Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

All that would be enough to keep any man a prisoner to his fears, viewing each night as a long horror when his foes might come upon him unannounced. But somehow, after so many days passing without incident, the normality of the road shrunk the fears that should have had me wideeyed and shivering, to something almost abstract. Riding with Snorri on one side, Kara on the other, unexpected autumn sunshine on my back, the boy cantering ahead . . . it just didn’t seem possible that the world could hold such nightmares.

“I think some Viking is rubbing off on me.” I made a show of brushing at my sleeve as Snorri moved his horse slowly past Murder. The stallion had mellowed a touch on the journey and would allow the other nags to take a turn in the lead, presumably viewing them as heralds who go before a great king to announce his imminent arrival. “I’m not finding this trip north quite as dreadful as the last one.”

“That’s the magic of the fjords.” Snorri grinned. “They call you back.

None travel as far as the Vikings-but we go back-the North calls us home.”

“Sentimental nonsense.” Kara caught us up riding close on my left side. “There are more Vikings settled on the Drowned Isles and south of the Karlswater than live in all of Norseheim.”

I could sense another of their interminable arguments coming on.

The pair of them could debate the smallest issue for hours in that singsong tit-for-tat way the Norse had. They would end up hair-splitting over some terminally dull point of Viking history. Suddenly the world would hinge on whether Olaaf Thorgulson, fourth son of Thorgul Olaafson, sailed from Haagenfast in the 28th year of the Iron Jarls or the 27th . . . I glanced around hurriedly for something to distract them before they got started.

“Fuck me! It’s the pope,” I said, not really believing it, for meeting her holiness on a backroad along the Zagre-Attar border seemed no more real a possibility than an unborn lurching out from the hedgerows. “That seems unlikely.” Snorri stood in his stirrups for a better view.

Ahead of us the road ran arrow straight, dividing the land, rising and falling with each undulation. Emerging from the hidden dip of the next valley a long caravan had begun to crest the next but one ridge. Even from a mile off I recognized the papal flag without difficulty, a purple cross fluttering horizontally on a white pennant. A dozen or more men carried a large sedan chair, its roof sporting a golden cross that screamed “steal me” across the intervening distance, and two squads of halberdiers, a score fore and aft, bracketed the affair, carrying enough pointy steel to make even the most hardened brigand turn a deaf ear.

“Well if it’s not the pope it’s someone damned important.” Father never got such an escort despite being a cardinal.

“We should steer clear of them,” Snorri said.

“Don’t worry, the church gave up burning heathens years ago.” I reached out to place a condescending pat on his shoulder. “You’ll be fine.

These days they only go after witches . . . oh.” I glanced back at Kara.

“Perhaps we should steer clear of them. A caravan that large is bound to have at least one inquisitor with it.”

Of course when the people you want to avoid are ahead of you on the best road in an unfamiliar region, and going in the direction you want to go, only more slowly . . . that tends to mean reducing your own pace and following them.

We rode behind at walking speed, keeping a good half a mile between us. Every now and then the papal convoy would come back into view, cresting one of the folds in the rolling landscape. It started to rain. “We could just ride past,” Hennan said.

“The boy has a point,” Snorri said. “At a canter we’d be ten seconds from rear to van.”

“They’re filling the road. They would need to stand aside for us,” I said. “They might ask our business-and if there’s an inquisitor with them then they would probably know it soon enough.” My fingers found the lump Loki’s key made under my jacket. Inquisitors had a nose for such things-though to accuse them of using enchantment would be little different from tying yourself to the stake and calling for a torch.

Explaining the key to an agent of the Roma Inquisition was not something I wanted to have to do. Men had had their tongues torn out for even speaking the names of false gods.

The rain thickened as the light failed, and still the clerics and their guards showed no sign of turning from the road to seek shelter for the night.

“We’ll be following them all the way to Osheim.” I spat rainwater.

The growing gloom felt oppressive, filled with all the threats that I’d become so adept at forgetting about of late. Unbidden, an image of Darin came to me, my brother lying dead by the Appan Gate . . . a moment later I saw my unborn sister’s hand move beneath his skin, seeking a way out. I had given Darin peace with the sword at my hip, but my sister had found the gate she needed only hours later, carving her path into this world through Martus’s still-warm corpse. Was she out there now? A creature of Hell, still raw from her false birth and hungry for my life? “Jal?” A hand on my shoulder. Kara’s hand.

I flinched and nearly lashed out. “What?” The word came out with a harsh edge.

“Someone’s coming,” she said.

The clatter of hooves drew closer as we pulled to the left side. A single horse, being ridden hard.

The man emerged from the murk and rain and was nearly lost from sight again before he pulled up, his mount rearing and whinnying a complaint.

“Has the cardinal’s escort passed you by?” He threw his hood back.

Black hair plastered his brow, the face beneath gaunt, teeth bared in exhaustion or threat.

“No,” I said. “Which cardinal? What are they doing out here?” The man ignored me, pulling his hood down and turning his horse back to the road. Perhaps the “out here” offended him. I keep forgetting people not from Red March tend to regard their own country as the centre of empire.

“Which cardinal?” I shouted.

“Hemmalung.” A shout across his shoulder, almost lost amid the rain andhoof-beats.

“Why does it matter what his name is?” Hennan asked. “Her name,” I said. An idea had started to intrude, an idea so big that only a corner of it had managed to poke through my skull so far. “Hemmalung is Charland’s second city.” The truth was I couldn’t name the first city, or any others, or any single fact about the kingdom-but I knew Hemmalung was a city because I knew the cardinal that kept her see there.

“And her name is?” Snorri leaned in to hear, drawing a hand down across the short black thicket of his beard as if to squeeze the rain out. “Gertrude.” I remembered her as a thickset woman in her late fifties, thin lipped, deep-sunken eyes, greying curls. She had visited Father at Roma Hall on more than one occasion. “I’m going to ride on ahead and reintroduce myself to the good cardinal.”

“Why?” Kara looked as bedraggled as her horse, the rain dripping off the ends of both their noses. “We could find an inn. Take shelter for the night. Chances are they’ll be out of our way come tomorrow.”

“There’s something she has that I need. Snorri can tell you what it is.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“We were told about it in Hel . . .” I cocked my head expectantly, and finding Snorri still looking blank, and my ear filling with cold water, I cycled my hand. “By a dark soul deservingly nailed to a rather big tree . . .”

“Marco?” Snorri threw up his hands in exasperation. “You shouldn’t believe anything he had to say!” He turned to Kara. “Jal thinks a cardinal’s seal will split his sister from the lichkin that brought her out of Hel.”