Smoke in the Glass

by Chris Humphreys

  Crouched behind the wicker wall of that balcony, Luck was thinking the same. It was risky, all of it. Uncertain. Yet he knew this: succeed and his people might still be doomed. Fail and they certainly would be.

  Freya was beside him, bow in hand, a quiver full of arrows before her. He hoped she wouldn’t need them. She smiled at him – but he saw his same doubts reflected in her eyes, where her smile didn’t reach.

  He handled his own weapon again, the only one he’d ever been any good with: rope. Like many others, it was a weapon drawn from the farm. If swords were beaten from plough blades, spears straightened from scythes, and axes repurposed from the chopping of wood to the chopping of limbs, rope could be transformed too – into the slingshot that boys and girls would hunt with and give up when they were grown. He’d retained his into adulthood; his left arm and shoulder had grown doubly powerful because his right was so weak, while his aim was so keen that he could put a stone into a bear’s eye at fifty paces. He could also flick a fly off a wall at ten with a whip, or coil a noose over a bull’s horns, wrap a length around its legs, and lower it to the ground.

  None of which will serve me here, he thought, checking and rechecking the two loops he’d tied, following the thick rope from his feet up and over the balcony and through the metal wheel of the building’s winch.

  He licked his lips in sudden panic. This is madness. I should get Hovard to reoccupy the tower. But then he heard the ram’s first crash into the gates and knew it was too late.

  He rose, peered. Arrows were still flying up, though fewer as the attackers realised there was no one shooting down at them. The ram came again and again, each crash splintering the gates and cracking the bar that lay across them. A last rush snapped it, burst the gates. They flew open, the ram withdrew, warriors with shields raised ran screaming in … and stopped, a dozen paces into the square, those following running into the backs of those who’d halted, realising, spreading wider, till they’d reached both sides of the square, formed a shield wall two ranks deep …

  … to face the one-ranked shield wall before them.

  Men and women stared at each other in the near silence, some of the attackers muttering, one man yelling ‘Cowards!’ then going quiet as if embarrassed by his noise. No one was looking up, but Freya had nocked an arrow and was ready in case someone did, and came for them. She and Luck looked down – and watched the biggest warrior yet march through the shattered gates to halt behind his men.

  ‘What the fuck is happening here?’ Stromvar shouted.

  Silence held. He put a hand on the back of the soldier before him, leaned forward to peer. ‘Bjorn! Where are you, you arse-licking coward? Skulking as ever, are you? Too scared to fight at the gates? Two deaths enough for you, are they?’

  Luck looked at Askaug’s wall. Saw his brother in the middle of it lower his shield and raise his head. Careful, Bjorn, he thought, sending the words out. Remember the plan. Keep your temper. Use your wits.

  Then he heard his brother’s laugh. This could be either a good or a bad sign. ‘I have a death here for you, Strum-bum,’ Bjorn called. ‘Care to come and get it? Just you and me?’

  The silence, broken by the two voices, was now shattered by many. Askaug’s men and women let forth a chorus of catcalls and jeers. Those of the Seven Isles responded in kind. It was only when their leader began hitting some, and bellowing at all, that they quietened for him.

  A signal suddenly cut off those around Bjorn. So Stromvar shouted, perhaps too loudly at first. ‘Why should I fight you alone, Bjornie?’ he jeered. ‘I have near double your forces here, and many more outside. Why not overwhelm your ranks and kill you at my leisure?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ Bjorn gave out a large, exaggeratedly fake yawn. ‘Then do so, Stromvar the Dragon. I’m sure you can whip your skalds into writing songs that celebrate your bravery and that they will be sung … oh, right into the middle of next week!’

  With a roar, Stromvar started jerking aside the men before him. ‘Songs? Let’s see what songs you sing, Bjorn the Pretty, with Death Dealer in your throat!’

  He’d broken through his own ranks, waving the sword he’d named. Bjorn stepped from his. ‘Come on then,’ he called.

  ‘Are you certain, quite certain?’ Freya nudged Luck with her foot. She’d pulled the bow string back halfway. ‘I could kill him fast. End this.’

  He still wasn’t certain – but he had to be for her. ‘You will end nothing. His warriors will still fight for him, reclaim his body to be reborn, kill many of us. As many of them will die. And we are going to need every man and woman in the fight ahead, if I am right.’

  ‘I pray you are,’ Freya said, and released the tension in her bow.

  The sound of the first clash came from below. Luck looked, and watched his brother being driven about the square. Stromvar was in a temper, which could mar a less experienced fighter. But the Dragon had scores of kills to his name. He used his anger to add power to his blows, raining them down from height, for he was near half a body taller than Bjorn. His brother deflected the cuts with his sword, used his litheness to slip from side to side to avoid them. But when he took a blow direct on his shield, the force of it crumpled him, and he staggered, only just avoiding the cuts that followed.

  Luck knew also that his brother was fighting without using his main talent: the swift dart and lunge, an adder’s strike and kill. His sword was lighter for that purpose, his shield too. But he could not use that skill, not if he wished to serve Luck’s purpose.

  The men of the Seven Isles were cheering. The men and women of Askaug were largely silent – only releasing a great groan when Stromvar, who’d missed a downward cut when Bjorn had slipped to the right, swung back – and slammed the flat of his blade into Bjorn’s face.

  His brother fell back, blood exploding from his nose. He probably couldn’t see, but somehow must have sensed, the next falling blow. He managed to roll away, as the great sword cut the dirt where he’d just been. Rolled again, staggered back … towards the balcony.

  ‘Get ready,’ said Luck. Freya laid down her bow.

  The blows came even faster now, over and around, lunges and slashes. Bjorn dodged them all, deflecting with his shield, with his sword, with the movement of his body a finger’s width from falling steel. His staggers took him back, ever back – until a last cut across his chest scraped his breastplate with a high, sharp screech and his fall away sent him reeling into the building’s wall.

  Stromvar paused to gloat. It was his mistake. ‘Pretty boy …’ he began.

  ‘Now,’ said Luck, and on the word, he and Freya put a foot each into the plaited loops, grabbed the rope above them, and hurled themselves over the balcony. There was an awful moment when they hung there from the winch, when Luck thought their combined weights might not be as great as their enemy’s, or would snap the machinery. Only a moment though, before the noose he’d stepped into tightened around Stromvar’s left ankle. He flipped upside down and rose past them roaring, while they fell as fast to the ground.

  ‘Now,’ came Hovard’s quiet command. As one, the ranks of Askaug ran out, and re-formed to encircle the front of the building, while a dozen archers ran onto the balcony above and leaned over it with arrows drawn to their ears.

  Stromvar was spinning, roaring, pain and fury making most words unintelligible. After the sudden shock, those of the Seven Isles swung their shield wall to face the other. ‘We’ll fight you!’ one of them cried out. ‘We’ll not stand by and watch our chieftain slaughtered.’

  ‘No one need be slaughtered this day,’ Luck called. ‘We only wish to talk.’

  ‘Talk?’ That word was clear at least, in Stromvar’s anguished yell. ‘You’ve broken my fucking leg and now you wish to talk?’

  ‘If you please,’ replied Luck.

  Bjorn rose and stood beside him, staring up at the suspended god. He wiped some blood from his nose, the
n spat. ‘Oh, he’s very big on talking, my little brother. You’ll soon learn that … Strum-bum.’

  ‘So you are telling me,’ said Stromvar, his broken leg up on the mead hall’s table, ‘that my cousin Beornoth was murdered last summer by this same black-eyed bastard whose corpse you showed me?’

  ‘By him or one like him. Yes,’ replied Luck. ‘I would have to see the body but—’

  ‘You can’t. We burned it, of course. The trunk anyway, since the head was gone.’ For a moment the five gods in the room all shuddered. A head could survive a little time away from the body. It was not anything any of them wanted to experience.

  The fifth god, Einar the Black, who had taken no part in the fighting while recovering from his wound – as a visiting god he’d have fought with his hosts – now ran his finger along the faint line of it around his neck. ‘But why me? Why Beornoth? Why kill the gods? The people love us.’

  ‘Not all the people,’ said Freya, refilling the six goblets from a large jug of hot mead. ‘Could this not be resentful mortals, Luck? There was that group, a hundred years ago, from the northern lakes. They beheaded their god.’

  ‘Yes!’ Stromvar slammed down his goblet again, half empty. ‘Why should these bald, black-eyed fuckers be from a foreign land we’ve never heard of, as you suggest? Einar here is dark enough, as are most of his people in the southern mountains. Perhaps a group of them live in caves, inbreed—’

  ‘No. He is from away. I know this for certain.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I have … examined him.’

  ‘Shit.’ Bjorn hawked, spat. ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘I did. I had to.’

  ‘Did what?’ Stromvar asked.

  ‘Luck has always been curious. About life, and how it works.’ It was Hovard who spoke now, softly. ‘He … takes things apart. Birds, beasts, fish. Dries them, reassembles them.’

  ‘That’s fucking disgusting.’ Stromvar grinned, and leaned back. ‘So what did you find?’

  ‘First I examined his possessions. The craft he came in, of which no man has seen the like? It was made of tanned seal skin—’

  ‘—which we use.’

  ‘But it was wrapped over a frame of the lightest, strongest wood I have ever seen. Almost unbreakable. One not found in our forests.’

  ‘Yet,’ said Einar, ‘there are forests in the south so vast even my people have not penetrated to their hearts.’

  ‘So a forest people would build an ocean-worthy boat? It is made to survive being rolled in big waves, the paddler sealed in. It is also designed to be pulled over snow. It has runners on its base. I think … I think a man could ride over snow in it as he could ride a wave.’

  ‘Like a sled?’

  ‘Like no sled we’ve ever seen, Freya.’

  Even Stromvar was silent at that, so Luck pressed on. ‘And then there was what he’d eaten.’

  ‘Eugh, brother!’

  Bjorn stood and left the table, making a show of being sick. Luck continued. ‘In his stomach were seeds of fruit we’ve never seen here. His sack contained dried meat that tasted like no creature that I know, flavoured with a spice also not found in our lands. There’s more I could tell, of what I found and where I found it – but I’ll spare Bjorn’s delicate stomach. Then there’s these.’ He reached into his sack and pulled out the globe and the stoppered vial, set them down, looked at Stromvar and Einar, who stared, fascinated, at the smoke swirling within. ‘He brought these. I saw things here. A prophecy of sorts, I think.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t know. But I also saw another black-eyed man.’ He sighed out a long breath. ‘Never have I felt such evil in one man in my life.’

  ‘Show me this fucker,’ said Stromvar.

  ‘No. I doubt you would see. I think I only did because … because I have spent years staring at things that are and are not. Also, look.’

  Luck bared his teeth. Stromvar peered. ‘They’re dirty. You need to scrub them with a pine stick, sap and needles,’ he said.

  ‘I have. Scrubbed and scrubbed. The black has faded, a little. But only a little.’ He tapped the stoppered vial. ‘I think if I were to use this often, soon my teeth would never be anything but black.’ He leaned back. ‘Though I … I desire to use it again. There was something in it, in the scent of it, that makes me crave it.’

  ‘Like mead?’ said Bjorn, turning back.

  ‘No, brother. Nothing like mead.’ He tapped the globe. ‘Somehow they communicate with this. Over a long distance.’

  ‘Who do you think “they” are, Luck?’

  ‘I don’t know, Freya.’ He shook his head. ‘All I know is that I must go and find out.’

  Bjorn returned to the table. ‘Where will you search, little brother?’

  ‘East.’

  ‘To the mountains?’

  ‘Beyond the mountains.’

  ‘Impossible,’ said Stromvar. ‘No one has climbed them, ever. Even as a god in an eagle, or running as a wolf, none have gone over them.’

  ‘No one has tried in fifty summers. And the weather has changed. Besides, the killer did.’

  ‘You said he came by boat.’

  ‘The last stage only. Even his boat could not have survived the northern seas in winter. None of ours, the finest in the world, ever have.’ Luck opened the drawer under the table. ‘This,’ he said, pulling out the piece of supple dried skin, unrolling it, ‘we found amongst the killer’s possessions. We think it is—’

  ‘A chart,’ said Stromvar, reaching down, spinning the skin towards him. ‘That’s Askaug,’ he said, tapping a finger on the end of an indent. Tapped again. ‘Here’s Peersoo. Tamauk. These cuts are my home, the Seven Isles.’ He peered closer. ‘I have charted them myself, for the whale hunt. Though this,’ he tapped again, ‘is better work than I have ever done.’

  ‘This is Molnalla the tallest of all mountains. See this cleft below?’ Luck laid his forefinger on the chart. ‘I think the killer pulled his boat over the mountains there, sledded down them, to here. Then he put his boat in the water,’ he hesitated, then moved his finger, ‘here.’

  A silence as all stared. Hovard broke it. ‘But that would be … that is—’

  ‘The Lake of Souls.’

  It was Freya who breathed it softly. But all of them there, save Luck, raised their hands, two middle fingers thrust out, to ward against the evil of the name.

  ‘No one,’ said Hovard, licking his lips, ‘not even a killer in a magic boat, could survive the Lake of Souls.’

  ‘I think he did,’ replied Luck. ‘Paddled across it, then down the Serpent River, the only one that does not freeze, to do his killing.’ He sat back. ‘So I must do the reverse.’

  Voices exploded.

  ‘You cannot!’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Brother!’

  But it was the softest voice there that came clearest. ‘Hovard is right, Luck,’ said Freya. ‘No one survives the Lake of Souls. No one even ventures close to it. Those two young hunters were the last, ten years back.’ She looked up. ‘What were their names, Bjorn? They were friends of yours.’

  ‘Karn, and his brother Rukka the Handsome. I hurt my leg chasing the same huge bison Karn had wounded.’ Bjorn leaned down. ‘I shouted at them to stop, that we’d gone too far already. But they were young, it was Karn’s first bull, they kept the chase. And they—’ He broke off, shook his head.

  Einar spoke. ‘If the marsh gases didn’t get them, the ghosts who it is said live there would have.’

  Hovard leaned across the table to be heard. ‘How can you be certain he came that way, brother? The killer may have crossed the mountains further in the north, circled down.’

  Luck shook his head. ‘No. He came from the Lake of Souls.’

  Bjorn thumped the table. ‘But how can you know this, brother? How?’

  ‘Becaus
e of the last thing I found in the killer’s craft. It was attached to the prow. Almost like a serpent head on our longships.’ He drew something out of his satchel. ‘I am sorry, Bjorn.’ He held out what looked like a fist-sized piece of balled leather, then placed it on the table. All stared at the object, puzzled, until Luck spoke again, softly. ‘It’s Karn,’ he said.

  Bjorn did go then, not just away from the table; outside, where he threw up, loud and long. It was the only noise, as all the others stared at the shrivelled monstrosity on the mead-hall table.

  It was Stromvar who broke the silence. ‘If this is … is who you say …’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Then why the fuck would you go anywhere near this place?’ Stromvar roared. ‘No insult, but you are small enough already.’ The huge warrior licked his lips. ‘Go south, to Einar’s land. Let him guide you through the great forest, then come back north to cross the mountain.’

  ‘It would take too long. Even if every second day I travelled as a beast – and you all know how that drains us – even if I managed that, it would still take three months.’ He looked up, straight at Hovard now. ‘I don’t think we have three months.’

  Stromvar grunted. ‘You are brave, little man,’ he said.

  ‘I am not, believe me,’ Luck replied. ‘I never have been. But I must do this. At least, I must try.’

  Einar ran one thumb around his healing scar again. ‘I can see – feel! – that you are right about the killings. I can accept that the one who did this to me was from beyond our world.’ He thumped his hand down upon the table. ‘But are you certain – certain now! – that this means that he and others are coming to conquer us?’

  ‘Can you think of a better way of preparing us for conquest than by killing those who could unite the people against them? The best fighters too?’ Luck looked around at all of them. ‘I believe it – but I cannot be certain until I have gone to look for myself.’

  Silence again, as all stared at the mute and shrunken head before them. Wiping his mouth, Bjorn returned. Saying nothing, he picked up the remains of his friend and tucked him into the folds of his cloak.