The Dark Horse (14 page)

20

Mouse felt Sigurd put his head on her shoulder and guessed he might have fallen asleep.

The horse kept walking, and as the night grew deeper Mouse let herself into its mind. The horse obeyed and walked on up into the hills.

She lost track of time, but there was the faintest glow in the sky ahead of them. Dawn was not far away.

Without warning the horse stopped.

Mouse was surprised when Sigurd spoke.

“What is it, Mouse?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered back, then, “Wait. I think there’s someone there. . . .”

Indeed there was. A shadow stepped out in front of them.

“Hold there!” said the shadow. “We have you outnumbered. Get down from the beast. . . .”

“I recognize that voice,” said Sigurd. “Thorbjorn! Is that you?”

“Sigurd? Is that Mouse with you?”

They got down from the horse, and the three found one another in the darkness.

Despite everything, they laughed.

“Are you alone, Sigurd?” Thorbjorn asked.

“Yes, we . . .”

“It’s all right, Sigurd. We all ran. There is no shame.”

Sigurd shook his head in the dark. “So who else is here?”

“No one,” said Thorbjorn quietly.

“So you had us outnumbered all by yourself?” asked Sigurd.

They laughed again.

“How did you get here so quickly? We’ve been traveling all night on the horse.”

“Maybe so, but perhaps not as straight a path as I have taken—I climbed right up the cliff from the fields behind the village. Two hours’ climb, maybe, and then I found myself here. I was too tired to go on, so I sat down to wait for the dawn, to see if I could find anyone else. . . . Then you came along. That’s not Skinfax, is it?”

“No,” said Sigurd, “I . . . we took it from one of the Dark Horse.”

“Sigurd, you are indeed a brave warrior. I don’t think we managed to put a stop to many of them.”

“No,” said Sigurd. It was his turn to be subdued. “What are we going to do?”

“Lawspeaker, I . . . ,” Thorbjorn began, but he did not know what to say. Mouse spoke.

“We must find a place to sleep. I know a place.”

“What?” said Sigurd. “How do you know a place?”

“I know,” she said simply. “This is where I was born to you.”

21

How we came to be there I could never understand, but it was all part of the path that fate had prepared for us. Much is clear now that was not then, if you understand that our lives are laid out for us and we merely follow the journey.

So we were back at the caves where we had found Mouse living with the wolves. That first night Mouse, Thorbjorn, and I crawled nervously inside the nearest one and got an hour or two’s sleep while we waited for daylight.

“How do we know there aren’t any wolves still here?” I had asked Mouse as she walked us calmly to the cave mouth.

“There aren’t,” she said. “They’ve all gone.”

Something in her voice told me that what she was saying was true, could not be otherwise.

“Is this yours?” I asked Mouse.

“My what?” she answered.

“Your cave. Where you lived.”

She shook her head.

“You don’t understand,” was all she said.

So we slept in a cave.

22

As daylight came and lit up the entrance of the cave Thorbjorn stirred. He got up and went to scout around outside. He was back very quickly.

“Sigurd! Mouse! Wake up! People coming.”

They crept to the cave mouth, only to see Hemm, with his son Egil, leading a small group of the Storn up the slope toward them.

Sigurd stepped out to meet them.

“Hail!” he called from the top of the slope in front of the string of caves.

They embraced gladly for a few minutes but then grew quiet. They looked at one another.

Sigurd asked a question, though he was afraid of the answer.

“Have you seen Freya? Any of you?”

They all shook their heads.

“I told her to take Skinfax,” he said.

But they looked back at him blankly.

“That’s not necessarily bad,” said Thorbjorn, putting a hand on his shoulder. “She could have got far away.”

Sigurd nodded. It wouldn’t do to show weakness. No doubt they each had lost someone when the Dark Horse attacked. It was up to him to lead the way.

But lead where? And to what end?

As the day wore on they took stock of their situation. They had a few swords and two spears. Otherwise, they had no food, nor water, nor any clothes apart from what they were standing in.

“All is lost!” wailed someone.

And Sigurd could not bring himself to disagree.

But then Mouse began to take over.

“I can help,” she said. “For a start, I know where some others are hiding.”

Sigurd turned to her. In spite of what he knew about her, he was surprised.

She held up a hand.

“There is a snake nearby. In the long grass by the cave mouth. It can smell humans. Upwind. That way.”

And she pointed.

“How do we know they’re not Dark Horse?”

“We don’t, unless we go and look. Anyway, my guess is they’ll all be in the village by now. . . .”

Sigurd could work again.

“Very well. Thorbjorn, Hemm, come with me. The rest of you, I want you to find a water supply and anything we can eat. And if Mouse has any suggestions, follow her as you would me. . . .”

They left, Sigurd clutching Fire-fresh, Hemm and Thorbjorn with a sword and a spear between them.

23

It felt strange to be up on that bit of hillside again. It had been the best part of five years since we had found Mouse, and yet I recognized much of the landscape around us.

As Hemm and Thorbjorn and I went looking for more survivors of the attack, I remember worrying about the effect that being up on the hill might have on her. So far she seemed well, but she was so sensitive, I reasoned, that anything might happen.

It made me think of happier times, after Mouse had settled in with the Storn, before the famine had started—I was still a boy, a child, and Mouse was my little sister. We didn’t have much work to do, and when it was done, we could spend the rest of the day wandering along the shore, swimming in the bay, or practicing hunting in the south woods.

But even then, I remember one time as we trailed each other through the woods she suddenly froze. As usual Mouse had found my hiding spot with great swiftness. She only had to ask the animals around her, and their feelings would give me away.

Laughing, I grabbed her and she squealed.

“Cheat!” I cried. “Try finding me yourself one day!”

And she was laughing but suddenly stopped. The look on her face made me let go of her straightaway.

“What is it?” I asked. I knew she was sensing something.

“Wolves,” she said.

I must have looked scared, for she said, “No, not now. There were wolves here, but one died. Right here.”

I don’t know how she knew, but it had obviously upset her greatly. I took her home.

That’s what I mean—she could sense something like that, and it could have a strong effect on her.

So I worried about what the caves might do to her. I was right to worry, as it turned out.

24

Sigurd and the others returned. They had found no one, but when they got back to the camp, more of the Storn were already there.

“They came around the top of the hill,” Mouse explained, “as you were going to look for them along the side.”

There were about sixteen of them now. The new arrivals included Hemm and Detlef, the Song-giver’s son, who had seen his father killed in the attack.

Sigurd studied them all. They were quiet and looked at him hopefully, as if he was going to save them from all this mess.

“And there’s something you must see,” said Hemm. “Show him, Detlef.”

Sigurd followed as the Song-maker’s son took him back up onto the hills above the caves. It was a short but steep climb. They lay on a high spit of cliff, panting until their breath returned.

“Look,” Detlef said, and pointed. Down, way down.

Incredibly, there was the village of the Storn, way below them. There was a sight line from high up on the cliff all the way down to the village. Even from this great height Sigurd could see individual buildings. The great broch was clearly visible, as was a weak, snaking column of smoke that rose out of what had been its roof. Other buildings were smoldering, too. The Dark Horse had destroyed the place.

“How are your eyes?” Sigurd asked Detlef.

“Yes, I see them, too,” he said, understanding what Sigurd was asking.

There were figures walking around the village, and again, even at this distance, you could tell they were Dark Horse by their height and black garb.

“What are we going to do?” asked Detlef.

Sigurd wanted to tell the truth. Detlef was his own age, yet Sigurd already felt so much older. He could not let Detlef down.

“We’ll survive,” he said, but he felt he was lying. “Let’s go down.”

As Sigurd told the others what they had seen, that the Dark Horse, or at least some of them, were still in the village, the mood amongst them all grew blacker.

“We have water,” said Mouse. “There’s a stream a short way from here.”

“And we have these,” said one of the women, holding up a brace of hares. “We caught them,” she explained needlessly.

Sigurd nodded.

“Good, now all we need is fire. We might just get some of this bracken to catch, but we’re going to have to kindle it the old way. Who wants to try?”

Hemm volunteered. He got his small son Egil to help. It had been a long time since Hemm had lit a fire without flint and steel. They worked methodically, using the gut of one of the hares to make a string. They wound this once round a stick and then tied the ends to another stick. This made a bowstring, and when they ran it back and forth, the stick around which the gut was tied spun in a small hole in a third, flat piece of wood.

Eventually a little smoke began to drift from the hole, caused by the furious spinning of the bow stick.

“Try it,” said Hemm, and Egil dropped a few crushed bits of dried bracken into the hole. He blew gently and a glow appeared. He repeated the process, and a small flame licked up the side of the bow stick.

“Quick!”

It was alight.

“Right,” said Sigurd, “get the fire into the cave! We can’t take the risk of being seen, even if we do need to eat.”

Night was falling, the end of their first full day on the hill. They ate the hares, quietly and without joy. It had been a long time since anyone had asked Sigurd what they were going to do. He guessed that was because they knew he had no idea. There was only one person who didn’t seem to feel the weight of sadness upon her.

Mouse.