Mark Lawrence - Prince of Fools

“We could pop in there and see if the ale tastes any better here?” I pointed to a tavern just ahead, barrels placed in the street before it for men to rest their tankards on, a painted wooden swordfish hanging above the door.

“Maladon beer is fine.” Snorri walked on past the entrance.

“It would be if they forgot to salt it.” Foul stuff, but sometimes foul will do. I’d asked for wine back in the town of Goaten and they’d looked at me as if I’d asked them to roast a small child for my meal.

“Come on.” Snorri turned towards the sea, waving away a man trying to sell him dried fish. “We’ll check the harbour first.” A tension had built in him as we approached the coast, and when we first saw the sea from a high ridge he had sunk to his knees and muttered heathen prayers. Since the troll-stones he’d been walking with such purpose I had to nudge Sleipnir along to keep up.

Several boats were tied at mooring points along the dock front, amongst them one that required neither loading nor unloading.

“A longboat,” I said, spotting at last the classic lines that Snorri must have recognized from the coast road. I slipped from Sleipnir’s back as Snorri strode towards the vessel, breaking into a run over the last fifty yards. Even a landlubber like myself could see that the ship had been through rough times, the mast broken some yards short of its proper height, the sail ragged.

Without slowing Snorri reached the harbour’s edge and dropped from sight, presumably onto the unseen deck of the longboat. Cries and shouts went up. I prepared myself for the sight of carnage.

Making a slow advance and peering over the side, with the caution of a man not wanting a spear in the forehead, I expected to be met with a boat full of blood and body parts. Instead Snorri stood amidst the rowing benches grinning like a loon with six or seven pale and hairy men crowding around him, exchanging welcome punches. And all of them trying to talk at once in some godforsaken language that sounded like it needed to be retched up from the depths of a man’s belly.

“Jal!” He glanced up and waved. “Get down here!”

I debated the matter, but there seemed no escape. I slung Sleipnir’s reins over one of the ship lines and went off to find a means of descent that didn’t involve breaking both ankles on arrival.

Disentangling myself from a rickety ladder of salty rope and rotting planks, I turned to find myself an object of study for eight Vikings. The most immediate thing to strike me was not the traditional Norse “fist of welcome” but the fact that most of them were identical.

“Quins now, is it?” I counted them off.

Snorri slung an arm about two of the five, white-blond types with ice-chip eyes and beards far more close-cut than the usual “big-enough-to-lose-a-baby-in” style of the North. “Sore point, Jal. These are Jarl Torsteff’s octuplets. Atta sits at Odin’s table now, in Valhalla, with Sex and Sjau.” He cast me a stern look and I kept my face a mask. “These are Ein, Tveir, Thrir, Fjórir, and Fimm.”

My guess was that I’d just had a lesson in counting to eight in Norse, and simultaneously a look at the meagre state of Jarl Torsteff’s imagination. I decided to call them the quins in any event. Less morbid.

“Also Tuttugu.” Snorri reached out to pummel the shoulder of a short fat man. A ginger beard fluffed out from both sides of the man’s head with great enthusiasm but failed to quite meet across his chins. Older this one, midthirties, a decade over the quins. “And Arne Dead-Eye, our greatest shot!” This last the oldest of them, tall, thin, melancholy, bad teeth, balding, grey in the black of his beard. If I’d seen him bent over weeds in a field I’d have thought him a common peasant.

“Ah,” I said, hoping we wouldn’t have to mix blood or spit in each other’s hands. “Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

Seven Vikings looked at me as if I might be some kind of hitherto unseen fish they’d just landed. “Run into trouble?” I pointed at the broken mast, but unless the thirty or so additional men required to fill the rowing benches were up at the Swordfish enjoying tankards of salt-beer, then the trouble had entailed much more than a shortening of the mast and some ripped sailcloth.

“Drowned Isles trouble!” A quin, possibly Ein.

“We don’t have a settlement on Umbra any more.” This another quin, directed at Snorri.

“Call them the Dead Isles now.” Tuttugu, jowls wobbling as he shook his head.

“Necromancers chased us onto our ships. Storms chased us south.” Arne Dead-Eye, looking at the calluses on his hand.

“Got wrecked on Brit. Took months to repair. And the locals?” A quin spat over the side and a remarkably long way out to sea.

“Been hopping along the coast ever since, trying to get home.” Arne shook his head. “Dodging Normardy’s navy, patrol boats off Arrow, Conaught pirates. . And Aegir hates us. Sent storm after storm to beat us back.”

“I was expecting sea serpents next; a leviathan, why not?” Tuttugu rolled his eyes. “But we’re here. Friendly waters. Few more repairs and we can cross the Karlswater!” He slapped a random quin across the shoulders.

“You don’t know?” I asked.

Snorri’s brow furrowed and he moved to the side of the boat, leaning out to stare north across the open water.

“Know what?” From many mouths, all eyes on me.

I realized my mistake. Don’t board a man’s ship bearing bad news. You’re likely to leave again swiftly and by the wet side.

“We know there’s no word of the Undoreth in Den Hagen.” One of the quins, Ein with the scar at the corner of his eye. “No longships docking. Tales come from the Hardanger ports of raids along the Uulisk, but no detail. We’ve been here four days and that’s all we’ve discovered. You know more?”

“Snorri’s the one to tell it,” I said. “My stories are all from him and I’d not trust myself to remember them right.” And that turned all those pointed stares Snorri’s way.

He stood, towering above us all, grim, a hand on his axe. “It’s a thing that must be told where we can toast the dead, brothers.” And he walked to the harbour wall, climbing quickly up a series of jutting stones that I’d missed on my way down.

• • •

Snorri led us to a dockside tavern where the drinking tables would afford a view of the longship. I didn’t judge it worth stealing, but perhaps he was wise not to put that to the test. After all, a place like Den Hagen would make anyone frantic to leave after a short while, so there might have been men there desperate enough to sail off in any untended vessel, even a leaking tub like the one that brought the Norsemen to harbour.

I walked along at the rear of the group with Tuttugu. “I thought longships would be, you know, longer.”

“It’s a snekkja.”

“Oh.”

“The smallest type.” Tuttugu managed a grin at my ignorance, though his mind must have been on what Snorri would tell. “Twenty benches. Skei carry twice as many. Ours is called Ikea , after the dragon, you know?”

“Yes.” I didn’t, but lying is easier than listening to explanations. I wasn’t even that interested in their boat, but it looked as though I might be trusting myself to it, and sooner than I wanted to. Twice the size of their snekkja still didn’t sound like a big ship-but the strength of the North had always been in swift boats, and many of them. I had to pray that with all that practice the damn things were at least seaworthy.

We drew up stools around a long bench, several locals wisely deciding to relocate to other tables. Snorri called for ale and sat at the head of the table, looking out across the length of it at the snekkja’s sails flapping above the harbour wall. The sky behind them held a complex mix of dark and moody clouds, some trailing rain, but all lit by the slanting rays of the afternoon sun.