I fell with a wheeze of surprise, despite it having been inevitable from the moment I spotted their longboat closing on the beach.
The Viking crashed down on top of me, pressing my face to the rock. I lay panting while the rest of the pursuit gathered round. My view offered only their boots but I didn’t need to see any more than that to know they would be a fearsome bunch.
‘Prince Jalan Kendeth. Good to meet you again.’ A southern accent, a touch winded.
The weight lifted from me as my captor rolled clear. I took my time getting into a sitting position. Looking up, I found Edris Dean staring down at me, feet braced against the slope, hand on hip. He seemed pleased. The dozen Red Vikings arrayed around him looked less pleased. More of them stretched out back down the slope, toiling upward.
‘Don’t kill me!’ It seemed like a good place to start.
‘Give me the key and I’ll let you go,’ Edris said, still with the smile.
The thing about staying alive is staying useful. As a prince I’m always useful … as an heir and a figurehead. As a debtor I was useful as long as Maeres believed I might be able to pay him back. As Edris’s captive, too far from home to be a good prospect for ransom, my only real use lay in being a link to Loki’s key. ‘I can take you to it.’ It might only mean a few more hours of life but I’d sell my own grandmother for that. And her palace.
Edris waved a couple of the Hardassa men forward. One took the rations sack I’d been too preoccupied to ditch, the other started to go through my clothes, and not gently. ‘My friends here tell me there’s only one reason to put in at this shore.’ He pointed up at Beerentoppen. ‘I don’t need you to find the witch.’
‘Ah!’ The Viking was being particularly thorough and his hands were freezing. ‘Uh. But. You need me to…’ I hunted for a reason. ‘Skilfar! Snorri’s got the key and he’s going to give it to Skilfar. You’ve got to catch him before he gets to her.’
‘I don’t need you for that either.’ Edris took the dagger from his belt. A plain iron pig-sticker.
‘But…’ I eyed the blade. He had a good point. ‘He’ll trade the key for me. You don’t want to fight him – didn’t go so well last time. And … and … he might throw the key away. If he threw it as you charged him you could spend a week hunting these slopes and still not find it.’
‘Why would he trade Loki’s key against your life?’ Edris sounded doubtful.
‘Blood debt!’ It came to me in a flash. ‘He owes me his life. You don’t know Snorri ver Snagason. Honour’s all he has left. He’ll pay his debt.’
Edris twitched his mouth in a sneer, quickly gone. ‘Alrik, Knui, he’s your responsibility. Take his weapons.’
The pair searching me and my belongings took away my sword and knife. Edris strode past, setting a good pace, the others following in his wake. ‘You keep up now, my prince, or we’ll have to cut you loose and take our chances.’
Alrik, a dark-bearded thug, started me off with a shove between the shoulders. ‘Quick.’ The Red Vikings spoke the old tongue among themselves and some had a few words of Empire. Knui followed on. I had no illusions concerning what was meant by ‘cutting me loose’.
Hurrying after Edris, I kept a good eye on the ground ahead, knowing a twisted ankle would see me gutted and left to die. Now and then I stole a glance at the mountain slopes to either side. Somewhere out there the necromancer might be watching, and even in these direst of straits I had time to be scared of her.
Climbing to the Beerentoppen crater with Edris in the lead proved every bit as horrific as running before him. Staggering up ever-steeper rock-faces, hands and knees raw, feet blistered and bruised, panting hard enough to vomit a lung, I actually wished I could be back in the Sea-Troll bobbing about on the ocean.
Hours passed. Noon passed. We got high enough to see across the snow-laden peaks north and south, the going becoming even more vertical and more treacherous, and still no Snorri. It astonished me that without knowing he was pursued Snorri had kept ahead of us. Especially with Tuttugu. The man was not made for climbing mountains. Rolling down them he’d be good at.
Afternoon crawled into evening and I crawled after Edris, driven on by the threat of Alrik’s hatchet and by well-placed kicks from Knui. The peak of the mountain looked to be broken off, ending in a serrated rim. The slopes took on a peculiar folded character, as if the rock had congealed like molten fat running from a roasting pig. We got to within a few hundred yards of the top when Edris’s scouts returned to report. They yabbered in the old tongue while I lay sprawled, willing some hints of life back into limp legs.
‘No sign of Snorri.’ Edris loomed over me. ‘Not out here, not in the crater.’
‘He must be somewhere.’ I half-wondered if Snorri had lied, if he’d gone off on some different quest. Maybe the next cove held a fishing town, a tavern, warm beds…
‘He’s found the witch’s cave, and that’s bad news for all of us. Especially you.’
I sat up at that. Fear of imminent death always helps a man find new reserves of energy. ‘No! Look—’ I forced my voice to come out less shrill and panicky. Weakness invites trouble. ‘No. I wanted Snorri to give Skilfar the key – but he didn’t agree. Chances are he’ll still have it when he comes out. He’s a hard man to argue with. And then you can trade.’
‘When a man starts changing his story it’s difficult to give credence to anything he says.’ Edris eyed me speculatively, a look that had probably been the last thing half a dozen men ever saw. Even so, the blind terror that had held me since sighting their longboat had started to ebb. There’s an odd thing about being among men who are casually considering your murder. On my ventures with Snorri I’d been plunged into one horror after another, and run screaming from as many of them as I could. The terror that a dead man inspires, trailing his guts as he lurches after you, or that cold chill the hot breath of a forest fire can bring, these are reactions to wholly alien situations – the stuff of nightmare. With men though, the regular everyday sort, it’s different. And after a winter in the Three Axes I’d come to see even the most hirsute axe-clutching reavers as fairly common fellows with the same aches, pains, gripes and ambitions as every other man, albeit in the context of summers spent raiding enemy shores. With men who bear you no particular ill will and for whom your murder will be more of a chore than anything else, entailing both the effort of the act and of the subsequent cleaning of a weapon, the business of dying starts to seem a bit everyday too. You almost get swept up in the madness of the thing. Especially if you’re so exhausted that death seems like a good excuse for a rest. I returned his stare and said no more.
‘All right.’ Edris ended the long period of decision and turned away. ‘We’ll wait.’
The 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
