Prince of Fools

TWENTY

Nobody had orders to stop a visiting prince taking a ride around the city before his appointment at court. We collected Ron and Sleipnir and clattered down into Crath City. And kept on going. Riding proved a misery and I shifted constantly in my saddle, seeking more comfortable positions and cursing all Scorrons, their damned women most of all.

“Both of them had their eyes too close together too. . I never liked ginger hair in any case, and I’m sure that younger one had-”

“She had something about her, that Katherine,” Snorri interrupted. “I could imagine her going places-doing great things. She had the look.”

“If you liked her so much you should have made your move.” Pain made me goad him, seeking distraction. “Perhaps she was looking for a bit of rough.”

Snorri shrugged, rolling in his saddle as we followed the Roma Road. “She’s a child yet. And I’m a married man.”

“She was seventeen if she was a day. And I thought you Vikings operated under ship rules?”

“Ship rules?” Snorri raised a brow. Crath City was nothing more than a stain in the air behind us now.

“If you get there by ship there are no rules,” I said.

“Ha.” He narrowed his eyes a touch. “We’re men as any other. Some good. Some bad. Most in between.”

I blew through my lips. “How old are you anyway, Snorri?”

“Thirty. I think.”

“Thirty! When I’m thirty I want to still be having fun.”

Again the shrug, a small smile. Snorri didn’t take offence at much. Which was a good thing all told. “Where we’re going, living to thirty is hard work.”

“Is there anything good about the North? Anything at all? Any single thing that I can’t better find somewhere warm?”

“Snow.”

“Snow’s not good. It’s just cold water gone wrong.”

“Mountains. The mountains are beautiful.”

“Mountains are inconvenient lumps of rock that get in people’s way. Besides, if it’s mountains I want, I have the Aups on my doorstep.”

We clomped along in silence for a minute. The traffic on the Roma Road had thinned, but on its long straight sections you could still see carts and horsemen, even travellers afoot, stretching off into the distance.

“My family,” he said.

And though I laid no claim to wisdom, I was wise enough to say nothing to that.

• • •

The summer that had welcomed us belatedly in Ancrath wore thin as we progressed north. At the town of Hoff, amidst fields ripe for harvest and on a cold day with more of autumn in it than any other season, Snorri led us east from the Roma Road.

“We could take ship from a Conaught port,” I said.

“Men of the true North are not loved in Conaught,” Snorri replied. “We have visited too often.” He urged Sleipnir onto the unkempt and rutted track that pointed east towards the mountains of northern Gelleth.

“And the Thurtans will be better?”

“Well, the Thurtans will be bad too,” he admitted. “But in Maladon a warmer welcome awaits.”

“Fewer visits?”

“There we stayed. We’ll take ship in Maladon. I have cousins there.”

“We’d better, because I’m not going any farther east.” East of Maladon was Osheim, and nobody went to Osheim. Osheim was where the Builders built the Wheel, and every fairy tale that ever launched a nightmare starts, “Once upon a time, not far from the Wheel of Osheim.”

Snorri nodded, solemn. “Maladon. We’ll take ship in Maladon.”

The mountains thrust us up through autumn and into winter. Those were bad days, despite warm clothing and good provisions bought in Hoff. I’d paid the coin out with more than the usual measure of begrudging, knowing that the pieces of silver could have been paving my way back to the heat of Vermillion.

Amidst the high places of Gelleth I came to miss the small taste of luxury our night in the Tall Castle had afforded us. Even the stinking cots of the Falling Angel would have been heaven compared to bedding amongst rocks in the teeth of a gale halfway up some nameless mountain. I suggested to Snorri that we take the longer but less arduous path via the Castle Red. Merl Gellethar, the duke who kept that seat, was Grandmother’s nephew and would have some family duty to help us on our way.

“No.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It’s too long a detour.” Snorri muttered the words, ill tempered-an unusual thing for him.

“That’s not the reason.” He always grew cross when lying.

“No.”

I waited.

“Aslaug cautioned against it,” he growled.

“Aslaug? Isn’t Loki the Father of Lies? And she’s his daughter. .” I paused for him to deny it. “So that would make her. . a lie?”

“I believe her this time,” he said.

“Hmmm.” I didn’t like the sound of that. When your sole travelling companion is a seven-foot maniac with an axe, it can be unsettling to hear that he’s starting to believe the devil that whispers in his ear when the sun sets. Even so, I didn’t argue the point. Baraqel had told me the same thing that morning. Perhaps when an angel whispered to me at sunrise, I should start believing what he said.

I dreamed of Sageous that night, smiling a calm smile to himself as he watched the board across which I was pushed, from black square to white, white to black, dark to light. . Snorri beside me, matching my moves, and all about us, shadowed pieces, orchestrated to some complex design. A grey hand pushed its pawns forwards-I felt the Silent Sister’s touch and stepped forwards, black to white. Behind her loomed another, more huge, deepest crimson, the Red Queen playing the longest game. A dead black hand reached across the board, high above it a larger hand, midnight blue, guiding. I could almost see the strings. Together the Lady Blue and the Dead King advanced a knight and without warning the unborn stood before me, only a plain porcelain mask to preserve my sanity from its horror. I woke screaming and waited for dawn without sleeping.

• • •

In the Thurtans we kept to ourselves, avoiding inns and towns, sleeping in hedges, drinking from the rivers, of which there are too many, dividing the country into innumerable strips.

On the border between East and West Thurtan there lies a great forest known as Gowfaugh, a vast expanse of pine, dark and threatening evil.

“We could just take the road,” I said.

“Better to cross the border without notice.” Snorri eyed the forest margins. “Thurtan guards are like as not to give us a month inside one of their cells and take any valuables as payment for the privilege.”

I looked back along the trail we’d taken down from the hills, a faint line across a dour moorland. The Gowfaugh had nothing inviting about it, but the threat behind worried me more. I felt it daily, nipping at our heels. I had been expecting trouble since we left Crath City, and not from King Olidan worried that I’d sullied his queen’s honour. The Dead King had moved twice to stop us and the third time could be the charm.

“Forwards, Jal, that’s the place to keep your attention. You southerners are always looking back.”

“That’s because we’re no fools,” I said. “You’ve forgotten the unborn at the circus? Edris and his hired men, and what they became when you killed them?”

“Someone is seeding our path to stop us, but they’re not chasing us.”

“But the thing in Vermillion-it escaped, Sageous said we would meet it, he-”

“He told me the same thing.” Snorri nodded. “You don’t want to believe much that man says, but I think he’s right. It did escape. I suspect the creature you saw in the opera house was an unborn, one grown old in its power, the target of the Silent Sister’s spell. Probably an important lieutenant to the Dead King. A captain of his armies maybe.”

“But it’s not following us?” It was following us. I knew it.

“Did you not listen to the dream-witch, Jal?”

“He said a lot of things. . Mostly about killing you-and how I could go home if I did.”

“The curse, the Silent Sister’s spell? Why’s it still on us?”

That did ring a bell. “Because the unborn wasn’t destroyed. The enchantment is an act of will. It needs to complete its purpose.” I crossed my arms, pleased with myself.

“That’s right. And we’re heading north and the spell is giving us no problems.”

“Yes.” I frowned. This was going somewhere bad.

“The unborn isn’t chasing us, Jal. We’re chasing it. The thing’s gone north.”

“Hell.” I tried to calm myself. “But. . but, come on, what are the odds? We’re headed for the same place?”

“The Silent Sister sees the future.” Snorri touched a finger to his eye. “Her magic is aimed towards tomorrow. The spell sought out a way to reach the unborn-it followed the path that would see it carried by someone, some somebodies, who would end up in the same place as its target.”

“Hell.” I hadn’t any more to say this time.

“Yup.”

We skirted the Gowfaugh until we found a trail, too wide for a deer path, too narrow for a woodsman’s track. On reflection, as we pushed our way along it, leading the horses and trying to avoid getting a branch in the eye, the Gowfaugh wasn’t the kind of forest you’d hope to find deer in. Or woodsmen.

“Forests.” Snorri rubbed at three parallel scratches on his bicep and shook his head. “I’ll be glad to be free of this one.”

“Woods where a man can hunt stag and boar, that’s what we have in Red March, with proper trees, not all this pine, with charcoal burners, timber cutters, the occasional bear or wolf. But in the North. .” I waved at the close-packed trunks, branches interlaced so a man would have to cut his path every yard of the way. “Dead places. Just trees and trees and more trees. Listen! Not even a bird.”

Snorri shouldered his way ahead. “Jal-this one point I’ll cede you. The south has better forests.”

We crumped along, following convoluted paths, footsteps muffled by the thick blanket of old dry needles. It didn’t take long to become lost. Even the sun offered few clues as to direction, its light coming diffuse from louring clouds.

“I do not want to spend a night in here.” The darkness would be utter.

“Eventually we’ll find a stream and follow it out.” Snorri snapped a branch from his path. Needles fell with a faint patter. “Shouldn’t take long. These are the Thurtans. You can’t take three steps without finding yourself ankle-deep in a river.”

I made no reply but followed him. It sounded like sense, but the Gowfaugh lay tinder-dry and I imagined the woven roots drinking up any stream before it penetrated half a mile.

The forest seemed to press closer on every side. The slow lives of trees overwhelming all else, insensate and implacable. The light started to fail early and we pressed on through a forest twilight, though far above us the sun still scraped across the treetops.

“I’d swap a gold coin for a clearing.” I would have paid that much for room to stretch my arms. Ron and Sleipnir followed behind, heads down, brushed on both sides, miserable in the way that only horses can be.

Somewhere the sun had started to sink. The temperature dropped with it, and in the half-light we struggled against unyielding walls of dead branches in the airless gloom. The noise when it came was startling, shattering the arboreal silence through which we had laboured so long.

“Deer?” More in hope than belief. Something big and less subtle than a deer, snapping branches as it moved.

“More than one.” Snorri nodded to the other side. The sound of dry wood breaking grew louder from that direction too.

Soon they were flanking us on both sides. Pale somethings. Tall somethings.

“They had to wait until it got dark.” I spat out dry needles and drew my sword with difficulty. I’d have no hope of swinging it.

Snorri stopped and turned. In the gloom I couldn’t see his eyes, but something in the stillness of the man told me they would be black, without feature or soul.

“They would have been wiser to come in the light.” His mouth moved, but it didn’t sound like him.

All of a sudden I wasn’t sure whether the path might not be the least safe place for me in the whole of Gowfaugh. One of the creatures flanking us drew momentarily closer and I saw a flash of pale arms, a man’s legs but naked and whitish-green. A glimpse of a white face, gums and teeth exposed in a snarl, a glittering eye fixed for a heartbeat on mine, betraying an awful hunger.

“Dead men!” I may have shrieked it.

“Almost.” And Snorri swung his axe in a great loop, shearing off branches in scores. I would have bet against even a blade of razor-honed Builder-steel carving through like that. Again, another huge loop. I lunged away, stopped only by Ron’s blunt head, blocking the path we’d forged. Snorri sang now, a wordless song, or perhaps a language lay behind it, but not of men, and he carved a space, ever more wide, until he strode from one side to hack deeper and then four paces to the other, five paces, six. The stumps of trees, some thicker than my arm, studded the space, poking up knee-high through drifts of fallen timber. In the clearing, despite open sky above, twilight-blue and cradling the evening star, it was darker than the forest. And the darkness trailed his axe.

“Wh-what?” Snorri came to a halt, panting. The twilight had taken on a new quality. The sun had set. Aslaug confined once more to whatever hell she inhabited. He looked down at his weapon. “It’s not a wood-axe! Gods damn it!”

I stepped closer, smartish, worried that corpse-white arms might reach for me from the darker shadows.

“Make a light, Jal. Quick.”

So with Snorri standing over me and the horses nervous, wedged along the trail, I fumbled in my pack, whilst all around us branches broke and pale men moved between the trees.

“Come out. I’ll bet you cut easier than wood,” Snorri called to them, though I detected an edge of fear in his voice-something I’d never heard before. I think the forest unnerved him more than the enemy within it. I found tinder and then flint, managing to drop both in the darkness, finding them again with trembling fingers. The scent of pine sap grew around us, strong and sickly, almost overpowering.

I struck spark to tinder as Snorri swung at the first of the men to rush from the trees. Branches snapped on all sides, more of them pushing through. An ill-advised glance upwards showed them lean and naked, pale greenish-white ghosts in the dimness. The passage of Snorri’s axe carved a great furrow through the creature from left hip to right nipple, slicing through gut, ribs, sternum, and lungs. Evidently the axe retained some edge despite being used to cut timber. Still the pine-man came on, the stink of sap overwhelming as the stuff oozed from his bloodless wound. At the last he tripped on a stump, crashed down, and became snarled in a mess of loose entrails and stray branches. By then Snorri had plenty of other problems to worry about.

Success! Spark became glow became smoke became flame. A month earlier it would have taken me half an hour to get the same result. Crouched close to the ground and with Snorri swinging and grunting above me, and the scream of terrified horses, I managed to transfer the fire to one of the pitch torches I’d bought back in Crath City, offered there for exploring the extensive municipal catacombs.

“Burn it!” A pale, twitching limb landed beside my foot.

“What?”

“Burn it!” Another grunt and a head dropped close by. A pine-man leapt onto Snorri’s back.

“Burn what?” I shouted.

“Everything.” He fell backwards, impaling his passenger on several stumps.

“That’s madness!” We’d burn up too.

Snorri’s move, whilst genius in the short term, left me exposed, and at least four pine-men were pulling free of the trees to enter the clearing, more behind them. The look in their eyes frightened me more than the fire. I shoved the pitch brand into the mass of broken branches before me.

Flames rose up almost immediately. The pine-men took two or three more steps before halting, each with their face to the fire. Behind me Snorri tore free of his opponent and rose with a groan. “Follow the horses!”

Already the flames were spreading, a fierce crackling building as needles popped in the heat and the fire raced along desiccated branches, quickened by pine-men’s blood. Terrified out of whatever wits horses possess, Sleipnir and Ron bolted, stampeding across the small clearing Snorri had carved, scattering both pine-men and fire. I managed to follow Snorri’s example and roll clear, very nearly impaling myself on a couple of inch-thick stumps.

The two horses punched their own passage through the trees. I hoped they’d avoid being blinded, but it seemed a damn sight better than being barbecued. Snorri gave chase and I stumbled along in their wake. Behind me the fire roared like a living thing and the pine-men answered it with thin cries of their own agony.

For a brief while we left the fire behind us, plunging unseeing along the horses’ path. As my breath grew short I paused for a moment and, glancing back, saw the whole forest lit from within by an orange glow, countless trunks and branches in black silhouette. “Run!” I shouted uselessly, thereafter saving my breath to better follow my own order.

The inferno leapt through the trees with spectacular speed. It jumped between treetops faster than it moved on the ground, and several times we found ourselves beneath a roof of flame whilst the beast roared behind us. Trees exploded within moments of the inferno wrapping them. Literally blown apart, great swirls of orange embers rising above them. The flame rushed through the needled branches like a wind, consuming everything. A burning hand pressed against my back, driving me to greater exertions. Ron’s path split from Sleipnir’s; I chose the one to the left. A hundred yards on I saw my horse through the trees to the side, snared on something, hook-briar most like, screaming. It takes a lot to snare a horse, and Ron was a strong one, fuelled with terror of the flame. But he hung there and I raced on, cursing. At least the fire put a quick end to him. The gelding would have been molten fat and charring bones before he knew the firestorm had him.

I saw Snorri up ahead, fire-lit. Sleipnir’s strength failing her, both of them toiling up a steep slope.

“Run.” A gasp, little louder than my rasping breath.

We made the ridge before the flames, save those dancing high above us in the treetops. “Hel be praised.” Snorri leaned against a trunk, gasping. The slope ran away from us, just as steep on the way down as it was on the rise, trees thinning yard by yard and where the ground grew level, stretching out before us, mile upon mile of moonlit grassland.