Jarnulf’s smile was icy. “When I die, I aim to take as many with me as I can, Jarl Hun?. I suspect you would be a rough partner for such an enterprise.” His pale blue eyes looked a blank gray in the gathering dark. “I do not think you love Chieftain Makho, the one who gives you pain.”
“No. I do not love him.”
“Then help me play a small trick. I am not death-sung like these Hikeda’ya. My last song must fly high and far, so that the old gods of my people can see it from Himnhalla—from the starry heavens.”
“Do you wish me to throw it?” The giant watched as Jarnulf wrapped the hide around the arrow shaft, the ashy symbols now hidden. “I fear I will crush it instead.”
“I can send it farther and higher with my bow than you can, even with those great thews of yours,” Jarnulf said. “All I need you to do is to remain where you are and block the space between the two stones, so that Makho and his angry friend Kemme cannot see what I do.”
“And what will you do in return? A slave like me is too poor to do favors, especially for doomed mortals, and I already helped you once.”
Nezeru did not understand what the giant meant. Helped the mortal how? When?
“The doomed part is not up to you, Goh Gam Gar,” Jarnulf replied. “As for my repayment, that will be for you to decide one day. Tell me, do we have a bargain?”
The giant laughed and stole a casual glance over his massive shoulder. At the far end of the crevice, beyond the horses, Makho and the other two Hikeda’ya were still planning either escape or brave death. “It would be a good joke, I think, but when the time comes for you to repay me, the jest may no longer be so much to your liking.”
“We have both worn collars,” said Jarnulf. “They do not take away a man’s honor—or a giant’s, is my guess. I will live by my bargain.”
“Very well.” Goh Gam Gar tilted himself so that he blocked all view across the passage from the far end. “Talk to your old gods. You might ask them why they hate giants so much that their servants have always tried to slay us.”
“If I meet them tonight, I promise I will ask.” Jarnulf rose to a crouch, arrow in one hand, and took up his bow. “Ah,” he said, “I nearly forgot the last touch to my death song. There will be plenty of blood later, I think, but I need a little now to make the words powerful enough for the gods to hear.” He drew the point of his arrow across the muscle of his leg, freeing a stripe of blood. He then rolled the hide in it, smearing it with a red that looked almost black in the twilight. “I will go only a short distance,” he said to Nezeru. “You will be able to watch me.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “I thought you only meant to loose an arrow. You can’t leave this place! You will give us away.”
“There is no one nearby. Ask Goh Gam Gar.”
The giant flared his immense nostrils. “He speaks the truth. The men with armor have all gone down to the bottom of the hill to wait.”
“You have your own bow, do you not, Sacrifice Nezeru?” Jarnulf fixed his pale eyes on hers but she could not guess at his thought. “If I do anything more than what I have said, feel free to put an arrow in my back. Can you see? There is no cover in this direction for a long distance. I know the skills of those trained by the Order of Sacrifice. You will be able to kill me easily.”
“I cannot let you disobey our chieftain,” she said. “If you go beyond this stone, I have no choice but to put an arrow in you.”
“And I am going, arrow or no,” he told her. “But here is something else for you to consider while you ponder whether to hasten my death by a few short hours. Why did your Singer and Makho sneak off in secret earlier to meet with a mortal?”
“What?” She was so surprised it was all she could do to keep her voice low. “What nonsense is this?”
“When you and Kemme were sent to scout the land ahead. Your chieftain told the giant to watch me, but Goh Gam Gar was lax, and I slipped off to follow them.”
“Slipped off? I’ll wager the beast let you go.” At least now she knew the earlier favor that Goh Gam Gar had mentioned. But she still could not make sense of what Jarnulf had said. “Why do you say Makho met with a mortal? How could that be?”
“Because I saw it. It happened in the last hours of darkness, before you two brought the whole of the Erkynlandish army down upon our heads. Saomeji and your chieftain met with a rider who came up the great road from the south.”
“A messenger from Nakkiga—” she began.
“Do you think after spending much of my life among both kinds that I do not know the difference between the scent of your folk and that of mortals like myself? If you had seen them, even from a distance as I did, you would not have mistaken the stranger for anything but one of my race, either. Face to face with the Singer and Makho, he was like a short-legged dog among buck deer. Your comrades showed no surprise at his arrival, and talked with him for some little time, then the mortal got back onto his horse and rode away toward the south.”
“Not toward the army that surrounds us? Because they were behind us, coming from the north.” She shook her head. “That only makes your lie more obvious, Huntsman. Where would he come from in this wilderness, if not out of the numbers of this mortal army?”
“That I cannot say, unless he was a wide-ranging scout, but he wore no insignia I could see, only an old cloak, as though he did not wish his identity to be too obvious. In any case, why would your chieftain have a secret meeting with a member of the army that hunts us?” He stood. “Now, I must send my song to the gods—and you must decide whether to feather my back or not, Sacrifice Nezeru, because the others will be done with their talking soon.”
She watched in near disbelief as he turned his back on her and edged to the end of the space protected by the cleft boulder and Saomeji’s song. She nocked an arrow and drew her bow, but as with the child on the island of the bones, she could not find the conviction to let fly. At last she lowered it again.
“Go, then and be quick,” she whispered. “But if you take a step beyond that fallen log I promise I will kill you. Your gods will never know your name, but the ravens will pick your bones long before the sun has found its way back into the sky.”
“Very fair.” Jarnulf got down on hands and knees, then crawled out of the crevasse, waiting until he had gone several paces down the slope before rising.
Nezeru watched, uncomfortably aware of the massive creature behind her whose bulk sealed her off from the rest of the Talons, but even more miserably conscious of her fellow Hikeda’ya on the giant’s far side.
Once he was away from the great, cloven stone, Jarnulf made his way swiftly and quietly down the slope and stopped just before the fallen log, looking back to make certain Nezeru saw him. Then, his mouth moving as if he sang or chanted something she could not hear, he drew his bow and pointed the arrow up and out toward the south, away from the mortal soldiers waiting at the bottom of the hill. When he released the string the arrow leaped into the air, carrying his red-smeared parchment silently across the violet sky, dwindling as it rose until at last it spent its strength and began to curve down into the trees.
Jarnulf scrambled back to the great halved stone even more quickly than he had gone, still blocked from the view of the others by the immensity of Goh Gam Gar. He had only just taken his place again when Nezeru heard the horses snort restlessly as someone came toward them from the far end.
“What have you done here?” demanded Saomeji, his voice a quiet snarl, his yellow eyes wild. It was the first time she had ever heard the Singer sound angry. “Someone has broken the line of my song!” He stood behind the giant on tip-toe, unwilling to get too close to the monster but struggling to see past him. “Was it you, mortal? What have you done?”
“Done?” Jarnulf laughed. “Have we not enough to worry about? I wanted a piss and the Hun? didn’t want to move, so I stepped out and did it on the hill, just there.” He shook his head. “I did not know that joining your company meant I could only piss when and where you said, Singer. If you’d told me, I might have chosen different traveling companions.”
Makho came up behind Saomeji, his face cold. “You do nothing without asking me first, mortal.” He looked at Nezeru. “What did he do?”
Another crossroad had come. “Only what he said, Hand Chieftain.” Lies to her superior now rolled from her tongue as though she had practiced the crime for years. She was troubled by that, but also impressed with her own unexpected facility. “He did it before I knew what he planned, but came back promptly, so I did not slay him.”