Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

Though Hel has no sun there is a sun here in this memory of the Uuliskind, and it is setting. Ahead of him in the neck of the valley, black against the sunset, a lone warrior, wide, armoured in ill-matched pieces, arms spread, a buckler held in one hand, an axe in the other, its blade a wedge for piercing mail.

“Sven Broke-Oar?” For a moment Snorri knows fear. The giant is the only man to have bested him: his strength is not human. Weak from loss of blood and crippled by his injuries, he knows this fight to be beyond him. Still on his knees the Northman whispers a prayer, the first to pass his lips in an age. “All-father, I have done my best. Watch me now. I ask only that you give me the strength that has left me.” The prayer of a man who has met his challenges with an axe and a brave heart. The prayer of a man who knows this will not suffice. The prayer of a man who will not live to speak another.

Snorri rises with a snarl, careless of his wounds, knowing that the gods are watching him. He stands, clothed in the ichor of demons and the scarlet of his own blood, hardly distinguishable from the beasts he has slain in such numbers.

“I am ready.” If Hel has set Sven Broke-Oar between him and his family then Sven Broke-Oar will die the second death. “Undoreth!” he roars, and as if his shout is a spear launched at the heavens themselves the sky turns red as blood behind him. And then he charges.

The warrior holds his ground as Snorri races toward him. He wears an outsized shoulder guard of spiked black iron, a pot helm, visored to offer only a slit for his eyes and perforations at the mouth. Black bands of iron around his chest and middle girdle a thick shirt of leather and layered padding. Iron plates sewn to leather trews defend both legs. Every part of his armour bears the signs of battle, bright cuts, dull crimson splashes, dented metal, torn leather.

Twenty yards remain between them. The warrior raises his axe above him. Ten. The warrior tilts his head. “Snorri?” Five. And lets the axe fall.

Snorri, filled with battle-rage, swings his own axe in a decapitating arc, razored steel driven with the force of both arms. At the last moment mind over-rides muscle, and screaming with effort he pulls the blow, able to rob it of most of its power. Hel’s blade strikes the warrior’s gorget, coaxing a bright sound from the metal collar before falling away.

“Snorri?” Gauntleted hands fumble with the helm’s hinged faceplate.

Snorri lowers his axe and uses it to support himself, heaving in laboured breaths.

The faceplate comes free.

“Tutt?”

“I knew you’d come.” Tuttugu smiles. He lacks his beard, his chins raw where it was ripped away. The red slice Edris Dean’s knife made still marks Tuttugu’s throat, his face pale. His eyes though, they shine with joy. “I knew you’d make it.”

“What in Hel’s name? What . . . Tuttugu . . . how?”

“Ssshhh!” Tuttugu raises a hand. “Don’t speak her name-not here. She’ll send more of her guards, and they’re hard to beat.”

Snorri looks back at the body-strewn valley. “You did all this?”

Tuttugu grins. “They didn’t all come at once.”

“But still . . .”

“I couldn’t let Freja and the children be taken, Snorri.”

“But Karl . . .”

“Karl could fight the demons, they’re just beasts following their instincts to hunt down stray souls. But to go up against Hel’s servants as they carry out their orders? That could get him thrown out of Valhalla. We couldn’t have that.”

“But you . . .”

“I haven’t taken up my place yet, so they can’t throw me out. When you’re bound for the halls you keep your body in Hel . . . or a copy of it I guess . . . Anyway, I went looking for Freja instead of going where I was supposed to.”

Snorri reaches out and sets his hand on Tuttugu’s shoulder. “Tutt.” He realizes that he hasn’t any words.

“It’s all right. You’d do the same for me, brother.” Tuttugu clasps Snorri’s wrist then moves on to lead the way.

Snorri looks once more, out across the gorge that Tuttugu has held against all comers, then follows his friend down the slope toward the still waters below.

A rowing boat lies close to shore, tied to a boulder in the shallows. Just beyond the rock the fjord’s bed shelves sharply down, becoming lost in clear dark water. Snorri wades out and takes the rope. The awful thirst in him cries out to drink, but he hasn’t come for water.

Snorri climbs in, takes the oars. Tuttugu scrambles over the side to sit in the stern, and Snorri rows them out across the lake. There are no signs of pursuit back where the valley joins the fjord. The sky is the sky of the living world, dark with cloud, swirled as if by a god’s finger into a great spiral right above them. Thor’s work perhaps. Will the thunder speak before this journey ends?

An evening mist clings to the waters. The freshness of the air speaks of early autumn, carrying hints of wood smoke, fish, and the distant sea. Each dip of the oars draws him closer. In the valley fear had seized him-fear that his strength would not be enough to win through, and that at the last the way of the warrior would not bring him to his heart’s desire. Now a new fear grows in him, its voice louder with each pull of the oars. What will he find? What will he say? What future is there for them? Snorri came to save his children, and instead feels more a child himself with each passing moment-scared to face the family he has failed-scared that he will be unequal to whatever task might be required of him now.

Instinct slows his oars. He raises them, dripping, and the boat bumps gently against the Long Quay. Snorri loops the rope over an ancient post and clambers onto the walkway, his injuries making an old man of him.

The slopes before him are those he was born upon, where he was raised from cot to manhood, where he raised children of his own. Tuttugu and Snorri fished from the quays as boys, ran riot among the huts when the longboats sailed in spring, chased girls. One in particular. What had her name been? A grin twists Snorri’s mouth. Hedwig, Tuttugu’s sweetheart when they had been nine. She’d chosen Tutt over him, perhaps his only victory in all those years, and Snorri had taken it with poor grace.

Tuttugu stands with Snorri at the foot of the climb, waiting. Snorri catches himself delaying. Only his house lies on the slopes. His path is clear. And yet he stands here, not moving. The breeze tugs at him. Grass bends to its tune. High above on the ridges, goats move along their slow paths. Out over the fjord a gull slides down the wind. But none of them make a sound, not one single sound. And the house stands, waiting.

“I’ll watch the lake,” Tuttugu says.

Courage comes in many forms. Some strains come harder to one man than the next. Snorri digs deep for the courage he needs to do this thing that has held him for so long, drawn him so far and by such strange paths. He puts one foot in front of the next, does it again, and walks the beaten path that he has walked so many times before.

At the door to his house Snorri has to dig again. Images of the night Sven Broke-Oar brought the dead to Eight Quays fill his vision. The sounds of their screaming deafens him, their screams as he lay helpless beside the hut, buried by the snowfall from the roof.

Blind he puts his hand to the door, fumbles the latch, pushes through. The hearth lies cold, the bed beneath furs and the furs beneath shadows, the kitchen corner tidy, the ladder to the attic in is proper place. They stand, all three, with their backs toward him, Freja between her children, a hand on Egil’s shoulder, the other on Emy’s head. All three silent, unmoving, heads bowed.

Snorri tries to speak but emotion grips his throat too tightly and he can form no words. The air comes from him in sharp panting breaths- the kind a man might make when a spear runs him through and he seeks to master the pain. He feels his face twist into a grimace, cheeks rising as if they might somehow hold back the tears. In the doorway of his house Snorri ver Snagason falls to his knees, pressed there by a weight greater than the snow that held him down, his strength stolen more effectively than by any venomed dart. Wracked by sobs, he tries to speak their names and still no sound will break from his lips.