The northmen lowered their tankards, watching Snorri with uneasy fascination. I looked out to sea once more, west, along the coast to where the burning rim of the sun still beaded the horizon with red jewels. Fewer, fewer, gone.
“I said, Undoreth, we will paint the snows with Hardanger blood!” Snorri surged to his feet, freed by the sunset, eyes clear, the table scraping back across the stones. “We will take back what we love and show these Red Vikings how to bleed.” He raised his axe above his head. “We are of the Undoreth, the Children of the Hammer. The blood of Odin runs in our veins. Storm-born we!”
And where Aslaug left the northmen unmoved with her dark threats, Snorri ver Snagason had them on their feet in a moment, roaring their defiance at the evening sky, pounding the table until the wood splintered and the tankards leapt.
“More ale!” Snorri sat at last, thumping the table one more time. “We drink for the dead.”
“Will you come with us, Prince Jalan?” Tuttugu asked, taking a tall flagon from the server, the head of foam as white as the quins. “Snorri says they call you a hero in your homeland, and your foes named you ‘Devil.’”
“Duty compels me to see Snorri to his homeland.” I nodded. When a course of action is forced upon you it’s best to accept it with grace and milk it for whatever you can get, right up to the moment the first opportunity to weasel out of the deal presents itself. “We’ll see what these Hardanger scavengers make of a man of the Red March.” Hopefully I’d find a way for it not to be a corpse.
“What makes us think we’ll fare any better with nine than Snorri did with one?” Arne Dead-Eye wiped ale foam from his moustache, his voice morose rather than fearful. “The Broke-Oar had enough men to lay waste to Einhaur and every village along the Uulisk.”
“Fair question.” Snorri reached out to point at Arne. “First understand that there were very few men at the Black Fort, and it’s not a place that could ever be garrisoned to its capacity. Every meal eaten there must be hauled across the ice. Every log or sack of coal must be carried there. And what is there to defend against? Slaves labouring beneath the Bitter Ice, digging tunnels in search of a myth?
“Second, we will go better prepared, not dressed in what could be scavenged from ruins in the moment. We will go with clear heads, the murder in our hearts locked away until it is needed.
“Third and finally. What else are we to do? We are the last of the free Undoreth. Anything that survives of our people is there, on the ice, in the hands of other men.” He paused and set his broad hands upon the table, staring at the spread of his fingers. “My wife. My son. All my life. Each good thing I have done.” Something twitched at his mouth and became a snarl as he stood, voice growing towards a roar once more.
“So I’m not offering you victory, or a return to your old lives, or the promise that we will build again. Just pain, and blood, and red axes, and the chance to make war upon our enemies together, this last time. What do you say?”
And of course the maniacs roared their approval, and I banged my fist halfheartedly against the table and wondered how I could get the hell out of this mess. If Sageous hadn’t been lying, or wrong, then perhaps if Snorri fell in the assault and I lurked near the back I could run off once the spell had broken. Of course, with nine men there aren’t exactly a lot of ranks to hide behind, and this Black Fort sounded inconveniently far from any safe haven that a man might run to.
I decided the best policy for the now would be to drink myself insensible and hope the morrow had better to offer.
“The most important message here,” I said into a gap where the Norsemen were all momentarily silenced by their tankards, “is not to act too hastily. Planning is the key. Strategy. Equipment. All those things that Snorri missed out on the first time in his impatience.”
The longer we delayed, the more chance there was that this curse might wear off or some opportunity for escape would happen along. The important thing was for the Ikea not to sail before I’d exhausted all opportunities for me not to be onboard when it did. With a shrug I drained my ale and signalled for another.
TWENTY-FOUR
Some hangovers are so horrific that it seems the whole world rocks and sways around you, the very walls creaking with the motion. Others are relatively mild and it just turns out that in your drunkenness a collection of Vikings have thrown you onto a heap of coiled ropes in their longship and set to sea.
“Oh, you bastards.” I cracked open an eye to see a broad sail flapping overhead and gulls wheeling far above me beneath a mackerel sky.
I sat up, threw up, stood up, tripped up, threw up, crawled to the side of the boat, vomited copiously, crawled to the other side and groaned at the thin dark line on the horizon, the only hint at the world I knew and might never see again.
“Not a sailor, then?” Arne Dead-Eye, watching me from a bench, his oar locked before him, a pipe in his hand.