“Why?” With almost no breath as I caught up a hundred yards on.
Snorri, waiting at the head of a flight of stairs, looked past me to the light of Tuttugu’s swinging lantern. “Hurry!”
“Why?” I almost reached to catch hold of him.
“Because we can’t win. Not in the dark. Maybe in the morning such magics, such creatures . . . maybe they won’t be so strong. Maybe not. Either way, we’ll die in the daylight.” He paused. “I don’t care about Aslaug’s gifts. I don’t like what she’s tried to turn me into.” A grin. “Let’s go to Valhalla with the sun on our faces.”
Snorri paused for me to answer. All I had to say was I didn’t think the sun would find us in a strong-room buried in the middle of the keep, but I kept those words behind my teeth. He grinned again, tentative this time, then turned and set off down the stairs. I followed, cursing that I had yet more icy steps to contend with, though fat Tuttugu and his broken knee would have a still harder time of it behind me.
Ice had sealed the door to the courtyard. Snorri broke it open and waited for us, the wind howling outside.
“How will we even get in?” I panted the question.
“I took keys off Sven Broke-Oar.” Snorri patted his jacket. “I’ve been over there already. Opened it all up . . . I had to search . . .” He hooded his lantern so no glimmer of it showed. Tuttugu did the same when he arrived puffing at the bottom of the stairs.
We stepped out into the courtyard. I could see nothing but a scattering of lights around the great doors as the Red Vikings came through. No doubt they’d be checking on their companions and stores first. Without food and fuel they faced a bleak future. Fort or no fort, the Bitter Ice would kill them all.
“Come.” Snorri led off.
“Wait!” I literally couldn’t see him. We could be separated and lose each other in the dark. The dawn was much less than an hour away but the sky held no hint of it.
Tuttugu hobbled between us and set a hand on Snorri’s shoulder. “Take a hold, Jal.”
I held on to Tuttugu, and in a blind convoy we set out, crunching over the ice and snow, across the expanse of courtyard.
The Red Vikings might be busying themselves securing their old holdings, but I worried more about those who had brought them here. The night felt haunted—the wind speaking with a new voice, more chill and more deadly than before, though I hadn’t thought it possible. We pressed on, and with each step I expected some hand to be laid upon my shoulder, pulling me back.
Sometimes our worst fears aren’t realized—though in my experience it’s only to make room for the fears our imagination was insufficient to house. In any event we reached the keep and Snorri set a great iron key into the lock of the subdoor that sat within a greater portal large enough to admit wagons. With effort he turned the key—I thought to find the lock too frozen, but again my fears were unfounded; the lock had after all been built in the cold by people who understood the winter.
Snorri led the way inside. He closed the door, locked it, unhooded his lantern. We stood for a moment, the three of us, looking at each other’s pale, blood-spattered faces, our breath pluming before us. “Come.” Snorri pressed on, threading through various empty chambers, more doors, more stairs—less icy here deep within the building. We hurried through deserted halls, shadows swinging all around us with the sway of our two lanterns. Our bubble of tentative illumination sailed through a consuming darkness. Our footsteps echoed in those cold and empty places and it seemed we made an awful clatter. I pushed the phrase loud enough to wake the dead to the back of my mind. Side passages yawned at us as we passed, dark with threat. Onward, through a tall archway into a long hall, an iron door standing ajar at the end of it.
“There.” Snorri gestured with his axe. “That’s our stronghold.”
Salvation! In the worst of times even temporary salvation feels like a blessing. I glanced back at the archway, convinced some grave horror would step from the shadows at any moment and tear after us. “Hurry!”
Snorri jogged across and, with a squeal of hinges, pulled the door wide for us to pass through. Beyond it lay a narrow corridor set with a series of thick iron doors. It was as well that Snorri had unlocked them on his previous visit or we’d be fumbling with keys while the shadows reached for our backs. When he pulled the first one closed behind us, the sound of him locking it was a special kind of music to my ears. My whole body slumped as that awful tension eased.
I wondered where Freja and Egil might be and hoped it was somewhere secure. I didn’t mention it, though, in case Snorri decided to go out searching for them again. If they’d lasted this long they’d last a little longer, I told myself. In my mind’s eye I pictured them, clothing their names in Snorri’s descriptions, Freja capable, determined . . . She wouldn’t give up hope, not in him, not while her son lived. I saw the boy too, scrawny, freckled, inquisitive. I saw him smile—the easy grin his father had—and scamper off about some mischief amongst the huts of Eight Quays. I couldn’t picture them here, couldn’t imagine what this place might have made of them.