Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

I remembered how the lichkin I had inadvertently stabbed with the key in Hell had fallen apart. Kara had it right. Besides, the chances of me driving the key into an unborn on purpose were too remote to bother considering. I needed something sacred and I had nothing. Father’s seal had been reclaimed by Rome and his holy stone had consumed itself in the violence that destroyed Double and his necromancies.

Kara proved no help and my fears continued to stalk me toward the border.

On the fifth day we crossed into Slov. No battles had been fought here, though the passage of so many men of the March had left scars of a different sort. The arrival of Grandmother’s ten thousand must have taken the little fort of Ecan by surprise-certainly the place bore no signs of conflict and the small garrison of Red March soldiers left to hold it looked bored rather than worried.

King Lujan probably heard of the incursion a day or two later. I would not have liked to have been in the same room when he did. I’d never met the man but the stories painted him as possessing the disposition of a wolverine with belly-ache, and a tendency when angered to lash out at those within reach using whatever happened to be handy, be it his dinner plate or a flanged mace.

The Slovs’ unpreparedness could be forgiven to a degree. Invasion is usually preceded by months of bad blood and the progressively loud rattling of sabres. Armies first gather along borders, defences are reinforced against counterattack. Sometimes a battleground is even agreed upon to stop two large armies missing each other and marching in circles for days or months.

Grandmother’s strike, aimed as it was at one target-the fortified town of Blujen-and more specifically at the tower housing the Lady Blue in the city’s eastern quarter, followed none of the rules of war. There had been no threats, no discontent, no border incidents. Her army had been gathered in the midst of Red March, drawing on forces from the western regions, and had then headed east without delay. A sudden and direct blow from deep cover, unexpected and deadly. Perhaps if she had struck at Julana City the Red Queen might have taken Slov’s capital and already have the king’s head on a spike-but what value is there in shading another kingdom red on the war-room chart if the whole map is about to burn?

Any army will make a ruin of the land as they pass through. Grandmother’s army had left its marks on the borderlands of Slov, not through malice or conflict but through sheer numbers. In places where the road could not contain them the troops had marched through fields, though luckily for the farmers the harvest no longer stood there to be trampled. Less luckily however any travelling force of thousands picks the countryside clean as it goes and a newly gathered-in harvest simply makes it more convenient to pick up and take.

“The people will starve come winter. Even in these green lands.” Kara seemed disgusted with me, waving her arm at the hollow-eyed peasants who watched us pass.

“They’re lucky to have homes still standing,” I said. “Hell, they’re lucky to be alive.” Snorri and I had passed through the border region where Rhone and Scorron meet Gelleth-towns there had been reduced to fields of hot embers, others had been left to ghosts and rats, the people long fled. But Kara didn’t seem placated, instead eyeing me as if I’d personally led the invasion.

“Starvation has a crueller edge than any sword, Jal.” Snorri watched the road with a grim set to his mouth.

“I think we’re missing the big picture here.” Ragged children watching us from a roadside tree didn’t help put me in a sympathetic light. “If the Blue Lady isn’t stopped, and if we don’t succeed in Osheim nobody is going to have time to starve: there won’t be a winter, and being hungry will cease to be an option.”

None of them had a reply to that and we rode on in silence, with me still feeling guilty despite my flawless logic. It struck me belatedly that I should have added the way the pair of them made me feel guilty for all sorts of things I normally wouldn’t give a damn about to the case for not taking Kara and Hennan with us.

The next dawn came with a bite, crisp, leaving the hedgerows heavy with dew and us in no doubt that winter was sharpening its teeth.

We rode more cautiously now, scanning the woods and hedgerows for signs of ambush. An invading army leaves dangerous ground in its wake. Add to the desperation of the surviving populace the removal of their ruler’s yoke and you get the perfect mix for armed bands of looters and raiders.

Fortunately Grandmother’s plan called for a quick exit once her goal was accomplished and this required that she keep the roads back to Red March clear. We passed half a dozen checkpoints before the sun set on our first day in Slov, and at each of them I had to argue my case, the volume and confidence of my delivery seeming to be more of a factor in getting us through than Garyus’s ornately worked scroll of authorization.

At Trevi we saw our first true signs of battle. I smelled it first, the bitterness of smoke lacing an evening mist as we rode along the Julana Way, weary and feeling the miles where we sat. The scent of Vermillion’s burning still haunted my nostrils but that had been an inferno billowing out hot clouds that quenched the stars. This was the stink of old fires hiding among ruins, smouldering, chewing slowly through the very last of their fuel beneath thick blankets of ash.

The sun descended toward the western hills, throwing our shadows before us and tingeing the mists with crimson before we saw the ruined fort. The mound it stood upon was too small and isolated to make it a convincing foothill, too large for me to easily believe that men had heaped up so much earth. A small town had grown at the foot of the mound to service the fort’s needs. Little of those homes remained: most lay in ashes; here and there a standing spar. The fort itself had lost a large part of its gatehouse in some devastating explosion, masonry scattered the slope, reaching down to the blackened ribs of the closest buildings. What magics or alchemy the Red Queen had employed I couldn’t guess but she had obviously not been minded to mount a long siege or to leave the garrison secure to threaten her supply line.

“Impressive.” Snorri sat tall in his saddle, eyes on the scene ahead of us.

“Hmmm.” I’d be glad when it was all behind us. The road led on into a tangle of forest a quarter of a mile or so past the fort. It looked like the sort of place survivors might gather and plot revenge. “We’ll steer well clear of it. Stay alert. I don’t like this place.”

The words were scarcely off my lips before Squire started beeping. It wasn’t something she’d done before. The noise was like no sound any horse could make, or any human or instrument for that matter. It held an unnatural quality, too precise, too clean. Hennan looked around in surprise, trying to locate the source. As far as I could tell what he was sitting on was making the sound.

“It’s coming from the saddlebags,” Kara said, nudging her mount closer to the boy’s.

“Ah.” I guessed then what was making the beeps and all at once the day seemed colder than it had a moment before. “Hell.”

Snorri gave me that two-part look of his, the first part being: tell me what you know , and the second part being: or I’ll break your arms . I dismounted and started to undo the straps on Squire’s left saddlebag. It took a bit of digging to get the package out, and then some wrestling with twine and rags to unwrap it. The beeps came every four seconds or so, the gap long enough so you might imagine the last one was the end of it. A few moments later I pulled away the last of the wrapping and held Luntar’s box of ghosts in my hands. In the light of day it looked every bit as unnatural as it had back in the throne room. It seemed as if it were a piece of winter viewed through a box-shaped hole, and it weighed far too little for what I knew it to contain. It beeped again and I nearly dropped it.