“Nothing.” Snorri put the key away. “All that fuss and . . . nothing.” He bent to pick up his axe. “I’m sorry, Jal. I’m a poor friend.”
I held up a hand to forgive him, ignoring the fact I’d hit him first.
Snorri stepped away from us swinging his axe. The enemy would be upon us soon enough. He needed to make ready. The axe cut glimmering arcs as he wove a figure of eight, then turning with the swing, reversed into an upward slice. Snorri made it seem almost an art, even with so crude a weapon. To my left Tuttugu readied himself, tightening his belt and wiping clean his blade with his sailcloth sack. Courage didn’t come naturally to him, at least not the kind that warriors laud, but he’d taken his death blow once already this day and now prepared to die again.
“We could just give them the key.” I felt someone should state the obvious. “Leave it here and head west for Maladon.”
They all ignored me. Even the boy—and he hadn’t a clue what I was talking about, so that seemed harsh. Ten or eleven years were surely too few to see past Prince Jalan’s glossy exterior?
I would have set off by myself but the Silent Sister’s trap had grown stronger with each stride we took toward the Wheel. I doubted I could get a hundred yards before the crack tore wide and Baraqel ripped from Snorri while Aslaug poured out of me.
“The sun’s coming down,” Kara said unnecessarily.
“I know.” The arch’s shadow stretched toward the Wheel, dark with possibility. I felt Aslaug’s breath on the back of my neck again—heard the dry scratching at the door that held her back.
The Red Vikings came on over the ridge, close enough now for me to see the detail on their shields: sea serpent, pentagon of spears, the face of a giant with the shield boss its roaring mouth . . . The fatal wounds Snorri had dealt out now glistened in the red and dying light—a man split from collarbone to opposite hip, another headless and led on a tether, more behind. Somewhere in that crowd Edris Dean watched us from behind a Viking face guard. Was the necromancer there too, in furs, a shield on her arm? Or did she spy from some remove, set apart, as so often before? Suddenly my bladder declared itself beyond full.
“Do you think there’s time—” I began, but those bastard Red Vikings cut me off with their battle cries and started to charge.
It turned out there was time. I drew my knife and with wet legs prepared to face the onslaught of nearly two dozen Norsemen.
Something changed.
Although it made no sound the archway drew my gaze from the charging axemen. The whole of it lay black and darkness spilled from it, streaming cold about my ankles, thickening the shade before us.
“Jalan.” Aslaug rose from the shadowed ground as a woman might rise beneath her bed sheets, shrouded at first, her form uncertain, then drawing them about her, tighter and more tight, until at last she stands framed before you. She faced me, her back to the enemy, and I stood filled with her power, seeing the world with perfect clarity, darkness smoking from my skin. “This is no place for you, my prince.” She smiled, eyes gleaming, black with madness.
The first of the Hardassa, a fleet-footed young reaver, sprinted toward Aslaug, ready to bury his axe between her shoulder blades. Instead he came to a jerking halt, impaled on a sharp-ended black leg, thin as an insect’s and seemingly emerging from Aslaug’s back, though I couldn’t see from where or how. This was new—she was actually here in the flesh. “Shall we go?” she asked as the man died, choking on his blood. She gestured toward the arch with her eyes.
Snorri met the next wave of men, carving through the first one’s face with exquisite timing, long arms at full stretch. He leapt clear of the man a half pace behind, rotating to hack into the small of his back as momentum carried the fellow past. Tuttugu—already backed against the other side of the arch—slipped sideways with commendable skill and let the first of his foes hew stone so that his weapon was shaken from his grip. Tuttugu answered by burying the wedge of his blade in the man’s sternum.
More men came from Tuttugu’s left, keeping away from the yawning oblivion within the archway. Kara threw her runes at them, hurling a meagre handful. Each became a spear of ice, thrown with more force than even Snorri could manage. The shafts pierced shields, mail, flesh and bone, leaving the enemy staring in confusion at the holes punched through them.