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

“Dead men!” I may have shrieked it.

“Almost.” And Snorri swung his axe in a great loop, shearing off branches in scores. I would have bet against even a blade of razor-honed Builder-steel carving through like that. Again, another huge loop. I lunged away, stopped only by Ron’s blunt head, blocking the path we’d forged. Snorri sang now, a wordless song, or perhaps a language lay behind it, but not of men, and he carved a space, ever more wide, until he strode from one side to hack deeper and then four paces to the other, five paces, six. The stumps of trees, some thicker than my arm, studded the space, poking up knee-high through drifts of fallen timber. In the clearing, despite open sky above, twilight-blue and cradling the evening star, it was darker than the forest. And the darkness trailed his axe.

“Wh—what?” Snorri came to a halt, panting. The twilight had taken on a new quality. The sun had set. Aslaug confined once more to whatever hell she inhabited. He looked down at his weapon. “It’s not a wood-axe! Gods damn it!”

I stepped closer, smartish, worried that corpse-white arms might reach for me from the darker shadows.

“Make a light, Jal. Quick.”

So with Snorri standing over me and the horses nervous, wedged along the trail, I fumbled in my pack, whilst all around us branches broke and pale men moved between the trees.

“Come out. I’ll bet you cut easier than wood,” Snorri called to them, though I detected an edge of fear in his voice—something I’d never heard before. I think the forest unnerved him more than the enemy within it. I found tinder and then flint, managing to drop both in the darkness, finding them again with trembling fingers. The scent of pine sap grew around us, strong and sickly, almost overpowering.

I struck spark to tinder as Snorri swung at the first of the men to rush from the trees. Branches snapped on all sides, more of them pushing through. An ill-advised glance upwards showed them lean and naked, pale greenish-white ghosts in the dimness. The passage of Snorri’s axe carved a great furrow through the creature from left hip to right nipple, slicing through gut, ribs, sternum, and lungs. Evidently the axe retained some edge despite being used to cut timber. Still the pine-man came on, the stink of sap overwhelming as the stuff oozed from his bloodless wound. At the last he tripped on a stump, crashed down, and became snarled in a mess of loose entrails and stray branches. By then Snorri had plenty of other problems to worry about.

Success! Spark became glow became smoke became flame. A month earlier it would have taken me half an hour to get the same result. Crouched close to the ground and with Snorri swinging and grunting above me, and the scream of terrified horses, I managed to transfer the fire to one of the pitch torches I’d bought back in Crath City, offered there for exploring the extensive municipal catacombs.

“Burn it!” A pale, twitching limb landed beside my foot.

“What?”

“Burn it!” Another grunt and a head dropped close by. A pine-man leapt onto Snorri’s back.

“Burn what?” I shouted.

“Everything.” He fell backwards, impaling his passenger on several stumps.

“That’s madness!” We’d burn up too.

Snorri’s move, whilst genius in the short term, left me exposed, and at least four pine-men were pulling free of the trees to enter the clearing, more behind them. The look in their eyes frightened me more than the fire. I shoved the pitch brand into the mass of broken branches before me.

Flames rose up almost immediately. The pine-men took two or three more steps before halting, each with their face to the fire. Behind me Snorri tore free of his opponent and rose with a groan. “Follow the horses!”

Already the flames were spreading, a fierce crackling building as needles popped in the heat and the fire raced along desiccated branches, quickened by pine-men’s blood. Terrified out of whatever wits horses possess, Sleipnir and Ron bolted, stampeding across the small clearing Snorri had carved, scattering both pine-men and fire. I managed to follow Snorri’s example and roll clear, very nearly impaling myself on a couple of inch-thick stumps.

The two horses punched their own passage through the trees. I hoped they’d avoid being blinded, but it seemed a damn sight better than being barbecued. Snorri gave chase and I stumbled along in their wake. Behind me the fire roared like a living thing and the pine-men answered it with thin cries of their own agony.

For a brief while we left the fire behind us, plunging unseeing along the horses’ path. As my breath grew short I paused for a moment and, glancing back, saw the whole forest lit from within by an orange glow, countless trunks and branches in black silhouette. “Run!” I shouted uselessly, thereafter saving my breath to better follow my own order.