CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR BIÓRR

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

BIóRR

B iórr stepped onto a raft and pushed off from the riverbank with his spear, others dipping rough-shaped oars into the water and beginning to row. The current dragged them downriver, but it was not long before they were at the other side, the raft sliding into a silted bank and Rotta was jumping onto soft earth and striding up the riverbank.

They had passed through deep forest, shadowing the curve of the river around the great hill of Wolfdales and, as Biórr leaped from the raft onto the riverbank, he heard screams, faint on the wind. The sun was a red line above the forest now, day leaking from the world, and shadows stretched and merged all about him.

Rotta was standing at the foot of a steep slope, the others already gathered about him. A dozen warriors, all with Rotta's rat-blood in their veins.

"Well, no point just staring at it," Rotta said as he looked up at the slope. "We've got to get up there, so we might as well be doing it as thinking about it." With that he set off, scrambling through thick grass.

Biórr looked up at the slope, saw that it climbed steadily for a while, then steepened again, became almost a sheer cliff. He rolled his shoulders, settling his shield on his back and set off after Rotta.

Darkness fell about them swiftly, but there were few clouds and the winter's moon was bright, so Biórr could see his way well enough. By the time he reached the point where the slope steepened again, he was breathing hard, and he paused for a moment.

Rotta was already scaling the cliff, a darker shadow in the encroaching night zigzagging his way up the almost sheer wall as he found seams in the rock. Biórr bent and untied the knots on his turn-shoes, took them off, and his n?lbinding socks, too, and stuffed the shoes and socks into his belt. He would need bare feet for this. He focused on the rat in his blood.

Help me, old friend, to find the safe way, to be nimble and deft, to cling, to climb.

He felt a wash of strength flood through him, felt the bones and nails of toes and fingers lengthen and harden. He started climbing the rock face, finding variations in the surface that would have been invisible without his god-blood, clinging to them with his long fingers and deft toes, slowly winding his way up the cliff. He paused at one point, looked back down and saw the shadowed forms of those other rat-blood infused warriors with him, a breadcrumb trail winding up the rock face. Glancing up, he could see the dark line of the cliff-top, a silver glow of moonlight shimmering above it. He climbed on, the cold wind swirling, tugging at his braided hair and the hem of his tunic beneath his brynja . His sword hilt snared in a knotted clump of rock and dragged him back, one hand slipping free. He hung suspended a long, timeless moment, and then a hand was reaching down to him, long, strong fingers wrapping around his wrist and hauling him up.

"Would be a shame to fall when you're almost at the top," Rotta said to him with a smile.

Biórr moved to take his socks and shoes from his belt.

"Wait for that," Rotta said, and Biórr nodded, looking around while they waited for the others to reach them. The wind blew harder and colder up here, hissing, ebbing and flowing in his ears like the lapping roar of the sea. He was standing upon the gently slopping crown of a hill, the dark ocean of the Iron Wood spread around them. As he looked, he saw pinprick fires flicker into life along both edges of the riverbank, realised that it was Lik-Rifa' s war-host making camp.

Well, we are not beaten, then. Although we have not won, either, or Lik-Rifa would be inside this dark hole of a wolf-den already.

Skadi's slim face appeared over the edge of the cliff, and he scrambled up to join them, the last of Rotta's hand-picked rat-blood crew.

"Well, as much as the view is wonderful, we should be moving on," Rotta said, and he led them up the gentle slope of the hill. The grass was stiff and damp beneath Biórr's feet and he saw the peak of a large tree ahead, Rotta leading them around it in a wide circle, until they had moved from one side of it to the other. Rotta was crouched now, eyes bright in the moonlight, nose twitching as he chose his path with care. Biórr and all those behind him emulated Rotta, moving swiftly, then crouching still and silent for long moments, the grass sighing about them.

Another swift scuttle through the grass and Rotta stopped in the shadows of a ruined, vine-wrapped tower. Crawled around it, stopping at what Biórr saw must have been an old entrance. It was piled with fallen rubble now, clogged with earth and grass growing in thick tufts. A dark shadow marked a ragged seam no wider than a man's open hand. Rotta unbuckled his weapons belt and slithered out of his brynja and handed them to Biórr.

"Pass them through to me in a moment," he said, and he stuck his nose into the seam, sniffing and snuffling, his long-clawed rat-hands probing the edges. He pressed his body into the seam, stretching, elongating, his new form squashing through the impossibly narrow gap. Then he was gone.

Biórr shrugged off his shield, unbuckled his weapons belt, wrapping it around his sword and seax, wriggled out of his brynja . Began to feed Rotta's kit and his own through the gap and saw Rotta's long-fingered hand reach out from the darkness for them.

"Come on," Rotta hissed from the darkness once Biórr had passed everything through.

Biórr closed his eyes and felt the rat in his blood. Gave it full sway, felt it surge and run and scamper through his veins, felt the tingling power, the fear and savagery, inextricably bound, and moved, sliding into the ragged slash of darkness that separated the rubble and grass, felt his flesh squeezing into the gap, felt his bones soften and compress, ribs bending like saplings, a pressure building within him, every part of him becoming more pliable. The world pressing in upon him, a claustrophobic darkness squeezing him, and with a gasp he was through, falling into blackness, his bones springing back into place, the rat in his blood exultant.

We are safe in the dark , the rat whispered to him.

Biórr blinked, the rat in him filtering and sifting the darkness until he could see outlines, the black shifting to grey. Rotta's sharp-lined face appearing. He was holding out Biórr's kit and he took it, looked around and saw he was in a small space, not quite large enough to stand straight, just wide enough for Rotta's crew to squeeze into. He dressed as the others crammed into the space, putting his woollen socks and turn shoes back on, his brynja and weapons belt.

"You all may be wondering why you are here," Rotta said to them, once the last warrior had made it into this tight space.

Some grunts and heyas.

"Ulfrir's lair has a number of entrances, but all of them are sealed with some Seier-rune or other," Rotta said. He crouched down to the rotted frame of a huge trapdoor, Biórr seeing the hint of steps in the shadows beneath it, and rapped his knuckles on what should have been open space. A crackle and flare of blue light rippled out from his knuckles, like waves from a stone cast into a pool. "You see, this entrance is barred by Seier."

"So why are we trying to sneak in, if every way is barred?" Skadi asked.

"Ulfrir is very big on pack ," Rotta said. "On family. Orna his wife and their children together spent much time with him here, perhaps that is why he has returned here," he mused. "Anyway, all of Ulfrir's pack, all of his family knew the words of power that would give them access to his home." He was silent, eyes looking elsewhere.

"So how does that help us get in?" Skadi asked him.

Rotta's eyes snapped back into focus, and he smiled.

"I flayed the skin from one of his daughters while she was still alive," he said. "You would be surprised at what comes out of a person's mouth when they are subjected to such … extremes."

He placed his splayed fingers upon the Seier-barrier, crackles of blue light around each of his fingertips.

" Turn úlfsins, opinn fyrir úlfaflokkinn, " Rotta whispered, and the Seier-barrier flared and melted away. Rotta grinned at them and took a few steps down the stairwell beneath the trapdoor.

"Skalk, Estrid?" Rotta hissed.

A silence, then a voice whispered back.

"Here."