Snow-Walker Read Free Page B

He had been a kinsman of her father; he was a marked man in the Jarlshold. And his wife was right. No pleading would move Ragnar, and anyway, she, Jessa, wouldn’t have it.
    Mord came back to the fire. The hearth was a large, square one in the middle of the house, and around the walls were the sleeping booths, with their wooden screens and warm, musty hangings. By now the fire was a hot blaze, licking and spitting over the new peats, throwing glows and shadows around the room, over Thorkil’s face, and Mord’s, worried and upset. Outside, the afternoon sky was darkening with snow. Winter lingered late, as usual, in the Jarlshold.
    Thorkil said, “Mord, tell us about Gudrun.”
    â€œBest not to, lad. I’d rather keep my tongue.”
    â€œBut we need to know.” Thorkil glanced at Mord’s wife, with her youngest daughter pulling at her skirts. “We’re going there, after all.”
    She turned away from him. “He’s right, Mord.”
    Mord put down the peat he had been crumbling, got up slowly, and locked the door. Coming back, he sat closer to the fire.
    â€œIt’s a stranger story than any skald’s saga. Much of it you’ll know, I’m sure. When Ragnar was a young man, the Wulfings were the ruling kin in the north. He was just one of many small landowners; your fathers were two more. But he was ambitious. He bought land where he could, stole it where he couldn’t, ruined his enemies in the Althing—that was the old law court—and gathered ruthless, cruel men about him. Still, he might have stayed as he was, if it hadn’t been for her.”
    Mord paused. Then he said, “Beyond the Yngvir River and the mountains, there’s only ice. It stretches, they say, to the edge of the world, into the endless blackness. Travelers—those that have come back—speak of great cracks that open underfoot, of mountains smooth as glass, of the sky catching fire. Beyond the icebergs even the sea freezes. No animals live there, not even the white bears, though I have heard a tale of a long glistening worm that burrows in the ice. It may not be true. But certainly there are trolls, and ettins, and some sort of spirit that howls in the empty crevasses.
    â€œIn those lands live the White People, the Snow-walkers, a race of wizards. No one knows much about them, except that sometimes they would come to the northern borders and raid. Children would disappear from farms, and it would be said that the White People had taken them. Cattle too, and sometimes dogs.
    â€œOne year the raids were so bad, the old Jarl sent Ragnar with a war band to march up there and settle it. They crossed the hills by way of the old giant’s road that passes Thrasirshall, and marched down the other side, straight into a white mist. It was waiting for them there, a solid whiteness that even the wind couldn’t blow away. Fifty men marched into that devil’s trap, and only one came out.”
    â€œWhat was it?” Thorkil asked.
    â€œSorcery. Rune magic.” Mord shrugged. “Who knows? But three months later a ship came into the harbor at Tarva, a strange ship with dark sails and twenty oarsmen—tall white-haired men who spoke a fluid, unknown language. The old man, Grettir, led them—he was younger then, of course. Then Ragnar came out of the ship, and with him a woman, white as ice, cold as steel. To this day no one knows who she is, or what godforsaken agreement he made with them to save his life. But we soon found out what sort of a creature had come among us.”
    Jessa glanced at Thorkil. He was listening intently, his fingers working at the laces of his boots, knotting and unknotting, over and over.
    â€œThe first thing,” Mord went on, “was that the old Jarl died one night in a storm. He was hale enough when he went to bed, but in the night he gave a sudden scream, and when they got to him he was dead. There was a mark, they