“One, two, thirteen. That should see me safe. You come visit us in Red March when you’re bored with balancing equations.”
“I will,” he said, but I know from experience it takes practice to lie when cuddling someone, and Omar had not practised.
I disentangled myself and set off toward the front of the caravan.
“Don’t forget your camels, Jalan!”
“Right.” And with reluctance I angled my way toward the rear of the group being lined up, already tensing to dodge the first barrage of camel-spit.
The desert is hot and boring. I’m sorry, but that’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s also sandy, but rocks are essentially dull things and breaking them up into really small pieces doesn’t improve matters. Some people will tell you how the desert changes character day by day, how the wind sculpts it endlessly in vast and empty spaces not meant for man. They’ll wax lyrical about the grain and shade of the sand, the majesty of bare rock rising mountainous, carved by the sand-laden breeze into exotic shapes that speak of water and flow . . . but for me sandy, hot, and boring covers it all.
The most important factor, once water and salt are covered, is the boredom. Some men thrive on it, but me, I try to avoid being left alone with my own imagination. The key if one wishes to avoid dwelling on unpleasant memories or inconvenient truths is to keep yourself occupied. That fact alone explains much of my youth. In any event, in the desert silence, with nobody but camels and heathens to speak to, none of them with much mastery of Empire tongue, a man is left defenceless, prey to dark thoughts.
I held out until we hit the coast, but that last trek along the narrow strip of sand between the wideness of the sea and the vast march of dunes broke me. One chill night we camped beside the skeleton of some great ocean-going ship that had floundered close enough to port for the irony to be more bitter than the seawater. I walked among its bare and salt-rimed spars rising from the beach, and setting a hand to one ancient timber I could swear I heard the screams of drowning sailors.
That night sleep proved impossible to find. Instead, beneath the bright and cold scatter of the stars, my ghosts came visiting and dragged me back to Hell.
“Isn’t there supposed to be a bridge?” I ask, staring out across the fast-flowing waters of the River Slidr. It’s the first water I’ve seen in Hell. The river lies at least thirty yards wide, the opposite shore is a beach of black sand sloping up to a set of crumbling black cliffs. The cliffs vault toward the dead-lit sky in a series of steps, and above them clouds gather, dark as smoke.
“It’s the River Gj?ll that has a bridge, not the Slidr. Gjallarbrú they call the bridge. Be thankful we don’t need to cross it, Módgud stands guard.”
“Módgud?” I don’t really want to know.
“A giantess. The far shore of that river is corpse upon corpse. They build the Nagelfar there, the nail ship that Loki will steer to Ragnarok. And behind that bridge stand the gates of Hel, guarded by the chained hound, Garm.”
“But don’t we need to—”
“We’re already past the gates, Jal. The key, the door, all that took us into Hel.”
“Just the wrong bit of it?”
“We need to cross the river.”
Thirst rather than a lack of caution draws me on, hurrying me down those last few yards of the shore.
I advance to the shallows. “Yeah. That’s not going to happen.” The riverbed shelves away rapidly and although the swift-flowing water lies unnaturally clear it soon becomes lost in darkness. Crossing a river like this would be a serious problem under any circumstances but as I kneel to drink I spot the real show-stopper. In defiance of all reason there are daggers, spears, and even swords, being borne along in the current, all silvery clean, and sparkling with sharpness. Some are pointed resolutely in the direction the current takes them, others swirl as they go, scything the waters all around.
Snorri arrives at my shoulder. “It’s called the River of Swords. I wouldn’t drink it.”
I stand. Further out the blades look like fish shoaling. Long, sharp, steel fish.
“So, what do we do?” I stare upriver, then down. Nothing but miles of eroded banks stepping up to the badlands on either side.
“Swim.” Snorri walks past me.
“Wait!” I reach forward to get an arm in his way. “What?”
“They’re just swords, Jal.”
“Yessssss. That was my point too.” I look up at him. “You’re going to dive in among a whole bunch of swords?”
“Isn’t that what we do in battle?” Snorri steps into the water. “Ah, cold!”
“Fuck cold, it’s sharp I’m worried about.” I make no move to follow him.
“Crossing the Slidr isn’t about bridges or tricks. It’s a battle. Fight the river. Courage and heart will see you across—and if it doesn’t then Valhalla will have you for you will have fallen in combat.”
“Courage?” I know I’m sunk before I start then. Unless simply wading in constitutes courage . . . rather than just stupidity.
“It’s that or stay here forever.” Snorri takes another step and suddenly he’s swimming, the water churning white behind him, his great arms rising and falling.
“Crap on it.” I stick a foot in the water. The chill of it reaches through my boot as if it isn’t there and shoots up the bones of my leg. “Jesus.” I take the foot out again, sharpish. “Snorri!” But he’s gone, a third of the way across, battling the waters.
I take the opportunity to put the key back around my neck on its thong. I find it hot in my grasp, reflecting nothing, not even the sky. I wonder if I call on Loki will the true God see and drown me for my betrayal? I hedge my bets by calling on any deity that might be listening.
“Help!”
The way I see it is that God must be pretty busy with people appealing to him all the time, so he probably appreciates it when prayers cut to the chase.
I pause to consider the injustice of a Hell that contains no lakes that drown heroes and let cowards float, but instead holds test upon test over which someone with nothing to recommend them save a strong arm may triumph. Then, without further consideration I run three steps and dive in.
Swimming has never been my forte. Swimming with a sword at my hip has always resulted in swifter progress, but sadly only toward the bottom of whatever body of water I’m drowning in. The Slidr however, proves unusually buoyant when it comes to sharp-edged steel and Edris Dean’s blade rather than dragging me down, holds me up.
I thrash madly, my lungs too paralysed by the cold even to begin pulling back the breath that escaped me when I hit the river. The iciness of the water is invasive, seeping through blood and bone, filling my head. I lose contact with my limbs but it’s not drowning that concerns me—it’s keeping warm. Deep in my head, in the dark spaces where we go to hide, I’m crouched, waiting to die, waiting for the ice to reach me, and all I have to burn are memories.