‘Steady on … I don’t want to hurt you.’ The jab I threw his way had everything I could muster behind it. Isen blocked the punch on both his fists, just before his face, then hit me in the wrist with a vicious uppercut before I could pull my arm back. It hurt like fuck and left my wrist aching.
I glanced at Snorri for inspiration. He mimed a punch, and I turned back to find Isen doing exactly that. At nearly full stretch he struck me on the jaw. It felt as if my head had exploded: I saw lights flash, the world spin, and a bone-rattling reunion with the ground allowed me to deduce that some falling had been involved too. Lifting my head and squinting I could make out two smaller figures advancing on me. Was I really going to end my illustrious career by being beaten to death by midgets?
A shake of my head reunited the two images of Count Isen as he closed on me. All the parts of me hurt and I lay still while he paced around me.
‘Confess your crimes, Prince Jalan!’ he roared. ‘You pressed your unwanted and degenerate attentions on my sweet Sharal!’
I stared up at the sky, hoping his theatrics would let me get some much-needed air into my lungs. Around the periphery of my vision I could see Isen continue to stalk around me as if I were some trophy kill, an eighteen point stag he’d brought down on some hunt perhaps.
‘Confess your crimes! You forced yourself on my innocent—’
I swept my arm out taking Isen’s feet from under him. He fell backwards, landing heavily as I sat up.
‘I fucked her!’ I got to my feet as Isen rolled to his front. ‘But she wasn’t an innocent.’ I stooped down and grabbed the back of Isen’s belt in one hand, the back of his collar in the other. ‘And she liked it!’ The last with a roar as I hoisted him above my head, holding him firm despite his struggles.
Isen bucked like a fish on deck but I held him. ‘Yield!’
‘It’s to the death, you fool!’
He might have been a small fellow but already it was starting to feel as though I had a full-grown man held above my head.
‘Death is a permissible outcome but either party may still choose to accept if the other party yields.’ I quoted from my extensive knowledge of duelling regulation.
‘Well I don’t yield!’ Isen shouted. I could imagine the froth around his moustache.
‘I can drop you on my knee and break your back. You realize that?’
‘Do your worst, despoiler!’
I was sure someone must have swapped Isen for Snorri: it was the only way to explain how heavy he had become. I had to rest some of his weight on my head to relieve my arms. ‘Two of the DeVeer sisters have been widowed since the last sunset,’ I said, through teeth gritted with effort. ‘I’m loathe to widow the third.’ Then, too quietly for the crowd to hear, I hissed, ‘And if you don’t yield I’m going to put you over my knee and spank you before your troops.’
A deathly silence followed, during which I barely managed to keep him aloft. If he’d struggled he would have broken free and I would have been too weakened to fend him off – but in the end it was the threat to his dignity rather than his life that scared him.
‘I yield.’
I did my best not to drop him but the effect was pretty similar. ‘Isen yields!’ I shouted it loud enough for everyone to hear and stepped away sharply while two of his captains hurried forward to help him up. I would have lifted my arms in victory but right then even reaching up to scratch my nose would have been a labour of Hercules.
Isen shook off his knights and came striding toward me. I tried not to flinch or beg him not to hit me again. Instead I played on the role of bold, brave, bluff Jalan, hoping that a sufficiently convincing performance would erase the memory of me being flattened by a single punch and lying at the count’s mercy.
‘Honour is settled, Isen, and at least one of the DeVeer sisters still has a husband. Count your blessings, and remember that Sharal is the greatest of them.’
Count Isen’s mouth twisted with all the harsh words he wanted to let loose in my direction, but like old nobility he bit down on it and followed protocol. ‘Settled.’
Lowering my voice for just his ears. ‘Do your duty. Vermillion needs you. Play your cards right and you could come out of this a hero. You might find the dead wandering close to the city – in small numbers it would be a chance to let your men adjust to the idea and to develop your tactics. Spears are not the best weapon.’
‘The dead are truly risen?’ Isen chewed at his lip, staring into the distance over the heads of his men.
‘You need to get messengers into the city to coordinate with the new marshal. Send them in by river – watch out for mire-ghouls, they swim and use envenomed darts. Your men will be more useful inside the walls so getting them in will be the first task…’
Isen favoured me with a hard stare, perhaps reevaluating me, though from his expression it could be in either direction. He raised his hand and shouted, ‘Move out!’ He walked briskly to the roadside and men hurried out of his path. From the embankment he beckoned the Norse to him then waved his knights on. Snorri, Kara and Hennan came to stand beside us as the spearmen started to march past. Sir Thant led the count’s steed over, Murder immediately snorting a challenge at the larger horse.
‘I’ll leave these foreigners in your care, Prince Jalan. My agents found them on the Roma Road heading north and since they were the only link I had to finding you after your remarkable disappearing act.’ He shot me a dark look. ‘I extended the hospitality of my house to them. The woman mumbles a lot of heathen gibberish.’ He nodded toward Kara as if she were incapable of understanding Empire tongue. ‘Claimed you and the other had descended into the underworld!’ Isen managed to combine disgust and amusement in a single snort. ‘But she knows some tricks and said she would be able to find you when you got closer … and she did! In any event, they’re your responsibility now. Release them, have them incarcerated as spies, or turn them over to the inquisition – whatever you choose.’
Isen turned and mounted his monstrous horse, a feat that required several more steps than is traditional. He turned in his saddle and regarded us all from on high. ‘We won’t speak of this again.’
A shake of reins and the count left us, Sir Thant trotting after him toward the head of the column. We watched him go, silent for a long moment.
‘So.’ I turned back to Kara and Hennan. ‘Did you miss me?’
23
Half a mile down the road we found the inn I remembered, The Jolly Marcher, a long timber-framed building with stables and outbuildings, set up to feed, accommodate, and if necessary repair, any traveller with sufficient coin in their pockets.
We chose a table outside. It pays to take advantage of the last warm days of a year when and where you find them. And autumn days, when the sun shines, are made for outdoor dining. Once a few cold snaps have wielded the scythe through the ranks of the bugs that traditionally try to add themselves to your meal, the pleasure in taking your fill beneath the roof of the sky increases immeasurably. And of course the thing that really puts the ‘great’ in the Great Outdoors … practically any direction you care to run off in is an escape route.
‘So, you led Count Isen right to me?’ I gave Kara an accusing look and rubbed my jaw, possibly on the side she slapped me – my face had been so battered of late I couldn’t tell any more.
‘Why should I not?’ Kara returned my accusatory stare with one of her own. She was better at it. ‘You had never mentioned the man in my hearing and he’s a noble who swears fealty to your grandmother. Also, he was holding us prisoner and intended to do so until he found you.’
‘Well…’ I took a gulp of wine to buy time in which to think of a riposte. ‘It’s … disloyal! Not the sort of thing friends are supposed to do.’
‘But stealing from them is fine?’ Kara tore a chunk from the crusty loaf, using the same violence that someone might throttle a chicken with.
‘That’s rich coming from a woman who spent three months trying to steal Loki’s key off Snorri!’
> ‘I was trying to stop the key going into Hel. You think what happened to your city was bad? If the Dead King got hold of that key he could do the same to a hundred cities in a year!’
‘And how did you lead him to me?’ I turned the conversation in a less damning direction.
‘Loki’s key leads all sorts of people to it.’ Kara turned her angry stare from me to her bread and soup. ‘Particularly once it settles in one place.’
The speed with which she looked away caught my attention. A practised liar gets good at noticing the failings of those with less practice. I glanced at Snorri, then back at Kara. ‘Snorri put his blood on the key to bind it to him. That’s why when I used it to open the door there he was standing on the other side.’ I rested my chin in my hand, noticing how stubbly it was. A day in Snorri’s company and I was already starting a beard. ‘But originally it was you who was supposed to help him return, you who tied your piece of string to his toe … or whatever it is witches do when they want to find something. And I’ve been in Vermillion for the best part of a month…’ I pointed a finger at her. ‘It was Snorri turning up that made you get old Isen to abandon his post, wasn’t it?’
She looked up, scowling and without an answer, but the colour in her cheeks said enough. I looked back at Snorri but he was concentrating on his food and I couldn’t see what expression he wore. ‘Well.’ I paused to finish my wine and wave at the table-boy for some more. ‘It’s been lovely. And it was nice to see you again, young Hennan. But Snorri and I are on a very dangerous mission where speed is of the essence, so we will have to take our leave.’ I snagged a leg from the cold roast chicken set at the middle of the table. ‘Once we’ve finished our meal.’ I let the table-boy fill my goblet. The local red proved highly palatable. ‘So we must bid you adieu and let you make your own way to your destination.’
‘Where are you going?’ Hennan asked. It had been less than half a year but he’d sprung up like a summer weed, his face taking on the longer, more angular shape it would keep as a grown man, providing the world didn’t fall to pieces first. ‘We could come too.’
‘Absolutely not,’ I said. ‘I’m not taking a child into mortal danger.’
‘But where are you going?’ Kara repeated the boy with the same lack of decorum.
‘That, I’m afraid to say, is a state secret.’ I gave her my best princely smile.
‘Osheim,’ Snorri said.
‘That’s where I was taking Hennan,’ Kara replied, not missing a beat. ‘He has relatives not far from the Wheel.’ She nodded to where I’d tied up Murder and Squire. ‘You have four horses.’
‘You don’t know how to ride.’ It seemed easier than ‘no’.
‘We’ve spent a rather tedious summer as Count Isen’s prisoners. Though he did insist on referring to us as guests and allowed us some freedoms. Sir Thant taught us both to ride.’
I looked over at Snorri, not expecting any support after his rapid and treacherous disclosure of our destination. ‘You see? It’s the Wheel. It even gets to völvas in the end. She even thinks it’s her idea…’ I faced Kara again. ‘No. You’d slow us down. Besides, we may be hunted – you’d be much safer on your own.’
Kara’s jaw took on a familiar determined set. ‘You don’t think you’ll have more chance with us? You think we’re useless?’
‘Hennan’s just a boy!’ I spread my hands. ‘I don’t think you quite understand what’s at stake—’
‘Hennan lived his whole life a day’s walk from the centre of the Wheel. His family lived in that valley for at least four generations, probably forty. Any sons of that line who felt the draw of the Wheel walked in a century ago. What could be more valuable to you than someone who can resist the glamours there when you might be losing your reason?’
‘We should take the boy home, Jal.’ Snorri said it in the tone of voice that meant the matter had been decided. Combined with Kara’s underhand use of logic, and the fact that I was too exhausted, beaten up, full, drunk, and generally traumatized to want to argue, I let the Northman have his way.
For the next five days we rode east. Autumn continued to do a passable impression of summer, the mornings came crisp and the sunsets flowed warm and golden. Red March unfurled her beauty, dressed in the traditional colours of the season, and while we kept up a sharp pace the opportunity to bed down in good inns and dine at open houses along the roadside took much of the sting from the exercise. In truth there are few better ways to spend a day than riding through the March on a fine day in the fall of the year.
The four of us renewed our acquaintance with various degrees of hesitation. Hennan proved shy at first, keeping his mouth closed and his ears open, but when he finally did reach the point of asking questions they came in a deluge.
Kara kept her reserve longer, clearly not having forgiven me for stealing the key and denying her a triumphant return to Skilfar. I did point out that Count Isen would likely have taken it off her with potentially disastrous consequences, but that logic didn’t seem to placate the völva.
Snorri, true to his word back at the palace, appeared to be at peace, enjoying our company though showing no signs of wanting to talk about what had happened to him. I’d been terrified every moment I spent in Hell: to be left there alone lay beyond my imagination. I was quite happy for it to stay there too.
It didn’t take long though for Hennan’s questions to turn to what happened to Snorri and me when we passed through the door in Kelem’s cavern. I soon found myself sharing Snorri’s desire to let things lie.
‘What did you see?’
‘I…’ I really didn’t want to think about it. I certainly didn’t want to put it into words. Somehow saying it out loud would stop it being a nightmare, something unreal and belonging wholly to that other place. Speaking of it in the light of day would bring it firmly into the realm of experience, a real and concrete thing that had to be dealt with. I might have to start thinking about what it all meant: the idea that after a short span on Earth an eternity in such a place might be waiting for us was a deeply depressing one. It’s all very well when death is a mystery that churchmen fritter away the best part of Sunday droning on about. Seeing it for yourself at first hand is a profound horror and not something I wished to inflict on a child, or myself. ‘It’s too nice a day, Hennan. Ask a different question.’
Try as I might to bury the memories of Vermillion my old talent proved unequal to the task and they kept pace with me on the road, haunting each hedgerow, ready to spring into any quiet moment, or paint themselves across any blank canvas, be it sky or shadow.
My mind kept returning to Darin’s death, to the lichkin in Milano House, to my last glimpse of Martus. Each of those a stepping stone to the cold and ugly fact that my sister had at last emerged into the world so long denied to her. My sister, unborn, ridden by a lichkin, and still hungry for my death to further anchor her against the relentless pull of Hell.
I sought Kara’s wisdom on the subject, hoping the völva might have made some study of our enemy in the time we’d been parted.
‘A man in Hell told me it took some holy thing to break an unborn,’ I said, nudging Murder up close to Kara’s mare.
She shrugged. ‘It’s possible. It would have to be something very special. Some relic maybe. Perhaps in the hands of a priest. Sometimes faith moves more of the mountain than magic.’
‘Wouldn’t Loki’s key be the best thing to unlock one thing from another? My sister from the beast that wears her? It’s holy – a god made it!’
Kara gave me a bleak grin. ‘Loki is a god, but who has faith in him?’
‘But the key works! It could unlock—’
‘The lichkin are monsters of many parts. Not born, not made, but accumulations of the worst parts of men, the filth that falls from souls purged in Hel.’ Though the day was bright around us it seemed colder and more brittle as Kara spoke of such things. ‘When old hatreds sink to the deepest rifts of the underworld sometimes they fit together and interweave, perve
rsions of the most twisted kind, detached from their owners, drift until they become entangled, and slowly over generations, something awful is built. But what is tangled together can be unravelled. Use the key and the lichkin will be undone, but your sister will be torn apart, shredded, still bound to the pieces of its crimes. You need something less destructive – something that will persuade the lichkin to release its hold and let her go.’
I remembered how the lichkin I had inadvertently stabbed with the key in Hell had fallen apart. Kara had it right. Besides, the chances of me driving the key into an unborn on purpose were too remote to bother considering. I needed something sacred and I had nothing. Father’s seal had been reclaimed by Rome and his holy stone had consumed itself in the violence that destroyed Double and his necromancies.
Kara proved no help and my fears continued to stalk me toward the border.
On the fifth day we crossed into Slov. No battles had been fought here, though the passage of so many men of the March had left scars of a different sort. The arrival of Grandmother’s ten thousand must have taken the little fort of Ecan by surprise – certainly the place bore no signs of conflict and the small garrison of Red March soldiers left to hold it looked bored rather than worried.
King Lujan probably heard of the incursion a day or two later. I would not have liked to have been in the same room when he did. I’d never met the man but the stories painted him as possessing the disposition of a wolverine with belly-ache, and a tendency when angered to lash out at those within reach using whatever happened to be handy, be it his dinner plate or a flanged mace.
The Slovs’ unpreparedness could be forgiven to a degree. Invasion is usually preceded by months of bad blood and the progressively loud rattling of sabres. Armies first gather along borders, defences are reinforced against counterattack. Sometimes a battleground is even agreed upon to stop two large armies missing each other and marching in circles for days or months.
Grandmother’s strike, aimed as it was at one target – the fortified town of Blujen – and more specifically at the tower housing the Lady Blue in the city’s eastern quarter, followed none of the rules of war. There had been no threats, no discontent, no border incidents. Her army had been gathered in the midst of Red March, drawing on forces from the western regions, and had then headed east without delay. A sudden and direct blow from deep cover, unexpected and deadly. Perhaps if she had struck at Julana City the Red Queen might have taken Slov’s capital and already have the king’s head on a spike – but what value is there in shading another kingdom red on the war-room chart if the whole map is about to burn?