They’d searched the forest for far too long. The sorcerer and Ofaeti were relatively young men. Not so Leshii. He would have found the going hard even if he’d had any enthusiasm for the hunt, but with so much plunder in his bags, he was in a state of terror the whole time. The woods were full of bandits and worse. Who knew what monsters lurked in the deep wood? Ofaeti and the Raven had been puzzled and frustrated. They found the wolf’s tracks, even its strange spoor, but never saw the beast itself.
For a couple of days they lay low, aware there were forest men in the area. Leshii had six horses with him, trailing behind his calm, reliable mule. Ofaeti had wanted to cut them free, saying they would draw any bandit with their mess and their noise. The Raven, though, had waved away his objections.
‘Let the merchant keep his plunder,’ he’d said. ‘Our fates are tight woven; woodsmen will not bring us to death.’
So it seemed the next day, when they came upon the bodies.
Ofaeti had bent to examine the dead men, while Leshii checked their bags and pouches.
‘These men did not die warriors’ deaths,’ said Ofaeti.
‘Plague?’ said Leshii, backing away from a corpse.
‘In a circle, all at once?’ said Ofaeti. ‘A strange plague that does that. Is this Seid magic, sorcerer?’
The Raven shrugged. He crouched in front of the body of a bandit and touched his face.
‘Not your magic?’ said Ofaeti.
‘My magic is of the body and the fight. Not this,’ said Hugin.
‘So what is this?’
The Raven tapped his tongue against his teeth. ‘Women’s magic, but I have never seen so many taken.’
‘Your sister could do this?’ said Leshii to the Raven.
Ofaeti laughed. ‘I’d call it the rarest troll work if any woman could stick her head back on her shoulders and kill these men. We might have ended the siege of Paris and been drunk for a year on Frankish wine if she’d pulled that trick on the ramparts.’
‘I have seen one man killed this way but never as many,’ said Hugin. He sat on his haunches, staring out into the trees. After a while he said, ‘The witch is dead — you saw me cut her head from her shoulders. This is troll work but it can’t be hers.’
‘Then what?’ said Leshii.
‘Something,’ said Hugin. His face was pale.
‘We should stay here and see if it returns,’ said Ofaeti.
‘Agreed,’ said Hugin. ‘Something capable of this might be able to find the lady.’
Leshii rubbed at his ears as if he couldn’t believe they were working properly. ‘We stay here to meet something that has killed forty men and left them cold on the ground?’
‘We need to find the lady. If there is a witch here, we should talk to her,’ said Hugin.
‘And if she kills us?’
Ofaeti shook his head. ‘Why are you afraid to die, little merchant?’
‘Is that something that requires explanation? Why are you not?’
‘I will live on in the halls of the All Father, to battle all day and feast all night. It’s not right for a man to love his life too much because he must lose it one day. Fear of its loss poisons its living. Death is fun, looked at the right way.’
‘I am not afraid to die,’ said Leshii, ‘but I am a merchant as you are a warrior, and I do not want to die before I have done great deeds, won caskets of gold and built great houses. I live as a little man, I would not die as one.’
‘Well spoken,’ said Ofaeti, ‘but wrong. Even the greatest merchant, surrounded by money, women and cattle, is nothing to the man of war. Gold is superior to steel in all regards except one — when it is held in the hand. There the deeds of steel outvalue those of gold a hundred-fold.’
‘You are learned in the ways of steel,’ said Leshii, ‘and for that reason I shall bow to your knowledge and call you the argument’s master.’
Leshii knew the Norsemen and how they argued. Ofaeti’s words had become elevated, even poetic, as all his kinsmen’s did when they considered themselves in a contest of wits. It was as well to let the warrior win, he thought, and praise him for his skill with words.
‘So you are happy to stay here?’
‘Delighted,’ said Leshii. ‘May the lord of lightning forbid that I should be afraid of being murdered in a violent and unpleasant fashion.’
Ofaeti sat back on a log and scratched his head. ‘You are a clever man, merchant. Anyone who can trade without the implied threat of violence to help his haggling has a fair tongue in his head.’
‘My fair tongue has often been aided by bodyguards’ fair swords,’ said Leshii.
‘They speak in a language all men can under-’
‘Quiet!’ The Raven held up his hand. ‘Can you hear?’
‘What?’
‘Laughter,’ said Hugin.
Leshii turned his head from side to side, trying to catch any sound. ‘I hear nothing.’
‘There is laughter here,’ said the Raven, ‘and it is her.’
‘Who?’
‘Aelis.’
‘Is she with the wolf?’ said Ofaeti.
‘This is some tree spirit trying to ensnare you,’ said Leshii. ‘This is-’
And Leshii heard it. A breath, no more, but it was her, he knew it.
Ofaeti’s sword was out and he was looking around.
‘Enchantment?’ said Leshii.
‘Seid,’ said Ofaeti. Leshii had never seen the big man nervous before and that made the merchant very scared indeed.
‘What is Seid?’
‘Magic. Women’s magic.’
‘Weak then?’ Leshii said the words knowing the answer. The Norsemen held their female seers in great regard, he knew.
Ofaeti just gave him a look that seemed to question if the merchant had finally lost the little sense he believed him to have.
And then they saw her. She stepped out of the liquid air of the evening, shimmering into view and disappearing like a trick of the light. She was frightening in her beauty, something too perfect to be of the earth. Aelis, but changed and strange.
‘Lady, we are your protectors,’ said Leshii, Helgi’s reward coming to mind. She had grown so beautiful that Helgi would set him up in his own palace if he brought her to him. The thought suddenly nauseated him. Could he not look on a woman like that without his thoughts immediately turning to selling her? He shook himself. What was happening to the practical man of profit and loss?
She vanished and his head was clear. There was a sound in the distance, the neigh of a horse.
Leshii glanced to his right. The mule was alone, browsing the grass next to Leshii’s treasure of swords. ‘Our horses,’ he said, ‘have gone.’