Tuttugu ran a hand down his face, red and sweating despite the spring chill. “Hedwig managed to send a messenger while her father was still raging and gathering his men. The boy galloped from Sorrenfast and started asking where to find the foreign prince. People directed him to Astrid’s house. I got all this from Olaaf Fish-hand after I saw Astrid storming down the Carls Way. So . . .” He drew a deep breath. “Can we go now, because—”
But I was up and past him, out into the unwholesome freshness of the day, splattering through half-frozen mud, aimed down the street for the docks, the mast tops just visible above the houses. Gulls circled on high, watching my progress with mocking cries.
TWO
If there’s one thing I like less than boats it’s being brutally murdered by an outraged father. I reached the docks painfully aware that I’d put my boots on the wrong feet and slung my sword too low so it tried to trip me at each stride. The usual scene greeted me, a waterfront crowded with activity despite the fishermen having put to sea hours earlier. The fact that the harbour lay ice-locked for the winter months seemed to set the Norsemen into a frenzy come spring—a season characterized by being slightly above the freezing point of brine rather than by the unfurling of flowers and the arrival of bees as in more civilized climes. A forest of masts painted stark lines against the bright horizon, longboats and Viking trade ships nestled alongside triple-masted merchantmen from a dozen nations to the south. Men bustled on every side, loading, unloading, doing complicated things with ropes, fishwives further back working on the nets or applying wickedly sharp knives to glimmering mounds of last night’s catch.
“I don’t see him.” Snorri was normally easy to spot in a crowd—you just looked up.
“There!” Tuttugu tugged my arm and pointed to what must be the smallest boat at the quays, occupied by the largest man.
“That thing? It’s not even big enough for Snorri!” I hastened after Tuttugu anyway. There seemed to be some sort of disturbance up by the harbour master’s station and I could swear someone shouted “Kendeth!”
I overtook Tuttugu and clattered out along the quay to arrive well ahead of him above Snorri’s little boat. Snorri looked up at me through the black and windswept tangle of his mane. I took a step back at the undisguised mistrust in his stare.
“What?” I held out my hands. Any hostility from a man who swings an axe like Snorri does has to be taken seriously. “What did I do?” I did recall some kind of altercation—though it seemed unlikely that I’d have the balls to disagree with six and a half foot of over-muscled madman.
Snorri shook his head and turned away to continue securing his provisions. The boat seemed full of them. And him.
“No really! I got hit in the head. What did I do?”
Tuttugu came puffing up behind me, seeming to want to say something, but too winded to speak.
Snorri let out a snort. “I’m going, Jal. You can’t talk me out of it. We’ll just have to see who cracks first.”
Tuttugu set a hand to my shoulder and bent as close to double as his belly would allow. “Jal—” Whatever he’d intended to say past that trailed off into a wheeze and a gasp.
“Which of us cracks first?” It started to come back to me. Snorri’s crazy plan. His determination to head south with Loki’s key . . . and me equally resolved to stay cosy in the Three Axes enjoying the company until either my money ran out or the weather improved enough to promise a calm crossing to the continent. Aslaug agreed with me. Every sunset she would rise from the darkest reaches of my mind and tell me how unreasonable the Norseman was. She’d even convinced me that separating from Snorri would be for the best, releasing her and the light-sworn spirit Baraqel to return to their own domains, carrying the last traces of the Silent Sister’s magic with them.
“Jarl Sorren . . .” Tuttugu heaved in a lungful of air. “Jarl Sorren’s men!” He jabbed a finger back up the quay. “Go! Quick!”
Snorri straightened up with a wince, and frowned back at the dock wall where chain-armoured housecarls were pushing a path through the crowd. “I’ve no bad blood with Jarl Sorren . . .”
“Jal does!” Tuttugu gave me a hefty shove between the shoulder blades. I balanced for a moment, arms pinwheeling, took a half step forward, tripped over that damn sword, and dived into the boat. Bouncing off Snorri proved marginally less painful than meeting the hull face first, and he caught hold of enough of me to make sure I ended in the bilge water rather than the seawater slightly to the left.
“What the hell?” Snorri remained standing a moment longer as Tuttugu started to struggle down into the boat.
“I’m coming too,” Tuttugu said.
I lay on my side in the freezing dirty water at the bottom of Snorri’s freezing dirty boat. Not the best time for reflection but I did pause to wonder quite how I’d gone so quickly from being pleasantly entangled in the warmth of Edda’s slim legs to being unpleasantly entangled in a cold mess of wet rope and bilge water. Grabbing hold of the small mast, I sat up, cursing my luck. When I paused to draw breath it also occurred to me to wonder why Tuttugu was descending toward us.