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

“Burning the dead.” Tuttugu pointed towards the far door. “He’s building a pyre on the wall.”

I tried to sit up and lay back cursing. “There’s not enough wood, surely? Why not leave them to freeze?”

“He found the wood store, and he’s been knocking doors off hinges, ripping down shutters.”

“But why?” I asked, not sure I wanted an answer.

“Because of what will be coming from the Bitter Ice,” Ein said. “He doesn’t want the bodies raised against us.” He didn’t say that his last three brothers lay amongst them, but something in his face told it anyway.

“If they’re frozen they won’t be able to . . .” I tried to sit again. Sitting is an important precursor to running away.

“Might not freeze in time,” Tuttugu said.

“And Snorri doesn’t want anything left to be defiled after . . .” Ein set his whetstone down and admired his edge in the firelight.

Between them the two men I’d saved had managed to make my blood run cold. That “in time” and that “after” were not encouraging. A corpse would freeze solid overnight.

“We’re expecting . . . trouble . . . before morning?” I tried to make it not sound like whining, and failed.

“No ‘we’ about it. It’s what Snorri says. He says they’re coming.” Tuttugu tightened the bindings about his knee and whimpered in pain.

“How does he know?” I made a third attempt to sit, galvanized by fear, and succeeded, ribs grating.

“Snorri says the dark told him.” Ein set his axe down and looked my way. “And if he doesn’t end this in the dark, then you’ll have to do it in the light.”

“This—” I eased down from the table and the pain cut me off. “This is madness. He finds his wife and child, and then we go!” I left off the “finds them dead or alive” part. “Broke-Oar is dead—it’s done.”

Without waiting to be contradicted, I hobbled off towards the far door. The blood smears, drying to black and deepest scarlet now, showed the way. Where Snorri found the energy to drag approaching thirty corpses out along that corridor and onto the fort wall I didn’t know, but I did know that he would have neither the fuel, stamina, nor time to add the frozen dead of Olaaf Rikeson’s army to his pyre.

The stairs up to the outer door were slippery with blood, already freezing where it had dripped from one step to the next. Opening the door, I found the night lit with a vast blaze, the wind trailing orange flame out over the battlements. Even with all that heat not twenty yards off, the cold bit me immediately, the alien cold of a landscape that held in it nothing for men or for any other living thing.

Snorri stood silhouetted against the inferno. I could see corpses and timbers, some black against the hot glow, others melting into it. Even the wind’s strength couldn’t keep the scent of roasting flesh from my nostrils. The walkway ran with hot fats, burning even as they spilled down the inner wall.

“It’s done, then?” I had to raise my voice above the crackle of the fire and the wind’s discontent.

“They’re coming, Jal. The dead men from the Bitter Ice, the necromancers who herd them, Edris and the rest of the Broke-Oar’s following.” He paused. “The unborn.”

“What the hell are you doing out here, then?” I shouted. “Search for your wife and let’s be gone.” I ignored the fact that I could barely walk the length of the corridor and that if his child were here we couldn’t march across the Uplands with him. Such truths were too uncomfortable. Besides, the woman and boy were probably dead, and I would rather die trying to cross the ice than facing necromancers and their horrors.

Snorri turned away from the fire, eyes red with smoke. “Let’s go in. I’ve spoken the words. The flames will carry them to Valhalla.”

“Well, not Broke-Oar and his bastards,” I said.

“Even them.” Snorri glanced back at the blaze, a half-smile twisting his split lip. “They died in battle, Jal. That’s all it takes. When we arm against the jotün and the jotnär at Ragnarok, all men with fire in their blood will stand together.”

We walked in side by side, Snorri matching my snail’s pace as I hobbled down the stairs, mis-stepping once and uttering every foul word I knew until I reached the bottom. “We can’t stay here, Snorri.”

“It’s a fortress. Where better to stay when your enemies march?”

He had me there.