The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

Slov was of course in a state of high anxiety with rumours running rife through the countryside and any town with a wall, girding its loins for war. Suspicion ran deep that any stranger might be a Red March spy, but even the fevered imagination of the Slovs was hard-pressed to picture the Red Queen recruiting giant Vikings, blonde völvas or red-haired northern lads as covert agents. I did my best to hide behind Snorri and say as little as possible during encounters. The approach worked well, becoming easier by the mile as we left the war zone behind us, and within a few days we had returned to the steady progress and comfortable tavern nights that we had enjoyed on the way.

Having consulted the maps at Grandmother’s headquarters and discussed the matter with a dangerous-looking man of hers who described his employment only as “travelling widely on state business,” we aimed to leave Slov along the Attar-Zagre border and pass swiftly into Charland, crossing the breadth of that ill-favoured nation before travelling the length of Osheim to the Wheel.

I’m not a man who likes travel. I do like to ride, it’s true, but generally I’d prefer to end the day where I started, i.e. home in the palace of Vermillion. I don’t approve of foreign places. Neighbouring countries are at best a necessary evil required to cut down on the amount of coastline, since the only thing worse than a long journey overland is a journey of any length over water. In short, even with the addition of decent roads, warm inns, and half-decent food, the business of getting from A to B is overrated.

I could regale you with a near-endless list of small towns passed through, lazy peasants encountered, provisions purchased, hooves shod, ale drunk, early morning frosts, the fiery colours of the fall, sunsets lingering in the west . . . but the truth is that by the time we met disaster nearly a hundred miles had passed beneath our hooves without a damn thing happening.

For a world reputedly on its last legs things seemed largely untroubled, at least to judge by what could be seen from the back of a horse in the middle of the Broken Empire. The sky remained variously blue or grey, showing no tendency to crack or burn. The land held the wet ochre hues of autumn with no sulphurous ravines opening up amid the stubbled fields, no tongues of fire licking from new-formed fissures. Even the hell that had been lapping at the walls of Vermillion seemed a distant dream now.

I tried on a couple of occasions to broach the subject of Snorri’s journeying in Hel. I would have got to it in my own time without Kara making eyes at me. My own time, however, would have been when we were both old men. Fortunately he just shook his head and reached for his ale. “Done is done, Jal. Stories tell themselves when the time’s right. And for some stories the time is never right.”

For the first week of our journey each shadowed space hung thick with threat. I knew Edris Dean to be out there somewhere, having fled the siege when things turned sour. I knew that the Unborn Prince would be stalking the kingdoms, bound on the Dead King’s business. And worse than Dean, worse even than the Unborn Prince, I knew my sister would be seeking me. Kelem had told me my sister required my death to seal her into this world. Marco had confirmed as much when we found him nailed to a tree in the drylands. My sister had escaped her long exile, breaking into our world through the wound left by the death of one brother. Unborn from hell and bound to a lichkin she would now be seeking the death of her last sibling to anchor her here. I needed something holier than my father’s blessing on a cross to break my sister from the lichkin. I kept my eyes open as we travelled, but church relics are thin on the ground in most places, so mostly I kept my eyes open for skinless horrors trying to pounce on me from the hedgerows.

All that would be enough to keep any man a prisoner to his fears, viewing each night as a long horror when his foes might come upon him unannounced. But somehow, after so many days passing without incident, the normality of the road shrunk the fears that should have had me wideeyed and shivering, to something almost abstract. Riding with Snorri on one side, Kara on the other, unexpected autumn sunshine on my back, the boy cantering ahead . . . it just didn’t seem possible that the world could hold such nightmares.

“I think some Viking is rubbing off on me.” I made a show of brushing at my sleeve as Snorri moved his horse slowly past Murder. The stallion had mellowed a touch on the journey and would allow the other nags to take a turn in the lead, presumably viewing them as heralds who go before a great king to announce his imminent arrival. “I’m not finding this trip north quite as dreadful as the last one.”

“That’s the magic of the fjords.” Snorri grinned. “They call you back.