Glen Cook - The Fire In His Hands

Ragnar soon staggered through the doorway, bloody from chin to knee. Much was his own. He had his stomach opened by an axe stroke.

With a peal of mad laughter he held Bjorn’s head high, like a lantern in the night. Bjorn’s horror remained fixed on his features.

Ragnar mouthed one of his battle cries, then collapsed.

Bragi, Haaken and Helga were beside him instantly. But it was too late. His will had, finally, broken.

Helga plucked at the ice in his hair and beard, ran fingers lightly over his face. A tear dribbled down her cheek. Bragi and Haaken withdrew. Even in her loss the plunder-bride from the south could not shed her pride, could not reveal the real depth of her feelings.

Bragi and Haaken crowded the main fire, and shared their misery.

The funeral was managed in haste. It was an expediency, unworthy of the dead man, rushed because Hjarlma would return. It should have been a warrior’s funeral with pyres and ricks, following a week of mourning and ritual.

Instead, Bragi, Haaken, Sigurd and Soren carried Ragnar up Kamer Strotheide, above the tree-and summer snow-lines, and placed him, seated upright, in a stone cairn facing both Draukenbring and the more distant Tonderhofn.

“Someday,” Bragi promised as he and Haaken placed the last stone. “Someday we’ll come back and do it right.”

“Someday,” Haaken agreed.

It would be a long tomorrow, they knew.

They shed their tears, alone together there, then went down the mountain to begin the new life.

“This is how he managed it,” said Helga, while watching her sons chop at the frozen earth by the broken hearthstone. She held a golden bracelet, slim but ornately wrought. “It’s half of a pair. Hjarlma wore the other. Each reacted to the other’s approach. When Bjorn drew close, Hjarlma realized that Ragnar was coming.”

Bragi grunted. He did not care now.

“I think I hit it,” Haaken said.

Bragi started digging with his hands. He soon exposed a small chest.

Sigurd and Soren arrived with the packs. The four surviving warriors would go south from the shingle pine.

The chest proved to be shallow and light. It was not locked. Little lay within. A small bag of southern coins, another of gemstones, an ornate dagger, a small parchment scroll on which a crude map had been inscribed hastily. And a copper amulet.

“You keep the valuables,” Bragi told his mother.

“No. Ragnar had his reasons for keeping these things together. And of treasure he left me plenty elsewhere.”

Bragi considered. His father had been secretive. The forest round Draukenbring might be filled with pots of gold. “All right.” He pushed the things into his pack.

Then came the moment he had dreaded, the time to take the first southward step. He stared at his mother. She stared at him. Haaken stared at the ground.

The cord was hard to cut.

For the first time in memory Helga revealed her feelings in public — though she did not exactly go to pieces.

She pulled Haaken to her, held him for nearly two minutes, whispering. Bragi caught the sparkling of a tear. She brushed it away irritably as she released her foster son. Embarrassed, Bragi looked away. But there was no evading emotion. Sigurd and Soren were, once again, parting with their own families.

His mother’s embrace engulfed him. She held him tighter than he had thought possible. She had always seemed so small and frail.

“Be careful,” she said. And what less banal was there to say? At such a parting, probably forever, there were no words to convey true feelings. Language was the tool of commerce, not love.

“And take care of Haaken. Bring him home.” No doubt she had told Haaken the same thing. She pulled away, unclasped a locket she had worn for as long as Bragi could remember. She fastened it round his neck. “If you have no other hope, take this to the House of Bastanos in the Street of the Dolls in Hellin Daimiel. Give it to the concierge, as an introduction to the lord of that house. He’ll send it inside. One of the partners will come to question you. Tell him:

‘Elhabe an dantice, elhabe an cawine.

Ci hibde clarice, elhabe an savan.

Ci magden trebil, elhabe din bachel.’

He’ll understand.”

She made him repeat the verse till she was sure he had memorized it.

“Good. No more can be done. Just don’t trust anyone you don’t have to. And come home as soon as you can. I’ll be here waiting.”

She kissed him. In public. She had not done that since he had been a toddler. Then she kissed Haaken. She had never done that at all. Before either could react, she ordered, “Now go. While you can. Before we look more foolish than we already do.”

Bragi shouldered his pack and started toward Kamer Strotheide. Their way led round its knee. Sometimes he looked up toward Ragnar’s cairn. Only once did he look back.

The women and children and old people were abandoning the steading that had been home to generations. Most would flee to relatives elsewhere. A lot of people were on the move during these times of trouble. They should be able to disappear and elude the spite of the Pretender’s men.

He wondered where his mother would go...

Forever afterward he wished that, like Haaken, he had refused to look. He could, then, have remembered Draukenbring as a place alive, as a last hope and refuge quietly awaiting him in the northland.

Chapter Four

A Clash of Sabers

Nassef looked back once. Heat waves made the bowl of Al Rhemish a tent city writhing beneath dancing ghosts. A muted roar echoed from the valley. He smiled. “Karim,” he called gently.

A hard-looking man whose face had been scarred by the pox joined him. “Sir?”

“Go back down there. Visit our people. The ones who met us when we came in. Tell them to keep the riots going. Tell them I need an extended distraction. And tell them to pick five hundred willing warriors and send them after us. In small groups, so they’re not noticed leaving. Understand?”

“Yes.” Karim smiled. He was missing two front teeth. Another was broken at an angle. He was an old rogue. He had seen his battles. Even his gray-speckled beard seemed war torn.

Nassef watched Karim descend the stony slope. The former bandit was one of their more valuable converts. Nassef was sure Karim’s value would increase as the struggle widened and became more bitter.

He swung his mount and trotted after his sister and brother-in-law.

El Murid’s party consisted of almost fifty people. Most were bodyguards, his white-robed Invincibles, who had been guaranteed a place in Paradise if they died in El Murid’s behalf.

They made Nassef uneasy. They had eyes madder than those of their prophet. They were fanatically devoted. El Murid had had to bend the full might of his will to keep them from storming the Royal Compound after the trial.

Nassef assumed his post at El Murid’s right hand. “It went better than we hoped,” he said. “The boy’s attack was a godsend.”

“Indeed it was. To tell the truth, Nassef, I was reluctant to do it your way. But only the intercession of the Lord Himself could have made it so easy. Only He could have brought about an attack so timely.”

“I’m sorry about the ankle. Does it bother you much?”

“It pains me terribly. But I can endure it. Yassir gave me an herbal for the pain, and bound it. If I stay off it, I’ll be good as new before long.”

“During that farce of a trial... For a minute I thought you were going to give in.”

“For a minute I did. I’m as subject as anyone else to the wiles of the Evil One. But I found my strength, and the lapse made the outcome sweeter. You see how the Lord moves us to His will? We do His work even when we think we’re turning our backs on Him.”