either side.
‘Swim.’ Snorri walks past me.
‘Wait!’ I reach forward to get an arm in his way. ‘What?’
‘They’re just swords, Jal.’
‘Yessssss. That was my point too.’ I look up at him. ‘You’re going to dive in among a whole bunch of swords?’
‘Isn’t that what we do in battle?’ Snorri steps into the water. ‘Ah, cold!’
‘Fuck cold, it’s sharp I’m worried about.’ I make no move to follow him.
‘Crossing the Slidr isn’t about bridges or tricks. It’s a battle. Fight the river. Courage and heart will see you across – and if it doesn’t then Valhalla will have you for you will have fallen in combat.’
‘Courage?’ I know I’m sunk before I start then. Unless simply wading in constitutes courage … rather than just stupidity.
‘It’s that or stay here forever.’ Snorri takes another step and suddenly he’s swimming, the water churning white behind him, his great arms rising and falling.
‘Crap on it.’ I stick a foot in the water. The chill of it reaches through my boot as if it isn’t there and shoots up the bones of my leg. ‘Jesus.’ I take the foot out again, sharpish. ‘Snorri!’ But he’s gone, a third of the way across, battling the waters.
I take the opportunity to put the key back around my neck on its thong. I find it hot in my grasp, reflecting nothing, not even the sky. I wonder if I call on Loki will the true God see and drown me for my betrayal? I hedge my bets by calling on any deity that might be listening.
‘Help!’
The way I see it is that God must be pretty busy with people appealing to him all the time, so he probably appreciates it when prayers cut to the chase.
I pause to consider the injustice of a Hell that contains no lakes that drown heroes and let cowards float, but instead holds test upon test over which someone with nothing to recommend them save a strong arm may triumph. Then, without further consideration I run three steps and dive in.
Swimming has never been my forte. Swimming with a sword at my hip has always resulted in swifter progress, but sadly only toward the bottom of whatever body of water I’m drowning in. The Slidr however, proves unusually buoyant when it comes to sharp-edged steel and Edris Dean’s blade rather than dragging me down, holds me up.
I thrash madly, my lungs too paralysed by the cold even to begin pulling back the breath that escaped me when I hit the river. The iciness of the water is invasive, seeping through blood and bone, filling my head. I lose contact with my limbs but it’s not drowning that concerns me – it’s keeping warm. Deep in my head, in the dark spaces where we go to hide, I’m crouched, waiting to die, waiting for the ice to reach me, and all I have to burn are memories.
I reach for the hottest memory I have. It isn’t the blind heat of the Sahar, or the crackling embrace of Gowfaugh Forest engulfed in flame. The Aral Pass unfolds, dragging me back into that blood-soaked gorge packed with men at war, men screaming, men at cut and thrust, men fallen about their wounds, time running red from their veins, men dying, whispering beneath the cacophony, speaking to their loved and lost, calling for their mothers, last words twitching on blue lips, bargains with the Devil, promises to God. I see another man slide back from my sword, leaving it black with gore. By now it’s too dull to slice, but a yard of steel is still deadly whatever edge it carries.
The Aral Pass carries me a third of the way across the Slidr. I find my focus and realize the river’s sharp load has not yet cut me open but there’s still too far to go and the opposite shore is slipping by too fast. In the distance I hear a roar, a low, steady, wet-mouthed roar. A long silver spear passes beneath me, too close. I start to swim again, pounding artlessly at the water, and this time it is the bloodshed at the Black Fort that drives me on. I remember the sick sound as my sword point pierces an eye, crunching through the bony orbit and into the Viking’s brain. In an instant the fire is gone from him, a meat puppet with his strings all snipped. An axe cleaves the air in front of my face as I sway back. A high table catches me in the back and I topple onto it, twisting, throwing my legs into the spin. A broadsword hammers into the planks where my head was and I’m over the table, on both feet, swinging, shearing through the arm that held that sword.
The battle madness of the Black Fort releases me at last, panting amid tumbled corpses. I’m two-thirds of the way across the Slidr, still in the choppy, swift-moving clarity of the river. Downstream, in the distance, the valley is choked with mist. That roar has grown louder, filling the world, trembling in the depth of my bones.
I strike out for shore, desperate now. Something bad waits for me in that mist but I’m running out of fight and time. The coldness takes me and all I have to burn is my duel with Count Isen, the high, sharp crash of blade on blade as he tries to kill me and I weave my defence from desperation. It’s not enough. I’m still ten yards from shore and going under. There’s a sharp agony in my leg that reaches me even though the limb is frozen and numb. I’ve been hit. The waters close over me. I surface once more and see that before reaching the rising mist the whole Slidr vanishes as if itself cut by a massive sword. The thunder is louder than thought. I’m being dragged to the falls. I go under again and none of that matters: a shoal of knives is bearing down on me and I’ve no air to scream with.
Somehow, against all sense, my sword is in my hand. A fine way to drown. But then I remember it’s not my sword and the heat that was in my blood in the moment I took it fills me once more. Edris Dean wielded this sword against me, seeking my life as he had sought that of my mother, and of my sister, warm in the womb. I battled him before Tuttugu’s corpse. The corpse of my friend, a coward who died a hero’s death. I remember how it felt to drive my sword between Edris Dean’s ribs, to sink it into the meat of him, to feel it bedded in his flesh and to rip it out again, grating across bone. I open my mouth and roar, careless of the river, and there I stand, dripping in the shallows, sword in hand, and above me the mist from an endless waterfall rises in clouds that dare the sky. The Slidr plunges over a rocky lip just ten yards on. Swords leap from its clear waters as gravity takes the river and hauls it swiftly away.
I step forward on trembling legs, weak in every limb, three more steps, two more, and I’m on the wet sand. I’ve no injuries that I can see.
A figure is running toward me, Snorri, slowing as he draws near, panting. ‘I—’ He raises a hand, draws in a huge breath, ‘thought I’d lost you there.’
I look at the sword in my hand, the script etched into its blade, the water still dripping from it, diamonds turned rust red in the deadlight. ‘No. Not yet. Not today.’
We climb up the riverbank in silence, both of us wrapped in memories. As the Slidr dries from me I feel that somehow its waters have left me more … connected. I remember my battle at the Aral Pass. I remember the fight within the Black Fort. For the first time Jalan the berserker has met everyday Jalan and we’ve come to some sort of agreement. I’m not sure exactly what it is yet … but something has changed.
Hell on the far side of the Slidr proves steeper than before. Hills of black rock replace the dust, hills in which everything is sharp and that offer a traveller no chance for rest. Everywhere the stone looks as if it were soup on the boil, frozen in the instant, bubbles bursting from it, leaving a myriad edges, all razored. Just touching the ground leaves my fingers bloody. How long the leather soles of my boots will last, and what will become of my feet after that, I can’t say.
We see
