• • •
“Jalan.” A dark and seductive voice. “Jalan Kendeth.” Aslaug insinuated herself into my dream, which up until that point had been a dull repetition of the day, climbing the Beerentoppen all over again, endless images of rocks and grit passing under foot, hands reaching for holds, boots scrabbling. I stopped dead on the dream-slopes and straightened to find her standing in my path, draped in shadow, bloody with the dying sun. “What a drab place.” She looked about herself, tongue wetting her upper lip as she considered our surroundings. “It can’t really be this bad? Why don’t you wake up so I can see for real.”
I opened a bleary eye and found myself staring out at the setting sun, the sky aflame beneath louring clouds. Alrik sat close by sharpening his hatchet with a whetstone. Knui stood a little way off where the slope dropped away, watching the sun go down, or pissing, or both. Edris seemed to have disappeared, probably to check on his men.
Aslaug stood behind Alrik, looking down on the dark mass of his hair and broad shoulders as he tended his weapon. “Well this won’t do at all, Jalan.” She leaned to peer behind me at my hands, wedged between my back and the rock. “Tied up! And you, a prince!”
I couldn’t very well answer her without drawing unwanted attention, but I watched, filled with the dark excitement her visits always provoked. It wasn’t that she made me brave exactly, but seeing the world when she stood in it just took the edge off everything and made life seem simpler. I tested the bonds on my wrists. Still strong. She made life simple. . but not that simple.
Aslaug set one bare foot on the helmet Alrik had set beside him, and laid her finger against the side of his head. “If you launched yourself at him and struck the top of your forehead against this spot. . he would not get up again.”
I gestured with my eyes toward Knui, just ten yards down the slope.
“That one,” she said. “Is standing next to a fifteen foot drop. . How quickly do you think you could reach him?”
Under normal circumstances I’d still be arguing about the head butt. I would have guessed as zero the likelihood that I could pick myself up, cover the distance to Knui without falling on my face. To then knock Knui off the cliff while not following him over was surely impossible. I also wouldn’t have the nerve to try it, not even to save my life. But with Aslaug looking on, an ivory goddess smoking with dark desire, a faint mocking smile on perfect lips, the odds didn’t seem to matter any more. I knew then how Snorri must have felt when he battled with her beside him. I knew an echo of the reckless spirit that had filled him when the night trailed black from the blade of his axe.
Still I hesitated, looking up at Aslaug, slim, taut, wreathed in shadows that moved against the wind.
“Live before you die, Jalan.” And those eyes, whose colour I could never name, filled me with unholy joy.
I tilted away from the boulder that supported me, rocked onto my toes, and started to fall forward before straightening my legs with a sudden thrust. Suppressing the urge to roar I threw myself like a spear, forehead aimed for the spot on Alrik’s temple where Aslaug had laid her finger.
The impact ran through me, filling my vision with blinding pain. It hurt more than I had thought it would-a lot more. For a heartbeat or two the world went away. I recovered to find myself lying across Alrik’s unresisting form, head on his chest. I rolled clear, trying to see out of eyes screwed tight against the pain. Down the slope Knui had turned from the cliff edge and his contemplation of the sea.
Getting on your feet on a steep incline with your hands bound behind you is not easy. In fact I didn’t quite manage it. I lurched, half-stood, unbalanced, and set off down the mountainside flat out, desperately trying to get each foot in front of me in time to keep from diving face first into the rock.
Knui moved quickly. I aimed at him as the only chance for stopping my headlong dash. He’d already advanced a couple of yards and was unslinging his axe when, totally out of control, I cannoned into him. Even braced against the impact, Knui had no chance. Wiry and tougher than leather he might be, but I was the bigger man and carrying more momentum than anyone on a mountainside would ever want. Bones crunched, I carried him backward, we held for a broken second teetering on the cliff edge, and with a single cry we both went over.
Hitting Alrik had been harder and more painful than I wanted or expected. Hitting Knui proved much worse. Both were gentle taps compared to hitting the ground. For the second time in under a minute I passed out.
I came to lying face down on something soft. And damp. And. . smelly. I couldn’t see much or move my arms.
“Get up, Jalan.” For a moment I couldn’t understand who was speaking. “Up!”
Aslaug! I couldn’t get up-so I rolled. The softness proved to be Knui. Also the dampness and the smell. His face registered surprise, the expression frozen in. The back of his head had. . spread, the rocks crimson with it. I struggled to my knees, hurting myself on the stones. Aslaug stood beside me, against the cliff, her head and shoulders rising above the edge where Knui had stood. Shadow coiled up about her, vine-like, her features darkening.
“Y-You said the drop was fifteen foot!” I spat blood.
“I was next to you, Jalan. How could I see?” An infuriating smile on her lips. “It got you moving though. And any fall on a mountain can kill a man, with a little luck.”
“You! Well. . I.” I couldn’t find the right words, the fear had started to catch up with me.
“Better get your hands free. .” She pressed back against the stone, crouching now, indistinct as the horizon ate the sun and gloom swelled from every hollow.
“I. .” But Aslaug had gone and I was speaking to the rocks.
Knui’s axe lay a little further down the slope. I shuffled toward it and with considerable difficulty positioned myself so I could start to saw at the hide strip around my wrists, watching all the while for other Hardassa men or Edris himself to come running into view.
Even a sharp axe takes a god-awful long time to cut through tough hide. Sitting there by Knui’s corpse it felt like forever. Every few seconds I let my gaze slip from lookout duty to check he hadn’t moved. I had a poor record with killing men on mountainsides. They tended to get up again and prove more trouble dead than alive.
At last the hide parted and I rubbed my wrists. Looking up, Aslaug’s second lie became apparent. She had said if I head butted Alrik where she pointed that he wouldn’t be getting up again. Yet there he was, standing at the top of the four-foot “cliff” that Knui and I sat at the bottom of. He didn’t seem pleased. More importantly, he had his hatchet in one hand and a wide-bladed knife with a serrated back in the other.
“Edris will want me alive!” I considered running but didn’t want to bet against how well Alrik could throw that hatchet. Also he could probably catch me. I thought about the axe lying on the rocks behind me. But I’d never swung one. Not even for splitting logs.
The Viking’s glance flitted to Knui, lying there with the rocks painted a dark scarlet all around him. “Fuck Edris.”
Two words told me all I needed to know. Alrik was going to murder me. He tensed, readying himself to jump down. And an axe hit him in the side of his head. The blade sheared through his left eye, across the bridge of his nose, and stopped midway along the eyebrow on the other side. Alrik fell to the ground and Snorri stepped into view. He put one large foot on the side of Alrik’s face and levered his axe free with an awful cracking sound that made me retch.
“How’s the Sea-Troll?” Snorri asked.
“I’m fine! Thank you very much.” I remained seated and patted myself down. “No, not fine. Bruised and damn near murdered!” Seeing Snorri suddenly made it all seem much more real and the horror of it all settled on me. “Edris Dean was going to gut me with a knife and-”