Mark Lawrence - Prince of Fools

Snorri dropped his gear and ran out along the long-quay, sure-footed, stepping where it would bear his weight and losing no time over the choices. He’d run the long-quay all his life.

“Fool girl! You know you’re not to-” Fear made his voice harsh as he fell to his knees and scooped Emy into his arms. He bit back the anger. “You could have fallen, Einmyria!” A child raised to the Undoreth should have more sense, even at five. He held her tight to his chest, still careful not to crush her, his heart hammering. Emy had been a babe at her mother’s breast when Jarl Torsteff led the Undoreth against Hoddof of Iron Tors. At no point in that battle-not charging the shield wall, not wet with Edric ver Magson’s blood, not pinned by stockade timber with two men of Iron Tors approaching-had Snorri known fear such as that which seized him seeing his own child hanging over dark waters.

Snorri held Emy away from him. “What were you doing?” Soft now, almost beseeching.

Emy bit her lip, struggling to hold back the tears filling her eyes-the same cornflower blue as her mother’s. “Peggy’s in the water.”

“Peggy?” Snorri tried to recall a child of that name. He knew all the children by sight, of course, but. . it came to him, a wash of relief erasing any exasperation. “Your doll? You’re out here looking for a peg doll you lost before the snows?”

Emy nodded, still close to tears. “You find her! You find her, Papi.”

“I don’t-She’s lost, Einmyria.”

“You can find her. You can.”

“Some lost things can be found again and some can’t.” He broke off his explanation, seeing in his daughter’s eyes the exact moment that a child first understands there are limits on what her parents can do, rather than just limits on what they choose to do. He knelt before her in a moment’s silence, somewhat less than he had been just seconds before, and Emy a half step closer to the woman she would one day become.

“Come on.” He stood, lifting her. “Back to your mama.” And he walked back, careful now, watching the planks, placing each foot with precision. Carrying Emy up the slope, Snorri echoed with an old pain, the hurt of every parent separated from their child, whether by a sudden slip into deep and hungry water or by slow steps along divergent paths bound for the future.

• • •

They came that night.

Snorri had often said that Freja saved his life. She took from him the rage that had forged his skill with axe and spear, setting in its place new passions. He said she had given him purpose where all he had before was confusion that he hid, as most young men do, behind an illusion of action. Perhaps she saved his life again that night, some dream-murmured warning thinning his sleep.

What woke him, Snorri couldn’t say. He lay in the dark and the warmth of his covers, Freja close enough to touch but not touching. For long moments he heard only the sound of her breathing and the creak of ice re-forming. He had no concern over attack-the jarls had settled the worst of their squabbles, for the now. In any case, only a fool would risk a raid with the season barely starting to turn.

Snorri set a hand to the smoothness of Freja’s hip. She muttered some sleepy rejection. He pinched.

“Bear?” she asked. Sometimes a white bear would nose around, take a goat. The best thing to do was to let it. His father advised, “Never eat a white bear’s liver.” As a boy, Snorri had asked why, were they poisonous? “Yes,” his father had said, “but the main reason is that if you try to, the bear will be busy eating yours, and he has bigger teeth.”

“Maybe.” Not a bear. Where his surety came from, Snorri didn’t know.

He slid from the furs and the cold gripped him. Clad only in skin, he took down his axe, Hel. His father had given him the weapon, a single broad blade, half-moon cutting edge. “This blade is the start of a journey,” his father had said. “It has sent many men to Hel, and it will send her more souls before its time is done.” With the axe in his hand Snorri felt clothed, the cold laying no finger upon him for fear he might hack it off.

Someone stumbled outside, close by the hut, yet not so close that it left no room for doubt. “That you, Haggerson? Taking a piss on the wrong ground?” Sometimes Haggerson would drink with Magson and Anulf the Ship, then stumble off in search of home-lost even though he had but forty huts to choose from.

A soft but penetrating cry went up, almost the call of a loon, but not quite, and in any case the birds were silent before the ice left. Snorri slipped the latch, set the ball of his foot to the timber, and kicked his door open as hard as he could. Someone howled in pain and staggered back. Snorri barrelled through, into a moonless night pierced by lantern light, more lanterns being unhooded by the moment. Snow lay thick on the ground. It fell in fat and heavy flakes: spring snow, not the tiny crystals of winter. Snorri’s bare feet nearly slid from beneath him, but he kept his balance, swung, and sank his axe into the spine of the man still clutching his face after kissing the door. A savage tug ripped the blade free of the man’s lower back as he collapsed.

“Raid!” Snorri bellowed it. “To arms!”

Lower down the slope, a fire struggled to keep burning on the turf roof of a hut closer to shore. Dark shapes hurried past amidst white flurries, caught in the glow for a moment, then swallowed by the night once more. Foreigners, then: Vikings might set torch to thatch when raiding in warmer climes, but none of them would waste time on that in the North.

Figures converged on Snorri, three rounding the hut, half-running, one tripping over the log stack. Others came up the slope. Smaller, scrawny shapes that made no sense to the eye. Snorri rushed the closest trio. Darkness, flame, and shadow offered little chance to pick out the glimmer of weapons and defend himself. Snorri made no attempt at it, relying instead on the logic that says if you kill your foe immediately you have no need of shield or armour, no need to parry or to evade. He swung, double-handed, arms extended, body turning with the blow. Hel sheared through the first man’s head, hit the second in the shoulder, and buried deep enough to leave his arm swinging on threads. Snorri reversed his turn, feeling but not seeing the hot spray of blood across his shoulders as he spun. The rotation brought him level with the third man, rising with an oath amongst the scattered logs. Snorri’s shin caught the man’s face, his momentum wrenched Hel free, and he brought the axe down, overhead, as he had so many times before in this very spot-a different axe, splitting logs for the fire. The result was much the same.

Something hissed past his ear. Cries and screams went up across Eight Quays now, some terrified, some the terminal sounds men make when wounded beyond repair. He could hear Freja shouting at the children inside the hut, getting them to stand behind her by the stone hearth. Something sharp struck him between the shoulders, not hard, but sharp. He turned, sighting figures atop Hender’s hut, straddling the roof, dislodging the snow to fall in miniature avalanches, some kind of sticks in their hands. . A dart struck him in the shoulder, no longer than his finger. He pulled at it, running for Hender’s doorway, where he would be out of sight from the roof. The dart resisted, its barbs hooked deep in his flesh, and yet there was no pain, just a numbness. Snorri ripped the thing free, careless of the damage.

Hender’s door hung from one leather hinge, men in black rags huddled over something at the far end of the main chamber, hinted at by the glow of a dying fire. The place stank of rot, so bad it made Snorri’s eyes sting, rotten meat and an acrid bog stench. Dark footprints marked the floor around a pool of blood before the hearth.