“You’re a coward, Snorri ver Snagason.” Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or the Red Queen’s blood still running hot in my veins, or even an honest desire to help the man, but something set the words spilling from my mouth, my normal desire to avoid any chance of being hit overridden for the moment.
“How so?” He didn’t move or raise his voice. In truth I’d never seen the violence he displayed in battle spill over into conversation-even those that ran against him. Perhaps I just judged him by what I’d do if I were a big scary Viking.
“This key. It’s built of lies, you know that. Taking it to death’s door-” I waved an arm in the air. “It’s just looking for a way out, an escape. You may as well have cut a hole in the sea ice back in Trond harbour and jumped through. Same result, less effort, and fewer people inconvenienced.” I would have told him he wasn’t going to get his wife back, or his children, or the unborn baby. I would have told him it was all nonsense and that the world doesn’t work that way. I would have said that but perhaps I’m not that cruel, or perhaps I didn’t trust his temper that far. . but most likely it didn’t need to be said. He knew it already.
Snorri didn’t speak. Nothing but the moan of the wind and the slap of waves against the hull. Then, “Yes. I am a coward, Jal.”
“So, throw the key over the side and come with me to Vermillion.”
“The door is my quest now.” Snorri sat up. “The door. The key. It’s all I have.” He touched the place where the key hung beneath his jerkin. “And what is the key if not a chance to face the gods and to demand an explanation for the world. . for your life?”
I knew this wasn’t about gods. Whatever he said. His family drew him on. Freja, Emy, Egil, Karl. I still kept their names and the stories he’d told about them, and they weren’t even mine. It’s not in me to care about such things, but even so, I saw that little girl, her peg doll, Snorri running to save her. I’d expected him to speak of them again over the long winter. Expected it and dreaded it. Known that one night, deep in his cups, he must break and drunkenly he would rage against the loss. But he never did. No matter how dark the night nor how long, or how much of my ale he consumed, Snorri ver Snagason made no complaint, spoke no word of his loss. I hadn’t expected to speak of it at last in a small boat, bound on every side by cold miles of restless sea.
“That’s not-”
“Sixty beats of a heart would be enough. If I could hold them. Let them know I came for them no matter what stood in my way. It would be enough. Sixty beats of a heart past that door would outweigh sixty years in this world without them. You’ve not loved, Jal, not held your child, newborn and bloody, soft against a hard world, and promised that child you’d keep it safe. And Freja. I don’t have the words for it. She woke me. I’d spent my time in red dreaming, biting at any hand that tried to feed me. She woke me-I saw her-and she was all I wanted to see-all I could see.”
Kara and Tuttugu hadn’t moved from their benches but I saw in the stillness of them that both lay awake, listening.
“There’s no place in this world for me any more, except as a weapon, except as the anger behind a sharp edge, bringing sorrow. I’m done, Jal. Broken. Past my time.”
I hadn’t anything to say to that, so I said nothing, and let the sea speak. In time the sun found us, and Baraqel must have flowed into the northman’s mind, though whether he had any words to offer up after Snorri’s own I couldn’t say.
TWELVE
That first day after I woke from the blood dream I spent cradling my hand in my lap and glowering at Kara. She kept her peace though. At least until I started fumbling at the laces of my trews to answer nature’s call. It’s a difficult business at the best of times, standing up in a small boat to relieve oneself over the side. Trying to stand in choppy seas whilst unlacing with an injured hand is doubly difficult.
“This would be a hell of a lot easier if some lunatic hadn’t stabbed me!” The laces confounded my awkward fingers yet again. “Christ’s whore!” I may have uttered a few more oaths, and called a certain völva’s good name into disrepute. .
“In the north we call that a little prick,” Kara replied, not looking over from her place at the tiller.
I’m sure she meant the injury, but Tuttugu and Snorri, being ignorant barbarians, laughed themselves hoarse at my expense, and thereafter I manfully ignored my wound, having found the edge of Kara’s tongue to be sharper than her needle.
• • •
Tuttugu and I kept our eyes north as often as not, watching for the sails of a longship. Any flash of white had us wondering if a pair of red eyes waited beneath, and behind that a deckful of the Hardassa. Thankfully we saw no sign of them. Perhaps after the events at the Black Fort the Dead King no longer held sufficient sway over the Red Vikings to have them dog our trail all the way to the continent. Or maybe we had simply outrun them.
• • •
In three days’ sail from Beerentoppen the Errensa had borne us so far south that the Norseheim coast now curved away from us, heading east. The Devouring Sea lay ahead, the last barrier to the continent, spreading out toward the shores of Maladon. Kara said her prayers, the Undoreth called on Odin and Aegir, I made one-sided bargains with the Almighty, and we parted company from the north for good or ill.
• • •
The Devouring Sea, or the Karlswater as those on its southern shores name it, has a poor reputation with sailors. Storms from the great ocean are often funnelled down into the Karlswater by the Norseheim highlands. Such storms are perilous enough out in the deeps, but in the shallow waters where we now sailed they would on occasion whip up rogue waves so huge that no ship could survive them. Such waves were rare but they could sweep the Karlswater clear. Aegir’s Broom the Vikings called them. The sea-god cleaning house.
I hung at the Errensa’s stern, watching Norseheim diminish behind us, compressed between sea and sky into a dark and serrated line. Then just a line. Then imagination. And finally memory.
“When I get to Maladon I’m paying a barber to shave this beard.” I ran my fingers up into the curls, bleached white-blond by the newly arrived sun, thick with salt and grease. My old crowd wouldn’t even recognize me, all scars, lean muscle, and wild hair. Still, nothing that a tailor, a man with a razor, and a month of comfortable living couldn’t set right.
“It suits you.” Kara looked up at me under her brows, blue eyes unreadable. She sat repairing a cover for one of the storage units. She’d warmed to me a little over the course of the journey, checking on my hand wound without apology but with a gentle touch. Twice a day she rubbed a sweet-smelling unguent at the entry and exit holes. I enjoyed the attention so much I somehow forgot to mention it had stopped hurting.
In exchange for Kara’s medical care I entertained her with tales of the Red March court. It never hurts to mention you’re a prince-a lot. Especially if you are one. She seemed to find my stories amusing, though I wasn’t sure she was always laughing at the parts I thought were funny. .
“A fish!” Snorri leapt up, rocking the boat. “Thor’s teeth! I caught one!”
He had too, a foot and a half of black slimy fish jerking back and forth in his hands, the line still trailing from its mouth.
“Only took you twelve days at sea!” I’d told him to give it up an age ago.
“I got one!” Snorri’s triumph couldn’t be dented by my jibes.
Tuttugu came over to slap him on the back. “Well done! We’ll make a fisherman of you yet.”
Of course Tuttugu had only to drop a hook over the side and it seemed the fish fought each other for the privilege of swallowing it. He must have hauled a score of them from the waves since we set sail. He’d taken to coaching Snorri and confided to me that the warrior had been a poor farmer too. Tuttugu worried that Snorri had nothing to fall back on-he had a talent for war but in the peace he might find life challenging.