2. Crossed Paths

“I crossed paths with a strange human today, seemingly a magus, who wished to barter for one of my journals. He had somehow translocated an ornate cart into the tunnels outside of Grorgin. When I refused, he informed me that he would simply steal the texts instead and as such suggested I keep dual recordings.

When I countered that keeping zero would also avoid such theft, he appeared dismayed.

He then claimed he was still happy to pay and that no price was too high.

Fine, I decided, I would do as he instructed for whichever divine elixir had granted Agrak his immortality. To my surprise, a flask was produced on condition I never drink three of the kind.

Who knew my short foray into authorship would gather such a formidable following.”

Fenkirk’s gates had been left open for those traveling the main road.

Hjorvarth had almost strode straight through the lumbering town. He had seen little more than creaking structures and churned earth, but stopped when greeted with the fetid smell of rotting corpses.

The ravaged killing ground where Sam and Hakon had fought with the rest of Fenkirk’s militia lay covered with goblin corpses, blanketed by a black shroud of crows that cawed and plucked at flesh.

A huge troll sat cross-legged amid them, as if in a sated repose.

Hjorvarth scowled, reaching for his axe. He walked towards the gap in a sprawling makeshift fence.

A small woman emerged to block him. She wore a hooded cloak, woven of two shades of grey. She struck an ominous visage ahead of the rotting dead and the black carrion.

Hjorvarth’s pale eyes flickered with fear. “Stand back, Lady of Shadows. I—”

“What?” Astrid pulled back the fur-lined hood, revealing ruffled raven hair. She squinted in defense of noon light, her raw cheeks speaking to recent misery. “It’s me… Astrid.”

“Oh.” Hjorvarth relaxed, then furrowed his brows. “You are a long way from Jorund’s Hill.”

“Jorund’s Hill no longer,” Astrid whispered, scrutinizing the earth. “My father is dead. My mother has taken her own life. Dagny is with me, should be… soon.” She glanced up at him. “You… Hjorvarth.”

“Yes?” Hjorvarth asked with a concern that he had once reserved for Isleif.

Astrid shook her head in frustration, brushing away tears that trickled down her cheeks. “I can’t think,” she hissed. “Edda is dead… rent, and I can still hear her screaming. The Sage has set things out of order, awry, brought vengeful forces down on us.” She stared up at him in desperation. “I made matching cloaks.”

Hjorvarth stepped forward, having to kneel to hug her. He held her now she sobbed into his chest, but then she struggled free from him.

“You did this.” Astrid’s dark eyes glistened with anger. “I told you this would happen, but you still wanted to leave. I told you he would die. I told you, and you told me you would protect him. Why did you lie to me?”

Hjorvarth stared at her as if sorrowed. “I have no answer that will comfort you, Astrid. Now—”

“Now, what?” Astrid snapped. “‘Mind out of the way why I kill this troll?’ To what end, Hjorvarth? What harm does it do by eating the rotting goblins? The folk of Fenkirk left this place with the very hope that trolls would wander here and clear the town of death. So what gain is there in killing it?”

“It is—”

“Lady’s creature. Ah, yes, because all the strong men of Timilir are terrified of a woman in the shadows.” Astrid shook her head. “A belief for fools if ever there was one. And even if it were true, all of the men here have already been burned. So what would be your hope, beyond getting yourself sent to the Lady’s Shadow?”

“Words!” the troll called in a high-pitched voice. “Man words!”

“It speaks in a child’s voice,” Hjorvarth growled.

Astrid scoffed. “It speaks in a troll’s voice.”

The wax creature seemed to watch without eyes from amid the sea of crows.

Hjorvarth frowned. “I’ve seen that troll before… killed it, even.”

“All trolls look the same. And they all speak in the same high voice.”

“No.” Hjorvarth shook his head. “It is dark green instead of black.”

“And such a grand distinction that is,” Astrid said. “I remembered what I came here—”

Hjorvarth gave her a gentle shove so he could pass. “Troll!”

“Man?” the troll shouted.

Crows scattered skyward now the wax creature lumbered to its feet. “Man!”

Hjorvarth saw then that the wax creature was far larger than he had remembered. He drew his axe as the troll closed, shaking the ground with its massive weight.

Astrid saw the scene as though a grey-cloaked child stared up at a rounded wax giant. “I suppose it is dark green!”

“I is Fragor!” The troll leaned forward as if to look down on Hjorvarth. “I think your face sees me before? No, yes? Yes, no?”

Hjorvarth nodded, struggling to understand why he had been so foolish as to call for the monster. He pictured the hundreds of teeth inside the troll’s maw, remembered how badly a similar set had mangled Geirmund.

“Lost mouth?” Fragor asked. “I fight you too hard?”

Astrid walked up beside Hjorvarth. “Have you seen this man before, Fragor?”

“Him?” Fragor shrieked. “Yes! Greedy man. Run man. Cave hider man. Big bad man. And you?”

Astrid smiled. “He acted much the same in my company.”

Fragor’s dark face creased, dribbling wet wax. “Man words? I not know them. Friends, now?”

“Friends,” Astrid agreed.

Fragor prodded Hjorvarth’s head. “Friends?”

Hjorvarth frowned. “What are you doing here, troll?”

“Me?” Fragor hummed in outrage. “What doing you here, man? This my cave. This my bigger cave.”

“This is the open world.”

“No.” Fragor seemed to look skyward. “This my blue roof cave… friends?”

“How many men have you eaten?”

“I eat gob gob gobins. Men—” He hummed disagreeably, face creasing. “Bad taste.”

Hjorvarth gripped his axe. “Yet you tried to eat me.”

Fragor shrieked laughter, then lumbered around them, crouching as if to hide behind Astrid.

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“Fragor.” Astrid turned. “I must speak with the bad man. Could you go and wait in the trees?”

Fragor paused for a long while in consideration. “We journey?”

“Yes,” Astrid gently answered. “If you wish… I need to travel to the Midderlands.”

“Know not. I wait at trees for pointing.” Fragor’s face creased. “Bad man journey?”

“No,” Hjorvarth said. “And—”

Fragor hummed sadly, then thundered away.

Hjorvarth scowled. “Have you turned mad, Astrid?”

“Yes,” Astrid said, her gaze crestfallen. “I believe that my grief has remade me. I will leave without Dagny’s company. But—”

“I will not allow it.”

Astrid’s pale face hardened. “Be glad that Fragor has mistook your aggression for a greeting for now.” She swallowed. “I only came here to warn you. Sam’s imprisonment is a manipulation. The first rung on a ladder that leans against nothing and is due to fall.”

Hjorvarth upturned his palms. “How does it stand if it leans against nothing?”

Astrid narrowed her eyes in irritation. “You are still being led by the Sage.”

“Oh?” Hjorvarth asked in mock. “And have you not just chosen a troll for your company? A troll who I met with, when led to a cave by that robed bastard. It seems of all of us, you are the one most eager to follow.”

“I came here to save you from Fragor,” Astrid angrily explained.

“By your own word, the troll is harmless.”

“I have travelled for days to come here, to help you,” she snapped. “You who brought death to all my family!”

Hjorvarth furrowed his thick brows. “You cannot play at grief and cruelty both, Astrid. You claim I walk to the tune of the Sage’s lute, but offer no other stride. What matter is it to me whether he would want me to save Sam? Does the seed worry that the wind blew it this way and that, or is it only hoping to land some place where it can plant? I would not care whether the Lady herself is cheering for me to save him. I swore an oath to Sam, and I mean to uphold it. I have had more than enough of men dying around me.”

“This did not go as I had hoped.” Astrid sighed. “I am sorry that your father died.”

“As am I,” Hjorvarth assured, “but I will feel no better when you walk off to your death. The Midderlands Pass is too dangerous a place for anyone traveling alone. And the Midderlands themselves are little better.”

Astrid took in a slow breath then shook herself. “I will be fine. I happen to have drawn myself as an old woman, and I expect the troll Fragor will quite enjoy my company… better that than burden Dagny by forcing her to be my guardian. At least this way the harmless troll will be safe from men… well, men like you.”

“I fear your choice will be the death of you.”

“Ah.” Astrid smirked. “So we are of a mind then, because I fear that yours will be the death of you.”

“And do your drawings of me as an old man offer no safeguard?”

Astrid laughed. “Yes… but death of the soul doesn’t always require the rending of flesh.”

Hjorvarth stared in all severity. “I pray to all the gods that it does not take rent flesh to shake your faith in worthless prophecies.” He shook his head. “Your plan is reckless beyond imagining,” he added. “Accompany me to Timilir, and I will have a friend take care of you in my stead.”

“A life of selling myself is all that awaits me in Timilir, Hjorvarth.”

Hjorvarth stood silenced by her cold delivery.

“Wish me luck,” Astrid suggested, pulling up her hood now she turned away.

Hjorvarth took a step forward, then hesitated. “Joyto’s Luck, Astrid!”

“Kragor’s Strength, Hjorvarth!” Astrid waved without turning back.

Hjorvarth felt uneasy with the heathen blessing, watching while the grey-cloaked woman made her way through the strewn corpses.

The murder of crows fell to a wary silence, studying her as she approached, returning to their meals as she departed.

Hjorvarth considered chasing after her, but was held back by a mix of certainty, confusion and fear. He swept his pale gaze across the abandoned settlement around him and wondered whether he had wandered into yet another realm of the dead.

***

“Where go?” asked Fragor, towering over Astrid many times over.

“We need to find something,” she kindly answered. “Hidden by the Young Wolf.”

“Bones?” Fragor reasoned.

“Not a real wolf,” she explained, wrapping her cloak about her. “Gudmund of Horvorr. A manling. He sent a man called the Trapper out to the Midderlands Pass long ago.”

Fragor ponderously hummed. “Not understanding. We friends…?”

“We are friends, yes.”

“This good!”

“It is indeed. But our journey will be quite dangerous. Will you protect me?”

“Yes!” Fragor enthused. “Fragor protect friend. I fight so hard.”

“Thank you, Fragor.” Astrid smiled up at him. “I will lead the way, but you are much faster and larger than I am. So you will have to wait for my little legs.”

“Hm. Yes. I am. Friends,” he said, humming happily to himself.

The cloaked woman swept forward, out through the broken walls of Fenkirk and into the towering, black trunked, trees of the Blackwood. Her gaze kept straight and resolute despite the countless bodies they passed, and the stench of rot and filth and death.

“So much food!” Fragor declared with awe, plucking up bodies as he went and bundling them under his great arms. “Why did they fighting?”

“For many reasons. Greed, pride, and survival. The goblins were running out of places to live. To find food. But there are a great deal less of them. So the issue resolves itself.”

“Oh… for food.”

“Yes.”

“What we finding…?”

“I am not entirely sure,” admitted Astrid. “Edda tells me it is buried. That I must unearth it or else all will be undone. But I can no longer hear her…”

“Oh. She gone?”

“Yes…”

“Oh.”

“This way,” said Astrid, turning eastwards, and leaving the ruins of Fenkirk behind them. Fragor’s huge feet made for thunderous footfalls at her side, but he soon rushed too far ahead and had to wait, and then waited too long, and so rushed ahead again.

“Where go…?”

“The Midderlands Pass.”

“Ah,” said Fragor in his piping childish voice. “Is good…?”

“Not really,” she answered. “The goblin Chiefs who refused to follow the Moonbear still reside there. And there are many other monsters besides.”

“We are fighting them?”

“If they wish to fight us, yes.”

“This is… good. Agak says it is bad. But I… am wronging him. I fight so hard.”

“That is good,” she echoed.

Fragor excitedly hummed, stomping off into the distance, shouldering into tree trunks and crushing bushes and branches with his great weight. When he got so far that Astrid could not see him she was both relieved by the quiet, and worried he would not return.

Her parents were dead. The last plaintive words of Edda’s spirit had been for her to set out in search of whatever was buried. It had felt fated when she had set out, but now it did not seem as simple.

She was not Hjorvarth. Or Fragor. Or even that smiling blond man, Engli.

Astrid was a young woman, small and feeble, and if a man, or a goblin, were to attack her she would be hard pressed to defend herself. Yet she was acting with the same rigidity as the huge warrior, without the bulk to back it up. A giant troll might come in useful, unless he accidentally crushed her underfoot, or decided she was better as food.

How much simpler life would be if she were Hjorvarth. She could have beaten the Salt Sage bloody and locked him away before he ever had a chance to kill her father.

“The Old Enemy,” she murmured. “And now I travel with the oldest friend of The Small King,” she thought. “Perhaps it is fated,” she said aloud. A great wave of grief threatened to drag her under, but she softly sighed and smiled defiantly to herself. “There’ll be time for sorrow later,” she reminded herself.

Stomping sounded out in the distance, amid the great hissing of leaves, and the huge childlike figure of wax bounded forward from between the black trunks of trees.

“You are slow!” Fragor declared. “How long to middle lands?”

“A long while,” admitted Astrid. “You will have to be patient.”

“Hm…” Fragor let out a short, disagreeable hum. “This what Agak says.”

“I can always go on alone.”

“No!” Fragor insisted, almost apologetically. “Fragor protect friend. I will patient!”

“You can call me Astrid, Fragor.”

“Ass…id. Acid! Yes. Acid is friend!”

Astrid quietly laughed.

“What laughing?”

“Well… because you are made of acidic wax…” She trailed off, realizing her meaning would be entirely lost. “We are friends. And that makes me happy.”

“Yes,” Fragor agreed. “Hah!”

Nearly a score breaths passed with the giant troll lumbering along beside her.

“How long, Acid…?” Fragor hopefully asked.

Astrid had begun in no mood for talking, but she managed to smile in answer despite her patience already wearing terribly thin. “A very long while indeed.”