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

“How long was I out? How much time is left?”

“It’s two hours until dawn. They’ll be here before that.”

“What will we do?” Sven Broke-Oar had been bad enough. I had no desire to wait to see whatever it was that had terrified a monster like him.

“Barricade ourselves in the gatehouse. Wait.”

As much as I liked the idea of defence, it didn’t sound like Snorri. His very name meant “attack.” To hold back sounded like an admission of defeat. But the man was all done in. I could see that. I could no more heal his wounds than I could my own. Just walking beside him set the air crackling with uncomfortable energies. Even with a yard between us, my skin crawled as if somewhere in the marrow of my bones, that crack, the one the Silent Sister’s magic had fractured into the world—between worlds—as if that crack were seeking to break out. It wanted to run through me and join its dark twin as it broke from Snorri, to join together and race towards the horizon, splitting and splitting again until the world lay shattered.

• • •

The gatehouse held several chambers, the foremost of which offered views down over the gate should a man be motivated to crack open the shutters and lean out. In addition three covered murder-holes would allow the pouring of whatever unpleasant liquid one might wish to flush upon the heads of any standing at the great doors. This close to the Bitter Ice, just pouring water onto unwelcome guests would be fatal for most. The room held a fireplace with wood stacked to either side and two copper buckets filled with coal. Tuttugu and Ein set to lighting a fire, both of them moving awkwardly as their injuries had stiffened. Tuttugu had fashioned a crutch from a spear, pieces of furniture, and a wadded cloak, but it was clear he could cover no great distance on it. Our serious fighting force consisted of Snorri and Ein, both much diminished by their injuries. Tuttugu and I together could have been defeated by a single determined twelve-year-old armed with a stick.

The doors and shutters were all of heavy construction, iron bolts oiled and locked in place.

“They’ll come over the walls,” I said.

“The dead won’t.” Snorri swung his arms to loosen them. He had Sven Broke-Oar’s axe now, or rather I suspected he had reclaimed his father’s axe from the man.

“Then the Hardanger men will.” Edris would be with them. I couldn’t say why he frightened me more than the Vikings, but he did.

“I doubt they have grapples, probably not even rope. But maybe.” Snorri shrugged. “We can’t patrol the walls of this fort with two men. They would just try in three places at once. They’ll get in or they won’t. Either way they will be cold. We’ll keep watch from the gatehouse roof and decide what to do when it needs to be done.”

“But it’s dark.”

“If they come in the night, Jal, they’ll carry lights, now won’t they? The ones that can climb need to see. I don’t know what the dead see, or if they need it to be light, but the dead I saw in Eight Quays were like the dead on the mountain by Chamy-Nix. They won’t be scaling walls.”

“And the unborn?”

“Let those come.” He made a sudden lunging strike at the air with his axe.

• • •

It fell to Tuttugu and me to keep watch, one taking a turn after the other. It made no sense for either man who could still fight to freeze his arse off on the roof. Tuttugu took the first hour. I could only guess what it cost him to climb the stairs with his shattered knee. I found him huddled in his furs, blue with cold and semiconscious when I hobbled up the long spiral of steps to relieve him an hour later. Ein had to come up to help his friend down again.

I stood my turn, there in the dark with the wind howling all about and nothing to see but the glow of the bone-fire by the east tower. I’d been warm for only a few hours, but already the bitter chill outside came as a shock. I found it hard to imagine we had endured it day after day.

In the dark, as I made a slow tour of the guard wall, my mind played tricks: voices on the wind, colours in the night, faces from my past come to visit. I imagined the Silent Sister, here on the ice, her tatters flying in the wind as she made her circuit of the Black Fort, painting out her curse across its walls as she went. She should be here, that old woman. She’d brought us to this, somehow, in some way I couldn’t quite fathom. It was her fault. I’d called her evil, the blind-eye woman, a witch burning people in their homes. And yet it seemed perhaps that on each occasion it had been an unborn or some other minion of the Dead King that had been her true target. The people had just been in the way. Or bait, perhaps.