The Liar's key

FIVE

“. . underneath! It’s taken six men to get him out.” A woman’s voice, tinged with wonder.

I felt as if I were lifted up. Carried away.

“Steady!”

“Easy. .”

A warm wet cloth passed across my forehead. I snuggled into the softness cradling me. The world lay a pleasant distance away, only snatches of conversation reaching me as I dozed.

In my dream I wandered the empty palace of Vermillion on a fine summer’s day, the light streaming in through tall windows overlooking the city’s basking sprawl.

“. . hilt deep! Must have reached the heart. .” A man’s voice.

I was moving. Borne along. The motion halfway between the familiar jolt of a horse and the despised rise and fall of the ocean.

“. . saw his friend. .”

“Heard him shout in the doorway. ‘Snorri!’ He roared it like a Viking. .”

The world grew closer. I didn’t want it to. I was home. Where it was warm. And safe. Well, safer. All the north had to offer was a soft landing. The woman holding me had a chest as mountainous as the local terrain.

“. . charged straight at it. .”

“. . dived at it!”

The creak of a door. The raking of coals.

“. . berserker. .”

I turned from the sun-drenched cityscape back into the empty palace gallery, momentarily blind.

“. . Fenris. .”

The sunspots cleared from my eyes, the reds and greens fading. And I saw the wolf, there in the palace hall, jaws gaping, ivory fangs, scarlet tongue, ropes of saliva, hot breath. .

“Arrrg!” I jerked upright, my head coming clear of Borris’s hairy man-breasts. Did the man never wear a shirt?

“Steady there!” Thick arms set me down as easily as a child onto a fur-laden cot. A smoky hut rose about us, larger than most, people crowded round on all sides.

“What?” I always ask that-though on reflection I seldom want to know.

“Easy! It’s dead.” Borris straightened up. Warriors of the clan Olaaf filled the roundhouse, also a matronly woman with thick blond plaits and several buxom younger women-presumably the wife and daughters.

“Snorri-” I started before noticing him lying beside me, unconscious, pale-even for a northman-and sporting several nasty gashes, one of them an older wound sliced down across his ribs, angry and white-crusted. Even so he looked in far better shape than a man should after being gnawed on by a Fenris wolf. The markings about his upper arms stood out in sharp contrast against marble flesh, the hammer and the axe in blue, runes in black, trapping my attention for a moment. “How?” I didn’t feel up to sentences containing more than one word.

“Had a shield jammed in the beast’s mouth. Wedged open!” Borris said.

“Then you killed it!” One of his daughters, her chest almost as developed as his.

“We got your sword out.” A warrior from the crowd, offering me my blade, hilt first, almost reverential. “Took some doing!”

The creature’s weight had driven the blade home as it fell.

I recalled how wide the wolf’s mouth had been around Snorri, and the lack of chewing going on. Closing my eyes I saw that brilliant hand pressed between the wolf’s eyes.

“I want to see the creature.” I didn’t, but I needed to. Besides, it wasn’t often I got to play the hero and it probably wouldn’t last long past Snorri regaining his senses. With some effort I managed to stand. Drawing breath proved the hardest part. The wolf had left me with bruised ribs on both sides. I was lucky it hadn’t crushed them all. “Hell! Where’s Tuttugu?”

“I’m here!” The voice came from behind several broad backs. Men pulled aside to reveal the other half of the Undoreth, grinning, one eye closing as it swelled. “Got knocked into a wall.”

“You’re making a habit of that.” It surprised me how pleased I was to see him in one piece. “Let’s go!”

Borris led the way, and flanked by men bearing reed torches I hobbled after, clutching my ribs and cursing. A pyramidal fire of seasoned logs now lit the square and a number of injured men were laid out on pallets around it, being treated by an ancient couple, both shrouded in straggles of long white hair. I hadn’t thought from my brief time in the hall that anyone had survived, but a wounded man has an instinct for rolling into any cranny or hidey hole that will take him. In the Aral Pass we’d pulled dead men from crevices and fox dens, some with just their boots showing.

Borris took us past the casualties and up to the doors of the great hall. A small man with a big warty blemish on his cheek waited guard, clutching his spear and eyeing the night.

“It’s dead!” The first thing he said to us. He seemed distracted, scratching at his overlarge iron helm as if that might satisfy whatever itched him.

“Well of course it’s dead!” Borris said, pushing past. “The berserker prince killed it!”

“Of course it’s dead,” I echoed as I passed the little fellow, allowing myself a touch of scorn. I couldn’t say why the thing had chosen that moment to fall on me, but its weight had driven my sword hilt-deep, and even a wolf as big as a horse isn’t going to get up again after an accident like that. Even so, I felt troubled. Something about Snorri’s hands glowing like that. .

“Odin’s balls! It stinks!” Borris, just ahead of me.

I drew breath to point out that of course it did. The hall had stunk to heaven but to be fair it had been only marginally worse than the aroma of Borris’s roundhouse, or in fact Olaafheim in general. My observations were lost in a fit of choking though as the foulness invaded my lungs. Choking with badly bruised ribs is a painful affair and takes your mind off things, like standing up. Fortunately Tuttugu caught hold of me.

We advanced, breathing in shallow gasps. Lanterns had been lit and placed on the central table, now set back on its feet. Some kind of incense burned in pots, cutting through the reek with a sharp lavender scent.

The dead men had been laid out before the hearth, parts associated. I saw Gauti among them, bitten clean in half, his eye screwed shut in the agony of the moment, the empty socket staring at the roof beams. The wolf lay where it had fallen whilst savaging Snorri. It sprawled on its side, feet pointing at the wall. The terror that had infected me when I first saw it now returned in force. Even dead it presented a fearsome sight.

The stench thickened as we approached.

“It’s dead,” Borris said, walking toward the dangerous end.

“Well of course-” I broke off. The thing reeked of carrion. Its fur had fallen out in patches, the flesh beneath grey. In places where it had split worms writhed. It wasn’t just dead-it had been dead for a while.

“Odin. .” Borris breathed the word through the hand over his face, finding no parts of the divine anatomy to attach to the oath this time. I joined him and stared down at the wolf’s head. Blackened skull would be a more accurate description. The fur had gone, the skin wrinkled back as if before a flame, and on the bone, between eye sockets from which ichor oozed, a handprint had been seared.

“The Dead King!” I swivelled for the door, sword in fist.

“What?” Borris didn’t move, still staring at the wolf’s head.

I paused and pointed toward the corpses. As I did so Gauti’s good eye snapped open. If his stare had been cold in life now all the winters of the Bitter Ice blew there. His hands clawed at the ground, and where his torso ended, in the red ruin hanging below his ribcage, pieces began to twitch.

“Burn the dead! Dismember them!” And I started to run, clutching my sides with one arm, each breath sharp-edged.

“Jal, where-” Tuttugu tried to catch hold of me as I passed him.

“Snorri! The Dead King sent the wolf for Snorri!” I barged past wart-face on the door and out into the night.

What with my ribs and Tuttugu’s bulk neither of us was the first to get back to Borris’s house. Swifter men had alerted the wife and daughters. Locals were already arriving to guard the place as we ducked in through the main entrance. Snorri had got himself into a sitting position, showing off the over-muscled topology of his bare chest and stomach. He had the daughters fussing around him, one stitching a tear on his side while another cleaned a wound just below his collarbone. I remembered when I had been light-sworn, carrying Baraqel within me, just how much it took out of me to incapacitate a single corpse man. Back on the mountainside just past Chamy-Nix, when Edris’s men had caught us, I’d burned through the forearms of the corpse that had been trying to strangle me. The effort had left me helpless. The fact that Snorri could even sit after incinerating the entire head of a giant dead-wolf spoke as loudly about his inner strength as all that muscle did about his outer strength.

Snorri looked up and gave me a weary grin. Having been at different times both light-sworn and now dark-sworn I have to say the dark side has it easier. The power Snorri and I had used on the undead was the same healing that we had both used to repair wounds on others. It drew on the same source of energy, but healing undead flesh just burns the evil out of it.

“It came for the key,” I said.

“Probably died on the ice and was released by the thaw.” Snorri winced as the kneeling daughter set another stitch. “The real question is how did it know where to find us?”

It was a good question. The idea that any dead thing to hand might be turned against us at any point on our journey was not one that sat well with me. A good question and not one I had an answer for. I looked at Tuttugu as if he might have one.

“Uh.” Tuttugu scratched his chins. “Well it’s not exactly a secret that Snorri left Trond sailing south. Half the town watched.” Tuttugu didn’t add “thanks to you” but then again he didn’t need to. “And Olaafheim would be the first sensible place for three men in a small boat to put in. Easily reachable in a day’s sailing with fair winds. If he had an agent in town with some arcane means of communication. . or maybe necromancers camped nearby. We don’t know how many escaped the Black Fort.”

“Well that makes sense.” It was a lot better than thinking the Dead King just knew where to find us any time he wanted. “We should, uh, probably leave now.”

“Now?” Snorri frowned. “We can’t sail in the middle of the night.”

I stepped in close, aware of the two daughters’ keen interest. “I know you’re well liked here, Snorri. But there’s a pile of dead bodies in the great hall, and when Borris and his friends have finished dismembering and burning their friends and family they might think to ask why this evil has been visited upon their little town. Just how good a friend is he? And if they start asking questions and want to take us upriver to meet these two jarls of theirs. . well, do you have friends in high places too?”

Snorri stood, towering above the girls, and me, pulling on his jerkin. “Better go.” He picked up his axe and started for the door.

Nobody moved to stop us, though there were plenty of questions.

“Need to get something from the boat.” I said that a lot on the way down to the harbour. It was almost true.

By the time we reached the seafront we had quite a crowd with us, their questions merging into one seamless babble of discontent. Tuttugu kept a reed-torch from Borris’s roundhouse, lighting the way around piled nets and discarded crates. The locals, lost in the surrounding shadows, watched on in untold numbers. A man grabbed at my arm, saying something about waiting for Borris. I shook him off.

“I’ll check in the prow!” It took me a while to master the nautical terminology but ever since learning prow from stern I took all opportunities to demonstrate my credentials. I clambered down, gasping at the pain that reaching overhead caused. I could hear mutters above, people encouraging each other to stop us leaving.

“It might be in the stern. . that. . thing we need.” Tuttugu could take acting lessons from a troll-stone. He dropped into the other end of the boat, causing a noticeable tilt.

“I’ll row us away,” Snorri said, descending in two steps. He really hadn’t got the hang of deception yet, which after nearly six months in my company had to say something bad about my teaching skills.

To distract the men at the harbour wall from the fact we were smoothly pulling away into the night I raised a hand and bid them a royal farewell. “Good-bye, citizens of Olaafheim. I’ll always remember your town as. . as. . somewhere I’ve been.”

And that was that. Snorri kept rowing and I slumped back down into the semi-drunken stupor I’d been enjoying before all the night’s unpleasantness started. Another town full of Norsemen left behind me. Soon I’d be lazing in the southern sun. I’d almost certainly marry Lisa and be spending her father’s money before the summer was out.

Three hours later dawn found us out in the wide grey wilderness of the sea, Norseheim a black line to the east, promising nothing good.

“Well,” I said. “At least the Dead King can’t get at us out here.”

Tuttugu leaned out to look at the wine-dark waves. “Can dead whales swim?” he asked.