The Liar's key

THIRTEEN

“We’ve got to move fast, but in which direction?” Snorri asked.

“We need to be away from the coast.” Tuttugu hugged his belly with nervous arms, perhaps imagining a Hardassa driving his spear into it. “Take away their advantage. Otherwise they’ll pace us at sea and come in for us by night. And if they’re forced to beach they’ll have to leave men to guard the longboat.”

“We’ll aim south-west.” Kara pointed to a low hill on the horizon. “We should reach the Maladon border in three or four days. If we’re lucky we’ll be close to Copen.”

“Copen?” Tuttugu asked. I offered him silent thanks for not making me be the one to display my ignorance yet again.

“A small city on the Elsa River. The duke winters there. A good place to rest and gather our resources,” Kara said. By which she no doubt meant “for Jalan to buy us food and horses.” At this rate I’d arrive at Vermillion as poor as I thought I was when I left it.

• • •

We set off at a good pace, knowing the Hardassa men would be better provisioned, better equipped. . probably just plain better in all regards given that our second best warrior was likely a woman with a knife.

The sun came out to mock us, and Kara led the way, winding a path across slopes thick with heather and dense clumps of viciously spiked gorse.

“We’re getting closer to the Wheel aren’t we?” I asked an hour later, footsore already.

“Yes, we’ll just cut through the outer edge of its. . domain.”

“You can feel it too?” Snorri fell back to walk beside me, his stride free as if his wound no longer pained him.

I nodded. Even with four hours until sunset I could sense Aslaug prowling, impatient. Each patch of shadow seethed with possibilities despite the brightness all about. Her voice lay beneath all other sounds, urgent but indistinct, rising with the wind, scratching behind Snorri’s question. “It’s like the world is. . thinner here.” Even with an arm’s length between Snorri and me that old energy crackled across the shoulder facing him, buzzing in my teeth, a brittle sensation, as if I might shatter if I fell. With the old feeling came new suspicions, all of Aslaug’s warnings creeping into my mind. Baraqel’s hold on the northman would be strengthening with each yard closer to the Wheel. How long could I trust Snorri for? How long before he became the avenger Baraqel intended him to be, smiting down anyone tainted with the dark. .

“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 god, 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 völvas 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? Grass?”

“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 prongs 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. “Völva?” 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. Hardassa are coming.”

“Hardassa?” 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. “Shit.” 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 völva 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 gods 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 title 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.

“Shit.” 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 hell was Tuttugu staying for?

“Kara!” I shouted. “They won’t come!”

A score and more of the Hardassa 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. “Hell.” With Aslaug screaming at me to run, my own instincts screaming louder still, and Kara telling me to do it. . I ran.

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

“Ow!” I snatched my hand back, putting knuckle to mouth. “You little fucker!” 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 grass.

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 Hardassa, 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 Hardassa 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 Hardassa 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 Hardassa 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 völvas 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 bloody 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 bloody chunks. Behind him Kara strode back and forth where her runes fell, chanting something.

“Why in hell?” 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 Hardassa ceased blinking away his blindness and spotted us. He gave chase, axe high for the strike.

“Hell.” 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 Hardassa 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 grass writhes before them and fear to tread there. . this is beyond. .”

“It’s the Wheel.” Tuttugu, still examining his torn and bloody 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 Hardassa 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 succumbing. Perhaps such resistance lay in their blood, passed 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 passed black shards of volcanic glass, 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 passed between two of the shards and entered the circle. She went to one knee and scraped 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. “Orichalcum.” 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 Hardassa?” Snorri asked.

“No.” Kara led the way on. “Take it, Tuttugu.”

Tuttugu accepted the over-sized bead. Immediately the light in it died and it became merely shiny metal, like a solid drop of quicksilver.

“A magic was worked in that circle long ago.” Kara took the bead back and the glow returned. “Orichalcum leaks into the world at such sites, though I’ve never heard of it being found in such quantity. Skilfar has a piece.” She held her thumb and finger out to show how small, pea-sized. “One use for it is to assess a would-be völva’s potential. It has nothing to say of wisdom, but of affinity for enchantment it speaks volumes. This glow is my potential. Training and wisdom will help me put it to good use, as a warrior hones their strengths into skills.”

“And when Skilfar held it out for you to take?” Snorri asked.

Kara shook her head. “She bid me take it from a bowl upon a shelf in her cave. Though weeks later I saw her pass beneath that shelf and the glow from within the bowl was brighter than when I hold it now in my hand.” She held it out to Snorri. “Try it.”

Snorri reached for it, without slowing his pace, and she dropped the orichalcum into his palm. Immediately it lit from within, so bright it made me glance away. “Warm!” He passed it back quickly.

“Interesting.” Kara didn’t seem disappointed at being outshone. “I can see why the Silent Sister chose you. Jal, you try.” She held the bead for me to take.

“I’ve had enough of heathen spell-mongering.” I kept my distance and hid my hands beneath my armpits. “Last time we did something like this I ended up being stabbed.” In truth I didn’t want to be shown as dull before her. Tuttugu might seem pleased at sparking nothing from the metal-but a prince should never be seen to fail. Especially by a woman he’s hoping to impress. And was that a grin I saw on Snorri’s face as he outshone me, yet again? Aslaug had said the northman sought to usurp me, and now the whispers rose at the back of my mind to confirm it. For a moment I imagined that the Red Vikings had killed him. Would that have been so bad?

“Frightened?” Kara still held the orichalcum toward me.

To change the subject I asked, “Chose him? Nobody chose him-or me. It was accident that wrapped us in the Sister’s curse. A chance escape, a meeting against the odds.” I’d been expendable, a minor princeling left to die in her fire, an acceptable price to pay for ending an unborn. And my “meeting” with Snorri had hardly been planned. I’d run straight into him in a blind terror whilst trying to escape the crack spreading from my great aunt’s broken spell.

“I don’t think so.” Kara said no more as we struggled up a rise. At the top she continued. “The Silent Sister’s spell wouldn’t fit into just any man. It’s too powerful. I’ve never heard of its like. Even Skilfar was amazed-she never said it in so many words, but I could tell. A spell like the Sister’s needed two people to carry it, and to grow its strength from the first seed. Two people-opposites-one for the dark part, one for the light. It wouldn’t be left to chance. No, this must have been planned an age in advance. . to bring two such rare individuals together.”

I’d heard enough. Opposite to Snorri. Coward to his hero, thief to his honesty. Lech to his fidelity. Magic as mud to his shining potential. All I had to console myself with was prince to his pauper. . I was glad at least to find myself as suited to sorcery as a paving slab. Magic always struck me as hard and dangerous work. . not that there are any words you can put before “work” that makes it sound attractive. Certainly not “dangerous” or “hard.”

• • •

Our marching order changed as the miles passed. The boy grew weary and fell back with Tuttugu whose burst of energy from being healed now seemed spent. Snorri, Kara, and I, however, shed our tiredness. I found a dark excitement building in me. Each time I trod through the shadows cast by standing stones I heard Aslaug, her message now a simple promise-“I come.” And, although I feared her arrival, the threat of it bubbled through me like black joy, twisting my lips into a smile that might scare me if I had a mirror to see it in.

Cresting a ridge somewhat higher than the rest we paused, and turning back saw the enemy for the first time since the hut. We waited for Tuttugu and Hennan to struggle up to our position.

“I count twenty of them,” Snorri said.

“There were that many at Arran’s roundhouse before they attacked,” said Tuttugu, panting. “Close on a score.”

“Didn’t you manage to kill any of them?” I didn’t try to keep the complaint from my voice.

“Six, I think,” Snorri grunted. “They’re following us with the others.”

“Ah.” I turned to Kara. “Did you remember the necromancer when you said magic was our only hope? Because it looks like she’s following us in.”

Five or six hundred yards across a broad vale our enemy came on in a tight knot, their pace unhurried but relentless. I took a few steps to put more distance between Snorri and me. The skin along the side facing him burned and I swear for a moment I saw cracks reach out toward him from my arm, like black lightning forking into the air.

We pressed on, hurrying down the far side of the ridge, the heather catching at our ankles. At the bottom we waited for Tuttugu to draw level with us again.

“The sun will set soon. We’ll make our stand then.” Snorri cast a sideways glance my way. “Baraqel will lend me strength then too. He comes closest at dawn, but the dying of the light is another time when he can draw near-especially here.”

I nodded, suddenly not trusting the Norseman an inch. Every word he uttered sounded like a lie and when I blinked I could almost see Baraqel’s wings spreading from Snorri’s shoulders. Even so, ahead of us lay the Wheel and every nightmare ever whispered of in fireside tales. I wouldn’t run into it to avoid an axe. Besides, once Aslaug showed up I had the feeling that she wouldn’t be letting me run anywhere other than straight at the foe, whoever they might be.

The wind still blew, fitful now, edged with memories of winter. The land lay strangely silent, the lone cry of a curlew seeming an impertinence. I could smell rain approaching.

“Not much go left in them,” I told Kara as Tuttugu drew near. Hennan looked half-dead on his feet, though I’d heard no word of complaint from him. The boy wiped at his nose as he came closer, dry mud still in his hair from where I had brought him down when he raced to stand with his grandfather.

Tuttugu drew level and lifted his axe in greeting, the blade dark with dried blood, exhaustion written in the gesture.

Snorri grabbed the back of Hennan’s jerkin as he passed and hoisted him off the ground and onto his shoulders with one arm. “You can ride,” he said. “No charge.”

Tuttugu looked my way. “And Jal carries me?”

I laughed despite myself and slapped a hand to his shoulder. “You should come to Vermillion, Tutt. Fish off the bridge for your living and come out with me of an evening to scandalize the highborn. You’d love it. If the heat doesn’t melt Vikings.”

Tuttugu grinned. “The war chief of the Undoreth endured it.”

“Ah, but even Snorri went crispy at the edges, and he did spend most of his time in nice dark prison cells. .”

“Wh-” Tuttugu bit his reply off and stopped to stare.

As we crested another fold in the terrain an archway stood revealed in our path. Weathered stone, tall as a tree, narrow, and set with deep graven runes. Kara hurried ahead to examine the carvings.

“Well, that’s nice.” I walked through it, ignoring Kara’s hiss of warning. A considerable part of me had hoped, albeit without conviction, that I’d find myself somewhere new on emerging from the other side of the arch. Somewhere safe. Sadly, I just arrived on the grass opposite and looked back at the Norse, their hair wild across their faces in a sudden gust.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Something to set our backs against,” said Snorri.

“A work of the wrong-mages.” Kara craned her neck to stare at the runes above her. “A doorway to other places. But opening it is beyond any skill of mine. And like as not those places are worse than this one.”

“Sounds like any one of these wrong-mages could take the Empire throne and bend the Hundred to his will if their magic is so strong.” I followed her gaze up the stonework. Runes had been worked on my side too. Some of them reminded me of those the Silent Sister set climbing across the walls of the opera house and suddenly I felt those awful violet flames again, my ears filled with the screams of those I left to burn.

“Hel, they could take the whole world with magics like that.” Tuttugu set his back to the stone and slid down to sit against the base. Snorri shrugged Hennan from his back and lifted his axe to inspect the blade.

“The wrong-mages are bound to the Wheel,” Kara said. “And in time it breaks each of them. Their power diminishes swiftly as they move further from the centre. Not that many of them have the willpower to leave in any case. Kelem was the only wrong-mage to truly escape this place.” Her fingers moved among her braids, freeing most of the runes still hanging there, preparing for the fight.

“You said opening the doorway was beyond you. .” I frowned at the völva, her face resigned yet still fierce. “But before today the spell you summoned serpents with had only ever rippled the grass. .”

She looked up at Snorri, standing beside her. “Give me the key-there’s not much to lose at this point. . I’ll try to open the way.”

“What?” He eyed the open space between us. “It’s an arch. There’s no lock.”

Kara touched her rune-filled left fist to a symbol on the left support, eyes narrowed in concentration, the echo of some internal litany twitching on her lips. She crossed to the opposite side and struck a second carving with her right fist. “Give me the key. I can work this.”

Snorri looked suspicious. I felt a little glow to know it wasn’t just me he didn’t trust with Loki’s gift. “Direct me,” he said.

The völva shot him a narrow look. “We don’t have time to argue, just-”

“Show me how and I’ll do it.” I could hear the growl in his voice. This wasn’t up for debate.

Kara glanced toward the closest ridge where the Hardassa would soon appear. “From the runes it seems this arch was an attempt to open the doors to many places where men were not meant to go. Here,” she pointed to the first character she had touched, “darkness, and there, light. To step across miles in this world you have to take shortcuts through such places.”

“Open the door to light,” Snorri said.

“Damn that!” I saw his plan now, to unleash Baraqel and his kind on the Broken Empire. “Take the dark path-Aslaug can guide us.”

“No!” It was perhaps the first time since he faced Sven Broke-Oar that I’d heard true rage in his voice. A nimbus of light lit around him, tinged with the red of the western sky. “We’ll not take that road.”

A fury of my own rose at the snarl on the northman’s treacherous face. A black anger running through my veins, dark and thrilling. The idea that I had ever feared Snorri seemed as ridiculous as the idea I had ever trusted him. Right now I knew the strength of mere muscle would count for nothing when I reached out to crush him. I held his gaze. The bastard wanted Baraqel out in the world. Everything Aslaug had said was true. Snorri was the light’s servant now. “Kara, open the night-door.”

“No.” Snorri stepped forward and I matched him, until we stood face to face beneath the empty arch. Darkness smoked off my skin and I could feel Aslaug’s hands upon my shoulders, cool and steadying. The light that burned around Snorri bled from his eyes now. There’s light that is the warmth and comfort of the first days of summer, then there’s the glare of a desert sun where that light moves from comfort to cruelty-the light Baraqel sent through Snorri went beyond that into something not meant for men, so harsh that it held no place for any living thing.

“Kara!” I barked at her. “Open it.”

Snorri raised his fist, perhaps unconscious of the axe clutched in it. “I won’t have that night-whore-”

I hit him. Without thought. And the impact of it near deafened me. A burst of dark-light threw both of us yards back, but we found our feet in moments, throwing ourselves at each other, howling.

Only Tuttugu stepping into the archway and interposing himself prevented a second, more violent clash. Snorri found himself holding his father’s axe above the head of the only other living Undoreth. I found myself, hands outstretched into claws, reaching for Tuttugu’s face.

Snorri withdrew his hand and let the axe drop. “What. . what are we doing?” The moment of madness passed.

I’d been going to leap on an axe-wielding Snorri, barehanded. “Christ-it’s this place!” Neither of us owned our actions any more. A little longer and we’d both be puppets for the avatar we carried inside us. “We need to get out of here before it kills us.”

“The Red Vikings will probably beat Osheim to it.” Kara insinuated herself past Tuttugu to stand between us. She pushed both of us back. “I’ll try to open the door that I think I have most chance of success with.” She looked up at Snorri. “And if you won’t let go of your precious key then, yes, I will direct you.” She wiped the frustration from her face and pushed Snorri back another couple of feet before turning to face the archway, eyes doing that defocused “witchy” thing of hers. “There!” She moved beside him, pointing to an arbitrary point in the air, her head cocked to one side, staring past her finger into some infinity.

With a frown, Snorri fished out the key on its chain and, stepping closer, raised it to the point indicated. The blackness of the thing looked wrong against the thickening gloom. It had nothing of darkness about it, that black, but was something else again, perhaps the colour of lies, or sin.

“Nothing.” Snorri put the key away. “All that fuss and. . nothing.” He bent to pick up his axe. “I’m sorry, Jal. I’m a poor friend.”

I held up a hand to forgive him, ignoring the fact I’d hit him first.

Snorri stepped away from us swinging his axe. The enemy would be upon us soon enough. He needed to make ready. The axe cut glimmering arcs as he wove a figure of eight, then turning with the swing, reversed into an upward slice. Snorri made it seem almost an art, even with so crude a weapon. To my left Tuttugu readied himself, tightening his belt and wiping clean his blade with his sailcloth sack. Courage didn’t come naturally to him, at least not the kind that warriors laud, but he’d taken his death blow once already this day and now prepared to die again.

“We could just give them the key.” I felt someone should state the obvious. “Leave it here and head west for Maladon.”

They all ignored me. Even the boy-and he hadn’t a clue what I was talking about, so that seemed harsh. Ten or eleven years were surely too few to see past Prince Jalan’s glossy exterior?

I would have set off by myself but the Silent Sister’s trap had grown stronger with each stride we took toward the Wheel. I doubted I could get a hundred yards before the crack tore wide and Baraqel ripped from Snorri while Aslaug poured out of me.

“The sun’s coming down,” Kara said unnecessarily.

“I know.” The arch’s shadow stretched toward the Wheel, dark with possibility. I felt Aslaug’s breath on the back of my neck again-heard the dry scratching at the door that held her back.

The Red Vikings came on over the ridge, close enough now for me to see the detail on their shields: sea serpent, pentagon of spears, the face of a giant with the shield boss its roaring mouth. . The fatal wounds Snorri had dealt out now glistened in the red and dying light-a man split from collarbone to opposite hip, another headless and led on a tether, more behind. Somewhere in that crowd Edris Dean watched us from behind a Viking face guard. Was the necromancer there too, in furs, a shield on her arm? Or did she spy from some remove, set apart, as so often before? Suddenly my bladder declared itself beyond full.

“Do you think there’s time-” I began, but those bastard Red Vikings cut me off with their battle cries and started to charge.

It turned out there was time. I drew my knife and with wet legs prepared to face the onslaught of nearly two dozen Norsemen.

Something changed.

Although it made no sound the archway drew my gaze from the charging axemen. The whole of it lay black and darkness spilled from it, streaming cold about my ankles, thickening the shade before us.

“Jalan.” Aslaug rose from the shadowed ground as a woman might rise beneath her bed sheets, shrouded at first, her form uncertain, then drawing them about her, tighter and more tight, until at last she stands framed before you. She faced me, her back to the enemy, and I stood filled with her power, seeing the world with perfect clarity, darkness smoking from my skin. “This is no place for you, my prince.” She smiled, eyes gleaming, black with madness.

The first of the Hardassa, a fleet-footed young reaver, sprinted toward Aslaug, ready to bury his axe between her shoulder blades. Instead he came to a jerking halt, impaled on a sharp-ended black leg, thin as an insect’s and seemingly emerging from Aslaug’s back, though I couldn’t see from where or how. This was new-she was actually here in the flesh. “Shall we go?” she asked as the man died, choking on his blood. She gestured toward the arch with her eyes.

Snorri met the next wave of men, carving through the first one’s face with exquisite timing, long arms at full stretch. He leapt clear of the man a half pace behind, rotating to hack into the small of his back as momentum carried the fellow past. Tuttugu-already backed against the other side of the arch-slipped sideways with commendable skill and let the first of his foes hew stone so that his weapon was shaken from his grip. Tuttugu answered by burying the wedge of his blade in the man’s sternum.

More men came from Tuttugu’s left, keeping away from the yawning oblivion within the archway. Kara threw her runes at them, hurling a meagre handful. Each became a spear of ice, thrown with more force than even Snorri could manage. The shafts pierced shields, mail, flesh and bone, leaving the enemy staring in confusion at the holes punched through them.

“Jalan?” Aslaug asked me, drawing my attention back from the melee. Small hands gripped my leg. The boy. God knows why he chose me for protection. . Another two Hardassa reached us, trying to swerve around Aslaug. Both fell, sprawling forward, snared in web-like strands of darkness. “You need to leave,” she said. Behind her, the man transfixed on her insect leg lifted his head and eyed me with the consuming hunger of those returned from death. From his wide-open mouth came that wordless roar that dead men keep in place of language. Aslaug flicked him off in a crimson shower as he started to struggle. “Mine is not the only magic here.”

Snorri caught an axe just below the blade as it blurred toward him. He twisted into the attacker, a powerfully built redbeard, until his back pressed the other man’s chest, with the back of his head pressed against the other man’s nose guard. Arms outstretched, still trapping the axe, his own blade free on the other side, Snorri rotated into more attackers. Their blows thudded into the back of the redbeard Viking that he now wore as a cloak. Snorri let the man fall, dragging his Hardassa axes with him. Unencumbered once more, he hacked across his two closest foes.

A tearing sound behind me, and the archway pulsed with sudden light, like a bright wound in the darkness. From the resulting maelstrom of swirling blackness shot with motes of brilliance, Baraqel emerged, golden-winged, a silver sword in his hand-too bright to look upon, advancing on Aslaug. At the same time the ground about us began to boil, bones rising to the surface like bits of meat in a soup set above the flame. Bones and more bones, skulls here and there. The peaty soil vomited forth arm bones, leg bones, one piece finding another, and joining, linking with old gristle and stained sinew that had withstood the rot.

“This is a place of death!” Kara, yelling from the opposite spar of the arch. “The necromancer-” She broke off to apply her knife to a skeletal hand gripping her leg, more Hardassa closed upon her swiftly.

The dead men strewn in Snorri’s wake also started to rise. Bony hands began to claw at Baraqel’s feet, even reaching for Aslaug. The avatars of dark and light, rather than rushing at each other as Snorri and I had done, had to pause in order to deal with the necromancy reaching up to bring them down.

“Run!” Kara shouted, and free of the bones’ grip, she dived headfirst into the archway.

I hesitated for a moment. It looked a lot like a wider version of the crack that had pursued me in Vermillion. The archway seethed with darkness and light making war, a mixture I’d seen reduce people to bloody and widely scattered chunks. For all I knew small pieces of Kara now decorated the grass on the far side of the arch.

“Don’t!” hissed Aslaug, more limbs springing from her torso to pin Norsemen to the ground before they could reach me. Long, thin, hairy limbs. “Stay!” While the arch had been dark she’d been urging me through, but now she wanted me to stay?

That convinced me. I ran toward the swirling dark-light.

“Wait!” Aslaug’s shriek a mix of rage and anguish. “The völva lied to you, she’s a-”

I leapt through. The weight on my leg told me that the boy had come too. All the sounds behind me cut off in an instant and I started to fall.

• • •

The best thing I can say about what followed is that it probably hurt less than being butchered with an axe.