Gods of the Ragnarok Era Omnibus 2: Books 4-6

by Matt Larkin

  A blood-drenched, empty-handed Loki flew over the table and collided with the man, his weight bearing the Serk down. They slammed into the floor. Rolled past Sigyn.

  Mail scraped on stone. Loki had hold of the man’s coif and slammed his head upon the floor twice. The second time, blood splattered.

  Sigyn scrambled to her feet. Her leg gave out at once, and she toppled back down.

  “Block the pain!” Loki shouted at her.

  Easier said than done. Sigyn flooded the pneuma into her limbs, relying on its power to keep her up. Hands slick with blood, she crawled to her bow. Forced herself to stand and nock another arrow. To rise.

  “Scyld,” Starkad said. He faced off against the burn-faced Son of Muspel. Waiting for no answer, he launched himself at the man. The Son moved nigh as fast, and the two of them fell into a dance of blades Sigyn could hardly track.

  “Keep the rest off him!” Loki shouted, snatching up a curving sword as he charged back in.

  Right. Starkad had his hands full with the Son.

  Sigyn took a bead on another Serklander and fired. Her arrow punched through his right eye and dropped him in front of his fellows. One of them stumbled. Sigyn put an arrow through his throat.

  Her fingers brushed her quiver without looking, felt only a handful of fletched shafts left. Far less than the wave of men rushing in here.

  Beside her, Mundilfari was mumbling to himself, seeming to argue with someone she couldn’t even see. Hel-damned mist-mad sorcerer! More fighting raged outside—she could hear it, but couldn’t tell who yet fought the Serklanders.

  She loosed again and again. Two more Serklanders piled up on the floor.

  Another man broke around the side of the table.

  Sigyn scrambled to nock an arrow.

  From nowhere, Mundilfari charged forward and pressed his index finger into the man’s forehead. The Serklander stopped dead, quivering in place. Spasms wracked him. His eyes clouded over and blood began to seep from them, and from his nose and his ears as well.

  The horrible sense of wrongness crept up on Sigyn, churning her stomach and threatening to draw tears of profound terror to her eyes. It choked her with foulness.

  The soldier dropped into a heap on the floor, continuing to twitch there.

  Mundilfari shook himself, blinking as if dazed.

  Fucking sorcerers. Forcing herself to look away, Sigyn loosed her last arrow, dropping another man who tried to charge Starkad.

  Tyr’s son was still tightly engaged with Scyld, both seeming evenly matched.

  And then, through the doorway, stepped Hödr, treading among the piles of corpses as though they meant naught to him. Flames swirled around one of his hands, a white-hot inferno that drove even his own men away.

  Hödr jerked his arm back and a whip of flame arced out like a lash, surging for Starkad’s neck.

  Loki intercepted it, catching it with his bare hand. Almost blindingly white fire flared between them. Then it erupted around Loki in a wave that forced Sigyn to shield her face.

  When she looked up, Loki had been blown clear into the far wall, his clothes a scorching and smoldering mess. The Serklanders who’d stood around him had been reduced to ashes flitting about the room.

  Hödr was on his knees, panting.

  Her ears were ringing. Over that whine, she caught wind of Mundilfari chanting in Supernal. The exorcism.

  Shit. She had to keep Hödr busy long enough.

  And she had no more arrows with which to achieve that. Lacking another option, she vaulted the table. Landing after even that short hop sent fresh agonies surging up her leg. She toppled down to one knee, grunting with pain.

  Hödr froze mid stride then jerked violently, his face a mask of rage and perhaps even pain. He looked to her then past her, to where Mundilfari chanted so fervently.

  “Hödr!” Sigyn screamed. Just keep him busy. Keep him occupied a moment longer.

  Her son glared at her, baring his gritted teeth. He took a step forward. And then another. Each slow, as if he pushed against the tide. Flames from the brazier began to swirl. They streamed toward Hödr’s hands in arcing bands, like a loose woven braid, spiraling toward each of his splayed fingers.

  Oh fuck.

  “Hödr!” He wasn’t listening to her. Barely even seemed to see her.

  Sigyn flooded as much strength into her legs as she could. Then she launched herself at her son. He whipped a flaming hand at her and those streams of fire washed over her head. In an instant her hair, even her eyebrows ignited. Searing pain engulfed her face and she fell, gasping, rolling on the ground as agony beyond aught she knew bombarded her. It drove the pneuma from her grasp and left her reeling, consciousness threatening to slip away beneath the conflagration of pain.

  Her vision dimmed.

  Flailing, she caught hold of her pneuma again, using it once more to reinforce her body. To block the pain for even a moment.

  She managed to roll over.

  Mundilfari’s voice had become a thunderous roar, reverberating off the walls and seeming to ring inside her head.

  But Hödr was still advancing on him. He’d moved past Sigyn and was making slow progress, hands now fully engulfed in spiraling firestorms.

  He’d had an apple. He could survive most aught that didn’t kill him.

  Wanting to weep with the agony, Sigyn snatched up a fallen knife. And lunged at Hödr, planting it in the back of his calf. Hot blood jetted over her arm.

  Roaring, he spun, flaming first raised above her. Sigyn dropped onto her back and tried to crawl away. The heat from those flames seared her face as it drew nigh, blistering and scorching her. But Hödr hesitated, a hairsbreadth from immolating her head. With a growl, he turned away, again advancing on the chanting sorcerer.

  Letting loose an inhuman howl, Hödr lunged, swinging his arm as if it held a sword. The flames surrounding his hand launched at Mundilfari in a spinning disc. They crashed into the sorcerer and the table and exploded in a boom that stole even the ringing in Sigyn’s ears. It burnt away the air and left her gasping.

  The sorcerer detonated, flesh and blood burned away to cinders in an instant. For a heartbeat that burned into Sigyn’s eyes, he stood there, charred bones. And then those too turned to dust and blew away in the currents of the explosion.

  Sigyn’s mind rejected the sight, unable to reconcile it. It was impossible. Naught burned so hot.

  And … and … they needed Mundilfari. He was the only one who could save Hödr. But his chanting had stopped. The echo of it gone all at once.

  The exorcism had failed.

  The explosion had sent everyone, Hödr included, crashing onto the floor.

  Sigyn lay there gasping. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t …

  And then the chant took up again, the same timbre, the same discordant rhythm that set her every nerve roiling and praying for it to end once more.

  Loki was chanting, stumbling over. Sigyn tried to rise. Could he finish it …? Just pick up where Mundilfari had faltered?

  Her husband dropped knees first atop Hödr as their son tried to rise, pinning the boy’s shoulders. He slammed one hand atop the boy’s forehead and pinned it to the floor. The other was wrapped around Hödr’s throat.

  Fuck, he was choking him. No! No, Loki, please …

  All the pain faded to a distant spot in her mind as Sigyn dragged herself across the floor, leaving trails of her blood in the process.

  No. Hödr. Please …

  Her little warrior …

  Not this. And not by Loki … Urd could not be so cruel.

  Please.

  The whine began to return to her ears, still drowned out by the alien chanting that suffused her senses with the utter foulness of the Art.

  Hödr bucked beneath his father’s grasp. His head tried to thrash from side to side, but Loki held it still. Smoke was rising in tendrils between Loki’s fingers, as if he were burning her son’s skull clean through.

  Hödr’s screams of agony cu
t through even the obscenity of Loki’s invocations.

  Flames erupted from Hödr’s eyes like tiny volcanoes, burning upward as her son wailed and spasmed.

  Loki toppled off him, screaming himself, jerking as if caught in a maelstrom. He rolled along the floor. Streams of blood seeped from his ears and smoke billowed from his mouth. A ring of flame shot out from his body as he thrashed.

  Beyond him, Scyld too had dropped to his knees, clutching his head. Screaming.

  At least for the instant before Starkad’s runeblade sheared clean through his skull.

  The remaining Serklander soldiers surrounded them, but none seemed intent to close in and face whatever madness unfurled here.

  Unable to form words or even give voice to her screams, Sigyn crawled to her son’s side. His eyes had burned away, leaving gaping blackened holes where once they’d been. The flesh was charred around them, blistered and oozing blood.

  Sigyn threw her head on his chest, rocking back and forth. Unable to weep.

  Unable to aught do save moan.

  They told her, later, that the spectacle of such horrors had broken the morale of those Serklanders in the fortress. They had fled, spreading their fear to others. And Tyr had broken through their lines, coming into the fortress to see what had transpired.

  The Serklanders named Peregot accursed and set to burning the whole town. But none pursued Tyr as he led the refugees away. Indeed, they fell back into the Andalus Marches, perhaps seeking orders from another caliph.

  Loki and Hödr lay in the back of a cart, Sigyn sitting between them. The two people she loved best in the world, both caught in feverish fits while she remained uncertain whether they’d live or die.

  The following night, Loki woke with a groan, eyes red. Sigyn rushed to his side and eased him back down. Still burning with fever, but surely he’d recover now.

  But a terrible look had come into his eyes. A horror she could not unsee.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s … gone.” Loki stared at her, his crystal blue eyes too wide. “Surtr. He’s escaped me.”

  60

  Sigmund knelt over Keld’s broken body. His thegn lay in the mud amidst the still raging battlefield, already stinking of his own shit.

  No time to see to the man now, but Sigmund swore to himself he’d give Keld a proper funeral. Along with all the others. A field of carrion composed of men and shieldmaidens Sigmund had known and loved for long years.

  Blood dribbled from Gramr’s point as Sigmund charged back into the fray. A Menzlin warrior came at him with a great, two-handed axe. Wild swings, any of which could have cleaved a man in twain. But each blow narrowly missed Sigmund as he weaved from side to side.

  He kicked the warrior in the chest, sending him hurtling several feet through the air before landing in the mud with a squelch and a sputter. Sigmund lunged forward and drove Gramr through the warrior’s heart.

  He bellowed a war cry. How many had he slain this day? Two dozen?

  Obvious reluctance marred the faces of two foes around him, and neither gave charge. One, a spearman, looked to his fellow who bore a battleaxe.

  Sigmund raised Gramr high, shrieked, and raced for the axeman.

  The man faltered, falling back several steps like a fucking craven. He raised a shield too slowly. Gramr sliced clean through his forearm and cut his face in half.

  Sigmund spun even as the spearman charged. He knocked the blow aside with his shield, and stepped inside the man’s reach all as one movement. A fell, fey instinct had seized him this day. Every move his foes made seemed whispered in his ears. Every blow they would have struck fell short or scraped off Sigmund’s mail.

  He rammed Gramr through the spearman’s sternum. The runeblade punched through mail, flesh, and spine as easily as linen. His fury had become a sun, burning inside his chest. Consuming him in an inferno that could only be extinguished with blood, and then, only for a few heartbeats.

  The wolf sang in his mind, lending him speed and strength no mortal man could hope to match.

  A terrible vengeance for two murdered sons and a shattered empire. For dreams heaped onto a pyre. A lifetime of losing all those he’d cared for.

  The voice in his head warned him as another foe raced up behind him. Sigmund spun, whipping Gramr around in a low arc. Her blade sheared through a shieldmaiden’s waist from one side and out the other. Utter disbelief colored her face for a brief instant. Before her torso toppled free from her legs and blood bubbled up as if from a mountain spring.

  “I’ll kill you all!” Sigmund bellowed into the mist.

  The carnage confused even his keen wolf senses, but still he knew where foes lay. He raced up, over a hill, to find the corpses of more of his men. Beyond them stood a trio of axemen, all with giant shields. Those who had slain so many, now defending the hill.

  That voice suddenly told him to move, and move he did, lunging to one side. Thwack. An arrow stuck in the mud where he’d just stood. The bowman stood beyond the axemen, already nocking another arrow.

  With the best howl he could manage in human form, Sigmund charged up that hill, right into their midst. His shield jerked up of its own accord. Thwack. The impact of an arrow against it sent vibrations shooting up Sigmund’s arm.

  The arrow’s weight unbalanced his shield arm, but Sigmund’s strength meant he could still move it faster than his foes would expect.

  He whipped the shield around first, thrusting it at the first axeman’s face. The man hefted his own shield to block the wild blow, which served to at least break off the arrow shaft and send his foe stumbling a few steps back.

  Twisting, knowing the other axemen circled him, Sigmund whipped Gramr around in a wide arc. The pair of them fell back though, and his blade met only air. Which was fine. Sigmund continued his arc, twisting it into a thrust at the remaining man who had now charged, axe high.

  The runeblade rammed through his face and sent blood and brains splattering over Sigmund as he tore it free.

  A heavy blow cracked down between Sigmund’s shoulder blades and sent him crashing into the mud. Everything went hazy, dim. He rolled, tumbling, unable to arrest his fall down the hill. He hit a corpse, bounced over it, then landed on level ground.

  Streams of pain coursed through his back, his neck, his shoulders. Even his arms for some inexplicable reason. The voice hadn’t warned him of that. He barely had time to form the thought before the war cries of another man forced him back to the moment at hand.

  Growling, drawing on the wolf’s strength, Sigmund shoved himself off the ground and into a lunge in one swift motion. Gramr sliced out one of the charging axemen’s guts and sent him stumbling down to the spot Sigmund had just risen from. Shrieking, he turned and faced down the last of the warriors.

  The man hesitated a bare moment, then raced in, his guttural scream filling the air.

  Sigmund blocked the axe on his shield, the impact numbing his arm and suddenly stinging more than a dozen others had this battle. Fatigue must be taking him, stealing his rage. And he needed that rage. He needed that voice turning him into the invincible Sigmund. None dared stand before him!

  He knocked aside another attack with his shield, then launched into rapid swings of Gramr. The runeblade tore a chunk out of his foe’s shield. That left the man gaping for a heartbeat. Long enough for Gramr to cleave through his skull.

  Panting, Sigmund spun, seeking more foes. “By Odin, I’ll kill every last one of you myself! I will tear your halls down, Lyngi! Do you hear me!” He paused, catching his breath. He’d finish what Helgi had started and thus honor his son.

  Another man drew nigh, stepping out of the mist, clad not in armor but a cloak and wide-brimmed hat concealing his face. Sigmund could catch naught but a glimpse of a vicious scar where one eye should have been. The man held a spear and seemed to be singing to himself.

  Mist-mad fool of Lyngi’s?

  The spearman advanced on Sigmund.

  Come to die, fool? Roaring, Sigmund
charged forward. He raised Gramr high over his head for a chop that would cleave the old vagabond in half. The man raised his spear in both hands to block, little good though it would do him.

  The runeblade bit into the spear.

  And Gramr snapped in half.

  The force of it was like a wail in Sigmund’s mind, a cry of the damned in agony, beyond the gates of Hel. It drove him to his knees, gaping at the shattered runeblade. The indestructible sword of the Old Kingdoms. Broken upon an old man’s spear …

  Sigmund looked up, expecting that spear to run him through. But the old man had vanished back into the mists.

  Gramr … The gift of Odin …

  Sigmund let the sword fall from his trembling fingers. This couldn’t happen. It could not.

  Metal clashed on metal. Men screamed. Dying all around. The battle still raged.

  Desperately, Sigmund cast about himself, seeking another weapon. A fallen sword lay nearby. He grabbed this, rose, and rushed onward into the mist.

  Before the next hill, he came to a contingent of Styrian warriors, desperately holding back a Baian onslaught. Surrounding their king … Eylimi knelt in the mud, hand holding his gut. Hjordis’s father would not last long.

  Sigmund threw himself amidst the Baian warriors. His blade hamstrung one. His shield shoved another out of position. He fell into the dance with them. Cleave, strike, dodge, parry.

  A spearpoint scraped along his mail, bruising the flesh beneath before punching through a link and wedging into the gambeson under the chain. Sigmund grabbed the spear with one hand and shoved, his varulf strength sending the owner stumbling away. A blade crashed into Sigmund’s shoulder at the same time. The fingers of his shield arm went numb even as crushing agony lanced through his shoulder and upper arm.

  His shield fell limp at his side.

  The pain of it sent him down to one knee.

  A war cry behind him. A man moving in for the kill. Premature.

  Sigmund twisted around and thrust his sword through the groin of his would-be murderer. It did not punch through easily as Gramr would have. It carried the task though, sending his attacker toppling over sideways, hands clutching his mauled stones.