Wolfsangel by M. D. Lachlan

someone raised to believe the sword was the answer to everything.

    One thing was plain to Saitada, though: if the fight went on she was about to lose her children’s guardian.

    Clinging to the boys - she wouldn’t leave them - she sprang out into the rain to interpose herself between the warriors.

    ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘Enough!’ But her words, incomprehensible to the kings, were lost in the rain, and suddenly it was as if a giant hand had lifted her from the ground and she was shooting up through the sodden air, up the cliff, up and up and up. Then she heard a strange childish voice speak to her.

    ‘Die,’ it said.

    She was falling, squeezing her babies to her. Then it was light and quiet and the same voice spoke again.

    ‘Forgive me, Lord Loki,’ it said.

    ‘Sister, we all make mistakes. Forget the error, and forget me too,’ said Saitada, though it wasn’t her voice. It was the voice of the strange traveller, the boys’ father. And then she was on the ground below the rock, and Authun, bloodstained and panting, was standing over her. It was dawn and the sun warmed her face.

    ‘They have sent a boy to guide us,’ said the king. ‘See to the children and then we’ll get going.’ Strangely, she understood him, though he was still speaking his own language.

    A pale child of about eight was in front of them, laden with protective charms, arm rings, amulets and talismans.

    ‘Follow,’ he said.

    And they set off, on the arduous journey across the Troll Wall and up to the witches’ realm.

5 The Loss of Sons

    The cliff was perilous and it was becoming clear to Authun that they would not reach the top. The woman had finally yielded her children and they were strapped wriggling and squalling to the king, the mother checking their bindings with irritating regularity.

    Authun still shivered to look at her but he could not yet cast her aside. He shivered still more when he thought of the ordeal that faced him in meeting the witch queen.

    ‘Do you know where you are going, child?’ he asked the boy.

    The boy just kept on climbing.

    It had been a still day at the bottom, but here, an inexorable ten days up, along winding paths, down others, braving terrible scrambles and awful jumps, the wind almost flattened the climbers to the rock. Authun had thought the slave girl would never make it. There was a path, not that you would see it from the bottom, but it was so narrow in places that even Authun, who had stared down death so many times without blinking, felt a tightness in his stomach as he trusted his life to a root or a fingerhold. He did not look down.

    They slept tied on to the cliff with ropes and pegs the boy had with him, and surrounded by charms. The child seemed not to sleep but spent the night chanting a strange song to a broken tune in a language Authun did not understand. The only thing that troubled the king’s dreams was the anticipation of what was to come.

    And then the overhang became serious. Impassable. How had he reached the witches before? Authun couldn’t remember. He remembered only the prophecy, the witch queen’s presence and the dark.

    Inside the clouds, visibility down to a few paces, the path finally gave out. The child guide seemed to have missed the entrance to the caves. Authun felt the fear drying his mouth. He was weak, the girl was weaker. They wouldn’t survive the climb down, even if the boy agreed to guide them. The boy clambered back around Authun, back around Saitada and then, just visible in the clinging mist, he beckoned them. There in the rock was a gap, no more than a crack. It was only a shoulder’s width and scarcely as tall as a man. Authun would not be able to pass through it with the children, and even without them would have to turn sideways and wriggle his way in. He peered into the blackness and smelled the deep earth. He could see nothing at all but he had to go on. He untied the infants and gave them to their mother. Then he slid inside