The Shades of Winter a Novel of Averraine Page 5

  It didn’t extend that far. Lavran stopped so abruptly that we all bumped into each other, biting back the natural grunts of surprise.

  “Trapped,” I muttered, but at the same moment Lavran whispered “Door.”

  I felt my heart sink. It could not possibly be this easy. That would suggest our adversaries were almost as mind-numbingly stupid as we were. I didn’t believe it.

  For a really good ambush, obviously, you make sure that your target has no way out. That they had not confronted the possibility that we might escape them, even temporarily, could not be less likely. Either this door was locked and barred, or what was on the other side was immeasurably worse than what was, I was certain, creeping stealthily up behind us.

  Lavran had no such doubts. He found the latch, and eased the door open just a tiny sliver, peeking out, and cool, sweet air rushed in.

  We could even hear the sound of waves, lapping gently onto the rocky shore. Then Lavran noiselessly shut the door again.

  “A few,” he whispered. “Not many. It’s right above the pier. We can take them, easy.”

  They were looking at me. I was trying to think why it should have come to this.

  I’d been prepared to die gloriously, even if it was a forlorn hope that we could have struck more than a mild nervousness into Istara’s heart. It would have at least been a gesture, a salute to what we might have been.

  It would have been, in the end, the choice of easy heroics. Any warrior knows how to die.

  Living is more difficult. Living and making anyone believe where our true danger now lay seemed nearly impossible.

  I said softly, “Ingvold and Halvar, you take him and make for a ship. The small one, if you can. Get him away. Take care he survives. You’ll understand, I think, once you’re away. The rest of us will try to win through as well, as many as we can manage, but we guard Ingvold and Halvar and make sure they escape, right?”

  They all made little, soft sounds of assent. Sacrificing themselves, that was fine. They were comfortable with that. We had been trained to this, really, all our lives.

  This time, when he opened the door, Lavran eased it a little further inwards. We could hear them now, low voiced muttering, and then a curse and a laugh. Lavran hooked his thumb left, and stepped back, letting the door swing fully open, and like a fool, I leapt through it without a thought.

  The squeal of the hinges and my precipitate move gave the game away, but it was, fortunately, too late. They were still drawing weapons when I reached the first one, and I saw Raisa running past me, then Oddhi and the rest, cutting a path for Ingvold and Halvar.

  I don’t know what the people who lived here had been thinking. To this day, I cannot fathom why they had not put more, and more alert, warriors in our path. Did they think us addled? Had they assumed that the man who’d lain in wait for us would have cut all of us down singlehanded?

  But there it was: I could see Ingvold had reached the boat, Halvar covering his back, and one by one, we battled our way down the pier, with fewer and fewer fighters against us. Only a handful of man-lengths lay between us and our escape now.

  An arrow clattered onto the stones nearby.

  I looked up and saw three figures on the high wall above. Archers. Damn. And now another group was emerging from the main doors, twenty strong and running as if at long last, it had finally occurred to them that we might, in fact, get away after all.

  “Now!” Raisa yelled, and as one we turned and ran for the boat, tumbling off the stone docking onto the deck below.

  There is this about having spent three decades trading and raiding as one. We knew ships and we knew routine. We wasted no time. There was no fumbling about, no cursing and no confusion. People threw themselves into accustomed places, smoothly unshipping their oars, while Ingvold, having tossed our cargo into the bow, ripped the rope from its moorings.

  Our pursuers were still shouting over which ship they should board to give chase when we began to pull away.

  I had scrambled to the steering oar and was pulling it heavily to. Out beyond the harbour, the fog was thicker than ever. If we had a chance, it lay straight ahead of us, but it was a slim chance at best. Once fogbound, of course, we might slip away unseen.

  There was a fairly equal chance that we’d slip away right into some unmarked reef or shoal, to drown unknown and unlamented, of course, but that was in the hands of the gods at this point.

  The sound was fading behind us. I risked a look; despite Audric giving me the high-sign that we were well into the mist and had lost them, I needed to know for certain. But he was right, the fog had closed down behind us, although not, I feared, for long. They knew what direction we’d gone. They might well predict which way we’d go next. An even gamble, for them and us.

  Sometimes, all you have to go on is instinct. I had no actual ideas left in me. My only hope was that we could hide from them long enough for us to figure out what it was we needed to do. I pushed the steering oar out and felt the ship swing around, and then I steadied her again. There wasn’t much swell, which was truly lucky, and she moved silent and swift, as we rowed south and west, deeper into the gloom.

  Chapter 11

  Once more, we committed ourselves to silence. The fog might muffle sound, but then again, the weirdest little bounce might give us away. Even the oars were being rowed slow and careful now, just enough to keep us moving steadily on the waves.

  It was cold, too, and getting colder. Both my back and my knee were stiff and aching, and it was getting wetter, as tiny droplets formed on everything the fog touched. To make matters worse, Elke had gotten cut badly by one of our attackers. Battle-rage had carried her through the worst of it: none of us were, in fact, aware that she was hurt until the immediate danger finally seemed past, and she had slid off her rowing bench and slumped to the deckboards, groaning.

  We spent precious minutes, with only Ingvold and Lavran remaining at their oars, while we did what we could to stop the blood and get her easy, all the while hoping that her grunts of pain weren’t giving us away.

  And there was the problem of time, as well. We’d probably not beached the Sea-Cat until midnight. For all we knew, it might nearly be dawn, and that might be our undoing.

  Straining my ears in the darkness, I heard no sounds of other ships, other oars. There wasn’t enough wind for a sail, but I listened for the sighing of ropes against wood, anyway. If I could not hear them, might they still be able to hear us?

  And hard on the heels of that thought, the gods decided to put it to the test.

  Our cargo woke up.

  He groaned, first, and we all of us froze once more in alarm, then relaxed back. If they hadn’t heard Elke, it was unlikely that another such sound could give us away.

  But then, of course he yelled, that same angry demand for Skeid to lend him strength to kill these traitors. He was, incredibly, trying to struggle to his feet.

  Lavran got up and hit him, hard. He fell back, unconscious once more, and this time, there was blood.

  Not good. What was the point of this, if we killed him in the process?

  But there were other, more pressing concerns. From far off, it seemed, there was a shout of warning or triumph, and suddenly everyone was hard at their oars, while I turned our nose south a little more and west again. If they had any sense of where that noise had come from, we were in serious trouble.

  I kept trying to peer into the fog, squirming around, hoping to see farther in every direction I could, because there was another danger, too. If my understanding of the sound we’d heard was off , which it probably was: fog, as I’ve said, does strange things to noises over water, and they might well, in that larger vessel, run right over us before either ship had time to know it.

  A bit awkward for them, of course, since our unwilling passenger was important enough for them to want a full recovery.

  And an unbelievable disaster for us. The entire night would be a literal dead loss.

  But with every moment, I was
gaining a kind of crazy confidence. Whatever hampered us, it hampered them just as much. Simple logic dictated our probable course, and they would more than likely follow that logic.

  I had, by now, thrown logic to the winds.

  The night seemed to go on forever. We’d heard nothing more, and we’d lapsed back into that slow rhythm, trying not to move too far or too fast. I could have told them to put their backs into it, but that might have sparked some questions, questions I had no easy answers for. They needed to come to this in their own time.

  At some point, I was aware that a breeze had picked up, and that our cover was lifting. It was still full dark, as far as I could tell, which meant that our time in Alvandir had probably been shorter than I’d figured.

  Audric leaned forward, and rested on his oar.

  “Sail?” he said, hopefully.

  “No, not yet. Lavran, you’re closest. Is he still breathing?”

  “Aye.”

  It didn’t seem as if the Istarans had caught onto which way we’d headed. I could see nothing of them, and if we were running blind, well, so would they be.

  I leaned on the steering oar, and pointed the boat’s nose more firmly west. We might still need to move south a little more, if things went the way they seemed to be going, because the drawing I’d studied so carefully back at Dyrsholt had shown the greater current that circled up and around before diving back down to run hard along the Camrhys coast. It might shorten our journey by a day or more.

  It seemed to me that the boat had been crewed by people who preferred to fish the open waters. Just to my left, there was a neatly folded mound of nets, and beyond them, I could see a drift-line tucked up against the strakes, a folded square of sail-cloth with a thick rope coiled over it.

  I nodded at Raisa, who got up and took the steering oar, and I knelt and began uncoiling the rope, tossing the cloth out over the stern.

  You can use a sea anchor in a couple of ways. The main one is to keep you steady, especially in a storm, when the important thing is to stop yourself from turning sideways to the waves. But it also slows you down, keeps you from moving too far off course, and very handy for fishing it is, too, if everyone is busy trying to haul in the nets.

  We needed time. I needed time. This might give me some.

  I could feel every pair of eyes on me as I worked. When I turned, I saw that even Elke had managed, despite the pain, to pull herself up to rest against the ripstrake, and was watching me with a serious question in her eyes.

  “All right,” Sigurd said. “We’ve run this far along your road, Tam. Now suppose you tell us where it’s going?”

  “Let’s set the sail,” I said. It wasn’t a stalling gambit, in fact. They couldn’t row and think, not sensibly, anyway.

  “Is that wise? What if they see us on the horizon?”

  “Can you see them? We’ll keep a watch, no fear. But it’s my guess they’re halfway to the north coast by now.”

  “And so should we be.”

  That was Oddhi. He never likes the unexpected choice.

  But once the sail was up, things got easier. It always feels better, when even a little wind takes you, and the drift line was keeping us more or less steady, so we could all breathe a bit easier.

  “Well, then, suppose you tell us why we’re dragging this lump of a crazed Istaran about with us?”

  I glanced down the keel to where the topic of discussion lay.

  “I need you to look at him. Really look.”

  They did it, to no effect at all.

  “What is it you want us to see?” Lavran was getting bored.

  “Imagine him twenty years ago. With both eyes.”

  I was more than nervous, now. If they couldn’t see it? And why should they? They hadn’t fought him, and even so, I wasn’t sure of any of this myself.

  Raisa had given the steering oar back into my keeping. She was close to him now, balancing herself on the thwarts with practiced ease against the rhythm of the waves that rocked us, staring down at him intently.

  She turned, eyes wide.

  “No,” she said. She flung herself onto her bench. “No, you’re wrong.”

  I said, softly, “But if I’m not?”

  And then they all began to speak at once, in denial and anger.

  “Stop it,” I said. “Do you want them to hear the echoes on Alvandir?”

  That, at least, they believed.

  “You didn’t fight him. No one else throws an axe fake like that. Please, just look at him.”

  “I don’t need to look at him. He’s dead,” said Oddhi. “I know it’s hard, hardest of all for you, Tam, but he’s dead.”

  I took a deep breath. “Tell me, Oddhi, how does a man’s body burn beyond recognition, but his silver ring survive on his hand without a mark?”

  Until the words were out, I hadn’t known that I had ever thought them. They had lain deep and hidden in some secret place, never whispered, not even to my own heart, but once said aloud, I knew I’d lived with them for a very long time.

  No one answered. No one was looking at me, now. The silence felt as brittle as ice. I wondered for the first time in my life if there was a breaking point for us.

  “Well,” said Lavran, eventually. “Why don’t we ask him?”

  Chapter 12

  He was awake. I didn’t know how long he’d been listening to us, but at least this time, he wasn’t trying to get onto his feet or shouting at us. He looked a bit puzzled, actually.

  “Right, then, my lad. Sit up, there’s a good boy.” Ingvold manhandled him into a huddle, leaning him against the side as if he were a recalcitrant puppy.

  “I will kill you all.”

  It was a spell-breaker, that snarling threat. We, all of us, began to laugh.

  He glared at us.

  “You think me powerless, you cowards? Only set me free and you will taste death.”

  “Well, here’s a thought. Tell us your name, oh warrior! And then mayhap we’ll talk about freeing you.”

  He yelled that plea to Skeid again, and began to wrestle with the leather pinning his arms at his back. It must have hurt, though, because after a moment, he slipped back against the ship’s hull, and fixed that one-eyed glare on Ingvold.

  “What foolery is this? Well you know my name, traitor.”

  “Do I? Well, just for the deed-echo, then. Come on, give me your lineage.”

  He gazed back at us with that blue, blue eye, and an intense look of utter certainty came over him. He drew in a breath and said, proudly,

  “I am Thrain Stronghand, son of Thrand, chiefest of the Skjalfang and avenger of all my kin!”

  And that was when the second argument began.

  • • •

  All peoples, wherever they dwell, have their tales of heroes.

  And their tales are all the same in this: they hover over us from a far-off past, in a time almost forgotten, dimly lit by ancient fires and glowing with the gold of age.

  Thrain Stronghand was a story from those times, a man so fully wedded to honour that he killed off an entire clan to avenge his own losses. A paragon, Thrain had been, and it was, moreover, one of those tales of glory we held in common with Istara. The Skjalfang were all of us, more or less. Jolgier was a Skjalfang through and through, but then so had been Queen Katla, by way of her father’s kin.

  If Thrain had ever lived at all, though, it would have to have been fully twenty generations past. I had heard the Lawsingers recite Katla’s lineage over her pyre, and it could have been even longer than that for all I knew, as I hadn’t been keeping count at the time.

  We weren’t arguing our prisoner’s identity any more. His mental state seemed more of a problem.

  He wasn’t having any of it. As soon as we started in on what sort of madness would take someone that way, he began shouting at us again.

  We were murderers and traitors, betrayers, thieves. We were evil scum, and Skeid would soon grant him his wish and we would be lying dead at his feet.


  “I will have my vengeance, for your murders of the innocent! Did you not slay my beloved wife and my son where they lay sleeping, you foul beasts? You will pay for your treachery.”

  “What were their names?”

  Sigurd, as he often had before, stopped us all cold, including our furious hero.

  “What?”

  “You heard me well enough. What were their names, this beloved wife and child of yours, that you are so eager to shed blood over?”

  That’s the thing, of course. No one ever names Thrain’s wife, still less his son. They show up in the story just long enough to get killed, so that no one blames Thrain for the slaying of hundreds of innocent farmers and thralls who happened to be in his way.

  He opened his mouth, but no words came. Instead he looked out at us, desperate, and for one fleeting moment, fearful and confused, and the long years between us suddenly fell away, leaving just a man we’d known once, a man we’d loved, a man we’d mourned and buried full twenty years ago.

  “Oh, Njall,” Raisa said softly, “What have they done to you?”

  • • •

  We had another couple of go-rounds with this over the next while.

  Njall was alternating between attempts to free himself, along with bouts of shouting, and then relapses into sullen silence, during which we slowly came to the obvious conclusion that it was pointless to take him home and proclaim him as the ruler of Raeth.

  First of all, no one would believe us.

  Hell, we didn’t believe us.

  And what good, said Oddhi, would it do, even if they did believe, with him screaming that he was a mythical, long-dead hero? All it could do was make a very bad situation worse.

  That he had been magicked in some way, that his mind was clouded, that we were in no way equipped to deal with this, and that we needed expert help, well, all of that was undoubtedly true, but it got us nowhere. The massacre at Heilaegr was now a much bigger loss than ever - what few wise ones that might have escaped it were probably widely scattered, and not necessarily the ones with the skills we needed.

  And then there was the other problem, the one we were hardly willing to speak about aloud, hanging over everything we said and did.