Page 55 of Edge of the Wild

“He’s wily,” Leif said. “He probably got away.”

Erik didn’t respond. He toed at one of the half-filled marks on the ground. Frowned at it, and sank to his haunches to brush at the snow. “These look like…claw marks.”

“Wolves, probably,” Askr said. “Came sniffing around the body.”

“But didn’t eat it?”

“There were claw marks last night,” Náli spoke up. His face was still bloodless. “And the man I walked with said the creature that attacked him had claws.”

“A weapon fashioned after claws, then,” Erik said. “Meant to frighten us.”

Náli edged forward, expression going glassy. He motioned toward the dead man. “I can–”

“No,” Erik said.

Birger placed a hand on the young lord’s shoulder, despite the dark looks from his own men, and the way they crowded in, clutching at his arms and cloak as if to pull him back – or keep him from falling.

“It’s too soon for that again, lad,” Birger said. “I think we already know who’s done this.” To Erik: “Shall we make a pyre?”

Erik glanced up at a wedge of sky visible between the branches. “No. We need to move on. We’re losing daylight.”

A horn sounded. Two sharp blasts.

Someone said, “That’s Edda, Lord Ingvar’s son.”

The whole group was off and running, back to the clear plain beside the lake where they’d lunched. Even in deep snow, dodging rocks and old logs, burdened by furs and cloaks and heavy boots and swords, the Northmen covered the ground in great strides, leaping over objects. Oliver had never felt smaller, nor more of a hindrance, lungs burning as he breathed in cold air, the wind stinging his face.

He tripped – and was righted by a strong hand. Erik, not even breathing hard.

They burst out of the trees, and found Lord Ingvar’s party standing at the lake’s edge, all of them gazing out across the water, several pointing, all of them murmuring to one another.

Edda, a stocky lad with his dark hair in two long braids down his back, and a long, narrow beard, still held his horn, and charged up the rise to meet them. “There’s something out on the water,” he panted, eyes wide with alarm. “Too far to make out.”

“A ship?” Erik asked.

“I don’t – I don’t know.”

Erik charged down to the beach again, and Oliver hurried to follow.

“There,” one of the guards said, pointing with the tip of his spear.

Oliver shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted against the brightness of the water. He didn’t…there. A splash. A fountaining spray of crystal droplets, a plume, a glimpse of – of something white. Andlarge.

“That’s not a boat,” he heard himself say through suddenly-numb lips.

“That’s a living creature,” Edda said. “That’s alivingbloody creature.”

“A white bear,” someone said.

“That’s too big for a bear!”

“Maybe it’s…” The rest of Magnus’s sentence was lost to the sudden droning in Oliver’s ears. It was a humming, hissing, grinding…

And then the blue.

And a growl. A voice that wasn’t a voice at all, but which conveyed pain, and fear. It was a cry for help.

And then nothing.

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