Having consulted the maps at Grandmother’s headquarters and discussed the matter with a dangerous-looking man of hers who described his employment only as “travelling widely on state business,” we aimed to leave Slov along the Attar-Zagre border and pass swiftly into Charland, crossing the breadth of that ill-favoured nation before travelling the length of Osheim to the Wheel.
I’m not a man who likes travel. I do like to ride, it’s true, but generally I’d prefer to end the day where I started, i.e. home in the palace of Vermillion. I don’t approve of foreign places. Neighbouring countries are at best a necessary evil required to cut down on the amount of coastline, since the only thing worse than a long journey overland is a journey of any length over water. In short, even with the addition of decent roads, warm inns, and half-decent food, the business of getting from A to B is overrated.
I could regale you with a near-endless list of small towns passed through, lazy peasants encountered, provisions purchased, hooves shod, ale drunk, early morning frosts, the fiery colours of the fall, sunsets lingering in the west . . . but the truth is that by the time we met disaster nearly a hundred miles had passed beneath our hooves without a damn thing happening.
For a world reputedly on its last legs things seemed largely untroubled, at least to judge by what could be seen from the back of a horse in the middle of the Broken Empire. The sky remained variously blue or grey, showing no tendency to crack or burn. The land held the wet ochre hues of autumn with no sulphurous ravines opening up amid the stubbled fields, no tongues of fire licking from new-formed fissures. Even the hell that had been lapping at the walls of Vermillion seemed a distant dream now.
I tried on a couple of occasions to broach the subject of Snorri’s journeying in Hel. I would have got to it in my own time without Kara making eyes at me. My own time, however, would have been when we were both old men. Fortunately he just shook his head and reached for his ale. “Done is done, Jal. Stories tell themselves when the time’s right. And for some stories the time is never right.”
For the first week of our journey each shadowed space hung thick with threat. I knew Edris Dean to be out there somewhere, having fled the siege when things turned sour. I knew that the Unborn Prince would be stalking the kingdoms, bound on the Dead King’s business. And worse than Dean, worse even than the Unborn Prince, I knew my sister would be seeking me. Kelem had told me my sister required my death to seal her into this world. Marco had confirmed as much when we found him nailed to a tree in the drylands. My sister had escaped her long exile, breaking into our world through the wound left by the death of one brother. Unborn from hell and bound to a lichkin she would now be seeking the death of her last sibling to anchor her here. I needed something holier than my father’s blessing on a cross to break my sister from the lichkin. I kept my eyes open as we travelled, but church relics are thin on the ground in most places, so mostly I kept my eyes open for skinless horrors trying to pounce on me from the hedgerows.
All that would be enough to keep any man a prisoner to his fears, viewing each night as a long horror when his foes might come upon him unannounced. But somehow, after so many days passing without incident, the normality of the road shrunk the fears that should have had me wideeyed and shivering, to something almost abstract. Riding with Snorri on one side, Kara on the other, unexpected autumn sunshine on my back, the boy cantering ahead . . . it just didn’t seem possible that the world could hold such nightmares.
“I think some Viking is rubbing off on me.” I made a show of brushing at my sleeve as Snorri moved his horse slowly past Murder. The stallion had mellowed a touch on the journey and would allow the other nags to take a turn in the lead, presumably viewing them as heralds who go before a great king to announce his imminent arrival. “I’m not finding this trip north quite as dreadful as the last one.”
“That’s the magic of the fjords.” Snorri grinned. “They call you back.
None travel as far as the Vikings—but we go back—the North calls us home.”
“Sentimental nonsense.” Kara caught us up riding close on my left side. “There are more Vikings settled on the Drowned Isles and south of the Karlswater than live in all of Norseheim.”
I could sense another of their interminable arguments coming on.
The pair of them could debate the smallest issue for hours in that singsong tit-for-tat way the Norse had. They would end up hair-splitting over some terminally dull point of Viking history. Suddenly the world would hinge on whether Olaaf Thorgulson, fourth son of Thorgul Olaafson, sailed from Haagenfast in the 28th year of the Iron Jarls or the 27th . . . I glanced around hurriedly for something to distract them before they got started.
“Fuck me! It’s the pope,” I said, not really believing it, for meeting her holiness on a backroad along the Zagre-Attar border seemed no more real a possibility than an unborn lurching out from the hedgerows. “That seems unlikely.” Snorri stood in his stirrups for a better view.
Ahead of us the road ran arrow straight, dividing the land, rising and falling with each undulation. Emerging from the hidden dip of the next valley a long caravan had begun to crest the next but one ridge. Even from a mile off I recognized the papal flag without difficulty, a purple cross fluttering horizontally on a white pennant. A dozen or more men carried a large sedan chair, its roof sporting a golden cross that screamed “steal me” across the intervening distance, and two squads of halberdiers, a score fore and aft, bracketed the affair, carrying enough pointy steel to make even the most hardened brigand turn a deaf ear.
“Well if it’s not the pope it’s someone damned important.” Father never got such an escort despite being a cardinal.
“We should steer clear of them,” Snorri said.
“Don’t worry, the church gave up burning heathens years ago.” I reached out to place a condescending pat on his shoulder. “You’ll be fine.
These days they only go after witches . . . oh.” I glanced back at Kara.
“Perhaps we should steer clear of them. A caravan that large is bound to have at least one inquisitor with it.”
Of course when the people you want to avoid are ahead of you on the best road in an unfamiliar region, and going in the direction you want to go, only more slowly . . . that tends to mean reducing your own pace and following them.
We rode behind at walking speed, keeping a good half a mile between us. Every now and then the papal convoy would come back into view, cresting one of the folds in the rolling landscape. It started to rain. “We could just ride past,” Hennan said.
“The boy has a point,” Snorri said. “At a canter we’d be ten seconds from rear to van.”
“They’re filling the road. They would need to stand aside for us,” I said. “They might ask our business—and if there’s an inquisitor with them then they would probably know it soon enough.” My fingers found the lump Loki’s key made under my jacket. Inquisitors had a nose for such things—though to accuse them of using enchantment would be little different from tying yourself to the stake and calling for a torch.
Explaining the key to an agent of the Roma Inquisition was not something I wanted to have to do. Men had had their tongues torn out for even speaking the names of false gods.
The rain thickened as the light failed, and still the clerics and their guards showed no sign of turning from the road to seek shelter for the night.
“We’ll be following them all the way to Osheim.” I spat rainwater.