Red Vikings distributed themselves across the slopes to seek the entrance to Skilfar’s lair. Edris, Alrik, and Knui stayed with me.
‘Tie his hands.’ Edris settled down against a rock. He drew his sword from its scabbard and took a whetstone to its edge.
Alrik bound my hands behind me with a strip of hide. None of them had brought packs, they’d just given chase. They had no food other than what they’d stolen from me, and no shelter. From our elevation we could see along the mountainous coast for several miles in each direction, and out across the sea. The beach and their longboat lay hidden by the volcano’s shoulder.
‘Is she here?’ The necromancer plagued my thoughts, images of dead men rising kept returning to me, unbidden.
Edris let a long moment pass before a slow turn of the head brought his gaze my way. He gave me an uneasy smile. ‘She’s out there.’ A wave of his hand. ‘Let’s hope she stays there.’ He held his sword toward me. ‘She gave me this.’ The thing put an ache in my chest and made me shiver, as if I remembered it from some dark dream. Script ran along its length, not the Norse runes but a more flowing hand reminiscent of the markings the Silent Sister used to destroy her enemies. ‘Kill a babe in the womb with this piece of steel and the poor wee thing is given to Hell. Just waits there for its chance to return unborn. The mother’s death, the death of any close relative, opens a hole into the drylands, just for that lost child, and if you’re quick, if you’re powerful, all that potential can be born into the world of men in a new and terrible form.’ He spoke in a conversational tone, his measure of regret sounding genuine enough – but at the same time a cold certainty wrapped me. This was the blade that had slain Snorri’s son in his wife’s belly, Edris the man who started the foul work that the necromancers continued and that ended with Snorri facing his unborn child in the vault at the Black Fort’s heart. ‘You watch the slopes, young prince. The necromancer’s out there, and that one you really don’t want to meet.’
Alrik and Knui exchanged glances but said nothing. Knui took off his helm, setting it on his knees, and rubbed his bald scalp, scraping his nails through sweat-soaked straggles of red-blonde hair to either side. In places the helm had left him raw, bouncing back and forth on the long climb. The day had taken its toll on all of us and despite the awfulness of my predicament my head started to nod. With the horror of Edris’s words rattling about in my brain I knew I wouldn’t ever sleep again, but I lay back to rest my body. I closed my eyes, sealing away the bleakness of the sky. A moment later oblivion took me.
‘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