by Scott Oden
* * *
THE SURVIVORS OF HRAFNHAUGR, THOSE scarred and bloodied souls who had endured Odin’s weather, the storms of iron and stone that had left them refugees in their own land; who had emerged from the wrack to watch their friends and loved ones vanish in the ruin of Gautheimr—these three-score survivors had no fight left in them. Thus, when this hate of the Elder World pulled itself over the crumbling edge of the peninsula, half-slithering and half-crawling, none sought to meet it head-on. There was no thought of a good death or of gaining glory by slaying the beast. No, when Malice-Striker came, the last of the Raven-Geats took to their heels.
All was chaos and screaming. Shapes ran in every direction, wreathed in smoke and fume; warily, Malice-Striker dipped its fleshless head. Its jaws and teeth came up bloody as it seized one of the injured warriors and tore him in two. Its baleful green eye blazed like a torch; blood rained from its chin. It needed sweet red gore to reconstitute itself, and to fuel the sorcery that animated it. And here, there was gore in plenty.
A spear rattled off its ribs. A Geat bolted from hiding and made a run for it. The wyrm slithered forward, the weedy scales of its belly scraping themselves clean on the stones. Its jaws lashed out, snapping up the man in midstride. He loosed a piercing shriek. Bones crunched, blood dribbled down Malice-Striker’s naked spine as the thing mimicked eating its prey. The sorcery would remember, and the flesh would knit itself from the stringy meat and blood cascading down its bony gullet. It needed more …
“What do we do?” Dísa could not hide the tremble of fear in her voice as she watched the hoary beast feed on the living and on the battle-dead. Already, flesh was forming on its bones, knots and ropes of naked muscle, the roots of a tongue. “H-How do we fight it?”
“We don’t. Sárklungr is the only blade that can harm it,” Úlfrún said. She tightened her grip on her axe. “And Grimnir has it, if he still lives.”
“We have to find him! Find Sárklungr!”
“You go. See if you can find him, or just the sword. We will hold him off.” Úlfrún stood shoulder to shoulder with Konraðr, who had gone quiet. “Go!”
But Dísa did not move.
Up the slope, Malice-Striker crossed what was left of the second terrace. Its bony tail, as heavy as a battering ram, flicked out and shattered the Raven Stone; as the wyrm slither-crawled into the smoldering ruin of the first terrace, Dísa saw its head dart forward. It came up with a writhing body. Even at this distance, they heard a short, sharp scream that ended in the wet snap of bone.
“You have to run, Dísa,” Úlfrún said, turning to her. “Get away from here. Start your life anew. There’s a world—”
“This is my home,” Dísa snapped. “Or what’s left of it. I’ll not run, not while you lot stand your ground. Do you take me for a piss-legged bench-hugger?”
Úlfrún straightened. “Never,” she replied, her sadness palpable. “So be it. What about you, Skara? Skara?”
But Konraðr was no longer beside them. He stooped and retrieved his sword, then crossed to where Father Nikulas lay dead. He knelt by his friend. “I am sorry, my friend,” he murmured. “I led you astray, subverted your sworn duty for my own ends, lied to you—though I knew it not. Now you sit among the angels, at the right hand of God. I beg you, good Nikulas, to ask God’s forgiveness for my part in this.” Konraðr crossed himself, and grunted as he rolled the priest’s corpse aside. From beneath the body, the lord of Skara drew forth the crucifix-topped staff. “Get somewhere safe,” he said, rising. “Both of you. I’ll draw the beast away.”
“Did you not hear me? You can’t fight it…” Úlfrún grasped his arm.
“I don’t mean to.” He looked at Dísa, his expression softer. “This is my weregild to you, the blood-price for my deeds. Get away from here. Kneel to what gods you may, and live a good life.” He looked from her to Úlfrún. “Take her and go. Go!”
“May your Nailed God be with you,” Úlfrún replied. With a short, sharp nod she turned away, plucking at Dísa’s arm and exhorting her to follow. The young Raven-Geat shrugged her off at first. She met Konraðr’s gaze evenly.
“My people, they did not deserve this,” Dísa said. “My friends, my family, my home … we caused you no harm, and yet you brought war to our threshold. What you do now … it does not absolve you of your part in this.”
“No.”
Dísa nodded. “Then I accept your blood-price, Witch-man, and I will weave the song of your death into the memory of Raven Hill.”
Konraðr gave her the ghost of a smile. He bent his pale head. “Go, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir. Go, quickly,” he said. “Ere my song reaches its crescendo.”
Dísa backed away. Then, turning, she made to follow Úlfrún. Konraðr watched them vanish over the hillock of rubble marking the gates of Hrafnhaugr, then turned back to face the dragon.
The beast caught sight of him, its sinister green eye narrowing.
Konraðr hoisted the crucifix aloft.
“Praise be to God!” he roared, striding forward. “Yea though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me. Thou hast trained my hands for war, my fingers for battle. Thou hast been my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge!” The cross gleamed with a light of its own; the Nailed God’s power coursed through the white-skinned Crusader as he reached the center of the first terrace. Here, he drove the staff into the earth and brandished his sword. “Part thy heavens, Lord, and come down; touch thy mountains, so that they smoke. Send forth thy lightning and scatter mine enemy. Deliver me, O Lord, from the hands of the Heathen, whose mouths are full of lies and whose right hands are deceitful.” Malice-Striker recoiled, and then darted forward; the earth trembled under its charge. Konraðr bared his teeth in a fierce grimace, but he did not quail. “And yea, though I should walk in the shadow of the Beast of Armageddon, I will fear not its evil, for thou art with me! Let thy mercy follow me all the days of my life!”
None alive witnessed the last stand of Konraðr the White, the Ghost-Wolf of Skara; no human eye beheld his last gasp of courage amid the ruins of Raven Hill where, crucifix held aloft, he adjured the Great Serpent, and threatened it with hellfire and damnation if it did not return to the pits from whence it crawled.
And none among the living saw the beast’s knifelike teeth flense the flesh from the albino’s bones as it consumed him.
* * *
A DOZEN OR MORE RAVEN-GEATS pelted down the cracked and broken switchbacks, now clogged with enough splintered palings and rubble to form a ramp from the gate to the road below. Dísa and Úlfrún ran among them. But their headlong exodus slowed, finally stopping as they came near the Scar—now twice as wide as before, its edges treacherous with crumbling rock and soil. The bridge, which Thorwald’s Norsemen had repaired, was now just a wreckage of frayed rope and splintered board. They were trapped, death behind them and death before.
“What do we do?” Dísa panted.
“The ropes,” Úlfrún said, nodding. “From the old bridge. If we can get down to the water, maybe we’ll have a chance.” But Úlfrún spied the remnants of the Crusaders’ advance camp. It stood hard by the ruin of the bridge, where a few men in stained surcoats, their crosses dark with mud, blood, and other fluids of war, sat in dazed silence amid tents and pavilions that were flung haphazardly about. Side by side, the women headed toward them. Small fires lit their way. By that thin light, a few hard-eyed men witnessed the Raven-Geats’ flight; most ignored them—the war was over, they thought. Their lords were dead and their enemy, too. What was there left to fight over? But a few perked up at the sight of Úlfrún and Dísa approaching. Humorless smiles crept at the corners of their mouths; hands sought the reassurance of hilt and haft.
“That’s her,” one man said, stepping to the fore. Dísa recognized him as the Dane who had escaped Brodir’s wrath. He gestured at the pair of women. “The little one, there. She’s
the witch who did Jarl Kraki. The other is the one-handed bitch who shot Thorwald down like a dog!”
“Peace, lads,” Úlfrún said. “Help us, and we might all see the sun rise.”
The jötunn lights kindled across the heavens, casting an eerie greenish radiance over the earth. Dísa could see the grim looks and bared teeth spreading through the Crusaders’ ranks. She drew her seax.
“Don’t do it,” Dísa warned. “Listen to her!”
The Dane wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Let’s see how tough you think you are when I take that pig-sticker from you, little girl.”
Dísa’s eyes narrowed. She said nothing.
“Stand back!” Úlfrún roared, hefting her axe. “We are enemies no longer! Something comes that—”
“Bitch!” The Dane who’d run from Brodir lunged for Dísa. Nor did the young woman shy away from his assault. She met him with a stiff-armed blow to the point of his chin, grabbing his beard and hauling his head to the side. Before Úlfrún could stop her, Dísa’s seax flashed; blood fountained, and the Dane flopped to the earth with his throat hacked open.
She stepped over his writhing corpse and leveled her gore-slimed blade at the Dane’s companions. “Listen to me, you useless sons of whores,” she growled. “Something comes! Something that will kill the lot of us if we don’t get off this gods-forsaken rock! Do you want to stand here and fight while our doom creeps up on us? Step forward, then, and I will oblige you! I have naught else to lose, you wretches! But if you want to see your homes, your families, then smooth your hackles and give heed!”
The Crusaders milled and muttered; finally, one stepped forward—a tonsured priest in ill-fitting mail. “I am Brother Marten,” he said. “What became of Father Nikulas, do you know? And what do you mean, ‘something’ comes?”
Dísa and Úlfrún exchanged glances. “Your man was slain,” the older woman replied. “And as for what I mean…” She glanced over her shoulder. “I mean that!”
“M-Mother of God!” the priest, Marten, stammered, his eyes wide as a slithering shadow crested the low hill and came through the gate, its one eye gleaming like the jötunn-lights overhead.
Screams and bellowed warnings erupted as Geats and Danes, both, caught sight of the wyrm. Malice-Striker came on like a tempest. “Down the ropes!” Úlfrún bellowed. “Get down the ropes! Otherwise, we die up here!” She grabbed Marten by the arm and propelled him toward the bridge. “Hurry, priest!” The Danish mercenaries needed no exhortation. They scrambled for the ruined bridge, shoulder to shoulder with the Geats who’d been their enemies. Men shouted and scuffled; women screamed. A Geat seized one wrist-thick cable of twisted hemp and was about to scoop up one of the women and guide her down when a gap-toothed Dane shoved him aside. Soil crumbled, and the Geat—with the woman in tow—stumbled and fell screaming over the edge of the Scar. “Christians first, you heathen bastard!” The gap-toothed Dane turned to motion for Brother Marten … and died with Úlfrún’s axe in his chest.
“Stop!” Úlfrún of the Iron Hand roared, kicking him off the blade. The Dane’s body slid into the ravine. “Marten—”
Úlfrún turned to the priest, who bared his teeth in a grimace. His fear-widened eyes saw only the bloody axe blade; his fear-deafened ears heard only the unholy scrabbling of the dragon at their heels. Brother Marten saw his death in this pale-eyed queen of the berserkir, with her pagan witch at her side. But God was with him … God was with him! Before she could strike him down, Marten punched out with the thin-bladed dagger in his fist. It caught Úlfrún under her ribs and to the left, piercing her tattered mail. She snarled; Dísa turned at the sound.
The younger woman saw Marten draw back his bloody knife; she saw Úlfrún’s axe fall from her nerveless fingers. She saw her clutch at her abdomen, as though willing herself to catch and hold the spurts of bright arterial blood. And Dísa knew the score. The young Geat snarled and turned on Marten. The priest squeaked and danced back as her seax missed him by a hairsbreadth. She would have chased him down and butchered him, but Úlfrún caught her arm.
“He … He’s not worth it,” she said. “Come, run.”
“Run where? It’s no use.” Dísa shook her head. “There’s no way across.” A woman loped past them and leaped out over the Scar, the Allfather’s name on her lips. “Odin!” Her arms and legs cart-wheeled as Úlfrún watched her get swallowed up by the darkness of the ravine.
The dragon slithered closer—a nightmare of bone and blood under the witch lights of the North. It was ten yards away now, and coming for them. They could smell the foetor coming off its age-slimed jaws. It was the stench of death.
“Kill me,” Dísa whispered, offering Úlfrún the hilt of her seax. “Do it! I don’t want to die in that thing’s jaws.”
“No one’s dying. Can you swim?” she said to Dísa. The young Geat nodded. “Good.” And with a hiss of agony, Úlfrún Hakonardottir—Úlfrún of the Iron Hand, who was Jarl to the Bear-men and the Wolf-men—snatched Dísa up and leapt …
But as quick as she was, Malice-Striker was quicker. It smashed through the Danes and the Geats, sending their claw-ripped bodies tumbling. It bit Brother Marten’s head from his shoulders as he stood before it, his dagger held by the blade like a crucifix. And it lashed out with its whiplike tail and caught Úlfrún and Dísa in midleap. Dísa felt the impact; she heard the sharp intake of breath, the hissed curse, as the wyrm’s razor-edged scales and spikes of bone tore through Úlfrún’s mail and laid open her back muscles.
As they tumbled and fell, Úlfrún turned loose of her. The last thing Dísa Dagrúnsdottir heard before she struck the water and knew nothing else, was Úlfrún’s voice and the soft whisper of her name …
* * *
“DÍSA.” THE VOICE CUT THROUGH the darkness. It was an old voice, a man’s voice, made gravelly and harsh from the passing of years; it was a familiar voice. “Dísa Dagrúnsdottir,” he said.
Dísa pried one eye open. The world swam; colors stabbed her. She closed her eyes again, and coughed up a lungful of lake water.
“Yes, girl. Get it up.”
“O-Old Hygge?”
Dísa heard the ancient Geat laugh. “Aye, child.”
She opened her eyes. It was near dawn, the smoke-stained sky lightening in the east. By that rising twilight, she reckoned herself in the belly of a boat. Someone had removed her mail; she lay under a tattered cloak, her gambeson still sodden. Fetishes clicked as she pushed her hair out of her eyes. Old Hygge worked the boat’s tiller, while other hands manned the oars.
Women’s hands. The wives and mothers, sisters and daughters she had sent to Grimnir’s longhouse. All of them snuck looks at her with red-rimmed eyes, wondering why she survived and their husbands and brothers, sisters and mothers did not; she felt the burning questions in their hooded gazes, but Dísa shook her head. “Úlfrún was with me,” she said to Old Hygge. “We fell together…”
Old Hygge shook his head. “We’ve found Bjorn Hvítr and Kjartan, but no others.”
“The dragon?”
Old Hygge shivered. He shook his head, his lips thin and pale as he refused to even speak of the dreaded wyrm.
Dísa sank back down. She remembered the beast’s tail raking Úlfrún’s back; she remembered the impact with the surface of the water. And she remembered, over Úlfrún’s shoulder, Malice-Striker’s malignant green eye, gleaming down at them from the edge of the ravine—intelligent, ruthless, and burning with hate. “What have we done?” she muttered, closing her eyes.
Suddenly, the boat rocked violently to the port side. Old Hygge loosed a string of salty curses; the others gave bleats of fear as a black-nailed hand seized the wale. Dísa scurried over, grabbed that hand, then the scruff of coarse black hair, then the belt at his waist as she hauled Grimnir into the boat.
Bedraggled, he nevertheless clutched Sárklungr to his breast.
“Little bird,” he spat, wiping his good eye.
Without warning, she threw her arms a
round his neck—a desperate hug that caught him off guard.
“Nár! Stop that,” he snarled, pushing her away. Dísa sank down beside him.
“I thought you lost, as well. Everyone … Everyone is dead … Bjorn Svarti, Brodir … Úlfrún … We fell…” she ventured, her voice quavering.
And the tears that spilled down Dísa Dagrúnsdottir’s cheeks as she named the dead would not be the last.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, ON THE BEACH leading up to Grimnir’s longhouse, they built a pyre for the dead. A whole village burnt in effigy; hundreds of souls. Hundreds of ghosts. Surrounded by the women of Hrafnhaugr, by the young girls that were all that remained of the Daughters of the Raven, by Old Hygge and the crippled giant, Bjorn Hvítr; by dour Kjartan—who held the Otter-Geat, Laufeya, close—Dísa led them in the recitation of the dead. Their names floated aloft with the embers of their pyre as its flames burned low.
“The barrow sank back into the lake,” Grimnir said later, as they sat near the water and listened to the lapping waves of Lake Vänern. “Took most of the peninsula with it.”
“Did it take Odin’s wyrm with it?” Dísa asked. She was clad now in a tunic and leggings, a cloak warding off the night’s chill. A thaw was coming; she could smell it on the breeze.
“Still out there. Near as I can tell, it fed off the rest of that white-skinned bastard’s army before it vanished into the lake.”
“Konraðr,” she said quietly, recalling the Christian’s sacrifice. “His name was Konraðr. You’re going after it.” There was no question in Dísa’s mind.
Grimnir grunted. “There’s still a matter of vengeance between us. You have a piece in this now. Will you come?”
Dísa thought about it a moment, and then shook her head. “No. I’ve had my fill of Odin’s weather,” she said; then, quietly: “My people need me.”