Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

And so I found myself down at the river docks about to flee Vermillion by boat with a Viking once again. Same Viking, different boat.

I had argued long and hard that I should at least take a crack squad of troops, by which I meant a small army . . . or, if it were up to me, a large one. Garyus pointed out that any infantry would slow me down and were needed at the walls. The horde of dead men wandering the embers of the outer city still posed a substantial threat and there was no certain knowing that the Dead King would not return his attention to them or send another lichkin or unborn to focus their efforts.

“A fast horse will serve you better than two hundred men, and the queen took what little cavalry remains to us to Slov with her. Any riders we have left in Vermillion are needed as swift reserves to react to possible incursions.”

Garyus had directed that we should begin our journey by following the line of Grandmother’s advance into Slov. The trail of destruction should allow for relatively unhindered passage. He had had no word of his sister and reports of her death appeared to be wishful thinking on Uncle Hertet’s part. With any luck Grandmother would already have levelled the Lady Blue’s stronghold and killed the witch with her bare hands.

This of course led me to suggest that I then deliver the key into the Red Queen’s hands and let her see to its future, whether that lay in the Wheel of Osheim or around her neck. If it were to be the Wheel she would surely do a better job of it than me.

Garyus had contradicted me again. “You have qualities she lacks, Jalan. Necessary ones. You will run away. You will lie and cheat. My sister is more likely to fight and die. The only sure way this key is getting to Osheim is in the hands of someone as flexible and resourceful as you.”

Garyus’s talk of his sister had returned my thoughts to my own. In Hell Marco had revealed that the holiest of items might separate an unborn into the child’s soul and the lichkin that rode it. But Father’s seal was gone, his holy stone too, and a search of the Inner Palace had turned up nothing more holy than a gold cross blessed by the cardinal. I took it anyway. It was made of gold! But truth be told I suspected that being blessed by my father would probably have rendered it less holy rather than more.

All of which left me standing on a cold and misty riverbank thinking that if I really were flexible and resourceful I would have found a way out of this. It also left me clutching the side of my face.

“I think she loosened one of my teeth.” I probed with my tongue. “You look fine to me,” Snorri said, his gaze on the water. I’d had a guard bring Micha to me in one of the palace’s waiting rooms. She had come with Nia bawling in her arms, wearing the wornthrough look of a new parent overlayered with the long horror of the night. “Jalan?” She had been surprised to see me.

“Sit down, Micha.” I nodded to the couch opposite, an overstuffed confection from some Florentine master.

“What is it? It’s Darin! Tell me!” She stood, rooted to her mark, even Nia’s howls fading away to underscore the moment.

The words dried up in my mouth and I desperately wanted to be able to play deaf again. “He was very brave,” I said. I had plenty more I planned to say. I knew how I was going to declaim it, words regarding my brother’s heroism, words of comfort, words of encouragement for the future. But when it came to saying them to her-all I had were those four.

She had crumpled then, folded and gone to the floor, Nia still safe and silent in her arms. I had expected rage, questions, denials, but her grief just reached up and took her voice.

I had Alphons, from my father’s guard, lead her away to the ballroom where a number of soldiers watched over a growing collection of survivors from around the palace. Next I sent for Lisa. She walked in white-faced, cold-eyed, proud, as if I were the invader and she my captive.

I tried to deflect her toward the couch but she kept on coming until we stood almost nose to nose. My instinct has always been to deliver bad news at a distance and be ready to run.

“Two teeth, I think.”

“What?”

I took the fingers out of my mouth and repeated myself more clearly.

“Two teeth, I think.” I should have stuck with my instincts. Being honest and compassionate just gets you slapped so hard your teeth rattle. I didn’t even say Barras was dead, just that I’d lost sight of him in the battle and it didn’t look good . . .

“There’s the boat.” Snorri pointed to a darker patch of mist.

The blur resolved itself as it drew closer to the shore. A flat-bellied riverboat of the sort used to ferry livestock and goods across the Seleen or a short way up or downstream. Currently it held my stallion, Murder, and three other horses chosen for their endurance, the pair not immediately intended for riding laden with provisions and a tent.

Two boatmen leapt ashore and pulled the craft into the shallows so Snorri and I could board. The plan was to take us downstream beyond any danger from the city’s besiegers and put us on some safe stretch of riverbank so we could follow my grandmother’s trail to Slov. From there our path would take us through Zagre, north into the kingdom of Charland, and eventually back to Osheim.

Strangely, despite all the terror and the hopeless nature of our journey, the actual being on the move part felt pretty good. I’d missed Snorri. Not that I’d ever go as far as showing it. And now he was back and the world was slipping past us, I thought of Kara and the boy again. We’d spent so long travelling together as a four that being a two once more seemed to make their absence more palpable. As if it should be the völva’s hand on the tiller, and Hennan messing about with the ropes.

I joined Snorri in the prow as the boatmen pushed us back out into the current with long poles. “I told you the Wheel draws everyone back in the end.” That was how Nanna Willow had it. The Wheel would pull you in. Quick or slow, but in the end you’d come, thinking it was your idea, full of good reasons for it. And here we were, hundreds of miles away, full of good reasons, and aimed for the Wheel.

“Maybe so.” Snorri nodded. “Some things can’t be avoided.”

He said it lightly but I felt a weight behind it. Perhaps a lesson learned in Hell.

“Osheim has its teeth in you, Snorri. Deep. The old man just had to mention it and you were packing your bags. If it’s got this much of a hold on you across hundreds and hundreds of miles . . . what use will you be when we’re actually there?”

“I will do what needs to be done.”

He looked so grim, so determined, that I let the matter drop. Perhaps he knew something I didn’t. I didn’t ask. Snorri could keep his secrets- I had no appetite for stories from the deadlands-but maybe they waited for me anyway in the days to come, perhaps like the Wheel they stood in my path and could not be avoided.

Snorri still had a strangeness about him, that mixture of death and legend he’d carried with him back from beyond death’s door. We both stood, watching the dark waters of the Seleen escape the mist and vanish beneath our prow, neither of us talking.

The events of the past day unfolded themselves across the blank page offered by the river fog. The whiteness at first the smoke of Father’s pyre, twisting and rising, then the hot clouds billowing over the Appan Gate, thick with the screams of the dead and the dying amid an inferno of my making. I saw Darin’s face, shaped across the mist. Barras appeared too and I realized I couldn’t remember when I saw him last. Had he been with me when I led the charge to save Darin? I didn’t know. I had an image of him, wild-eyed, swinging his bloody sword amid a crowd of dead, but where and when it came from, and what happened after I couldn’t say. Lisa told me I’d let Barras die, abandoned him to his fate because he’d married her. I saw Martus there too, his face raised to me, as he was when I threw him my sword. He hadn’t been the best of brothers, and not the best of men either, but damn it, he was my brother, my mother’s son, and knowing he was gone left me hollow. The sword hung again at my side, the last point of contact between us.