Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

Without sight a man can’t follow a trail. All he’ll find in the dark is a broken leg for the hinterlands are treacherous, the rocky ground ice-clad and fissured.

‘I’d want better soldiers. Look: I felled seven of them while fighting blind.’ Snorri nodded. ‘Though to be fair you did have a screaming girl to help you.’

‘The battle at Eight Quays I fought in. A massacre more than a battle. My survival shames me every day.’

Cold has its own taste. It tastes of a bitten tongue. It coils around you, a living thing, a beast that means to kill you, not with wrath, not with tooth nor claw, but with the mercy of surrender, with the kindness of letting you go gentle into the long night after such a burden of pain and misery.

‘The Dead King is persuasive. If I brought this wife and son of yours here, to this room, held a hot iron to their faces … you might find me persuasive, no?’ ‘Vikings don’t make war on children.’ Snorri knew defeat. Better to have let the ice claim him than come here to fail his family. ‘The Undoreth leave orphans and widows untouched when they raid?’ A snort of derision at that from the men around the hearth. ‘Snorri Red-Axe has adopted the sons and daughters of the

many men he’s sent on their final voyage?’ Snorri had no answers. ‘Why are they here? Why take captives? Why here?’ The Broke-Oar only shook his head, looking older now, closer to fifty than to forty. ‘You’ll sleep better not knowing.’

‘We will take back what we love and show these Red Vikings how to bleed.’ He raised his axe above his head. ‘We are of the Undoreth, The Children of the Hammer. The blood of Odin runs in our veins. Storm-born we!’

‘Second, we will go better prepared, not dressed in what could be scavenged from ruins in the moment. We will go with clear heads, the murder in our hearts locked away until it is needed. ‘Third and finally. What else are we to do? We are the last of the free Undoreth. Anything that survives of our people is there, on the ice, in the hands of other men.’ He paused and set his broad hands upon the table, staring

at the spread of his fingers. ‘My wife. My son. All my life. Each good thing I have done.’ Something twitched at his mouth and became a snarl as he stood, voice growing toward a roar once more.

‘So I’m not offering you victory, or a return to your old lives, or the promise that we will build again. Just pain, and blood, and red axes, and the chance to make war upon our en...

And of course the maniacs roared their approval, and I banged my...

against the table and wondered how I could get the hell...

decided the best policy for the now would be to drink myself insensible and hope the morrow had better to

see whether any of last week’s meals might reappear if I tried really hard.

‘Hell! Where’s my damn horse?’

‘Bits of it are probably all over the lower slopes of Den Hagen.’ Arne mimed chewing. ‘Stew, sausages, horse-bacon, roast horse, tongue soup, liver with onions, fried horse, mwah. All good.’

Archery, well, it’s never been our strong point, but there were plenty willing. The jarl set up this coin, far too far out, and nobody could hit the damn thing. It was getting dark before they let me have a go. Took it down first try. Never heard the last of it. And that’s how it is in this world, boy. Start a tale, just a little tale that should fade and die – take your eye off it for just a moment and when you turn back it’s grown big enough to grab you up in its teeth and shake you. That’s how it is. All our

lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days,

imitation of the vast waves on which we tossed. ‘Wake me when the storm’s passed.’ ‘Storm?’ A shadow fell across me. ‘You’re going to tell me that it’s always like this, aren’t you?’

‘Oh no.’ He sat on the bench opposite, his good cheer like acid on my hangover. ‘It’s rarely as good as this.’

Or at least I had until a whiff Norseman’s putrid arm brought them all back in a flood. At least this time I made it to the side before retching into the dark swell of the waves. I spent a long time hanging there, holding a loud but wordless conversation with the sea. Fjórir was still sitting where I left him when I came back empty-stomached and trembling. The whole boat continued to threaten capsize at each surge of the waves but nobody else seemed concerned.

‘You seem less worried about it than I am.’ ‘The gods are taking us in order. Youngest first.’ Again that grin. ‘Atta fell to ghouls in Ullaswater. Then a dead man pulled Sjau into the bog at Fenmire. Sex took an arrow from a Conaught bowman. So Fimm’s next, not me.’ And all of a sudden I found myself scared as hell.

water hauled me back into the waking world. ‘Jal? Jal?’ ‘Is he going to be all right?’ A reply in their heathen tongue. ‘… soft these southerners …’ ‘… bury at sea—’ More nonsense words in northern gibberish. Another bucket. ‘Jal? Talk to me.’ ‘If I do will you stop pouring seawater over me?’ I kept my eyes shut. All I wanted to do was lie very still. Even moving my lips seemed too much effort.

guessed he really was invulnerable until poor Fimm took his place in line. Hopefully he’d pay me back by putting his invulnerable self between me and harm’s way.

The angel had far more gravitas about him now than he had in his early visits. As if he spoke more with his own voice than the one I’d fashioned for him back when he was nine parts imagination.

Bravery is just a different kind of broken. The quins are missing whatever it is a man needs in order to feel fear.

Snorri’s scared of being a coward.

Scared of being a coward, is that what bravery is? Am I brave because I don’t fear being afraid? You’re of the light: the light reveals. Shine a bright enough light on any kind of bravery a...

‘Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards.

My personal tragedy is in being born into a world

where sanity is held to be a char...

I always know what is right. I just don’t do it.

‘You don’t look injured.’ Tuttugu buried his fingers in the ginger bush of his beard and scratched furiously, muttering something. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Brothel rash,’ he said. ‘Whore pox?’ That at least made me smile. ‘Ha!’ ‘Snorri said—’ ‘I ain’t laying on hands down there! I’m a prince of Red March for God’s sake! Not some travelling apothecary-cum-faith-healer!’ The fat man’s face fell.

I had thought Den Hagen looked dour and uninviting but compared to Trond the port of Den Hagen was a paradise, practically open-legged with welcome.

Rain started to fall, lacing the wind and stinging like ice where it hit my cheeks. ‘And this is summer? How can you tell?’ ‘Glorious summer!’ Snorri spread his arms beside me. ‘You can tell because in the winter there are no midges,’

‘Also the snow is six foot deep.’ ‘And you could walk to the port from here,’ Snorri said.

‘He must have been fourteen, or fifteen.’ Quin Tveir, probably. ‘Hauled on the oar so hard he broke it.’ Quin Thrir, possibly. ‘Didn’t know his own strength, even then.’ Fjórir, his arm still scarred. ‘Never seen anyone pull an oar that hard.’

‘Is he stronger than you, Snorri?’ I found the thought unsettling. Snorri pulled back on his oar, keeping rhythm with the others. ‘Who can say?’

‘The Broke-Oar doesn’t know his own strength.’ Another stroke. ‘But I know mine.’ And the look he gave me, all ice and fire, ma...

‘There you go, my lovely.’ A perky, fair-haired tavern-girl set down my roast pork, a heel of bread, a steaming jug of gravy, and a tankard of ale. ‘Enjoy.’ I watched her leave and started to feel twenty-two again rather than ninety-two. Good food, ale and a floor beneath me that had the manners to stay where it was put … the world had started looking up. All I needed was a plausible excuse for staying in Trond until the nastiness up north had been dealt with

and I could look upon this whole sorry affair as a vacation gone tragically astray.

Another pretty young thing, white-blonde and pale, slanted glances my way from beside an older man. None of them dressed like professional company, even accounting for the summer chill. It seemed as though taking your sister or daughter to the tavern might

just be the done thing in Trond. Another woman walked in through the street door, this one solid and dour, and pushed a path to the bar to order black ale. I chewed over that one with my meat. Things appeared to run very differently in the North. Still, I had no objections.

Now I’m a good-looking fellow. No doubts about that. Good thick hair, honest smile, face in order, but this interloper could have stepped from some frieze of the sagas, chiselled to perfection. I hated him with a rare and instant passion.

‘Oh, would you sing for us?’ Astrid, pressing her gifts against him. And that was that. I slunk back to my table while Golden Boy held the tavern spellbound with a gloriously rich tenor, running through all their favourite songs. I chewed my lukewarm roast and found it hard to swallow, my ale sour rather than salt. I glowered through narrowed eyes as Hakon stood bracketed by Edda, Astrid and various other wenches drawn from the shadows by his cheap show.

door a hearty kick, slamming it shut. A meaty thud and an oath rewarded me. I counted to three and hauled the door open. ‘Hell! Are you all right, man?’ He was on his backside clutching his face. ‘The wind must have caught the door. Terrible thing.’ ‘… be ok.’ Both hands still clasped over his nose, the injured one atop the good. I crouched beside him. ‘Best have a look.’ And pulled back his bad hand. Immediately that familiar warmth built, and with it came an idea

despicable and delicious in equal parts. I gripped his bitten hand tight. The day went dim around me. ‘Ow! What the—’ Hakon pulled away. ‘You’re fine.’ I hauled him to his feet. Fortunately he helped, because I could barely lift myself. ‘But what—’ ‘You’re just a bit dazed.’ I steered him back into the tavern room. ‘You got hit by a door.’ Astrid and Edda converged on Golden Boy and I stepped away, letting them at their

prey. As I left I tugged the loose end of the bloodstained cloth about his hand and pulled it away with me. ‘What—’ Hakon lifted his uncovered hand. ‘How many babies did you save?’ I said it quiet enough over my shoulder as I returned to my table, but too loud to miss. ‘There’s no bite there!’ Astrid exclaimed. ‘Not even a scratch.’ Edda stepped back ...

higher, turning it this way and that in astonishment. ‘He can pay for his own damn brandy!’ The warrior at the bar. ‘A cheap trick.’ The thickset woman, slamming down her tankard of ale. ‘He’s no kin of Alaric!’ Anger starting to colour the complaints. ‘I doubt he’s spoke a true wo...

poor Hakon, their shouts drowning him out, punches flying. Somehow he made it through them, half-running through the street door, half-thrown. He sprawled in the mud, slipped, fell, scrambled up and was gone, the door slamming behind him. I leaned back in my chair and took the last chunk of pork off my knife. It tasted sweet. I can’t say I was entirely proud about using the healing gif...