by Scott Oden
“Rather than succor Jerusalem,” Konraðr said, “it was to Constantinople that we fared. I thank God Magnus did not live to see my shame. He fell ill and died at Andros, where I became Count Baldwin’s man—his ‘Revenant,’ as he called me, for I was akin to the restless dead who ravened after the living with bile and hate to spare. Deeds were done…”
Father Nikulas dropped his gaze to the hilt of Konraðr’s sword. Sweat and old bloodstains discolored its shagreen wrappings, held fast by coils of tarnished silver wire, while nicks and scratches marred its acorn-shaped pommel. They were like runes, these markings, and they told a tale akin to the sagas of old. In the shimmer of candlelight on steel, the priest watched the destruction of an ancient city, a city of cyclopean walls and sprawling palaces. He saw faces reflected in the sword’s blade—snarling, screaming, young, old, male, female; he saw children cowering in the wrack of war, lit by the glow of Greek fire. And he saw an old man, gray-bearded, one-eyed, clad in the faded finery of a Varangian lord. Albino hands smeared in blood tended the old man’s wounds, though there was not a leech or chirurgeon under heaven who could help him. The killer’s hands folded in prayer. Haltingly, the old man spoke …
“The old graybeard was talking out of his head,” Konraðr said, stroking the blade’s hilt as he would a cat, his attention drawn into the past. “Talking about a saint called Teodor, whose sword was lost in the lands of his ancestors.”
“Saint Teodor?”
“You know of him, then?”
Father Nikulas leaned forward; he clasped his crucifix with both hands, raised it to his lips, and kissed it. “A Christian soldier of Rome in the days of great Constantine. He swore an oath to God to slay a dragon that had plagued Bithynia, devouring whole villages and making off with gold and women. He followed the wyrm north, into the forests of Germania and beyond. None now know where blessed Teodor caught up to his quarry, whether it was in the bogs of Jutland or the grinding ice of the Kjolen Mountains, but their battle was said to have lasted a year and a day—and when Saint Teodor triumphed, the wyrm’s death shook the earth.”
“And the saint?”
“Slain, as I recall,” the priest replied, “crushed by the dragon’s death-throes. It is presumed his bones—and his sword, which was blessed by the blood of Christ—lie among the beast’s coils to this day, wherever those coils may lie.”
“The old man knew.”
“The old man knew he was dying, lord.” Nikulas rose and paced in a tight circle, hands clasped behind his back. His cassock rustled with every turn. “You said it yourself: he was talking out of his head. The deathbed mutterings of an old heretic. If that’s what you seek to stem your so-called pagan apocalypse … well, you might as well wish for a piece of the True Cross or the Spear of Longinus. Saint Teodor’s sword is lost to us. It—”
Konraðr cut him off. “It is in the land of the Raven-Geats, along the northwestern shores of Lake Vänern.” The Ghost-Wolf of Skara stood and padded to the young priest’s side. “It is a pagan land, men say, the last bastion of the Old Ways.” Konraðr clapped Nikulas on the shoulder; he drew him closer, his voice a seductive whisper. “This is how you become my ally: you and I, we will scour the land of the Raven-Geats, burn their heresy from our midst, and recover the sword of Saint Teodor. That done, we will join my cousin, the King of the Danemark, ere his campaign against the Estonians reaches full bloom. Imagine it: Father Nikulas, soldier of Christ—ever in the shadow of his unworthy master, the Archbishop—stepping forth to bring his liege a mighty gift! For would not the sword of Saint Teodor make a potent symbol, if carried at the head of a crusading army? Would that army not be assured of victory?”
Father Nikulas bit back a scathing rebuke. Indeed, he could find no fault in Konraðr’s logic. Nikulas was ambitious, though he allowed a love of Christ and the good of His Church to motivate him rather than base desire for temporal power and the myriad sins it could buy. That he left to Archbishop Sunesen. But to possess a sword anointed by the blood of the Savior of Mankind … how far would he go? Would he betray his archbishop? Most assuredly. But would he betray his king?
“An army under the aegis of God, protected by one of His saints, would be indomitable,” he said quietly. “But we needs must strike quickly, before your cousin, the King, declares your refusal to attend him an act of treachery. Spies must be dispatched with all haste, armed with coin and good sense. And we must not falter. Our lives, if not our souls, depend on it.”
The lord of Skara’s face was bloodless and damp; his thin frame shook from the renewed ague. “With my five hundred household troops, my sworn men, seven hundred and twenty-nine more men have flocked to my banner since Yule. And my spies have already returned. We seek a place called Hrafnhaugr, Raven Hill. I lack only the blessings of a priest. So I ask you, Father Nikulas of Lund, will you help me? Will you carry the light of Christ into the last dark corner of Sweden?”
Flickers of movement caught the priest’s eye. In the shadows of the cathedral—beyond the shafts of pale winter’s light filtering from the clerestory overhead, away from the glow of a hundred candles—Father Nikulas sensed a ghostly presence. There were scores of them, the restless dead, led by a figure of an old man, hunched and twisted and clad in the faded cloak of a Varangian lord. A single eye gleamed from beneath the brim of a slouch hat.
They waited.
They waited for him.
And though Father Nikulas shuddered at the thought of joining their ranks, he did not quail. He was a soldier of Christ, faithful and devout. So it was with a trembling hand that he made the sign of the Cross and let that gesture stand as his answer.
“In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”
9
Nothingness, shot through with jags of green light, and then … voices, distant and muffled as though heard from under the earth—one is harsh and grating, the other smooth and silky:
“Nár! What do those rootlings know?” says the harsh voice. A name floats from the aether, flirts at the edges of her consciousness, and is gone before she can grasp it. Anger percolates through the darkness; hate and loathing that stretches back an eternity.
“The vættir don’t lie,” hisses the silky voice. Halla, the green-shot void around her says, trembling. Her name is Halla. “He is probably already here, in Miðgarðr.”
“Then find him! If some mortal bears that one-eyed bastard’s luck, then how hard could it be?”
The silky voice, as smooth and cold as a fresh coverlet of snow, curses in a language she does not comprehend. Then: “Impossible, if he chooses not to be discovered. I think he’s been sent to stop whatever it is you’ve got planned. To protect the prophecy. He’ll be drawn to you…”
“Let him come, then!” The harsh voice laughs, and the void convulses with barely contained rage. “God or no, I’ll send him back to Ásgarðr in pieces. That dragon is mine!”
Dragon. The dragon. The bones of the dragon …
The nothingness rustles; light seeps in from beyond the veil—green and gold, red like flames; by its wan illumination she can see a figure. It bears the shape of a man, though hunched and as twisted as the staff he leans upon. A single malevolent eye gleams from beneath the brim of his hat.
But he is no god.
Her voice profanes the silence. “What is the dragon?”
The stranger smiles.
“From the depths a barrow | rises through the water,
The stone-girdled hall | of Aranæs, where dwells
Jörmungandr’s spawn, | the Malice-Striker.
Its dread bones rattle | and herald an end.”
And with a sound like the rattle of immense bones, the stranger’s cloak is borne up as by a hot breath of wind. There is only darkness beneath. And that darkness grows and spreads, becoming monstrous wings that blot out the pale light between worlds. The darkness crawls like a serpent. It robs the air of its breath; it slays the living with a pestilence that rots the blood in their veins. It crushes
and destroys.
She does not flee as the darkness engulfs her. And in its hideous embrace, she opens her mouth to curse …
* * *
DÍSA DID NOT AWAKEN BY fits and starts, nor did she bolt upright and thrash about as though trapped by her dreams. No, she simply opened her eyes. She knew where she was; the beams overhead, the furs beneath, the smells of oiled iron and rust, incense and old blood, the smoke coiling through shafts of gray daylight that stabbed down from the clerestory—all of this was familiar to her. The Hooded One’s longhouse. Thus it came as no surprise, as she looked around, to see Halla sitting cross-legged nearby, a mail hauberk draped over her lap and a wooden bucket of tools and scrap mail beside her.
Dísa stretched, tendons cracking and joints popping. “I was dreaming,” she said. “I died and went into the earth—but not my body. Just … me. The earth was like water and I swam through it. Deeper, I went. Always deeper, to where I heard the roots of trees singing. They told me stories. Stories of dragons…”
“A fine dream.” Halla nodded, cutting her eyes sharply at the younger woman.
“How long was I out?”
The troll-woman put down the tool she’d been using to remove links from the hem of the hauberk. “Nine days,” Halla replied.
“Nine? Ymir’s blood!” Dísa said. “Has anyone from Hrafnhaugr come looking for me?”
Halla shook her head. She did not rise and come to check Dísa’s injuries; indeed, as Dísa took stock of herself she realized she had none—no pain in her face or her head, no swelling in her nostrils and cheeks that would have made breathing a labor. Halla asked, “What do you remember?”
Dísa frowned. “I remember … I remember it was my fault. I nearly had him, but my concentration slipped—I let my guard down—and he dealt me a crack to the skull.” She touched her hairline by her temple, feeling … nothing. No lumps or lacerations. No contusions or bruises. She should have been a mass of aching muscles, her skull on fire and her every breath like a fish gasping its last on the bank. But she felt fine … better than she had in many days. “Or did I dream that, as well?”
“That was real enough.” Halla took up the mail hauberk once more. She used an awl and pliers to remove rings, drawing up the garment’s hem. Those she removed went into the bucket with a metallic clink. “The old fool nearly sent you on to the next world.”
“Remind me to return the favor someday,” Dísa replied, half in jest. “Where is he?”
“Gone hunting.” Halla gestured with the awl. “Tell me of this wager of yours.”
Dísa rolled onto her side, her legs drawn up; she raised herself up on one elbow with her head propped on her right hand. She tried with her other hand to untangle the beads and disks in her hair. She told Halla of Flóki, the Jarl’s son—whom she’d known since they were children; she recounted the falling out between father and son, Flóki’s departure from Hrafnhaugr, and Hreðel’s desperation to see his son returned. “Though he’s a horse’s arse, and a fool to boot, Hreðel has been loyal to the Hooded One. To fulfill this boon would not have taxed him overmuch. But he’s made his decision. He’ll help, but only after I draw blood from him.” Dísa’s brows knitted. She muttered, “And this is proving more difficult than I imagined.”
“Because you’re wriggling around like a worm on a hook, that’s why,” Halla said. She opened a mail link, prized it free, and dropped it into the bucket. Clink. “You rise to his taunts, allow your anger to get the better of you, and put your inexperience on display for all to see.” Clink. “Think, child. Has your Jarl not men aplenty? More than enough to fetch his wayward son back to him? Of course he has.” Clink. “This is a test of your loyalty, to see how far you will go for him. To see what you will risk.” Clink. “Grimnir’s no fool. He knows what your Jarl is about, making threats, testing the limits of the Hooded One’s patronage to see if things have changed.” Clink. “What seems a small matter to you, a reasonable request balanced against a lifetime of fealty, is nothing less than an attempt to break an ancient compact that limits the Jarl’s power.” Clink. “And you are right in the middle of it, flailing about like you know the score.”
A long silence passed between them. Dísa lay back and closed her eyes. She wanted to hear again the ethereal singing of the trees, the hum of root and bole, the shiver of limb and leaf, the thrum of the heartwood and the rasp of the bark. Instead, she heard only the patter of a cold rain, the rustle of a breeze, and the distant rumble of thunder in the mountains to the north. “Am I to be nothing but their pawn, then?” Dísa said, finally. “Some useless piece in this game they play?”
Halla shrugged. “That choice is yours.”
“Choice?” Dísa’s cheeks grew hot with pent-up rage. “What choice? Unless I can convince Grimnir to help, Flóki risks death or worse. But if I ignore my Jarl and leave Flóki to rise or fall on his own merit, I risk losing everything if Hreðel decides to rebel against the Hooded One.”
Clink. “That is their game, child. What is yours?”
“Mine?”
“Aye.” Clink. “Yours. You can be the pawn in their game or the queen in your own. You need only decide what rules you play by, if any, and what your endgame is.”
Dísa hesitated. “I … I want to be a shieldmaiden. That is my endgame.”
“Good,” Halla replied. She put her tools aside, took up a cloth, and polished the hem of the hauberk, feeling for burrs in the metal. When she found one, Halla drew an iron rasp from the bucket and filed the burr down. “Then how do you get there? By bending to your Jarl’s demands? By shadowing Grimnir? By recklessly attacking him every chance you get in hopes of scoring his hide and drawing blood?”
“I want to learn his war-art,” Dísa said. “And I’d probably learn it faster if I were conscious and not always trying to sneak up on his blind side. But Flóki…”
“You fancy this lad?”
Dísa nodded.
“And you want to see him succeed, be his own man, and earn the praise and respect of the Raven-Geats?”
“I do.”
“Then he must be left to his own devices. You do not make steel by plucking iron from the fire ere the heat burns it. It must taste the flames and either master them or be destroyed by them. None of you lot get out of this world alive and unscathed. Your Hreðel has forgotten this, I think.” Halla held up the mail shirt. It was mid-thigh rather than knee-length now—a haubergeon rather than a hauberk—its butted rings of dark iron interspersed with rings of copper and silver. The troll-woman nodded.
Dísa sat up. “How do I begin? I can’t imagine the Hooded One will want me tagging along after him as he goes about his day.”
“Do precisely what you are doing now, child, but do it smarter.” Halla tossed her the mail shirt. “Protect yourself. Become accustomed to the weight and wear of mail.” She waved at the interior of the longhouse, which was equal parts treasure hoard and armory. “Root through this and find yourself a good gambeson, a helmet, greaves, a shield … enough armor where you can take a blow from Grimnir’s blade without risking your neck. Find yourself an axe and a spear, as well. Then go, try and draw your blood—but be conscious of how he moves, how he attacks, how he taunts you first. Understand why he does this. And emulate him. Become him.”
“Make the game my own,” Dísa said, as a new resolve kindled in her eyes. “Be the queen, rather than the pawn.”
* * *
GRIMNIR RETURNED TO THE LONGHOUSE with the setting of the sun. Wary, he emerged from the deep twilight of the forest and into the open only after he was certain no one followed him. All day, after Halla’s warnings about that wretched Grey Wanderer, he’d borne the sensation of scrutiny—the crawling of his scalp, the flicker of movement glimpsed from the corner of his eye. It was enough that he came back from the hunt through the heart of the bog, laying traps in his wake. Now, mud fouled his boots; grime and blood mucked his limbs. His hair hung sweat-damp across his saturnine brow. Over his shoulders, he carried the gu
tted carcass of a roe deer as though its weight were nothing. One hand held the scrawny beast’s leg; the other cradled a hunting spear.
Grimnir reached the foot of the stairs and turned back the way he had come; nostrils flared as he snuffled at the air. His good eye, gleaming in the darkness like an ember, swept across his back-trail.
Nár! Look at you! Grimnir snarled at himself. Starting at shadows like that old git who raised you! Gífr’d laugh to see you now! He hawked and spat. Then, dropping any pretense at stealth, he ascended the steps with the swagger of a conquering king. Grimnir reached the head of the stairs; from there, he could see that the doors to the longhouse stood ajar. Light seeped out, a glow that striped the gathering dark with a broad swatch of orange. He smelled the smoke of his hearth, the warmth, the ancient stink of soot-stained beams.
And he heard an intermittent thock, like a stick striking a wooden post.
Scowling, he sidled close and nudged the door with one booted foot. Hinges squealed in protest. Grimnir shifted his weight. What he saw, however, only deepened his scowl.
Halla sat to one side, a helmet of blackened iron in her lap and a bucket of smith’s tools at her elbow. She was busy repairing the leather liner, where it met the drape of mail at the neck and the cheek guards. Grimnir recognized it by the silver-inlaid half-face guard—he’d taken it from a dead Norse prince barely older than the girl.