Mark Lawrence - Prince of Fools

“Honestly?” Tuttugu glanced ahead at the others, the first pair of quins some twenty yards farther up the slope.

“Let’s try honesty first and move on to lies if it proves too upsetting.”

“Honestly. . I’d much rather be back in Trond with a big plate of liver and onions. I could settle there, do a spot of fishing, find a wife.”

“And the axe-wetting?”

“Scares me shitless. The only thing that stops me from running away in battle is knowing everyone else is faster than me and I’d get cut down from behind. The best chance lies in facing the enemy head-on. If the gods had given me longer legs. . well, I’d be gone.”

“Hmmm.” I shifted the pack to the least comfortable position so far. The thing was already making my lungs ache. “So why are you trekking up this mountain?”

Tuttugu shrugged. “I’m not brave like you. But I’ve got nothing else. These are my people. I can’t leave them. And if the Undoreth really have all been slaughtered. . someone has to pay. Even if I don’t want to be the one to make them-someone has to pay.”

• • •

Toiling across the mountainside gave fresh impetus to the finding of reasons not to go. With gritted teeth I put in the effort needed to catch up to Snorri at the head of our trek.

“This Broke-Oar of yours. He’s a war leader, important amongst his people?”

“He has a reputation. His over-clan is the Hardassa.” Snorri nodded. “Many followers, but he doesn’t rule in Hardanger. He’s feared more than loved. He has a way about him. When he focuses on a man, many find it hard to resist him-they’re swept along with his energy-but when he turns away, often that man will remember reasons to hate him again.”

“Even so.” I paused to recover my breath. “Even so. He’s not going to spend year after year sitting in this little fort in an icy wasteland? Not a man like that? You can’t expect to find him where you left him?”

“We weren’t just buying furs in Trond, Jal.” Snorri glanced back at the stragglers. Well, straggler. Tuttugu. “There’s no other place in the North like Trond for finding out what’s going on. Tales come in on the ships. Sven Broke-Oar has been raiding up and down the coast. The Waylander and Crassis clans in Otins Fjord, the Ice Jarls in Myänar Fjord, and the Hørost on the Grey Coast. All of them have been hit, and hard. Many captives, many slaughtered. And last reports have him entering the Uulisk. There’s nothing there for him except the trek to the fort. He’s set to winter there. Ice locks up all the high North in the long night. Everyone draws in, holds fast, waits for spring. The Broke-Oar reckons himself secure at the Black Fort. We’ll teach him a different lesson.”

I had no answer to that, other than that I was a worse teacher of lessons than I was a pupil, and I was a terrible pupil.

• • •

We trudged on, mile after mile, up unforgiving slopes of bedrock shelving skyward from the sea and angled towards daunting heights. Weariness took me into dark places. I grumbled about the weight of my pack until I hadn’t even the energy for that. Several times I thought about ditching my sword just to be free of the weight. At last I fell into a kind of reverie, plodding on whilst replaying the highlights of my afternoon, Astrid and Edda’s highlights in particular. All of a sudden it hit me. The man who had stepped in, lowered his hood a fraction, then ducked out. . a band of raven-dark hair, greying to the sides.

“Edris!” I stopped in my tracks. “Snorri! That fucker Edris Dean was there. In town!”

Up ahead Snorri turned, raising a hand to stop the quins. “I saw him too,” he called back. “With a dozen men of the Hardanger. Another reason we left in a hurry. The Red Vikings are a significant force in Trond.”

They waited until Tuttugu and I caught up. “We’ll camp here,” Snorri said. “And keep a watch for anyone following up the slopes.”

Sleeping on mountains is a miserable business, but I have to admit that it’s less miserable in a thick fur-lined sleep-sack with a canvas and leather awning to divert the worst of the wind around you. Snorri and the others had spent their money well and we had an untroubled night.

Come morning we broke fast on black bread, cold chicken, apples, and other perishables from Trond. Before long we’d be back on hardtack and dried meat, but for the now we ate like kings. At least like impoverished kings who happen to be stuck on a mountainside.

“Why the hell is Edris in Trond?” I asked the question I’d been too bone-tired to voice the previous evening.

“The thing we’re chasing-being dragged after-it seeded its trail with trouble for us.” Snorri chewed off another piece of bread, attacking it like meat on the bone. “The Dead King lies behind all this, and he collects men, living ones as well as the dead. The right kind of man he’ll draw to him. Men like the Broke-Oar and this Edris.”

“Edris will be chasing us now?” I hoped not. The man scared me, and more than trouble did in general. Something about him gnawed at me. Whatever quality ran through individuals like Maeres Allus, Edris had his measure of it too. An understated menace-the kind you know that when it does speak will be worse than any threat or posture from men capable only of common cruelty.

“Trying to get ahead of us, most like.” Snorri swallowed and stood, stretching until his bones creaked. “He’ll aim for the Black Fort, or maybe the mining at the Ice first. If they’re warned we don’t stand much chance.”

We didn’t stand a chance in any event. I kept that opinion to myself. Perhaps if Edris did warn them, the others would see it was hopeless and abandon the effort.

“All right, but. .” I got up too, lugging my pack up onto my shoulder. “Explain to me again why a horror from Red March runs a thousand miles and more to some godforsaken hole in the ice?”

“I don’t know it all, Jal. Sageous told me some of it, though that may be lies. Skilfar had more to say-”

“What? When?” I didn’t remember any of that.

“She didn’t speak to you?” Snorri raised his brows.

“Of course she did. You heard her. Some nonsense about my Great-Uncle Garyus and being led by my cock. Dreadful old crone, mad as a brush.”

“I meant. . without words.” He frowned. “She spoke in my head, the whole time.”

“Hmmm.” I wondered how much faith to place in words spoken in Snorri ver Snagason’s head. It seemed quite crowded in there and who knew how many voices Aslaug might use? Or perhaps Baraqel might be responsible for Skilfar’s words not reaching me-though whether he would be acting in my best interests with such selective deafness, I didn’t know. “Remind me.”

“The unborn are hard to summon. Very hard. Only a few come through, where the conditions are right, where the timing, the place, the circumstances all align.”

“Well, anyone knows that !” All new to me.

“And so they are scattered.”

“Yes.”

“But what the Dead King has ordered in the Bitter Ice, the work his minions are accomplishing there. . is drawing the unborn, from all corners of the earth. To one place. Perhaps when your friend at the opera found himself targeted and escaped he abandoned whatever mission called him there and ran for the gathering in the North. Or maybe he was always bound there after whatever business drew him into Vermillion.”

“Ah.” Oh hell. “But your wife is in the Black Fort, right? And the unborn are beneath the Bitter Ice? Yes? So we never have to meet them. . right?”

Snorri didn’t answer immediately, only started walking.

“Yes?” At his back.

“We’re taking the Black Fort.”

I tried to remember Snorri’s tale from the tavern in Den Hagen. The Broke-Oar had told him his son was safe. That’s all he said. He’d also talked Snorri into getting clubbed around the back of the head. All about me the Norsemen were hefting packs, moving on. Already I could feel the faintest tug as the curse binding me to their leader began to stretch out across the slope. “Crap on it.” And I followed in his footsteps.