Red Queen's War: The Liar's Key Part 11

"They've drawn up." The cousin at the wall.

The princess lets the bow relax and comes to watch. Nine of the men have spread into a line on their horses. The emissary and the captive ride forward five more yards. The girl is in silks, side-saddle, she looks no more than thirteen, maybe fourteen. The man is fat, his armour adjusted for it, his neck thick and reddened by the Red March sun. He wears a blue plumed helm and a long turquoise cloak.

"Hail, the castle!" His voice reaches them, thinned by the distance.

Princess Alica's face is stone. She strings the arrow to her bow once more and draws it.

"The flag . . ." Contaph stares at her, a frown throwing his brow into deep furrows. Out among the enemy contingent the white flag flutters.

She looks once, out across the wall. "A mistake," she says. "It helps me adjust for the wind." She arches her spine, drawing the bowstring back further across her breastplate . . . and the arrow is gone, just the hiss of it left behind amid our silence.

The princess drops the bow and steps away from the wall. Behind her a high-pitched cry rings out. A pause. The sound of galloping.

"Princess Gwen-" The cousin runs out of words.

"Shot her sister . . ." The whisper ripples along the wall.

Alica whirls back around to face them all. "No negotiation. No surrender. No terms."

Another sharp turn and she's striding toward the stairs at the tower's centre. Contaph jogs, clanking to catch her, the others strung out behind. I'm at her shoulder. So close I can hear the tightness of her breath.

She doesn't turn her head as Contaph draws level at the head of the stair. "Kerwcjz would have had her staked over a fire for us all to watch by morning. He'd have set her singing my troops a song of pain and kept her at it as long as his torturers' skills allowed." The cousin and three others arrive behind us. Alica keeps her shoulders to them. Back at the wall the first rock explodes against the battlements. All along the enemy line engines of war release their pent up forces with throaty tw.a.n.gs.

"We win this, or we die. There is no third way."

And in that moment I knew my grandmother.

And rock rained down upon us.

ELEVEN.

"I'm so hungry."

"Finally he wakes!" Snorri's voice close by.

I opened my eyes. "I've gone blind!" Panic seized me and I struggled up, banging my head on something hard.

"Relax!" He sounded amused. A big hand pushed me down. The old magic sizzled unpleasantly at the contact points.

"My eyes! My fuc-"

"It's night time."

"Where are the d.a.m.n stars then?" I touched my forehead where I'd bashed it. My fingers came away sticky.

"It's cloudy."

"Where's the lantern?" I had him this time. We always kept the lantern burning on dark nights, wick trimmed low. Better to waste a little oil than trip overboard in the dark when nature called.

"You broke it when you fell over."

I remembered it all. That woman! My hand!

"My hand!" I shouted, stupidly grabbing the place she stabbed me and yelping in pain.

Tuttugu uttered a sleepy complaint and stopped snoring. These days I only really noticed his snoring when he stopped.

"Why am I so hungry?"

"You're a pig." I heard Snorri turn over and gather his covers.

"You've been asleep the best part of two nights and a day." Kara's voice from the other end of the boat.

"Well . . ." I paused to consider that. "Well, it didn't work. You mutilated me for nothing."

"You saw nothing?" She sounded unconvinced.

"I saw my grandmother. When she was younger than I am now. She was a scary b.i.t.c.h back then too! Worse, if anything."

"You delayed too long before tasting the blood," Kara said.

"Well excuse me for being busy staring at the six inches of steel sticking out of the back of my hand!" I still couldn't believe she didn't warn me.

"You may see more when you next dream. Perhaps what you seek." She didn't sound bothered-sleepy more than anything.

I glowered at her in the darkness, but judging by the soft sounds all around me the three of them had already fallen back into their slumbers. I couldn't follow them. I'd slept enough. Instead I sat staring into the darkness, rocked by the waves, until the skies shaded into pale to herald the dawn.

I spent those cold dark hours staring at memories of memories. At my grandmother a lifetime ago, at the sacrifices she made to deny her enemy, at the fire in her that drove her to attack long after hope had fled the battlefield. Like Snorri. Or rather, like Snorri had been.

In the grey predawn I watched the northman slumped across the tiller, the slits of his eyes dark as he watched me back. Baraqel would talk to him soon. The angel would walk across the waves and speak of light and purpose, and still Snorri would steer this boat south, aimed toward death.

"You're a coward, Snorri ver Snagason." Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or the Red Queen's blood still running hot in my veins, or even an honest desire to help the man, but something set the words spilling from my mouth, my normal desire to avoid any chance of being hit overridden for the moment.

"How so?" He didn't move or raise his voice. In truth I'd never seen the violence he displayed in battle spill over into conversation-even those that ran against him. Perhaps I just judged him by what I'd do if I were a big scary Viking.

"This key. It's built of lies, you know that. Taking it to death's door-" I waved an arm in the air. "It's just looking for a way out, an escape. You may as well have cut a hole in the sea ice back in Trond harbour and jumped through. Same result, less effort, and fewer people inconvenienced." I would have told him he wasn't going to get his wife back, or his children, or the unborn baby. I would have told him it was all nonsense and that the world doesn't work that way. I would have said that but perhaps I'm not that cruel, or perhaps I didn't trust his temper that far . . . but most likely it didn't need to be said. He knew it already.

Snorri didn't speak. Nothing but the moan of the wind and the slap of waves against the hull. Then, "Yes. I am a coward, Jal."

"So, throw the key over the side and come with me to Vermillion."

"The door is my quest now." Snorri sat up. "The door. The key. It's all I have." He touched the place where the key hung beneath his jerkin. "And what is the key if not a chance to face the G.o.ds and to demand an explanation for the world . . . for your life?"

I knew this wasn't about G.o.ds. Whatever he said. His family drew him on. Freja, Emy, Egil, Karl. I still kept their names and the stories he'd told about them, and they weren't even mine. It's not in me to care about such things, but even so, I saw that little girl, her peg doll, Snorri running to save her. I'd expected him to speak of them again over the long winter. Expected it and dreaded it. Known that one night, deep in his cups, he must break and drunkenly he would rage against the loss. But he never did. No matter how dark the night nor how long, or how much of my ale he consumed, Snorri ver Snagason made no complaint, spoke no word of his loss. I hadn't expected to speak of it at last in a small boat, bound on every side by cold miles of restless sea.

"That's not-"

"Sixty beats of a heart would be enough. If I could hold them. Let them know I came for them no matter what stood in my way. It would be enough. Sixty beats of a heart past that door would outweigh sixty years in this world without them. You've not loved, Jal, not held your child, newborn and b.l.o.o.d.y, soft against a hard world, and promised that child you'd keep it safe. And Freja. I don't have the words for it. She woke me. I'd spent my time in red dreaming, biting at any hand that tried to feed me. She woke me-I saw her-and she was all I wanted to see-all I could see."

Kara and Tuttugu hadn't moved from their benches but I saw in the stillness of them that both lay awake, listening.

"There's no place in this world for me any more, except as a weapon, except as the anger behind a sharp edge, bringing sorrow. I'm done, Jal. Broken. Past my time."

I hadn't anything to say to that, so I said nothing, and let the sea speak. In time the sun found us, and Baraqel must have flowed into the northman's mind, though whether he had any words to offer up after Snorri's own I couldn't say.

TWELVE.

That first day after I woke from the blood dream I spent cradling my hand in my lap and glowering at Kara. She kept her peace though. At least until I started fumbling at the laces of my trews to answer nature's call. It's a difficult business at the best of times, standing up in a small boat to relieve oneself over the side. Trying to stand in choppy seas whilst unlacing with an injured hand is doubly difficult.

"This would be a h.e.l.l of a lot easier if some lunatic hadn't stabbed me!" The laces confounded my awkward fingers yet again. "Christ's wh.o.r.e!" I may have uttered a few more oaths, and called a certain volva's good name into disrepute . . .

"In the north we call that a little p.r.i.c.k," Kara replied, not looking over from her place at the tiller.

I'm sure she meant the injury, but Tuttugu and Snorri, being ignorant barbarians, laughed themselves hoa.r.s.e at my expense, and thereafter I manfully ignored my wound, having found the edge of Kara's tongue to be sharper than her needle.

Tuttugu and I kept our eyes north as often as not, watching for the sails of a longship. Any flash of white had us wondering if a pair of red eyes waited beneath, and behind that a deckful of the Harda.s.sa. Thankfully we saw no sign of them. Perhaps after the events at the Black Fort the Dead King no longer held sufficient sway over the Red Vikings to have them dog our trail all the way to the continent. Or maybe we had simply outrun them.

In three days' sail from Beerentoppen the Errensa had borne us so far south that the Norseheim coast now curved away from us, heading east. The Devouring Sea lay ahead, the last barrier to the continent, spreading out toward the sh.o.r.es of Maladon. Kara said her prayers, the Undoreth called on Odin and Aegir, I made one-sided bargains with the Almighty, and we parted company from the north for good or ill.

The Devouring Sea, or the Karlswater as those on its southern sh.o.r.es name it, has a poor reputation with sailors. Storms from the great ocean are often funnelled down into the Karlswater by the Norseheim highlands. Such storms are perilous enough out in the deeps, but in the shallow waters where we now sailed they would on occasion whip up rogue waves so huge that no ship could survive them. Such waves were rare but they could sweep the Karlswater clear. Aegir's Broom the Vikings called them. The sea-G.o.d cleaning house.

I hung at the Errensa's stern, watching Norseheim diminish behind us, compressed between sea and sky into a dark and serrated line. Then just a line. Then imagination. And finally memory.

"When I get to Maladon I'm paying a barber to shave this beard." I ran my fingers up into the curls, bleached white-blond by the newly arrived sun, thick with salt and grease. My old crowd wouldn't even recognize me, all scars, lean muscle, and wild hair. Still, nothing that a tailor, a man with a razor, and a month of comfortable living couldn't set right.

"It suits you." Kara looked up at me under her brows, blue eyes unreadable. She sat repairing a cover for one of the storage units. She'd warmed to me a little over the course of the journey, checking on my hand wound without apology but with a gentle touch. Twice a day she rubbed a sweet-smelling unguent at the entry and exit holes. I enjoyed the attention so much I somehow forgot to mention it had stopped hurting.

In exchange for Kara's medical care I entertained her with tales of the Red March court. It never hurts to mention you're a prince-a lot. Especially if you are one. She seemed to find my stories amusing, though I wasn't sure she was always laughing at the parts I thought were funny . . .

"A fish!" Snorri leapt up, rocking the boat. "Thor's teeth! I caught one!"

He had too, a foot and a half of black slimy fish jerking back and forth in his hands, the line still trailing from its mouth.

"Only took you twelve days at sea!" I'd told him to give it up an age ago.

"I got one!" Snorri's triumph couldn't be dented by my jibes.

Tuttugu came over to slap him on the back. "Well done! We'll make a fisherman of you yet."

Of course Tuttugu had only to drop a hook over the side and it seemed the fish fought each other for the privilege of swallowing it. He must have hauled a score of them from the waves since we set sail. He'd taken to coaching Snorri and confided to me that the warrior had been a poor farmer too. Tuttugu worried that Snorri had nothing to fall back on-he had a talent for war but in the peace he might find life challenging.

"A fine one." Kara joined them, standing close beside Snorri. "A blackcod should always be boiled and eaten with winter greens." The two of them seemed at ease in each other's company. I watched them with a strange mixture of jealousy and satisfaction. Part of me half wanted Snorri and the volva to find the furs together. A good woman was the only hope for him. He needed something other than his grief.

I found it rather worrying that I might be considering sacrificing the pleasure I hoped to take in Kara. That didn't sound like me at all. Especially after all the hours I'd spent imagining the ways I'd set her rune-charms clicking one against the other . . . still . . . if Snorri found himself a woman he might be able to let go of the madness that possessed him to seek a door into death and recover his lost family. And, whatever my plans, there was always a chance I would get dragged into the insanity. So after all I was giving up Kara in my own interest. I relaxed. That sounded more like me.

In the midst of the Devouring Sea, as far from land as I had ever been, I sat amid the heave and the swell on Kara's small wooden boat and, with little to fix my mind upon, focused on Snorri instead. I watched him, leaning into the prow now, the wind streaming dark hair behind him, eyes on the southern horizon. As fierce a warrior as I'd ever known, with no give in him, no fear in the face of sword or axe. I knew why I was bound south-to claim the comforts and privilege of my birthright and live to a disgraceful old age. I knew what drew Snorri and, despite what he'd said days before, I couldn't marry his words to any kind of sense. I'd seen plenty of what came back from the deadlands and none of it had been pretty.

I'd also noticed that since my long sleep he wore the key on a piece of rusting chain-as if he'd read my mind when I considered tearing it free and tossing it overboard. I felt a little hurt by his mistrust, however justified. I considered broaching the subject but watching him there, hunched around the pain of his poisoned wound and the older pain of his loss . . . I let it lie. Instead I followed his gaze to the dark stain on the horizon that held his attention.

"That looks bad." It looked worse than bad.

"Yes." A nod. "Could get rough."

The storm caught us half a day from the sh.o.r.es of Maladon. A cataclysmic war of the elements that even the Vikings called a storm. It made everything that I'd suffered on the sea before seem like mild discomfort. The wind became a fist, the rain its spears, gripped tight and driven into flesh. And the waves . . . those waves will haunt my dreams until the day something worse comes along. The sea changed scale around us. A man out on the ocean always feels small, but amid waves that could overtop and sweep away castles, you understand what it is to be a beetle among stampeding elephants.

The wind drove us, without sails, skidding across foam-skinned behemoths. Turn to face it and the rain made you blind, the wind filling you as you tried to scream. Turn away and it became a fight to s.n.a.t.c.h a breath, so unwilling was the air to pause long enough to be captured.

I guess Snorri and the others were busy. They certainly seemed to do a lot of shouting and throwing themselves about. What they were busy with though I couldn't tell you. Nothing they did could make any difference in the face of that a.s.sault. For my part I clung to the mast with both arms, and at times both legs. No lovers' clinch was ever as tight as the embrace in which I held that wooden pole, and despite waves that washed across me until my lungs hammered for a chance to breathe, I kept my grip.

Small boats are, it turns out, highly resilient to being sunk. They bob up again and again in defiance of reason and expectation. My eldest brother, Martus, when ten or eleven, used to go to Morano Bridge with his friends, and sometimes Darin and I would sneak along to watch. The older boys would swim in the shallows, or go onto the bridge and drop their lines in the Seleen. When they got bored with not catching any fish they'd start looking for mischief. Martus would lead them along the many-pillared bridge wall, and p.i.s.s on pa.s.sing boats, or taunt local boys, safe in the knowledge that Father's guards would protect him. Father always sent four guards with Martus, him being the heir.

One fine spring morning at the Morano Bridge Martus decided on a naval warfare simulation. In practice this meant having his friends haul large stones from the riverbank up onto the bridge and then him dropping them on pa.s.sing mother ducks and the long trains of ducklings following in their wake. The thing is that it's quite hard to sink a duckling with a rock. Especially when they're coming out from under the bridge. The delay between the spotters on the upstream side and the emergence of the targets has to be judged, along with the exit point and the drop time. So for the best part of two hours Darin and I watched from the riverbank as Martus dropped a hundredweight of stones, some larger than his head, on a stream of fluffy ducklings led under the bridge by ill-advised mother ducks. And despite enormous splashes on all sides, the sucking drag of drowning stones, and a tumult of sizeable waves, those fluffy little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds sailed on indefatigably, unsinkable yellow b.a.l.l.s of downy defiance that drove Martus into ever greater rage. He didn't get a single one, and when he raced down to tackle the last of them mano-a-duckling in the shallows, an angry swan burst from the reeds, evaded all four guards, and broke his wrist for him with a savage peck. Best day ever!

Anyway, Kara's boat was rather like those ducklings. It had to be a kind of magic, but whatever the storm threw at us, it kept on floating.

The storm didn't end, just weakened by degrees, each time resurging as my hopes grew, until by dawn it was merely torrential rain driven by a gale. I fell asleep still hugging the mast, soaked and frozen, knowing the sun had begun its climb into the sky but unable to see it behind the storm wrack.

I woke, shivering, and feverish once more, to the sound of gulls and the distant crash of breakers.

"Tie the jib off!" Kara's voice.