by Scott Oden
Pétr watched the two rangers gather Arngrim’s limp form. Absently, he nodded. “Drawbridges,” he said. “Two of them, he wanted.”
Konraðr hauled the squat Dane to his feet. “Then build them, by God! Take all you need save time, good Pétr. I want them ready by sunrise.”
The Dane rubbed his chin, and then nodded. The gesture was like striking flint to steel—it kindled a fierce light in the Rock’s eyes. “Two teams, two hundred men on each. We will need axes and adzes, hammers. The forge needs to be up and running, to make nails.”
“Go!” Konraðr sent the man on his way. “Sound your horns, lads! Send for my dogs of war, Thorwald and that pirate, Kraki! Summon Starkad and his noble thanes! It’s time these wretched heathens see the extent of their doom!”
A dozen and more horns howled their anger into the afternoon sky.
* * *
“THAT GOT THEIR ATTENTION,” ÚLFRÚN said, handing her silver-chased crossbow back to her man, Herroðr.
“And ours,” Dísa replied. She glanced over her shoulder as a clamor arose inside Hrafnhaugr’s walls. The sudden cacophony raised by the enemy brought villagers pouring into the streets. Men and women in their war-rags hustled to their mustering points amid the jangle of harness and the clatter of shields. A cadre of older women took the children under their wings and herded them from the lowest terrace, up to where they would shelter beneath the eaves of Gautheimr under Old Hygge’s watchful eye. “How long will we keep the gate open?” Dísa said.
“Until the hymn-singers breach the ravine, at least,” replied Úlfrún. Bjorn Hvítr had command of the gate, with its repaired hinges and iron-bound bar ready to fall into its new-forged brackets; just outside the gate, Brodir commanded the reserve: half the berserkir and half the úlfhéðnar, men of the Bear and of the Wolf; the rest were stationed at the bridge with Forne as their captain, alongside Bjorn Svarti and the sworn men. And Jarl Hreðel.
“What’s this idiot doing?” Grimnir said, leaning out over the palisade to get a better look.
Hreðel was on the move. Alone. No man tried to stop him as he strode to the center of the bridge, well within bow shot of the enemy, and thrice clashed the haft of his axe against his shield. His voice rang clear as a church bell. “Konraðr the White!” he bellowed. “Konraðr the White! Come out, you son of a Swedish harlot! Come out and face me! Sansorðinn, I name you! Craven mare with a thousand riders! Come out!”
The echo faded away; silence fell. And on the far side of the bridge, Konraðr the White emerged from the trees. Grimnir eyed him closely. He saw a tall man with skin and hair both as white as mountain ice. But even at this distance Grimnir could see there was something not quite right—a distortion in the air around him, too faint for the human eye. “Little bird,” Grimnir muttered. “You say he knows things he should not? That he seemed to listen to something on the wind?”
“Yes,” Dísa replied. “Why?”
But Grimnir did not reply. His eye blazed with new-kindled wrath.
Below, Konraðr walked to the head of the bridge. He peered up at the spirit pole, a look of disdain creasing his broad forehead. “What hurt have I done you, old man?” he shouted.
“You killed my son!”
“I’ve killed many sons! What of it?” Then, the lord of Skara cocked his head to one side. Grimnir saw the distortion agitate. “You are … Hreðel. Poor Flóki was your son? Alas, I did not kill him!”
“You nailed him to a cross, you milk-colored sodomite!”
“And I gave him a good Christian burial after that vicious little whore Dísa Dagrúnsdottir put an arrow through his head! Did you call her out? Insult her? Offer violence upon her? No! When you’ve done that, Hreðel Kveldúlfsson, then seek me out and we will settle our grievances!” Konraðr turned.
“Coward!” Hreðel roared. “Trembler! I piss on your god, hymn-singer! I shit on your god! His love makes a woman out of you! Call down your Christ! Summon him from his whore’s-nest in the sky, craven! Maybe he will face me, though more like he’ll also turn his back and offer me his arse for a buggering!”
Laughter spread along the allied lines, from where they stood drawn up by the bridge. As word of what was said spread into the streets, the laughter redoubled. Men hooted and catcalled. Horns brayed, a chuckling tune like the mirth of giants.
Konraðr stopped.
Slowly, he turned back to face Hreðel. The lord of Ska-ra bared his teeth in a feral grin, his eyes black sockets that gleamed with red points of light. He unbuckled his sheathed sword, stripped off his gambeson and his tunic underneath until he stood as bare-chested as Hreðel. The scars etching his torso looked like eerie writing—a Witch-man’s runes carved in flesh. Konraðr motioned to one of his men, who passed him a round shield and bearded axe with a long, flared head.
From the enemy side of the bridge, a chant went up. “Ska-ra! Ska-ra!” Spears clashed on shields, keeping time. “Ska-ra! Ska-ra!”
Amid the tumult, Konraðr said something to his men. A few of them, giant Danes with two-handed axes, came out from the shelter of the woods. Groans and cries arose from the walls of Hrafnhaugr as, with zealous fervor, these men laid in to the spirit pole of their ancestors. Wood chips flew; in short order they’d hacked down the heathen symbol. Konraðr nodded. With their help, he rolled the pole into the ravine.
Another warrior came forth with a cross made from two hastily lashed-together spear shafts.
Konraðr knelt a moment, lips moving as he muttered a prayer. Then, making the sign of the Cross, he rose to his feet and clashed his axe against the face of his shield.
“Ska-ra! Ska-ra!”
And like his namesake, the Ghost-Wolf came for his prey.
There was no bluster or bravado; no more taunts spilled from either man’s lips—only hissing breath and creaking rope as they closed the interval and came to grips. Hreðel moved his weight from foot to foot, causing the bridge to sway. The boards groaned in protest; older boards popped and cracked, but Konraðr paid no heed.
“Flóki!” Hreðel yelled, and sprang at the lord of Skara with all the reckless courage of a Geat. Shields crashed and grated; Hreðel jabbed at Konraðr’s eyes with the horn of his axe, then reeled sideways as the albino’s counter caught his shield’s edge and hacked a divot from the ash-daubed linden wood.
Hreðel whistled a curse through clenched teeth. He rebounded off the ropes. Wooden axe-hafts clacked as they traded blows—strike, parry, and riposte. Konraðr punched out with the iron-banded edge of his shield, driving it like a battering ram into the center boss of Hreðel’s.
Back, the old Jarl staggered.
Konraðr gave him no respite. His axe darted; he hooked the left edge of Hreðel’s shield with the beard of his axe and hauled it to the right, exposing the older man’s left side. Again, he punched out with the rim of his own shield. This time, bone splintered as he drove it edge-on into the joint of Hreðel’s shoulder, and then into his ribs.
The older man bellowed like a wounded ox. The quick, successive blows dropped him to one knee; a bloody froth sprayed from over his beard as he struggled to get his shield up and into a defensive position. The broken shoulder and ribs hampered him from bringing his axe back into play. Konraðr loomed over him.
Groans and cries went up from the allied lines. Atop the wall, Grimnir heard Dísa curse; Úlfrún said nothing. The slow, disappointed shake of her head was comment enough. From across the ravine, a clamor arose—shrieks and howls and clashing harness. Cries of “SKA-RA! SKA-RA!”
“Kristr á yðr alla!” the Ghost-Wolf snarled. “Christ owns you all!”
Before Hreðel could rise, Konraðr’s axe crashed down into the juncture of the old Jarl’s neck. Blood jetted as the steel blade crunched through muscle, sinew, and bone. Hreðel made a gurgling cry. His axe fell from nerveless fingers, clattered to the boards and slipped between them. The old man sagged against the ropes and sought to stem the tide of blood pumping through his fingers.
Konra�
�r shrugged free of his shield. He seized Hreðel Kveldúlfsson by the lank handful of hair left to him, wrenched him up, and struck again. Blood spattered the albino’s milky chest. A third blow fell, and the old Jarl’s head came free in a rain of gore, trailing ragged flesh and marrow-leaking vertebrae.
“Do you hear me?” Konraðr roared. His eerie red eyes flashed as he stepped over the old Jarl’s headless corpse. He raised his prize. Blood spattered his arm, flecked his pale face and hair. He strode toward the line of Geats—standing now in stunned silence. At twenty yards, he stopped. With an explosive grunt, he slung Hreðel’s severed head over the line of Geats. “Christ owns you all!”
For a long moment, the tableau held. Konraðr stared at the assembled Geats, who stared back in silence. Finally, he ducked his head and spat, and began to turn away.
“Wait!” a deep voice called out. Konraðr turned as a giant of a man stepped out from the enemy line. He was dark haired, and in his hands he cradled a long-hafted axe. It was Bjorn Svarti. “This Christ of yours,” he said. “I’m told he practiced a type of sorcery. That he could walk on water. Is this true?”
“He was a worker of miracles,” Konraðr replied truculently.
“Miracles, aye.” Bjorn Svarti nodded. “But could he fly, you white-skinned whoreson?” And with an explosive curse, Svarti pivoted, raised his axe, and brought it down on the rope lashings that anchored the bridge.
Hemp parted; boards trembled.
“Run! Dog!” With each word, Svarti struck the anchor logs. The Geats cheered. Another axe-man attacked the other pole.
And Konraðr the White, Ghost-Wolf of Skara, turned and leapt over Hreðel’s fallen body … and ran. He could feel every juddering axe blow. The ropes grew loose; the boards began to slip from their moorings. From the Crusader side of the ravine, arrows lofted skyward as archers tried to pick off the axe-wielding Geats; men roared and cursed.
Ten paces from safety, Konraðr felt the left side of the bridge give way. He threw himself forward, wrapping his right arm in the tangle of ropes as the right side of the bridge collapsed. The whole thing fell beneath him. Konraðr plummeted, breath whuffing from his lungs as he slammed into the wall of the ravine. He hung there a moment only, before dozens of hands pulled him to safety.
* * *
ATOP THE PALISADE GRIMNIR DOUBLED over, roaring with laughter. It was a rare thing for the humor of men to strike him as funny, and rarer still for the reverse to be true. The gallows’ humor of the kaunar? Nár! Too unsettling for the likes of these piss-blooded whiteskins. Too coarse. They took their jibes and japes with civilized airs now, as stiff-necked and gelded as the hymn-singers’ priests.
But that? Grimnir straightened. That was a choice bit of mockery. Dísa glanced at him, eyebrows raised in a quizzical expression. On her other side, the wolf-woman, Úlfrún, chuckled as she shook her head. She clapped a hand on Dísa’s shoulder, nodded to Grimnir, and walked away. With the bridge suddenly no longer part of the defensive equation, she would doubtless rejigger the order of battle. Bah! Let her! He had a different kettle of fish to boil.
“What?” Dísa said as his chortling ceased as quickly as it had began.
“You did not see it, did you, eh, little bird?”
“See what?”
Grimnir chk-chk’d his teeth. “Something protects your Witch-man, and it’s not the power of his beloved Christ! It’s something of our world. Something old…”
“I knew it!” Dísa hissed; she raised her head and peered over the palisade, looking for some glimpse of what it might be. “What can we do?”
Grimnir caught her arm and hauled her close. “First, keep your tongue between your teeth! Tell no one, not even your precious Úlfrún. I trust that one about as far as I can throw her.” Dísa nodded. “Then, after these other louts have gone off to sleep, meet me by the postern gate. If we can get Halla in sniffing distance, that old hag will have an answer.”
19
The Crusaders made their camp half a mile from the ravine, at the edge of a fallow field. Here, amid the stubble of last year’s barley, sprang a city of tents, with well-ordered avenues and cross-streets, plazas where cook fires blazed, and alleys that led to earth-cut privies. At the center of this web stood the chapel tent, with its three-meter-high crucifix, and the pavilion complex of the lord of Skara.
As night fell, the pavilion was the center of activity. Messengers bathed in sweat came in bearing reports and left out again bearing orders. Clerks—in actuality merely soldiers of the household guard who had their letters and a steady hand—took in requests and wrote out requisitions, using waxed boards and horn-shaped styli made from carved wood with an iron tip. Quartermasters dispensed food and drink, and makeshift markets bloomed in the plazas where merchants from Eiðar who’d followed the Crusader army offered everything from preserved vegetables to barbering.
And the heart of this city, the arbiter of its laws and keeper of its customs, was Konraðr the White. The albino lord of Skara sat stripped to the waist in a plain chair, listening as a messenger reeled off a report from Pétr on the status of his war machines; as he sat and listened, Father Nikulas saw to his injured arm and shoulder—wrenched and rope-burned after the incident at the bridge. Konraðr winced as the bearded priest rotated his arm in its socket, and then applied a soothing oil to the kinked muscles.
“Tell Pétr,” Konraðr said, stopping the messenger in mid-spiel, “I appreciate his attention to detail, but I simply do not have time to care how he gets this done. I only care that he has my drawbridges ready by daylight. Go!” Konraðr waved the rest of the clerks and messengers away. “All of you: leave me. Not you, good Nikulas.”
The priest wiped his oily hands on a rag before taking up a stone jar of salve. This he daubed on the rope burns. Konraðr hissed at the touch of Nikulas’s fingers.
“God watches over you, my lord,” the priest said. “The business at the bridge could have ended poorly for us.”
“Is that your way of chiding me, Father? Of telling me I should place more value on this broken vessel?”
“God spared you for a reason.”
“And Arngrim?” Konraðr replied with more bitterness than he’d intended. “Did God take him for a reason, too?”
Nikulas answered him frankly: “Yes. But only God knows what that reason might be. As for you, the reason is clear: you have great works left to do. Don’t squander it with games of one-upmanship and cheap theatrics.”
The lord of Skara shifted in his seat, uncomfortable now. “I should have you flogged.”
“I have borne the stripes of a good lashing for speaking truth to power before.” Nikulas shrugged. “And I expect I will, again, ere the Almighty sends for me.”
“Let us hope He waits many years to send that summons, my friend,” Konraðr said, rubbing his eyes. “My tincture, if you please. I am weary, and tomorrow is set to be a day of red slaughter.”
Father Nikulas nodded. Both men lapsed into silence as the priest went to a sideboard. There, in a small mortar, he crushed together a selection of dried herbs. For a long moment, the only noise inside was the soft rasp of the pestle. Konraðr’s chair creaked as he shifted his weight. Then: “You’re a learned man, are you not, priest?”
“Not so learned as some,” Nikulas replied, “but more learned than others.”
“Do you know what the word skrælingr means?”
The priest stopped, his pestle falling silent. Konraðr heard the sharp intake of breath, faint but distinct—the sound of a man caught off guard. Slowly, the pestle resumed its task. “Where … Where did you hear this word?”
“On the wind. What is it?”
Nikulas pursed his lips. “It described a hate of the Elder World. A race of night-skulking sons of Cain who would come among men by the dark of the moon, to tear their limbs off and drink their blood.”
“Was, you say?”
“Yes, thanks be to God. They are no more.”
“And you know this, how
?”
Nikulas said nothing, at first. He finished his grinding, dusted off the pestle, and set it aside. “When my novitiate ended,” he said, after a moment, “my first years as a monk were spent in the scriptorium at Kincora. I had a fine hand, you see, and the Abbot wanted a suitable gift produced for the Holy Father in Rome—an illuminated manuscript, a copy of Beatus Vivere, the Life of Our Lady of Kincora, blessed St. Étaín. A noble endeavor, this, and I focused all my efforts on it. But as I copied, I read. It was an old habit of mine.
“The saint was not a native of Ireland, you see. No, she came to us from Glastonbury, via Denmark—where she was kidnapped and her companions killed. Her captor snatched her screaming off the road of pilgrimage and made her lead him back to the south of England, to Badon on the eve of its destruction at the hands of Almighty God, and thence to Ireland. There, she fell in with partisans of Brian Mac Cennétig, and witnessed the old king’s murder at the Battle of Chluain Tarbh.”
“Fascinating,” Konraðr said, a hint of sarcasm shading his tone. “What does any of this have to do with night-skulking sons of Cain, my priest?”
Nikulas put the ground-up herbs into a cup, added warmed wine, and stirred the mixture with a silver spoon. “Her captor,” he said, bringing the cup to Konraðr, “was the last of that accursed line. The last skrælingr. The blessed Saint tried to bring him from the darkness and into the light of Christ, but the creature refused. After Chluain Tarbh the beast vanished, never to be seen again. That chapter of the Beatus Vivere ends with,
“Away sprang Bálegyr’s son, | across the Ash-Road
With shoulders cloaked | in the skin of the wolf-father;
The Æsir gave chase, | goaded by Alfaðir,
And with him | came the Twilight of the Gods.”
“How was her captor called? This skrælingr?”