They felt the setting of the sun on their skin. The heat went out of the air, and around them everything dampened. Sounds died on beds of pine needles as the horizon crept closer and closer. Overhead, thick clouds drifted slowly across a darkening sky.
“Do we ride for the edge?” Goran asked.
“Hm,” Ulfar said. “Yes. We need to get out of here before dark, I think.”
Soon enough, the party was making reasonable time through the woods. The shadows grew longer around them as the tree growth thinned; they broke out of the woods around Uppsala just as the sun dipped below the edge of the world.
“There,” Ulfar said, pointing to a pass between two small hills. “Through there, and we’re on the road.”
“Might be good to stay on this side of that hill, then, just while we wait for daylight,” Goran said.
Ulfar looked back toward the woods. Somewhere in the back of his head something crackled. His tongue tasted like fresh metal, and he could feel the sword in his gut.
For a fraction of the blink of an eye he knew everything again—but then it was almost all gone. The only thing that remained was a sense of danger.
“I don’t know what I like worst, the forest or the road,” Ulfar muttered. “Doesn’t feel right.”
Arnar dismounted and led his horse toward a thick tree trunk. “Here,” he said. “As good as any.” He pulled out a brush from his pack and started methodically brushing the horse down.
Inga’s mare followed, and Inga whimpered as she clambered off. “Can’t understand why anyone would choose this over sailing,” she said. “I hurt everywhere.”
“Just wait,” Goran said, smiling as he pulled the reins to guide his horse to Arnar’s side. “Tomorrow you’ll be crying until well past midday.”
Inga raised an eyebrow but didn’t answer. Instead she turned to Arnar. The bearded man had produced a hand-ax from somewhere within his packs and was busy whittling branches from a fallen tree behind the thick trunk. He stopped long enough to hand Inga a knife with a big blade.
Ulfar watched as they fell companionably into work together. He looked at Goran, who grinned. The guard had thrown down his bedroll and nearly finished clearing the space for a small fire.
At Inga’s feet, innocent-looking sticks were piling up. She took what Arnar passed her, made three or four nicks in the middle of the wood, then laid the stick down carefully.
“What are these for?” Ulfar couldn’t help himself.
Inga looked at Arnar, then placed a stick at Ulfar’s feet. “Go on,” she said. Ulfar stepped on the stick—and it broke with a snap. “We’ll place them around the camp when darkness comes,” Inga said. “Any night guests might avoid them—but they might also give us a little bit of a warning.”
Ulfar smiled his approval, then went to see to the fire.
The stars twinkled overhead. Goran gnawed on a strip of half-burned, half-raw horsemeat, licking the blood off his lips.
“So where are we going after we find your friend?” Arnar grunted, half-hidden in shadow.
Ulfar leaned back. His stomach was full, and now he just wanted to fall asleep and wake up three years ago, when everything had been so much simpler. “North, then west,” he said. “We’re going to find another man and avenge my cousin.”
“Not a lot of money in revenge,” Arnar said.
“I have a suspicion that by the time I get to this particular worm, he’ll be lying on a pile of gold,” Ulfar said.
“Who is he?” Goran said.
“Inga . . . ?”
“His name is Valgard,” Inga whispered. Even here, she still glanced furtively into the darkness before continuing, “He’s a . . . healer. Or was. He’s . . . He used to live in my town—Stenvik—only we got turned over by King Olav, and all of a sudden we were thralls in our own homes. All except Valgard, because he’d squirreled away books and a cross so the king thought he was one of them. You know, the Mumblers.”
“We know the Mumblers,” Arnar said. “That’s one of the reasons I can’t be doing with the Christ thing. All the mumbling.”
“He . . . went over to their side,” Inga continued. “And how. He was suddenly