The Last Light of the Sun Page 13

  He did know her name by then. Anrid. They called her “the Serpent,” though, by summer’s end. She hadn’t come to him in the town again nor, in fact, did it occur to him to ask her to do so. There were enough girls about for a governor, no need to get entangled in that way with seers who kept snakes by their beds in the dark or wrapped them around their bodies to watch stones split flesh and crack bone in the morning light.

  Jormsvik was more a fortress than a city.

  For one thing, only the mercenaries themselves and their servants or slaves lived within the walls. The rope-makers, sailmakers, armourers, tavern-keepers, carpenters, metalsmiths, fishermen, bakers, fortune-tellers all lived in the unruly town outside the walls. There were no women allowed inside Jormsvik, though prostitutes were scattered through the twisting streets and alleys just outside. There was money for a woman to make here, beside a large garrison.

  You had to fight someone to become one of the men of Jormsvik, and fight steadily to stay in. Until you became a leader, when your battles might reasonably be expected to be all for hire and profit—if you stayed out of the tavern brawls.

  For three generations the mercenaries of this fortress by the sea had been known and feared—and employed—through the world. They had fought at the triple walls of Sarantium (on both sides, at different times) and in Ferrieres and Moskav. They had been hired (and hired away) by feuding lords vying for eminence here in the Erling lands, as far north as the places where the sky flashed colours in the cold nights and the reindeer herds ran in the tens of thousands. One celebrated company had been in Batiara, joining a Karchite incursion towards fabled Rhodias forty years ago. Only six of them had returned—wealthy. You received your fee in advance, and shared it out beforehand, but then you divided the spoils of war among the survivors.

  Survivors could do well.

  First, you had to survive getting in. There were young men desperate or reckless enough to try each year, usually after the winter ended. Winter defined the northlands: its imminent arrival; the white, fierce hardness of the season; then the stirring of blood and rivers when it melted away.

  Spring was busiest at the gates of Jormsvik. The procedure was known everywhere. Goatherds and slaves knew it. You rode up or walked up to the walls. Shouted a name—sometimes even your real one—to the watch, issued a challenge to let you in. That same day, or the next morning, a man drawn by lot would come out to fight you.

  The winner went to bed inside the walls. The loser was usually dead. He didn’t have to be, you could yield and be spared, but it wasn’t anything to count on. The core of Jormsvik’s reputation lay in being feared, and if you let farmboys challenge you and walk away to tell of it by a winter’s turf fire in some bog-beset place, you weren’t as fearsome as all that, were you?

  Besides which, it made sense for those inside to deter challengers any way they could. Sometimes the sword rune could be drawn from the barrel on a morning by a fighter who’d been too enthusiastically engaged in the taverns all night, or with the women, or both, and sometimes it wasn’t just a farmboy at the gates.

  Sometimes, someone came who knew what he was doing. They’d all gotten in that same way, hadn’t they? Sometimes you could die outside, and then the gate swung open and a new mercenary was welcomed under whatever name he gave—they didn’t care in Jormsvik, everyone had a story in his past. He’d be told where his pallet was, and his mess hall and captain. Same as the man he’d replaced, which could be unpleasant if the dead man had friends, which was usually the case. But this was a fortress for the hardest men in the world, not a warm meadhall among family.

  You got to the meadhalls of Ingavin by dying with a weapon to hand. Time then for easiness, among ripe, sweet, willing maidens, and the gods. On this earth, you fought.

  BERN WAS AWARE that he’d made a mistake, almost immediately after stooping through the low door of the alehouse outside the walls. It wasn’t a question of thieves—the fighting men of Jormsvik were their own brutal deterrent to bandits near their gates. It was the mercenaries themselves, and the way of things here.

  A stranger, he thought, a young man arriving alone in summer with a sword at his side, could only be here for one reason. And if he was going to issue a challenge in the morning, it made nothing but sense for any man in this ill-lit room (which was nonetheless bright enough to expose him for what he was) to protect himself and his fellows in obvious ways against what might happen on the morrow.

  They could kill him tonight, he realized, rather too late, though it didn’t even have to come to that. Those on the benches closest to where he’d sat down (too far from the doorway, another mistake) smiled at him, asked after his health and the weather and crops in the north. He answered, as briefly as he could. They smiled again, bought him drinks. Many drinks. One leaned over and offered him the dice cup.

  Bern said he had no money to gamble, which was true. They said—laughing—he could wager his horse and sword. He declined. At the table they laughed again. Big men, almost all of them, one or two smaller than himself, but muscled and hard. Bern coughed in the dense smoke of the room. They were cooking meat over two open fires.

  He was sweating; it was hot in here. He wasn’t used to this. He’d been sleeping outdoors for a fortnight now, riding south into Vinmark’s summer, trees green and the young grass, salmon leaping in the still-cold rivers. He’d been riding quickly since he’d surprised and robbed a man for his sword and dagger and the few coins in his purse. No point coming to Jormsvik without a weapon. He hadn’t killed the man, which might have been a mistake, but he’d never yet killed any man. Would have to, tomorrow, or he’d very likely die here.

  Someone banged down another tin cup of ale on the board in front of him, sloshing some of it out. “Long life,” the man said and moved on, didn’t even bother to stay to share the toast. They wanted him rendered senseless tonight, he realized, slack-limbed and slow in the morning.

  Then he thought about it again. He had no need to challenge tomorrow. Could wake with a pounding head and spend the day clearing it, challenge the day after, or the morning after that.

  And they’d know it, he realized, every man in this room. They’d all done this before. No, his first thought had been the wiser one: they wanted him drunk enough to make a mistake tonight, get into a brawl, be crippled or killed when there was nothing at stake—for them. Should he be flattered they thought he was worth it? He wasn’t fooled. These were the most experienced soldiers-for-hire in the north: they didn’t take chances when they didn’t need to. There was no glory in winning a wall-challenge when the sword rune was drawn, only risk. Why take it, if you didn’t have to? If the foolish traveller came into an ale room the night before, showing his sword?

  At least he’d hidden the horse, among the trees north of town. Gyllir was accustomed to being tied in the woods now. He wondered if the stallion still remembered Thinshank’s barn. How long did horses remember things?

  He was afraid. Trying not to let them see it. He thought of the water then, that dead-black night, guiding the grey horse into the sea from the stony beach. Expecting to die. Ice-cold, end of winter, whatever lay waiting in the straits, under the water: what he’d survived. Was there a reason he’d lived? Did Ingavin or Thünir have a purpose in this? Probably not, actually. He wasn’t … important enough. But there was still no need to walk open-eyed into a different death tonight. Not after coming out of the sea alive on a Vinmark strand as a grey day dawned.

  He lifted the new cup and drank, just a little. A bad mistake, coming in here. You died of mistakes like that. But he’d been tired of solitude, nights alone. Had thought to at least have a night among other men, hear human voices, laughter, before he died in the morning fighting a mercenary. He hadn’t thought it through.

  A woman stood up, came over towards him, hips swaying. Men made way in the narrow space between tables for her, though not without squeezing where she could be reached. She smiled, ignored them, watched Bern watching her. He felt dizzy
already. Ale after not drinking for so long, the smoke, smells, the crowd. It was so hot. The woman had been sitting with a burly, dark-bearded man clad in animal skins. A bear-warrior. They had them here in Jormsvik, it seemed. He remembered his father: Some say the berserkirs use magic. They don’t, but you never want to fight one if you can help it. Bern saw, through fire smoke and lantern light, that the man was watching him as the woman approached.

  He knew this game, too, suddenly. Stood up just as she stopped in front of him, her heavy breasts swinging free beneath a loose tunic.

  “You’re a pretty man,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Bern muttered. “Thank you. Need to piss. Right back.”

  He twisted past her. She grabbed deftly for his private parts. With an effort, Bern refrained from glancing guiltily at the very big man she’d just left.

  “Hurry back and make me happy,” she called after him.

  Someone laughed. Someone—big, blond, hard-eyed—looked up then, from the dicing.

  Bern slapped a coin on the counter and ducked outside. He took a deep breath; salt in the night air here, sound of sea, stars overhead, the white moon high. The nearer ones in the room would have seen him pay. Would know he wasn’t coming back.

  He moved then, quickly. He could die here.

  It was very dark, no lights to speak of outside the inns and the low, jumbled wooden dwellings and the rooms where the whores took their men. A mixed blessing, the darkness: he’d be harder to find, but might easily run headlong into a group of people, trying to make his way north and out from this warren of buildings. A fleeing stranger, Bern was certain, would be happily seized to be questioned at leisure.

  He ran up the first black alley he came to, smelled urine and offal, stumbled through a pile of garbage, choking. Could he just walk, he wondered? Avoid being seen to be running from something?

  He heard noises behind him, from the alehouse door. No, he couldn’t just walk. Needed to move. It would be a sport for them. Something to enliven a night outside the fortress walls, waiting for a new contract and a journey somewhere. A way to keep in fighting trim.

  In the blackness he bumped into a barrel lying on its side. Stooped, groped, righted it. No top. Grunting, he turned it over, sweating now, and clambered up, praying the bottom was solid enough. He stood, gauged distance as best he could in the dark, and jumped for the slanting roof of the house above. Caught a purchase, levered a knee up, awkward with the sword at his hip, and pulled himself onto the roof. If there was someone inside they’d hear him, he knew. Could raise an alarm.

  When you had no obvious choices, you acted as if what you needed to do could be done.

  Why was he remembering so many of his father’s words tonight?

  Prone on the roof above the alley, he heard three or four men go by in the street. He was being hunted. He was a fool, the son of a fool, deserved whatever fate he met tonight. He didn’t think they’d kill him. A broken leg or arm would spare someone the need to fight him tomorrow with a risk involved. On the other hand, they were drunk, and enjoying themselves.

  Wiser to surrender?

  More sounds, a second group. “Pretty-faced little shiteater,” he heard someone say, at the entrance to the alley. “I didn’t like him.”

  Someone laughed. “You don’t like anyone, Gurd.”

  “Do yourself with a hammer,” Gurd said. “Or do it to that little goatherd who thinks he can join us.” There came the unmistakable sound of a blade being drawn from a scabbard.

  Bern decided that surrender was not a promising option.

  Carefully, holding his own sword out of the way, he backed along the roof. He needed to go north, get beyond these houses and into the fields. He didn’t think they’d care enough to leave drinking and go looking for him out there in the night. And come morning, once he rode up to the gates and issued a challenge, he’d be safe. Although that probably wasn’t the best way to describe what would follow then.

  He could have stayed at home, a servant for two more years. He could have hired himself out on a farm somewhere on the mainland, invented a name for himself, been a servant or a labourer there.

  That wasn’t what he’d ridden the grey horse into the sea to become. Everyone died. If you died before the walls of Jormsvik, perhaps the sword in your hand would get you to Ingavin’s halls.

  He didn’t actually believe that, truth be told. If it were so, any farmhand could get himself run through by a mercenary and drink mead forever with smooth-skinned maidens among the gods, or until the Serpent devoured the Worldtree and time came to a stop.

  It couldn’t be that easy.

  Neither was moving on this roof, which slanted too much. They all slanted, to let the snow slide in winter. Bern skidded sideways, dug in fingers and boots to stop himself, heard the sword scrape. Had to hope, could only hope, no one else heard it. He lay still again, sweat trickling down his sides. No sounds below except for running feet. He slowly manoeuvred himself around to look the other way.

  There was a ramshackle, two-storey wooden house on the other side of another narrow alley. Just the one, the others were all one-level, like the house he was on. One of the new-style stone chimneys ran up an outside wall, set back from the street, he saw. They didn’t have these on the isle. It was meant to allow a hearth, warmth and food, on a second floor. It looked as if it was going to fall over. There was a window in that second storey, overlooking his rooftop. The wooden shutters were open. One hung crookedly, needing repair. He saw a candle burning on the ledge, illuminating a room—and the face of the girl watching him.

  Bern’s heart lurched. Then he saw her put a finger to her lips.

  “Gurd,” she called down, “you coming up?”

  A laugh below. They had gone right around, were in the street on the other side now. “Not to you. You hurt me last time, you’re wild when I do you.”

  Someone else laughed. The girl across the way swore tiredly. “How ’bout you, Holla?”

  “I go with Katrin, you know that. She hurts me when I don’t do her!”

  Gurd laughed this time. “You see a stranger?” He was right below. If Bern moved to the roof’s edge he could look down on them. He heard the question and closed his eyes. Everyone died.

  “Didn’t,” said the girl. “Why?”

  “Pretty farmboy thinks he’s going to be a mercenary.”

  Her voice was bored. “You find him, send him up. I need the money.”

  “We find him, he’s no good to you. Trust me.”

  The girl laughed. The footsteps moved on. Bern opened his eyes, saw her turn her head to watch the men below go down the lane. She turned back and looked at him. Didn’t smile now, nothing like that. She moved back, however, and gestured for him to come across the way.

  Bern looked. A small window in a flat wall, above his level. A slanting roof where he was, no purchase to run and jump. He bit his lip. The heroes of the Days of Giants would have made this jump.

  He wasn’t one of them. He’d end up clattering down the face of the wall to the street below.

  Slowly he shook his head, shrugged. “Can’t,” he mouthed, looking across at her.

  She came back into the window frame, looked left and right down the lane. Leaned out. “They’re around the alley. I’ll get you at the door. Wait till I open.”

  She hadn’t given him up. She could have. He couldn’t stay on this roof all night. He had two choices, as he saw it. Jump down, keep to shadows and alleys, try to get north and out of town with a number of fighting men—he didn’t know how many—prowling the streets for him. Or let her get him at the door.

  He pulled himself nearer the edge. The sword scraped again. He swore under his breath, looked over and down. Saw where the door was. The girl was still at the window, waiting. He looked back at her and he nodded his head. A decision. You came over into the world—crossed from an island on a stolen horse—you had decisions to make, in the dark sometimes, and living until morning could turn on them.

/>   She disappeared from the window, leaving the candle there, so small and simple a light.

  He stayed where he was, watching it, this glimmer in darkness. There was a breeze. Up here on the roof he could smell the sea again, hear the distant surge of water beneath the voices and laughter of men. Always and ever beneath those things.

  An idea came to him, the beginnings of an idea.

  He heard a sound. Looked down. She carried no light, was a shadow against the shadows of opened door and house wall. No one in the laneway, at least not now. He seemed to have decided to do this. Bern slid himself to the lowest point on the pitched roof, held his scabbard with one hand, and dropped. He stumbled to his knees, got up, went quickly to her, and in.

  She closed the door behind him. It creaked. No bolt or bar, he saw. Two other doors inside, off the narrow corridor: one beside them, one at the back.

  She followed his glance. Whispered, “They’re in the taverns. Upstairs is mine. Step over the fourth stair, it’s missing.”

  In the dark, Bern counted, stepped over the fourth stair. The stairs creaked, as well. Each sound made him wince. Her door was ajar. He went in, she was right behind him. This one she closed, slid down a bar to lock it. Bern looked at it. A kick would splinter lock and door.

  He turned, saw the candle in the window. A strangeness, to be looking at it now from this side. Not a feeling he could explain. He crossed and looked out at the roof across the lane, where he’d been moments before, the white moon above it, and stars.

  He turned back into the room and looked at her. She wore an undyed tunic belted at the waist, no jewellery, paint on her lips and cheeks. She was thin, legs and bones, brown hair, very large eyes, her face thin, too. Not really what a man would want in a woman for the night, though some of the soldiers might like them young, an illusion of innocence. Or like a boy. An illusion of something else.