The cries of the gulls, earlier so poignant against the bleakness of the landscape, had grown raucous and swollen to cacophony.
“Bloody birds.” I looked for a stone but none lay to hand.
Throwing the first stone. . a simple pleasure. Once my life had been one simple pleasure after the next. I wondered what Barras and the boys would make of me, returning in my heathen rags, leaner, my sword notched, scars to show. Less than a year would have passed but would things still be the same? Could they? Would those old pastimes still satisfy? When I finally rode through the Red Gates would I really be back. . or had the moment somehow passed, never to be recaptured? I’d seen too much on my journey. Learned too much. I wanted my ignorance back. And my bliss.
Something splatted on my forehead. I reached to wipe the dribbles from my cheek, fingers coming away gooey with white muck.
“Fucking bloody. .” Weakness forgotten, I lurched to my feet, fist raised in impotent rage at the gulls circling overhead. “Bastards!” I wheeled seaward, intent on finding a stone lower down the beach.
Not until I’d found my stone-a nice flatish piece of black-grey slate, smoothed by the waves and with that perfect round-in-the hand feel-and started to straighten up for my reckoning with the gulls did I notice the longboat. Still a ways out among the very first breakers, sail furled, forty oars splashing rhythmically as they drove it forward. I stood, jaw hanging, shocked into stillness. To either side of the prow a red eye had been painted, staring forward, heavy with threat.
“Shit.” I dropped my stone. I’d seen this before. A memory from our trek north. Looking down upon the Uulisk Fjord. A longboat made tiny with the distance. A red dot at its prow. These were Hardanger men. Red Vikings. They might even have Edris Dean with them if the bastard had escaped the Black Fort. Two Vikings stood in the prow, round rune-marked shields, wolf-skin cloaks, red hair streaming around their shoulders, axes ready, close enough to see the iron eye rings and nose guards on their helms. “Shit.” I scrambled back, grabbed my sword, snatched up the smallest of three bags of provisions, started running.
A winter of over-eating and over-boozing had done little for my fitness, the only exercise I got happening under the furs. The breath came ragged from my lungs before I even reached the first ridge. What had been a dull ache of ribs crushed beneath the weight of the Fenris wolf rapidly flared into the pain of dagger-driven-into-lung with each gasp of air. On reaching the higher ground I risked pausing to turn around. The Hardanger men had their longboat beached with a dozen of them busy around it. At least twice that number had already started up the slope on my trail, scrambling over the rocks as if catching a southerner would make their day. And yes, in the midst of them, bareheaded, a solid fellow in a studded leather jerkin, sword hilt jutting over his shoulder, iron-grey hair with that blue-black streak and bound at the back into a tight queue. “Edris fucking Dean.” I seemed to be making a habit of being chased up mountains by the man.
The land rose toward Beerentoppen as if it were in a dreadful hurry. I panted my way through dense clumps of gorse and heather, struggled through stands of pine and winter-ash, and scrabbled over the patches of bedrock that lay exposed where the wind wouldn’t allow the meagre soil to gather. A little higher and the trees gave up trying, and before long my path angled across bare rock unbroken by any splash of green. I kept on, cursing Snorri for leaving me, cursing Edris for giving chase. No doubts now remained about who had been keeping watch on us in Trond. And if Edris was here and dead things were hunting us too it seemed certain that at least one necromancer escaped the Black Fort with him. Quite possibly the scary bitch from Chamy-Nix who’d stood the mercenaries Snorri killed back up again.
Snorri and Tuttugu had left no trail so Beerentoppen’s broken peak was all I had to guide me. Baraqel had told them where Skilfar was but damned if I could remember what he’d said. I stumbled gasping and spluttering around the vast boulders that decorated any even vaguely flat surface, and skittered a dangerous path across slopes littered with brittle stones that may have been spat from the volcano. . or dropped by pixies for all I knew.
One skitter took me a little too far. I hit a rock, tripped, and sprawled, coming to a halt not more than a foot from a drop big enough to be the killing kind. “Shit.” The closest of my pursuers were three hundred yards off and moving fast. I got to my feet, hands bloody.
I’m very good at running away. For best results put me in a city. Among streets and houses I do well. In such surroundings a good sprint, tight cornering, and an open mind when it comes to hiding places will see a man clear under most circumstances. The countryside is worse-more things to trip you up, and the best hiding spots are often taken. On a bleak mountainside it comes down to endurance, and when a fellow has been wrung out by sea sickness, not to mention rolled on by the kind of wolf that would only need two friends to bring down a mammoth. . well, it’s not going to end well.
Fear is a great motivator. It returned me to my feet and set me jogging on. I didn’t dare look back for fear of missing my footing again. I clutched my side, rasped in one breath after the next, and tried to keep from weaving across the slope. Hope is almost as bad as fear for goading a man past the point at which he should give up. Hope persuaded me I was opening a lead. Hope convinced me the next rise would reveal Snorri and Tuttugu just ahead. When, in a sudden pounding of footsteps, the Hardassa man caught up with me and brought me down, I fell with a wheeze of surprise, despite it having been inevitable from the moment I spotted their longboat closing on the beach.
The Viking crashed down on top of me, pressing my face to the rock. I lay panting while the rest of the pursuit gathered round. My view offered only their boots but I didn’t need to see any more than that to know they would be a fearsome bunch.
“Prince Jalan Kendeth. Good to meet you again.” A southern accent, a touch winded.
The weight lifted from me as my captor rolled clear. I took my time getting into a sitting position. Looking up, I found Edris Dean staring down at me, feet braced against the slope, hand on hip. He seemed pleased. The dozen Red Vikings arrayed around him looked less pleased. More of them stretched out back down the slope, toiling upward.
“Don’t kill me!” It seemed like a good place to start.
“Give me the key and I’ll let you go,” Edris said, still with the smile.
The thing about staying alive is staying useful. As a prince I’m always useful. . as an heir and a figurehead. As a debtor I was useful as long as Maeres believed I might be able to pay him back. As Edris’s captive, too far from home to be a good prospect for ransom, my only real use lay in being a link to Loki’s key. “I can take you to it.” It might only mean a few more hours of life but I’d sell my own grandmother for that. And her palace.
Edris waved a couple of the Hardassa men forward. One took the rations sack I’d been too preoccupied to ditch, the other started to go through my clothes, and not gently. “My friends here tell me there’s only one reason to put in at this shore.” He pointed up at Beerentoppen. “I don’t need you to find the witch.”