LITMIR.BIZ

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it. I’d liked Astrid and it sorrowed me to think we wouldn’t snuggle up in her husband’s bed again. I guessed she’d been content to ignore my wanderings as long as she could see herself as the centre and apex of my attentions. To dally with a jarl’s daughter, someone so highborn, and for it to be so public, must have been more than her pride would stand for. I rubbed my jaw, wincing. Damn, I’d miss her.

      ‘Here.’ Snorri thrust a battered pewter mug toward me.

      ‘Rum?’ I lifted my head to squint at it. I’m a great believer in hair of the dog, and nautical adventures always call for a measure of rum in my largely fictional experience.

      ‘Water.’

      I uncurled with a sigh. The sun had climbed as high as it was going to get, a pale ball straining through the white haze above. ‘Looks like you made a good call. Albeit by mistake. If you hadn’t been ready to sail I might be handfasted by now. Or worse.’

      ‘Serendipity.’

      ‘Seren-what-ity?’ I sipped the water. Foul stuff. Like water generally is.

      ‘A fortunate accident,’ Snorri said.

      ‘Uh.’ Barbarians should know their place, and using long words isn’t it. ‘Even so it was madness to set off so early in the year. Look! There’s still ice floating out there!’ I pointed to a large plate of the stuff, big enough to hold a small house. ‘Won’t be much left of this boat if we hit any.’ I crawled back to join him at the mast.

      ‘Best not distract me from steering then.’ And just to prove a point he slung us to the left, some lethal piece of woodwork swinging scant inches above my head as the sail crossed over.

      ‘Why the hurry?’ Now that the lure of three delicious women who had fallen for my ample charms had been removed I was more prepared to listen to Snorri’s reasons for leaving so precipitously. I made a vengeful note to use ‘precipitously’ in conversation. ‘Why so precipitous?’

      ‘We went through this, Jal. To the death!’ Snorri’s jaw tightened, muscles bunching.

      ‘Tell me once more. Such matters are clearer at sea.’ By which I meant I didn’t listen the first time because it just seemed like ten different reasons to pry me from the warmth of my tavern and from Edda’s arms. I would miss Edda, she really was a sweet girl. Also a demon in the furs. In fact I sometimes got the feeling that I was her foreign fling rather than the other way around. Never any talk of inviting me to meet her parents. Never a whisper about marriage to her prince … A man enjoying himself any less than I was might have had his pride hurt a touch by that. Northern ways are very strange. I’m not complaining … but they’re strange. Between the three of them I’d spent the winter in a constant state of exhaustion. Without the threat of impending death I might never have mustered the energy to leave. I might have lived out my days as a tired but happy tavernkeeper in Trond. ‘Tell me once more and we’ll never speak of it again!’

      ‘I told you a hundr—’

      I made to vomit, leaning forward.

      ‘All right!’ Snorri raised a hand to forestall me. ‘If it will stop you puking all over my boat…’ He leaned out over the side for a moment, steering the craft with his weight, then sat back. ‘Tuttugu!’ Two fingers toward his eyes, telling him to keep watch for ice. ‘This key.’ Snorri patted the front of his fleece jacket, above his heart. ‘We didn’t come by it easy.’ Tuttugu snorted at that. I suppressed a shudder. I’d done a good job of forgetting everything between leaving Trond on the day we first set off for the Black Fort and our arrival back. Unfortunately it only took a hint or two for memories to start leaking through my barriers. In particular the screech of iron hinges would return to haunt me as door after door surrendered to the unborn captain and that damn key.

      Snorri fixed me with that stare of his, the honest and determined one that makes you feel like joining him in whatever mad scheme he’s espousing – just for a moment, mind, until commonsense kicks back in. ‘The Dead King will be wanting this key back. Others will want it too. The ice kept us safe, the winter, the snows … once the harbour cleared the key had to be moved. Trond would not have kept him out.’

      I shook my head. ‘Safe’s the last thing on your mind! Aslaug told me what you really plan to do with Loki’s key. All that talk of taking it back to my grandmother was nonsense.’ Snorri narrowed his eyes at that. For once the look didn’t make me falter – soured by the worst of days and made bold by the misery of the voyage I blustered on regardless. ‘Well! Wasn’t it nonsense?’

      ‘The Red Queen would destroy the key,’ Snorri said.

      ‘Good!’ Almost a shout. ‘That’s exactly what she should do!’

      Snorri looked down at his hands, upturned on his lap, big, scarred, thick with callus. The wind whipped his hair about, hiding his face. ‘I will find this door.’

      ‘Christ! That’s the last place that key should be taken!’ If there really was a door into death no sane person would want to stand before it. ‘If this morning has taught me anything it’s to be very careful which doors you open and when.’

      Snorri made no reply. He kept silent. Still. Nothing for long moments but the flap of sail, the slop of wave against hull. I knew what thoughts ran through his head. I couldn’t speak them, my mouth would go too dry. I couldn’t deny them, though to do so would cause me only an echo of the hurt such a denial would do him.

      ‘I will get them back.’ His eyes held mine and for a heartbeat made me believe he might. His voice, his whole body shook with emotion, though in what part sorrow and what part rage I couldn’t say.

      ‘I will find this door. I will unlock it. And I will bring back my wife, my children, my unborn son.’

       3

      ‘Jal?’ Someone shaking my shoulder. I reached to draw Edda in closer and found my fingers tangled in the unwholesome ginger thicket of Tuttugu’s beard, heavy with grease and salt. The whole sorry story crashed in on me and I let out a groan, deepened by the returning awareness of the swell, lifting and dropping our little boat.

      ‘What?’ I hadn’t been having a good dream, but it was better than this.

      Tuttugu thrust a half-brick of dark Viking bread at me, as if eating on a boat were really an option. I waved it away. If Norse women were a highpoint of the far north then their cuisine counted as one of the lowest. With fish they were generally on a good footing, simple, plain fare, though you had to be careful or they’d start trying to feed it to you raw, or half rotted and stinking worse than corpse flesh. ‘Delicacies’ they’d call it … The time to eat something is the stage between raw and rotting. It’s not the alchemy of rockets! With meat – what meat there was to be found clinging to the near vertical surfaces of the north – you could trust them to roast it over an open fire. Anything else always proved a disaster. And with any other kind of eatable the Norsemen were likely to render it as close to inedible as makes no difference using a combination of salt, pickle, and desiccated nastiness. Whale meat they preserved by pissing on it! My theory was that a long history of raiding each other had driven them to make their foodstuffs so foul that no one in their right mind would want to steal it. Thereby ensuring that, whatever else the enemy might carry off, women, children, goats, and gold, at least they’d leave lunch behind.

      ‘We’re coming in to Olaafheim,’ Tuttugu said, pulling me out of my doze again.

      ‘Whu?’ I levered myself up to look over the prow. The seemingly endless uninviting coastline of wet black cliffs protected by wet black rocks had been replaced with a river mouth. The mountains leapt up swiftly to either side, but here the river had cut a valley whose sides might be grazed, and left a truncated floodplain where a small port nestled against the rising backdrop.

      ‘Best not to spend the night at sea.’ Tuttugu paused to gnaw at the bread in his

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