NINE

Before Leif could open his mouth in reply, the night fell on them. Astrid felt the marsh embrace her, and then – and then oh such a dizzying rush of up and up and the thick black glooping, the suffocation, all dank and death and oozing pitch. She made to scream, and the bog was in her mouth and up her nose and how had her ribs not cracked –

And then the earth unfolded, open skies around again. Astrid peeled open her eyes, lids thick with the heavy, cold slime, and met a giant’s gaze: two huge troll eyes, sunk deep inside a craggy face, regarding her, unblinking.

She was standing, she thought, on a wet peat tussock, matted with sedge – but standing high in the air. From behind, she heard a sucking sound, and turned to see Leif rising once more to his feet, clambering towards her over what might have been four huge, half-sunken logs of bog-oak. She could have screamed again at the sight of him, for Leif was completely covered in mud, at one with the mere – as she must be herself, she thought.

She turned again, back to those pooling eyes. We must be standing on the troll’s hand.

‘Now might be the time for you to talk to them,’ she whispered to Leif.

She heard him gulp – she felt him tremble – but somehow, somehow he found his tongue.

‘Peace be on you and yours,

Jotunn of the marshes.

Swallower of sky-wheel,

Seek not to cause us harm.’

Well, thought Astrid, they haven’t eaten us yet.

‘Warden of the wetlands,

We’ve come to give you aid.

Sent by sleep-sights, we rode;

Sought out your fell abode.’

He stopped, teeth knocking together, quivering all over and shedding lumps of bog with every twitch. Astrid waited for something to happen.

For a time, nothing. Come on, she thought. And then: No! I take it back! – for the troll’s mouth had opened.

That terrible maw was the size of the Great Hall doors; a foul cave filled with broken, stony teeth, livid sores raised on its gums. It was dark, but she thought she saw things moving in there: small creatures crawling over and between the vicious teeth. Frogs? Snakes?

Somewhere in the cave-dark, a glistening, globbing tongue stirred. And, unbelievably, the troll spoke.

‘Do I smell the wound-sweat

Of sons of ash and elm?

Tell me, tiny manlings,

Truth to save your brain-walls.’

Astrid could just make out the words – low, slow; all mulching and golloping. As far as she could follow, they were being told to speak up – or else …

She nudged Leif, urging him to reply, but he just swayed a little. She suspected he was about to faint.

The troll rumbled angrily.

‘Faster, foes of troll-kin!

For we’ve had much grief here.

I long to rend and lap,

Lunch upon bone marrow!’

There was nothing for it: Astrid had to say something. ‘Um, fair … well … troll. Sorry, I’m no good at this. But it’s true, what he said. We’ve come all the way out here, from Jelling, because of something he saw in a trance. He has these … these visions, you see. And this one told him to come here, right now. A falcon led him. He didn’t tell me any more …’

She glanced at Leif, in time to see him flop over on the troll’s palm. He had fainted.

‘We know about the boy,’ said the first troll. ‘Brought news, we were, of him. “Here’s hope,” came the message. “He’ll maybe solve this wrong.”’

Astrid’s heart sank as she realised the troll would only speak in poems. But she dredged up the courage to ask: ‘What wrong?’

For answer, the troll turned. Astrid lurched at the sudden rush, tumbling down to land beside Leif and fearing they would both fall further. But those hoary, bog-oak fingers curled up and cupped them gently, then set them down on the ground. Astrid leapt aside as Leif rolled past her, plopping into the fetid water. To judge by the noise he was making, this at least woke him back up. But Astrid had no time for him now. She saw what the troll had meant.

Beneath the blasted trees lay a long, hulking, low shape that at first she took for a hall, roofed with turf. Or it might have been a whale, beached absurdly far inland and weltered all over with seaweed and barnacles. Or, the fallen mother of all trees.

But of course, it was none of these things. It was a troll, dying.

‘Astrid?’ said Leif, in a vole-sized voice. ‘Astrid, do you think that we can help it?’

A moan came from the felled troll then, sad enough to break her heart, and deep enough to break rocks. This morning’s sacrifices had been nothing, she realised: if a hundred bulls had lowed a lament, it would not have come close to this.

‘Aurnir, my eldest son,’ said the troll. ‘A handsome lad, he was. But now he’s faced the beast; brought low with a death-hurt.’

Now Astrid could make out his head, his limbs, his chest, and saw the awful gash across his side. The wound was deep, and raw, and out from his innards there welled a tarry substance that must have been his blood.

‘That was some blow, to bring down a troll,’ she breathed. ‘See the edges of it, too? They’re almost charred …’

In fact, she now saw what must have been burns all over its body. But she thought better of mentioning this to Leif: he’d fainted once already. So she looked instead at its pain-wracked face. Its eyes were closed; it clearly had no idea they were there. It wouldn’t be long now.

‘What could have caused this kind of harm?’ said Leif.

The troll-mother was sobbing now, and a small waterfall of mud and slime began to fall. Swiftly, the two of them stepped back, as she tried to reply.

‘It hailed from the hawk-land,

High and grim and shining.

It brought the bright hall-wolf,

Bad thiever of forests.

‘Its fast battle-fire

Fell swift on my Aurnir;

A flurry of wind-oars

Overcame his attacks.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Astrid, ‘but I just don’t understand. What kind of man, or … or monster …’

But it was no use. Grief overwhelmed the giant creature, and she staggered back into the arms of the other two trolls. Tremors rocked them where they stood.

The sorrow-stricken troll made one last attempt at speech.

‘My Svadi and Svarang

Support me as I fall.

But they cannot thwart this,

These last of my children.

I fear for my two sons;

Fierce is the bright slayer.

We look to you, thumblings,

To halt its … its …’

Her final words were drowned in a wild howling. Instantly, her sons joined in, inconsolable as babies and unstoppable as a storm. The trolls began beating their breasts, stamping the unstable earth in their total despair.

Leif stood his ground. ‘We will help you, and stop what caused this hurt,’ he managed to say. Then Astrid seized his arm and tugged him aside, as a colossal foot descended. ‘Run!’

And they ran.