Prince of Fools

THIRTEEN

Never having been troubled by a conscience before, I was far from sure what to expect of one, and so when for a minute or two each day at dawn a voice began to whisper to me to be a better man, I decided the shock of recent events had finally woken mine. My conscience had a name-Baraqel. I didn’t like him much.

From the moment I jerked into the waking world that morning, suddenly terrified that I’d fallen asleep with Edris and his murderers waiting close by, to the moment we left town under a brightening sky, I had been looking over my shoulder.

“You won’t miss them,” Snorri said.

“No?” There was no part of Rhone I would miss. Though perhaps now with my purse fat and jingling once more, the nation might open her arms to me and deign to show a visiting prince a good time.

“There’ll be too many to hide.” Snorri’s voice wobbled with the gait of his steed, jolting up and down when the mare picked up the pace.

“How do you know that?” Annoyance coloured my question. I didn’t like the open reminder of our troubles. With Snorri troubles were always put front and centre and dealt with. My style was more to shove them under the rug until the floor got too uneven to navigate, and then to move house.

“He was too confident, that Edris. There’ll be a dozen of them at least.”

“Shit.” A dozen! I squeezed my nag along that little bit faster. I’d named the gelding Ron, after the Amazing Ronaldo whose ill-advised bet with Snorri had financed the early part of our trip.

We rattled along up the valley at a decent pace, fast enough to startle the sheep in successive fields into waves of woolly panic. It had to be said that, as uninspiring as Chamy-Nix was, the surroundings viewed with the morning coming up red and rosy behind them were quite stunning. Rhone gets hilly as you work your way north. Hills become mountains, mountains become peaks, and from Chamy-Nix you can see the white heights of the Aups, mountains so tall and so legion that they divide the empire more surely than a blade. In many senses the empire had always been broken and the Aups were the sword that divided it.

An hour later, gaining height and with our path back to Chamy-Nix laid out behind us, I spotted the pursuit. “Hell, that looks like a lot more than a dozen!” And a dozen was a lot more than we could handle. In fact, if it had been only Edris, Darab, and Meegan, that would have been too many. My stomach folded around itself in a cold knot. I remembered the Aral Pass. There’s no way any sensible person could view the prospect of someone else attempting to open them with a sharp edge as anything but terrifying. I found myself eyeing up the larger rocks in the hope I might hide beneath one of them.

“Twenty. Near enough.” Snorri looked back up the track and nudged Sleipnir on. He’d told me the original bearer of the name in his heathen tales had sported eight legs. It’s possible that on such an overendowed beast even Snorri stood a chance of outpacing the band on our trail. On any regular mount, though, it was never going to happen.

“Maybe if we just left the locket here. .” It took about three seconds for my resolve to fail. I could abandon Snorri and set Edris’s band a stiffer test. By rights I would win clear, but Ron was far from the best of horses and in such mountainous terrain it’s easy to lame an animal if you push too hard. That would leave me meeting the band alone-if, of course, I managed to survive Snorri’s death given the magics binding us. Abandoning the locket to them seemed the easiest of paths.

Snorri just laughed as if I’d made a joke. “We should keep one of them alive,” he said. “I want to know who set them on us.”

“Oh, right.” A madman, I was riding with a madman. “I’ll try to keep a small one for later.” Snorri, it seemed, was as capable of deluding himself about upcoming battles as I was about the value of my locket. Perhaps that was all bravery was-a form of delusion. It certainly made it much easier to understand if that were the case.

“We need a good place to make a stand.” Snorri cast about as if this might be such a place. I could have told him with some confidence that no such place existed, anywhere. Instead I tried a different tactic.

“We need to get higher up.” I pointed to the barren slopes above us where the mean grass lost its footing and bare rock cut a path towards the heavens. “We’ll have to abandon our horses, but so will they, and then the fact you can’t ride for shit won’t matter any more.” And if I had my way we’d lose Edris’s party amongst the confusion of ridge and gorge, then win free to buy better horses somewhere else.

Snorri rubbed his short beard, pursed his lips, looked back at the distant band, and nodded. “Better if everyone is on two feet.”

I led the way, urging Ron off the track and up towards the ridges impossibly far above us. Beyond those ridges peaks rose, white with snow and brilliant in the sunshine. A fresh breeze followed us up the side of the valley, offering a helpful push, and for a while I felt hope sinking its cruel hooks into me.

Tough mountain grass gave way to boulder fields and scree; Sleipnir’s hooves skittered out from under her and she fell, legs flailing, looking for a moment as if she might actually have eight of them. Snorri grunted as he hit the ground, pulling clear while Sleipnir struggled to right herself.

“That hurt.” He brushed his thigh where the horse’s weight had pressed, then used his fingers to pry loose the small stones bedded into his flesh. “I’ll walk from here.”

I stayed in the saddle for another five or ten minutes, while Snorri hobbled along without complaint. At last, though, even with my expert guidance, the going became too steep for Ron. Rather than wait for the inevitable tumble, which would probably see us both rolling down the slopes to where Snorri had had his own fall, I dismounted.

“Off you go, Ronaldo.” The climb ahead of us would test a mountain goat. I gave his flank a sound slap and moved on, burdened once more beneath my few possessions. The sword that Snorri had given me was the heaviest of my loads and kept trying to trip me. I held on to it mainly to please the Norseman, though my ultimate plan was to throw it away and beg for mercy if cornered.

The wind became less friendly as we gained height, colder and capricious, seeming to press us to the rocks one moment, then in the next try to yank us clear so that we might tumble back the way we’d come. I paused frequently to check the progress of our pursuit. They had ridden harder than us and abandoned their horses later. A bad sign. These were driven men. Ahead of me, Snorri crested the ridge we’d been aiming for during the long climb. He still hobbled, but his injury seemed no worse than it had been at the start.

“Crap.” The Aral Pass ran between two huge mountains in the Auger range on the Scorron borderlands. I had always felt that mountains could come no larger-the rocks at the bottom would surely be unable to support the weight. I had been wrong. The Aups above Chamy-Nix deceive the eye. It’s not until you get amongst them that you understand just how ridiculously big they are. A whole city would be little more than a stain on the flanks of the tallest. Beyond the ridge we now clung to, defying a murderous wind, rose a second ridge and a third and a fourth, each separated by deep-cut gorges, the slopes between variously lethal with scree or unclimbably steep. And all the ways open to us lay divided by smaller gorges and littered with boulders the size of buildings, each poised to fall.

Snorri set off down, grunting once as his foot tried to slip out from under him. I knew if he started to slow me I would leave him behind. I wouldn’t want to, and I would dislike myself for doing so, but nothing would compel me to stand against twenty mercenaries. It sounded better like that. More reasonable. Twenty mercenaries. The truth was that nothing would compel me to stand against one mercenary, but twenty sounded like a better excuse to leave a friend in the lurch. A friend? I pondered that one on the way down. An acquaintance sounded better.

By the time we needed to start heading up again, there were few parts of me that didn’t hurt. I’ve developed a good degree of resilience when it comes to riding. Walking, not so much. Climbing, none at all. “W-wait a minute,” I panted, trying to snatch a breath from the wind-less fierce in the valley but still insistent. The air seemed thinner, unwilling to replenish my lungs. Snorri didn’t appear to notice, his breathing scarcely harder now than when we started the climb.

“Come.” He said it with a grin, though he had grown more sombre as we went on. “It’s good to make a stand in a high place. Good for the battle. Good for the soul. We’ll make an end of this.” He looked back at the ridge we descended from. “I had dark dreams last night. Of late all my dreaming has been dark. But there’s nothing of darkness in warriors met for battle on a mountainside beneath a wide sky. That, my friend, is the stuff of legend. Valhalla awaits!” He thumped my shoulder and turned to the climb. “My children will forgive their father if he dies fighting to be with them.”

Rubbing at my shoulder and at the stitch in my side, I followed. His “warriors met beneath a wide sky” nonsense was full of darkness as far as I was concerned, but as long as we were still doing our best not to meet the mercenaries anywhere at all, then we were in accord.

We had to scramble in places, leaning so far forwards we practically kissed the mountain, reaching for crevices in the folded bedrock to haul ourselves up. My breath came ragged, the cold air filling my lungs like knives. I watched Snorri path-finding, sure, measured, no fatigue, but favouring his uninjured leg. He had spoken of his dreams, but he didn’t have to. I’d slept alongside him, heard his muttering, as if he argued the night away with some visitor and when he woke that morning on the tavern floor his eyes, usually a Nordic blue, sky pale, were black as coals. By the time he rose to break fast, no trace of the change remained and I could pretend it a trick of shadows in a hall lit only by borrowed light. But I had not imagined it.

I sighted the first of the pursuit cresting the ridge behind us while we closed the last hundred yards to the ridge above us. Losing sight of them as we descended the next gorge gave me some comfort. Troubles are troublesome enough without having to look at them all the time. I hoped they’d find the going as tough as I had and that at least a few of the bastards would take the last tumble of their lives.

The shadows started to reach, striating the slopes. My body told me we’d been climbing for a month at the least, but my mind was surprised to discover the day almost over. Night would at least offer a chance to stop-to snatch some rest. Nobody could navigate slopes like these in the dark.

Mountains are pretty at a distance, but my advice is to never let them get to be more than scenery. If you have to crane your neck to look at something, you’re too close. By the time we were approaching the top of the third ridge I was practically crawling. Any disloyal thoughts about abandoning Snorri with his injured leg were cast aside far below us. I had promoted him to best friend and to man most likely to carry me. In places it wasn’t the steepness that had me crawling but sheer exhaustion, my raw lungs unable to draw sufficient breath to work my limbs. We threaded our way along a series of broad ledges littered with boulders from man-size to ones that dwarfed elephants, hunting along each ledge for climbable access to the next.

“Come. It’s easy.” Snorri looked down at me from the level above, holding out a hand. I’d come to a halt about two-thirds of the way up, caught on a steep field of loose, frost-shattered stone resting on solid rock beneath. I took a step towards him, reaching for the offered hand.

“F-” I started to say “Fuck” but as my boot continued to slide the word drew out into a wail that turned into a scream and ended with an “Ooffff!” and me on my arse.

“Try again.” Snorri. Ever helpful.

“I can’t.” I said it through gritted teeth. My ankle had filled with a hot, liquid pain. I’d felt the joint flex past the angle any ankle should make. There might have been a snapping under my scream, or perhaps just a tearing, but either way the idea of putting weight on it was not one I could entertain.

“Get up!” Snorri roared it at me as if I were a common soldier on parade. He would have made a good drill sergeant because I was on my feet before better judgment could stop me. I toppled forwards and collapsed screaming, hiking my breath in to vent in successively louder outbursts.

When I fell silent I could hear a slithering of stones, and a second later Snorri loomed above me, blocking out the day.

“I don’t abandon comrades,” he said. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

Now, I’m not a man who takes his pleasure in other men, but in that moment Snorri’s overmuscled and sweaty embrace was a thousand times more welcome than any I might get from Cherri or Lisa. He hefted me over one shoulder and started walking. The proximity caused that strange crackling energy to begin building between us, but I was prepared to risk it being less fatal than Edris and his murderers.

“Thank you,” I burbled, half-delirious with the pain. “I knew you wouldn’t leave me. I knew-” Snorri stopped and set me with my back to a boulder, propped up on one foot. “What?”

“It’s fine.” Snorri cast about, studying the layout of the boulders, the width of the ledge. “This will do, here. I’m not leaving.”

“I want you to leave!” I hissed the words past gritted teeth. “Keep going, you big lummox.” Just take me with you! I kept that last part behind my teeth. Not because Snorri might think badly of me, but just because I didn’t think it would change his mind. Of course, if he actually made to leave I would be immediately addressing the issue of being hauled along too. For the now, me play-acting the bluff hero would at least keep him happy and more likely to put some effort into defending me in my incapacitated state.

Snorri unlimbered his axe. He would have been more content with the broad crescent of a Norse axe suited to the shearing off of limbs. The weapon he carried sported a heavy wedge of a blade designed to punch a hole in armour. If the mercenaries had any significant armour and yet had managed to climb to where we were, then we might as well give up since they’d have to be supermen.

A short way back the ledge narrowed and a huge rock sealed off all but two or three feet of it, leaving a harrowing stretch where we had had to edge along the boulder beside a drop of ten yards to the ledge below. Snorri crouched down where he would be out of sight of the men as they came along that open and narrow path.

“That’s the plan? You surprise the first one and then it’s just the other nineteen to deal with?”

“Yes.” He shrugged. “I was only running because I knew you’d stay with me and I didn’t want your death on my hands, Jal. Now we’re in it together as the gods must have wanted from the start.” The smile he offered made me really want to punch him.

“We’re out of sight. We could hide. They go past, spread out, lose us, give up. They can’t track us on rock!” I didn’t mention he’d have to carry me.

Snorri shook his head. “They could wait us out. If we tried to leave the ledges they’d see us on the more exposed slopes. Better this way.”

“But. .” There’s fucking twenty of them, you moron!

“They’re strung out, Jal. A proper leader would have kept them together, but they’re too confident, eager for the kill. The four or five at the front are nearly a quarter of a mile ahead of the last man.” He spat as if to show his disgust for their poor tactics. I would have spat too, but my mouth was too dry.

“Steady on, let’s think this one through-”

Snorri cut me off with a hiss and a raised hand. A clatter of rock on rock from the ledge below. An oath. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been slowing the Norseman down; our pursuers were only minutes behind. I lay back against the cold rock. My final resting place? I would likely die within a yard of it. At our elevation the mountain held nothing in common with the world I knew, just bare fractured stone, too exposed and too high for lichen or moss, not a twig or scrap of grass or any hint of green to rest the eye upon. As lonely a spot as I’d ever seen. Nearer to God, perhaps, but godforsaken.

In the west the sun dropped towards high and snowcapped peaks, the sky crimson all about them.

Snorri grinned across at me, eyes clear and blue once more, the wind playing raven hair around his neck, across his shoulders. He saw death as a release. I could see that now. Too much had been taken from him. He wouldn’t ever surrender, but he relished the impossibility of the odds. I grinned back-it seemed the only thing to do-that or start crawling away.

The wind brought faint sounds of men climbing now. Stones slipping beneath boots, weapons clattering, curses offered to each other and to the world in general. I tested my ankle and nearly bit my tongue off, but only nearly-so sprained rather than broken. I took the quickest of steps on it and found myself back against the rock, having blacked out for a moment. Perhaps I could hop and stumble on a bit farther, buoyed up with terror, but I’d be caught soon enough and without Snorri for protection. The moment he fell, though, I’d be off, hope or no hope.

Find a happy place, Jalan. I hopped around my boulder, trying to remember my last moments with Lisa DeVeer. Footsteps sounded along the narrow path between the drop and the boulder. The fall was the least of their worries, though they didn’t know it. Crouching and biting back on the pain, I peered around the edge of my rock to see them arrive. I would have wet myself but the mountain air is very dehydrating.

The first man to come into view was Darab Voir, just as I recalled him from the tavern, a bald-headed bruiser, scar-patterned in the traditions of some Afrique tribes, sweat glistening on his dusky skin. He never saw Snorri. The Norseman’s axe descended in an arc, paralleling the side of the rock as Darab emerged. I’ve always considered a head to be a solid object, but as Snorri’s axe passed through the mercenary’s I had to reconsider. The wedge of his blade entered Darab’s skull at the back, near the top, and emerged beneath his chin. The man’s face literally bulged, the sides of his head seemed to flow outward, and as he toppled away over the drop, without cry or protest, the rocks were drenched with him.

Snorri roared then. The ferocity in it would have given Taproot’s elephant pause, but that wasn’t where the terror lay. The horror was in the simple unabashed joy of it. He didn’t wait for anyone else to emerge. Instead he rounded the corner swinging his axe to cave in the side of the next man’s head and smash him against the rock wall. He ran then, literally ran through them, striking quick short blows as if his axe were a rapier, light as a willow switch. Two, three, four men variously pitched into empty space or slammed against the rock, all of them with a hole in them big enough to put your fist into.

Somewhere out of sight Snorri found a pause and started to declaim, not some Norse battle dirge but ancient verse from the “Lays of Rome.”

Then out spake brave Horatius,

the Captain of the Gate:

“To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.”

Another grunt of exertion, a clatter of metal on rock. The thump of bodies falling.

“And how can man die better

than by facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his gods.”

Damn the barbarian. He was enjoying this madness! He thought himself Horatius on the narrow bridge before the gates of Rome, holding back the might of the Etruscan army! I started to crawl away. It’s shame that gets us killed. Shame is the anchor, the heaviest burden to carry from the battlefield. Fortunately shame was an affliction I’d never suffered from. I did wonder, though, hearing Snorri move on to the next verse of his epic, whether he might not be able to hold out there indefinitely. Providing they didn’t have bows with them. . Of course, if that Edris were any kind of a leader he’d have sent men to flank his enemy. No single man can stand against many when they come at him from two sides. I would have flank-

“Hello. What have we here?”

I looked up into the pale staring eyes of Meegan-Edris’s second companion from the night before. The setting sun framed him with a bloody light. He’d struck me back at the tavern as one of the last men on earth I’d want to meet in a dark alley. Like Cutter John he had the look of a man who kept a distance from the world, as if viewing us all from behind the confessional screen. Such men make good torturers.

At Meegan’s shoulder stood a hard-bitten warrior tending to grey with a longsword ready in his hand. More men sent to flank us probably approached along the ledge as Meegan and I blinked at each other, me on all fours, him leaning forwards as if in enquiry.

Whatever you do in dangerous situations, the main thing is to do it quickly. I’ve always maintained just because it’s given to you to be a coward doesn’t mean it’s something you can’t strive to do well. My father used to admonish me to excel in all things. Excellence in cowardice means being quick off the mark. If you want to run away fast, then the first thing to do is take off in whatever direction you happen to be facing.

“Ooof” was the only remark Meegan had an opportunity to make as I ran through him, and that utterance was chosen for him by the fact a lot of air needed to vacate his lungs in a hurry. I launched forwards off my good ankle and put my shoulder into the little bastard. Being a big bastard helps in these exchanges. The man behind him staggered back, tripping.

One good thing about falling over on a mountain-good at least when it’s other people-is that you’re pretty much guaranteed to hit your head on a rock. Meegan showed no signs of wanting to get up again. The other man managed to land on his arse, though, and sprang back up sharpish with a curse. We both found ourselves looking at the gleaming length of my sword between us, held at one end by my hand on the hilt and at the other by the ribs he had wrapped around the blade. I had no memory of drawing it, let alone pointing it at him.

“Sorry.” Don’t ask me why I apologized. In the heat of the moment my ankle’s complaints were ignored and I hurried on past the mercenary, yanking my steel clear of his flesh with a sick-making wet tearing sound and the grate of cutting edge against bone. I saw more figures negotiating the boulder-strewn ledge ahead of me and executed a swift turn on my good ankle before hobbling at speed back towards the ambush point where I’d last seen Snorri.

I met him coming in the opposite direction. Or, more accurately, I threw myself to the ground when he came charging around a corner, drenched in blood, axe held blade to ear, haft to chest. The silent purpose in him was terrifying-and then he roared his battle cry and all of a sudden the silence of his purpose would have been fine. A moment later I worked out that he had been shouting, “Behind you!”

Four men had been practically within stabbing range of my heels. Snorri burst amongst them with reckless disregard for everyone’s safety, including mine and his. His axe head buried itself in one man’s solar plexus on a rising arc that split his sternum. He shoulder-charged another man, a hefty fellow, lifting him off his feet and mashing him against a sharp corner of rock. A third man thrust at Snorri but somehow the twisting giant conspired not to be in the way, the mercenary’s sword tip lancing between the Norseman’s elbow and chest. Snorri’s continuing turn trapped the blade and wrenched the weapon free from his attacker’s grasp. The last of the four had Snorri cold. Axe bedded in one foe, tangled with another, he stood open to the man’s spear thrust.

“Snorri!” Why I shouted a useless warning, I don’t know. Snorri could see the problem well enough. The spearman hesitated for a split second. I don’t think my cry distracted him. Most likely he was intimidated by the blood-soaked giant before him, his scarlet battle-mask divided by a fierce and broad grin. A split second should not have been enough, but with a roar Snorri impossibly powered his axe through his victim’s chest, splattering the varied insides of the man in the process, and cut away the spear’s head just before it reached his neck. The backswing broke open the spearman’s face with the blunt reverse of the blade. And I swear to you the iron trailed darkness as it cut the air. Swirls of night left in its wake, fading like smoke. The last man, now swordless, spun away and ran for it. Snorri turned to me, eyes wholly black, panting, snarling, unseeing.

I rolled to my feet-well, foot-sword hanging from my hand, and for a moment we faced each other. Over Snorri’s left shoulder the last burning scrap of the sun fell behind the mountains.

“You’ve got a bit of. .” I mimed with my hand, scraping at my chin. “Um. . something in your beard. Lung, I think.”

He reached up, a slow movement, eyes clearing as he did so. “Could be.” He flicked the gobbet of flesh away. A grin. Snorri again.

“There are more coming?” I asked.

“There are more,” he said. “Whether they’re coming or not is yet to be decided. I think there are eight remaining.” He wiped his face, smearing the crimson. Where clean skin showed he looked far too pale-even for a Norseman. The dark and flowing nature of the gore beneath his ribs on the left suggested that not all the blood belonged to our enemy.

“Edris?” I asked.

Snorri shook his head. “Him I would remember putting down. He’ll be bringing up the rear, making sure none of his stragglers decide the mountain’s too steep.” He leaned back against the rock, axe dangling from his hand, flesh white beneath the scarlet now, veins curiously dark.

“We should give them something to think about,” I said. I knew the power of fear better than most men, and Snorri had left a frightful mess. I took hold of the man Snorri had ripped his axe out of to save himself from the spear thrust. His left boot proved the least slippery part of him and I tugged him towards the drop where our ledge fell away to the next. I’d moved him about six inches before discovering that while blind terror is a great anaesthetic in the moment, once the immediate danger is passed the effect wears off rapidly. I fell back clutching my ankle and inventing new swear words that might more effectively convey my distress. “Bollockeration.”

“Toss the corpses over?” Snorri asked.

“It might make them think twice.” It would make me think just the once, and the thought would be I’ll come back later.

Snorri nodded and, taking two men by the ankle, threw them over the edge. They landed with a sound that was wet and crunchy at the same time, and my stomach lurched. It would be the path the mercenaries’ rear guard would likely take-the route we had taken. Meegan and his companions had only been inspired to the alternative and more difficult ascent by the sounds of battle. The sensible desire to flank Snorri rather than face him one by one in the narrow defence point he’d chosen had driven them up a more dangerous path.

Still sat on my backside, I grabbed another man by the wrist, braced my good leg against a ridge of rock, and started to tug him by inches towards the drop. I moved him about a yard in the time it took Snorri to toss all but one of the rest in the area.

“This one’s still alive.” Snorri leaned over Meegan and kicked him in the ribs. “Out cold, though.” He looked over at me with an appreciative grin. “You saved a small one for questioning like you promised.”

“All part of the plan,” I grunted, shifting my corpse another three inches. He was the spearman. Thankfully he lay facedown. His passage across the rocks had left a red smear where I’d dragged him. I clutched him below the hand, not wanting to touch his warm dead fingers.

“I’ll sort out the others.” And Snorri headed off to deal with any of the fallen from his initial attack who hadn’t yet fallen far enough.

“No, I’m fine. Don’t trouble yourself.” I got no reply-with Snorri already out of earshot and the rest of my audience dead or unconscious, my sarcasm was wasted. “Heave!” and I heaved again. The corpse slid forwards another three inches. Dead fingers moved against my skin, a convulsion of them like spider legs flexing, stroking down the veins and tendons in my wrist. I nearly let go fast enough, but the hand clasped me as I unclasped it, the dead man lifted his head, and the ruin of his face gaped a crimson grin at me, white skull visible beneath flapping flesh. Fear lends a man strength, but so too does being dead, apparently. I wrenched hard enough to drag the spearman a whole extra yard, but it didn’t win me free, just brought him close enough to reach for my throat. I managed half a scream before dead fingers, still warm, cut it off with an iron grip.

It’s not until you’ve actually been throttled that you realize how terrible it is. It doesn’t take enormous strength to seal your air off completely-and the dead man’s strength was enormous. When you’re denied a breath, then all of a sudden breathing is the only thing you’re interested in. I clawed at the wrist beneath my chin, dug at the fingers, but if a face can kiss Snorri’s axe and still find a smile, then fingernails aren’t going to mean much. I planted a foot on the dead thing’s shoulder and pushed for all I was worth. It felt as though my throat would be ripped from my neck, but the grip wasn’t released. Black spots began to grow in my vision, joining at the edges to make a wall of darkness. Blinding cracks ran through the black, my heart hammered behind its cage of ribs, and the stink of burning flesh filled my nostrils even though I could draw no air into them.

And then, as suddenly as the hand had seized me, it was gone. Snorri loomed over me, gripped under my armpits, and hauled me clear. If my throat hadn’t been so well lubricated with terror-sweat I suspect I would have seen it still clutched in the dead man’s fingers, red and dripping.

Snorri snatched up his axe while I sucked air through the straw that being choked had left me with. The dead man stood, still grinning amidst the butchered remains of his face, and raised his hands towards us, the wrists and forearms curiously burned, wisps of smoke still lifting from them. Snorri made to advance, but two figures tackled him from the rear. He staggered, desperate to keep his footing. Two of his victims clung to him, blood still oozing from the fatal wounds his axe had given them.

Gasping and weak, I backed away from the spearman, still on my arse, shuffling amongst the rocks, retreating before his unhurried advance. Snorri looked in trouble too, with one of the things clinging to his back, the other encircling his waist with both arms and trying to eat its way into his stomach.

“Help.” I only managed to squeak it out as a whisper. I don’t think Snorri noticed. He’d just thrown himself back against the rock wall to the next ledge, sandwiching the corpse on his back between the broadness of his shoulders and the stone. He might not have heard my cry for aid, but I heard the resulting cracking of ribs and vertebrae loud and clear.

“Mffgl.” The dead spearman tried to speak just before he fell upon me. Torn flesh and a broken jaw rendered him incomprehensible.

“Help!” I managed a touch more volume, and this time, expecting to be throttled again, I caught both the creature’s wrists. The thing’s strength was shocking, and the burned flesh slid and tore beneath my grip.

Across the way, just behind my attacker’s head, I saw Snorri butcher the corpse-man he’d crushed, not severing its head but pulverizing its neck with two quick axe blows. With the second blow a horrifying change came over my opponent. Its strength multiplied and where it had been inexorably pressing my arms back it now brushed aside any attempt at defence and sealed both hands around my bruised neck once more.

The ruined face came close to mine, dripping, tongue writhing over shattered teeth and a hideous intelligence in its eyes. Yards behind, Snorri caught the head of his last opponent in both hands and with an oath pushed it away from his side. It took all his strength, as if his enemy had also grown in power, and the scarlet mouth he tore from his hip trailed skin and strands of flesh from its jaws. Snorri drove his knee right into the thing’s face, booted it away, then pursued, raising a big rock on high to pulp its head.

Again, as if some necromantic vitality had been shared amongst the corpses and now flowed from the destroyed corpse into the last available vessel, my enemy’s strength redoubled. It stood, lifting me as if I were nothing. By rights it should have snapped my neck, but although the strength of its arms had grown, the creature’s grip actually weakened.

I looked down and where my hands fastened upon the dead skin, a blinding light burned. The white heat of a desert sun bled between my fingers, my bones just shadows in a rosy haze of pumping blood and living flesh. The dead thing crisped where I touched it. Fats bubbled, flesh burned back, exposing sinews that smouldered, then shrivelled.

I nearly let go in shock.

Snorri came running, axe recovered and ready. He whirled it in a blow towards the monstrosity’s head, but somehow it took one hand from my throat and caught the weapon beneath its blade. The haft thunked against its palm with a dull and wooden sound. Snorri struggled to pull his axe free, but though he dragged the dead man several yards, and me too, still held in its choking fingers, he couldn’t defeat the thing’s strength.

The Norseman paused, slipped his grip to the end of the axe haft and to the head, and used the weapon as a lever to twist the spearman’s wrist. Bones snapped with loud retorts, tendons gave, flesh tore. Leaving his axe in the broken hand, Snorri bore his foe to the ground and proceeded to pulp the grinning face with a large chunk of rock.

Released, I rolled clear, struggling for air. The hand that had held me now rested on two blackened arm bones jutting from the dead man’s forearm. Even now my breath wouldn’t draw. I fell into unconsciousness, reflecting rather abstractly that I’d never even known that there were two bones in a man’s forearm.