Mark Lawrence - Prince of Fools

When it actually happened, nobody there was more surprised than me. My hand tingled. I’m sure all magic tingles-though it may have been pins and needles-then a peculiar brittle feeling stole from each fingertip, joining and spreading to the wrist. What I first took to be a paling of the flesh became a faint but unmistakable glow. Light started to leak around my fingers as if I were concealing something brighter than the sun within my grip, and a faint warmth rolled beneath my palm. Meegan stopped struggling and stared at me in horror, straining at his bonds. I pushed harder, willing hurt into the little bastard. Bright fracture lines started to spread across the back of my hand.

The light and the warmth seemed to draw on me, flow from my core to the single extremity where they burned. The day grew colder, the rocks harder, the pain in my ankle and throat sharp and insistent. The spreading cracks frightened me, too strong a reminder of the fissure that had chased me when I broke the Silent Sister’s spell.

“No!” I jerked my hand back, and the weight of exhaustion that settled on me nearly pressed me to the rocks.

A shadow loomed across us. “Have you broken him yet?” Snorri squatted beside me, wincing.

I lifted my head. It weighed several times more than it should. The rip in Meegan’s jerkin showed pale and unbroken skin beneath the blackening smears of blood, a faint scar recording where his wound had been. “Shit.”

Snorri tugged at the man’s gag. “Ready to talk?”

“I been ready since I came round,” Meegan said, trying to roll back into a sitting position. “I was trying to tell that one. No need for any rough stuff. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“Oh,” I said, vaguely disappointed, though it was exactly what I would have done in his position. “And we’re supposed to let you go after that, are we?”

Meegan swallowed. “It’d be right fair of you.” He had a nervous, sweaty way about him.

“Fair as twenty against two?” Snorri rumbled. He’d brought his axe with him and ran his thumb along its edge as he spoke.

“Ah, well.” Meegan swallowed again. “Weren’t anything personal. That’s just how many she paid for. Was just business for Edris. He spread her coin around and got together a bunch of us local men, fellas who’d seen some trouble, fellas who’d fought a battle or hired theirselves out for sharp-work before, that kind o’ thing.”

“She?” I knew plenty of women who’d like to see me take a beating, and not a few who might pay to have it done, but twenty men was excessive, and most of them would probably not want the castigation to be fatal.

Meegan nodded, eager to please, spittle drying on his chin, snot on his upper lip. “Edris said she were a fine-looking woman. Didn’t say it all polite like that, though, no sir.”

“You didn’t see her?” Snorri leaned in.

Meegan shook his head. “Edris made the deal. He ain’t local. Knows a lot of bad folk. Passes through once, twice a year.”

“She’ll be the necromancer. Did she have a name?” Snorri asked.

“Chella.” Meegan licked his lips. “Had Edris scared, she did. Never seen him scared afore. I didn’t want to meet her, not after that. Don’t care how tasty she were built.”

“And would you know where to find this Chella now?” Snorri’s great hands closed around the haft of his axe as if imagining it the necromancer’s throat.

Meegan shook his head, a quick shake like a dog flinching off water. “Ain’t from around here. A northerner, Edris said. Had a bottle of liquor off her, he did, for us all to toast the mission with. Some Gelleth brew, I think Darab said it was. Strange burn to it.” He smacked his lips. “Passing strange. Made you want more of it, though. Most like she’s from Gelleth. Perhaps she went back. Perhaps she’s watching us right now. Something stood the boys back up after you knocked ’em down.”

“What should we do?” I didn’t like the idea of some necromancer witch watching from the ridges, ready to send her dead men after us. The whole idea had sounded faintly ridiculous back in Grandmother’s court. I’d been sure most of it was lies, and whatever parts of it might have held truth didn’t seem so scary. Mouldy old corpses jerking witlessly after frightened peasants seemed no threat to proper soldiery. But miles from civilization-and Rhonish civilization at that-outnumbered by the dead on treacherous ground, my view of things had suffered an about turn. “I mean, we should do something.”

“With him?” Snorri kicked Meegan’s bound feet.

“About her,” I said.

“My goal is in the North. If anything gets in my way, I’ll put a hole through it. If not, I’ll leave it behind.”

“We pick up the pace, keep heading north. I like it.” When a plan involves running away, I’m in.

“And him?” None of the solutions for Meegan looked good. I didn’t want to let him go, I didn’t want to keep him, but whilst I’ll do my fellow man down at every turn, I’ve no murder in me.

“Let him join his friends.” Snorri knotted a hand in the ropes around Meegan’s wrists and hoisted him to his feet.

“Hey now, that hardly seems fair. He was going to kill-”

Snorri took three strides, dragging Meegan to the edge where the rock fell away in a single steep step. . and pushed him over. “Those friends.”

Meegan’s wail of despair ended with a wet thunk and the sound of something, or things, running towards the place he hit. Snorri met my shocked gaze. “I try to be a fair man, to live with honour, but come against me armed and looking to take my life, and you will not walk away again.”

Nights spent on mountains are not to be recommended. Nights where the dark is full of the sounds of dead men trying to climb up to where you’re shivering under thin blankets, even less so.

In the end the morning came. That’s what matters.

“So you healed that man.” Snorri led the way across the mountain face, looking for a way down that would not be accessible to the corpses in our wake.

“No, I didn’t.” Deny everything was a policy I’d adopted at an early age. “Shit!” I missed my footing and set my boot down harder than intended. The white-hot needles of pain lancing up from my ankle let me know that getting down off the mountain was going to hurt.

“He had a rip in his arm deeper than the cut I’ve got on my belly.”

“No. Just his jerkin. Big hole in his jerkin, little scrape on his arm. He bled a lot. That’s probably what fooled you. I just wiped the blood away some.” I could see where this was going. Snorri wanted the same treatment. Well, no. The cut on Meegan’s arm had sucked out too much of my energy as it was. A whole night with the DeVeer sisters might have left me more go in my legs. Snorri’s injuries would leave me crawling. “Sorry but I- Ouch! Christ bleeding, that hurt!” A light knock of ankle against boulder.

“Of course,” said Snorri, “a man who could erase a gash like that would have mended his own ankle by now. I must have been mistaken.”

I took three more painful steps whilst that one sank in, then sat on the nearest suitable boulder, “You know, it does hurt quite a lot. I’ll just try to rub some life back into it.” I tried to be surreptitious about it, but he just stood there watching, with his arms folded, like some big suspicious Norseman. The thought of walking down on a sound ankle proved too much temptation. With teeth gritted and jaw set, I bound both hands around the joint and strained. Snorri raised a brow. I reached for whatever magic had burned in me and pushed harder.

“I, erm, can leave you to it if you need a quiet moment.” The tight line of his lips in that black beard gave no indication that he was mocking me.