Page 42 of A Light So Blinding
She flinched and flattened herself to the ground as another voice crackled through the air. Deep and low, it was not a voice she recognized.
“Listen to me. I’m telling you that we’re fine. The trolls down there don’t come up here. And the trolls in the mountain stay in the mountain.” Rougher and with an accent she didn’t recognize, she feared these men would find her.
Scream, Bjorn had said. He needed to hear her scream, and he’d come running. But she didn’t want to let the men know where she was.
Astrid couldn’t see them. But she was a lone woman with blonde hair in a white shirt. They’d see her far sooner than she would catch them.
Crawling over to a bush that had seen better days, she pressed herself into it. The twigs dug into her skin, tearing at her flesh until there were red lines dripping down her arms and legs. She didn’t even feel the pain and terror that lanced through her.
She could hear their footsteps now. Another man, this one with a higher pitched voice, said, “Yeah, but we have trolls withus. You don’t think they track their own kind? I heard the last raid was attacked by a whole warband. No one made it back.”
“Then how did you hear they were attacked?” The sound of a smack echoed through the night. “Dolt.”
Orange light illuminated the two men as they walked toward her. She could see now that they were in clothing that looked as rough as they did. The clothes on their backs were threadbare and worn, but they wore many weapons. So much glinting metal at their hips, strapped to their thighs, covering their entire forms in a way that made her wonder just how confident they were that they were going to be attacked.
The torchlight drew closer and closer to her hiding spot, and she could feel in her gut that they were going to find her. She pulled at the wells of her magic, tugging it into being so that she could send it at them like arrows from a bow. They wanted to return to their camp. The darkness was frightening, and the sound of skittering rocks could easily be trolls hunting them down. They were safer together.
The man holding the torch shuddered. “Perhaps we should return. It would be safer.”
But the man next to him, the one with the high voice, froze. She realized he was staring right at her. And that was when she realized the torchlight had reached her feet.
He could see the leather straps around her feet. She hadn’t tucked them in enough.
Astrid’s heart skipped in her chest. She slowed her breath, forcing herself to remain silent and quiet. She was in control. She wasn’t terrified. She wasn’t going to... to...
A roar split through the air. She could feel it vibrating the stones around her as pure rage sliced through them all. It was the sound of an animal who had finally found the creature it was hunting, and all who heard the sound should scuttle away into their hiding places.
“What was that?” the torch bearer said.
The other replied, “Troll.”
He was still staring at her. Looking at the bushes like he knew there was something that needed to be done here, but he didn’tknow what. Should he attack her? She could feel his thoughts stretching across the short distance between them. Whoever was in the bush, it was his duty to find them, report them... kill them.
She pushed harder at the fear in his mind, stretching it like spun sugar. Then, as his friend turned toward the sound, she allowed her face to emerge into the torchlight.
Pale and ghostly, she used his own fear to warp her features. She wasn’t just a woman in a bush. She was a specter, a warning.
She whispered, “Run.”
And the two men did so as another angry roar split through the air, shattering what little calm she had left. She knew that roar. She’d heard it in the labyrinth before.
Sixteen
Bjorn
Bjorn heard sounds shortly after Astrid had left. But the noises weren’t coming from the direction she’d gone in, so for a little while, he ignored them.
The mountain allowed sounds to echo. He’d heard noises that he would have sworn were the souls of the dying this far up the mountain. He and his father used to travel this way often to visit his mother. Bjorn had stories from those travels that would make the hair raise straight off the arms of any person listening. He knew damn well that there were hauntings here.
But as he made the stone circle that would contain their fire, he continued hearing the noises. They were strange sounds for spirits. Words that continued slipping through, both in the human language and in the black tongue. Words that whispered of travel and others of torment.
For a time, he wondered if it was merely his mind playing tricks on him. Maybe he was back in the labyrinth after all, listening to people talking in the other cells. But no, he knew hewasn’t there. Bjorn even tapped a rock hard against his bare foot. It hurt, but it didn’t fracture what he saw in front of him.
He had to see what was making the sound, even if it was spirits who called out to him. He’d met them once before.
It hadn’t gone well.
Crouched low, he clambered over the stones and followed the sounds until a nightmare unfurled before him. There were human soldiers here, all of them armed to the teeth and setting up a ring of fire around their campsite. Nothing would come close, and nothing would approach them without them seeing who it was. But within that circle, there were cages.
