I’ve never been one for wandering in the dark. It seemed, though, that our light couldn’t last the journey. I held the torch high and prayed that before it failed we’d see a circle of daylight far ahead.
“Come on. Come on.” Muttered in short breaths as we walked. The plasteek soldiers had been left far behind, but for all I knew they stalked us just beyond the range of the torch’s illumination. “Come on.”
Somehow the torch kept going.
“Thank God!” I pointed up ahead to the long-awaited spot of daytime. “I didn’t think it would last.”
“Jal.” Snorri tapped my shoulder. I looked round, my gaze following his to my hand, raised above my head. “Holy sh—” The torch was a blackened stump, no longer even smoking. The fingers gripping it were, however, another matter, glowing fiercely with an inner light. At least they were until Snorri drew them to my attention. At that point they blinked out, plunging us into darkness, and I did what any sensible man would. I ran hell for leather for the outside.
A storm waited for us.
TWENTY-THREE
The port of Den Hagen sits where the River Oout washes into the Karlswater, that stretch of brine the Norse call the Devouring Sea. A collection of fine homes huddle on the rising slopes to the east—well, fine for the North where every building crouches low, granite-built to withstand the weather that sweeps in from the frozen wastes. Log cabins, round houses, inns, ale-halls, and fish markets reach down to huge warehouses that fringe the docks like receiving mouths. Greater ships sit at anchor in the quiet waters of the bay; other vessels crowd the quays, masts rising in a profusion of spars and rigging. Seagulls circle overhead, ever mournful, and men fill the air with their own cries, voices raised to call out prices, summon fresh hands to load or unload, issue challenge, share jokes, curse or praise the many gods of Asgard, or to bring the followers of Christ to the small and salt-rimed church at the water’s edge.
“What a hole.” The stink of old fish reached me even on the cliff tops where the coast road snaked in from the west.
Snorri, walking ahead of me, growled but said nothing. I leaned forwards and patted Sleipnir’s neck. “Time for us to part soon, old one-eye.”
I would miss the horse. I’ve never liked walking. If God had meant man to walk he wouldn’t have given us horses. Wonderful animals. I think of them as the word escape, covered in hair and with a leg at each corner.
We wound down into Den Hagen, the road lined with shacks that looked as though the first winds of winter would clear them from the slopes. On a high corner overlooking the sea, seven troll-stones watched the waves. They looked like stones to me, but Snorri claimed to see a troll in each of them. He pulled open his weather jacket and jerked up the layers of his shirts to reveal a fearsome scar across the hard-packed muscles of his stomach. “Troll.” With a finger he implied a series of additional scars from hip to shoulder. “I was lucky.”
In a world where dead men walked, unborn rose from fresh graves, and the people of the pines haunted forests, I could hardly dispute his claim.
On the final stretch of the road we passed three or four hammer-stones set on the verges to honour the thunder god. Snorri checked for rune stones around each but found only a stray black pebble, river-smoothed and wide enough to cover his palm, bearing a single rune. Perhaps local children made off with the rest.
“Thuriaz.” He let it fall.
“Hmmm?”
“Thorns.” He shrugged. “It means nothing.”
? ? ?
The town boasted no wall, and nobody save a handful of sorry-looking merchants watched the entrance—not that there was an entrance, just an increase in the crowding of houses. After weeks of rough living and hard travelling, even a place such as Den Hagen has its appeal. Every piece of clothing on me still held its measure of rain from the storm that had lashed us for two days across the moorland fastness surrounding Skilfar’s seat. A man could have slaked his thirst on what he could squeeze from my trews. He’d have to be damnable dry to risk it, though.
“We could pop in there and see if the ale tastes any better here?” I pointed to a tavern just ahead, barrels placed in the street before it for men to rest their tankards on, a painted wooden swordfish hanging above the door.
“Maladon beer is fine.” Snorri walked on past the entrance.
“It would be if they forgot to salt it.” Foul stuff, but sometimes foul will do. I’d asked for wine back in the town of Goaten and they’d looked at me as if I’d asked them to roast a small child for my meal.
“Come on.” Snorri turned towards the sea, waving away a man trying to sell him dried fish. “We’ll check the harbour first.” A tension had built in him as we approached the coast, and when we first saw the sea from a high ridge he had sunk to his knees and muttered heathen prayers. Since the troll-stones he’d been walking with such purpose I had to nudge Sleipnir along to keep up.