Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War)

by Lawrence, Mark

The man reached the bar and a hairy warrior signalled he’d get the drink for him. “Snatched him from his mother’s arms,” the man said. Someone passed him a cloth and he started wrapping it around his hand.

  “Oh, let me help!” And Edda fled my side, Astrid in hot pursuit.

  “Well, I chased it. The cur didn’t want to give up his prize. We disagreed and I got the baby, and this.” He held up his bandaged hand.

  “Isn’t that marvellous, Prince Jalan?” Edda glanced back over her shoulder at me. She looked even more tempting at a distance.

  “Marvellous.” I managed a mutter.

  “Prince?” The fellow bowed. “Delighted to meet you.”

  Now I’m a good-looking fellow. No doubts about that. Good thick hair, honest smile, face in order, but this interloper could have stepped from some frieze of the sagas, chiselled to perfection. I hated him with a rare and instant passion.

  “And you are?” I aimed for a level of disdain with enough edge to cut but not to make me look bad whilst doing it.

  “Hakon of Maladon. Duke Alaric is my uncle. Perhaps you know him? My longships are the green-sailed ones in the harbour.” He knocked back the brandy. “Ah, a mandolin!” He spied the troubadour. “May I?”

  Hakon took the instrument, strumming with his injured hand, and immediately music began to flow like liquid gold. “I’m better on the harp, but I’ve tried these a few times.”

  “Oh, would you sing for us?” Astrid, pressing her gifts against him.

  And that was that. I slunk back to my table while Golden Boy held the tavern spellbound with a gloriously rich tenor, running through all their favourite songs. I chewed my lukewarm roast and found it hard to swallow, my ale sour rather than salt. I glowered through narrowed eyes as Hakon stood bracketed by Edda, Astrid, and various other wenches drawn from the shadows by his cheap show.

  At last I could take it no longer and got up to go out back for a piss. A final resentful glance at Hakon saw him disentangling from Astrid to follow me out. I pretended not to notice. Once in the blustery yard, rather than making immediately for the latrine I waited, leaving the door ajar and listening for his approach.

  The wind had picked up something fierce and put me in mind to play a trick I’d used a time or two back in Red March. On hearing him take the handle I gave the door a hearty kick, slamming it shut. A meaty thud and an oath rewarded me. I counted to three and hauled the door open.

  “Hell! Are you all right, man?” He was on his backside, clutching his face. “The wind must have caught the door. Terrible thing.”

  “. . . be okay.” Both hands still clasped over his nose, the injured one atop the good.

  I crouched beside him. “Best have a look.” And pulled back his bad hand. Immediately that familiar warmth built, and with it came an idea both despicable and delicious in equal parts. I gripped his bitten hand tight. The day went dim around me.

  “Ow! What the—” Hakon pulled away.

  “You’re fine.” I hauled him to his feet. Fortunately he helped, because I could barely lift myself.

  “But what—”

  “You’re just a bit dazed.” I steered him back into the tavern room. “You got hit by a door.”

  Astrid and Edda converged on Golden Boy and I stepped away, letting them at their prey. As I left I tugged the loose end of the bloodstained cloth about his hand and pulled it away with me.

  “What—” Hakon lifted his uncovered hand.

  “How many babies did you save?” I said it quiet enough over my shoulder as I returned to my table, but too loud to miss.

  “There’s no bite there!” Astrid exclaimed.

  “Not even a scratch.” Edda stepped back as if Hakon’s lies might be contagious.

  “But I—” Hakon stared at his hand, holding it up even higher, turning it this way and that in astonishment.

  “He can pay for his own damn brandy!” The warrior at the bar.

  “A cheap trick.” The thickset woman, slamming down her tankard of ale.

  “He’s no kin of Alaric!” Anger starting to colour the complaints.

  “I doubt he’s spoke a true word since he came in.”

  “Liar!”

  “Thief!”

  “Wife-beater!” That last one was me.

  The crowd folded about poor Hakon, their shouts drowning him out, punches flying. Somehow he made it through them, half-running through the street door, half-thrown. He sprawled in the mud, slipped, fell, scrambled up, and was gone, the door slamming behind him.

  I leaned back in my chair and took the last chunk of pork off my knife. It tasted sweet. I can’t say I was entirely proud about using the healing gift of angels to screw over the better man just for being more handsome, taller, and more talented than me, but then again I couldn’t bring myself to feel too bad about it either. I looked out over the crowd and wondered which of the girls to reel back in.

  “You, boy.” A stout ginger-haired man blocked my view of Astrid.

  “I’m—”

  “I don’t care who you are, you’re in my seat.” The fellow had the kind of aggressive red face that makes you want to slap it, his bulk girded in thick leathers set with black iron studs, knife and hatchet at his hips.

  I stood up—not without effort, for healing Hakon’s bite wound had taken a lot out of me. I towered over the man, which is always unfortunate if you want an excuse to duck out of a fight. In any event, standing was a necessary part of the process since I intended to vacate the chair rather than get cut into chunks over the issue. I puffed out my cheeks even so and blustered a piece—you can’t let the weakness show or you’re dead.

  “Men of my standing don’t cross the seas to brawl in taverns. Damned if I care which chair I’m in.” The weight of my sword tugged at me and I wished Snorri hadn’t forced the thing on me. It’s always easier to back out of such confrontations if you can claim to have left your sharp iron at home.

  “Dirty bastard, aren’t you?” The Norseman looked up at me with a sneer. “I hope you’ve not left any of that stain on my chair.” He frowned in pantomime. “Or doesn’t that stain come off however you scrub?”

  To be fair we were probably equally dirty, with his grime smeared over skin so fish-belly white you could see the veins snaking blue paths underneath, and mine the proud olive hue that a man of Red March retains however long it’s been since he saw the sun, darkened still further with Mother’s heritage from the Indus.

  “Your chair.” I stepped aside, indicating the free seat. My whole attention focused on the man, every muscle I owned ready for action.

  The tavern held quiet now, anticipating violence and waiting for the show. Sometimes such things can’t be avoided—unless you’re a true professional. Most, for example, wouldn’t think to just run like hell.

  “It is dirty!” The Viking pointed to the chair, as filthy as any other in the place. “Suppose you get down there and clean it. Right now.” More men pressed through the street door, not that he needed the backup.

  “I’m sure a cleaner chair can be found for you.” I puffed up, pretending I thought he was joking and hoping the size of me would intimidate the man.

  Just as cowards often have an instinct for trouble, many bullies have a nose for fear. Some small clue hidden in the way I carried myself told him I wouldn’t be a problem. “I said, you do it, foreigner.” He raised a fist to menace me.

  Snorri loomed behind the man, caught his wrist, broke it, and tossed him into the corner. “We’ve no time for games, Jal. There’s three boatloads of Maladon sailors headed up here—something about Lord Hakon being set upon . . . anyway, we don’t want to get caught up in it.”

  And with that he bundled me through the room, with Arne, Tuttugu, and the quins in tow, and out the back door.

  “We’ll make camp in the hills,” he said, hefting open a gate in the wall
of the enclosed yard.

  And like that my dreams of a warm bed and warmer company blew away in a cold wind.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I trailed along at the back of the party, bent double under my pack. It felt as though Snorri had decided it was important we each took several large rocks with us to the Bitter Ice. Tuttugu laboured along beside me, short of breath and walking awkwardly.

  “You ‘applied’ the paste, then?”

  He nodded, striding on with the gait of a man who didn’t make it to the dunghole in time. “It really stings.”

  “That’ll be the mustard seed.” On reflection it had probably been fennel seed the recipe called for, but I decided not to mention it now.

  I shifted my pack to what turned out to be a less comfortable position. “So, Tuttugu, looking forwards to wetting your axe in the blood of your enemies?” I needed some insight into the Viking mind-set. My only escape route lay through understanding what made these men tick.

  “Honestly?” Tuttugu glanced ahead at the others, the first pair of quins some twenty yards farther up the slope.

  “Let’s try honesty first and move on to lies if it proves too upsetting.”

  “Honestly . . . I’d much rather be back in Trond with a big plate of liver and onions. I could settle there, do a spot of fishing, find a wife.”

  “And the axe-wetting?”

  “Scares me shitless. The only thing that stops me from running away in battle is knowing everyone else is faster than me and I’d get cut down from behind. The best chance lies in facing the enemy head-on. If the gods had given me longer legs . . . well, I’d be gone.”

  “Hmmm.” I shifted the pack to the least comfortable position so far. The thing was already making my lungs ache. “So why are you trekking up this mountain?”

  Tuttugu shrugged. “I’m not brave like you. But I’ve got nothing else. These are my people. I can’t leave them. And if the Undoreth really have all been slaughtered . . . someone has to pay. Even if I don’t want to be the one to make them—someone has to pay.”

  • • •

  Toiling across the mountainside gave fresh impetus to the finding of reasons not to go. With gritted teeth I put in the effort needed to catch up to Snorri at the head of our trek.

  “This Broke-Oar of yours. He’s a war leader, important amongst his people?”

  “He has a reputation. His over-clan is the Hardassa.” Snorri nodded. “Many followers, but he doesn’t rule in Hardanger. He’s feared more than loved. He has a way about him. When he focuses on a man, many find it hard to resist him—they’re swept along with his energy—but when he turns away, often that man will remember reasons to hate him again.”

  “Even so.” I paused to recover my breath. “Even so. He’s not going to spend year after year sitting in this little fort in an icy wasteland? Not a man like that? You can’t expect to find him where you left him?”

  “We weren’t just buying furs in Trond, Jal.” Snorri glanced back at the stragglers. Well, straggler. Tuttugu. “There’s no other place in the North like Trond for finding out what’s going on. Tales come in on the ships. Sven Broke-Oar has been raiding up and down the coast. The Waylander and Crassis clans in Otins Fjord, the Ice Jarls in Myänar Fjord, and the Hørost on the Grey Coast. All of them have been hit, and hard. Many captives, many slaughtered. And last reports have him entering the Uulisk. There’s nothing there for him except the trek to the fort. He’s set to winter there. Ice locks up all the high North in the long night. Everyone draws in, holds fast, waits for spring. The Broke-Oar reckons himself secure at the Black Fort. We’ll teach him a different lesson.”

  I had no answer to that, other than that I was a worse teacher of lessons than I was a pupil, and I was a terrible pupil.

  • • •

  We trudged on, mile after mile, up unforgiving slopes of bedrock shelving skyward from the sea and angled towards daunting heights. Weariness took me into dark places. I grumbled about the weight of my pack until I hadn’t even the energy for that. Several times I thought about ditching my sword just to be free of the weight. At last I fell into a kind of reverie, plodding on whilst replaying the highlights of my afternoon, Astrid and Edda’s highlights in particular. All of a sudden it hit me. The man who had stepped in, lowered his hood a fraction, then ducked out . . . a band of raven-dark hair, greying to the sides.

  “Edris!” I stopped in my tracks. “Snorri! That fucker Edris Dean was there. In town!”

  Up ahead Snorri turned, raising a hand to stop the quins. “I saw him too,” he called back. “With a dozen men of the Hardanger. Another reason we left in a hurry. The Red Vikings are a significant force in Trond.”

  They waited until Tuttugu and I caught up. “We’ll camp here,” Snorri said. “And keep a watch for anyone following up the slopes.”

  Sleeping on mountains is a miserable business, but I have to admit that it’s less miserable in a thick fur-lined sleep-sack with a canvas and leather awning to divert the worst of the wind around you. Snorri and the others had spent their money well and we had an untroubled night.

  Come morning we broke fast on black bread, cold chicken, apples, and other perishables from Trond. Before long we’d be back on hardtack and dried meat, but for the now we ate like kings. At least like impoverished kings who happen to be stuck on a mountainside.

  “Why the hell is Edris in Trond?” I asked the question I’d been too bone-tired to voice the previous evening.

  “The thing we’re chasing—being dragged after—it seeded its trail with trouble for us.” Snorri chewed off another piece of bread, attacking it like meat on the bone. “The Dead King lies behind all this, and he collects men, living ones as well as the dead. The right kind of man he’ll draw to him. Men like the Broke-Oar and this Edris.”

  “Edris will be chasing us now?” I hoped not. The man scared me, and more than trouble did in general. Something about him gnawed at me. Whatever quality ran through individuals like Maeres Allus, Edris had his measure of it too. An understated menace—the kind you know that when it does speak will be worse than any threat or posture from men capable only of common cruelty.

  “Trying to get ahead of us, most like.” Snorri swallowed and stood, stretching until his bones creaked. “He’ll aim for the Black Fort, or maybe the mining at the Ice first. If they’re warned we don’t stand much chance.”

  We didn’t stand a chance in any event. I kept that opinion to myself. Perhaps if Edris did warn them, the others would see it was hopeless and abandon the effort.

  “All right, but . . .” I got up too, lugging my pack up onto my shoulder. “Explain to me again why a horror from Red March runs a thousand miles and more to some godforsaken hole in the ice?”

  “I don’t know it all, Jal. Sageous told me some of it, though that may be lies. Skilfar had more to say—”

  “What? When?” I didn’t remember any of that.

  “She didn’t speak to you?” Snorri raised his brows.

  “Of course she did. You heard her. Some nonsense about my Great-Uncle Garyus and being led by my cock. Dreadful old crone, mad as a brush.”

  “I meant . . . without words.” He frowned. “She spoke in my head, the whole time.”

  “Hmmm.” I wondered how much faith to place in words spoken in Snorri ver Snagason’s head. It seemed quite crowded in there and who knew how many voices Aslaug might use? Or perhaps Baraqel might be responsible for Skilfar’s words not reaching me—though whether he would be acting in my best interests with such selective deafness, I didn’t know. “Remind me.”

  “The unborn are hard to summon. Very hard. Only a few come through, where the conditions are right, where the timing, the place, the circumstances all align.”

  “Well, anyone knows that!” All new to me.

  “And so they are scattered.”

  “Yes.”

  “But
what the Dead King has ordered in the Bitter Ice, the work his minions are accomplishing there . . . is drawing the unborn, from all corners of the earth. To one place. Perhaps when your friend at the opera found himself targeted and escaped he abandoned whatever mission called him there and ran for the gathering in the North. Or maybe he was always bound there after whatever business drew him into Vermillion.”

  “Ah.” Oh hell. “But your wife is in the Black Fort, right? And the unborn are beneath the Bitter Ice? Yes? So we never have to meet them . . . right?”

  Snorri didn’t answer immediately, only started walking.

  “Yes?” At his back.

  “We’re taking the Black Fort.”

  I tried to remember Snorri’s tale from the tavern in Den Hagen. The Broke-Oar had told him his son was safe. That’s all he said. He’d also talked Snorri into getting clubbed around the back of the head. All about me the Norsemen were hefting packs, moving on. Already I could feel the faintest tug as the curse binding me to their leader began to stretch out across the slope. “Crap on it.” And I followed in his footsteps.

  The True North is much as Snorri described it from experience and much as I described it from ignorance. All of it appears to be sloping up to start with, though later it slopes both up and down as if in a great hurry to get somewhere. The air is thin, cold, and full of winged insects that want to suck your blood. Drawing your breath through your teeth helps strain the buggers out and keep your lungs clear. Also they die away as you gain height.

  Much of the place is bare rock. As soon as you gain any altitude it’s bare rock covered with last winter’s snow. From the heights you can see mountains, mountains, and more mountains, with lakes and pine forests huddling in the dents between them. I took Tuttugu’s advice early on and bound about my boots the rabbit furs and sealskin overguards from my pack. With this and my feet in thick woollen socks the snows didn’t freeze my toes. It would only get worse as we headed north, though, into the Jarlson Uplands, where the wind off the interior came armed with knives.

  We paused in the lee of one high ridge whilst Snorri and Arne discussed our route.