The Liar's Key

“All right.” I cut across the one-eyed warrior again. “You can go. But I’m staying in the boat!”

The fellow across from Snorri turned a cold blue eye my way, the other socket empty, the firelight catching the twitch of ugly little muscles in the shadowed hollow. “This fit-firar speaks for you now, Snorri?”

I knew the insult to be a grim one. The Vikings can think of nothing worse to call you than “land man,” one who doesn’t know the sea. That’s the trouble with these backwater villages—everyone’s tetchy. They’re all ready to jump up at a moment’s notice and spill your guts. It’s over-compensation of course, for living in freezing huts on an inhospitable beach. At home I’d damn the fellow’s eyes . . . well eye at least . . . and let one half of the palace guard hold me back while the other half beat him out of town. The trouble with a friend like Snorri is that he’s the sort to take things at face value and think I really did want to defend my own honour. Knowing Snorri he’d stand by clapping while the savage carved me up.

The man, Gauti I think Snorri had called him, had one hand on the axe before him, casual enough, fingers spread, but he kept that cold eye on me and there was little to read in it that wasn’t murder. This could go very wrong, very quickly. The sudden urge to piss nearly overtook me. I smiled the bold Jalan smile, ignoring the sick feeling in my stomach, and drew my dagger, a wicked piece of black iron. That got some attention, though less than in any place I’d ever seen an edge drawn before. I did at least get the satisfaction of seeing Gauti flinch, his fingers half closing about his axe hilt. To my credit, I do look like the kind of hero who would demand satisfaction and have the skill to take it.

“Jal . . .” Snorri with a half frown, gesturing with his eyes at the eight inches of knife in my hand.

I pushed aside some axe hafts and in a sudden move inverted my blade so the point hovered a quarter inch above the table. Again Gauti’s eye twitched. I saw Snorri quietly lay his hand on the man’s axe head. Several warriors half rose then settled back in their places.

One great asset in my career as secret coward has been a natural ability to lie fluently in body language. Half of it is . . . what did Snorri call it? Serendipity. Pure lucky accident. When scared I flush scarlet, but in a fit young man overtopping six foot by a good two inches it usually comes across as outrage. My hands also rarely betray me. I may be quivering with fright inside but they hold steady. Even when the terror is so much that they do finally shake it’s often as not mistaken as rage. Now though, as I set knifepoint to wood, my hands kept firm and sure. In a few strokes I sketched out an irregular blob with a horn at the top and lobe at the bottom.

“What is it?” The man across from me.

“A cow?” A woman of middle years, very drunk, leaning over Snorri’s shoulder.

“That, men of the clan Olaaf, is Scorron, the land of my enemies. These are the borders. This . . .” I scored a short line across the bottom of the lobe. “This is the Aral Pass where I taught the Scorron army to call me ‘devil.’” I looked up to meet Gauti’s singular glare. “And you will note that not one of these borders is a coastline. So if I were a man of the sea it would mean, in my country, that I could never close with my enemy. In fact every time I set sail I would be running away from them.” I stuck the knife firmly in the centre of Scorron. “Where I come from ‘land men’ are the only men who can go to war.” I let a boy refill my tankard. “And so we learn that insults are like daggers—it matters which way you point them, and where you stand.” And I threw my head back to drain my cup.

Snorri pounded the table, the axes danced, and the laughter came. Gauti leaned back, sour but his ill-temper having lost its edge. The ale flowed. Codfish were brought to table along with some kind of salty grain-mash and dreadful little sea-weed cakes burned nearly black. We ate. More ale flowed. I found myself talking drunkenly to a greybeard with more scar than face about the merits of different kinds of longboat—a subject I acquired my “expertise” on in many separate pieces during innumerable similar drunken conversations with regulars back at the Three Axes. More ale, spilled, splashed, gulped. I think we’d got onto knots by the time I slipped gracefully off the bench and decided to stay where I was.

•   •   •

“Hedwig,” I grumbled, still half-asleep. “Get off me, woman.”

The licking paused, then started up again. I wondered vaguely where I was, and when Hedwig’s tongue had got quite so long. And sloppy. And stinky.