by William King
He breathed deeply of the clean fresh air and smiled, glad to have left the foul and polluted town behind. The islanders may have been rich, he thought, but they lived in a way that seemed less healthy than the lowliest of thralls.
At the rear of the dragonship lay a cargo of iron axe and spearheads, wrapped all in dragongut to protect them from the corrosive effects of the sea. They represented huge wealth to the Thunderfist clan, and Ragnar was proud to have been part of the voyage that had won it. Still, there was something worrying about it too. He suspected good fortune, and he believed the old adage that the gods made men pay for their gifts. None of the others aboard seemed to share his concern. They sang cheerful drinking songs, relieved to be out of the harbour and no longer to have the Wolf Priest aboard. Much as they had respected and been in awe of him, his presence had damped all of their spirits. Now, they joked and told tales of the events of the voyage. They ate their salted beef jerky happily and drank stoops of ale with glee. Laughter echoed across the deck and it woke an answering joy in Ragnar’s heart.
Suddenly there was a boom like thunder. Ragnar looked up in fear. There was not a dark cloud in the sky and no sign of a storm. There was absolutely no reason for the noise. His keen eyes scanned the horizon looking for the source. All around him the laughter stopped and he heard prayers being offered up to Russ for his protection.
There! In the distance, coming from the direction of Asaheim he saw it. It was little more than a black dot in the distance. It left behind it a white contrail like that of a meteor in the night sky, only this was broad daylight, and the trail was a white line written on the pale blue of the sky. Even as he watched, the dot turned and swerved towards them, and began to grow with appalling speed.
The curses and prayers grew louder, and men reached for their weapons. Ragnar kept his eyes fixed on the dot, wondering what it was. He could see now that it had two wings, like those of a bird, only they did not move. What sort of monster was it? A dragon? A wyvern? Some daemon conjured up by fell magic?
No, it did not appear to be anything like a living thing. As it came closer he could see that it was much more like one of those iron vessels in the harbour behind them. His mind reeled. Just as it seemed impossible that those things could float, it was surely impossible for this thing to fly. And yet it quite obviously was doing so. There was no way he could disbelieve his own eyes.
It slowed as it approached, losing some of the appalling velocity that propelled it across the sky faster than any bird. And the loud thundercrack boom had stopped, to be replaced by a wailing roar like the call of a thousand lost souls in torment.
The thing was flying low and he could see the wind of its passage was whipping up the sea below it, churning the waves to foam. It appeared to be coming right at them now, and Ragnar wondered whether they had done something to anger the gods. Perhaps this terrible apparition had been sent to destroy them.
It passed almost directly overhead. Looking at it from below Ragnar could see that it was some sort of metal vehicle, a winged cruciform with the shape of an eagle painted on its sides and wings. For a moment he thought he caught sight of windows in its front, and human faces looking out, but he dismissed that thought as a momentary aberration. Looking back as it passed he saw flames licked from its rear like the breath of a dragon. It screamed off into the distance towards the island of the Iron Masters and there it halted, great jets of flame belching forward. It hovered in the air above the Iron Temple for a moment and Ragnar watched breathlessly, not knowing quite what to expect. Half wondering whether it would destroy the town with its flames, half believing that he was about to witness some strange and appalling magic.
No such thing happened. The vehicle slowly settled on the roof of the Iron Temple. Everyone watched silently wondering what would happen next. No one spoke. Ragnar could hear his heart beating loudly in his chest.
Five minutes later the metal bird rose into the sky once more and hurtled back in the direction it had come. As it passed over them, it waggled its wings as if in salute. Suddenly, somehow, Ragnar knew that Ranek the Wolf Priest had found new transportation to take him wherever it was he wanted to go.
Everyone on the Spear of Russ was silent for hours afterwards.
CHAPTER THREE
The Festival of Passage
Ragnar smiled nervously. This was stupid, he told himself. He was a man now. He had taken his oath of loyalty to the ancestor spirits on the rune altar. He had his own axe and his own shield made of dragonhide leather stretched over a frame of bone. He had even started to grow his black hair long as befitted a Wolfbrother. He was a man now. He should not be afraid of asking a girl to dance.
And yet he was forced to admit that he was. Worse yet, he had no real idea of the reason why. The girl, Ana, seemed to like him. She smiled encouragingly every time he saw her. And of course he had known her for all the years of their childhood. He could not quite put a finger on what had changed between them, but he knew that something had. Ever since he had returned from the island of the Iron Masters all those moons ago something had been different.
He looked at his companions, the Wolfbrothers with whom he had sworn blood oaths, and it was hard not to laugh. They looked like boys pretending to be men. They still had the down of youth on their lips. They tried hard to emulate the swagger of adult warriors and yet somehow it still seemed wrong. They looked like boys playing at warriors, not warriors themselves. And yet that was not the case. All of them had been to sea. All of them had pulled oars through storm wind’s lash. All of them had aided in the hunting of the dragon and the orca. All of them had received their shares from the kill. Small shares admittedly but shares nonetheless. By the custom of their tribe, they were men.
Ragnar looked around. It was a late autumn afternoon and the weather was fine. It was the Day of Remembering, the first day of the last hundred-day of the year, the beginning of the short autumnal period when for all too brief a time the weather would be fine and the world would be peaceful. The Eye of Russ was growing smaller in the sky. The period of quakes and eruptions was all but done. All too soon, the snows would come and the long winter would descend on the world, as the Eye grew yet smaller. The breath of Russ would chill the world and life would become very hard indeed.
He pushed the thought aside. Now was not the time for thinking of such things. Now was the time for feasting, and making merry and betrothal while the weather was good and the days were still long. He looked around. The festive spirit possessed everybody. The huts were newly covered in fresh dragonhide. The wooden walls of the great hall were painted bright white and red. A huge bonfire stood unlit in the centre of the village. Ragnar could smell the minty scent of the herbs that would perfume the air when it was lit. The brewmasters were already dragging great barrels into the open air. Most people were still working but Ragnar and his friends were from the ships. This whole day was a holiday for them and they had nothing to do but loaf around dressed in their best. They had been kicked out of their huts so that their mothers could sweep and clean. Their fathers were already in the long hall swapping tales of the great battle against the Grimskulls. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the skald tuning up his instrument, and his apprentices beating out basic rhythms on the drums with which they would accompany him.
A long lean dog crossed his path and looked up at him in a friendly manner. He reached out and stroked it behind the ears, feeling the warmth of the fur already lengthening in preparation for winter. It licked his hand with a tongue as rough as sandpaper and then bounded off down the street, racing for the sheer joy of it. Suddenly Ragnar knew how it felt. He took a deep breath of the salt-fresh air and felt the urge to howl with the sheer pleasure of being alive. Instead he turned to Ulli, reached out, cuffed his ear and shouted, “Tig! You’re it.”
He turned and ran before Ulli had a chance to realise what was going on. Seeing that the game had started the other Wolfbrothers scattered, dashing among the huts and the busy people, send
ing chickens squawking skyward. Ulli raced after him, shouting challenges.
Ragnar turned on the spot, almost tripping from his own momentum as he did so and made a face at Ulli. His friend bounded towards him arm outstretched. Ragnar let him get almost within reach before turning once more and racing on. He ducked right and raced down a narrow street. He bounded left to avoid slamming into one of the brewers’ barrels and as he did so, his foot slid on a slick piece of turf and he fell. Before he could recover Ulli was on him and they wrestled on the ground pitting muscle against muscle like playful puppies. They rolled over and over down the slope until they heard girlish shrieks and bumped into something. Ragnar opened his eyes and found himself looking up into Ana’s long pretty face. She tugged her braid as she looked down at him and then she smiled. Ragnar smiled back and then felt his face flush.
“What are you two doing?” Ana asked in her soft husky voice.
“Nothing,” Ragnar and Ulli replied simultaneously, then burst out laughing.
Strybjorn Grimskull stood at the prow of the dragonship and glared ferociously at the horizon. He hawked a huge gob of phlegm into his mouth and then spat it contemptuously into the sea. Inside him he could feel the battle lust starting to build. He hoped that combat would come soon.
Ahead of the fleet lay the home island of the Grimskulls, site of their sacred runestone, the place from which they had been driven twenty long years ago by the accursed Thunderfists. Of course, that had been before Strybjorn had been born but that did not matter. He had grown up hearing all about the island’s beauty and he felt that he already knew it. Its image was clear in his mind from his father’s tales. This was the sacred land from which they had been driven by Thunderfist treachery all those years ago and which today, on the anniversary of their ancient loss, they would at last reclaim.
Anger at the interlopers filled him. He felt it as keenly as any of the survivors of the attack and the massacre when the Thunderfists had arrived from the sea to claim the land in force. Ten dragonships had overwhelmed the outnumbered Grimskull force while the vast majority of the warriors had been at sea following the orca herds. Those brave warriors had returned home to find their own land fortified against them, and their women and children enthralled by the Thunderfists. After a brief struggle on the beaches they had been driven back to their ships and out to sea, there to endure the misery of the Long Search.
Strybjorn shared their bitterness on that terrible voyage. The hopeless attacks on other settlements, the fruitless efforts to find a new home. He recalled the names of all those who had died of hunger and thirst and warfare as if they had been his own dead forefathers. He swore once more that he would avenge their spirits and appease their ghosts with Thunderfist blood. He knew it would be so, for had it not been ordained by the gods?
Had not Russ himself at last seen fit to reward the Grimskull warriors’ perseverance with the prize. They had found the village of Ormskrik with the inhabitants half dead of the wasting plague and they had overwhelmed it, killing the men and enslaving the women and children according to the ancient traditions. And then they had settled down to brood and breed and recover their numbers. And all those long years they had never forgotten the site of the ancestral runestone.
For twenty long years they had planned and prepared. Sons had been born. The gods had smiled. A new generation had grown to manhood. But always the Grimskulls had remembered the treachery of the Thunderfists, and the mighty oaths of vengeance that they had sworn. Tonight Strybjorn knew those oaths would be fulfilled. And truly the gods did smile, for was not tonight the anniversary of the very day upon which the Thunderfists had attacked. It was only fitting that twenty years to the day they had lost their ancestral lands, the Grimskulls would reclaim them.
Strybjorn was proud of his folk. It would have been easy to forget. It would have been easy to sink into the comforts of their new land. Such was not the Grimskull way. They knew the value of an oath. They were bound to seek vengeance. They had bound their children to seek vengeance as soon as they were old enough to take their vows of manhood. When Strybjorn had become a Wolfbrother, he had sworn that he would never rest until the runestone was reclaimed, and he had watered the sacred soil of his ancestral homeland with foul Thunderfist blood.
He stroked his craggy brow with one broad strong hand, and shielding his eyes stared towards the far horizon. Soon he knew they would make landfall, and then let the Thunderfists beware.
Ragnar watched High Jarl Torvald light the great beacon fires. The burning brand arced onto the oil-soaked wood and the flames leapt high like daemons dancing. The smell of ambergris and herbs billowed through the streets. The heat of the flames brought a flush to his face. He looked around and saw all the folk of the village had gathered around the bonfire and watched the chief perform his ceremonial duties.
Torvald brandished his axe. First to the north, towards Asaheim, and the great Mountain of the Gods, then to the south to the sea in defiance of the daemons that dwelled there. He raised the weapon high above his head, holding it with both hands and turned to face the setting sun. He let out a mighty roar and the whole crowd joined in, cheering and chanting the name of Russ, hoping to invoke the god’s favour for another year, as they had done every year since Russ had smiled upon them and granted them victory.
Once the chieftain had finished and returned to the ranks of his warriors, the old skald Imogrim limped into the firelight and gestured for silence. His apprentices followed him carrying their instruments and softly began to beat time to his words.
Imogrim raised his harp and plucked a few chords. His fingers moved gently over the strings as he stood for a moment idly, seeming to compose his thoughts. A smile played over his dry bloodless lips. The firelight illumined every seam of his craggy face, and turned his eyes into deep caverns. The white of his long beard glistened in the flickering light. The crowd waited breathless for him to begin. All around the night was still. Ragnar looked around and caught sight of Ana. It appeared that she had been looking at him, for their eyes met, and she looked away, almost shyly, eyes cast down towards the ground.
Imogrim began to chant. His voice was soft and yet surprisingly resonant, and his words seemed to flow out in time with the beat of the drums. It was as if he tapped some huge spring of memory within himself, and it had begun to flow softly yet inexorably outwards.
He was singing the Deed of the Thunderfists, their ancestral song, a work which had been begun in the lost reaches of time, hundreds of generations ago, and which had been added to by every skald who had held the position since. It was Imogrim’s life’s work to memorise the song, and add to it and to pass it on to his apprentices as they would, in time, pass it on to theirs. There was an ancient saying that if the jarl was the heart of his people, the skald was the memory. It was at times like this that Ragnar understood the truth of it.
Of course there would not be time for the whole tale this, or any other night, so Imogrim contented himself with extracts. He alluded in passing to the most ancient times, when the people had sailed between the stars on ships built by the gods. He sang of Russ who had come and taught the people how to survive in the dark times when the world had shook, and old evils had entered the world. He told of the time of choosing when Russ had picked the best ten thousand warriors from all the clans, and led them off, never to be seen again, to fight in the wars of the gods.
He sang of the ancient wars, and all the mighty deeds of the Thunderfists. Of how Berak had slain the great dragon Thrungling and claimed a casket of iron and the hand of the thunder spirit Maya. Of how the great seafarer Nial had sailed around the world in his mighty ship, the Wind Wolf. Of the night when the trolls had come and driven the Thunderfists from their ancestral land.
He brought the tale up to date with the story of how Ragnar’s father and his kin had found this island, ruled by the cruel and brutish Grimskulls, and had seized it in a day of bloody conflict. At this part of the song, some of those present had cheered. O
thers stared off into the fire as if remembering lost comrades and the brutal fighting of the past. And at last after long hours, the tale reached the present. Ragnar felt his heart lurch with pride as Imogrim told of their voyage to take the Wolf Priest Ranek to the island of the Iron Masters, and of how Ragnar had speared the dragon through the eye before it was dispatched by the old sorcerer’s magic.
He knew now that his name would live forever. For as long as his clan existed, his name would be recalled by the skald and his apprentices, and maybe even sung on high holy days and other feasts. Even after he had passed into the halls of the slain his name would live on. He looked over and saw the look of pride on Ana’s face.
He was so thrilled that he paid little attention to the rest of the song.
How convenient of the Thunderfists to light a beacon to guide us, Strybjorn thought, looking at the vast flickering bonfire on the horizon. It gleamed brilliantly and its reflection, caught on the waves, seemed only to amplify the light.
At first Strybjorn had thought the beacon was some sort of warning sign, that the approach of the Grimskull fleet had been noticed, but there was no sign of any preparation for war. No warriors had assembled on the beach. No dragonships had moved to meet them. There had been some consternation as word had been passed around the fleet but so far nothing had happened.
Strybjorn had suspected at first that it might be some sort of trap. Yet more proof, as if any were needed, of Thunderfist treachery and cunning. Then word had been passed up the oarbenches that it was most likely the Thunderfists were celebrating the anniversary of their infamous victory, and gloating over the butchery they had so treacherously inflicted. Well soon they would know how it felt. The jarl had ordered them to make landfall at Grimbane Bay, out of sight of the village. From there it was but a short march to swift and final vengeance.