I lurched to my feet. Hakon was already on the move, passing by the outermost of his men, pausing to swap a joke. Heart hammering, I hurried to intercept him whilst doing my best not to look as though I were hurrying. That’s pretty difficult. I don’t think I pulled it off. I caught him just beyond the camp.
“Yes?” Hakon gave me a distant look. He’d never accused me of malice over the affair at the Three Axes, or indeed acknowledged that the incident ever took place, but I could tell he had suspicions. Even now, with Kara waiting for him, he didn’t relax enough to gloat but regarded me with caution—once unbitten, twice shy, I guess.
“Just came to congratulate you, best man won and all that, spoils to the victor. She’s waiting for you over yonder.” I waved a hand toward the willow. As I spoke the words I felt Aslaug repeat them, wrapping the dark luxury of her voice about each syllable. It sounded as though she stood closer to him than I did—as though she whispered the last word into his ear.
For a moment Hakon just frowned. “You have very strange ideas about what is and what isn’t a game, prince. And no human should be referred to as spoils.” For a moment I worried he was going to hit me, but he stalked away toward the willow without sparing me another glance.
? ? ?
“A good night for walking!” Snorri hefted his pack. The Danes had purchased clothing, equipment and provisions for us in the last town we passed by. Using my money of course. “Across Gelleth and we’ll be back in Rhone before you know it. Jal loves Rhone, Tutt, just loves it.” Hennan looked up brightly from his bedding. “It’s good there?”
“If ever a country needed stabbing, Rhone is it.” I spat out a flying insect that decided to commit suicide in my mouth, possibly two, midges rising with the evening. Snorri seemed unaccountably cheerful. At least Tuttugu eyed me with a touch of sympathy.
“You’re not worried for our v?lva’s safety out there all alone with the night falling?” I poked at Snorri, wanting him to share my misery.
Snorri shot me a look under his brows. “She’s hardly alone, Jal. And it’s the things in the dark that should be scared of a v?lva, not the other way around.”
Young Hennan watched us from beneath his blanket, still not having bothered to rise. He shifted his gaze as we spoke, as though he were weighing us up and deciding what path to choose.
Somewhere out in the gathering gloom a shriek pierced the evening calm.
“I rest my case!” I said, spreading my hands. Snorri was already past me, axe in fist, Tuttugu hurrying along in his wake. For my part I was less keen to follow. The night holds all manner of terrors—and besides, the scream came from the direction of the willow. Hennan made to follow but I stuck a leg out in his path. “Best not.”
I have difficulty imagining the scene but all I can conclude is that Aslaug wove the shadow well. Very well indeed if she could make a reclining she-troll look like Kara’s inviting silhouette. Quite in what manner Lord Hakon offended the she-troll was never made entirely clear but it seems his advances were sufficiently impertinent to occasion the troll’s sticking of a sizeable willow branch into one of his orifices. Again the detail was never laid bare for us but suffice it to say that the escort ended in that meadow and Hakon was not riding when he left, but walking very carefully.
In the uproar immediately following the incident I took the opportunity to suggest to Gorgoth that he lead his people west rather than wait for the Danes’ outrage to reach boiling point. Gorgoth took the advice and I went with them, thereby avoiding having to hear all the names Hakon might call me, and of course avoiding the effort of trying not to smirk while he did it.
SEVENTEEN
Snorri and the others caught us up on the side of some desolate Gelleth hill, moon-washed and covered with low scrub. Quite how they’d followed our trail in the dark I didn’t know—I’d been expecting them to catch up by day. The old bond that used to bind the northman and me still gave a sense of discomfort and a gist of direction once we had a mile or two between us, but hardly enough to navigate through the night across treacherous country.
“You did that!” Snorri’s first words to me.
“I did indeed get Gorgoth and his pungent friends out of a potentially violent confrontation, yes.” Snorri opened his mouth again, wide enough this time to presage a shout, but I forestalled him with a lifted hand. “No need to thank me. The Red Queen raised the princes of her house to keep a cool head in a crisis.”
“I just want to know how you did it!” Tuttugu pressed past Snorri, a hint of a grin in the thicket of his beard. “Poor Hakon didn’t look like he’d be sitting in the saddle any time soon.”