The Liar’s Key
- -
- 100%
- +
The first time Aslaug came to me I had been surprised to find her so close to the image Snorri’s tales had painted in my mind. I told her so and she laughed at me. She said men had always seen what they expected to see but that a deeper truth ran beneath that fact. ‘The world is shaped by mankind’s desires and fears. A war of hope against dread, waged upon a substrate that man himself made malleable though he has long forgotten how. All men and all men’s works stand on feet of clay, waiting to be formed and reformed, forged by fear into monsters from the dark core of each soul, waiting to rend the world asunder.’ That’s how she introduced herself to me.
‘Prince Jalan.’ Aslaug stepped from the shadows of the hall. They clung to her, dark webs, not wanting to release their hold. She pulled clear as the sun kissed the horizon. No one would mistake her for human but she wore a woman’s form and wore it well, her flesh like bone, but dipped in ink so it soaked into every pore, revealing the grain, gathering black in any hollow. She fixed me with eyes that held no colour, only passions, set in a narrow and exquisite face. Oil-dark hair framed her, falling in unnatural coils and curls. Her beauty owed something to the praying mantis, something to the inhumanity of Greek sculpture. Mask or not though, it worked on me. I’m easily led in matters of the flesh. ‘Jalan,’ she said again, stepping around me. She wore tatters of darkness as a gown.
I didn’t answer, or turn to follow her. Villagers were still arriving, and the cheers and laughter from inside the hall were drawing more by the minute. None of them would see Aslaug but if they saw me spinning around and talking to the empty air it wouldn’t look good. Northmen are a superstitious lot, and frankly with what I’d seen over the last few months they were right to be so. Superstition though does tend to have a sharp end, and I didn’t want to find myself impaled on it.
‘Why are you out here in the wilds with all these ill-smelling peasants?’ Aslaug reappeared at my left shoulder, her mouth close to my ear. ‘And why,’ – a harder edge to her tone, eyes narrowing – ‘is that light-sworn here? I can smell him. He was going away…’ A tilt of her head. ‘Jalan? Have you followed him? Tagged along like a dog at heel? We’ve talked about this, Jalan. You’re a prince, a man of royal blood, in line for the throne of Red March!’
‘I’m going home.’ I whispered it, hardly a twitch in my lips.
‘Leaving your beauties behind?’ She always held a note of disapproval when it came to my womanizing. Obviously the jealous type.
‘I thought it time. They were getting clingy.’ I rubbed the side of my head, not convinced that Tuttugu had gotten all the splinters out.
‘For the better. In Red March we can begin to clear your path to succession.’ A smile lit her face, the sky crimson behind her with the sun’s death throes.
‘Well…’ My own lips curled with an echo of her expression. ‘I’m not one for murder. But if a whole bunch of my cousins fell off a cliff I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.’ I’d found it paid to play along with her. Whilst I’d rejoice in any misfortune that fate might drop upon my cousins, three or four of them in particular, I’ve never had an appetite for the more lethal games played at some courts with knife and poison. My own vision for my glorious path to the throne involved toadying and favouritism, lubricated with tales of heroism and reports of genius. Once selected as Grandmother’s favourite and promoted unfairly into the position of heir it would just be a case of the old woman having a timely heart attack and my reign of pleasure would begin!
‘You know that Snorri will be plotting your destruction, Jalan?’ She reached an arm around me, the touch cold but somehow thrilling too, filled with all the delicious possibilities that the night hides. ‘You know what Baraqel will be instructing. He told you the same when Snorri kept me within him.’
‘I trust Snorri.’ If he had wanted me dead he could have done it many times over.
‘For how long, Prince Jalan? For how long will you trust him?’ Her lips close to mine now, head haloed with the last rays of the sunset. ‘Don’t trust the light, Prince Jalan. The stars are pretty but the space between them is infinite and black with promise.’ Behind me I could almost hear her shadow mix with mine, its dry spider-legs rustling one against the next. ‘Returning with your body and the right story to Vermillion would earn Snorri gratitude in many circles for many reasons…’
‘Good night, Aslaug.’ I clenched what could be clenched and kept from shuddering. In the last moments before the dark took her she was always at her least human, as if her presence outlasted her disguise for just a heartbeat.
‘Watch him!’ And the shadows pulled her down as they merged into the singular gloom that would deepen into night.
I turned and followed the locals into their ‘great’ hall. My moments with Aslaug always left me a touch less tolerant of sweaty peasants and their crude little lives. And perhaps Snorri did bear watching. He had after all been on the point of abandoning me when I most needed help. A day later and I could have been subjected to all the horrors of handfasting, or some even crueller form of Viking justice.
4
Three long tables divided the mead hall, now lined by men and women raising foaming horn and dripping tankard. Children, some no more than eight or nine, ran back and forth with pitchers from four great barrels to keep any receptacle from running dry. A great fire roared in the hearth, fish roasting on spits set before it. Hounds bickered around the margins of the room, daring a kicking to run beneath the tables should anything fall. The heat and roar and stink of the place took a moment’s getting used to after plunging in from the frigid spring evening. I plotted a course toward the rear of the hall, giving the dogs a wide berth. Animals are generally good judges of character – they don’t like me – except for horses which, for reasons I’ve never understood, give me their all. Perhaps it’s our shared interest in running away that forms the bond.
Snorri and Borris sat close to the fire, flanked by Olaafheim’s warriors. Most of the company appeared to have brought their axes out for the evening’s drinking, setting them across the tabletop in such a crowd that putting down a drink became a tricky task. Snorri turned as I approached, and boomed out for a space to be made. A couple of grumbles went up at that, soon silenced with mutters of ‘berserker’. I squeezed down onto a narrow span of arse-polished bench, trying not to show my displeasure at being wedged in so tightly among hairy brigands. My tolerance for such familiarities had increased during my time at the Three Axes as owner and operator … well, in truth I paid for Eyolf to keep bar and Helga and Gudrun to serve tables … but still, I was there in spirit. In any event, although my tolerance had increased it still wasn’t high and at least in Trond you got a better quality of bearded, axe-wielding barbarian. Faced with the present situation though, not to mention a table full of axes, I did what any man keen on leaving with the same number of limbs that he entered with would do. I grinned like an idiot and bore it.
I reached for the brimming flagon brought to me by a blonde and barefoot child and decided to get drunk. It would probably keep me out of trouble and the possibility that I might pass the whole trip to the continent in a state of inebriation did seem inviting. One worry stayed my hand however. Though it pained me to admit it, my grandmother’s blood did seem to have shown in me. Snorri or Tuttugu had already mentioned my … disability to our hosts. In the troll-wrestling heart of the north being a berserker seemed to carry a good deal of cachet, but any right-thinking man would tell you what a terrible encumbrance it is. I’ve always been sensibly terrified of battle. The discovery that if I get pushed too far I turn into a raging maniac who throws himself headlong into the thickest of the fighting was hardly comforting. A wise man’s biggest advantage is in knowing the ideal time to run away. That sort of survival strategy is somewhat impaired by a tendency to start frothing at the mouth and casting aside all fear. Fear is a valuable commodity, it’s commonsense compressed into its purest form. A lack of it is not a good thing. Fortunately it took quite a lot of pushing to get my hidden berserker out into the open and to my knowledge it had only ever happened twice. Once at the Aral Pass and once in the Black Fort. If it never happened again that would be fine with me.
‘…Skilfar…’ A one-eyed man opposite Snorri, speaking into his ale horn. I picked out the one word, and that was plenty.
‘What?’ I knocked back the rest of my own ale, wiping the suds from my whiskers, a fine blond set I’d cultivated to suit the climate. ‘I’m not going back there, Snorri, no way.’ I remembered the witch in her cavern, her plasteek legion all around. She’d scared the hell out of me. I still had nightmares…
‘Relax.’ Snorri gave me that winning smile of his. ‘We don’t have to.’
I did relax, slumping forward as I let go of a tension I hadn’t known was there. ‘Thank God.’
‘She’s still in her winter seat. Beerentoppen. It’s a mountain of ice and fire, not too far inland, it’ll be our last stop before we leave the north just a few days down the coast and strike out for Maladon across open sea.’
‘Hell no!’ It had been the woman that scared me, not the tunnels and statues – well, they had too, but the point was that I wasn’t going. ‘We’ll head south. The Red Queen will have any answers we need.’
Snorri shook his head. ‘I have questions that won’t wait, Jal. Questions that need a little northern light shed on them.’
I knew what he wanted to talk about – that damned door. If he took the key to Skilfar, though, she’d probably take it off him. I didn’t doubt for a moment that she could. Still, it would be no skin off my nose if she stole it. A thing that powerful would be safer in the old witch’s keeping anyhow. Far from where I intended to be and out of the Dead King’s reach.
‘All right.’ I cut across the one-eyed warrior again. ‘You can go. But I’m staying in the boat!’
The fellow across from Snorri turned a cold blue eye my way, the other socket empty, the firelight catching the twitch of ugly little muscles in the shadowed hollow. ‘This fit-firar speaks for you now, Snorri?’
I knew the insult to be a grim one. The Vikings can think of nothing worse to call you than ‘land man’, one who doesn’t know the sea. That’s the trouble with these backwater villages – everyone’s tetchy. They’re all ready to jump up at a moment’s notice and spill your guts. It’s over-compensation of course, for living in freezing huts on an inhospitable beach. At home I’d damn the fellow’s eyes … well eye at least … and let one half of the palace guard hold me back while the other half beat him out of town. The trouble with a friend like Snorri is that he’s the sort to take things at face value and think I really did want to defend my own honour. Knowing Snorri he’d stand by clapping while the savage carved me up.
The man, Gauti I think Snorri had called him, had one hand on the axe before him, casual enough, fingers spread, but he kept that cold eye on me and there was little to read in it that wasn’t murder. This could go very wrong, very quickly. The sudden urge to piss nearly overtook me. I smiled the bold Jalan smile, ignoring the sick feeling in my stomach, and drew my dagger, a wicked piece of black iron. That got some attention, though less than in any place I’d ever seen an edge drawn before. I did at least get the satisfaction of seeing Gauti flinch, his fingers half closing about his axe hilt. To my credit, I do look like the kind of hero who would demand satisfaction and have the skill to take it.
‘Jal…’ Snorri with a half frown, gesturing with his eyes at the eight inches of knife in my hand.
I pushed aside some axe hafts and in a sudden move inverted my blade so the point hovered a quarter inch above the table. Again Gauti’s eye twitched. I saw Snorri quietly lay his hand on the man’s axe head. Several warriors half rose then settled back in their places.
One great asset in my career as secret coward has been a natural ability to lie fluently in body language. Half of it is … what did Snorri call it? Serendipity. Pure lucky accident. When scared I flush scarlet, but in a fit young man overtopping six foot by a good two inches it usually comes across as outrage. My hands also rarely betray me. I may be quivering with fright inside but they hold steady. Even when the terror is so much that they do finally shake it’s often as not mistaken as rage. Now though, as I set knifepoint to wood, my hands kept firm and sure. In a few strokes I sketched out an irregular blob with a horn at the top and lobe at the bottom.
‘What is it?’ The man across from me.
‘A cow?’ A woman of middle years, very drunk, leaning over Snorri’s shoulder.
‘That, men of the clan Olaff, is Scorron, the land of my enemies. These are the borders. This…’ I scored a short line across the bottom of the lobe. ‘This is the Aral Pass where I taught the Scorron army to call me “devil”.’ I looked up to meet Gauti’s singular glare. ‘And you will note that not one of these borders is a coastline. So if I were a man of the sea it would mean, in my country, that I could never close with my enemy. In fact every time I set sail I would be running away from them.’ I stuck the knife firmly in the centre of Scorron. ‘Where I come from “land men” are the only men who can go to war.’ I let a boy refill my tankard. ‘And so we learn that insults are like daggers – it matters which way you point them, and where you stand.’ And I threw my head back to drain my cup.
Snorri pounded the table, the axes danced, and the laughter came. Gauti leaned back, sour but his ill-temper having lost its edge. The ale flowed. Codfish were brought to table along with some kind of salty grain-mash and dreadful little sea-weed cakes burned nearly black. We ate. More ale flowed. I found myself talking drunkenly to a greybeard with more scar than face about the merits of different kinds of longboat – a subject I acquired my ‘expertise’ on in many separate pieces during innumerable similar drunken conversations with regulars back at the Three Axes. More ale, spilled, splashed, gulped. I think we’d got onto knots by the time I slipped gracefully off the bench and decided to stay where I was.
‘Hedwig,’ I grumbled, still half asleep. ‘Get off me, woman.’
The licking paused, then started up again. I wondered vaguely where I was, and when Hedwig’s tongue had got quite so long. And sloppy. And stinky.
‘Get off!’ I swiped at the dog. ‘Bloody mutt.’ I raised myself on one elbow, still at least half-drunk. The hearth’s glowing embers painted the hall in edge and shadow. Hounds slunk beneath the tables, searching for scraps. I could make out half a dozen drunks snoring on the floor, lying where they fell, and Snorri, stretched out along the central table, head on his pack, deep in his slumbers.
I got up, unsteady, stomach lurching. Although the hall smelled as if pissing in it might improve matters, I wove a path toward the main doors. In the gloom I might hit a sleeping Viking and it would prove hard to talk my way out of that one.
I reached the double doors and heaved open the one on the left, the hinges squealing loud enough to wake the dead – but apparently nobody else – and stepped out. My breath plumed before me and the moonlit square lay glittering with frost. Another fine spring night in the north. I took a pace to the left and started to answer nature’s call.
Beneath the splash of borrowed ale lay the slap of waves against the harbour wall, beneath that the murmur of surf slopping half-heartedly up the distant beach that slanted down to the river, and beneath that … a quiet that prickled the hairs at the back of my neck. I strained my ears, finding nothing to warrant my unease, but even in my cups I have a sense for trouble. Since Aslaug’s arrival the night seemed to whisper to me. Tonight it held its tongue.
I turned, still fumbling to lace my fly, and found instead that I needed to go again, right away. Standing no more than ten yards from me was the biggest wolf ever. I’d heard tall stories aplenty in the Three Axes and I’d been prepared to believe the north bred bigger wolves than might be found down south. I’d even seen a direwolf with my own eyes, albeit it stuffed and mounted in the entrance hall to Madam Serene’s Pleasure Palace down on Magister Street, Vermillion. The thing before me had to be one of the Fenris breed they spoke about in Trond. It stood as tall as a horse, wider in its shaggy coat, its mouth full of sharp ivory gleaming in the moonlight.
I stood there, stock still, still draining onto the ground between my feet. The beast moved forward, no snarl, no prowling, just a quick but slightly ungainly advance. It didn’t occur to me to reach for my sword. The wolf looked as though it might simply bite the sharp end off in any case. Instead I just stood there, making a puddle. I normally pride myself on being the type of coward who acts in the moment, running away when it counts rather than being rooted to the spot. This time however the weight of terror proved too great to run with.
Not until the huge beast charged past me, crashing open the double doors and rushing on into the great hall did I find the presence of mind to start my escape. I ran, holding my breath against the carrion reek of the thing. I got as far as the edge of the square, driven by the awful screams and howls behind me, before my brain dropped anchor. Dogs from the hall ran yelping past me. I came up short, panting – mostly in fear since I hadn’t run very far – and drew my sword. Ahead of me in the blind night could be any number of similar monsters. Wolves hunt in packs after all. Did I want to be alone in the dark with the beast’s friends, or would the safest place be with Snorri and a dozen other Vikings facing the one I’d seen?
All across Olaafheim doors were being kicked open, flames kindled. Hounds, that had been taken unawares, now gave voice, and cries of ‘To arms!’ started to ring out. Gritting my teeth, I turned back, making no effort to hurry. It sounded like hell in there: men’s screams and oaths, crashing and splintering, but strangely not a single snarl or wolf-howl. I’d seen dog fights before and they’re loud affairs. Wolves, it seemed, were given to biting their tongues – yours too, no doubt, if they got a chance!
As I drew closer to the hall the cacophony from within grew less loud, just groans, grunts, the scrape of claw on stone. My pace slowed to a crawl. Only the sounds of activity at my back kept me moving at all. I couldn’t be seen to be just standing there while men died only yards away. Heart racing, feet anything but, I made it to the doorway and eased my head around so one eye could see within.
Tables lay upended, their legs a short and drunken forest shifting in the fire glow. Men, or rather pieces of men, scattered the floor amid dark lakes and darker smears. At first I couldn’t see the Fenris wolf. A grunt of effort drew my eyes to the deepest shadow at the side of the hall. The beast stood hunched over, worrying at something on the ground. Two axes jutted from its side, one stood bedded in its back. I could see its great jaws wide about something, and a man’s legs straining beneath its snout, covered in a black slime of blood and slobber. Somehow I knew who it was, trapped in that maw.
‘Snorri!’ The shout burst from me without permission. I clapped a hand to my mouth in case any more foolishness might emerge. The last thing I wanted was for that awful head to turn my way. To my horror I found that I’d stepped into the doorway – the absolute worst place to be, silhouetted by moonlight, blocking the exit.
‘To arms!’
‘To the hall!’ Cries from all directions now.
Behind me I could hear the pounding of many feet. No retreat that way. The Norse will string a coward up by his thumbs and cut off bits he needs. I stepped in quickly to make myself a less obvious target, and edged along the inner wall, trying not to breathe. Vikings started to arrive at the doorway behind me, crowding to get through.
As I watched the wolf a hand, looking child-size against the scale of the creature, slid up from the far side of its head and clamped between its eyes. A glowing hand. A hand becoming so brilliant that the whole room lit almost bright as day. Exposed by the light, I did what any cockroach does when someone unhoods a lantern in the kitchens. I raced for cover, leaping toward the shelter of a section of table fallen on its side part way between us.
The light grew still more dazzling and half-blinded I staggered across a torso, fell over the table, and sprawled forward with several lunging steps, desperate to remain on my feet. My outstretched sword sunk into something soft, grating across bone, and a moment later an immense weight fell across me, taking away all illumination. And all the other stuff too.
5
‘…underneath! It’s taken six men to get him out.’ A woman’s voice, tinged with wonder.
I felt as if I were lifted up. Carried away.
‘Steady!’
‘Easy…’
A warm wet cloth passed across my forehead. I snuggled into the softness cradling me. The world lay a pleasant distance away, only snatches of conversation reaching me as I dozed.
In my dream I wandered the empty palace of Vermillion on a fine summer’s day, the light streaming in through tall windows overlooking the city’s basking sprawl.
‘…hilt deep! Must have reached the heart…’ A man’s voice.
I was moving. Borne along. The motion halfway between the familiar jolt of a horse and the despised rise and fall of the ocean.
‘…saw his friend…’
‘Heard him shout in the doorway. “Snorri!” He roared it like a Viking…’
The world grew closer. I didn’t want it to. I was home. Where it was warm. And safe. Well, safer. All the north had to offer was a soft landing. The woman holding me had a chest as mountainous as the local terrain.
‘…charged straight at it…’
‘…dived at it!’
The creak of a door. The raking of coals.
‘…berserker…’
I turned from the sun-drenched cityscape back into the empty palace gallery, momentarily blind.
‘…Fenris…’
The sunspots cleared from my eyes, the reds and greens fading. And I saw the wolf, there in the palace hall, jaws gaping, ivory fangs, scarlet tongue, ropes of saliva, hot breath…
‘Arrrg!’ I jerked upright, my head coming clear of Borris’s hairy man-breasts. Did the man never wear a shirt?
‘Steady there!’ Thick arms set me down as easily as a child onto a fur-laden cot. A smoky hut rose about us, larger than most, people crowded round on all sides.
‘What?’ I always ask that – though on reflection I seldom want to know.
‘Easy! It’s dead.’ Borris straightened up. Warriors of the clan Olaaf filled the roundhouse, also a matronly woman with thick blonde plaits and several buxom younger women – presumably the wife and daughters.
‘Snorri—’ I started before noticing him lying beside me, unconscious, pale – even for a northman – and sporting several nasty gashes, one of them an older wound sliced down across his ribs, angry and white-crusted. Even so he looked in far better shape than a man should after being gnawed on by a Fenris wolf. The markings about his upper arms stood out in sharp contrast against marble flesh, the hammer and the axe in blue, runes in black, trapping my attention for a moment. ‘How?’ I didn’t feel up to sentences containing more than one word.
‘Had a shield jammed in the beast’s mouth. Wedged open!’ Borris said.
‘Then you killed it!’ One of his daughters, her chest almost as developed as his.
‘We got your sword out.’ A warrior from the crowd, offering me my blade, hilt first, almost reverential. ‘Took some doing!’
The creature’s weight had driven the blade home as it fell.