by Matt Larkin
On the wind, fell whispers advised her to call upon the Art, extend her mortal existence and thus delay her meeting with Hel. But Gudrun had denied herself the Art for long years. Sorcery had taken so much from her and she would not heed its call to give yet more.
“Sister.”
A tremble shot through her, through all the world. An earthquake that somehow sent even the winds whipping faster, lashing her cheeks.
“Gudrun, awaken from this.”
The shaking continued until it sent her toppling down, crashing toward the snows.
She sat bolt upright, flailing about herself for a foe to strike. Her brother Gunnar stumbled backward and Gudrun herself pitched from her bed and onto the floor in a tangle of blankets. The fall sent a jarring impact into her knee and left her moaning.
Her brother groaned, snatching a goblet from her bedside. “Would that I could believe this was only wine. How much did you take this time?”
Gudrun glowered at her brother. Her head was splitting apart, her eyes were burning, and now he was lecturing her. And he’d come in here wearing the crown, so he’d either come directly from his throne room, or else he’d donned it as a reminder to her of his authority, despite him being the youngest of the siblings.
Oh, but Grimhild had crowned Gunnar king when their father had died.
“You can’t keep doing this to yourself.” Gunnar tossed the goblet aside and it clattered along the floor like a Hel-damned gong. “Look at you. What have you become?”
Despite herself, Gudrun followed his command, taking in her appearance. She clearly hadn’t bothered removing her gown, though it was disheveled from sleeping in it. And stained with wine. There had been some wine, among other things. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Her brother sighed and knelt beside her. “What I understand is that it’s been more than a dozen years since you came back to us.” Well, she’d had nowhere else to go, really. It wasn’t so much that she’d wanted to reconcile with Grimhild as that she’d had no choice. “Whatever Mother gave you to help you get a handle on your … sufferings … well, it’s time—”
“My sufferings!” Gudrun rose, swayed in place as her legs threatened to give out, and then managed a shaky step toward him. “You have no idea what I went through, caught under the thrall of that thing for so many years! You cannot begin to fathom what I have endured.” Nor what Skadi allowed the wood jotunnar to do to her once the snow maiden had finally released her from possession. “How I fought to regain myself.”
Are you yourself? Snegurka’s hateful whisper left Gudrun grinding her teeth and clutching her head in an attempt to silence the snow maiden.
“Perhaps you’re right. I don’t know what you went you through. I do know you’re now as much a slave to Mother’s brew as you were to the vaettr.”
Gudrun favored him with a disdainful sneer. “Fuck you, King Gunnar.” The boy still worshipped Grimhild. But then, their mother had probably never had him raped or tortured just to teach him a lesson. No, not him. Not the favored son.
“You forget yourself.”
“Not at the moment. That’s what the Hel-damned brew is for.”
Gunnar nodded slowly, looking about her chambers, gaze seeming to linger on the piles of discarded garments, the stains, the dust—Gudrun no longer allowed slaves in to clean—and the half-eaten turnips from Hel-knew-when. “You’ve slept all day. The slaves already prepare the night meal. I expect you to attend.”
You become a shade, even in life. So close to the limitless cold of Niflheim. You will be one of us, someday soon.
Now she groaned, a breath away from telling him she wouldn’t come. She had no desire to see anyone else, much less suffer the raucous din of clattering plates and goblets. But from the look on her little brother’s face, he might well have had her bodily dragged downstairs if she didn’t accede to his wishes.
Instead, she offered him a curt nod. “Excuse me, then. I need my chamberpot.”
“Yes. And sister? Please have the slaves clean that too.” With that, he turned and left.
Gudrun rubbed her face and groaned.
In the great hall, Grimhild sat at Gunnar’s right. While her brother ruled in name, more oft than not, Gudrun saw their mother’s hand guiding his moves. The woman favored Gudrun with a look of disapproval, chin lifted just high enough Gudrun wanted to slap her.
Not that she’d have ever dared it.
Grimhild had slowly begun to regaining her powers in the years since Father had died. Since Odin had murdered him. Gudrun hadn’t been here to see those early days, when Grimhild must have seemed pathetic—old and withered and struggling to manage with no power save alchemy. Her grimoire was gone and she’d lost the vaettir she’d once bound, thus severely limiting her Art. She must have blundered around, mixing what few brews she could recall.
Perhaps she’d even beseeched aid from other sorcerers to help her summon and bind a new vaettr. If so, Gudrun would dearly have loved to have seen how Grimhild must have hated so debasing herself. Sadly though, at the time, Gudrun herself was suffering far worse depredations than her mother.
Gudrun slunk into a chair beside Hogne, her middle brother, deliberately avoiding meeting Grimhild’s gaze.
The king drummed his fingers on the table while slaves deposited plates of steaming cod and leeks in front of them. A handful of other ranking Niflungar also sat at the table, but Gudrun ignored them, having no desire to see their looks of reproach if they knew about her.
Finally, Gunnar cleared his throat. “Guthorm sends reports that a new king has risen in Hunaland.”
Hardly news. Every other moon saw the rise or fall of some petty king somewhere in the North Realms. The whole world was engulfed in chaos. Hel, a number of dynasties lasted less than a year. Gudrun stared at her fish, her stomach roiling uncomfortably. She didn’t much want to eat aught, but she’d best at least try the leeks.
“Why do we care?” Hogne asked when their king failed to elaborate. “That is, I thought you wished to focus on claiming all Reidgotaland before other lands.”
“Hmm, yes. Except this man who claimed the throne is a scion of our old ally, Volsung.”
Now Gudrun looked up sharply. “I thought all Sigmund’s children had died?”
“All but one, raised here in Reidgotaland, no less, though now returned home.”
Grimhild leaned forward, lacing her fingers on the table. “Will he know of his forebear’s oath to us?”
“Doubtful,” Gunnar admitted. “Nevertheless, I’ve set Guthorm to watch him.”
Gudrun barely restrained herself from rolling her eyes. Their half-brother was dead, raised as a draug by his own mother in an appalling show of her lack of maternal empathy. A draug made an excellent spy in the wilds but was like to find it hard to infiltrate a king’s court, reeking of death and rot.
Gunnar seemed to sense her disdain because he cleared his throat. “He need not watch the man’s every move, only bear witness to any further wars he fights. When the time is right, I can reach out to Sigmundson myself, or send Hogne.”
No one even suggested Gudrun should go.
Just as well. She needed more draught and a deep sleep.
13
Myrkvidr separated Reidgotaland from Hunaland. The greater part of that divide had become known as the Poison Marshes, a twisted and decaying wasteland ruled by a famed linnorm. Sigurd and Regin had ridden to the edge of Myrkvidr, but Sigurd had to walk Grani within the wood and Regin’s horse demurred to go at all.
The canopy remained oppressively thick, even in winter.
Indeed, while snow still crunched underfoot at Sigurd’s passage, it was little more than a thin layer of it in most places. And with the encroaching darkness, Regin seemed scarcely frightened of the sun, oft traveling beside Sigurd almost until dawn before he scrambled off to find some warren. How the dverg always came to locate such places, Sigurd did not know for certain, though he suspected Regin could pass through earth and stone as he wis
hed and thus, perhaps, simply sank into the ground when he so desired. The dverg remained cagey about the extent of his abilities, as always, and thus left Sigurd to make his own suppositions.
Tale told of beasts stalking these woods—varulfur or ghosts or other, worse creatures. Trolls, even, some had claimed, though Sigurd had heard most trolls dwelt in the Jarnvid out in Aujum and had not passed much across the borders of Hunaland. His father had skirmished with the creatures some years back and now, the trolls seemed largely content to keep to the desolate wild places where men feared to walk.
Of course, such a description fit well to the Myrkvidr.
It was a place of eerie, nigh overwhelming stillness, as if the shadows themselves stifled sound and swallowed any semblance of hope for light. Those rare spots where sunlight pierced the canopy became scattered beams illuminating tiny fragments of the forest floor and seeming an intrusion upon another world.
Perhaps it was that, in truth. Perhaps the Veil thinned here, and the Myrkvidr lay closer to the woodlands in the Spirit Realm, Hoddmimis Holt. Or perhaps a root of Yggdrasil rose close to the surface here. In either case, Sigurd could see why men would flee this wood and still none would call them craven. He could see it, yes, but he’d not flee himself. So much of his life had been spent in dark places too close to the Veil, trained by a hateful being from the other side.
He was not fool enough to think on the Otherworlds without trepidation, but neither did he intend to beg for Odin’s protection at the mere mention of such things. No, Sigurd had walked in the dark a long time. Sometimes for days without light, as Regin tested his mettle and thus reinforced it.
“We draw nigh to the Poison Marshes,” the dverg said, his voice a grating intrusion on the otherwise still forest, even though he kept it to a whisper. “If we skirt the edge, we’ll come to a fjord where my brother likes to drink clean water fresh from the sea instead of the filth in which he now dwells.”
Drink seawater? Sigurd supposed it made little sense to wonder overmuch on what suited a dragon, but still, it seemed strange to think any creature would slake its thirst in a fjord.
“You suggest I fight the beast when he comes to drink?”
Regin snorted. “Would you prefer to trek through the marshes and fight the linnorm in its own domain? Even if you could find its lair, I imagine you’d regret it.”
“To the fjord then.”
Sigurd followed the dverg as he led to the edge of Myrkvidr, pausing to stare at the sky when the tree line grew thin. A few hours before dawn? But Regin was cautious. Satisfied that no danger awaited him from the rising sun, the dverg led onward. Beyond the woods’ edge they came to a steep decline down to the fjord, one Sigurd eased his way down with grace, smirking as Regin stumbled and cursed his precarious footing.
At the base of it, Sigurd walked along the water’s edge, examining the terrain. Assuming Fafnir came directly from the Poison Marshes to the north, the serpent ought to have left some sort of trail as to his passing.
Linnorms had two forelegs which they used to propel themselves forward, or so Regin had explained during the trek. Their tails dragged like snakes, and in either case, Sigurd expected to be able to find clear indication of …
He paused, gaping at a break in the trees in the distance that looked as if a jotunn had come blundering through them, casting trunks aside. And dragged a rivet through the silt ahead of him. Shaking his head, Sigurd advanced closer. Sure enough, a clawed footprint lay embedded in the snow, and others around it.
Each footprint was nigh as a large as Sigurd was. What would that make this monster? Eighty feet long? Longer?
He spun as Regin approached. “You made no mention of the size of this beast!”
The dverg shrugged. “Would it have mattered?”
Yes, Sigurd rather imagined that it might. Suddenly even Gramr, mighty though she was, seemed but a needle against his foe. “How do you propose I fight a creature capable of eating a godsdamned longship?”
Regin groaned and looked around, staring at the fjord. “He’ll come to drink.”
“And?”
“I’m thinking!” The dverg paced around the disturbed snow, examining one track, then another. “Notice how the line of his tail always follows roughly the same path?”
Sigurd shrugged.
“My brother is a creature of habit, even in his changed, bestial state. He must take the same exit from the marshes each time he comes and drink in roughly the same place.”
And if Sigurd had an army of archers with arrows capable of piercing dragon scale, he might lay an ambush. Since he had naught of the sort, he little saw how any of this mattered. He shook his head in disgust. “You’ve wasted our trip, dverg.”
“You made an oath.”
“Yes, I did, and I’ve not forgotten, or I would’ve walked from here already.”
Regin pointed to the silt. “It’s soft ground. Dig a hole beneath it, cover the hole, and hide. Fafnir will crawl right over you, exposing his underbelly.”
Huh. Was that even possible? Could he gut the serpent before the creature even realized a threat lay nigh? “Suppose he smells me out? Or otherwise detects the hole?”
Regin snorted. “Boy, did you truly suspect you might slay a dragon without taking the least risk in the process? You must choose the chance you take. Fight with guile or wait here, sword in hand and challenge him to a duel. Were I you, I’d rely on guile.”
Sigurd spat into the water. The dverg would be his death, more like than not. Still, he’d given his oath and he’d not break that. To do so was to invite a worse urd than falling prey to a dragon.
And so Sigurd sent Grani to seek feed in the forest, then drew Gramr and cut a chunk out of a tree stump, a curving piece he could use for a shovel in the wet ground. Regin watched, offering no help as Sigurd set to digging a hole.
When dawn drew nigh, the dverg fled once more, disappearing into the Myrkvidr.
And still Sigurd worked.
He had to piss. That thought niggled Sigurd almost constantly as he lay in a clammy hole on the riverbank. It was but one of innumerable flaws in this plan, him lying here not knowing if the linnorm might show up in a moment or a fortnight. How oft did dragons need to drink water? Daily? Once a moon? Who knew?
Then there was the threat of the mist, billowing over his hole, vapors no doubt seeping in with each breath.
So Sigurd found himself squirming in discomfort. Every time he rose, he risked discovery that would make all his efforts in vain. Meaning, every time he could no longer control it, he had to roll over and let loose in his own hole.
A bad plan for that reason alone, no matter how many times he told himself he could swim in the river when this was done.
Besides which, even were he not discovered, suppose the ground gave way beneath the linnorm’s weight and Fafnir thus crushed him, maybe without even realizing it? Sigurd’s glorious journey would come to an ignoble end that might preclude him from ever reaching Valhalla. Or, if he did make it there, how his ancestors might mock his urd. Flattened to pulp under a serpent, lying in his own piss.
Would skalds tell verses of such a warrior? He suspected not. Assuming they even ever learned of what befell him. No, rather, Thrain might well remain on the throne of Rijnland forever, and he alone would guess where Sigurd had gone.
Overhead, ravens croaked as though he was already a corpse.
Sigurd groaned, shaking his head in disgust with the situation and cursing himself for a fool for ever considering it. He could make out little of the sky—he’d covered the hole with branches cut from the trees—but he guessed dusk would settle in after but a few more hours. Maybe then he’d flee this accursed pit and tell Regin to develop a better plan.
Of a sudden the ground began to rumble all around him. Loose silt tumbled down from the sides of the pit onto Sigurd’s face. He clenched his teeth, trying to keep his breath to the barest sound possible, though he doubted Fafnir could have heard aught over the raucous commoti
on of his own movement.
Something immense passed over the branches he’d covered himself with, snapping many and showering them down onto Sigurd. It blocked out the light and left him blind. An earthy stench like putrid water choked him, polluting the air with its foulness. Trying not to gag, Sigurd gripped Gramr’s blade.
This was it.
She was ready, he could feel it. She whispered glories in his ear. Promised his name would live on in eternity for felling such an abomination.
Don’t think. Don’t plan … just act.
Sigurd rammed Gramr straight upward. The blade scraped against the serpent’s massive scaled hide. Sigurd heaved and Gramr shrieked as she punched through the scales. Driving it up required far more force than piercing mail did. Scorchingly hot blood sprayed all over Sigurd’s arms and face, stinging, searing him like acid.
He roared at the creature as it tore itself asunder, unable to arrest its own momentum.
The linnorm thrashed, bellowing in shock and rage. Its wild convulsions yanked Gramr from Sigurd’s hand and exposed a hint of daylight above him. Should he make a break for it while—
The creature crashed back down over his hole once more, wiggling so violently the pit began to cave in. Already, the hole had filled with burning blood. If Fafnir died atop this place, Sigurd would be trapped, maybe even drown.
Screaming, he punched the scaled bulk. It was like hitting a solid wall—one lined with ridges. He jerked his hand back, shrieking as blood continued to seep into his little prison.
Fuck!
But the linnorm continued its thrashing, exposing the air once more. Sigurd launched himself from the hole, scrambling out toward the river on all fours. He pitched over, slammed his face into silt that stung his eyes, then heaved himself yet onward.
Sand, blood, and grime so caked him it blurred his vision as he rolled over and scrambled back away from the linnorm.
With a final heave, the creature crashed down once more and lay still, with only faint convulsions still holding it.