• • •
Lower.
• • •
A castle sprawls across a high ridge, commanding views into two valleys that run toward the garden lands. A huge castle, its outer wall thick as a house, taller than trees, punctuated by seven round towers. Enclosed within this perimeter, a small town in stone and Builder-brick, then a second wall, yards thick and higher than the first, and within that, barracks, armouries, a well-house, and a keep tower. The keep I recognize—or think I do. It reminds me of the Ameroth Tower that stands on the edge of the Scorpions, a range of hills straddling the region where Red March, Slov, and Florence meet. I visited the tower once. I must have been ten. Father had sent Martus to be squired to Lord Marsden who keeps his household there. Darin and I tagged along as part of our education. The tower had been the tallest building I’d ever seen. It still is. A work of the Builders. An ugly rectangular structure, fashioned from poured stone, without windows or ornament. I recall that it had been surrounded by rubble and the village lay a mile off, the locals too fearful of ghosts to dwell any closer. Darin and I had ridden the surrounding hills, being still young enough to explore and play. I remember that the rocks thereabouts sported peculiar scorch marks. Geometric patterns fractured into them in ways I couldn’t explain.
• • •
Lower.
• • •
An army stands camped about the castle, arrayed for siege. An army so numerous that the tents of the different units colour the ground like crops in great fields. The horses for their cavalry are corralled in herds thousands strong. Forests have been felled to build the machinery that waits at the foremost edge of the host. Rocks are piled beside each in pyramids ten, twenty, thirty feet high. The throwing arms of trebuchet, catapults and mangols are drawn back, loaded, ready to unleash.
• • •
Lower.
• • •
The stink and the cacophony of the horde are intolerable. Such a press of humanity and animals in such close confines. On the higher ground pavilions stand, decked with crests of arms. The great houses of Slov are there. The high and the mighty have come with their knights and levies. Among the forests of standards are the arms of nobles from Zagre, Sudriech, even Mayar. There cannot be less than thirty thousand men here. Perhaps fifty thousand.
• • •
I’m falling. Falling. Toward the outer wall. Unseen I descend among the troops that crowd the top of the east-most wall tower. There are a hundred archers here, smooth iron skullcaps fluted across the neck, chain-mail coifs, leather jerkins set with iron plates, skirts of overlapping leather strips, iron-studded. I have seen such armour on stands along the long gallery of Roma Hall. As a child I used to hide behind one suit in particular, by the west stair, and leap out to shock the maids.
A scorpion bolt-lobber stands at the front of the tower, aimed out between the crenulations at the distant foe. The operating crew are holding back a respectful distance whilst gathered immediately behind the engine a small group of nobility debate some issue.
In a moment I stand amongst them. Next to me is a huge warrior in battered platemail, heavy-duty stuff fashioned in the old style from black iron. He glances my way but he sees through me.
“We can hold for relief. If it takes two months we can hold,” he says, eyes fierce and dark, set in a brutal face, a black beard bristling over his lantern jaw, threaded by a pale scar.
“Damn that!” The speaker whirls from her contemplation of the enemy. She stands four fingers over six foot, her build athletic, strong, young with it . . . maybe eighteen. Her armour is gilded, and worked in enamels across it are the burning spears of the Red March. No vanity this though, the steel is full gauge and without ornament. A soldier’s armour. “If we let them bide here the Czar’s path west lies open. The Steppes will be at Vermillion’s gates before the harvest.”
I watch her face, broad and angular, pale for a woman of the March—beneath a shock of dark red hair, angry hazel eyes, full lips. I know this face.
“Contaph.” She advances on the knight beside me. Even a woman of her stature has to look up at the man. “Can we attack? Sally forth? They won’t be expecting an attack.”
An intake of breath at this from the men around her, knight captains and lords by their armour. I can understand this. There are not enough troops within the castle to challenge the host outside. I know this without looking. The castle could not hold so many.
“They won’t be expecting an attack, princess,” says Contaph. “But they are ready for one, even so. Kerwcjz is no fool.”
“A deputation!” This from a man at the wall, with a spyglass to his eye.
The princess leads the nobles to the battlements, archers parting to make space. “Tell me,” she says.
“Ten riders under a white flag. An emissary. And a prisoner. A woman. A girl—”
The princess snatches the spyglass and sets it to her own eye. “Gwen!”
“Kerwcjz has your sister?” Contaph’s fist tightens on the pommel of his sword, the iron plates of his gauntlet grating one against the next. “This means Omera has fallen.”
“Give me your bow,” the princess demands of the nearest archer.
“Alica!” A strained whisper from the man beside her, smaller but similar in his colouring.
“Princess,” she says. The bow is in her hands, her eyes on his—dangerous. “Call me by my name again, cousin, and I will drop you from this wall.”
She pulls an arrow from the archer’s quiver. “It’s a good bow?”
“Y-yes . . . princess.” The archer stutters it out. “Pulls a hair to the left if you over-draw. But that’s not a worry—it’s too much bow for a wo—”
Princess Alica strings the arrow and draws it to her ear, pointing up at the great keep tower back beyond the second wall. “Yes?”
“A hair to the left, your majesty.” The man backs away. “Two fingers on a fifty-yard target.”
“They’ve drawn up.” The cousin at the wall.
The princess lets the bow relax and comes to watch. Nine of the men have spread into a line on their horses. The emissary and the captive ride forward five more yards. The girl is in silks, side-saddle, she looks no more than thirteen, maybe fourteen. The man is fat, his armour adjusted for it, his neck thick and reddened by the Red March sun. He wears a blue plumed helm and a long turquoise cloak.
“Hail, the castle!” His voice reaches them, thinned by the distance.
Princess Alica’s face is stone. She strings the arrow to her bow once more and draws it.
“The flag . . .” Contaph stares at her, a frown throwing his brow into deep furrows. Out among the enemy contingent the white flag flutters.
She looks once, out across the wall. “A mistake,” she says. “It helps me adjust for the wind.” She arches her spine, drawing the bowstring back further across her breastplate . . . and the arrow is gone, just the hiss of it left behind amid our silence.
The princess drops the bow and steps away from the wall. Behind her a high-pitched cry rings out. A pause. The sound of galloping.
“Princess Gwen—” The cousin runs out of words.
“Shot her sister . . .” The whisper ripples along the wall.
Alica whirls back around to face them all. “No negotiation. No surrender. No terms.”
Another sharp turn and she’s striding toward the stairs at the tower’s centre. Contaph jogs, clanking to catch her, the others strung out behind. I’m at her shoulder. So close I can hear the tightness of her breath.
She doesn’t turn her head as Contaph draws level at the head of the stair. “Kerwcjz would have had her staked over a fire for us all to watch by morning. He’d have set her singing my troops a song of pain and kept her at it as long as his torturers’ skills allowed.” The cousin and three others arrive behind us. Alica keeps her shoulders to them. Ba
ck at the wall the first rock explodes against the battlements. All along the enemy line engines of war release their pent up forces with throaty twangs.
“We win this, or we die. There is no third way.”
And in that moment I knew my grandmother.
And rock rained down upon us.
ELEVEN
“I’m so hungry.”
“Finally he wakes!” Snorri’s voice close by.
I opened my eyes. “I’ve gone blind!” Panic seized me and I struggled up, banging my head on something hard.
“Relax!” He sounded amused. A big hand pushed me down. The old magic sizzled unpleasantly at the contact points.
“My eyes! My fuc—”
“It’s night time.”
“Where are the damn stars then?” I touched my forehead where I’d bashed it. My fingers came away sticky.
“It’s cloudy.”
“Where’s the lantern?” I had him this time. We always kept the lantern burning on dark nights, wick trimmed low. Better to waste a little oil than trip overboard in the dark when nature called.
“You broke it when you fell over.”
I remembered it all. That woman! My hand!
“My hand!” I shouted, stupidly grabbing the place she stabbed me and yelping in pain.
Tuttugu uttered a sleepy complaint and stopped snoring. These days I only really noticed his snoring when he stopped.
“Why am I so hungry?”
“You’re a pig.” I heard Snorri turn over and gather his covers.
“You’ve been asleep the best part of two nights and a day.” Kara’s voice from the other end of the boat.
“Well . . .” I paused to consider that. “Well, it didn’t work. You mutilated me for nothing.”
“You saw nothing?” She sounded unconvinced.
“I saw my grandmother. When she was younger than I am now. She was a scary bitch back then too! Worse, if anything.”
“You delayed too long before tasting the blood,” Kara said.
“Well excuse me for being busy staring at the six inches of steel sticking out of the back of my hand!” I still couldn’t believe she didn’t warn me.
“You may see more when you next dream. Perhaps what you seek.” She didn’t sound bothered—sleepy more than anything.
I glowered at her in the darkness, but judging by the soft sounds all around me the three of them had already fallen back into their slumbers. I couldn’t follow them. I’d slept enough. Instead I sat staring into the darkness, rocked by the waves, until the skies shaded into pale to herald the dawn.
• • •
I spent those cold dark hours staring at memories of memories. At my grandmother a lifetime ago, at the sacrifices she made to deny her enemy, at the fire in her that drove her to attack long after hope had fled the battlefield. Like Snorri. Or rather, like Snorri had been.
In the grey predawn I watched the northman slumped across the tiller, the slits of his eyes dark as he watched me back. Baraqel would talk to him soon. The angel would walk across the waves and speak of light and purpose, and still Snorri would steer this boat south, aimed toward death.
“You’re a coward, Snorri ver Snagason.” Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or the Red Queen’s blood still running hot in my veins, or even an honest desire to help the man, but something set the words spilling from my mouth, my normal desire to avoid any chance of being hit overridden for the moment.
“How so?” He didn’t move or raise his voice. In truth I’d never seen the violence he displayed in battle spill over into conversation—even those that ran against him. Perhaps I just judged him by what I’d do if I were a big scary Viking.
“This key. It’s built of lies, you know that. Taking it to death’s door—” I waved an arm in the air. “It’s just looking for a way out, an escape. You may as well have cut a hole in the sea ice back in Trond harbour and jumped through. Same result, less effort, and fewer people inconvenienced.” I would have told him he wasn’t going to get his wife back, or his children, or the unborn baby. I would have told him it was all nonsense and that the world doesn’t work that way. I would have said that but perhaps I’m not that cruel, or perhaps I didn’t trust his temper that far . . . but most likely it didn’t need to be said. He knew it already.
Snorri didn’t speak. Nothing but the moan of the wind and the slap of waves against the hull. Then, “Yes. I am a coward, Jal.”
“So, throw the key over the side and come with me to Vermillion.”
“The door is my quest now.” Snorri sat up. “The door. The key. It’s all I have.” He touched the place where the key hung beneath his jerkin. “And what is the key if not a chance to face the gods and to demand an explanation for the world . . . for your life?”
I knew this wasn’t about gods. Whatever he said. His family drew him on. Freja, Emy, Egil, Karl. I still kept their names and the stories he’d told about them, and they weren’t even mine. It’s not in me to care about such things, but even so, I saw that little girl, her peg doll, Snorri running to save her. I’d expected him to speak of them again over the long winter. Expected it and dreaded it. Known that one night, deep in his cups, he must break and drunkenly he would rage against the loss. But he never did. No matter how dark the night nor how long, or how much of my ale he consumed, Snorri ver Snagason made no complaint, spoke no word of his loss. I hadn’t expected to speak of it at last in a small boat, bound on every side by cold miles of restless sea.
“That’s not—”
“Sixty beats of a heart would be enough. If I could hold them. Let them know I came for them no matter what stood in my way. It would be enough. Sixty beats of a heart past that door would outweigh sixty years in this world without them. You’ve not loved, Jal, not held your child, newborn and bloody, soft against a hard world, and promised that child you’d keep it safe. And Freja. I don’t have the words for it. She woke me. I’d spent my time in red dreaming, biting at any hand that tried to feed me. She woke me—I saw her—and she was all I wanted to see—all I could see.”
Kara and Tuttugu hadn’t moved from their benches but I saw in the stillness of them that both lay awake, listening.
“There’s no place in this world for me any more, except as a weapon, except as the anger behind a sharp edge, bringing sorrow. I’m done, Jal. Broken. Past my time.”
I hadn’t anything to say to that, so I said nothing, and let the sea speak. In time the sun found us, and Baraqel must have flowed into the northman’s mind, though whether he had any words to offer up after Snorri’s own I couldn’t say.
TWELVE
That first day after I woke from the blood dream I spent cradling my hand in my lap and glowering at Kara. She kept her peace though. At least until I started fumbling at the laces of my trews to answer nature’s call. It’s a difficult business at the best of times, standing up in a small boat to relieve oneself over the side. Trying to stand in choppy seas whilst unlacing with an injured hand is doubly difficult.
“This would be a hell of a lot easier if some lunatic hadn’t stabbed me!” The laces confounded my awkward fingers yet again. “Christ’s whore!” I may have uttered a few more oaths, and called a certain völva’s good name into disrepute . . .
“In the north we call that a little prick,” Kara replied, not looking over from her place at the tiller.
I’m sure she meant the injury, but Tuttugu and Snorri, being ignorant barbarians, laughed themselves hoarse at my expense, and thereafter I manfully ignored my wound, having found the edge of Kara’s tongue to be sharper than her needle.
• • •
Tuttugu and I kept our eyes north as often as not, watching for the sails of a longship. Any flash of white had us wondering if a pair of red eyes waited beneath, and behind that a deckful of the Hardassa. Thankfully we saw no sign of them. Perhaps after the events at the
Black Fort the Dead King no longer held sufficient sway over the Red Vikings to have them dog our trail all the way to the continent. Or maybe we had simply outrun them.
• • •
In three days’ sail from Beerentoppen the Errensa had borne us so far south that the Norseheim coast now curved away from us, heading east. The Devouring Sea lay ahead, the last barrier to the continent, spreading out toward the shores of Maladon. Kara said her prayers, the Undoreth called on Odin and Aegir, I made one-sided bargains with the Almighty, and we parted company from the north for good or ill.
• • •
The Devouring Sea, or the Karlswater as those on its southern shores name it, has a poor reputation with sailors. Storms from the great ocean are often funnelled down into the Karlswater by the Norseheim highlands. Such storms are perilous enough out in the deeps, but in the shallow waters where we now sailed they would on occasion whip up rogue waves so huge that no ship could survive them. Such waves were rare but they could sweep the Karlswater clear. Aegir’s Broom the Vikings called them. The sea-god cleaning house.
I hung at the Errensa’s stern, watching Norseheim diminish behind us, compressed between sea and sky into a dark and serrated line. Then just a line. Then imagination. And finally memory.
“When I get to Maladon I’m paying a barber to shave this beard.” I ran my fingers up into the curls, bleached white-blond by the newly arrived sun, thick with salt and grease. My old crowd wouldn’t even recognize me, all scars, lean muscle, and wild hair. Still, nothing that a tailor, a man with a razor, and a month of comfortable living couldn’t set right.
“It suits you.” Kara looked up at me under her brows, blue eyes unreadable. She sat repairing a cover for one of the storage units. She’d warmed to me a little over the course of the journey, checking on my hand wound without apology but with a gentle touch. Twice a day she rubbed a sweet-smelling unguent at the entry and exit holes. I enjoyed the attention so much I somehow forgot to mention it had stopped hurting.
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