Mark Lawrence - The Liar's key

Getting on your feet on a steep incline with your hands bound behind you is not easy. In fact I didn’t quite manage it. I lurched, half-stood, unbalanced, and set off down the mountainside flat out, desperately trying to get each foot in front of me in time to keep from diving face first into the rock.

Knui moved quickly. I aimed at him as the only chance for stopping my headlong dash. He’d already advanced a couple of yards and was unslinging his axe when, totally out of control, I cannoned into him. Even braced against the impact, Knui had no chance. Wiry and tougher than leather he might be, but I was the bigger man and carrying more momentum than anyone on a mountainside would ever want. Bones crunched, I carried him backward, we held for a broken second teetering on the cliff edge, and with a single cry we both went over.

Hitting Alrik had been harder and more painful than I wanted or expected. Hitting Knui proved much worse. Both were gentle taps compared to hitting the ground. For the second time in under a minute I passed out.

I came to lying face down on something soft. And damp. And. . smelly. I couldn’t see much or move my arms.

“Get up, Jalan.” For a moment I couldn’t understand who was speaking. “Up!”

Aslaug! I couldn’t get up-so I rolled. The softness proved to be Knui. Also the dampness and the smell. His face registered surprise, the expression frozen in. The back of his head had. . spread, the rocks crimson with it. I struggled to my knees, hurting myself on the stones. Aslaug stood beside me, against the cliff, her head and shoulders rising above the edge where Knui had stood. Shadow coiled up about her, vine-like, her features darkening.

“Y-You said the drop was fifteen foot!” I spat blood.

“I was next to you, Jalan. How could I see?” An infuriating smile on her lips. “It got you moving though. And any fall on a mountain can kill a man, with a little luck.”

“You! Well. . I.” I couldn’t find the right words, the fear had started to catch up with me.

“Better get your hands free. .” She pressed back against the stone, crouching now, indistinct as the horizon ate the sun and gloom swelled from every hollow.

“I. .” But Aslaug had gone and I was speaking to the rocks.

Knui’s axe lay a little further down the slope. I shuffled toward it and with considerable difficulty positioned myself so I could start to saw at the hide strip around my wrists, watching all the while for other Hardassa men or Edris himself to come running into view.

Even a sharp axe takes a god-awful long time to cut through tough hide. Sitting there by Knui’s corpse it felt like forever. Every few seconds I let my gaze slip from lookout duty to check he hadn’t moved. I had a poor record with killing men on mountainsides. They tended to get up again and prove more trouble dead than alive.

At last the hide parted and I rubbed my wrists. Looking up, Aslaug’s second lie became apparent. She had said if I head butted Alrik where she pointed that he wouldn’t be getting up again. Yet there he was, standing at the top of the four-foot “cliff” that Knui and I sat at the bottom of. He didn’t seem pleased. More importantly, he had his hatchet in one hand and a wide-bladed knife with a serrated back in the other.

“Edris will want me alive!” I considered running but didn’t want to bet against how well Alrik could throw that hatchet. Also he could probably catch me. I thought about the axe lying on the rocks behind me. But I’d never swung one. Not even for splitting logs.

The Viking’s glance flitted to Knui, lying there with the rocks painted a dark scarlet all around him. “Fuck Edris.”

Two words told me all I needed to know. Alrik was going to murder me. He tensed, readying himself to jump down. And an axe hit him in the side of his head. The blade sheared through his left eye, across the bridge of his nose, and stopped midway along the eyebrow on the other side. Alrik fell to the ground and Snorri stepped into view. He put one large foot on the side of Alrik’s face and levered his axe free with an awful cracking sound that made me retch.

“How’s the Sea-Troll ?” Snorri asked.

“ I’m fine! Thank you very much.” I remained seated and patted myself down. “No, not fine. Bruised and damn near murdered!” Seeing Snorri suddenly made it all seem much more real and the horror of it all settled on me. “Edris Dean was going to gut me with a knife and-”

“Edris?” Snorri interrupted. “So he’s behind this?” He rolled Alrik’s corpse off the drop with his foot.

Tuttugu came into view, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “The southerner? I thought it might just be the Hardassa. .” He caught sight of me. “Jal! How’s the boat?”

“What is it with northmen and their damn boats? A prince of Red March nearly died on this-”

“Can you carry us away from the Red Vikings?” Snorri asked.

“Well no, but-”

“How’s the damn boat then?”

I took the point. “It’s fine. . but it’s about a spear’s length from the longboat that these two came in.” I nodded to the corpses at my outstretched feet. “And there are over a dozen more with it, and two dozen on the mountain.”

“Good that Snorri found you then!” Tuttugu rubbed his sides like he always did when upset. “We were hoping they’d come ashore somewhere else. .”

“How-” I stood up, thinking to ask how it was that Snorri did find me. Then I saw her. A little further back from the edge from where Snorri and Tuttugu looked down on me. A Norse woman, fair hair divided into a score of tight braids, each set with an iron rune tablet, a style I’d seen among older women in Trond, though none ever sported more than a handful of such runes.

Snorri saw my surprise and gestured at the woman. “Kara ver Huran, Jal.” And at me. “Jal, Kara.” She spared me a brief nod. I guessed her to be about halfway between me and Snorri in age, tall, her figure hidden beneath a long black cape of tooled leather. I wouldn’t call her pretty. . too weak a word. Striking. Bold-featured.

I bowed as she drew closer. “Prince Jalan Kendeth of Red March at your ser-”

“My boat is in the next cove. Come, I’ll lead you there.” She pinned me with remarkably blue eyes as if taking an uncomfortably accurate measure of me, then turned to go. Snorri and Tuttugu made to follow.

“Wait!” I stumbled about, trying to gather my wits. “Snorri!”

“What?” Glancing back over his shoulder.

“The necromancer. She’s here too!”

Snorri turned back after Kara, shaking his head. “Better hurry then!”

I set both hands to the top of the “cliff” and prepared to heft myself up onto the slope above when I saw my sword hilt jutting over Alrik’s shoulder. He lay on his side, not far from Knui. Above the nose his head was little more than skull fragments, hair and brain. I hesitated. I’d killed my first man with that sword, albeit mostly by accident-at least he was the first one I remembered. I’d notched that sword battling against the odds in the Black Fort, wedged it hilt-deep in a Fenris wolf. If I’d ever done anything that might truly count as manly, honourable, or brave it was done holding that blade.

I took a step toward Alrik. Another. The fingers of his right hand twitched. And I ran like hell.

Deep gullies, rain-carved through ancient lava flows, brought us down to the cove where Kara’s boat lay at anchor.

“It’s a long way out,” I said, peering through the gloom. The footing in the gullies would have been dangerous in full day. Coming down in deep shadow had been practically begging for a broken ankle. And now with the night thick about us Kara expected me to swim toward a distant and slightly darker clot of sea that was allegedly a boat. I could see the gentle phosphorescence of the waves as the foam surged over the jagged rocks where the beach should be, and beyond them. . nothing else. “A very long way out!”