"You're a pretty man," she said.
"Thank you," Bern muttered. "Thank you. Need to piss. Right back."
He twisted past her. She grabbed deftly for his private parts. With an effort, Bern refrained from glancing guiltily at the very big man she'd just left.
"Hurry back and make me happy," she called after him. Someone laughed. Someone—big, blond, hard-eyed—looked up then, from the dicing.
Bern slapped a coin on the counter and ducked outside. He took a deep breath; salt in the night air here, sound of sea, stars overhead, the white moon high. The nearer ones in the room would have seen him pay. Would know he wasn't coming back.
He moved then, quickly. He could die here.
It was very dark, no lights to speak of outside the inns and the low, jumbled wooden dwellings and the rooms where the whores took their men. A mixed blessing, the darkness: he'd be harder to find, but might easily run headlong into a group of people, trying to make his way north and out from this warren of buildings. A fleeing stranger, Bern was certain, would be happily seized to be questioned at leisure.
He ran up the first black alley he came to, smelled urine and offal, stumbled through a pile of garbage, choking. Could he just walk, he wondered? Avoid being seen to be running from something?
He heard noises behind him, from the alehouse door. No, he couldn't just walk. Needed to move. It would be a sport for them. Something to enliven a night outside the fortress walls, waiting for a new contract and a journey somewhere. A way to keep in fighting trim.
In the blackness he bumped into a barrel lying on its side. Stooped, groped, righted it. No top. Grunting, he turned it over, sweating now, and clambered up, praying the bottom was solid enough. He stood, gauged distance as best he could in the dark, and jumped for the slanting roof of the house above. Caught a purchase, levered a knee up, awkward with the sword at his hip, and pulled himself onto the roof. If there was someone inside they'd hear him, he knew. Could raise an alarm.
When you had no obvious choices, you acted as if what you needed to do could be done.
Why was he remembering so many of his father's words tonight?
Prone on the roof above the alley, he heard three or four men go by in the street. He was being hunted. He was a fool, the son of a fool, deserved whatever fate he met tonight. He didn't think they'd kill him. A broken leg or arm would spare someone the need to fight him tomorrow with a risk involved. On the other hand, they were drunk, and enjoying themselves.
Wiser to surrender?
More sounds, a second group. "Pretty-faced little shit-eater," he heard someone say, at the entrance to the alley. "I didn't like him." Someone laughed. "You don't like anyone, Gurd."
"Do yourself with a hammer," Gurd said. "Or do it to that little goatherd who thinks he can join us." There came the unmistakable sound of a blade being drawn from a scabbard.
Bern decided that surrender was not a promising option.
Carefully, holding his own sword out of the way, he backed along the roof. He needed to go north, get beyond these houses and into the fields. He didn't think they'd care enough to leave drinking and go looking for him out there in the night. And come morning, once he rode up to the gates and issued a challenge, he'd be safe. Although that probably wasn't the best way to describe what would follow then.
He could have stayed at home, a servant for two more years. He could have hired himself out on a farm somewhere on the mainland, invented a name for himself, been a servant or a labourer there.
That wasn't what he'd ridden the grey horse into the sea to become. Everyone died. If you died before the walls of Jormsvik, perhaps the sword in your hand would get you to Ingavin's halls.
He didn't actually believe that, truth be told. If it were so, any farmhand could get himself run through by a mercenary and drink mead forever with smooth-skinned maidens among the gods, or until the Serpent devoured the Worldtree and time came to a stop.
It couldn't be that easy.
Neither was moving on this roof, which slanted too much. They all slanted, to let the snow slide in winter. Bern skidded sideways, dug in fingers and boots to stop himself, heard the sword scrape. Had to hope, could only hope, no one else heard it. He lay still again, sweat trickling down his sides. No sounds below except for running feet. He slowly manoeuvred himself around to look the other way.
There was a ramshackle, two-storey wooden house on the other side of another narrow alley. Just the one, the others were all one-level, like the house he was on. One of the new-style stone chimneys ran up an outside wall, set back from the street, he saw. They didn't have these on the isle. It was meant to allow a hearth, warmth and food, on a second floor. It looked as if it was going to fall over. There was a window in that second storey, overlooking his rooftop. The wooden shutters were open. One hung crookedly, needing repair. He saw a candle burning on the ledge, illuminating a room—and the face of the girl watching him.
Bern's heart lurched. Then he saw her put a finger to her lips.
"Gurd," she called down, "you coming up?"
A laugh below. They had gone right around, were in the street on the other side now. "Not to you. You hurt me last time, you're wild when I do you."
Someone else laughed. The girl across the way swore tiredly. "How 'bout you, Holla?"
"I go with Katrin, you know that. She hurts me when I don't do her!"
Gurd laughed this time. "You see a stranger?" He was right below. If Bern moved to the roof's edge he could look down on them. He heard the question and closed his eyes. Everyone died.
"Didn't," said the girl. "Why?"
"Pretty farmboy thinks he's going to be a mercenary."
Her voice was bored. "You find him, send him up. I need the money."
"We find him, he's no good to you. Trust me."
The girl laughed. The footsteps moved on. Bern opened his eyes, saw her turn her head to watch the men below go down the lane. She turned back and looked at him. Didn't smile now, nothing like that. She moved back, however, and gestured for him to come across the way.
Bern looked. A small window in a flat wall, above his level. A slanting roof where he was, no purchase to run and jump. He bit his lip. The heroes of the Days of Giants would have made this jump.
He wasn't one of them. He'd end up clattering down the face of the wall to the street below.
Slowly he shook his head, shrugged. "Can't," he mouthed, looking across at her.
She came back into the window frame, looked left and right down the lane. Leaned out. "They're around the alley. I'll get you at the door. Wait till I open."
She hadn't given him up. She could have. He couldn't stay on this roof all night. He had two choices, as he saw it. Jump down, keep to shadows and alleys, try to get north and out of town with a number of fighting men—he didn't know how many—prowling the streets for him. Or let her get him at the door.
He pulled himself nearer the edge. The sword scraped again. He swore under his breath, looked over and down. Saw where the door was. The girl was still at the window, waiting. He looked back at her and he nodded his head. A decision. You came over into the world—crossed from an island on a stolen horse—you had decisions to make, in the dark sometimes, and living until morning could turn on them.
She disappeared from the window, leaving the candle there, so small and simple a light.
He stayed where he was, watching it, this glimmer in darkness. There was a breeze. Up here on the roof he could smell the sea again, hear the distant surge of water beneath the voices and laughter of men. Always and ever beneath those things.
An idea came to him, the beginnings of an idea.
He heard a sound. Looked down. She carried no light, was a shadow against the shadows of opened door and house wall. No one in the laneway, at least not now. He seemed to have decided to do this. Bern slid himself to the lowest point on the pitched roof, held his scabbard with one hand, and dropped. He stumbled to his knees, got up, went quickly to her, and in.