Red Queen's War: The Liar's Key Part 13

"You look . . . better," I told Snorri.

"I feel better." He patted his side.

"All magic is stronger here," Kara called back without turning. "Quicker to answer the will. Snorri is more able to resist Kelem's call, the light in him is battling the poison." She picked up the pace, and glanced my way. "It's a bad place to use enchantment, though. Like lighting a fire in a hay barn." I wondered if Snorri had mentioned Harrowheim to her.

"What is this 'wheel' anyway? Some sort of engine?" I imagined a huge wheel turning, toothed like the gears in a watermill.

"No one alive has seen it, not even the wrong-mages who live as close in as they can stand. The sagas say it's the corpse of a G.o.d, Haphestur, not of Asgard but a stranger from without, a wanderer. A smith who forged weapons for Thor and Odin. They say he lies there rotting and the magic of making leaks from him as his flesh corrupts." Kara glanced up at me, as if to gauge my reaction.

I kept my face stiff. I've found heathens to be a touchy lot if you laugh at their stories. "That's what the priests say. What do the volvas believe?"

"In King Hagar's library on Icefjar there are remnants of books copied directly from the works of the Builders themselves. I understood them to say that the Wheel is a complex of buildings laid above a vast underground ring, a stone tunnel, many miles long and going nowhere. A place where the Builders saw new truths."

I mulled on this one, walking another hour in silence. I pictured the Builders' ring of secrets, seeing it all aglow in my mind's eye while I tried to ignore each new blister. Less painful than the blisters, but somehow more distressing, was the sensation that each step took us closer to the Wheel, the world becoming fragile, a skin stretched too tight across bone, ready to give suddenly and without warning, and leave us falling into something new and much, much worse.

"Look!" Tuttugu, behind us but pointing ahead.

I squinted at the dark spot down in the shallow valley before us. "I didn't think anyone lived in Osheim."

"Lots of people live in Osheim, idiot." Snorri made to deliver one of those playful punches to the shoulder that leave my arm dead for the next six hours. He paused though, feeling the old crackle of magic, as fierce across his knuckles as it was across my side. "Most of them live far south, around Os City, but there are farmers everywhere."

I glanced around. "Farming what exactly? Rocks? Gra.s.s?"

"Goats." Kara pointed to some brown dots closer at hand. "Goats and sheep."

We hastened across the valley toward the lone hut. Somewhere in the back of my mind Aslaug whispered that Snorri had raised his hand against me, yet again, insulted me to my face. A low-born barbarian insulting a prince of the March . . .

Coming closer we saw that the dwelling was a stone-built roundhouse, the roof thatched with dried heather and river-reeds. Apart from a shed a single winter from no longer being a shed, and a drystone wall for stock to shelter behind come the snows, there were no outbuildings, and no other dwellings lay in sight.

A handful of mangy goats bleated at our arrival, one from the roof. An axe stood bedded in a log before the doorless opening. The place seemed deserted.

"See if they left any furs." I nodded at the door as Tuttugu drew up alongside us. "I'm freezing." My clothes still felt damp and were doing a poor job of keeping out the wind.

Tuttugu looked up at Snorri who shrugged and walked on over to the doorway.

"Halloo, the house?" Snorri paused as though he heard something, though I couldn't make out anything but the goat on the roof, bleating as if it were wondering how to get down again.

Snorri stepped up to the entrance. And then stepped back again. The long and gleaming p.r.o.ngs of some kind of farm implement following him out. "I'm alone here and have nothing you might want." A voice gone rusty with the years. "Also no intention of letting you take it." By inches a yard of wooden haft emerged, and finally on the other end an old man, tall but stooped, his hair, eyebrows, and short beard all white like snow, but thick, as if a thaw might give us back the younger man.

"More of you, eh?" He narrowed rheumy eyes at Kara. "Volva?" He lowered his pitchfork.

Kara inclined her head and spoke a few words in the old tongue. It sounded like a threat but the ancient took it well and gestured to his hut. "Come in. I'm Arran Vale, born of Hodd, my grandfather-" He glanced back at us. "But perhaps you've travelled too far to have heard of Lotar Vale?"

"You need to leave here, Arran." Snorri stepped in closer, making his words clear. "Gather only what you need. Harda.s.sa are coming."

"Harda.s.sa?" Arran repeated as if uncertain of the word, or of his hearing. He tilted his head, peering up at the Norseman.

"Red Vikings," Snorri said. Old Arran knew those! He turned quickly, vanishing into his home.

"It's us they're after! We should take what we need and go!" I glanced back at the distant lip of the valley, half expecting to see Edris's friends pouring down the slopes.

"That's exactly what they will do when they spot this place," Tuttugu said. "Take what they want. Re-provision. Their longship can hold a lot of goats." Something in his eyes told me his own thoughts were circling the idea of goat stew even now.

"Hurry!" Snorri slapped a hand to the lintel-stone, leaning in.

I looked back again and a lone figure stood on the ridge, little more than a mile away. "s.h.i.t." I'd been expecting it all this time, but that didn't stop the truth of it from being a cold shock.

Arran re-emerged carrying nothing but his pitchfork and in the other hand a butcher's knife. Across his back he'd secured a bow that looked as old as him and as likely to snap if bent.

"I'll stay." The old man looked to the horizon. "This is my place."

"What part of Viking horde did you not understand?" I took a pace forward. Bravery of any kind generally makes me uncomfortable. Bravery this stupid just made me angry.

Arran didn't look my way. "I'd be obliged if you'd take the boy though. He's young enough to leave."

"Boy?" Snorri rumbled. "You said you were alone."

"I misled you." The faintest smile on the bitter line of the old man's lips. "My grandson is with the goats in the south vale. The volva will know what's best for him-but don't bring him back here . . . not after."

"You're not even going to slow them down with that . . . fork."

"Come with us," Tuttugu said, his face clouded. "Look after your grandson." He said it like he meant it, even though it was clear the man had no intention of leaving. And if he did it would just slow us down.

"You can't win." Snorri, frowning, his voice very deep.

The old man gave a slow nod and a double tap on Snorri's shoulder with the fist that held the knife. A gesture that reminded me he had not always been old, nor was age what defined him.

"It doesn't matter if you win-it only matters that you make a stand," he said. "I am Arran, son of Hodd, son of Lotar Vale, and this is my land."

"Right . . . You do know that if you just ran away they'd probably ignore you?" I said. Somewhere just behind the conversation Aslaug's screams scratched to get through. Run! The message bled out into each pause. I didn't need instruction-running filled my mind, top to bottom. "Well . . ." I glanced once more at the doorway to the roundhouse, imagining it thick with fur cloaks inside. "We should . . . go." A look at the ridge revealed half a dozen figures now, close enough that I could make out their round shields. I started walking to galvanize the others into action.

"May the G.o.ds watch you, Arran Vale." Kara bowed her head. "I will do my best for your grandson." She spoke the words as if she were playing a role but in the unguarded moment as she turned away I saw her doubts-her runes and wisdom perhaps as much a facade as my t.i.tle and reputation. She started to follow me. Dig deep enough into anyone and you'll find a scared little boy or scared little girl trying to get out. It's just a question of how deep you have to scratch to find them-that and the question of what it really is that scares the child.

"s.h.i.t." I saw the boy, running toward us down the long and gentle slope of the valley's southern edge, a ragged child, red hair streaming behind. Snorri followed my gaze. I picked up my pace, angling to intercept the boy's path, though several hundred yards still separated us. Kara veered left to cover that approach should he try to evade me.

Only the Undoreth stayed where they were. "Snorri!" I called back.

"Get him to safety, Jal." A raw tone that stopped me in my tracks.

"Come on!" I turned back, beckoning them on. Tuttugu stood beside Snorri, axe in hands.

"It matters that we make a stand." Snorri's words reached me though he didn't raise his voice.

"Christ." They'd bought into the old man's nonsense. I could understand it from Arran, addled by age and a step from the grave in any case . . . but Snorri? Had Baraqel stolen his mind? And what the h.e.l.l was Tuttugu staying for?

"Kara!" I shouted. "They won't come!"

A score and more of the Harda.s.sa advanced down the northern slope now in a rough skirmish line, their cloaks of tartan, of wolfskin, and of bear blowing about their shoulders, shields low, axes held above the heather, their iron helms robbing any expression.

"Take the boy!" She started back toward Snorri.

"Wait! What?" Her face didn't look like someone preparing to argue Snorri out of it. "h.e.l.l." With Aslaug screaming at me to run, my own instincts screaming louder still, and Kara telling me to do it . . . I ran.

The little b.a.s.t.a.r.d dodged round me but I managed to overhaul him in a dozen paces and catch his hair. We both went down amongst the tussock gra.s.s. The kid couldn't have been more than ten, skinny with it, but he had a desperate strength, and sharp teeth.

"Ow!" I s.n.a.t.c.hed my hand back, putting knuckle to mouth. "You little f.u.c.ker!" He scrambled away, earth showering me where his toes gouged at the ground. I lunged after him, getting my feet under me and charging half a dozen steps-well aware I was heading in the opposite direction to the one I wanted to go in. A tussock caught my foot and I went down, diving, arms stretched. My fingers closed on the kid's ankle as my face hit the gra.s.s.

The air exploded from my lungs and refused to return. I lay, gripping the boy tight enough to break bones and desperately willing myself to draw breath. Lifting my head, I could see, past the black spots swimming in my vision, to the line of Harda.s.sa, closing around the three men before the hut. Kara stood halfway between me and the fight.

This was it. We were all going to die.

With a shout the Harda.s.sa advanced, spears and axes raised, shields on high.

Snorri's battle-cry rose with those of the Red Vikings, that old note of violent joy ringing out. He didn't wait for them to close but launched himself toward the biggest of the enemy. The attack took the Harda.s.sa by surprise, so confident were they in their numbers. Snorri leapt, setting a foot to the boss of his foe's raised shield and climbing above him as the man braced himself, then collapsed beneath the weight. Snorri rode the shield down, swinging his axe in an arc that smashed it through one helm, another, and sent the third spinning away.

Tuttugu and the old man followed, roaring out their challenge. It occurred to me, as the air started to leak back into my chest, that Tuttugu would be killed within the next ten seconds, and that I'd miss him despite his being a fat, ill-smelling, and low-born heathen.

I saw Arran shove his fork at a red-bearded Viking. Part of me, the part raised on story-book knights and legends of past heroes, had been expecting some display of martial excellence from the man, something to match the gravitas of his words. At the end of it though, for all his bravery, Arran Vale proved to be only what he was, a farmer, and an old one at that. His fork turned on a shield, scoring two grooves through the paintwork, whilst the Viking's axe bit into his neck, lost in a crimson deluge.

The Harda.s.sa closed around Snorri and Tuttugu. Hopelessly outnumbered and having no defence other than the axes in their hands, the last of the Undoreth stood no chance. The leg I had hold of stopped tugging as the boy also started to accept the reality of the situation.

I could still see Snorri, or at least his head, above the melee, roaring, seemingly illuminated by his own light like the actors on a Vermillion stage followed by the candle-mirror. Of Tuttugu there was no sign.

Kara stood maybe ten yards from the backs of the closest Vikings, no weapon in her hand. I didn't know how they might treat her after the killing was done. Did volvas enjoy the same protected status that priests did in Christendom . . . and were those traditions of sanctuary trampled over as often up north as down south?

Snorri's axe rose above the crowd, trailing gore, a scarlet spray flicking off the blade as it reversed and hammered down. The arm that held it glowed so bright it made shadows of the blood smeared along its length. So bright it hurt to look at it. And then, with a sound that I felt in my chest rather than heard, a brilliance lit within the Viking throng, making a black forest of limbs and torsos. For a moment I could see nothing but the afterimages seared into the back of my eyes, the silhouette of axe and shield, the tangle of arms. Blinking them clear I made out a figure surging through the melee, barging men aside, dragging something. A bright figure.

"Snorri!" I rose to my knees, releasing the boy and pressing the heels of my palms to both eyes to rid them of the last traces of blindness.

Snorri came on, hauling Tuttugu by the foot. He paused by Kara, twisted round, and ripped out the spear that transfixed Tuttugu's stomach. He tossed the b.l.o.o.d.y shaft aside, the light dying from him with each moment, and strode on, pulling his friend along with a grunt of effort. Behind him the Vikings cursed and clawed at their eyes. At least one felled a comrade, swinging his axe in a wild arc when barged by a blind man seeking escape.

Kara made no move to follow. She stood, still facing the enemy, raising her hands to her head. With a sudden motion she ripped free two handfuls of the runes from her hair, and scattered them across the ground before her like a farmer sowing grain.

Snorri reached me and the boy and collapsed to his knees. He had a gash on his upper arm, another on his hip. Ugly wounds, but by rights he should have been little more than b.l.o.o.d.y chunks. Behind him Kara strode back and forth where her runes fell, chanting something.

"Why in h.e.l.l?" I had too many questions and my mounting outrage wouldn't let me frame them.

"Couldn't let him stand alone, Jal. Not after we'd led them to his home."

"But . . ." I waved an arm at everything in general. "Now we're running away? With Tuttugu dead?"

"The old man died." Snorri glanced at the boy. "Sorry, son." He shrugged. "It's not my land. Nothing to stay for after Arran fell."

"I'm not dead." A weak voice behind him. Then, less certain, "Am I?"

"No." Kara hurried past us. "Let's go." She called the last part over her shoulder. A few runes still bounced across her back but most of her braids had lost theirs.

Tuttugu sat up, patting himself, a bewildered look on his face. He poked at the blood-soaked hole where his jerkin strained across his stomach. I understood then why Snorri was on his knees, head down.

"You healed him! And the light . . ." I trailed off, looking past the Undoreth to where the Red Vikings stood, rubbing their eyes, some rising from where they'd fallen, looking around as they regained their sight. In between us, where Kara sowed her runes the ground seemed to heave in one place, sink in another. One of the Harda.s.sa ceased blinking away his blindness and spotted us. He gave chase, axe high for the strike.

"h.e.l.l." I glanced about. Snorri and Tuttugu looked in no state for battle. Kara, if she drew it, would have a thin knife to face down the axeman. That left me, my dagger, and a weaponless boy. I wasn't sure of his age-ten? Eleven? Twelve? What did I know about children. I considered shoving the boy forward first.

The Red Viking ran a dozen more paces. To his left the ground rippled, the sod tore, and a vast snake arced from beneath the earth. It took him in its mouth, dived back, and in two heartbeats was swallowed by the soil as if it were a sea serpent on the ocean.

"What-?" I managed, an expression of my disbelief rather than a question. More snakes broke the surface, smaller ones no thicker than a man, seen only for scattered moments and gone. And the colour of them, drawn from no pallet I had ever seen, a pattern of crystalline brown and umber, confusing the eye, as if they were a thing apart from the world.

"Children of the Midgard Serpent-the great wyrm that wraps the world." Kara sounded as amazed as I was.

"How long will they stay?" The snakes kept to where Kara had cast her runes, forming a barrier to protect us. Now that the other Harda.s.sa were regaining their sight they backed away, shields raised, as if a shield could stop such serpents any more than could a castle wall.

"I don't know." Like me, Kara couldn't look away. "This has never happened before. The casting can make a person imagine snakes, make them believe that the gra.s.s writhes before them and fear to tread there . . . this is beyond . . ."

"It's the Wheel." Tuttugu, still examining his torn and b.l.o.o.d.y jerkin where the spear impaled him.

"Let's go." Snorri stood with an effort. "It won't take long for them to think to just go round."

We opened a good lead while the Harda.s.sa paused to take stock, tend their wounds, and consider their snake problem. In the hills and ridges beyond the valley we even lost sight of them, though it couldn't be long before they overhauled us again.

"We're heading closer to the Wheel?" It took an hour for me to notice: the business of putting one foot before the next had been consuming all my energy.

"Our only chance lies in magic-we can't outrun them or outfight them." Kara glanced back at the pursuit. "In this direction we grow stronger."

Kara might be growing stronger but I felt weaker by the yard. Of all of us only the boy, Hennan, had any go left in him. The distant strain of a horn reached us and I found I could walk a little faster after all.

"Seems to me." I took a few more steps before finding the effort required to finish the sentence. "That the Wheel has drawn you in too. Just took a bit longer."

That was how Nanna Willow had it. The Wheel would pull you in. Quick or slow, but in the end you'd come, thinking it was your idea, full of good reasons for it. I wondered how Hennan and his grandfather had lived here so long without succ.u.mbing. Perhaps such resistance lay in their blood, pa.s.sed one generation to the next.

The stain in the sky had grown darker and the oddly shaped rocks that broke the sod cast long shadows. Somehow my dread at meeting Aslaug in this place felt only a little less intense than my healthy fear of the sharp edges the Red Vikings were carrying after me.

We struggled on through an increasingly twisted land, across a wild heath where the occasional tree clawed slantwise toward the sky, angled by the north wind. Stones broke the sod with increasing regularity. Dark pieces of basalt that looked as if they had erupted from the bedrock but which must have been set standing by men. In places fields of such stones stood in rows, marching into the distance, aiming in toward the Wheel. I had no strength left to marvel at them. Later we pa.s.sed black shards of volcanic gla.s.s, some pieces taller than a man, sharp as the blades the ancients made from the stuff. I saw my face reflected in gleaming obsidian surfaces, warped as if drowning in horror within the stone-and looked no more. Further still and the obsidian grew up in twisted and razor-edged trees.

Closer to the Wheel the rocks took on disturbingly human shapes, on a scale ranging from the size of a man's head to larger than my father's halls. I tried not to see the faces or what they were doing to each other.

I cast the occasional glance at Snorri as we went-trying to judge what kind of hold Baraqel might be gaining on him as we came nearer to the Wheel. Several times I caught him sneaking furtive glances my way, only confirming my doubts about him.

In one place we came across a ring of obsidian pieces, knife-sharp, each taller than Snorri, and aimed skyward though splayed as if some great force at the centre of the circle had pushed them outward. For fifty yards on every side the heath lay blasted, blackened earth with only the occasional twist of heather stem now turned to charcoal. Something silvery gleamed at the centre. Despite our need for haste, Kara angled us toward the ring.

"What is it?" Snorri posed the question to Kara's back as she approached the standing stones. It looked as if softly glowing pearls laced the black earth within the ring, forming a rough outline of some explosion within. Kara pa.s.sed between two of the shards and entered the circle. She went to one knee and sc.r.a.ped at the burnt soil with her blade. It seemed as though the glow intensified around her. A moment later she stood, something shining in her hands, making dark sticks of her fingers.

When she reached us I saw that what she held was neither silver nor a pearl. "Orichalc.u.m." She withdrew one hand. A bead of metal the size of a fist rested upon the palm of the other, its surface gleaming, lit with its own silvery light, but broken with sheens of colour like oil on water, moving one into the other, a slow dance, mingling and separating as I watched.

"Will it help us fight the Harda.s.sa?" Snorri asked.

"No." Kara led the way on. "Take it, Tuttugu."