M. Lachlan: Wolfsangel

So they would have to climb — almost to the top of the Wall and then into it, to the caves. Authun knew, though, that the Wall would not be the greatest impediment to seeing the witch queen. That would be the witches themselves.

Between the hour of the dog

And the hour of the wolf

Between waking and sleeping

Between the light and the dark

Is the doorway of shadows

Step on, traveller,

Do not tarry on that grim threshold.

Authun read the runes someone had carved into a boulder. He was below the dizzying overhang of the Troll Wall, a cliff so high that the top was invisible in clouds. Human bones and rotting clothing lay about him but it was the inscription that made him shiver. Mundane perils of bandits and falling rocks were bad enough without thinking of what other horrors waited in the dark.

The Wall would take even the fittest warrior two weeks to climb, even if he found one of the shifting routes around the overhang at the first attempt. But no one was that lucky. It was impossible to reach the caves in one go. Rock slides moved old paths, opened new ones and closed others in a blink. You could climb almost to within touching distance of the top and then have to turn, your way impassable, another route needed. The paths were becoming fewer too, as if the mountain begrudged them and sought to shrug them off. How long would it be before there were none? Would the witches eventually be marooned and left to rot in their caves? Or were there other, hidden entrances that the sisters and their servants used?

The climb, though, wasn’t the biggest problem. The problem was, as the runes warned, sleep. For that tiny fall between waking and unconsciousness was where the witches were. People came to steal their treasure and died; people came to seek their advice and died. Very few, armed with charms and acceptable tribute, ever came back alive, and of those no one was ever stupid enough to seek a second audience. No one but Authun and his ancestors, who by divine right, it was said, could hold regular counsel with the witches. Even to the wolf king though, the prospect was daunting. This was his second visit, and he hoped he would never have to make a third.

They would have to wait for a guide, he knew, dangerous as that might be. Authun saw no point in exhausting himself and the woman by attempting the climb unaided. At the base there was the risk of bandits, but better that than the children should fall to their deaths. He made a fire, drank water from a skin, fed bread and salted fish to Saitada and made sure the bandit was just about alive.

Then he lay down and pretended to sleep for a bit to see what the woman would do. She fed her children and settled down to sleep herself. She was, as he guessed, no idiot. She wasn’t going to kill her only protector in a strange and hostile wilderness or even run away from him. The bandit was too badly injured to attempt anything. Authun wanted to take the precaution of breaking his remaining arm but feared that the shock might kill him. So instead he just tied him with walrus cord to a tree. Then he prepared for sleep properly and waited for the witch to come.

If it was the witch queen, all well and good. If it was one of the stranger sisters, well… Authun was a warrior so he concentrated on what he would do if the worst came to the worst, not what would become of him. He would try to give her the bandit, then the woman, after that himself. With luck the witch queen would appear in time to save the children.

But sleep wouldn’t come for him. The night was fine and temperate, and he was warm in his cloak, but little irritations seemed to keep him awake: a cold nose, a pebble in the small of the back, the smell of the moss on the rock, the taste of the rock even. Then he realised he was not awake but neither was he dreaming. Some of his senses seemed heightened — he could taste the cold on the air like iron, smell the difference between the flowers and the grasses; he could smell the tar and the dirt of a puddle. It was as if his hearing was slightly muted, his vision reattuned so that in the bright moon glare he could see new colours — deep metalled blues, sparkling dark greens and seams of gold on the side of the rock. He was where the witches were, he knew, in that place between waking and sleeping. He went to the tree and cut loose the bandit in preparation for what was to come.

Cries in the dark like a baby wailing. Authun wanted to prepare the woman for the arrival of the witch but they shared no language. She would just have to suffer it. He heard a voice through the rain. Where had the rain come from? He tasted it on his lips — more iron, like the way the hand smells after handling a sword, like blood. Mother in the pen, Mother in the pen.

It was a child’s voice, high and piping but clearly audible.

Authun didn’t want to look but knew that he must. If it was the witch queen then she would have to see him. He pulled the semi-conscious bandit to him, ready to throw him to the witch.

Down along the rock face he could see a young woman bent over as she tried to shield herself from the driving rain. She had something in her arms. It was a baby. Authun turned to Saitada. She was holding both her children close to her.

The woman staggered out from the cliff face with the baby and laid it on the ground. She took off its swaddling clothes and exposed it naked to the elements. Then she ran off into the night.

Authun stayed where he was. The witches had all sorts of tricks and he wasn’t about to fall for one so easily.

He watched as the child died. After a short while it stopped moving and then seemed to disappear. So this was magic. Authun kept his hand on his sword.

And then the rain stopped and it seemed that it was a lovely summer evening. The same woman who had left the baby appeared but this time dressed in farm girl’s finery, as if she was going to a dance. A man, also in his country best, walked past her, kissed her hand and seemed to tell her not to be late. Authun recognised the story. It was a fairy tale about an unmarried woman who had exposed her child to die rather than face the hardship of raising it. How did the story end? He couldn’t remember.

The woman smiled and sat on a stool that had appeared from somewhere. She was combing her hair. She finished and got up. Authun recalled that the story told she had gone to check on the pigs before leaving for the dance. She looked into a trough and from within it took something cold and blue. It was a baby, and Authun knew it was dead. The woman held the dead child up and looked at it as it began to move, kicking out its legs as if attempting a jig. And then the rhyme began, a rhyme that seemed to come from inside his head. Mother in the pen, Mother in the pen, Primp and preen to charm the men Take my swaddling clothes and dance in them.

As the rhyme split its way through his mind all he could see was Varrin’s face, bloated, white and drowned. What had he done? What had he done? The rain came down again, straight and hard in the windless evening.

Suddenly it was night, pitch black, and the young woman, her face pale with madness, clasping the dead child to her, was at Authun’s side. Even the king screamed, though he didn’t forget to push the wounded bandit towards the witch. It was as if the man’s body was swallowed by the night. The king knew that he wasn’t facing the witch queen. She would have recognised him. It was a patrolling witch mistaking him for another plunderer, or worse it was one of the truly terrible sisters, her mind simmering with magic, some half-demon who leaked delusions and madness to those around her and who could kill them without even noticing they were there.

‘Gullveig, Gullveig!’ shouted Authun at the top of his voice. ‘Help us, lady!’