LITMIR.BIZ

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A big someone poking clumsy fingers at a very painful spot over my cheekbone.

      ‘Just removing the splinters.’ A big fat someone.

      ‘Get off me, Tuttugu!’ I struggled to get up again, managing to sit this time. ‘What happened?’

      ‘You got hit with a stool.’

      I groaned a bit. ‘I don’t remember a stool, I— OUCH! What the hell?’ Tuttugu seemed fixed set on pinching and jabbing at the sorest part of my face.

      ‘You might not remember the stool but I’m pulling pieces of it out of your cheek – so keep still. We don’t want to spoil those good looks, now do we?’

      I did my best to hold still at that. It was true, good looks and a title were most of what I had going for me and I wasn’t keen to lose either. To take my mind off the pain I tried to remember how I had managed to get beaten with my own furniture. I drew a blank. Some vague recollection of high-pitched screaming and shouting … a memory of being kicked whilst on the floor … a glimpse through slitted eyes of two women leaving arm in arm, one petite, pale, young, the other tall, golden, maybe thirty. Neither looked back.

      ‘Right! Up you get. That’s the best I can do for now.’ Tuttugu hauled on my arm to get me on my feet.

      I stood swaying, nauseous, hung over, perhaps still a little drunk, and – though I found it hard to credit – slightly horny.

      ‘Come on. We have to go.’ Tuttugu started to drag me toward the brightness of the doorway. I tried digging in my heels but to no avail.

      ‘Where?’ Springtime in Trond had turned out to be more bitter than a Red March midwinter and I’d no interest in exposing myself to it.

      ‘The docks!’ Tuttugu seemed worried. ‘We might just make it!’

      ‘Why? Make what?’ I didn’t remember much of the morning but I hadn’t forgotten that ‘worried’ was Tuttugu’s natural state. I shook him off. ‘Bed. That’s where I’m going.’

      ‘Well if that’s where you want Jarl Sorren’s men to find you…’

      ‘Why should I give a fig for Jarl Sorr—oh.’ I remembered Hedwig. I remembered her on the furs in the jarlshouse when everyone else was still at her sister’s wedding feast. I remembered her on my cloak during an ill-advised outdoors tryst. She kept my front warm but damn my arse froze. I remembered her upstairs at the tavern that one time she slipped her minders … I was surprised we didn’t shake all three axes down from above the entrance that afternoon. ‘Give me a moment … two moments!’ I held up a hand to stay Tuttugu and charged upstairs.

      Once back in my chamber a single moment proved ample. I stamped on the loose floorboard, scooped up my valuables, snatched an armful of clothing, and was heading back down the stairs before Tuttugu had the time to scratch his chins.

      ‘Why the docks?’ I panted. The hills would be a quicker escape – and then a boat from Hjorl on Aöefl’s Fjord just up the coast. ‘The docks are the first place they’ll look after here!’ I’d be stood there still trying to negotiate a passage to Maladon or the Thurtans when the jarl’s men found me.

      Tuttugu stepped around Floki Wronghelm, sprawled and snoring beside the bar. ‘Snorri’s down there, preparing to sail.’ He bent down behind the bar, grunting.

      ‘Snorri? Sailing?’ It seemed that the stool had dislodged more than the morning’s memories. ‘Why? Where’s he going?’

      Tuttugu straightened up holding my sword, dusty and neglected from its time hidden on the bar shelf. I didn’t reach for it. I’m fine with wearing a sword in places where nobody is going to see it as an invitation – Trond was never such a place.

      ‘Take it!’ Tuttugu angled the hilt toward me.

      I ignored it, wrestling myself into my clothes, the coarse weave of the north, itchy but warm. ‘Since when did Snorri have a boat?’ He’d sold the Ikea to finance the expedition to the Black Fort – that much I did remember.

      ‘I should get Astrid back here to see if another beating with a stool might knock some sense into you!’ Tuttugu tossed the sword down beside me as I sat to haul my boots on.

      ‘Astrid?… Astrid!’ A moment returned to me with crystal clarity – Edda coming down the stairs half-naked, Astrid watching. It had been a while since a morning went so spectacularly wrong for me. I’d never intended the two of them to collide in such circumstances but Astrid hadn’t struck me as the jealous sort. In fact I hadn’t been entirely sure I was the only younger man keeping her bed warm whilst her husband roamed the seas a-trading. We mostly met at her place up on the Arlls Slope, so stealth with Edda hadn’t been a priority. ‘How did Astrid even know about Hedwig?’ More importantly, how did she reach me before Jarl Sorren’s housecarls, and how much time did I have?

      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.

       2

      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

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