Prince of Fools

The fifth door yielded after a silent struggle, one loud scrape echoing along the corridor as it gave. We held still, waiting for the challenge, but none came. The horror of my situation had started to settle on me as my body began to recover. I grew warm enough to shiver at about the same time that I grew scared enough to shake.

“Hel.” Snorri drew back from the part-open door, his face thrown into eerie relief by the lantern held beneath it.

“Is it safe?” Tuttugu, unwilling to lower his axe.

Snorri nodded. “Take a look.” He beckoned me, raising the lantern overhead.

The scene reminded me of Skilfar’s lair. Figures, row upon row, so close they leaned one upon the next, unable to fall. Men, shrouded in ice, bearded with frost, caught in every pose from curled in sleep to contorted in agony, but most just head down, captured in that plodding motion I knew so well from the past few days.

“Olaaf Rikeson’s men?”

“Must be . . .” Snorri pulled the door closed.

The next five halls all held frozen corpses, all warriors. Hundreds of them in total. Dead for centuries but ice-locked against the years. I wondered if whatever spirit a necromancer might return to them would be all the darker for those lifetimes spent with the devil.

The quads huddled together and the momentary joy we’d all known at escaping the wind faded swiftly in that grim place, surrounded on all sides by the ancient dead.

The corridor passed two sets of spiral stairs, coiling up and down in their narrow shafts. Snorri passed them by. This section seemed more often used, the walls free of ice, grit on the floor to make for surer footing.

There was no missing or mistaking our target. The air grew warm, thick with the smell of smoke and cooking, something meaty stewing in a pot if I were any judge. My mouth began to water immediately. Just the scent of that hot food had me ready to kill for my supper. The door at the end of the corridor stood taller than the side doors, studded with black iron, muffled sounds emerging.

We looked, one to the other, preparing to organize for an entry. As often happens in life, the decision was taken from us. A heavyset Viking emerged without warning, calling some insult back over his shoulder.

Arne’s arm flickered and the hatchet he’d carried so long at his hip now sprouted from the dark red curls of the man’s beard. It didn’t look quite real. Snorri and the others surged forwards without a sound save for boots on stone. The man scrabbled at the hatchet, blood pouring down his neck, and fell beneath them.

I found myself standing with only Tuttugu at my side. He gave an embarrassed grin and jogged off after the others. That left me alone in a corridor with frozen dead men packed into all the rooms to either side. The first battle cry rang out, Snorri’s roar of joyous violence as the others barged through the big door behind him. I screwed up whatever courage I could find and set off after Tuttugu, sword at the ready.

The sight beyond the door proved arresting. So arresting that even with all his momentum Tuttugu had come to a dead halt and I ran into his back, sandwiching my blade between us. A score or more Red Vikings had been crowded into the far end of the hall before the large fireplace. Stone tables ran nearly the length of the hall, and I could only think this was where Snorri had been brought and hung upon the wall.

The Hardanger men, Red Vikings as they’re known, hailed from a tribe darker in colouring than the Undoreth, more red heads amongst them, more dark-haired men, a tough breed, broad in the chest and blunt-featured. They weren’t armoured or armed for war, but Norse warriors are seldom beyond reach of their axes and will always wear a knife or hatchet.

Snorri had leapt onto the table to the left and run its length, taking the head from one man sitting at it, close to the door, and carving a furrow through the face of another sitting on the opposite side, farther along, closer to the fire. He’d dropped amongst the crowd by the hearth, swinging in great red arcs. Hardanger men scattered away into the length of the hall, grabbing their weapons, putting space between themselves and Snorri, only to be engaged by the quads, broadaxes flashing firelight as they ploughed flesh.

A quad went down, a backhand swing by a black-haired Viking burying an axe in his neck. The man was fearsomely fast, tall, lean, muscles like knots in rope along dirt-stained arms. Tuttugu ran forwards, screaming as if gripped by the worst kind of terror, and hammered his axe into the black-haired man’s chest before he could wrench his own axe from the quad’s vertebrae. I saw Hardanger men hurrying along either wall of the hall, weapons drawn. A path that would see them converge on the doorway where I stood. In response I chased after Tuttugu, between the tables. Sometimes advance is the best form of retreat. Inadvertently I kicked the severed head of the first man to die and sent it rolling away towards the melee.