Talus and the Frozen King

by Graham Edwards

  'If you say so.'

  Talus chose turns seemingly at random. Bran followed, knowing better than to offer suggestions. The wailing grew steadily louder. Bran grew steadily more unhappy.

  The way narrowed, the turns tightened. Bran was convinced Talus was leading them down a dead end. Surely now they must turn back.

  He was about to tap Talus's shoulder when, without warning, the maze spun them round and ejected them into a wide arena.

  Like the trenches, this open space was sunken and lined with stone. At the far end, a low passage led—Bran guessed—into the village itself. Numerous totems were spaced evenly around the arena's circular perimeter, some twice the height of a man. At least these characters had their mouths closed. Overhead, the red sky was laced with orange.

  A crowd had gathered in the arena. Most wore thick furs; a few wore simple skins, layered against the cold. Many of the men held spears with stone tips. Their cheeks were purple in the cold.

  All looked grim. The women knelt in a ring around a seated man. It was the women who were wailing.

  Nobody seemed to notice their arrival. All attention was on the man on the ground. Like Bran, he was big, red-bearded. He was also naked. Like the totems, his bare skin was rimed with ice.

  Around his head was a simple circlet of woven willow twigs. He was utterly still.

  Bran felt an almost overwhelming urge to run away.

  'Talus!' he hissed. 'I really think we should ...'

  'You!' A man stepped out of the crowd. The wailing of the women stopped abruptly.

  The man stood as tall as Talus; the deer-skull strapped to his head made him taller still. Eagle feathers adorned its giant antlers. Animal teeth rattled on a leather thong around his neck. His face was caked with blue paint, striped with yellow, reducing his features to an abstract pattern. He walked with a slight limp, aided by a long staff dressed with jangling shells.

  He glanced at Bran. He stared at Talus.

  'I am Mishina,' he said at last. 'I am shaman. Who are you?'

  Talus sank to his knees and opened his robe. Unlike Bran's simple bearskin, Talus's clothing was a random patchwork of different animal hides: rabbit, seal, even wolf. Some weren't familiar to Bran at all.

  Exposed to the cold air, Talus's bare chest rapidly took on the appearance of a plucked fowl, but he held firm without shivering.

  'We come without weapons,' he said, 'in only our skins.'

  Bran—who liked magic-men about as much as he liked totems—just glared.

  'Without weapons?' said Mishina. 'Your friend carries an axe.'

  'To make a fire, a man must cut wood,' Talus replied. 'We ask only to share words with you, and perhaps a little food.' He stood, wrapping his robe around his thin body again. 'And to offer what help we can. You have troubles.'

  'Stay where you are,' the shaman said. He tossed his head. The antlers turned the gesture into a challenge. 'Say nothing. Do nothing.'

  Talus dipped his head. 'As you wish.'

  Meanwhile, several young men had pushed their way into the circle of women and were trying to lift the seated man. But he was heavy, and their fingers slipped on his icy skin. Bran wondered why the man wasn't able to stand himself. What kind of fool chose to sit unclothed in the snow in weather like this?

  One particularly brawny character managed to wedge his hands under the man's thighs. He gave a grunt and lifted. At the same time, someone on the other side pushed and the brawny man lost his grip. The seated man—who'd rocked momentarily on to one haunch—fell back to earth. He hit the ground with unexpected solidity and at last Bran realised what it was they'd stumbled upon, and scolded himself for not having seen the obvious at once.

  The man in the snow was dead.

  More men crowded round the corpse, practically fighting each other in their efforts to raise it up.

  The women started wailing again. The scene descended into absurdity. At last the shaman called a halt. He spoke quietly to one of the observers – a stocky man with thick sandy hair – who ran into the village. Moments later the man returned dragging a litter woven from branches.

  The women shuffled aside, still on their knees. They'd fallen quiet again, though several were now tearing their hair. With some effort, the men managed to slide the frozen corpse on to the litter. Its flesh was as unyielding as stone. When the body was finally in place, Mishina thumped his staff on the icy ground. 'Hashath has left this living land,' he cried. 'Our warrior-king hunts now with his fathers in the afterdream.'

  The sandy-haired man clamped his arms across his chest. His face worked with emotion.

  'I have run with the spirits,' the shaman went on. 'The spirits say that Hashath was tired of this world. They say that he knew his time had come. That he shed his clothes and walked into the night. That he gave his body to the ice. The spirits tell us now to honour the will of Hashath, and set the next warrior-king on his path.'

  The men were nodding, and grunting agreement. The women began a slow, soft chanting.

  The men bent to the litter.

  Talus coughed and stepped forward. Bran tried to grab him, but his crippled fingers slipped through his friend's robe.

  'Whatever you're going to do, Talus,' he hissed, 'don't do it.'

  'Forgive me for saying so,' said Talus to the shaman, 'but I think your spirits may be wrong.'

  Mishina whirled round, his grip tightening on his staff. The bones around his neck rattled.

  The thick paint on his face made his expression impossible to read, but Bran guessed that Talus had made the shaman angry. He sympathised. Talus did that to people a lot.

  Five enormous strides carried Talus into the middle of the throng. The women shuffled aside to give him room; even some of the men fell back. Bran had seen this before: Talus looked frail, but there was something in his manner that could part crowds quicker than a charging boar. Bran's trepidation dissolved into a kind of fascinated pride.

  The shaman was unimpressed by Talus's boldness. 'Back!' He raised his staff.

  'Before you strike me,' said Talus, lifting his hands in placation, 'let me share my thoughts with you. They concern your king. You would do well to hear them.'

  'You are a gull-of-the-storm in the guise of a man!' Cracked paint showered from Mishina's cheeks. He swung his staff – the tip of which was studded with flint shards – straight at Talus's head.

  The sandy-haired man grabbed the staff just before it made contact. Thick muscles bunched in his forearm. Mishina grunted. Talus didn't move a muscle.

  'Let the stranger speak,' said the man. 'If it concerns my father's death, I would know his wisdom. If not, then you may kill him.'

  Talus beamed. 'Thank you. I will be brief. Mishina believes your king welcomed his own death – perhaps even brought it upon himself. I never knew your king in the living flesh, so I cannot know if he was a man to do such a thing. But I can look with my eyes. As an animal leaves its spoor on the ground, so a man leaves his marks on all those he meets. Are there marks here that nobody has yet seen? I believe there may be.'

  Here was another sight Bran had seen too many times to count: the faces of strangers growing slack and confused before one of Talus's bewildering speeches. He rubbed his beard to hide his smile.

  'See these tracks!' said Talus. His sudden shout made several of the onlookers jump. He bounded around the corpse on its litter, pointing at scuffs and scrapes in the snow. Wherever he strode, the crowd opened to let him through. 'In your rush to see your dead king, many of you have trodden the snow.' He stopped, triumphant. 'But look: these two furrows lead exactly to where the body was resting.'

  Talus crouched beside a pair of parallel grooves running back towards the village entrance.

  They were shallow and almost invisible amid the many footprints. Bran hadn't spotted them. Nor, he suspected, had any of the islanders. Now that Talus had pointed them out, they were impossible to miss.

  'A heavy object was dragged here. Someone tried to cover the tracks it left
. They failed. This tells me they were in a hurry.'

  'You say "object",' said the sandy-haired man. 'You mean my father?'

  Talus stood. 'What is your name?'

  The man squared his shoulders. 'I am Tharn. I am the eldest son of Hashath and warrior-king now to be. I would know what you have to say!'

  'Well, Tharn, king-to-be, I believe your father was either dead or asleep before he reached his final resting place. He did not walk here. He was dragged.'

  'Asleep?'

  'The kind of sleep from which you do not wake.'

  'If someone found him in such a state, they would not have dragged him here,' said Tharn.

  'They would have raised an alarm.'

  'Mmm.' Talus bent to the corpse. Mishina hissed and raised his staff again, but Tharn waved him back.

  Talus ran his bony fingers over the dead king's right shoulder. He explored the back of the neck, the broad chest. He stood, circled the body, stroked his own chin. He touched the king's right elbow, then the left.

  Throughout this, Bran watched Tharn's brow descend further and further down over his eyes. At last it was too much.

  'You insult my father!' Tharn shouted, seizing Talus by the arm.

  In the same moment, Talus grabbed the wrist of the frozen king and yanked the dead man's left arm all the way up until it was pointing at the blood-red sky. There was a hideous cracking sound. Ice shards sprayed the crowd. Several of the women screamed. There was a collective bellow from the men. Tharn drew back his bunched fist.

  'There!' Talus seemed oblivious to the uproar he'd caused. 'Please, Tharn, would you hold your father's arm for a moment?'

  Bran was convinced the young man would punch Talus. Instead – looking dumbfounded – Tharn did as he was told.

  Talus knelt and pointed to the hollow under the dead king Hashath's arm. The skin there was pale and hard, bristling with frozen hairs.

  There was also a small red hole.

  'See?' said Talus. 'The blood froze quickly, so the wound was hidden beneath the king's upper arm. Here, this slight swelling in the muscle of his chest, this was the --' he waved his hands as if trying to tease something out of the air '-- clue. The wound is small, but deep. The edges of the wound are clean. The weapon was almost certainly carved from bone.'

  Tharn placed his dead father's hand into Mishina's grasp. It was a strangely tender gesture. A lump rose in Bran's throat.

  Gently, Tharn knelt beside Talus. He touched the tip of his finger to the wound under his dead father's arm. When he withdrew it, it came away clean. Just as Talus had said, the blood had frozen solid.

  'What has happened?' said Tharn. His voice was gruff, unsteady.

  Talus placed his hand on the young man's shoulder.

  'I am sorry, Tharn,' he said. 'Your father was murdered.'

  CHAPTER THREE

  At Tharn's command, a small group of men carried the litter away. Talus had thought Tharn would accompany his father's body; instead, after a brief consultation with Mishina, he came over to where Talus and Bran were standing. Five other men followed him.

  'You will come with me,' said the dead king's son.

  Tharn's companions hustled around Talus and Bran, making a tight cordon. Talus read their faces, one after the next. All looked to be in a state of shock, from the lanky one who had trouble keeping his limbs folded to the stout one who'd been first to try and lift the king. The third man repeatedly tossed his mane of unkempt hair; angry lines were etched into his cheeks. The youngest of the five was a beardless lad, striking for the darting, dazzling green of his eyes, and the hugeness of their pupils. Close beside him stood a dour, thick-set youth whose face was painted entirely black.

  Despite their differences, all the men looked a little like each other, and a little like Tharn.

  Talus had no doubt the six of them were brothers.

  Tharn led the group out of the arena and into the village. His brothers herded Talus and Bran as a group of horned aurochs might herd their calves to protect them from wolves. Mishina brought up the rear.

  The route took them along narrow winding passages roofed with willow and turf. The village was another maze, this one fully enclosed. Piercing the passage walls were the entrances to the island's half-buried houses. Most of the doorways were blocked by heavy stone slabs; in the case of a few, the slabs had been pushed aside to reveal firelit interiors.

  Faces peered out to watch as they passed. Many were painted with coloured mud: yellow, brown, grey. On these the expressions were hard to read. On the rest there was fear, shock, suspicion. Grief.

  The procession stopped outside a house much bigger than its neighbours. The men passed one at a time inside. Overhead, the sky was red, the northlight long-gone.

  Talus knew Bran would be worried by the disappearance of the northlight. That was understandable.

  Bran believed the northlight was a river of spirits whose source lay at the outermost edge of the living world. Talus was prepared to accept that as a possibility.

  He also knew it might just be colourful weather.

  Most people thought weather was down to the spirits too. Talus didn't agree. It wasn't that he didn't accept the possibility of the spirit world. It was just that, on this particular subject, he was uncertain.

  Talus hated uncertainty.

  For Bran, the northlight was bound up with his grief for Keyli. Over the course of the journey, Talus had watch that grief grow and grow. Bran's urge to reach the source of the northlight—where he hoped he might make contact with his dead wife for one final time—had grown with it. Bran was like a ripening fruit, so swollen now with emotion that one day soon he would surely burst.

  So why Bran's sudden desire to turn back? It was a puzzle.

  Talus relished puzzles.

  Something hard jabbed into the small of Talus's back: Mishina's staff. Talus put questions about Bran to the back of his mind and stepped inside.

  The king's house was impressive, although Talus had seen much grander structures elsewhere. The low doorway led into a single circular room; Talus judged it big enough to hold twenty people. In the middle of the floor, a fire blazed on a stone hearth. Around the walls, alcoves contained beds with straw mattresses and deerskin covers. A broad ladder of stone shelves stood opposite the doorway; on it were displayed skulls and shells and all manner of bone tools and knives. If the status of a man could be gauged by his possessions, the king had commanded great regard.

  The roof was a wonder. Arcs of whalebone rose from the low stone walls to meet at a central point. Willow rafters spanned the gaps between the bones; the whole structure was covered with thatched seaweed. Off-centre was a small smoke-hole. Even so, the air in the room was sooty and hot.

  Talus wondered why—when the architecture was so clever—the ventilation was so poor.

  Then he spied a broken piece of driftwood hanging near the smoke-hole. Once, a screen must have hung there, cunningly shaped to guide the smoke out of the house. The breakage wasn't unusual.

  But it was odd that, in the house of the king, it had gone unrepaired.

  The five brothers seated themselves, leaving Talus and Bran isolated near the doorway.

  Mishina stood behind them, tall and aloof, blocking the exit.

  In one of the alcoves, a woman loitered, her face lost in shadow.

  'Say nothing,' Talus said to Bran. Addressing the others, he said, 'We thank you for admitting us into your circle.'

  Tharn waved his hand dismissively. He was seated alone on a stone chair beside the rack of shelves: the king's throne. His brothers sat cross-legged on the floor around the central fire.

  'Sit,' said Tharn. His face betrayed no emotion.

  Talus and Bran joined the men at the fire. The murky air was stifling but the heat was welcome after endless days on the tundra.

  The woman slipped out of the alcove. Bran gasped. Talus saw why: the woman had red hair and pale skin, just like Keyli.

  Talus considered advising Bran this w
as not his wife. But Bran's muscles, which had tightened upon sight of the woman, had already relaxed. Bran might be hot-headed, but he wasn't stupid.

  The red-haired woman carried shallow clay dishes filled with a salty liquid. She handed them round, then slipped away, passing Mishina and vanishing into the morning light. Bran's eyes remained fixed on the doorway for some breaths after she'd gone. Relishing the look of her, perhaps, but also gauging the distance to their only escape route.

  Talus hoped his companion didn't do anything stupid.

  He took a sip from his dish: it was a shellfish stew, flavoured heavily with local herbs. Bran took up his own dish and drained it in one gulp. Talus heard the growling as the hot food entered the big man's belly. He put his own stew down unfinished. Even without looking, he knew his friend was eyeing it with hunger.

  'My father is dead,' said Tharn. His voice was quiet, but it filled the room. 'Someone has killed him. Someone has killed the king.'

  Silence fell in the dead king's house. Every face was grim. And no wonder: these were his sons. But there was more to it than that. Even Talus had been shocked by the slaying. To kill a man was wrong. To kill a king was ... unthinkable.

  A king was spirit-chosen, more than a man. To kill a king was to do than merely snuff out a man's life: it was to invite the wrath every ancestor who'd ever lived. When the murderer's turn finally came to pass into the afterdream, he would be hounded and tortured by his enraged ancestors for all eternity. What man would consign himself to such an unspeakable torment?

  'If I may speak ...' Talus began.

  'You will be silent,' snapped Mishina from the doorway. 'You are alive only by the word of Tharn the king-to-be.'

  'Then I will address myself to Tharn.'

  Tharn silenced them both with a brisk chop of his hand. 'Stranger, you will not speak unless I say.'

  Talus nodded. Bran fidgeted. He was right to be uneasy: they were lucky to have made it this far alive.

  'Two strangers come to Creyak,' said Tharn, 'and my father dies. It worries me that these two things happen on the same night. It is a ...' Tharn frowned.