“Skraelings, before you ask,” Svik said from Varg’s other side.
The thralls kneeled at the poolside and filled their buckets, and then the troll was making a snorting, barking sound and they were standing and moving back towards the treeline. In a dozen heartbeats they were gone, the troll, warriors and skraelings all following after, and a moment later the valley was empty, as if they had never been there.
Echoed commands rippled along the line of Bloodsworn, Glornir summoning his captains, and Svik scrambled away, keeping his head below the ridgeline and across the slope to Glornir. R?kia went, as well, along with Sulich. Glornir spoke to them, gestured into the valley a dozen times, and then Svik was scrambling back. Torvik came with him.
“Half-Troll, No-Sense, Hammer-Hand, you’re with me,” Svik said, “and you, Halja Flat-Nose, and you, Vali Horse-Breath,” he said to a woman and man, sister and brother, both of them quiet and stern-faced. And then Svik was scuttling along the slope below the ridgeline, moving south towards a stand of pine that crested the slope. Varg looked at the others, Torvik grinning at him, and then they were all moving, following Svik. The rest of the Bloodsworn were breaking up into smaller groups, each one led by one of Glornir’s captains, and accompanied by one of Edel’s scouts. Varg glimpsed Skalk and his two guards staying close to Glornir, and then Svik was leading them into the stand of pine that crowned the edge and over the other side. The slope was steep and soon they had to break from the cover of the trees. Torvik took the lead, choosing a winding path down the slope, using boulders and bushes for cover. Soil and stone shifted beneath Varg’s feet, but he was sure-footed and kept up easily with Torvik. Einar slipped once, his huge bulk starting a small landslide of soil, but Svik steadied him and then the ground was levelling, and they were on the valley floor.
Torvik allowed them a moment to gather and then he was moving on, across the valley floor, splashing through a shallow stream and then up the far bank, into the cover of more pine woodland. They veered north, following the line of the valley, towards the waterfall. The din of its cascading waters grew, until Varg could see the shimmer of salmon-scales in the pool. They were close enough now to see a path through the trees that the troll and thralls had taken. Torvik turned eastward and led them higher up the valley slope, shadowing the path, always keeping it in view. They moved silently and as fast as wolves, the ground thick with pine needles that soaked up the sound of their footfall. Varg thought he saw the flitting shadows of movement on the far side of the path, shadows among the trees. He picked up his pace and drew level with Torvik, touched his shoulder and pointed.
“They’re Bloodsworn,” Torvik whispered after a frozen moment of silence, and then they were moving on.
Varg became aware of a change around him, almost like a vibration in the air, in the ground. He looked down; he half expected to see the carpet of pine needles they were crossing to be shaking, but all was still. It grew as they moved on, a pressure all around, like a gathering storm, a tingling in his blood.
Torvik stopped, held a fist up and they gathered around him.
The path they were following spilled into an open glade, the ground trampled to mud, a cliff face at its far end. There was an arched entrance in the cliff, tall and wide, the flicker of torchlight within it like pinpricks. People were walking in and out of the entrance, their bodies skeletal, clothes ragged, a constant stream of thralls in iron collars leading ponies harnessed to carts, and the carts were full of rubble. They filed north out of the tunnel entrance and led the ponies and carts to the far edge of the glade, where there was a newly made mountain of boulders and rubble. Here they unloaded their carts and then led them back into the tunnel entrance, swallowed by the darkness as if they were walking willingly into a sleeping serpent’s mouth.
Torvik pointed at different spots in the glade, and Varg saw other figures: warriors with spears, and a few of the skraelings. Varg did not like the look of them, clothed in thick tunics like a warrior, with weapons on their belts, though they looked crude and heavy, but their arms were long and knotted with striated muscle, their necks thick, and even from this distance something seemed… wrong, with their faces.
I have lived on a farm my whole life, he thought. The worst I have seen of vaesen is a mischievous fetch who cursed the milk one yuletide, and a knot of newly hatched serpents in the river, and they were not much bigger than eels.
The troll was nowhere to be seen, though the cave entrance was more than large enough for him to have entered the tunnel.