by Matt Larkin
“H-hervor …” Her grandfather’s rasp stilled her hand, and she turned back to him. “Please … let this … be. Let us … leave.”
Hervor looked from her grandfather back to Starkad, then to the thegn. Someone had to pay for what had happened here. Such a wrong could be made right only with blood.
“Listen to Bjalmar,” Starkad said, hands up in warding. “This path will not avail you, and even less him.”
“Some crimes cannot be borne, no matter the cost of vengeance.”
“The cost may well be your life, and certainly his. Maybe mine …”
Oh, bastard. Hold that over her head, would he? She hadn’t asked him to do aught here, though he surely should have, given what they had together. He ought to have had his blades in hands the moment he laid eyes on the wreck of her grandfather.
Before she could decide, a pair of men stormed into the cell and grabbed Starkad. A swift twist and Starkad shoved one off—flinging him against the wall—and bore the other to the ground. The guard flailed, caught Starkad’s beard and yanked on it.
With a bellow of pain, Starkad slammed a fist into the guard’s face. The man fell backward, strands of Starkad’s hair tangled around his fingers. The big thegn charged forward, slammed shoulder-first into Starkad, and sent him flying into the wall beside the other guard.
Odin’s stones, she wanted to draw Tyrfing! But she’d be forced to kill …
Instead, she unshouldered the still sheathed blade and raced in. She slapped the big man across the face with the flat. Blood splattered, and the oaf fell, clutching his shattered nose. Hervor twisted and brought the flat down against the back of his skull, sending him sprawling.
The other two guards had risen to their feet, but then, so had Starkad.
“Hrethel gave his permission,” Starkad said. “Be somewhere else.”
The two remaining men exchanged a glance, and then the one who’d wrestled with Starkad turned and ducked out the door. The other cursed under his breath. Hervor closed in, sneering at him. If he needed a bit more encouragement …
But the man finally decided it best to remove himself and disappeared out after his companion.
“Could’ve gone better,” Starkad mumbled.
“Yeah. We could’ve cut out their lungs and hung their corpses outside Hrethel’s walls.”
He spun on her. “You need to think this through. Focus on helping your grandfather while he yet draws breath. Lest your temper and need to avenge this wind up costing you all you have left.”
She barely restrained the urge to spit at his feet. Fuck him. Fuck him twice—once for being more right than he knew. She had pursued vengeance blindly against Orvar-Oddr, and look where that had got her … Halfway to the gates of Hel and no clue how to find her way back.
And if she let vengeance consume her here … Yes, she’d make more enemies.
Still, Hrethel would answer for this one day, one way or another. She’d take an oath on that if needs be.
Finally, she looked back at her grandfather, at where he struggled to rise. She slipped Tyrfing’s strap back over her shoulder and moved to help him up. Starkad took up his other arm, and together they helped him limp toward freedom.
They’d made it a scant dozen steps when Starkad’s legs faltered. “Whoa …” He swayed for a bare instant, then collapsed onto the floor.
Hervor’s grandfather pitched sideways and almost fell over, saved only by Hervor grabbing him.
Odin’s stones. Hervor eased Grandfather down to the floor and knelt beside Starkad. She placed a hand upon his head. He felt feverish and a sheen of sweat built on his brow. “Starkad?” She shook him. “Starkad!”
What in Hel’s frozen underworld? He had perhaps seemed a bit off on the trek here, perhaps filled with less vigor than was his wont. He certainly hadn’t seemed on the verge of utter collapse.
She shook him again. No, no. This was not good. They had to get out of here before Hrethel changed his mind. They were not among friends in this place.
As she glanced up, the hint of movement in the shadows caught her eye, a figure stepping away from them and into darkness.
Growling, Hervor rose and raced after the figure. She dashed around the corner only to catch a glimpse of someone slipping into an adjacent room. Someone poisoned Starkad? If so, she would wring an antidote out of them.
She jerked Tyrfing free of its sheath. Immediately, the blade began to gleam with a fell fire. She charged into the other room to find a tattooed man sitting in a circle of runes that looked painted in blood. Rimming the circle, candles provided the only illumination in the shadowed room. The strange tattoos on the man’s face seemed to dance in the candlelight and cast a wicked gleam upon his face.
Hervor glared at him, advanced, Tyrfing raised high. “A sorcerer. I should’ve known. You will undo whatever you have—”
A blur of motion to her side. She turned, tried to bring Tyrfing to bear. Someone caught her wrist in an iron grip. With one hand, her attacker flung her off her feet and into the wall. The impact sent blinding lights dancing across her eyes and Tyrfing slipped from her grasp, clattering onto the floor.
She hit the ground the same instant as her sword, took a second battering, lay there groaning.
She hadn’t even had time to catch her breath when her assailant grabbed her by the throat, hefted her off her feet, and slammed her back into the wall. The man leaned in, revealing his decaying face in the red gleam in his eyes.
Orvar.
Of course he was behind this. He had brought the sorcerer here to further torment her. Maybe he had even somehow tricked Hrethel into betraying her grandfather. With his hand around her throat, she struggled to make sense of it.
What else might he have been up to in the past year?
She wrapped her hand around Orvar’s wrist, tugged on it, tried to pry it free from her neck. But he had the strength of the grave. Making no progress, she took a swing at him.
His other hand jerked up with uncanny speed, caught her fist in his palm. Squeezed until she felt her knuckles popping. She tried to scream, but could get no wind in through her nigh crushed throat.
Everything began to dim. Even the candlelight faded away.
Of a sudden, he dropped her, and she sank to her knees. Sucked in painful breaths. Desperate for air. She tried to look up at him but her neck would barely respond.
His knee jerked up and caught her in the mouth, the blow sending her sprawling on the floor. It jerked her head back so hard it took a moment for the pain to register. She gagged on something hard and jagged, coughed and spit out a tooth along with a glob of blood.
Her mouth was full of wool and bitter iron. Any attempt at speech was a waste, and yet still she tried to form a thought.
The draug’s hand snared in her hair and pulled her back up to her knees. And then his blow smacked into her ribs with the force of a charging ram. She tried to double over with the pain but he held her aloft.
Hervor wanted to weep, to beg, to do aught to make him stop. If only she could make her mouth work. He hefted her higher and it felt like her hair would rip out from the roots.
“Poor little Hervor. So weak. So powerless. Do you want it to end? Would you stride gladly toward the gates of Hel? Oh, but not yet. You will lose everything. One by one, I will destroy all you have ever cared for.” The draug pulled her up until her face was level with his own. Until she was forced to look into his red, Otherworldly eyes.
And maybe she wanted to beg. But it wasn’t in her. She spit a glob of blood in his face.
Orvar snarled and flung her back to the floor.
“Hervor?” Her grandfather’s voice called from the doorway.
No. She tried to cry a warning, but all that came out was a moan. No, he couldn’t be here. Grandfather!
Before she could so much as rise, Orvar had closed the distance, seized her grandfather, and pulled him into the room. The draug shoved the old man up against the wall and growled at him, the sound as Oth
erworldly as his visage.
For an agonizing moment, Orvar held Grandfather like that. And she knew. She knew he was going to die. Right in front of her, and she couldn’t do aught about it. Couldn’t even get off the fucking floor.
And then Orvar dropped her grandfather and the old man slumped down. The draug glanced back at Hervor. “Oh, far better for you to watch what is already happening. Let him linger in twilight, gasping in pain in his final days. Until at last you bring out the family cudgel and put him out of his misery. How I wish I could see your face on that day. But worry not, I will always be close. Even when you finally enter into the ranks of the damned, I will be there waiting for you. Expect me, dear Hervor.”
She hadn’t seen the sorcerer arise, but the man now stood beside Orvar, the two of them seeming cloaked in shadows. Both men slipped out the door. The instant they had fled, a breeze with no clear source swept through the chamber and extinguished all the candles.
Left her in the dark.
6
The shadows spread out like waves on the sea, roiling around Starkad and casting his world in a dance of half-light and pitch darkness. They pooled around his feet as he wandered, muffled his footfalls, and dragged at his heels. They swallowed the pitiful glow of his torch like a hungry beast.
Everywhere he turned he remained trapped into utter solitude, in loneliness so profound it stole his breath away. A quiet so deep, it stifled even the crackle of his torch.
And each plodding step forward became more difficult than the last.
Ahead, through the haze of shadow, figures drifted in and out of focus. Starkad grunted silently, struggling to make his way toward them. The chance to see any other soul, to touch another was like water to a parched throat. But the shadows pulled at him, mired to his waist in a bog of them, holding him back and making each step more difficult than the last.
Starkad opened his mouth to shout for the people in the distance. Only a pitiful wheeze escaped his lungs. What was happening? What had happened to his voice? Again he cried out, managing only a puff of frustrated air.
He couldn’t reach them. Why couldn’t he get to them? Why couldn’t they hear him?
Groaning with effort, he trudged forward. Even his arms felt like they were pulling against the current now.
Another silent shout.
But he’d drawn nigh to the figures at last, people milling about as if they could not even see him. Until one turned, looked him in the face.
Vikar.
Starkad’s brother stared daggers at him. The man’s throat was chafed raw by the ends of a noose still dangling from his neck.
I’m sorry. Forgive me …
The words would not come. He opened his mouth, shaped them, but his voice was gone.
I didn’t mean … I shouldn’t have …
Naught but wheezing.
Vikar took a shuffling step toward Starkad, hands raised as if he intended to strangle him. To bring Starkad down to share his awful end. Well-deserved justice come for him at long last.
Another accuser passed by his side. He turned, even that motion feeling sluggish and distorted.
Ogn slapped him across the face. The sharp sound rang in his ears, nigh to a cacophony next to the overpowering silence engulfing him. Her beautiful face, once almost aglow, now seemed ashen in death. Eyes empty sunken in her skull.
Behind her, two more men drew nigh. Alrik and Eirik, each equally dead—if not by Starkad’s hand, then by his failures. The brothers bared rotten teeth at him, hissing in wordless, formless wrath.
Forgive me …
And still he could not speak.
He held his free hand up in warding as Vikar’s own hands edged closer to Starkad’s throat. Please. Let them all forgive him. But not one of his accusers had the least bit of mercy in their eyes. The dead are unable to forgive aught.
If only he could have explained …
Instead, he turned, fled deeper into the shadows. Made it a bare few steps before he almost blundered into Orvar-Oddr. His skin gray and rotting off. Eyes gleaming red, damned to the same awful urd as the Axe. As all who died upon Thule.
No!
Fuck! He’d tried! He’d tried to protect everyone!
Starkad ducked around Orvar and dashed deeper into the tide of darkness. Now the shadows no longer impeded him. They jerked him along as if caught in an undertow, threatened to pull his feet out from under him, to engulf him and devour him whole.
He dared to glance behind him. The legions of his victims and failures pursued him. Vikar and Ogn, Eirik and Alrik. Orvar. Yngvi and Alf. The Axe. Jorund. Ivar the Loud. Rolf Quicktongue. Bragi Bluefoot. A hundred others and yet he knew them all.
And they knew him. Deeply as lovers, they knew the crimes and darkness of his soul. Their eyes flickered with the knowledge, glowed with it like tiny candles chasing him through the darkness.
The ground beneath him bucked and revolted like a ship’s deck in a storm. Starkad stumbled, caught himself, and raced onward.
And then the stone beneath him cracked and burst apart. A rocky hand lurched out of it and snatched at his ankles. Starkad yelled—tried to—and jumped over the grasping hand. Another burst from the ground, followed by another and another.
One snared his right shin.
He jerked his leg, but the grip held him fast, strong as the stone it was made of. Another hand broke free from the earth and grabbed his other leg. Another and another jerked up. They dragged him down into the dirt. He was buried up to his knees and sinking deeper.
Stone hands snared his thighs, his shirt, his belt. Pulling him under.
Fuck!
Starkad beat at them with the torch. One hand lost its grip and sank back into the earth. Two more burst up to take its place.
Rocks crushed him up to his waist.
A hand grabbed his shoulder. Yanked him downward. Pebbles pelted his face. Dirt kicked up into his mouth. He screamed, still unable to make a sound.
Ogn was there, staring at him. Her eyes were murderous pinpoints of light in the darkness. They were all there, watching him face justice after long years. Hundreds of them.
More of the stone hands grabbed him. Snared his beard and his hair. Pulled him deeper. Grit stung his eyes.
Help!
He tried to reach for Ogn, barely able to get his forearm above the rocks. She sneered, unmoving and unmoved.
Starkad tried to scream but couldn’t. Dirt and rock covered his face, blinded him. Filled his mouth until he could no longer breathe. Until he was held motionless. His lungs screamed with fire but could not find air.
The weight of the earth crushed in around him.
He’d been buried alive. He jerked his arms about, desperate to dig himself free. No room to move at all. No chance at aught.
This was his end …
Sinking ever deeper, until the earth held him in its bowels forever.
The dirt suddenly broke and fell away from his face. Starkad gasped, spat out earth and pebbles and sucked down another breath. Stone blocks held his hands and feet, imprisoned him on the ground.
But he could breathe.
Blissful, beautiful air. No matter it was stale here beneath the land. It was glorious. He was alive.
Alive.
And in a cavern. The only light came from tiny flickers of flame in the distance. He couldn’t sit up, couldn’t get a good look.
Candles, maybe? Torches?
Figures moved about in the shadows cast by those flames, drifting in and out of his view.
He tried to scream, wheezed. Tried again. Forcing the words up felt like pushing against a mountain. “… help …” A whisper only.
Two of the figures shambled closer. They were hunched over, misshapen and bent in a mockery of human form. Backs so bent their beards nigh brushed the ground. Dvergar.
Starkad snapped his mouth closed. Dvergar helped no one. Not even themselves. All they wanted was others to share their eternal misery.
The nearest one kic
ked Starkad in the face with an iron boot. The blow sent blinding lights dancing across Starkad’s vision. It took a moment before he could even taste the blood in his mouth or feel the teeth rattling around over his tongue. He spit one out. Another. And another. A half dozen of his teeth gone …
No …
The other dverg leaned close over Starkad’s face and leered at him, the creature’s matted, greasy beard dangling into Starkad’s mouth and nose. The dverg grabbed him by both sides of his head. Dug meaty, rocky fingers into his temples with enough force it ought to have cracked his skull.
Starkad screamed now, roared in pain from the pressure.
Finally, the vaettr released him and backed away.
Metal scraped over stone in the distance. Starkad blinked. Hard to focus … eyes not working through the haze of pain.
He could barely lift his head up. Couldn’t see what … oh fuck.
Another dverg was dragging a massive iron maul behind himself.
“… wait …”
The other two dvergar cackled. “Wait? Wait for what? Hasn’t this waited long enough? How many winters would you like?”
“Blood needs blood.”
The one with the maul drew up beside him and hefted the hammer high in both hands.
“No …” Starkad mumbled. “Please.”
The dvergar exchanged looks.
“He said please,” one of them said.
“Asked for it. Polite.”
“Can’t argue,” the one with the maul said. It heaved the hammer up above its head.
Starkad screamed, even before the maul descended. Before it slammed into his shin. Before he heard the gut-wrenching sound of bone being pulverized.
He screamed in agony, in horror. Screamed until his voice went hoarse.
The three dvergar chuckled. The one with the maul had let it fall to the stone floor. Now he stalked around Starkad’s legs, dragging the weapon behind. He came up on the other side.
“Best make it even. Might have a limp otherwise.”
Starkad whimpered. Tried to beg but had no strength left in his voice.
The dvergar nodded to one another. The hammer-wielder hefted it once more.