Slov was of course in a state of high anxiety with rumours running rife through the countryside and any town with a wall, girding its loins for war. Suspicion ran deep that any stranger might be a Red March spy, but even the fevered imagination of the Slovs was hard-pressed to picture the Red Queen recruiting giant Vikings, blonde völvas or red-haired northern lads as covert agents. I did my best to hide behind Snorri and say as little as possible during encounters. The approach worked well, becoming easier by the mile as we left the war zone behind us, and within a few days we had returned to the steady progress and comfortable tavern nights that we had enjoyed on the way.
Having consulted the maps at Grandmother’s headquarters and discussed the matter with a dangerous-looking man of hers who described his employment only as ‘travelling widely on state business’, we aimed to leave Slov along the Attar-Zagre border and pass swiftly into Charland, crossing the breadth of that ill-favoured nation before travelling the length of Osheim to the Wheel.
I’m not a man who likes travel. I do like to ride, it’s true, but generally I’d prefer to end the day where I started, i.e. home in the palace of Vermillion. I don’t approve of foreign places. Neighbouring countries are at best a necessary evil required to cut down on the amount of coastline, since the only thing worse than a long journey overland is a journey of any length over water. In short, even with the addition of decent roads, warm inns, and half-decent food, the business of getting from A to B is overrated.
I could regale you with a near-endless list of small towns passed through, lazy peasants encountered, provisions purchased, hooves shod, ale drunk, early morning frosts, the fiery colours of the fall, sunsets lingering in the west … but the truth is that by the time we met disaster nearly a hundred miles had passed beneath our hooves without a damn thing happening.
For a world reputedly on its last legs things seemed largely untroubled, at least to judge by what could be seen from the back of a horse in the middle of the Broken Empire. The sky remained variously blue or grey, showing no tendency to crack or burn. The land held the wet ochre hues of autumn with no sulphurous ravines opening up amid the stubbled fields, no tongues of fire licking from new-formed fissures. Even the hell that had been lapping at the walls of Vermillion seemed a distant dream now.
I tried on a couple of occasions to broach the subject of Snorri’s journeying in Hel. I would have got to it in my own time without Kara making eyes at me. My own time, however, would have been when we were both old men. Fortunately he just shook his head and reached for his ale. ‘Done is done, Jal. Stories tell themselves when the time’s right. And for some stories the time is never right.’
For the first week of our journey each shadowed space hung thick with threat. I knew Edris Dean to be out there somewhere, having fled the siege when things turned sour. I knew that the Unborn Prince would be stalking the kingdoms, bound on the Dead King’s business. And worse than Dean, worse even than the Unborn Prince, I knew my sister would be seeking me. Kelem had told me my sister required my death to seal her into this world. Marco had confirmed as much when we found him nailed to a tree in the drylands. My sister had escaped her long exile, breaking into our world through the wound left by the death of one brother. Unborn from hell and bound to a lichkin she would now be seeking the death of her last sibling to anchor her here. I needed something holier than my father’s blessing on a cross to break my sister from the lichkin. I kept my eyes open as we travelled, but church relics are thin on the ground in most places, so mostly I kept my eyes open for skinless horrors trying to pounce on me from the hedgerows.
All that would be enough to keep any man a prisoner to his fears, viewing each night as a long horror when his foes might come upon him unannounced. But somehow, after so many days passing without incident, the normality of the road shrunk the fears that should have had me wide-eyed and shivering, to something almost abstract. Riding with Snorri on one side, Kara on the other, unexpected autumn sunshine on my back, the boy cantering ahead … it just didn’t seem possible that the world could hold such nightmares.
‘I think some Viking is rubbing off on me.’ I made a show of brushing at my sleeve as Snorri moved his horse slowly past Murder. The stallion had mellowed a touch on the journey and would allow the other nags to take a turn in the lead, presumably viewing them as heralds who go before a great king to announce his imminent arrival. ‘I’m not finding this trip north quite as dreadful as the last one.’
‘That’s the magic of the fjords.’ Snorri grinned. ‘They call you back. None travel as far as the Vikings – but we go back – the North calls us home.’
‘Sentimental nonsense.’ Kara caught us up riding close on my left side. ‘There are more Vikings settled on the Drowned Isles and south of the Karlswater than live in all of Norseheim.’
I could sense another of their interminable arguments coming on. The pair of them could debate the smallest issue for hours in that sing-song tit-for-tat way the Norse had. They would end up hair-splitting over some terminally dull point of Viking history. Suddenly the world would hinge on whether Olaaf Thorgulson, fourth son of Thorgul Olaafson, sailed from Haagenfast in the 28th year of the Iron Jarls or the 27th…
I glanced around hurriedly for something to distract them before they got started.
‘Fuck me! It’s the pope,’ I said, not really believing it, for meeting her holiness on a backroad along the Zagre-Attar border seemed no more real a possibility than an unborn lurching out from the hedgerows.
‘That seems unlikely.’ Snorri stood in his stirrups for a better view. Ahead of us the road ran arrow straight, dividing the land, rising and falling with each undulation. Emerging from the hidden dip of the next valley a long caravan had begun to crest the next but one ridge. Even from a mile off I recognized the papal flag without difficulty, a purple cross fluttering horizontally on a white pennant. A dozen or more men carried a large sedan chair, its roof sporting a golden cross that screamed ‘steal me’ across the intervening distance, and two squads of halberdiers, a score fore and aft, bracketed the affair, carrying enough pointy steel to make even the most hardened brigand turn a deaf ear.
‘Well if it’s not the pope it’s someone damned important.’ Father never got such an escort despite being a cardinal.
‘We should steer clear of them,’ Snorri said.
‘Don’t worry, the church gave up burning heathens years ago.’ I reached out to place a condescending pat on his shoulder. ‘You’ll be fine. These days they only go after witches … oh.’ I glanced back at Kara. ‘Perhaps we should steer clear of them. A caravan that large is bound to have at least one inquisitor with it.’
Of course when the people you want to avoid are ahead of you on the best road in an unfamiliar region, and going in the direction you want to go, only more slowly … that tends to mean reducing your own pace and following them.
We rode behind at walking speed, keeping a good half a mile between us. Every now and then the papal convoy would come back into view, cresting one of the folds in the rolling landscape. It started to rain.
‘We could just ride past,’ Hennan said.
‘The boy has a point,’ Snorri said. ‘At a canter we’d be ten seconds from rear to van.’
‘They’re filling the road. They would need to stand aside for us,’ I said. ‘They might ask our business – and if there’s an inquisitor with them then they would probably know it soon enough.’ My fingers found the lump Loki’s key made under my jacket. Inquisitors had a nose for such things – though to accuse them of using enchantment would be little different from tying yourself to the stake and calling for a torch. Explaining the key to an agent of the Roma Inquisition was not something I wanted to have to do. Men had had their tongues torn out for even speaking the names of false gods.
The rain thickened as the light failed, and still the clerics and their guards showed no sign of turning from the road to seek shelter for the night.
‘We’ll be following them all
the way to Osheim.’ I spat rainwater. The growing gloom felt oppressive, filled with all the threats that I’d become so adept at forgetting about of late. Unbidden, an image of Darin came to me, my brother lying dead by the Appan Gate … a moment later I saw my unborn sister’s hand move beneath his skin, seeking a way out. I had given Darin peace with the sword at my hip, but my sister had found the gate she needed only hours later, carving her path into this world through Martus’s still-warm corpse. Was she out there now? A creature of Hell, still raw from her false birth and hungry for my life?
‘Jal?’ A hand on my shoulder. Kara’s hand.
I flinched and nearly lashed out. ‘What?’ The word came out with a harsh edge.
‘Someone’s coming,’ she said.
The clatter of hooves drew closer as we pulled to the left side. A single horse, being ridden hard.
The man emerged from the murk and rain and was nearly lost from sight again before he pulled up, his mount rearing and whinnying a complaint.
‘Has the cardinal’s escort passed you by?’ He threw his hood back. Black hair plastered his brow, the face beneath gaunt, teeth bared in exhaustion or threat.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Which cardinal? What are they doing out here?’
The man ignored me, pulling his hood down and turning his horse back to the road. Perhaps the ‘out here’ offended him. I keep forgetting people not from Red March tend to regard their own country as the centre of empire.
‘Which cardinal?’ I shouted.
‘Hemmalung.’ A shout across his shoulder, almost lost amid the rain and hoof-beats.
‘Why does it matter what his name is?’ Hennan asked.
‘Her name,’ I said. An idea had started to intrude, an idea so big that only a corner of it had managed to poke through my skull so far. ‘Hemmalung is Charland’s second city.’ The truth was I couldn’t name the first city, or any others, or any single fact about the kingdom – but I knew Hemmalung was a city because I knew the cardinal that kept her see there.
‘And her name is?’ Snorri leaned in to hear, drawing a hand down across the short black thicket of his beard as if to squeeze the rain out.
‘Gertrude.’ I remembered her as a thickset woman in her late fifties, thin lipped, deep-sunken eyes, greying curls. She had visited Father at Roma Hall on more than one occasion. ‘I’m going to ride on ahead and reintroduce myself to the good cardinal.’
‘Why?’ Kara looked as bedraggled as her horse, the rain dripping off the ends of both their noses. ‘We could find an inn. Take shelter for the night. Chances are they’ll be out of our way come tomorrow.’
‘There’s something she has that I need. Snorri can tell you what it is.’
‘I can’t,’ he said.
‘We were told about it in Hel…’ I cocked my head expectantly, and finding Snorri still looking blank, and my ear filling with cold water, I cycled my hand. ‘By a dark soul deservingly nailed to a rather big tree…’
‘Marco?’ Snorri threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘You shouldn’t believe anything he had to say!’ He turned to Kara. ‘Jal thinks a cardinal’s seal will split his sister from the lichkin that brought her out of Hel.’
‘It will!’ I felt sure of it. ‘The dead can’t lie.’ Then less sure. ‘Can they?’
‘It’s nonsense anyway.’ Snorri kicked his horse into motion. ‘If a cardinal’s seal is so holy a thing then how do you expect to part Cardinal Gertrude from hers?’
‘I’ll steal it.’ I glanced toward Hennan. ‘I’m as god-fearing as the next prince, and scrupulously honest, but desperate times—’
‘You stole Loki’s key from Kara,’ the boy said.
‘Ah, well … that was mine in the first place. Anyhow – stop confusing the issue. I’ll take it.’
‘You’ll “take it”?’ Snorri raised a brow. I’ve spent several hours trying to learn the knack of elevating a single eyebrow, but the talent eludes me. It’s probably some inbred northern thing.
‘How?’ Kara asked. ‘You’re not making sense.’
‘Post-coitally.’ Sitting there on a wet horse in the rain it didn’t sound very appetizing. Remembering the last time didn’t whet my appetite either.
‘You slept with a cardinal?’ Snorri leaned in, surprise and amusement warring for control of his features.
‘Well, technically there was no sleeping involved.’ I aimed for the right tone of reserved nonchalance. I’m not sure I hit it. ‘But we knew each other in the biblical sense, yes.’
‘Aren’t your cardinals … old people?’ Hennan asked.
‘How long ago was this?’ Kara asked.
I nudged Murder to a faster pace, trying to shake off the curious Norse pressing me on all sides. ‘A long time ago.’
‘How long?’ Snorri caught up. ‘Not long ago you were twelve. You weren’t twelve were you?’
‘Of course not. Much older than that.’
‘He’s lying.’ Kara, back on my left.
‘A little older.’ I could hear Snorri sniggering above the rain. ‘If you must know, Gertrude was my first. She was very gentle—’
Laughter from both sides cut me off.
‘Damn you, heathens!’ I spurred Murder into a canter. ‘I’ll be back with the seal by morning. And if the guards catch you hanging around I’ll recommend you’re burned as witches.’
I let Murder have his head. Rain and murk kept visibility to thirty yards or less but I’ve never known a road run so straight, and the locals kept it well surfaced, shingle in the main but in some stretches cobbles or even paved. There’s something about galloping a horse that I’ll never tire of. It’s a sort of union that puts you in control of a power much greater than your own … control is too strong a word for it – if it were control much of the joy would go out of it – you’re a guide, a conduit. I think it’s as close to understanding sorcery as I’ve come.
Ten minutes later, soaked to the bone but flushed with the warmth of the ride, I knew I must be close to catching the cardinal. I slowed to a canter, not wishing to come on them by surprise and find myself accidentally impaled on a halberd before I could declare my intentions … or rather declare my lies, since my actual intentions would very likely see me impaled on purpose.
I nearly missed the horse, standing as it was off in the margins of the road amid the pouring rain. A lone dark horse, head down, back against the fringes of a small wood not far from the roadside. I’ve always had an eye for horse-flesh and this piece seemed familiar. Looking around I saw one spot among the shingle that seemed darker than the rest … perhaps stained with blood. I rode closer to the horse. It cantered off, skittish, but I saw enough to feel more certain it was the beast the messenger who passed us had been riding.
‘An assassin?’ I spoke the words aloud though there was nobody to hear and the rain overwrote them.
I turned Murder back to the road and continued at a slower pace, perplexed.
It didn’t take long to reach the column’s rearguard, shadowy in the rain, their halberds across their shoulders, swaying to the rhythm of the march.
‘Traveller, coming through!’ I thought it best to keep my anonymity as long as possible. At first none of them gave any sign of hearing me. ‘Traveller, coming through!’ I shouted again, and as one they all stopped. Without a head turning my way, the rearguard, some two dozen men in all, stepped to the roadside.
‘Coming through…’ I walked Murder past their ranks – eight lines of three, none of them glancing as I drew level, all with the blank-faces that soldiers on household duty often affect, affording the illusion of privacy to those they watch over.
The sedan chair was a large one, big enough to hold six people if they were squeezed side by side. Lanterns hung from each corner of the rectangular roof, but none were lit. Cardinal Gertrude would be travelling with a personal secretary, an aide and a couple of priests at a minimum. Hopefully no space had been found for the inquisition.
‘I’ll pay my respect to the cardinal…??
? I spoke loud enough to be heard above the thunder of rain on the tarred black roof of the enclosed chair. Properly the captain of her guard should have presented himself by now and demanded my credentials. Instead the whole column just stood there, ignoring me. ‘Now, look here…’ The bluster ran out of my voice as still not one face turned my way. Icy water ran down my back along with the surety that something was badly wrong here.
I turned Murder on the spot, a fancy move the stallion had been well trained in. With both legs clamped tight to his sides I could feel the nervous play of his muscles – the horse was scared, and given that he got his name from his normal response to threat … that made me scared too. I looked at the sedan’s black and shiny door, the papal order blazoned there, beaded with water above the crown and scythe of Hemmalung. The bearers stood without motion, heads down, dripping, and suddenly no part of me wanted that door open.
As I watched, it seemed that the water pattering down beneath the door was darker than it should be, as if stained.
‘I … uh … forgot something.’ I bumped my heels against Murder’s ribs. ‘Sorry, my mistake.’
The sedan’s door began to open, slowly, as if the wind might have caught its edge and started to pull it wide. Some cold and ethereal hand sunk its fingers into my chest, lacing them between my rib bones and closing, tight.
A gust took hold and threw the door full open, slamming back against the sedan’s wall. What light remained to the day proved insufficient challenge to the darkness within, revealing only one thing – a white enamel mask such as a rich man might wear to a masquerade. The eyes behind that slit remained invisible, but they cut like broken glass even so. The mask from the Vermillion Opera!
I slammed both heels into Murder’s sides and he took off like a bolt loosed from a crossbow. The Unborn Prince left the cardinal’s sedan with sufficient violence that splintered fragments of it winged past my ear as I bent to the gallop. He came after us with a rushing like a great wind tearing through a forest. A wet ripping sound chased us down the road. The halberdiers turned as we thundered by, trying to bring their weapons into play but they proved slow and strangely uncoordinated, even for guardsmen of the more ceremonial variety. I had to duck low to avoid the blades of the last two halberds, and then we were free and clear, Murder and me against the darkness and the rain.