I sighed. No more fun for Jal tonight. I felt sorry for the woman, of course, but the troubles of people I dont know never reached that far into me. My father, in one of his rare moments of coherence, declared it to be a symptom of youth. My youth, at least. He called on God to visit compassion upon me as a burden to be carried in later life. I was just impressed that hed noticed me or my ways this once, and of course its always nice for a cardinal to remember to call on God every now and then.
We sat a little apart from the main group, though close enough to feel the fires heat.
Hows the hand? I asked.
Hurts more, feels better. He held out the appendage in question and flexed it slightly, wincing. She removed a lot of the poison.
Thankfully Snorri omitted greater detail. Some folk will seek to entertain you with the gory details of their ailments. My brother Martus would have painted each glistening drop of pus for me in one of his woe-is-me monologues for which the only remedy is a swift exit.
The night held enough warmth, combined with the fire and my recent exercise, to leave me pleasantly sleepy. I lay back on the ground, without complaint for the hardness of it or the dust in my hair. For a moment or three I watched the stars and listened to the soft weeping. I yawned once and sleep took me.
Strange dreams hunted me that night. I wandered an empty circus haunted by the memory of the eyes behind that porcelain mask but finding only the dancers, each sobbing in her bed, and breaking into bright fragments as I reached to touch them. Cherri was there, Lula too, and they broke together, speaking a single word. Quarry. The night fractured, cracks running through tents, wheels, barrels; an elephant bellowed unseen in the darkness. My head filled with light until at last I opened my eyes to keep from being blinded.
Nothing! Just Snorris bulk, seated beside me, knees drawn up. The fire had fallen to red embers. The circus folk had gone to their beds, taking their sorrow with them. No sound but for the whirr and chirp of insects. My hearts pounding slowed. My head continued to ache as if it were cracked through, but the blame for that lay with a quart of wine gulped down in the heat of the day.
Its a thing to make the world weep, the loss of a baby. Snorris rumble was almost too deep to make sense of. In Asgard Odin sees it and his unblinking eye blinks.
I thought it best not to mention that technically a one-eyed god can only wink. All deaths are sad. It seemed like a good thing to say.
Most of what a man is has been written by the time his beard starts to prickle. A babe is made of maybes. There are few crimes worse than the ending of something before its time.
Once more I bit my tongue and made no complaint that this was exactly what he had accomplished at the dancers wagon earlier. It wasnt tact that held me silent so much as the desire not to get my nose broken yet again. I suppose some sorrows can only truly touch a parent. Id heard that somewhere. I think perhaps Cousin Serah had said it at her little brothers funeral. I recall all the grey heads nodding and exchanging words about her. She probably fished it from a book. Even at fourteen she was scheming for Grandmothers approval. And her throne.
When you become a father, it changes you. Snorri spoke towards the fires glow. You see the world in new ways. Those who are not changed were not properly men to begin with.
I wondered if he was drunk. Thats when I tend to speak profundities to the night. Then I remembered that Snorri was a father. I couldnt picture it. Wee ones bouncing on his knee. Tiny hands tugging at his battle braids. Even so, I understood his mood better now I could guess what he might see amongst the embers. Not this unborn child, but his own children, fleeing horrors in the snows. The thing that drew him north against all sense.
Why are you still here? I asked him.
Why are you?
I passed out. Mild exasperation coloured my voice. Im not sitting vigil! In fact, now that Im awake Ill find a better place to sleep. Perhaps one with more interesting contours and a snub nose. I stood, aching along my side, and stamped to get some life back into my legs.
Why are you still here? I asked him.
Why are you?
I passed out. Mild exasperation coloured my voice. Im not sitting vigil! In fact, now that Im awake Ill find a better place to sleep. Perhaps one with more interesting contours and a snub nose. I stood, aching along my side, and stamped to get some life back into my legs.
Cant you feel it? he said as I turned to go.
No. But I could. Something wrong. A sense of brokenness. No, I cant. Even so, I didnt step away.
With one breath the insects ceased their chorus. A deep noise reached me, rumbling up through the soles of my feet, still bare. Ah hell. My hands trembled, with the customary terror of the unknown, but also with something new, as if they were full of fractured light.
Hels about right. Snorri stood too. He had his stolen sword in hand. Had he held it all the time or gone to fetch it while I slept? He pointed the blade towards the babys grave. The noise had come from there. A burrowing, a scratching, the sound of roots pushing blind paths through soil. The headstone to the left tilted as the ground sank beneath it. The one to the right toppled forwards, coming to rest with a dull thud. All around the childs mound the soil cracked and heaved.
We should run, I said, having not the least idea why I was not already doing so. The word quarry repeated over and again behind my eyes. Whats happening down there? Perhaps a sick fascination kept me there, or the immobility of the rabbit beneath hawks claws.
Something is being built, Snorri said. When the unborn return, they take what they need.
Return? I sometimes ask even when I really dont want to hear the answer. Bad habit.
Its hard for the unborn to return. They are not like fallen that rise from the deaths of men. Snorri began to swing his sword left-handed, blurring it around him in fire-glow glimmers, making the air sigh. They are uncommon things. The world must be cracked open to admit them, and their strength is surpassing. The Dead King must want us very badly indeed.
I found my feet at that and ran. As the ground heaved and some dark thing rose, shedding dry clods of earth and shrugging off gravestones, I raced five full steps before tripping on an abandoned wine jug-possibly one Id brought with me-and sprawling face first.
I rolled and saw, edged by the radiance of stars and the faint light of embers, a horror still knee-deep in the earth and yet towering above the Norseman, a thin thing of old bones, tattered cloth, encompassing arms with talons built from too many finger bones to count. And about these dry and creaking remains, something wet and glistening, some vital freshness running along a golem built of long-dead grave litter, knitting this to that, bleeding quickness into the construct.
Snorri bellowed his wordless challenge, but he held his ground: No charging against this foe. It overreached him by a yard and more. The dead thing extended an arm, talons questing for Snorri, then snatched the hand back. A grey skull, filled with new wetness, craned down on a neck that was once the entirety of a mans spine. And it spoke! Though it had no lungs for bellows, no tongue to shape its words, it spoke. The unborns voice squealed like tooth on tooth, grated bone on bone, and somehow carried meaning.
Red Queen, it said.
Snorri took a pace back, sword raised. The skull swivelled and those awful wet pits that served for eyes found me, barefoot, weaponless, and scooting away on my backside.
Red Queen.
Not me! Never heard of her. The strength went from my legs and I stopped trying to escape, although it was the only thing I wanted to do.
You carry her purpose, it said. And her sisters magic. It swung its head towards Snorri and I could breathe again. Or you, it said. And you? The unborn returned its gaze to me, now on my feet. Under that inspection I started to die once more. Hidden? The skull tilted in query. How is it hidden?
Snorri attacked. As the unborns attention pinned me he leapt forwards, sword in his off hand, and hacked at its narrow waist of bone, dry skin, old gristle. The thing lurched alarmingly, recovered itself, and slapped him away with a lazy backhand that lifted the Norseman from his feet and sent him sprawling, his sword flying past me, lost in the night.
Battles are all about strategy, and strategy pivots on priorities. Since my priorities were Prince Jalan, Prince Jalan, and Prince Jalan, with looking good a distant fourth, I took the opportunity to resume running away. I find that the main thing about success is the ability to act in the moment. A hero attacks in the moment; a good coward runs in it. The rest of the world waits for the next moment and ends up as crow food.
I made it ten yards before nearly slicing my foot off on Snorris sword, which had ended its trajectory point first. Nine inches of the blade lay buried in the hard earth, the rest jutting up dangerously. Even in my terror I recognized the value in three foot of cold steel and paused to haul it clear. The action spun me around and I could see the unborn looming over Snorri, ghostly in the starlight. Weaponless, he refused to run and held what looked to be a gravestone above him like a shield. The stone shattered beneath the unborns descending fist. A thin hand of many bones encircled the Vikings waist-in another moment he would be gutted or have his head torn off.
Something huge and dark and wailing like a banshee swept towards me from the camp. Rather than be flattened beneath its ground-shaking bulk I ran, selecting the direction I happened to be pointing in. I needed all my speed to keep clear of the massive pounding feet behind me, and screaming, I charged directly at the unborn, desperately trying to find the extra legs to veer to the side.
At the last moment, with pants-wetting haste, I dived left, narrowly missing Snorri, rolled, rolled again, and somehow avoided skewering myself on the sword. I rose to watch in astonishment as Cherri bounced past atop an enraged elephant. The unborn went down with the sound of a hundred wet sticks snapping, ground to pieces beneath blunt feet the size of bucklers. The elephant thundered on into the night, still bearing the girl, and trumpeting loud enough to wake the dead, if any had still been asleep.