Red Queen's War: The Liar's Key Part 2

"The Red Queen would destroy the key," Snorri said.

"Good!" Almost a shout. "That's exactly what she should do!"

Snorri looked down at his hands, upturned on his lap, big, scarred, thick with callus. The wind whipped his hair about, hiding his face. "I will find this door."

"Christ! That's the last place that key should be taken!" If there really was a door into death no sane person would want to stand before it. "If this morning has taught me anything it's to be very careful which doors you open and when."

Snorri made no reply. He kept silent. Still. Nothing for long moments but the flap of sail, the slop of wave against hull. I knew what thoughts ran through his head. I couldn't speak them, my mouth would go too dry. I couldn't deny them, though to do so would cause me only an echo of the hurt such a denial would do him.

"I will get them back." His eyes held mine and for a heartbeat made me believe he might. His voice, his whole body shook with emotion, though in what part sorrow and what part rage I couldn't say.

"I will find this door. I will unlock it. And I will bring back my wife, my children, my unborn son."

THREE.

"Jal?" Someone shaking my shoulder. I reached to draw Edda in closer and found my fingers tangled in the unwholesome ginger thicket of Tuttugu's beard, heavy with grease and salt. The whole sorry story crashed in on me and I let out a groan, deepened by the returning awareness of the swell, lifting and dropping our little boat.

"What?" I hadn't been having a good dream, but it was better than this.

Tuttugu thrust a half-brick of dark Viking bread at me, as if eating on a boat were really an option. I waved it away. If Norse women were a high point of the far north then their cuisine counted as one of the lowest. With fish they were generally on a good footing, simple, plain fare, though you had to be careful or they'd start trying to feed it to you raw, or half-rotted and stinking worse than corpse flesh. "Delicacies" they'd call it . . . The time to eat something is the stage between raw and rotting. It's not the alchemy of rockets! With meat-what meat there was to be found clinging to the near vertical surfaces of the north-you could trust them to roast it over an open fire. Anything else always proved a disaster. And with any other kind of eatable the Nors.e.m.e.n were likely to render it as close to inedible as makes no difference using a combination of salt, pickle, and desiccated nastiness. Whale meat they preserved by p.i.s.sing on it! My theory was that a long history of raiding each other had driven them to make their foodstuffs so foul that no one in their right mind would want to steal it. Thereby ensuring that, whatever else the enemy might carry off, women, children, goats, and gold, at least they'd leave lunch behind.

"We're coming in to Olaafheim," Tuttugu said, pulling me out of my doze again.

"Whu?" I levered myself up to look over the prow. The seemingly endless uninviting coastline of wet black cliffs protected by wet black rocks had been replaced with a river mouth. The mountains leapt up swiftly to either side, but here the river had cut a valley whose sides might be grazed, and left a truncated floodplain where a small port nestled against the rising backdrop.

"Best not to spend the night at sea." Tuttugu paused to gnaw at the bread in his hand. "Not when we're so close to land." He glanced out west to where the sun plotted its descent toward the horizon. The quick look he shot me before settling back to eat told me clear enough that he'd rather not be sharing the boat with me when Aslaug came to visit at sunset.

Snorri tacked across the mouth of the river, the Hnir he called it, angling across the diluted current toward the Olaafheim harbour. "These are fisher folk and raiders, Jal. Clan Olaaf, led by jarls Harl and Knutson, twin sons of Knut Ice-Reaver. This isn't Trond. The people are less . . . cosmopolitan. More-"

"More likely to split my skull if I look at them wrong," I interrupted him. "I get the picture." I held a hand up. "I promise not to bed any jarl's daughters." I even meant it. Now we were actually on the move I had begun to get excited about the prospect of a return to Red March, to being a prince again, returning to my old diversions, running with my old crowd, and putting all this unpleasantness behind me. And if Snorri's plans led him along a different path then we'd just have to see what happened. We'd have to see, as he put it earlier, who cracked first. The bonds that bound us seemed to have weakened since the event at the Black Fort. We could separate five miles and more before any discomfort set in. And as we'd already seen, if the Silent Sister's magic did fracture its way out of us the effect wasn't fatal . . . except for other people. If push came to shove Aslaug's advice seemed sound. Let the magic go, let her and Baraqel be released to return to their domains. It would be far from pleasant if last time was anything to go by, but like pulling a tooth it would be much better afterward. Obviously though, I'd do everything I could to avoid pulling that particular tooth-unless it meant traipsing into mortal danger on Snorri's quest. My own plan involved getting him to Vermillion and having Grandmother order her sister to effect a more gentle release of our fetters.

We pulled into the harbour at Olaafheim with the shadows of boats at anchor reaching out toward us across the water. Snorri furled the sail, and Tuttugu rowed toward a berth. Fishermen paused from their labours, setting down their baskets of hake and cod to watch us. Fishwives laid down half-stowed nets and crowded in behind their men to see the new arrivals. Nors.e.m.e.n busy with some or other maintenance on the nearest of four longboats leaned out over the sides to call out in the old tongue. Threats or welcome I couldn't tell, for a Viking can growl out the warmest greeting in a tone that suggests he's promising to cut your mother's throat.

As we coasted the last yard Snorri vaulted up onto the harbour wall from the side of the boat. Locals crowded him immediately, a sea of them surging around the rock. From the amount of shoulder-slapping and the tone of the growling I guessed we weren't in trouble. The occasional chuckle even escaped from several of the beards on show, which took some doing as the clan Olaaf grew the most impressive facial hair I'd yet seen. Many favoured the bushy explosions that look like regular beards subjected to sudden and very shocking news. Others had them plaited and hanging in two, three, sometimes five iron-capped braids reaching down to their belts.

"Snorri." A newcomer, well over six foot and at least that wide, fat with it, arms like slabs of meat. At first I thought he was wearing spring furs, or some kind of woollen overs.h.i.+rt, but as he closed on Snorri it became apparent that his chest hair just hadn't known when to stop.

"Borris!" Snorri surged through the others to clasp arms with the man, the two of them wrestling briefly, neither giving ground.

Tuttugu finished tying up and with a pair of men on each arm the locals hauled him onto the dock. I clambered quickly up behind him, not wis.h.i.+ng to be manhandled.

"Tuttugu!" Snorri pointed him out for Borris. "Undoreth. We might be the last of our clan, him and I . . ." He trailed off, inviting any present to make a liar of him, but none volunteered any sighting of other survivors.

"A pox on the Harda.s.sa." Borris spat on the ground. "We kill them where we find them. And any others who make cause with the Drowned Isles." Mutters and shouts went up at that. More men spitting when they spoke the word "necromancer."

"A pox on the Harda.s.sa!" Snorri shouted. "That's something to drink to!"

With a general cheering and stamping of feet the whole crowd started to move toward the huts and halls behind the various fisheries and boat sheds of the harbour. Snorri and Borris led the way, arms over each other's shoulders, laughing at some joke, and I, the only prince present, trailed along unintroduced at the rear with the fishermen, their hands still scaly from the catch.

I guess Trond must have had its own stink, all towns do, but you don't notice it after a while. A day at sea breathing air off the Atlantis Ocean tainted with nothing but a touch of salt proved sufficient to enable my nostrils to be offended by my fellow men once more. Olaafheim stank of fresh fish, sweat, stale fish, sewers, rotting fish, and uncured hides. It only got worse as we trudged up through a random maze of split-log huts, turf roofed and close to the ground, each with nets at the front and fuel stacked to the sheltered landward side.

Olaafheim's great hall stood smaller than the foyer of my grandmother's palace, a half-timbered structure, mud daubed into any nook or cranny where the wind might slide its fingers, wooden s.h.i.+ngles on the roof, patchy after the winter storms.

I let the Nors.e.m.e.n crowd in ahead of me and turned back to face the sea. In the west clear skies showed a crimson sun descending. Winter in Trond had been a long cold thing. I may have spent more time than was reasonable in the furs but in truth most of the north does the same. The night can last twenty hours and even when the day finally breaks it never gets above a level of cold I call "f.u.c.k that"-as in you open the door, your face freezes instantly to the point where it hurts to speak, but manfully you manage to say "f.u.c.k that," before turning round, and going back to bed. There's little to do in a northern winter but to endure it. In the very depths of the season sunrise and sunset get so close together that if Snorri and I were to be in the same room Aslaug and Baraqel might even get to meet. A little further north and they surely would, for there the days dwindle into nothing and become a single night that lasts for weeks. Not that Aslaug and Baraqel meeting would be a good idea.

Already I could feel Aslaug scratching at the back of my mind. The sun hadn't yet touched the water but the sea burned b.l.o.o.d.y with it and I could hear her footsteps. I recalled how Snorri's eyes would darken when she used to visit him. Even the whites would fill with shadow, and become for a minute or two so wholly black that you might imagine them holes into some endless night, from which horrors might pour if he but looked your way. I held that to be a clash of temperaments though. If anything my vision always seemed clearer when she came. I made sure to be alone each sunset so we could have our moment. Snorri described her as a creature of lies, a seducer whose words could turn something awful into an idea that any reasonable man would consider. For my part I found her very agreeable, though perhaps a little excessive, and definitely less concerned about my safety than I am.

The first time Aslaug came to me I had been surprised to find her so close to the image Snorri's tales had painted in my mind. I told her so and she laughed at me. She said men had always seen what they expected to see but that a deeper truth ran beneath that fact. "The world is shaped by mankind's desires and fears. A war of hope against dread, waged upon a substrate that man himself made malleable though he has long forgotten how. All men and all men's works stand on feet of clay, waiting to be formed and reformed, forged by fear into monsters from the dark core of each soul, waiting to rend the world asunder." That's how she introduced herself to me.

"Prince Jalan." Aslaug stepped from the shadows of the hall. They clung to her, dark webs, not wanting to release their hold. She pulled clear as the sun kissed the horizon. No one would mistake her for human but she wore a woman's form and wore it well, her flesh like bone, but dipped in ink so it soaked into every pore, revealing the grain, gathering black in any hollow. She fixed me with eyes that held no colour, only pa.s.sions, set in a narrow and exquisite face. Oil-dark hair framed her, falling in unnatural coils and curls. Her beauty owed something to the praying mantis, something to the inhumanity of Greek sculpture. Mask or not though, it worked on me. I'm easily led in matters of the flesh. "Jalan," she said again, stepping around me. She wore tatters of darkness as a gown.

I didn't answer, or turn to follow her. Villagers were still arriving, and the cheers and laughter from inside the hall were drawing more by the minute. None of them would see Aslaug but if they saw me spinning around and talking to the empty air it wouldn't look good. Northmen are a superst.i.tious lot, and frankly with what I'd seen over the last few months they were right to be so. Superst.i.tion though does tend to have a sharp end, and I didn't want to find myself impaled on it.

"Why are you out here in the wilds with all these ill-smelling peasants?" Aslaug reappeared at my left shoulder, her mouth close to my ear. "And why"-a harder edge to her tone, eyes narrowing-"is that light-sworn here? I can smell him. He was going away . . ." A tilt of her head. "Jalan? Have you followed him? Tagged along like a dog at heel? We've talked about this, Jalan. You're a prince, a man of royal blood, in line for the throne of Red March!"

"I'm going home." I whispered it, hardly a twitch in my lips.

"Leaving your beauties behind?" She always held a note of disapproval when it came to my womanizing. Obviously the jealous type.

"I thought it time. They were getting clingy." I rubbed the side of my head, not convinced that Tuttugu had gotten all the splinters out.

"For the better. In Red March we can begin to clear your path to succession." A smile lit her face, the sky crimson behind her with the sun's death throes.

"Well . . ." My own lips curled with an echo of her expression. "I'm not one for murder. But if a whole bunch of my cousins fell off a cliff I wouldn't lose any sleep over it." I'd found it paid to play along with her. Whilst I'd rejoice in any misfortune that fate might drop upon my cousins, three or four of them in particular, I've never had an appet.i.te for the more lethal games played at some courts with knife and poison. My own vision for my glorious path to the throne involved toadying and favouritism, lubricated with tales of heroism and reports of genius. Once selected as Grandmother's favourite and promoted unfairly into the position of heir it would just be a case of the old woman having a timely heart attack and my reign of pleasure would begin!

"You know that Snorri will be plotting your destruction, Jalan?" She reached an arm around me, the touch cold but somehow thrilling too, filled with all the delicious possibilities that the night hides. "You know what Baraqel will be instructing. He told you the same when Snorri kept me within him."

"I trust Snorri." If he had wanted me dead he could have done it many times over.

"For how long, Prince Jalan? For how long will you trust him?" Her lips close to mine now, head haloed with the last rays of the sunset. "Don't trust the light, Prince Jalan. The stars are pretty but the s.p.a.ce between them is infinite and black with promise." Behind me I could almost hear her shadow mix with mine, its dry spider-legs rustling one against the next. "Returning with your body and the right story to Vermillion would earn Snorri grat.i.tude in many circles for many reasons . . ."

"Good night, Aslaug." I clenched what could be clenched and kept from shuddering. In the last moments before the dark took her she was always at her least human, as if her presence outlasted her disguise for just a heartbeat.

"Watch him!" And the shadows pulled her down as they merged into the singular gloom that would deepen into night.

I turned and followed the locals into their "great" hall. My moments with Aslaug always left me a touch less tolerant of sweaty peasants and their crude little lives. And perhaps Snorri did bear watching. He had after all been on the point of abandoning me when I most needed help. A day later and I could have been subjected to all the horrors of handfasting, or some even crueller form of Viking justice.

FOUR.

Three long tables divided the mead-hall, now lined by men and women raising foaming horn and dripping tankard. Children, some no more than eight or nine, ran back and forth with pitchers from four great barrels to keep any receptacle from running dry. A great fire roared in the hearth, fish roasting on spits set before it. Hounds bickered around the margins of the room, daring a kicking to run beneath the tables should anything fall. The heat and roar and stink of the place took a moment's getting used to after plunging in from the frigid spring evening. I plotted a course toward the rear of the hall, giving the dogs a wide berth. Animals are generally good judges of character-they don't like me-except for horses which, for reasons I've never understood, give me their all. Perhaps it's our shared interest in running away that forms the bond.

Snorri and Borris sat close to the fire, flanked by Olaafheim's warriors. Most of the company appeared to have brought their axes out for the evening's drinking, setting them across the tabletop in such a crowd that putting down a drink became a tricky task. Snorri turned as I approached, and boomed out for a s.p.a.ce to be made. A couple of grumbles went up at that, soon silenced with mutters of "berserker." I squeezed down onto a narrow span of a.r.s.e-polished bench, trying not to show my displeasure at being wedged in so tightly among hairy brigands. My tolerance for such familiarities had increased during my time at the Three Axes as owner and operator . . . well, in truth I paid for Eyolf to keep bar and Helga and Gudrun to serve tables . . . but still, I was there in spirit. In any event, although my tolerance had increased it still wasn't high and at least in Trond you got a better quality of bearded, axe-wielding barbarian. Faced with the present situation though, not to mention a table full of axes, I did what any man keen on leaving with the same number of limbs that he entered with would do. I grinned like an idiot and bore it.

I reached for the br.i.m.m.i.n.g flagon brought to me by a blond and barefoot child and decided to get drunk. It would probably keep me out of trouble, and the possibility that I might pa.s.s the whole trip to the continent in a state of inebriation did seem inviting. One worry stayed my hand however. Though it pained me to admit it, my grandmother's blood did seem to have shown in me. Snorri or Tuttugu had already mentioned my . . . disability to our hosts. In the troll-wrestling heart of the north being a berserker seemed to carry a good deal of cachet, but any right-thinking man would tell you what a terrible enc.u.mbrance it is. I've always been sensibly terrified of battle. The discovery that if I get pushed too far I turn into a raging maniac who throws himself headlong into the thickest of the fighting was hardly comforting. A wise man's biggest advantage is in knowing the ideal time to run away. That sort of survival strategy is somewhat impaired by a tendency to start frothing at the mouth and casting aside all fear. Fear is a valuable commodity, it's common sense compressed into its purest form. A lack of it is not a good thing. Fortunately it took quite a lot of pus.h.i.+ng to get my hidden berserker out into the open and to my knowledge it had only ever happened twice. Once at the Aral Pa.s.s and once in the Black Fort. If it never happened again that would be fine with me.

". . . Skilfar . . ." A one-eyed man opposite Snorri, speaking into his ale horn. I picked out the one word, and that was plenty.

"What?" I knocked back the rest of my own ale, wiping the suds from my whiskers, a fine blond set I'd cultivated to suit the climate. "I'm not going back there, Snorri, no way." I remembered the witch in her cavern, her plasteek legion all around. She'd scared the h.e.l.l out of me. I still had nightmares . . .

"Relax." Snorri gave me that winning smile of his. "We don't have to."

I did relax, slumping forward as I let go of a tension I hadn't known was there. "Thank G.o.d."

"She's still in her winter seat. Beerentoppen. It's a mountain of ice and fire, not too far inland, it'll be our last stop before we leave the north just a few days down the coast and strike out for Maladon across open sea."

"h.e.l.l no!" It had been the woman that scared me, not the tunnels and statues-well, they had too, but the point was that I wasn't going. "We'll head south. The Red Queen will have any answers we need."

Snorri shook his head. "I have questions that won't wait, Jal. Questions that need a little northern light shed on them."

I knew what he wanted to talk about-that d.a.m.ned door. If he took the key to Skilfar, though, she'd probably take it off him. I didn't doubt for a moment that she could. Still, it would be no skin off my nose if she stole it. A thing that powerful would be safer in the old witch's keeping anyhow. Far from where I intended to be and out of the Dead King's reach.

"All right." I cut across the one-eyed warrior again. "You can go. But I'm staying in the boat!"

The fellow across from Snorri turned a cold blue eye my way, the other socket empty, the firelight catching the twitch of ugly little muscles in the shadowed hollow. "This fit-firar speaks for you now, Snorri?"

I knew the insult to be a grim one. The Vikings can think of nothing worse to call you than "land man," one who doesn't know the sea. That's the trouble with these backwater villages-everyone's tetchy. They're all ready to jump up at a moment's notice and spill your guts. It's over-compensation of course, for living in freezing huts on an inhospitable beach. At home I'd d.a.m.n the fellow's eyes . . . well eye at least . . . and let one half of the palace guard hold me back while the other half beat him out of town. The trouble with a friend like Snorri is that he's the sort to take things at face value and think I really did want to defend my own honour. Knowing Snorri he'd stand by clapping while the savage carved me up.

The man, Gauti I think Snorri had called him, had one hand on the axe before him, casual enough, fingers spread, but he kept that cold eye on me and there was little to read in it that wasn't murder. This could go very wrong, very quickly. The sudden urge to p.i.s.s nearly overtook me. I smiled the bold Jalan smile, ignoring the sick feeling in my stomach, and drew my dagger, a wicked piece of black iron. That got some attention, though less than in any place I'd ever seen an edge drawn before. I did at least get the satisfaction of seeing Gauti flinch, his fingers half closing about his axe hilt. To my credit, I do look like the kind of hero who would demand satisfaction and have the skill to take it.

"Jal . . ." Snorri with a half frown, gesturing with his eyes at the eight inches of knife in my hand.

I pushed aside some axe hafts and in a sudden move inverted my blade so the point hovered a quarter inch above the table. Again Gauti's eye twitched. I saw Snorri quietly lay his hand on the man's axe head. Several warriors half rose then settled back in their places.

One great a.s.set in my career as secret coward has been a natural ability to lie fluently in body language. Half of it is . . . what did Snorri call it? Serendipity. Pure lucky accident. When scared I flush scarlet, but in a fit young man overtopping six foot by a good two inches it usually comes across as outrage. My hands also rarely betray me. I may be quivering with fright inside but they hold steady. Even when the terror is so much that they do finally shake it's often as not mistaken as rage. Now though, as I set knifepoint to wood, my hands kept firm and sure. In a few strokes I sketched out an irregular blob with a horn at the top and lobe at the bottom.

"What is it?" The man across from me.

"A cow?" A woman of middle years, very drunk, leaning over Snorri's shoulder.

"That, men of the clan Olaaf, is Scorron, the land of my enemies. These are the borders. This . . ." I scored a short line across the bottom of the lobe. "This is the Aral Pa.s.s where I taught the Scorron army to call me 'devil.'" I looked up to meet Gauti's singular glare. "And you will note that not one of these borders is a coastline. So if I were a man of the sea it would mean, in my country, that I could never close with my enemy. In fact every time I set sail I would be running away from them." I stuck the knife firmly in the centre of Scorron. "Where I come from 'land men' are the only men who can go to war." I let a boy refill my tankard. "And so we learn that insults are like daggers-it matters which way you point them, and where you stand." And I threw my head back to drain my cup.

Snorri pounded the table, the axes danced, and the laughter came. Gauti leaned back, sour but his ill-temper having lost its edge. The ale flowed. Codfish were brought to table along with some kind of salty grain-mash and dreadful little sea-weed cakes burned nearly black. We ate. More ale flowed. I found myself talking drunkenly to a greybeard with more scar than face about the merits of different kinds of longboat-a subject I acquired my "expertise" on in many separate pieces during innumerable similar drunken conversations with regulars back at the Three Axes. More ale, spilled, splashed, gulped. I think we'd got onto knots by the time I slipped gracefully off the bench and decided to stay where I was.

"Hedwig," I grumbled, still half-asleep. "Get off me, woman."

The licking paused, then started up again. I wondered vaguely where I was, and when Hedwig's tongue had got quite so long. And sloppy. And stinky.

"Get off!" I swiped at the dog. "b.l.o.o.d.y mutt." I raised myself on one elbow, still at least half-drunk. The hearth's glowing embers painted the hall in edge and shadow. Hounds slunk beneath the tables, searching for sc.r.a.ps. I could make out half a dozen drunks snoring on the floor, lying where they fell, and Snorri, stretched out along the central table, head on his pack, deep in his slumbers.

I got up, unsteady, stomach lurching. Although the hall smelled as if p.i.s.sing in it might improve matters, I wove a path toward the main doors. In the gloom I might hit a sleeping Viking and it would prove hard to talk my way out of that one.

I reached the double doors and heaved open the one on the left, the hinges squealing loud enough to wake the dead-but apparently n.o.body else-and stepped out. My breath plumed before me and the moonlit square lay glittering with frost. Another fine spring night in the north. I took a pace to the left and started to answer nature's call.

Beneath the splash of borrowed ale lay the slap of waves against the harbour wall, beneath that the murmur of surf slopping half-heartedly up the distant beach that slanted down to the river, and beneath that . . . a quiet that p.r.i.c.kled the hairs at the back of my neck. I strained my ears, finding nothing to warrant my unease, but even in my cups I have a sense for trouble. Since Aslaug's arrival the night seemed to whisper to me. Tonight it held its tongue.

I turned, still fumbling to lace my fly, and found instead that I needed to go again, right away. Standing no more than ten yards from me was the biggest wolf ever. I'd heard tall stories aplenty in the Three Axes and I'd been prepared to believe the north bred bigger wolves than might be found down south. I'd even seen a direwolf with my own eyes, albeit stuffed and mounted in the entrance hall to Madam Serene's Pleasure Palace down on Magister Street, Vermillion. The thing before me had to be one of the Fenris breed they spoke about in Trond. It stood as tall as a horse, wider in its s.h.a.ggy coat, its mouth full of sharp ivory gleaming in the moonlight.

I stood there, stock still, still draining onto the ground between my feet. The beast moved forward, no snarl, no prowling, just a quick but slightly ungainly advance. It didn't occur to me to reach for my sword. The wolf looked as though it might simply bite the sharp end off in any case. Instead I just stood there, making a puddle. I normally pride myself on being the type of coward who acts in the moment, running away when it counts rather than being rooted to the spot. This time however the weight of terror proved too great to run with.

Not until the huge beast charged past me, cras.h.i.+ng open the double doors and rus.h.i.+ng on into the great hall did I find the presence of mind to start my escape. I ran, holding my breath against the carrion reek of the thing. I got as far as the edge of the square, driven by the awful screams and howls behind me, before my brain dropped anchor. Dogs from the hall ran yelping past me. I came up short, panting-mostly in fear since I hadn't run very far-and drew my sword. Ahead of me in the blind night could be any number of similar monsters. Wolves hunt in packs after all. Did I want to be alone in the dark with the beast's friends, or would the safest place be with Snorri and a dozen other Vikings facing the one I'd seen?

All across Olaafheim doors were being kicked open, flames kindled. Hounds that had been taken unawares now gave voice, and cries of "To arms!" started to ring out. Gritting my teeth, I turned back, making no effort to hurry. It sounded like h.e.l.l in there: men's screams and oaths, cras.h.i.+ng and splintering, but strangely not a single snarl or wolf-howl. I'd seen dog fights before and they're loud affairs. Wolves, it seemed, were given to biting their tongues-yours too, no doubt, if they got a chance!

As I drew closer to the hall the cacophony from within grew less loud, just groans, grunts, the sc.r.a.pe of claw on stone. My pace slowed to a crawl. Only the sounds of activity at my back kept me moving at all. I couldn't be seen to be just standing there while men died only yards away. Heart racing, feet anything but, I made it to the doorway and eased my head around so one eye could see within.

Tables lay upended, their legs a short and drunken forest s.h.i.+fting in the fire glow. Men, or rather pieces of men, scattered the floor amid dark lakes and darker smears. At first I couldn't see the Fenris wolf. A grunt of effort drew my eyes to the deepest shadow at the side of the hall. The beast stood hunched over, worrying at something on the ground. Two axes jutted from its side, one stood bedded in its back. I could see its great jaws wide about something, and a man's legs straining beneath its snout, covered in a black slime of blood and s...o...b..r. Somehow I knew who it was, trapped in that maw.

"Snorri!" The shout burst from me without permission. I clapped a hand to my mouth in case any more foolishness might emerge. The last thing I wanted was for that awful head to turn my way. To my horror I found that I'd stepped into the doorway-the absolute worst place to be, silhouetted by moonlight, blocking the exit.

"To arms!"

"To the hall!" Cries from all directions now.

Behind me I could hear the pounding of many feet. No retreat that way. The Norse will string a coward up by his thumbs and cut off bits he needs. I stepped in quickly to make myself a less obvious target, and edged along the inner wall, trying not to breathe. Vikings started to arrive at the doorway behind me, crowding to get through.

As I watched the wolf, a hand, looking child-size against the scale of the creature, slid up from the far side of its head and clamped between its eyes. A glowing hand. A hand becoming so brilliant that the whole room lit almost bright as day. Exposed by the light, I did what any c.o.c.kroach does when someone unhoods a lantern in the kitchens. I raced for cover, leaping toward the shelter of a section of table fallen on its side partway between us.

The light grew still more dazzling, and half-blinded I staggered across a torso, fell over the table, and sprawled forward with several lunging steps, desperate to remain on my feet. My outstretched sword sunk into something soft, grating across bone, and a moment later an immense weight fell across me, taking away all illumination. And all the other stuff too.

FIVE.

". . . underneath! It's taken six men to get him out." A woman's voice, tinged with wonder.