Mark Lawrence - Prince of Fools

The noise of it, the stink, the colour. The room revolved around me, the din fading in and out, time seeming to slow. Tuttugu hauled his narrow axe from his enemy’s sternum. I heard the crack of bone, saw the blood gush, the man fall away, arms reaching, face dark with fury, not understanding that he’d died. A big red-haired man with a two-handed sword rushed at Tuttugu. Behind me three men vaulted the tables, two from the left, one from the right, eager to wet their blades. The door to the left of the great fireplace burst open, disgorging more Vikings, the first with an iron helm, studded all over, a crosspiece noseguard beneath. The man behind him raised a wide round shield, a spike on its central boss. More men crowded behind.

A spear sprung from a quad’s chest as he rushed the doorway. The force of it took him backwards, white hair flying. Blood sprayed across me from closer at hand, filling my eyes, filling my mouth with salt and copper. I heard screaming and knew it was mine. The Red Vikings closed on me from both sides and I watched them from behind a crimson veil. My sword flickered out-

• • •

“Jal?” Faint beneath the pounding in my ears, the thunder in my chest, the harshness of each drawn breath. “Jal?”

I could see the flagstones, awash with blood, black points of my fringe hanging before my eyes, dripping.

“Jal?” Snorri’s voice.

I was standing. My hand still held my sword. A table to either side. Corpses leaking-some under the tables, some sprawled across them.

“Jal?” Tuttugu, nervous.

“Is he safe?” A twin. Or perhaps just Ein now.

I looked up. Three Undoreth watched me at a safe distance, Snorri glancing towards the doorway through which the reinforcements had come.

“Baresarker!” Ein smacked his fist to his chest.

Snorri spared me a grin. “I’m starting to understand the hero and devil of Aral Pass!” His sealskins were ripped wide across his hip, exposing an ugly wound. Another deep cut on the muscle mounded around the join of shoulder and neck bled copiously.

My free hand started to shake uncontrollably. I looked around the room. The dead lay strewn. Around the hearth they lay in heaps. Arne sat on the table behind me, deathly pale, his cheek ripped so badly I could see through to the rotten teeth, half of them smashed out of his jawbone. The spreading pool of crimson around him told me that dentistry was the last of his worries. A wound to his thigh had cut the artery deep in the meat of him.

“Jal.” Arne offered me a broken grin, his words blurred by the face wound. He slumped down, almost graceful. “It was a great shot, though, wasn’t it. . Jal?”

“I-” My voice cracked. “A great shot, Arne. The best.” But the Dead-Eye was past hearing. Past everything now.

“Snorri ver Snagason!” A roar issuing from the doorway beyond the hearth.

“Sven Broke-Oar!” Snorri shouted in return. He hefted his axe and approached the fire. “You must have known I’d be back. For my wife, my boy, my vengeance. Why would you even sell me?”

“Oh, I knew.” The Broke-Oar even sounded pleased about it, which, now that the strange sense of dissociation was fading, brought all my fears back from whatever corners of my mind the battle madness had driven them into. “It was hardly fair to rob you of your fight now, was it? And we of the Hardanger do love our gold. And of course my new masters have expenses. The elixir they need for the dead in these cold climes requires oils from Araby, and those are hard to find. A man must trade good coin for such exotics.”

Even dazed I recognized the taunt. Telling Snorri he’d financed this horror with his own flesh and failure. Whatever was said of the Broke-Oar, none called him stupid.

Ein, Tuttugu, and I went to stand at Snorri’s side. Another chamber lay beyond the doorway, most of it out of our line of sight. A Red Viking lay half in one room, half in the other, his head split wide. Ein tugged the spear from his brother-Thrir if the order had held true.

“There’s more to it than that, Broke-Oar. You could have killed me and still had nine-tenths and more of your blood gold.” Snorri paused as if struggling to voice his question. “Where’s my wife? My boy? If you’ve harmed-” He snapped his jaw shut on the words, the muscles in his cheeks working.

Tuttugu hastened to bind Snorri’s side with strips from a cloak, Ein holding Snorri back as the warrior made to advance. Snorri relented and let them-the shoulder wound would bleed the strength from him soon if not staunched.

“There’s more to it than that,” Snorri repeated.

“It’s true, Snorri.” A touch of sadness in the Broke-Oar’s voice. Despite his reputation the man sounded. . regal, a king declaiming from his throne. Sven Broke-Oar had the voice of a hero and a sage, and he wound it around us like a spell. “I’ve fallen. You know it. I know it. I bent in the wind. But Snorri? Snorri ver Snagason still stands tall, pure as autumn snow, as if he stepped from the sagas to save us all. And whatever else I might be, Snorri, I am a Viking first. The sagas must be told, the hero must have his chance to stand against the long winter. Vikings we-born to hold against trolls, frost giants, even the sea. Even the gods themselves.

“Come, Snorri. Let’s make an end of this. Just you and me. Let your friends bear witness. I stand ready.”

Snorri started forwards.

“No!” I grabbed hold of his arm and heaved back with whatever strength I had left. The curse flared between us, the resulting blast shredding his sleeve and throwing me back across the table, afterimages of ink and sunlight overwriting my vision. The scent of burned air filled my nostrils, a sharp astringency that took me back to that street in Vermillion, running as if all Satan’s devils were at my heels, the cobbles cracking open behind me.

“What in Hel?” Snorri spun in my direction.

“I know-” Only a whisper came. I coughed and spoke again. “I know bastards.”

Ein bent and picked up the discarded shield. Tuttugu took another two from a display on the wall.

“These are your last moments, Broke-Oar!” Snorri shouted, and, bearing the shields high and low, Tuttugu and Ein stepped towards the doorway.

Crossbow bolts hammered into the shields in the instant Snorri’s guardians crossed the archers’ line of sight. Snorri unleashed a wordless roar and, pushing between his companions, launched himself into the next room.

I followed, still a touch dazed. If I’d had my wits about me I would have sat down with Arne and played dead.

Sven Broke-Oar stood at the far side of a chamber smaller than the one we’d come from, dwarfing the three crossbow-men beside him. I won’t say he made Snorri look small, but he sure as hell stopped him looking biggest. The man’s mother must have slept with trolls. Handsome trolls, though. With his great red-gold beard plaited across his chest and his hair flowing free, the Broke-Oar looked every inch a Viking king, down to the gold chasing at the edges of the scarred iron breastplate he had on. He held a fine axe in one hand, the iron buckler on his other about the size of a dinner plate, smooth and thick.

Ein veered towards the two men on the left; Tuttugu charged the one to the right. Sven Broke-Oar advanced to meet Snorri.

There’s not much you can do about an axe swinging your way with a man’s strength behind it. Killing the axe’s owner before he completes his blow is your best option. With a sword you can impale your foe. But if like your foe you’re armed with an axe, then “swing faster and hope” seems to be the best advice on offer. And of course to swing at your man you need to be a certain distance off-exactly the same distance he needs you to be at in order to swing at you.