stand taller than a shire horse, and wide as the elephant in Taproot’s circus. It had that blunt yet wrinkled face of dogs bred for fighting rather than the hunt. One canine, of similar size to Snorri’s fingers and thumb all funnelled up together, protruded from the lower jaw, escaping slobbery jowls to point toward a wet nose.
“It’s asleep.” A hoarse whisper at his shoulder. “If we’re very quiet we can get away.”
“This is her cave, Tutt. There aren’t going to be two. And this must be her guardian. It’s not here by chance.”
“We could . . .” Tuttugu rubbed furiously at his beard as if hoping to dislodge an answer. “You could lure it out and I could drop a rock on it from up there!” He pointed to the cliff top.
“I think that might . . . irritate her. I’ve met this woman, Tutt. She’s not someone you want to irritate.”
“What then? We can’t very well walk up and pat the puppy.”
Snorri took a hand from his axe and dug beneath his furs to touch Loki’s key. Immediately he felt them, Emy, Egil, Karl, Freja, as if it were their skin beneath his fingers, not the slickness of obsidian. “That’s exactly what we’ll do.”
With the need to run trembling in every limb, Snorri advanced into the cave, axe lowered, quiet but not creeping. A few yards in and he sensed he was alone. Turning, he beckoned Tuttugu. The other half of the Undoreth stood no further forward than when they last spoke, huddled in his leathers and quilted jacket, arms so tight about himself he almost squeezed his bulk thin. Snorri beckoned again, with more urgency. Tuttugu offered a despairing look at the heavens and hurried into the cave.
In close file the pair of them trod a silent path toward a tunnel leading from the back of the cave, some yards past the vastness of the dog. The size of the beast overwhelmed Snorri’s senses, the powerful dog-stink, the warmth of its breath as he passed within feet of that great muzzle. His back scraped the cave wall with each step. And at the closest point one huge eye rolled open amid the folded topology of the dog’s face, regarding Snorri with an unreadable look. For a moment he froze, hand tight on his axe, raising the weapon an inch or two before remembering how poorly it would serve him. With his gaze fixed on the tunnel mouth Snorri moved on, Tuttugu wheezing behind him as if terror had taken hold of his throat.