“We must find the Isbrún Bridge and move on, then,” Agnar repeated, turning and looking back, to the south. Elvar followed his gaze but could see nothing but blue skies and in the distance the white glare of sun on snow. She squinted. Was that something, on the edge of her vision? A smudge of movement on the horizon?
They had travelled north with surprisingly little opposition from vaesen, considering that the vaesen prowled the plains north of the Boneback Mountains with far more boldness than they trod the lands to the south. Fewer humankind lived on this side of the mountains, and those who did dwelled in isolated, stockaded steadings, rune-marked and defended by stout-hearted men and women. A day ago, they had come across the carcasses of an entire herd of elk in the snow, over fifty animals laying in the blood-spattered snow, strips of flesh and fur frozen and ragged among the bones.
It was difficult to tell what had killed them, as they had been visited and gnawed upon by all kind of predators and carrion-feeders, including tennúr who had stripped the skulls of all their teeth. But to trap and bring fifty elk down, that required a fearsome amount of vaesen, and not just a feat of strength, but of cunning as well.
“Have you found the elk-slayers with your keen eyes?” Kráka asked Agnar.
“What are they? Wights, skraelings, Huldra-folk?” Elvar asked, that familiar tremor in her gut, in her blood, where she longed to prove her worth, to earn her battle-fame. To prove her father wrong.
“Ach, it might be nothing,” Agnar said, blinking and looking away, rubbing his eyes from the snow-glare. “Either way, whether it is something or nothing, we need to be moving on.”
“Today is the day,” Uspa said, looking up at the sky. “It is sólst?eur, the beginning of the long day, when night is banished from the sky for thirty days.”
“Good,” Agnar said, laughing and clapping his hands. “Let’s be on with it, then.”
Elvar stood in silence, Grend one side of her, Biórr the other. The Battle-Grim were lined together on the slope of the hill they had camped upon, silent and grim in the light of the rising sun, all of them looking north at the vaesen pit and what lay beyond. One of the pack ponies stamped its feet and whickered.
Uspa stepped forwards and walked the twenty paces to the black granite boulder Elvar had stood beside earlier. The Seier-witch drew a seax at her belt and sliced it across the heel of her palm, blood welling. She made a fist, then opened her hand and touched her bloody fingertips to the black boulder, slowly pressing her palm upon it.
“Isbrú, opinberaeu tig, blóe gueanna skipar tér,” Uspa chanted. Her blood gathered in cracks in the rock, trickling down to the ground. A tremor passed through the boulder, as if it were breathing, and then the imprint of a hand appeared, huge, dwarfing Uspa’s. Elvar blinked and stared harder.
No, she thought. Not a handprint, a pawprint. Claws the length of Elvar’s seax were carved into the gloss-black rock.
A wolf or bear print. Is that the mark of Ulfrir, or Berser? The mark of a god? She felt a flutter of excitement and fear in the pit of her belly.
“Isbrú, opinberaeu tig, blóe gueanna skipar tér,” Uspa called out again, stepping away from the boulder and walking towards the vaesen pit, five paces from its edge, four, three, two, until it looked as if she would step over the edge and plummet to her death.
“No,” Agnar cried out.
And Uspa stepped over the chasm’s edge into thin air.
Gasps and shouts came from among the Battle-Grim, Agnar stumbling forwards.
Uspa’s foot came down on something solid.
The air before Uspa shimmered, like a heat haze, but filled with flickering colours, as if the gueljós lights that Elvar had seen shimmering in the night sky had fallen to the earth. They formed into a shape, wide and long, a writhing, twisting bridge that arced over the vaesen pit to the land beyond.
“Behold, the Isbrún Bridge,” Uspa called out as she turned and looked back at the Battle-Grim.
Elvar felt a smile split her lips, excitement a tremor in her bones. The saga-tales were coming to life, and she was a part of it.
“Ha,” Agnar shouted, punching his fist into the air and laughing, jumping on the spot.
“Battle-Grim, there lies the bridge to Oskutree. The last feet to tread upon it belonged to the gods,” Agnar cried out, grinning at them all, and a cheer rang out from them, feet stamping, spear butts thumping on the ground, Elvar joining her voice with theirs.
A sensation in Elvar’s feet, a vibration through her boots. She frowned, looked down and saw that the ground of the slope she was standing upon was shuddering, a tremor in the grass, the soil vibrating. Her weight shifted and she stepped back, frowning.