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

In the west the sun dropped towards high and snowcapped peaks, the sky crimson all about them.

Snorri grinned across at me, eyes clear and blue once more, the wind playing raven hair around his neck, across his shoulders. He saw death as a release. I could see that now. Too much had been taken from him. He wouldn’t ever surrender, but he relished the impossibility of the odds. I grinned back—it seemed the only thing to do—that or start crawling away.

The wind brought faint sounds of men climbing now. Stones slipping beneath boots, weapons clattering, curses offered to each other and to the world in general. I tested my ankle and nearly bit my tongue off, but only nearly—so sprained rather than broken. I took the quickest of steps on it and found myself back against the rock, having blacked out for a moment. Perhaps I could hop and stumble on a bit farther, buoyed up with terror, but I’d be caught soon enough and without Snorri for protection. The moment he fell, though, I’d be off, hope or no hope.

Find a happy place, Jalan. I hopped around my boulder, trying to remember my last moments with Lisa DeVeer. Footsteps sounded along the narrow path between the drop and the boulder. The fall was the least of their worries, though they didn’t know it. Crouching and biting back on the pain, I peered around the edge of my rock to see them arrive. I would have wet myself but the mountain air is very dehydrating.

The first man to come into view was Darab Voir, just as I recalled him from the tavern, a bald-headed bruiser, scar-patterned in the traditions of some Afrique tribes, sweat glistening on his dusky skin. He never saw Snorri. The Norseman’s axe descended in an arc, paralleling the side of the rock as Darab emerged. I’ve always considered a head to be a solid object, but as Snorri’s axe passed through the mercenary’s I had to reconsider. The wedge of his blade entered Darab’s skull at the back, near the top, and emerged beneath his chin. The man’s face literally bulged, the sides of his head seemed to flow outward, and as he toppled away over the drop, without cry or protest, the rocks were drenched with him.

Snorri roared then. The ferocity in it would have given Taproot’s elephant pause, but that wasn’t where the terror lay. The horror was in the simple unabashed joy of it. He didn’t wait for anyone else to emerge. Instead he rounded the corner swinging his axe to cave in the side of the next man’s head and smash him against the rock wall. He ran then, literally ran through them, striking quick short blows as if his axe were a rapier, light as a willow switch. Two, three, four men variously pitched into empty space or slammed against the rock, all of them with a hole in them big enough to put your fist into.

Somewhere out of sight Snorri found a pause and started to declaim, not some Norse battle dirge but ancient verse from the “Lays of Rome.”

Then out spake brave Horatius,

the Captain of the Gate:

“To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.”

Another grunt of exertion, a clatter of metal on rock. The thump of bodies falling.

“And how can man die better

than by facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his gods.”

Damn the barbarian. He was enjoying this madness! He thought himself Horatius on the narrow bridge before the gates of Rome, holding back the might of the Etruscan army! I started to crawl away. It’s shame that gets us killed. Shame is the anchor, the heaviest burden to carry from the battlefield. Fortunately shame was an affliction I’d never suffered from. I did wonder, though, hearing Snorri move on to the next verse of his epic, whether he might not be able to hold out there indefinitely. Providing they didn’t have bows with them . . . Of course, if that Edris were any kind of a leader he’d have sent men to flank his enemy. No single man can stand against many when they come at him from two sides. I would have flank—

“Hello. What have we here?”

I looked up into the pale staring eyes of Meegan—Edris’s second companion from the night before. The setting sun framed him with a bloody light. He’d struck me back at the tavern as one of the last men on earth I’d want to meet in a dark alley. Like Cutter John he had the look of a man who kept a distance from the world, as if viewing us all from behind the confessional screen. Such men make good torturers.

At Meegan’s shoulder stood a hard-bitten warrior tending to grey with a longsword ready in his hand. More men sent to flank us probably approached along the ledge as Meegan and I blinked at each other, me on all fours, him leaning forwards as if in enquiry.

Whatever you do in dangerous situations, the main thing is to do it quickly. I’ve always maintained just because it’s given to you to be a coward doesn’t mean it’s something you can’t strive to do well. My father used to admonish me to excel in all things. Excellence in cowardice means being quick off the mark. If you want to run away fast, then the first thing to do is take off in whatever direction you happen to be facing.