The Legendary Inge

by Kate Stradling

  “It’ll hurt a little now,” their father told them frankly. “It’ll hurt a little afterward, when I have to test it. It’ll hurt terribly if the spell ever has to activate in full force. But the sacrifice of pain is worth knowing that you’ll be safe from any real harm.”

  Across the room, fourteen-year-old Gunnar scoffed. “Aw, it doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “I saw you cry when he did it to you,” said Inge.

  “Gunnar, you’re not helping matters,” their father reproved. “It’s best to acknowledge the pain rather than deny it. Nea, Inge’s going first. I’ll let you watch, just as I let her watch Gunnar, but understand that you are next.”

  “And then Eirik, and then Einar?” Nea prompted.

  “That’s right.”

  “And Sassa last of all?”

  “Sassa’s too little yet. But someday, yes, Sassa too, and any other little brothers and sisters you might have after that. Inge, I need you to step here inside the circle I’ve drawn. Yes, just there.”

  “But Papa, I’m scared,” Nea called from the table.

  “Inge, are you scared?” he asked the older girl, his expression serious.

  She was—so incredibly scared that her insides quaked. In determination she fought that treacherous feeling. She tamped it down with a swallow and mutely shook her head.

  “Good girl,” said Torvald. “Now hold very, very still and don’t make a sound.”

  ***

  The bliss of death seemed to last only a fleeting moment. Then, Inge’s consciousness wrenched back into sharp focus.

  Heat burst through her, as though molten iron had been poured into her veins. Agony wracked her body. Her muscles seized and her back arched away from the floor. The seeming fire within her burned brighter and hotter. Ferociously it seared through her to forge again what had been torn asunder.

  She gasped for air, every breath like a knife and yet so desperately essential. Her lungs were the bellows, her heart the hammer, her body the malleable steel beaten into its proper frame once more. An eternity passed in that anguish. The fiery pressure condensed upon her chest; it fused into her wound to become part of her. Slowly its heat ebbed, leaving Inge cold and listless on the floor. She lay swathed in shadows as her ragged breath shuddered in her lungs.

  Bergstrom’s jagged sword hadn’t hurt half as much. It might have been better just to die and remain dead.

  Her whole body was stiff, as though she had been forged anew in solid metal. She knew deep down that she needed to move, to get up off the floor, to pursue the enemy and to help Signe, but that encompassing rigidity permeated her very bones. She had no energy to break it. Only her breathing came with relative ease, as though the restraints around her lungs had already cracked.

  “You see? If you’re touching her when the full spell triggers, you’ll get burnt to a crisp.”

  Her brother’s voice broke her train of thought. Annoyance surged through her, that he would be right there, watching and commenting as though she were a display at a village festival. “Gunnar,” she intoned between heavy breaths, each word an arduous chore, “I’ll kill you.”

  “And she can talk. That means the spell’s probably passed.”

  Movement sounded in her ears. A pair of hands hooked beneath her armpits to hoist her up.

  “Oh, don’t touch me!” she protested, and she tried to pull away from him.

  “You have to get up, Inge. You have to shake it off.”

  “I don’t want to! It hurts!”

  “Come on! You’ve done this half a dozen times for me! You know you have to move! Start with your fingers. Wiggle your toes. Colonel Raske, can you help me get her to move?”

  Inge knew, on some level of consciousness, that someone was with her brother, but she hadn’t focused enough to wonder who. The mere mention of Raske’s name jolted her from her childish protests. She jerked away from her brother and turned astonished eyes to discover the captain seated against the opposite wall.

  His astonishment was no less pronounced than hers. Self-consciousness flooded through her, covered in blood and disheveled as she was. She knew, too, what sort of spectacle she had just provided, having witnessed her brother’s revival on multiple occasions.

  Gunnar grunted. “Well, that got you moving.”

  Her attention snapped back. “You stupid liar!” she hissed, swatting at him. “You said it hardly hurt! All those times you revived, and this is what you went through? Ugh—!” The stiffness throughout her body cracked, stabbing her with pins and needles at every small movement.

  Gunnar ignored her insults. “You have to walk it off. Who did this to you? Was it Osvald? Where did he take the princess?”

  “I don’t know. He must want her alive, or else he would’ve stabbed her too. He didn’t even hesitate, just shoved his sword straight into me!”

  Her brother turned accusing eyes on Raske. “I thought you said Osvald wouldn’t hurt a woman.”

  “No, not Osvald,” Inge interrupted. The lingering fog in her mind cleared as she focused on this one thought. “It was Bergstrom. Bergstrom stabbed me! Bergstrom is the Dragon!”

  She raised harrowed eyes to Raske’s face and opened her mouth to question how such a thing was even possible, but the words stuck in her throat. His expression betrayed no surprise, only a flash of guilt.

  “Bergstrom?” Gunnar echoed. “Are you daft? He’s dead!”

  “No,” said Raske.

  “You knew,” Inge whispered, horrified.

  “I suspected.”

  “You knew!”

  “I suspected, Ingrid. I had no proof. If I’d said anything, I would’ve sounded crazy.”

  “But you brought back his body from the swamp,” Gunnar argued.

  “We brought back a body,” Raske replied. “It was so badly mangled that the armor alone served to identify him. But it wasn’t Bergstrom. It was someone else.”

  “Who?” Inge demanded.

  A perturbed expression crossed his face. Suddenly tight-lipped, he did not answer.

  “Who was it?”

  From afar a thunderous boom reverberated through the castle.

  “They must be ramming the doors to the throne room,” said Raske, more than ready to abandon the previous subject. He rose to his feet. To Inge, he looked uncharacteristically shaken.

  Another boom shook the castle walls.

  “We should hurry,” said Gunnar.

  Raske caught his arm before he could bolt ahead. “No. The king’s not there. The throne isn’t either. It’s not even the ‘throne room’ anymore. Signe’s our concern, but we can’t just barrel in and snatch her. We have Bergstrom and Osvald both to worry about, not to mention all the men and monsters who are loyal to them.”

  Inge had gingerly stood during this speech, pain crackling through her. “Osvald’s done for. You don’t have to worry about him, unless the king wants him kept alive.”

  The two men turned curious eyes upon her. From her belt, she extracted Forget-me-not.

  Her brother recognized the weapon. His brows shot up. “You got him?”

  “Only a slice across his palm.”

  “Even better,” said Gunnar. “No one takes that sort of injury seriously.” Upon seeing Raske’s confusion, he elaborated. “That’s Forget-me-not, one of my father’s daggers. The name is a warning: any wound the blade gives demands immediate attention. Otherwise it’ll prove fatal ere long.”

  “The wound won’t close,” Inge added quietly. “Unless Osvald carries a styptic with him and actually thinks to use it, he’s going to bleed to death.”

  “Where are the other smaller blades, Inge?” Gunner asked.

  “I’m not sure. They were under my bed, but the king gave me this one with his own hands. He may have taken the others as well.”

  “And where is the king?” Gunnar inquired of Raske.

  “With Dagmar, in her tower.”

  This declaration accompanied the deafening crash of the throne room doors giving way. A
split-second later, a furious roar echoed through the castle.

  “Looks like Master Jannik really did want the throne,” said Raske. “Lang, things will get bloody from here. Take your sister to safety.”

  “No! I’m coming with you,” Inge cried.

  Careless of Gunnar’s presence, Raske reached for her. He cupped the side of her face in one hand as he pinned her with steady, solemn eyes. “You’ve already died once tonight. That is more than enough.”

  It wasn’t enough if Signe was still in peril, if the crown was to fall. She wanted to say as much but under his gaze she couldn’t form the words. It was almost as though he was asking her to take refuge not for her sake, but for his.

  “All right, you two,” Gunnar grumbled, “stop it. You’re making my insides squirm. Colonel, as much as I’d like to obey your orders, I’m afraid that the safest thing would be to stick together. You can’t really trust Inge to stay out of trouble.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Inge retorted, annoyed with her brother for interrupting what had, for her, been a rather pleasant moment. “You’d probably try to stash me in some corner and rejoin the fray.”

  “And why shouldn’t I? I’m just as resilient as you are, and far more useful in a fight.”

  Raske intervened before their bickering could get out of hand. “Fine. Just keep your wits about you. Bergstrom is the greatest threat, but Osvald wields magic as his sword, and the arrival of his monsters may well be imminent.”

  He took the lead, his footsteps both quick and stealthy. Gunnar motioned Inge to follow, so that he could bring up the rear. Every step she took loosened the grip of her unnatural stiffness. Painfully aware she was of the dark bloodstains that covered her clothing, of the gash through her shirt, but she also knew she was lucky to be alive, lucky for her father’s foresight, lucky that the resiliency spell had outlived him.

  Raske stopped them several times as he checked their path for enemies. Most of the castle guard had remained loyal, but the handful of traitors in their midst had caused chaos and confusion. The corridors were all but deserted.

  “I gave the guards four rallying points this morning, should the castle come under attack,” Raske whispered as he crept along. “Any we meet here we can treat as hostile and eliminate.”

  The opportunity arose all too soon. Raske and Gunnar efficiently dispatched a couple of patrolling guards before they could even yell for help.

  “They’ve branded themselves,” Gunnar observed. Indeed, each had a strip of black cloth tied around his upper arm. “That makes them all the easier to identify.”

  They stashed the bodies in a nearby chamber and continued toward the throne room, the last place they knew for certain that Bergstrom had been.

  As they approached, voices echoed from within. Raske motioned for Inge and Gunnar to stay still as they listened.

  “Find the treacherous dogs and bring them to me! Kill anyone else you encounter!”

  A chorus of soldiers chanted their promise to obey. Shadows danced along the wall as they left the throne room and—to Inge’s relief, at least—headed the opposite direction.

  “Bergstrom, it’s my right to give orders here,” Osvald sniveled.

  “Of course, Your Highness, but under the Mark of the Dragon, the Dragon must command. My soldiers might not recognize you.”

  “I don’t care! They will defer to my power! It is my right to rule!”

  “Do something about your injury, Osvald,” Bergstrom replied, ignoring the childish tantrum. “You’re bleeding all over the place.”

  “What?” After a moment’s pause, Osvald said, “Signe, I’ve bled through the bandage. You must bind it again, but tighter this time. You there! Untie her hands so she can tend to me.”

  “Someone else can tend to you, Osvald,” Bergstrom interjected. “Signe’s hands must stay tied—for her safety.”

  “You shouldn’t tie her hands at all. You shouldn’t have killed Little Sister so brutally, either.”

  “I wasn’t brutal. I was very quick about it.”

  “But you enjoyed it!”

  “Osvald, you’re still bleeding. Take care of that instead of arguing with me.”

  “I don’t like your tone, Bergstrom. If not for me, you’d still be groveling at Halvard’s feet. If not for my beautiful monsters—”

  “Oh, yes. I’d almost forgotten. Flink, run up to the north wall and give the signal.”

  “What signal?” Osvald asked. “All that’s left is to capture Leiv and kill Halvard. Oh, don’t cry, Signe,” he added as a sob broke through the room. “You won’t miss him, I promise. I’m here now—he can’t keep us apart any longer, my sweet.”

  He cooed something more, but it was too soft for anyone out in the hall to hear. In the meantime, another soldier slipped from the room.

  “What signal is he supposed to give, do you think?” Inge whispered to Raske.

  “From context, it’s something having to do with the monsters,” he replied, his sharp eyes fixed on the retreating back of the soldier, Flink. “It doesn’t make sense for Bergstrom to have them attack the castle at this point, though.”

  “He’s going to set them loose on the city,” a quiet voice behind them explained. “He thinks to play the hero by destroying them while they run amuck.”

  Inge and Raske whirled. Gunnar had disappeared, and in his stead stood King Halvard, with Dagmar at his elbow.

  Raske recovered his wits. “But everyone knows the monsters are under the Dragon’s command, my Liege.”

  “He intends to put the blame on me afterward, to spread the tale that I was in league with Osvald all along, and that I had to be overthrown for the good of the nation. When it’s all settled, the people won’t know any different than what they’re told. Control the narrative, control the world.”

  He had demonstrated that philosophy a number of times since Inge had come to the castle. She was less interested in Bergstrom’s plot than she was in Gunnar’s disappearance, though.

  The king perceived her worry. “Your brother is donning one of the traitors’s uniforms. I’m going to have him infiltrate them. Leiv, would you like to be captured alongside me? You can’t dress up like a traitor: you don’t have a beard to show beneath the face plate, and Bergstrom would recognize your mannerisms in an instant anyway.”

  “Ingrid needs to sneak in through the back of the room,” Dagmar spoke up. “Leiv must go with her. The probability of success drops too far if he doesn’t.”

  King Halvard hummed. He turned his attention upon Inge. From beneath his cape he presented two of her father’s smaller blades. “Which of these would serve me better, would you say? Dagmar can’t divine the difference between them.”

  She recognized Cricket and Firefly. They were the smallest of Torvald’s creations; Cricket had the single blade of a knife, whereas Firefly boasted a dagger’s double edge. “It depends on the type of damage you want to cause,” she said uncomfortably. She wasn’t going to chastise the king for raiding her father’s trove—Forget-me-not had been proof enough of that act already—but she also wasn’t keen on divulging her father’s secrets, even to his sovereign lord.

  “Which one’s more destructive?” he pressed.

  “It depends,” said Inge again. Her resolve cracked under his steady gaze. “Cricket is more damaging over time. Firefly gives more immediate damage.”

  Wordlessly he handed her Firefly and tucked Cricket into his boot. Meanwhile, Gunnar reappeared in full castle-guard regalia, complete with the black armband. He moved the faceplate into position. “Is this even going to work?” he asked.

  “Dagmar’s divinations on that point have been rather spotty,” said King Halvard.

  “Half go one way, half the other,” Dagmar affirmed. “There are too many variables to get a sure result.”

  Gunnar hadn’t expected such a serious answer. “What am I to do?”

  The king straightened his shoulders. “I intend to surrender to the next patrol that comes around
, for Signe’s safety. I want you to slip in at the back of the group as though you’re one of them. Keep your wits about you, and you’ll know when to strike.”

  Dagmar turned a stern eye on Inge. “Don’t show yourself unless absolutely necessary. The opportunity to help Signe will arise. Take it. Leiv, you’re guiding her to the north door. Eliminate the guards there and any you meet along the way. Have I forgotten anything?” she added to King Halvard.

  He was observing her with shrewd eyes. “Only that we’re giving them a few minutes’ head-start. Good luck, you two.”

  A thousand questions swarmed in Inge’s head. Raske, on the other hand, took these orders as complete. After a curt nod, he grasped Inge’s arm and led her to an adjoining corridor, one that wound away from the throne room altogether. Inge chanced a final look over her shoulder. The king and Dagmar and Gunnar watched her and Raske depart. An atmosphere of determination hung around them, but it was almost completely devoid of hope.

  Chapter 24: Into the Devil’s Arms

  “Keep close,” Raske instructed. “We have to take the servants’ passages. It’ll be pitch-black, except where soldiers are patrolling.” He gripped her hand in his to lead her along. Under other circumstances, Inge would have enjoyed the gesture. At the moment, headed into the unknown darkness, she didn’t need the added distraction of her fluttering heart.

  “If there’s another entrance, why did Bergstrom have to ram down the double doors?” she whispered.

  “Pride. All the entrances were locked, but only the main one would serve his purposes. The Dragon comes as a conqueror. Bergstrom would’ve positioned his men at the other entrances beforehand, though, to prevent anyone within from escaping. He—” His words broke off as he halted in his tracks.

  Boots stamped a steady rhythm in the hall ahead. Raske pushed Inge behind him. She peered around his arm to glimpse torchlight dancing closer; a foursome of soldiers rounded the corner.

  “Eldr hér dey,” Raske uttered.

  A burst of power snuffed the torches, swathing the narrow hall in blackness again. Inge kept against the cool, solid wall as the soldiers ahead noised their confusion. Their voices cut out with abrupt yelps, one after another in eerie succession.