CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE GUÐVARR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

GUDVARR

G uevarr reined his horse in alongside Jarl Sigrún, both of them sitting upon the crest of a hill. They stared at the Iron Wood spread below them, a dark ocean of green, swaying and stretching into the horizon.

Wonderful, the one place I hoped I would never see again.

"There," he heard Rotta the rat-god say, pointing south, into the distance, to where hills reared from the depths of the forest like sea creatures breaching waves. "Ulfrir's den."

Even better, I am going back into that place of nightmares to fight a giant wolf and his hordes of lunatic followers.

They had ridden hard, Lik-Rifa's host of gods, humans, Tainted and vaesen sweeping across the land. They had not retrodden the path of Sigrún's and Guevarr's journey into the Iron Wood, but instead had crossed the River Sl?gen further north, skirting the north-eastern boundaries of the forest to move across more open land until they were directly north of the hills that the rat said was Ulfrir's bolt-hole. To reach it they had less forest to travel through now, and the road was wider, more travelled upon.

Faster and easier passage, Ilska the Cruel had said, and it had been her who had chosen this route. To be fair, she had been right, and they had travelled much further in a shorter time, bringing them closer to their destination before they had to risk the dangers of the forest.

Not that I think faunir or Froa will be brave enough to attack us now. Guevarr shifted in his saddle and looked back over his shoulder, seeing the sprawling, dark stain upon the land that was Lik-Rifa's war-host. It moved like a huge shadow crossing the sun, creeping inexorably towards the treeline of the forest.

"Ilska, how long?" Lik-Rifa called out.

"Five days, perhaps less," Ilska said, eyes fixed upon the hills in the distance.

"Do you agree with her, aunt?" Guevarr asked Sigrún, keeping his voice low.

"Aye," Sigrún nodded. She leaned in her saddle and whispered. "Lik-Rifa may be the head of this war-host, but Ilska the Cruel runs it. She has a rare head upon her shoulders, and without her this campaign would be chaos."

Ilska spoke to a tennúr that sat upon the crest of Lik-Rifa's saddle and in a burst of wings the small creature was taking to the sky, letting out a high-pitched, squeaking cry; in moments a flock of the winged vaesen were swirling around it. They climbed higher into the sky, swirled around their heads and then they were flying hard for the forest, spreading wider, fanning out like the wake of a ship as they reached the treeline.

"I do not like those filthy little creatures," Guevarr muttered, absently wiping a drip of snot from the end of his nose. "They steal your teeth when you sleep."

"You see, she has a head for tactics, using the resources this war-host brings her without prejudice," Sigrún said, giving Guevarr a hard look. "Tennúr make for excellent scouts."

I still do not like them , he thought.

"Onwards, then," Lik-Rifa called out. Horns blared, and the war-host shuddered into movement, Sigrún and Guevarr clicking their tongues and guiding their horses on down the hill, towards the Iron Wood.

Hello old friend , Guevarr thought as he approached the dark, looming wall of trees. How I have missed you.

Guevarr unbuckled his saddle girth and slid the saddle from his horse's back, laid it across the branch of a tree, took off the saddle blanket, too, folded it and laid it down on top of the saddle, then checked his mount's hooves.

It was late and Guevarr was tired. They had marched for the second day from sunrise until late into the night, the forest around him an impenetrable darkness made denser and deeper by the myriad fires that burned throughout the camp. He set the last hoof down and stood, stretched his back, heard it click.

"Feed her," he said to a thrall and she nodded her head, a shaven-haired woman, one of many who had travelled with the war-host from Darl. Without the thralls to do the cooking, clearing, mending of kit and tending of horses and a hundred other tasks the war-host would have become unglued. Something else that his aunt said Ilska the Cruel had orchestrated.

He threaded his way through the camp with a rising sense of dread in his gut. The crushing, claustrophobic darkness, the exhaustion, the prospect of a giant wolf at the end of his journey, it was all overwhelming, his unease growing into a heightened state of agitation that set every muscle in his body trembling. As he moved around knots and clusters of warriors and vaesen that sat huddled around fresh-scraped fire pits, drengrs and Tainted, trolls and skraeling, he heard fractured glimpses of their conversations, sitting, eating, drinking, laughing, the murmur of their conversations rising and falling as he moved among them.

How are they all so calm? They made him feel like a coward.

He saw Drekr moving through the camp and paused to watch him. The big man was stopping at each fire to talk to those gathered there, to sit and drink with them a while. Tainted, dragon-cultists, drengrs , skraeling. All of them greeted him with smiles and laughter.

Is he loved, or feared? Whichever it is, he is respected. Why do people not look at me the way they do at Drekr?

He sighed and moved on.

In either direction the fires burned, fading to pinpricks in the darkness as far as he could see. The forest had forced them to stretch the bulk of the war-host along the road, only the frost-spiders, night-hags and tennúr able to filter deeper into the undergrowth of the Iron Wood. Not even the trolls could forge a way through the dense scrub that grew between the trees. Here and there he saw the deeper shadows of guards standing among the trees, not that they probably needed them, with frost-spiders in the boughs and night-hags moving about the war-host's fringes like mist.

He saw Sigrún's small camp, a fire pit with thirty or so drengrs around it, an opened barrel of ale and an iron pot hanging over the fire. He helped himself to a bowlful of stew from the pot and a hornful of ale from the barrel, then looked for his aunt. She was sitting a little apart from her drengrs , sipping at a cup of ale and he made his way to her, sat down with a sigh.

"The horses are tended to," he said, "fed and watered."

"Good lad," Sigrún said. He looked at her, saw that she was staring into the crow-dark, her face shifting planes of shadow and light in the soft-glow from the fire pit. The scar on her face, inflicted by Orka, looked like some deep dark valley upon a carved map.

"Are you all right, aunt?" he asked her.

"Just thinking," she said quietly. "A year ago, we were worrying about the borders of Fellur village, and of the possible fight between Helka and St?rr." She snorted a laugh. "To think I was worried about that. And now we are in the middle of a war between gods."

"I know," Guevarr squeaked, his voice coming out higher than he had intended.

She sipped at her cup and looked at him. "I know you are scared, but it is all right to be scared."

He blinked at her, swallowed.

"We all feel fear, Guevarr," Sigrún said to him. "I know I do."

"Huh," he snorted. "Not you. You are the bravest person I know, have ever met. You always know what to do, always keep your head, even when you are fighting. Look at you when the faunir attacked. You saved Krúsa, you did not flee, you stood and fought to protect your drengrs ." He shook his head. "You are brave. A hero worthy of a skáld-song to me."

Sigrún's face cracked in a smile.

"In that glade, as the faunir attacked us, I was terrified," she said. "I nearly pissed my breeches." She looked him in the eye, firelight reflecting liquid gold. "We all feel fear, it is what you do with it that counts. I was scared of the faunir, scared of dying, but I know in here," she put a finger to her temple, "and here", moved it to her heart, "that if I gave in to that fear and fled, then I would lose everything. All that I have spent my life working for, fighting for. I would not stay a jarl long with that reputation. I would lose Fellur village, my drengrs , my respect. Any fair-fame I have earned would be snuffed out in a moment. I fear that more than I fear death."

Guevarr nodded, thinking that through.

"Courage is just a reaction to fear. You cannot show courage without first feeling fear."

"I understand that," Guevarr said. "But cowardice is also a reaction to fear. It is the not running away part that I still struggle with."

Sigrún laughed at that. "So do I," she smiled. "But remember this: you have come through much. Fought your way out of the Grimholt, fought through Jaromir's attack on Skalk and the Galdur tower, slew one of the Bloodsworn, journeyed into the frozen north to seek out Lik-Rifa's halls, negotiated with her, planned the downfall of Queen Helka and her brood, fought Hakon and Estrid at Darl. Survived the Froa-spirits and faunir of the Iron Wood." She looked into the darkness of the forest, her smile growing broader, and she winked at him. "So far."

"Ha, so far," Guevarr said, unable to stifle a smile of his own. "To be honest, all of that was just trying to stay alive."

"Well, that is no surprise. This is Vigrie, after all," she said. "The point is, you have stayed alive, you have come through it all. And look at you now, you have risen high in the ranks of a god."

Guevarr thought about that, nodded.

This is true.

"My advice to you," his aunt continued. "Eat well tonight, sleep well, and we shall face whatever the morrow brings with …"

She looked at him and he smiled.

"… courage," he finished for her.

Guevarr woke to darkness. He lay there a moment, eyes open, slowly watching the shifting of shadows above him, the grey of dawn seeping into the world, leaching the black away. Branches creaked overhead, leaves rustled, and with a groan he sat up. He was stiff, had rolled onto the knuckle of a root during the night. It felt like someone's fist was grinding into his back and he cast his wool blanket back, reached about him for his weapons belt, felt soft, damp leaves and earth, then found it. Stood up and buckled it about his waist, cinching it tight, felt the pain of a full bladder.

The camp still slept and he trod quietly, walking towards the treeline, looking for somewhere to empty his bladder. He saw a group of skraeling stirring, Krúsa there, kneeling and blowing on a fire, sparks flaring.

A sound up above and he looked up at the gloom of the forest, saw the fractured glow of dawn through the canopy, heard a whirring, and saw a darker shape flitting through the shadows. A tennúr, he realised, flying down through the canopy.

Is that Munni? he thought, as the vaesen swept over his head.

"WARE," the vaesen shrieked, "WARE, THEY ARE COMING."

Guevarr turned and ran stumbling back towards Sigrún and her drengrs .