Mark Lawrence - Prince of Fools

“Someone is seeding our path to stop us, but they’re not chasing us.”

“But the thing in Vermillion-it escaped, Sageous said we would meet it, he-”

“He told me the same thing.” Snorri nodded. “You don’t want to believe much that man says, but I think he’s right. It did escape. I suspect the creature you saw in the opera house was an unborn, one grown old in its power, the target of the Silent Sister’s spell. Probably an important lieutenant to the Dead King. A captain of his armies maybe.”

“But it’s not following us?” It was following us. I knew it.

“Did you not listen to the dream-witch, Jal?”

“He said a lot of things. . Mostly about killing you-and how I could go home if I did.”

“The curse, the Silent Sister’s spell? Why’s it still on us?”

That did ring a bell. “Because the unborn wasn’t destroyed. The enchantment is an act of will. It needs to complete its purpose.” I crossed my arms, pleased with myself.

“That’s right. And we’re heading north and the spell is giving us no problems.”

“Yes.” I frowned. This was going somewhere bad.

“The unborn isn’t chasing us, Jal. We’re chasing it. The thing’s gone north.”

“Hell.” I tried to calm myself. “But. . but, come on, what are the odds? We’re headed for the same place?”

“The Silent Sister sees the future.” Snorri touched a finger to his eye. “Her magic is aimed towards tomorrow. The spell sought out a way to reach the unborn-it followed the path that would see it carried by someone, some somebodies, who would end up in the same place as its target.”

“Hell.” I hadn’t any more to say this time.

“Yup.”

We skirted the Gowfaugh until we found a trail, too wide for a deer path, too narrow for a woodsman’s track. On reflection, as we pushed our way along it, leading the horses and trying to avoid getting a branch in the eye, the Gowfaugh wasn’t the kind of forest you’d hope to find deer in. Or woodsmen.

“Forests.” Snorri rubbed at three parallel scratches on his bicep and shook his head. “I’ll be glad to be free of this one.”

“Woods where a man can hunt stag and boar, that’s what we have in Red March, with proper trees, not all this pine, with charcoal burners, timber cutters, the occasional bear or wolf. But in the North. .” I waved at the close-packed trunks, branches interlaced so a man would have to cut his path every yard of the way. “Dead places. Just trees and trees and more trees. Listen! Not even a bird.”

Snorri shouldered his way ahead. “Jal-this one point I’ll cede you. The south has better forests.”

We crumped along, following convoluted paths, footsteps muffled by the thick blanket of old dry needles. It didn’t take long to become lost. Even the sun offered few clues as to direction, its light coming diffuse from louring clouds.

“I do not want to spend a night in here.” The darkness would be utter.

“Eventually we’ll find a stream and follow it out.” Snorri snapped a branch from his path. Needles fell with a faint patter. “Shouldn’t take long. These are the Thurtans. You can’t take three steps without finding yourself ankle-deep in a river.”

I made no reply but followed him. It sounded like sense, but the Gowfaugh lay tinder-dry and I imagined the woven roots drinking up any stream before it penetrated half a mile.

The forest seemed to press closer on every side. The slow lives of trees overwhelming all else, insensate and implacable. The light started to fail early and we pressed on through a forest twilight, though far above us the sun still scraped across the treetops.

“I’d swap a gold coin for a clearing.” I would have paid that much for room to stretch my arms. Ron and Sleipnir followed behind, heads down, brushed on both sides, miserable in the way that only horses can be.

Somewhere the sun had started to sink. The temperature dropped with it, and in the half-light we struggled against unyielding walls of dead branches in the airless gloom. The noise when it came was startling, shattering the arboreal silence through which we had laboured so long.

“Deer?” More in hope than belief. Something big and less subtle than a deer, snapping branches as it moved.

“More than one.” Snorri nodded to the other side. The sound of dry wood breaking grew louder from that direction too.

Soon they were flanking us on both sides. Pale somethings. Tall somethings.

“They had to wait until it got dark.” I spat out dry needles and drew my sword with difficulty. I’d have no hope of swinging it.

Snorri stopped and turned. In the gloom I couldn’t see his eyes, but something in the stillness of the man told me they would be black, without feature or soul.

“They would have been wiser to come in the light.” His mouth moved, but it didn’t sound like him.

All of a sudden I wasn’t sure whether the path might not be the least safe place for me in the whole of Gowfaugh. One of the creatures flanking us drew momentarily closer and I saw a flash of pale arms, a man’s legs but naked and whitish-green. A glimpse of a white face, gums and teeth exposed in a snarl, a glittering eye fixed for a heartbeat on mine, betraying an awful hunger.

“Dead men!” I may have shrieked it.

“Almost.” And Snorri swung his axe in a great loop, shearing off branches in scores. I would have bet against even a blade of razor-honed Builder-steel carving through like that. Again, another huge loop. I lunged away, stopped only by Ron’s blunt head, blocking the path we’d forged. Snorri sang now, a wordless song, or perhaps a language lay behind it, but not of men, and he carved a space, ever more wide, until he strode from one side to hack deeper and then four paces to the other, five paces, six. The stumps of trees, some thicker than my arm, studded the space, poking up knee-high through drifts of fallen timber. In the clearing, despite open sky above, twilight-blue and cradling the evening star, it was darker than the forest. And the darkness trailed his axe.

“Wh-what?” Snorri came to a halt, panting. The twilight had taken on a new quality. The sun had set. Aslaug confined once more to whatever hell she inhabited. He looked down at his weapon. “It’s not a wood-axe! Gods damn it!”

I stepped closer, smartish, worried that corpse-white arms might reach for me from the darker shadows.

“Make a light, Jal. Quick.”

So with Snorri standing over me and the horses nervous, wedged along the trail, I fumbled in my pack, whilst all around us branches broke and pale men moved between the trees.

“Come out. I’ll bet you cut easier than wood,” Snorri called to them, though I detected an edge of fear in his voice-something I’d never heard before. I think the forest unnerved him more than the enemy within it. I found tinder and then flint, managing to drop both in the darkness, finding them again with trembling fingers. The scent of pine sap grew around us, strong and sickly, almost overpowering.

I struck spark to tinder as Snorri swung at the first of the men to rush from the trees. Branches snapped on all sides, more of them pushing through. An ill-advised glance upwards showed them lean and naked, pale greenish-white ghosts in the dimness. The passage of Snorri’s axe carved a great furrow through the creature from left hip to right nipple, slicing through gut, ribs, sternum, and lungs. Evidently the axe retained some edge despite being used to cut timber. Still the pine-man came on, the stink of sap overwhelming as the stuff oozed from his bloodless wound. At the last he tripped on a stump, crashed down, and became snarled in a mess of loose entrails and stray branches. By then Snorri had plenty of other problems to worry about.