The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War #2)(77)

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Thump. Something hard stopped my tumble, taking away in one painful crunch all the momentum the slope thrust upon me. The impact wrapped me around the immovable object that arrested my fall, and I lay there moaning. Somehow I’d become entangled in an old blanket—a damp old blanket—and it seemed to be raining.

“Jal!” A man shouting.

“Jal!” Another man, closer.

I moaned a little louder, though not much. My lungs had yet to refill after being so rudely emptied of air. Seconds later hands found me, pulling the wrappings from around my head. I found myself staring up at Snorri’s face, framed by dripping black hair, with trees rising on all sides, terrifyingly tall and stark against a grey sky that seemed too bright.

“Whu,” I managed. It seemed sufficient to convey my feelings.

“The trolls dropped you.” Tuttugu, head thrusting into view, obscuring the sky, wet ginger hair dripping around a concerned expression. “Luckily you hit a tree.”

I puzzled this new definition of “lucky.”

“Did I fall off the roof?” I still wasn’t really following the conversation. Tuttugu looked confused. “You’ve lost weight,” I told him. Perhaps not relevant to the situation, but it was certainly true that the road’s hardships had stripped a few pounds from the man.

The Vikings exchanged a glance. “Let’s get him back up,” Snorri said.

With a distinct lack of tenderness they unwrapped me from the tree. A tall conifer with sparse branches—others like it dotted the slope. Snorri hefted me to my feet, gasping as he straightened, as if it pained him. He looped my arm over his shoulder and helped me up toward a ridge maybe fifty feet above us. The troll column stood there, black and watching, Gorgoth at the front, Kara to the rear where Snorri angled me. It looked to be late evening with the shadows thickening toward night. Hennan watched from the back of a troll as we drew close. It seemed they had taken to passing him about their number. It hadn’t struck me before that although there were both he-trolls and she-trolls in our merry band they hadn’t a child amongst them.

The cold rain started to clear my head and I remembered the slap Kara had given me. By the time we reached her I felt exhausted. “What happened?” I asked, aiming the question at anyone listening.

“Hit a bump and you tumbled out.” Tuttugu gestured toward what appeared to be a crude travois laid down on the trail.

“Can’t see a bump myself,” Snorri said. “Trolls dragged you for four days. Probably thought they could tip you out and nobody would notice.”

Kara stepped closer and started to squeeze bits of me through my tunic. They all hurt. “You’re fine,” she said, looking slightly apologetic. She wiped at some graze on my cheek with a piece of cloth smelling of lemons.

“Ouch!” I tried to push her hand away but she proved persistent. “I was dreaming again . . . What the hell kind of spell did you put on me, v?lva?”

Kara frowned and put her cloth away, stuffing it into a little leather pouch. “It’s a simple enough working. I’ve never seen it have this much effect on someone. I . . . I don’t know.” Her frown deepened and she shook her head. “I guess the Silent Sister had her reasons for choosing you as Snorri’s partner to hold her magic. You must have an affinity for it, or a susceptibility. I could test you tonight . . .”

“You can keep that orichalcum stuff away from me is what you can do.” I flomped down on the heap of bracken covering the network of bark strips that joined the travois poles. “I’ve had enough of witches. North, south, young, old, I don’t care. I’m swearing off them.” I put my head back, spitting out the rain. “Let’s go!” I saw the smallest smile twitch across Kara’s lips at that, in defiance of her will, and to my surprise the trolls bent to their task, dragging me along as the whole column resumed its trek.

For a few minutes I lay with eyes closed, struggling to recapture the dream. The word “assassin” had been in the air, perhaps the key took that memory from me and unlocked a might-have-been, perhaps Taproot’s condolences for my mother had been balanced on rumours of the three visiting murderers that the Red Queen buried. Dreams though, like sleep, are elusive when you’re hunting them, and sneak upon you when you’re not. After a while the rain splattering my face became irksome and I sat up, wiping my face.

“Four days?” I looked from Snorri to Tuttugu, tramping along behind the trolls. “How come I didn’t soil my—” Glancing down I discovered I wasn’t wearing my old trousers but instead some sort of rough kilt. “Oh.”

“Hungry?” Snorri fished out some strips of dried meat and held them toward me.

I rubbed my stomach. “Not for that.” But I took them anyway and started to chew, discovering within moments that “hungry” was too small a word to cover it. It takes a lot of chewing to get through dried meat, so that kept me busy for a while. I call it meat rather than beef or pork or venison, because once it’s been adulterated against decay it’s really not possible to say what animal died to put it in your hand. Probably a donkey. The taste is similar to leather, of the kind that’s been worn as a shoe for several hot weeks. The texture is too. “Any more?”

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“So where are we?”

I’d feigned weakness all night and planned to carry on doing so as long as the trolls would drag me. The travois was hardly a royal carriage but it beat walking. Now though as dawn broke, and the trolls spread out through the forest to hunt, and Snorri hung an oiled cloth between the branches to keep off the worst of the weather, I started to take more of an interest in proceedings.