There was something there, sure enough. Had the old fraud really seen them with his mystic vision? Perhaps he had risen early to look, for they were plain enough, a straggle across the snow. First, men on skis. Men! They fell over every hundred paces, worse than boys, as if they were babies. And behind those, clear enough to Piruusi's long-sighted eyes, a herd of them, moving like oxen, floundering along, kicking up snow with every step. They dragged a makeshift sled or travois with them.
Piruusi had never paid a Finn-tax, but those of his cousins who lived nearer the shore did so. It was worth it not to have their summer fisheries and fowling-trips cut short by the murderous seamen. Time, Piruusi thought, for someone to pay a Norse-tax in return. He skimmed back to the cluster of tents, men and women inside the flaps cooking over their hot fires of dried reindeer dung, called the menfolk to their skis and bows.
Shef's party regained their strength as they reached the first clump of trees, mere dwarf birch, but desperately welcome. Shef called the skiers back to join the marchers, anxious that no-one should be lost sight of.
“We'll get into the trees, find shelter,” he called. “Then we can have a fire and cook. At least we'll be off the moor.”
As if in answer, an arrow from behind a tree struck Wiferth, struggling with his skis, in the base of the skull. He fell instantly, dead as a herring before he struck ground. Moments later the air was full of the zip of arrows, the trees full of figures flitting from one trunk to another, never showing for more than an instant, calling encouragement to each other in some unknown language.
Many of Shef's party were veterans. They crouched immediately, shook out into a rough circle, moved behind what cover there was. But the arrows came from all sides. Not shot with much force—Shef saw Ceolwulf grimace and pull an arrow from the brawn of his thigh, seemingly with little effort—but deadly to throat or eye. The shooters were quite close in.
“Fritha,” Shef called, “use your crossbow. The rest of you with bows, shoot if you're sure, not otherwise. If you don't have a bow, lie down.”
The crossbow clicked as Fritha cocked it. Cuthred, using his initiative, stepped over to behind Fritha, batted an arrow away with his shield, stood over him to guard his back. Fritha sighted on a tree-trunk with a Finn behind it, waited for the man to bob out for his shot. As the Finn emerged, Fritha squeezed the trigger.
Hit in the center of the chest at thirty yards, the Finn flew backwards, the bolt buried up to its feathers. Piruusi, ten yards away, looked over in surprise. The Norse were not bowmen! Nor had he seen a bow. He had no martial tradition, no urge for glory. He fought like a wolf, like a predator. If the prey offered resistance, withdraw, wait. The Finns drew back, still shouting and releasing arrows.
“Well, that seemed easy enough,” muttered Shef, rising to his feet.
“Wait till we try and move,” answered Cuthred.
A few hours later, with still time left before the dark came down, the position was clear enough. Shef's party had lost two dead—they now had three corpses to drag—and half a dozen with minor arrow wounds. Crossbows or the threat of them kept the Finns at a distance, but Shef believed only a couple of the dozen bolts shot had taken effect. They had not top many left, and the Finns were growing adept at creeping up, shooting, and skimming away in the trees. They were deep in the wood now, and the shelter they had looked forward to so eagerly was proving a menace. On the open moor they had left, their longer-range weapons would have been decisive. It was a bad prospect for the night. Time to fell trees, make a barricade. At least they could have their promised fire.
As the first axeman struck at a birch tree, Shef noticed a bundle wedged in its branches. He stared up. A long bundle. An ominous long bundle.
He pointed it out to Thorvin, both men crouching for fear of the flying arrow. “What is that?”
Thorvin pulled his beard. “I have heard that up here, where the ground is often frozen too hard to bury their dead, they place them in trees instead.”
“We are in the Finns' churchyard?”
“Hardly a church. But a burial place, yes.”
Shef waved the axeman on, looked round for other tree-bundles. “Get a fire lit,” he called. “A big one. Maybe they will pay a ransom for their dead.”
Piruusi, watching, scowled again. The fire the Norse-folk had lit silhouetted them, would make them good targets in the night. But that was his own grandmother they had cut from her rest! What might they do? Not burn her? A burnt ghost lost its body in the other world, would come back to haunt its careless relatives. His grandmother had been trouble enough while she was alive.
Time, Piruusi thought, for trickery. He skied away from the reindeer sleigh they had brought up to carry off their dead, broke off a branch with leaves still on it, waved it in token of parley, alert all the time for any sign of one of the strange weapons being brought to bear on him.
Shef saw the man in the skin coat and trousers waving a bough, noting with envy even at that moment the beautifully supple leather—Piruusi's wives had spent many a day chewing the skin to that grade of softness. He saw his alert readiness to dodge, pushed aside Fritha's crossbow, broke off a bough himself and walked forward a little way.
The Finn stopped maybe ten yards off. As Shef wondered what language he might speak, the Finn solved matters for him by calling out in fair if fractured Norse.
“You,” he shouted. “Why fire? Why cut down trees, take down old people? You burn them? They do you no harm.”
“Why you shoot arrows at us?” retorted Shef in the same style. “We do you no harm. You kill my friends.”
“You kill my friends,” replied the Finn. Shef noted a flicker of motion out of the corner of one eye, something moving from tree to tree to his left. And to his right. The Finn was calling out again, trying to fix his attention—while the others came in on him from either side. He was trying to take a prisoner, not make a parley. It might be a good idea if they did try. If Shef could embroil two or three of them Cuthred would charge to his rescue. And that might frighten them enough to ensure free passage. Of course he, Shef, might not survive it.
There was something else moving in the forest. Not to either side, but behind the parleying Finn. He had left his sleigh and the two reindeer that pulled it behind him. The animals were standing quietly trying to grub lichen of some kind off the ground. But there was something definitely there behind them.
With incredulity Shef saw the towering bulk of Echegorgun step out from behind a dwarf birch tree. He could not have been behind the tree. The tree's bole was at most a foot thick, barely thicker than one of Echegorgun's arms. Yet there he was in plain sight, looking at Shef, evidently meaning to be seen. A moment before he had not been there. In any case Shef pondered, baffled, they had just spent days and weeks crossing an open moor where you could see every bird and blade of grass. How could Echegorgun have tracked them? Even the reindeer did not seem to have noticed him. They ate on, unalarmed.
The Finn had noticed Shef's fixed stare. “Ho, ho,” he hooted. “That old game. ‘See behind you, Piruusi, something there.’ Then I look, your men shoot, shoot.”
Echegorgun stepped carefully up to one of the grazing reindeer, took its head in his massive hands, turned it with a kind of delicacy. The reindeer's legs crumpled immediately, it fell forward, held up for an instant by Echegorgun. He moved to the other, still unmoving, snapped its neck with the same care and lack of haste.
And then he had gone, faded into the birch-shade as if he had never been, leaving only two dead animals to mark his passing.
Piruusi realized suddenly that Shef was ignoring him, whipped round like an adder. Saw his dead beasts unmoving on the ground. His eyes widened, his jaw dropped, he turned back to Shef with fear and disbelief on his face.
Shef turned and looked deliberately at the Finns creeping up from each side, yelled back to Fritha and his mates to mark them. Pointed warningly at the crossbows coming up. Then walked over to where Piruusi now stood by his dead reindeer.
“How you do that?” asked Piruusi. Could Pehto have been right, old fraud or no? Was there some kind of power in this odd man with the one eye and the old spear?
