“Who’s here?” he asked, fixing his attention on Joren.
“Queen Kallan.”
The words dumped a cold chill down Rune’s back, pushing all thoughts of the maiden aside. “When?” Rune asked.
“Dawn,” Joren said, “with the rising sun.”
Rune looked to the sky. Daylight would be upon them. “And the Seidkona?” he asked, his deepest worry setting in.
Joren was already nodding. “She rides with them.”
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. The silver of his signet ring shimmered. “Where…is Bergen?”
“Two day’s ride from here,” Joren said. “Even if I leave now, I won’t catch him in time.”
The last of Rune’s hope vanished as the forest spun around him. For the first time in a year, he saw everything and understood. “By the fires of Muspellsheim,” he cursed, opening his eyes. “She planned this.”
“My king?” Joren asked.
“All of it.” Rune crammed his gloves into his belt. “Our fight alongside Roald left us too weak to send aid to Thorold. We had no choice but to send Bergen. She knew he wouldn’t be back in time to defend the valley and we would be too few in number here, too weak in arms to stop her. The march alone left us too weak to battle, and she knew this. And now she strikes, when we are most vulnerable.”
Joren was whiter than the moonlight on his face. “But how did she find the valley?”
“We don’t stand a chance against that Seidkona of hers without him.” Rune shook his head at the hindsight, deaf to Joren’s question. “I hate that bitch.”
“But we won the battle of the Southern Keep.”
“And lost significant numbers in the process,” Rune said. “By keeping the Southern Keep, we have lost the valley. And the war.”
In silence, they stood, battling back waves of panic. They were dead if they retreated to Gunir and dead if they stayed to fight. They were dead without Bergen’s army.
“We can fall back to Gunir,” Joren said, desperate to stop the inevitable.
In silence, Rune reviewed his options. His knuckles popped as he tightened his fist, detesting the options the Seidkona had left him. After a moment, he settled on the one choice that would move him where he knew the queen wanted him.
“The Dokkalfar come for Gunir’s king,” Rune said. “If not in the valley, then they will march to Gunir, cross the Klarelfr, and rend her walls. They will take me from my city…through the spilled blood of Gunir’s children and her daughters, if they have to. No.” Rune shook his head. “We will stay in the valley, and we will face the Seidkona. Without Bergen.”
Sweat glistened on Joren’s brow. “But how? With Bergen gone—”
“I don’t know.” Rune rubbed his hand over his face as he scrambled to collect a thought. “Carry word to Bergen. He must be warned of the massacre he’ll find when he gets here. I will return to Swann Dalr and ready the army for battle. If we can hold them off long enough, maybe we can. Maybe Bergen will arrive in time.”
“But it’s two days’ ride at least,” Joren said. “He won’t make it. Regardless of how quickly I move, Bergen won’t make it to the valley in time.”
“We have to do something!”
A bird screeched, rustling the trees as it flew.
“The Dokkalfar queen has positioned everything flawlessly. They march to slay Gunir’s king. No matter how we assemble the pieces, I shall fall in the end.” The declaration of his death sparked a wild determination within.
“If it is my head she comes for, then she shall have it,” Rune said. “But the price of my head is the heart of her Seidkona. If I fall, so shall her servant. I will cut that Seidkona’s heart from her chest with my sword. Without her, Bergen will have a fighting chance to reach the queen.”
Rune’s words ignited the same fighting spark in Joren, and the scout lifted his head with the want to prevail.
Nodding, Joren disappeared into the trees, ready for the two-day ride to the Northern Watch and Bergen.
Rune glanced over his shoulder, hopeful to see what he knew wasn’t there when he caught sight of the dead boar forgotten on the ground. It seemed like a different time and place when he had killed it only a few moments ago.
The casual curiosity that impelled him to follow the maiden paled in comparison to the dread he saw in her eyes. Too well, he knew that darkness. Too well, he knew the hole it would leave as it ate its way through her. Too many memories of his own raced back as he shook his head at the boar. There was no time to drag a four hundred pound boar from the forest and dress it. After administering Freyr’s blessing upon the animal and grieving the wasted life taken, Rune followed Joren into the trees. He vowed to come back for it later, if he survived the day.
* * *
Kallan bit the side of her bottom lip, cursing her own foolishness as she rode. The Dokkalfar camp came into view where barely a corner of light from her tent was visible, and she pulled back the reins, slowing Astrid to a light canter.
In a matter of minutes, she slid from the saddle, tethered the reins to a tree, and stroked the horse’s dark bay coat. The stallion snorted and nuzzled Kallan’s waist.
“I’m sorry, Astrid,” she said. “I don’t have my pouch with me.”
Mindlessly, she patted the horse’s brown nose and added a kiss to the velvet as he snuffled for an apple. Her insides twisted with the pressing dawn. She gave a final pat on Astrid’s neck and slunk unseen toward her tent.
A different silence filled the wood and Kallan turned to the forest. Desperate to see through the dark, she ignited her palms with Seidr flame and studied the black silhouettes of foliage and pines behind Astrid. Her heart pounded through the silence. Converting her panic to patience, she scanned the shapeless black that rustled in the Nordic winds.
She could feel them. This time, she was certain of the nameless spirits that watched from the trees, if only she could see them.
“Where are you?” she whispered, scanning the blackest darkness.
Astrid pawed at the ground and shook his head, disturbed by an invisible pest. The leather bridle slapped the branch. The metallic jingle of the bit broke the tension in the air, and with it, the weight of the Shadow’s eyes. In that instant, the tension released and the forest returned to its calm.
Sighing, Kallan extinguished her flame and dropped her hands. She studied the trees a moment longer, until she was certain that whatever it was that had been there was gone. Without a second glance to Astrid, Kallan pulled back the tent’s flap.
The fire crackled in the center of the room, filling the air with a stuffy warmth. Aaric, like a large, tattooed sentry, brooded by the fire. Saying nothing and paying him no mind, Kallan strolled to her bed and sat down on the furs.
“One hour, Your Majesty,” Aaric said.
Kallan clenched her teeth at the formal title, but kept her head bent over her boot as she unlaced the leather strings.
“One hour,” he said. “Could you please explain why the queen of the White Opal could not be found until one hour before battle?”
Her foot smacked the floor and Kallan raised her fearless eyes to Aaric.
“A queen’s head is worth its weight in gold,” Aaric said as Kallan studied the newest of black lettering etched into his shoulder.
She shrugged at the statement, and loosened the laces on her boot.
“I went for a ride,” she said.
“On Astrid.”
Kallan dropped her boot to the floor and crossed the bearskin rug to the table at the opposite end of the room, knowing where this was going. Pulling the chair from the desk, she dropped herself down.
Kallan looked over the mortar filled with powdered sage, the pestle she hadn’t cleaned yet, and numerous herbs scattered about, until she located the single most precious possession laid out before leaving.
“Astrid is the only horse of his kind,” Aaric said. “You know that, and the enemy has long since learned to associate his presence with you,
Seidkona,” he all but growled the word. “He’ll be the first to betray you.”
“If he’s seen,” she said, fastening her mother’s necklace around her neck. “I used a spell on him,” she added before Aaric could roar a rebuttal.
“Well, thank the gods you had sense enough for that,” he said.
Hoping to discourage Aaric’s well-rehearsed rant, Kallan ignored the lecture and gathered the maps from the floor. She gently splayed them over the supplies, careful not to spill the inkwell she had abandoned earlier along with the paperwork.
Aaric relaxed his shoulders. The raging sea had ebbed.
“Kallan,” he said. “We were worried.”
We.
The lone word caught her ear, and she peered over her shoulder.
“You told Gudrun.”
Aaric narrowed his eyes.
“Gudrun taught you that spell. Do you think I had to tell Gudrun?”
She didn’t have time enough to answer before a chill swept the room. Throwing back the tent flap, Daggon entered, followed by a streak of silver and a flash of gold.
“Where is she?” the old woman said. “I’ll kill her.”
Behind her, Daggon dropped the tent flap.
Pushing out her thinned bottom lip, Gudrun looked Kallan over from her feet to her face.
Gudrun grimaced. “You’ve met someone.”
Kallan felt her face burn red as Aaric took his leave, shaking his head.
Daggon shifted his eyes, feigning interest in the sword on Kallan’s bed as Gudrun burrowed her fierce, golden stare into Kallan.
“Well, that explains that,” the old woman said, not noticing the change of tension in the air.
“Daggon,” Kallan said, doing her best to divert the subject to the captain’s corner of the room. “Where is the Dark One?”
“Just two days’ ride from here,” Daggon said, eager for the change in topic himself.
With a nod, Kallan averted her attention back to the map.
Gudrun’s eyes peered closer to better scrutinize every movement of Kallan’s face. “Who is he?”
“Woman,” Daggon howled from across the room.
“I’ve my rights,” she spat back.
Kallan’s face flushed a deeper red as she bit her lip and shuffled to bed.
In silence, she stared at the orange light splayed across the silver-black blades, remembering her father’s smile.
Deeper into darkness, her memory pulled her as she ignored the bickering that unfolded between Daggon and Gudrun. Her mind drifted as far from her room as her meandering thoughts could take her where the cold slowed her grief until it stopped. There, deep in the back of her mind, buried behind an iron black wall, Kallan couldn’t feel. There, she ceased to remember.
“Kallan?” Daggon’s gentle voice didn’t reach her.
Flames flickered in the silence, casting shadows Kallan didn’t see. She was somewhere else, stretched deep in the darkness of her mind where images lurked as she drew the blanket of cold around her, slipping further into the void, numbing her emotions, shutting him out, shutting everything out.
A gentle hand brushed her shoulder, jolting Kallan back to hear Daggon’s consolation.
“It was not your fault,” he said.
She flinched as his words drove a sharp pain through her.
“There was nothing you could have done to save him,” Daggon said.
Kallan’s eyes burned and the walls thickened, rising higher than before. She couldn’t breathe. “No,” she gasped. Tears burned her eyes. Her lip quivered.
“Shutting yourself in will not bring him back,” he said.
His words sliced their way deeper through the wall and a scream caught in her throat. Kallan threw her hands to her head and dug her nails into her scalp, desperate to shut out the memories that flooded back. A stream of blood flowed down her face, but she only felt her heart ache as she remembered her father’s laughter. Kallan’s hands wouldn’t move. Daggon held her wrists and he pulled her hands from her head. There he held her, staring inches from his face.
He had stopped talking and neatly, Kallan tucked the images and memories back behind the wall where they were safe and she could breathe again.
“Leave me,” she said, shaking beneath her rage.
Anger flushed her face where tears refused to flow and Daggon searched her hardened gaze.
“I still see the soft, gentle princess who broke every rule in jest and pilfered my wardrobe for clothes in which to dress the orphans,” Daggon whispered. “Where are you, Kallan? Where is the girl I once knew? Where has that princess gone?”
Kallan searched his copper eyes.
“You have no idea how much I wish to reach you,” he said, “to take you away from the void.”
Kallan’s rage recoiled and the hardened shell of the grief-stricken queen remained.
“You will not be able to maintain your focus in battle if you do not control your emotions,” he said, repeating Eyolf’s words to her.
But Kallan held her stone gaze fixed on her captain, who, at last, released her wrists.
“I’ll ready the men,” he said. Without a word, he lowered the hide flap behind him.
“He was a Ljosalfr, wasn’t he,” Gudrun said.
Kallan jerked her head around. The silence was all Gudrun needed to confirm what Kallan didn’t deny.
“I didn’t dare say anything to the men,” she said. “I felt you had enough to deal with from Aaric’s lecture. So,” Gudrun sighed. “Who was he?”
“A mindless oaf out hoping for a quick romp,” Kallan said. “He saw me and thought I was one of them.”
Gudrun nodded.
“He was an ass,” Kallan said.
Gudrun smiled. “Was he now?”
Only after Kallan was thoroughly uncomfortable with the topic did Gudrun sigh.
“Never mind,” she said and helped Kallan peel the Ljosalfar clothing from her body. “Not my business so long as you maintain your focus and don’t let feelings get in the way.” Gudrun droned on, lulling Kallan back to Daggon’s words.
Kallan closed her eyes against the pain and forced herself to breathe as Gudrun prepared her for battle.
Focus, she chided. The war. The plan. King Rune.
She felt the cold of her elding sword. Kallan opened her eyes and raised her blade before her until the double-edge reflected back the fire’s light. Kallan tightened her grip on the hilt, letting the solid weight ground her back to where she needed to be.
She would lead her army through the pine forests of Alfheim to battle at Swann Dalr. She would fight to take back what she had lost. She would fight to usurp their king and then she would kill him.
CHAPTER 16
Daggon stared over the darkness draped upon the Ljosalfar’s tents. Dawn spilled blotches of blue, gray, and black light that stretched into the trees where he waited. Many would die that day. Not a part of him cared anymore. There was only one other left who he bothered to concern himself with.
He shifted his gaze to Kallan, who had long since administered her orders to the commander of her second division. With her amadou pouch fastened beside the steel and elding dagger at her waist, Kallan wore leather and mail beneath her full set of elding plate armor. Her helmet encased her head. The nose guard distorted her face so much that he could barely make out her eyes peeking through the mail-lined helmet where she had tucked her hair. Standing beside him, she looked like one of her men.
“It is time.” Kallan’s cold voice cut the air.
“What of their sentries?” he asked.
“Silenced.”
“The Seidr?”
“My sword.” Kallan’s terse answer chilled the back of Daggon’s neck.
He knew better than to underestimate the delicate frame of the Seidkona. The Seidr was stronger than anything the Dvergar could create in Svartálfaheim. The shield secured to her forearm was unmarked for a reason.
“Gudrun is in position, awaiting the signal, secured with
in the pines on the cleft.”
Daggon peered to the ledge in the distance where Gudrun waited.
“Whenever you’re ready.” Her instructions were curt, confirming she had closed out the last of her emotion.
Daggon turned to the army hidden within the trees behind him where thirty thousand Dokkalfar waited in the Alfheim wood armed with axe, shield, and spear. Gripping the handle of his broadsword, Daggon shifted his gaze through the forest. Looking to his queen, he nodded slightly.
“Bring me their king,” Kallan bade and, with that order, Daggon raised his sword and released his battle cry.
The army echoed his order. Their voices rose from the darkness, sending the signal to the southern cleft where Gudrun raised her arms. With Seidr staff in one hand and Seidr in the other, Gudrun spoke with fervor beneath her breath.
The winds stirred, blowing her silver hair in a wild torrent as she turned her palm out and launched a single stream of lightning into the tents. Fire erupted within the valley and she saw Daggon join the charge, his sword still raised.
Warriors raced by as Kallan summoned her Seidr. With a flick of her wrists, she discharged streams of flame that arched into the camp and set the tents ablaze. Unsheathing her sword, Kallan raised her voice and charged, following her men into the open.
Into the valley, Daggon led the Dokkalfar. Their cries held strong until they stood in the very center beside Gudrun’s inferno where, one by one, their voices died out.
All was silent, save for the roaring flames. The dozen soldiers who had run out to meet them had already perished. Not a single Ljosalfar emerged from his burning tent. Not a single retaliatory cry was uttered. The Dokkalfar looked about for the enemy as Daggon assigned half a dozen men to search the tents. The Dokkalfar threw back the tent openings, upturned tables and chairs, and smashed the Ljosalfar possessions. A blanket of confusion settled over the army as Kallan pushed her way to Daggon’s side.
“Daggon.” Kallan’s voice carried over the men. She emerged from the crowd, her sword still unsheathed at her side.
“Where are they?” he asked. “Did they head out?”
“Their tents are still here,” Kallan said, sweeping her hand to the abandoned camp as she stepped to the side.
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