The Liar's Key

A light rain began to fall, driven across the sands at a shallow angle by the wind off the sea.

“Bugger.” I took shelter behind the boat.

I sat with my back to the hull, the damp sand under my arse, legs out before me, boot heels pushing little trenches into the stuff. I could have got in and wedged myself back into the prow but I’d had enough of boats to last a lifetime.

I retreated again into my dream of Vermillion, eyes fixed on the black sand but seeing the sun-baked terracotta roofs of the west town, threaded by narrow alleys and divided by broad avenues. I could smell the spice and smoke, see the pretty girls and highborn ladies walking where merchants sold their wares on carpet and stall. Troubadours filled the evening with serenades and the old songs that everyone knows. I missed the crowds, relaxed and happy, and the warmth. I would have paid a gold crown for just an hour of a summer day in Red March. The food too. I just wanted to eat something that hadn’t been pickled or salted or blackened on an open fire. Along the Strada Honorous or in Adam’s Plaza the hawkers roamed with trays of sweetmeats or pastry trees laden with dangling delicacies . . . my stomach rumbled loud enough to break the spell.

Gull cries rang out, mournful across the desolation of that shore. Shivering, I huddled deeper into my cloak. Snorri and Tuttugu had long since vanished over the first ridge. I wondered if Tuttugu was wishing he’d stayed behind yet. In Vermillion I would have a day of hawking with Barras Jon, or be out at the horse track with the Greyjar brothers. Evening would see us all gathered at the Royal Jug, or down by the river in the Ale Gardens, preparing for a night of wenching, or should Omar join us, dice and cards at the Lucky Sevens. God, I missed those days . . . Mind, if I turned up at the Lucky Sevens now how long would it be before Maeres Allus heard I was under one of his roofs and invited me to have a private word? A smile twisted my lips as I remembered Snorri hacking the arm from Cutter John, Maeres’s torturer. Even so, Vermillion would not be a healthy place for me until that bit of unpleasantness was sorted out.

The cries of the gulls, earlier so poignant against the bleakness of the landscape, had grown raucous and swollen to cacophony.

“Bloody birds.” I looked for a stone but none lay to hand.

Throwing the first stone . . . a simple pleasure. Once my life had been one simple pleasure after the next. I wondered what Barras and the boys would make of me, returning in my heathen rags, leaner, my sword notched, scars to show. Less than a year would have passed but would things still be the same? Could they? Would those old pastimes still satisfy? When I finally rode through the Red Gates would I really be back . . . or had the moment somehow passed, never to be recaptured? I’d seen too much on my journey. Learned too much. I wanted my ignorance back. And my bliss.

Something splatted on my forehead. I reached to wipe the dribbles from my cheek, fingers coming away gooey with white muck.

“Fucking bloody . . .” Weakness forgotten, I lurched to my feet, fist raised in impotent rage at the gulls circling overhead. “Bastards!” I wheeled seaward, intent on finding a stone lower down the beach.

Not until I’d found my stone—a nice flatish piece of black-grey slate, smoothed by the waves and with that perfect round-in-the hand feel—and started to straighten up for my reckoning with the gulls did I notice the longboat. Still a ways out among the very first breakers, sail furled, forty oars splashing rhythmically as they drove it forward. I stood, jaw hanging, shocked into stillness. To either side of the prow a red eye had been painted, staring forward, heavy with threat.

“Shit.” I dropped my stone. I’d seen this before. A memory from our trek north. Looking down upon the Uulisk Fjord. A longboat made tiny with the distance. A red dot at its prow. These were Hardanger men. Red Vikings. They might even have Edris Dean with them if the bastard had escaped the Black Fort. Two Vikings stood in the prow, round rune-marked shields, wolf-skin cloaks, red hair streaming around their shoulders, axes ready, close enough to see the iron eye rings and nose guards on their helms. “Shit.” I scrambled back, grabbed my sword, snatched up the smallest of three bags of provisions, started running.

A winter of over-eating and over-boozing had done little for my fitness, the only exercise I got happening under the furs. The breath came ragged from my lungs before I even reached the first ridge. What had been a dull ache of ribs crushed beneath the weight of the Fenris wolf rapidly flared into the pain of dagger-driven-into-lung with each gasp of air. On reaching the higher ground I risked pausing to turn around. The Hardanger men had their longboat beached with a dozen of them busy around it. At least twice that number had already started up the slope on my trail, scrambling over the rocks as if catching a southerner would make their day. And yes, in the midst of them, bareheaded, a solid fellow in a studded leather jerkin, sword hilt jutting over his shoulder, iron-grey hair with that blue-black streak and bound at the back into a tight queue. “Edris fucking Dean.” I seemed to be making a habit of being chased up mountains by the man.