I’m very good at running away. For best results put me in a city. Among streets and houses I do well. In such surroundings a good sprint, tight cornering, and an open mind when it comes to hiding places will see a man clear under most circumstances. The countryside is worse—more things to trip you up, and the best hiding spots are often taken. On a bleak mountainside it comes down to endurance, and when a fellow has been wrung out by sea sickness, not to mention rolled on by the kind of wolf that would only need two friends to bring down a mammoth . . . well, it’s not going to end well.
Fear is a great motivator. It returned me to my feet and set me jogging on. I didn’t dare look back for fear of missing my footing again. I clutched my side, rasped in one breath after the next, and tried to keep from weaving across the slope. Hope is almost as bad as fear for goading a man past the point at which he should give up. Hope persuaded me I was opening a lead. Hope convinced me the next rise would reveal Snorri and Tuttugu just ahead. When, in a sudden pounding of footsteps, the Hardassa man caught up with me and brought me down, 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.