of living. It’s not all the dropping of runes and the wrapping of old platitudes in gravitas. Get out there. Go south. Burn in the sun. Sweat. Bleed. Learn. Come to me older, tempered, hardened.’ She tapped a finger to the scroll case on her lap. ‘These words have waited here an age already – they will wait on you a little longer. Read them with eyes that have seen the wideness of the world and they will mean more to you. There is a singular benefit in Snorri’s choosing of Kelem to show him the door. A thousand-mile benefit. On such a journey a man might grow, and change, and find himself a new opinion. Perhaps you can help him.’
Snorri stretched beside me. ‘And that was that.’ He stood, the boat shifting beneath his weight, and glanced at Kara. ‘Skilfar shooed us out and her little dog followed to see that we left. Kara followed on minutes later. She said there were men hunting us on the mountain and that we’d find you near the crater on the west face.’
I looked between them, Snorri, Tuttugu, Kara – the madman, the faithful hound, the baby witch. Three of them against the Dead King, and if he didn’t take them then Kelem waited at the end of their journey. And the prize if they won was to open death’s door and let hell out…
‘Florence, eh? The best path to Florence leads through Red March. You can drop me off there.’
Perhaps Kara had a magic about her that permeated her boat, or maybe I had found my sea legs at long last – either way, the voyage south from the Beerentoppen proved less horrendous than the many days with Snorri in the Sea-Troll. Kara had named her boat Errensa, after the valkyrie that swim beneath the waves to gather the war dead for Ragnarok. She knew the winds and kept her sails full, driving us south faster than a man can run.
‘She’s a fine looking woman,’ I told Snorri when he came to join me, huddled in the prow. The boat wasn’t large but the wind gave us privacy, overwriting our conversation and snatching the words away.
‘That she is. She’s got a strength about her. Didn’t think she’d be your type, Jal. And haven’t you been mooning over this Lisa of yours ever since we left Trond?’
‘Well, yes, I mean Lisa’s a lovely girl… I’m sure I’ll climb her balcony once or twice when I get back but…’ But a man has to think about the here and now, and right there and right then, Kara had all my attention.
Life aboard a small sailboat is not to be recommended, however attractive the company, and even when you don’t have to spend most of each day emptying yourself over the side. The food proved cold, monotonous, and in short supply. The nights continued to try to reinstate winter. My fever continued to keep me weak and shivering. And any hopes I had of exercising my charms on Kara died early on. For one thing it’s hard to play the enigmatic prince of romance when the object of your affections gets to watch you shit into the sea twice a day. For another, the very first time my hand wandered her way Kara took a long knife from out beneath the many pleats of her skirt and explained with unnecessary volume how she would use it to pin that hand to my groin should it wander again. Snorri and Tuttugu just watched me and rolled their eyes as if it were my fault! I cursed the lot of them for miserable peasants and retreated to nibble on our diminishing store of dry oatcakes – revolting things.
At sunset Aslaug came, rising through the boards of the hull as if the inky depths had kept her safe while day scoured the world. Tuttugu glanced my way, shuddered and busied himself with a net that needed repairs. Snorri stared hard at the spot from which Aslaug rose, his gaze unreadable. Did he miss her company? He hadn’t the look of a man who saw her clearly though, his eyes sliding past her as she moved toward me. I hope her words slid past his ears just as well.
‘Jalan Kendeth. Still huddled among northmen? Yours is the palace of Red March, not some creaking tub.’
‘You have a faster means of getting there?’ I asked, my mood still soured.
Aslaug made no reply but turned slowly as if hunting a scent, until she faced the stern where Kara stood beside the tiller. The völva saw Aslaug in the moment the avatar’s gaze fell upon her. I could tell it in an instant. Kara made no attempt to conceal that recognition, or her anger. Without taking her gaze from the spirit she tied off the tiller and stepped forward. She compensated for the swell, advancing as if the boat were set in rock.
‘Out!’ Loud enough to startle Snorri and Tuttugu, and to have me jump half out of my seat. ‘Out, night-spawn. Out, lie-born. Out, daughter of Loki! Out, child of Arrakni!’ Kara’s eyes blazed with the sunset. She advanced, one hand held before her, clutching something that looked rather like a human bone.
‘Well she’s a pretty thing!’ Aslaug said. ‘Snorri will take her from you. You know that don’t you, Jalan?’
‘Out!’ Kara roared. ‘This boat is mine!’ She struck the bone to the mast and all about the hull runes lit, burning with a wintery light. In that instant Aslaug seemed to collapse, flowing into some smaller shape, the size of a large dog, so wreathed in darkness it was hard to see any detail … other than it had too many legs. In a quick thrashing of long dry limbs Aslaug scurried over the side and was gone without a splash. I shuddered and looked up at Kara who returned my gaze, her lips set in a thin line. I opted to say nothing. The völva held like that, still with the bone to the mast, for another minute, then another, and then, with the sun gone behind the world, she relaxed.
‘She is not welcome here,’ Kara said, and returned to steering the boat.
‘She and Baraqel are all Snorri and I have in our corner. They’re ancient spirits, angel and … well… There are people after us, things, after us that work magic as easily as breathing. We need them. The Red Queen’s sister gave us—’
‘The Red Queen moves you on her board like all her other pawns. What she gives you is as much a collar as a weapon.’ Kara took up the tiller again. Adjusted course. ‘Don’t be fooled about these creatures’ nature. Baraqel is no more a valkyrie or angel than you or me. He and Aslaug were human once. Some among the Builders copied themselves into their machines – others, when the Wheel first turned, escaped their flesh into new forms.’
‘Aslaug never told me—’
‘She’s the daughter of lies, Jalan!’ Kara shrugged. ‘Besides, she probably doesn’t remember. Their spirits have been shaped by expectation for so long. When the Day of a Thousand Suns came their will released them and they were free. Gods in an empty world … then we came back. New men, roaming the earth as the poisons faded. New will. And slowly, without us knowing it, or them, our stories bound about the spirits and our will made them into something suited to our expectations.’
‘Uh.’ I leaned back, trying to make sense of the völva’s words. After a while my head started to hurt. So I stopped, and watched the waves instead.
We sailed on. Snorri and Kara seemed to find excitement in each newly revealed stretch of dreary Norse coastline. Even the sea itself could fascinate them. The swell is doing that, the wind is turning, the rocks are this, the current is westerly. Pah. I’d heard more interesting discussions between herdmen cataloguing the ailments of sheep. Or I probably would have if I’d listened.
A consequence of boredom is that a man is forced to look either to the future or the past, or sideways into his imagination. I tend to find my imagination too worrisome to contemplate, and I had already exhausted the possible scenarios for my homecoming. So, sulking in the Errensa’s prow I spent long hours considering the circumstances of my abduction from Red March and forced march across half of Empire to the Black Fort. Time and again my thoughts returned to great uncle Garyus and his silent sister – born a conjoined monstrosity, the rightful king and queen of Red March. Their father, Gholloth had set the chirurgeons to splitting them, but neither could ever be set upon the throne when age claimed him. He passed them over for Alica, the younger sister. My grandmother. A less obvious monster. But which of them ruled? Which of them had truly set Snorri and myself upon our path north? Which of them had gambled