Single-handed, however, it would be impossible. And anyway the witches had called down enough rocks to make it impassable even with a full crew. So they walked.
The woman went in front of Authun, where he could see her. Her hair hung loose, as the wimple the priests had made her wear was now in the North Sea. In her tatty fifth-hand nun’s habit and the overlong cloak that had once belonged to Hella she looked like a beggar. The king did too, in his salt-stained cloak and sea furs. Authun carried the Moonsword tied on his back, hidden away. The hills, he knew, were full of trolls and bandits, and he didn’t want to go advertising his wealth.
They faced no supernatural opponents on their journey from the sea but on the second day saw three riders approaching in the distance. The girl looked for cover, which Authun thought a very reasonable course of action — for a woman. The king himself simply stood where he was. The men dismounted and approached, which Authun took as a sure signal of violent intent.
When taking on a warrior such as Authun the Wolf the best plan is to stalk him and cut him down in his sleep. Taunting him from afar and then approaching with ‘What have we here?’ is ill-advised. Still Authun, who was in a curiously melancholy mood, would have let the three pass had the first not attempted to shake him by the shoulder. Authun grasped the man’s hand so he couldn’t let go of his intended victim, took a pace back with his left foot to expose the arm and, in one movement, drew the Moonsword from his back and cut the limb in two. Before the bandit could realise what had happened, Authun struck him again, this time hard to the leg. Authun had no intention of killing him; already he was thinking how he might use him. His leg damaged, the man had sought to steady himself but had instinctively put his weight onto the missing hand at Authun’s collar. He fell forward at the king’s feet, bleeding heavily. The remaining two robbers stared in disbelief at the Moonsword. They knew now exactly who they were facing — they had heard so many stories of Authun the Wolf it was almost as if they knew him personally. One thing was clear in their minds. Fighting him was certain death.
They tried to flee, but Authun, even at thirty-five, was too fast for them. The king had noticed as soon as the men appeared that both were wearing costly byrnies. Thus encumbered, they died before they had run twenty paces.
He cleaned his sword on the fallen men’s clothes and returned to Saitada and the bleeding bandit. Working quickly, he took out a length of walrus cord from his pouch and tied off the man’s arm to stop the bleeding. The bandit was unconscious, which suited Authun. Saitada looked at the two bodies and then at the king. He found himself explaining.
‘If I’d let them go they would have come back when we were sleeping, perhaps in numbers,’ he said, though he knew she couldn’t understand. ‘They’re scavengers. They never paid for those horses. See the byrnies? They’re taken from the bodies of brave fools who came to steal the witches’ treasure, treasure that is only there to draw fools on to death. They use them in their magic then they throw them from the rock.’
The rock. In the distance they could see it, already huge three days’ march away. It was their destination: the Troll Wall, as tall as a thousand men standing on each other’s shoulders. It was a monstrous overhanging cliff, like something from a dream, an obstacle which blocks all further progress, something symbolic, with a resonance far beyond its daunting physical mass. He looked up at it. It was impossible, he thought, to imagine climbing it, though he had done so before. It was the only way into the witches’ caves that the sisters were willing to reveal to outsiders. The back of the mountain was even more impassable, swathed in permanent ice and perilous loose boulders, and defended by hill tribes under the witches’ thrall.
So they would have to climb — almost to the top of the Wall and then into it, to the caves. Authun knew, though, that the Wall would not be the greatest impediment to seeing the witch queen. That would be the witches themselves.
4
Between the hour of the dog
And the hour of the wolf
Between waking and sleeping
Between the light and the dark
Is the doorway of shadows
Step on, traveller,
Do not tarry on that grim threshold.
Authun read the runes someone had carved into a boulder. He was below the dizzying overhang of the Troll Wall, a cliff so high that the top was invisible in clouds. Human bones and rotting clothing lay about him but it was the inscription that made him shiver. Mundane perils of bandits and falling rocks were bad enough without thinking of what other horrors waited in the dark.
The Wall would take even the fittest warrior two weeks to climb, even if he found one of the shifting routes around the overhang at the first attempt. But no one was that lucky. It was impossible to reach the caves in one go. Rock slides moved old paths, opened new ones and closed others in a blink. You could climb almost to within touching distance of the top and then have to turn, your way impassable, another route needed. The paths were becoming fewer too, as if the mountain begrudged them and sought to shrug them off. How long would it be before there were none? Would the witches eventually be marooned and left to rot in their caves? Or were there other, hidden entrances that the sisters and their servants used?
The climb, though, wasn’t the biggest problem. The problem was, as the runes warned, sleep. For that tiny fall between waking and unconsciousness was where the witches were. People came to steal their treasure and died; people came to seek their advice and died. Very few, armed with charms and acceptable tribute, ever came back alive, and of those no one was ever stupid enough to seek a second audience. No one but Authun and his ancestors, who by divine right, it was said, could hold regular counsel with the witches. Even to the wolf king though, the prospect was daunting. This was his second visit, and he hoped he would never have to make a third.
They would have to wait for a guide, he knew, dangerous as that might be. Authun saw no point in exhausting himself and the woman by attempting the climb unaided. At the base there was the risk of bandits, but better that than the children should fall to their deaths. He made a fire, drank water from a skin, fed bread and salted fish to Saitada and made sure the bandit was just about alive.
Then he lay down and pretended to sleep for a bit to see what the woman would do. She fed her children and settled down to sleep herself. She was, as he guessed, no idiot. She wasn’t going to kill her only protector in a strange and hostile wilderness or even run away from him. The bandit was too badly injured to attempt anything. Authun wanted to take the precaution of breaking his remaining arm but feared that the shock might kill him. So instead he just tied him with walrus cord to a tree. Then he prepared for sleep properly and waited for the witch to come.
If it was the witch queen, all well and good. If it was one of the stranger sisters, well… Authun was a warrior so he concentrated on what he would do if the worst came to the worst, not what would become of him. He would try to give her the bandit, then the woman, after that himself. With luck the witch queen would appear in time to save the children.
But sleep wouldn’t come for him. The night was fine and temperate, and he was warm in his cloak, but little irritations seemed to keep him awake: a cold nose, a pebble in the small of the back, the smell of the moss on the rock, the taste of the rock even. Then he realised he was not awake but neither was he dreaming. Some of his senses seemed heightened — he could taste the cold on the air like iron, smell the difference between the flowers and the grasses; he could smell the tar and the dirt of a puddle. It was as if his hearing was slightly muted, his vision reattuned so that in the bright moon glare he could see new colours — deep metalled blues, sparkling dark greens and seams of gold on the side of the rock. He was where the witches were, he knew, in that place between waking and sleeping. He went to the tree and cut loose the bandit in preparation for what was to come.
Cries in the dark like a baby wailing. Authun wanted to prepare the woman for the arrival of the witch but
