Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud

Author:Jonathan Stroud
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781407047898
Publisher: RHCP
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

16

SVEIN BECAME DISSATISFIED WITH the appearance of his House, which was little more than a few dilapidated cottages set amid the fields. 'We can do better than this,' he said.

He had his men drag pine trees down from the forests and set them quarrying stone, but when they began the hall, they ran into problems. The walls kept tumbling down.

There was an old woman up by Lank Mere who was said to be a witch. Most people avoided her but Svein got on with her well enough. He went to ask about the walls.

'That's easy,' she said. 'You need someone to guard the foundations.'

'Anyone in particular?'

'Young, handsome, strong. That sort of thing.'

So Svein went back and chose a youth from the prisoners taken during the raids. He was killed and buried in the foundations and after that the hall rose high and strong.

For several heartbeats Halli and Aud stood utterly transfixed as – separated from them by only a few feet of air and a narrow thickness of wood – two men entered the barn. They listened to the scrabbling of footsteps on the earthen floor, to other indefinable fragments of sound that told of steady, purposeful movement to left and right across the space below.

The men would be checking the stalls, the old animal partitions; looking in hay piles too, if such there were. It wouldn't take them long to exhaust the possibilities.

Then they would climb the ladder.

Halli cast his eyes wildly about the loft space, at the sparse clumps and rills of straw that covered the flooring, at the sloping roof beams choked with webs.

Blank. Bare. Nowhere to go.

Except— He grasped Aud's sleeve, distantly surprised at the slimness of the arm beneath the wool; when she looked up, he jerked his head, pointed away to the rear of the barn, to where a ragged oval of light shone through.

The hole in the thatch.

Her face showed no acknowledgement, but she must have understood, because she was away from him instantly. moving across the loft with rapid steps that were at the same time soundless. Halli, following, found he could not go at anything like the speed without risking fatal noise. With ponderous care he negotiated the beams, expecting at any moment to hear a shouted challenge from the hatch behind him.

At the far corner Aud waited with an expression of aghast impatience; ignoring this as best he could, Halli leaned through the hole as he had done earlier that day. He scanned the fields cursorily, saw no one near and, grasping the rough dry thatch on either side, pulled himself forward and out into the open air.

The roof was layered with thick straw sheaves, originally tightly bound, but now old, worn and ragged. Its pitch was steep and ended altogether not far below the hole with a long drop to a pile of building stones, wood spars and tangled thorn.

Breathing hard, Halli drew himself out until his knees rested on the lip of the hole. His fingers scrabbled for purchase on either side.

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