Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

“It will!” I felt sure of it. “The dead can’t lie.” Then less sure. “Can they?”

“It’s nonsense anyway.” Snorri kicked his horse into motion. “If a cardinal’s seal is so holy a thing then how do you expect to part Cardinal Gertrude from hers?”

“I’ll steal it.” I glanced toward Hennan. “I’m as god-fearing as the next prince, and scrupulously honest, but desperate times-”

“You stole Loki’s key from Kara,” the boy said.

“Ah, well . . . that was mine in the first place. Anyhow-stop confusing the issue. I’ll take it.”

“You’ll ‘take it’?” Snorri raised a brow. I’ve spent several hours trying to learn the knack of elevating a single eyebrow, but the talent eludes me. It’s probably some inbred northern thing.

“How?” Kara asked. “You’re not making sense.”

“Post-coitally.” Sitting there on a wet horse in the rain it didn’t sound very appetizing. Remembering the last time didn’t whet my appetite either. “You slept with a cardinal?” Snorri leaned in, surprise and amusement warring for control of his features.

“Well, technically there was no sleeping involved.” I aimed for the right tone of reserved nonchalance. I’m not sure I hit it. “But we knew each other in the biblical sense, yes.”

“Aren’t your cardinals . . . old people?” Hennan asked. “How long ago was this?” Kara asked.

I nudged Murder to a faster pace, trying to shake off the curious Norse pressing me on all sides. “A long time ago.”

“How long?” Snorri caught up. “Not long ago you were twelve. You weren’t twelve were you?”

“Of course not. Much older than that.”

“He’s lying.” Kara, back on my left.

“A little older.” I could hear Snorri sniggering above the rain. “If you must know, Gertrude was my first. She was very gentle-” Laughter from both sides cut me off.

“Damn you, heathens!” I spurred Murder into a canter. “I’ll be back with the seal by morning. And if the guards catch you hanging around I’ll recommend you’re burned as witches.”

I let Murder have his head. Rain and murk kept visibility to thirty yards or less but I’ve never known a road run so straight, and the locals kept it well surfaced, shingle in the main but in some stretches cobbles or even paved. There’s something about galloping a horse that I’ll never tire of. It’s a sort of union that puts you in control of a power much greater than your own . . . control is too strong a word for it-if it were control much of the joy would go out of it-you’re a guide, a conduit. I think it’s as close to understanding sorcery as I’ve come.

Ten minutes later, soaked to the bone but flushed with the warmth of the ride, I knew I must be close to catching the cardinal. I slowed to a canter, not wishing to come on them by surprise and find myself accidentally impaled on a halberd before I could declare my intentions . . . or rather declare my lies, since my actual intentions would very likely see me impaled on purpose.

I nearly missed the horse, standing as it was off in the margins of the road amid the pouring rain. A lone dark horse, head down, back against the fringes of a small wood not far from the roadside. I’ve always had an eye for horse-flesh and this piece seemed familiar. Looking around I saw one spot among the shingle that seemed darker than the rest . . . perhaps stained with blood. I rode closer to the horse. It cantered off, skittish, but I saw enough to feel more certain it was the beast the messenger who passed us had been riding.

“An assassin?” I spoke the words aloud though there was nobody to hear and the rain overwrote them.

I turned Murder back to the road and continued at a slower pace, perplexed.

It didn’t take long to reach the column’s rearguard, shadowy in the rain, their halberds across their shoulders, swaying to the rhythm of the march.

“Traveller, coming through!” I thought it best to keep my anonymity as long as possible. At first none of them gave any sign of hearing me. “Traveller, coming through!” I shouted again, and as one they all stopped. Without a head turning my way, the rearguard, some two dozen men in all, stepped to the roadside.

“Coming through . . .” I walked Murder past their ranks-eight lines of three, none of them glancing as I drew level, all with the blank-faces that soldiers on household duty often affect, affording the illusion of privacy to those they watch over.

The sedan chair was a large one, big enough to hold six people if they were squeezed side by side. Lanterns hung from each corner of the rectangular roof, but none were lit. Cardinal Gertrude would be travelling with a personal secretary, an aide and a couple of priests at a minimum. Hopefully no space had been found for the inquisition.

“I’ll pay my respect to the cardinal . . .” I spoke loud enough to be heard above the thunder of rain on the tarred black roof of the enclosed chair. Properly the captain of her guard should have presented himself by now and demanded my credentials. Instead the whole column just stood there, ignoring me. “Now, look here . . .” The bluster ran out of my voice as still not one face turned my way. Icy water ran down my back along with the surety that something was badly wrong here.

I turned Murder on the spot, a fancy move the stallion had been well trained in. With both legs clamped tight to his sides I could feel the nervous play of his muscles-the horse was scared, and given that he got his name from his normal response to threat . . . that made me scared too. I looked at the sedan’s black and shiny door, the papal order blazoned there, beaded with water above the crown and scythe of Hemmalung. The bearers stood without motion, heads down, dripping, and suddenly no part of me wanted that door open.

As I watched, it seemed that the water pattering down beneath the door was darker than it should be, as if stained.

“I . . . uh . . . forgot something.” I bumped my heels against Murder’s ribs. “Sorry, my mistake.”

The sedan’s door began to open, slowly, as if the wind might have caught its edge and started to pull it wide. Some cold and ethereal hand sunk its fingers into my chest, lacing them between my rib bones and closing, tight.

A gust took hold and threw the door full open, slamming back against the sedan’s wall. What light remained to the day proved insufficient challenge to the darkness within, revealing only one thing-a white enamel mask such as a rich man might wear to a masquerade. The eyes behind that slit remained invisible, but they cut like broken glass even so. The mask from the Vermillion Opera!

I slammed both heels into Murder’s sides and he took off like a bolt loosed from a crossbow. The Unborn Prince left the cardinal’s sedan with sufficient violence that splintered fragments of it winged past my ear as I bent to the gallop. He came after us with a rushing like a great wind tearing through a forest. A wet ripping sound chased us down the road. The halberdiers turned as we thundered by, trying to bring their weapons into play but they proved slow and strangely uncoordinated, even for guardsmen of the more ceremonial variety. I had to duck low to avoid the blades of the last two halberds, and then we were free and clear, Murder and me against the darkness and the rain.

Glancing back is seldom advisable, especially when in full flight from danger. What are you going to do, run faster? It didn’t work out well for Lot’s wife and although I’ve learned few lessons from the bible, that one I should have hung on to. At least I hung onto my horse, though just barely. Perhaps the darkness saved me, concealing enough of the detail to preserve my sanity. As the Unborn Prince tore past the guardsmen, cardinal’s robes flapping, each man ripped open in a red butchery of tattered flesh and white bones. The contents of their bodies vomited out toward the prince and where they struck they stuck, flowing, reorganizing, so that stride by stride he grew and changed.