Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War 1)

“When you become a father, it changes you.” Snorri spoke towards the fire’s 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. That’s when I tend to speak profundities to the night. Then I remembered that Snorri was a father. I couldn’t 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. “I’m not sitting vigil! In fact, now that I’m awake I’ll 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.

“Can’t you feel it?” he said as I turned to go.

“No.” But I could. Something wrong. A sense of brokenness. “No, I can’t.” Even so, I didn’t 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.

“Hel’s 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 baby’s 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 child’s 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. “What’s happening down there?” Perhaps a sick fascination kept me there, or the immobility of the rabbit beneath hawk’s claws.

“Something is being built,” Snorri said. “When the unborn return, they take what they need.”

“Return?” I sometimes ask even when I really don’t want to hear the answer. Bad habit.

“It’s 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 I’d 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 man’s spine. And it spoke! Though it had no lungs for bellows, no tongue to shape its words, it spoke. The unborn’s 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 sister’s 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?”