by Matt Larkin
Starkad had no breath left with which to scream. He tried anyway.
Couldn’t … couldn’t see what was happening to his left. All peripheral vision … gone.
The Fire vaettr pulled him through enormous piles of ash. Yanked him over coals.
Starkad shut his remaining eye.
Please Odin … let him die now. Just let him … die.
A sudden awful clenching of his gut hit him. And with it, the realization: he couldn’t die … because he must already be dead. He had fallen into one of the underworlds. Into … Muspelheim. The World of Fire.
The creature that held him hurled him forward, sending him tumbling over the rocky ground once more. Despite himself, Starkad pushed up onto his knees again. If he was forever damned, he’d meet his urd head on. Not whimpering like some craven wretch.
He knelt before a mighty obelisk.
No … a throne the size of a king’s hall, the back of it drenched in shadows. And it was occupied. The creature that sat upon this throne towered over him like a living mountain, smoldering in the darkness. Its eyes were pools of molten hatred glaring down at Starkad. Ram-like horns curled down from its misshapen brow.
When it opened its massive maw, magma dribbled out in place of spittle. The monstrosity uttered something in the same guttural tongue the other had spoken, its voice seeming to leave the whole world trembling.
Surely, he now knelt before a prince of Muspelheim. A lord of Fire.
Teeth grit against the pain, Starkad glared defiance at the creature with his remaining eye. He struggled to his feet, sucking in painful, scorching breaths in the process.
The Fire prince raised its hand. Molten steel chains erupted from columns beside its throne. They shot out like arrows and coiled around Starkad’s forearms like serpents. Their heat scorched him down to his bones.
He had no screams left in him. No voice left with which to object.
The chains pulled taut, lifting him off his feet and suspending him two dozen feet in the air, almost high enough to look into the searing eyes of the behemoth on the throne.
Its rumbling laugh washed over him in a fresh wave of heat.
Its gaze promised him an eternity of suffering.
9
Never in her life had Hervor imagined she might want to find a sorcerer. A woman would have to be mist-mad twice over to desire an encounter with one who touched the Otherworlds. She’d fought Niflung sorcerers, true enough, and lived to tell of it—if only just. But they, as well as Gylfi, had only proved the folly of dealing with such creatures.
And here she was, scouring the town and the nearby hills for any would-be wielder of the Art. She’d met a völva who could do less than naught for Starkad and was more like than not a fraud. Her, and no one else. Sorcerers and witches were blessedly rare and most went their whole lives without laying eyes upon one.
For the best—unless someone you loved depended upon finding a worker of the Art. It was the third day and Starkad grew worse with each passing night. Weaker, more wan. Even he, strong as he was, would not last long.
It left Hervor with a difficult choice. Depart these lands in search of someone to help and thus leave Starkad alone. Or remain here. She led the goat she’d bought out into the woods. In the throes of desperation, she’d turn to routes she would never have considered otherwise.
The most powerful sacrifices were human ones, of course, but she’d try this first. Thus far, neither Odin nor any other Ás had answered her prayers. Maybe this would get their attention.
“Odin!” Her raspy cry sent a flight of birds scattering away from somewhere above her. “Odin! I offer you this sacrifice in my time of need!”
She pulled her knife, then jerked it along the goat’s throat. The animal bucked in pain and fear and shock. She grabbed its horns and struggled to hold on, to hold it still while its blood spilled out over the grass. Its thrashes sent jolts of agony into her ribs. The animal bleated, the sound garbled and wheezing.
“Odin, aid me!”
“You deserve no aid, murderous bitch.”
Hervor’s heart leapt into her throat and she turned, slowly. Odin had come here?
It was not the Ás king who strode past the trees, but Ecgtheow.
She gaped at the big man, struggling to make sense of his words. “Tiny?”
“Don’t call me that.” He had a hand on the hilt of his sword over his shoulder, had already begun to ease the blade free. Not the runeblade though. Didn’t seem to have that anymore.
“What are you doing? You answered my call for help …”
Ecgtheow growled something unintelligible before answering. “I came at your call, yes. Came to right a wrong your actions have wrought. You brought suffering and blood to your kin and mine. To all Sviarland.”
Oh … troll shit. He knew. “Ecgtheow, please. There are things you don’t understand.”
He snorted. “That supposed to excuse aught? Will you try to justify the murder of our leader, of a member of our crew? You slew Orvar-Oddr, and for what?”
Hervor spat. “For vengeance. The bastard had it coming.” She reached up and grasped Tyrfing’s hilt. She sure as Hel’s frozen underworld wasn’t going to let Tiny kill her now. Not for this.
“Did he? Do you have any idea what he has wrought since then? Your betrayal was enough to cause him to rise from the grave, and that with a singular pursuit. Your favorite one, no less—revenge. Now he’s destroying everything around you because of it. Everything you touch turns to death, bitch. Be doing all Sviarland a favor to send you down to Hel.” He jerked the blade the rest of the way free. “If it makes you feel better, suppose you can call it vengeance.”
Damn it. If he forced her to draw Tyrfing, she’d have to kill him. And she needed all the help she could get. “Just wait. Please. Listen to me. Orvar used a sorcerer to curse Starkad, to trap him in some nightmare.”
Ecgtheow advanced on her, slow and steady, forcing her to fall back. “You’re the nightmare here. Best I help this land wake from you.”
“He’ll die! Starkad will die of this if we do not find help for him!”
Now the big man faltered, let his sword point drop into the dirt. “Can’t say as I’m about to take your word for that.”
“If you don’t, we lose someone we both call friend. Can you afford to lose any more of those?”
He spat. “Don’t suppose I can.” He looked about a moment. “If all you say is true, best you take me to him, then. I need to see him with my own eyes.”
“All right. All right … He’s in Gylfi’s hall.”
Ecgtheow shook Starkad again. The third time had as much effect as the first two. “Wake up!” He slapped him and Hervor cringed. “Wake up, damn it!” He looked back to her. “You tried throwing water on him?”
She rolled her eyes.
Grumbling, Ecgtheow rose from Starkad’s bedside, grabbed Hervor by the elbow, and dragged her out of the room. “This still falls on your shoulders. Your actions wrought this, no mistake. Can’t just let that lie.”
“Spare me the sanctimony, Tiny. I am hardly the only warrior in this hall who cut down her enemies.”
“That’s a fact. But far as I can tell, you’re the only one responsible for a draug come back keen on sowing chaos and slaughter across the whole of Sviarland.”
Hervor glared at him.
Before she could think of a response, someone approached from down the hall. It took her a moment to recognize the singer from Kvenland she’d seen in Gylfi’s hall almost a moon ago.
He nodded to her, and she fell silent to let him pass. Except he didn’t. Instead, the man drew up beside her and stopped, stared right at her.
“Can I help you?”
“How magnanimous when the one seeking aid begins by offering it. Word spreads you find yourself in a dire plight and now called for anyone learned in the Art, heedless of the danger or implications therein.”
Hervor balked, but it was Ecgtheow who spoke. “Who the fuck are you
and what are you on about?”
“An emissary of Kvenland. Väinämöinen is my name, and having traveled far and long, a great many secrets have unfolded themselves before me. Arcane knowledge that might prove somewhat fortuitous under the circumstances.”
Hervor shook herself. If the man was here to answer her prayers, who was she to complain? Maybe Odin really was listening. “You can exorcise a vaettr?”
Väinämöinen stepped gingerly around her and strode into Starkad’s chamber. There he examined her lover.
Ecgtheow shoved her back into the room and she stumbled, barely keeping her feet.
She was about to glare at him, but at that moment Väinämöinen turned to her. “A mara has taken root within him, gorging itself upon the dwindling life.”
“That much I already know.”
The Kvenlander nodded as if to himself. “Yes, and I might be able to exorcise it. Such a ritual is wrought with risk for both him and myself, though. Were I to fail in such a dangerous undertaking, were the vaettr to prove too strong, I might find myself its new vessel.” He clucked his tongue. “Difficult and dangerous, a fearful combination to make the most learned of sorcerers tremble.”
He spoke almost as if he’d seen Gylfi’s exact reaction. Hervor took a step forward. “If this is about money, I’ll pay aught in my power to give. But name your price and I’ll arrange it, only save Starkad from this vaettr.”
“The price of a thing, the woman asks, knowing not the cost he needs.”
“If that’s a poem, I don’t have time—”
Väinämöinen quirked a wry smile. “And if it is but a line from a song that might have been? Time grows short, flitting and flying, before its end. If you wish me to risk so very much, you must risk in turn. In northern reaches, beyond the distant shores from which I hail, you might chance upon the witch-queens of Pohjola. And there, were you to make an end of the one called Loviatar, all would surely hold your payment fulfilled.”
Ecgtheow groaned. “Can’t say as I much like the idea of traveling to Pohjola.”
Nor Hervor. She’d heard stories of it back in her pirating days. Of a land of cold and darkness like unto Niflheim itself, lying north of the kingdoms in Kalevala that made up southern Kvenland. Men said witch-queens ruled there, calling up terrible sorcery to stay young and beautiful.
And here she’d gone and offered him to name his own price. “I meant to say I will come up with gold, with silver, with aught else you desire. I cannot afford a trek to some far-off land.” Nor did she relish the idea of going out in the frozen wastes a third godsdamned time.
“Though intent may have been wealful or woeful, still the ends remain the same. For what is needful fades little, but rather flourishes down through time’s wretched march.”
Ecgtheow scratched his beard. “Uh … huh?”
Hervor threw up her hands. “Fine. Fine, you want me to hunt down this Loviatar, I’ll do it. But first save Starkad. Hel’s gate, he’d be the best one to help me accomplish such a murder.”
“A payment delivered when the service is far from certain? However pure the intent, failure remains a possibility one cannot deny in such an undertaking.”
“A lesser chance of that with Starkad at my side,” she snapped.
“And yet here we stand, while he lies wilting in darkness.”
Ecgtheow cleared his throat. “Why do you even want this witch-queen dead? What’s she to you?”
Hervor spun on him. “I don’t give a troll’s rocky arse why! We don’t have time to do this. Starkad will be dead before we could ever reach Kvenland’s shores! Much less trek through Pohjola, kill the witch, and get back here.”
Väinämöinen’s irksome smile only grew, and he drew forth a wooden carving from a pouch. He held it in the palm of his hand, up so she could look closer. A finely carved kestrel, from the look of it. “A soul-bird to soar between the realms of waking and sleeping, to guide the weary soul away from destruction, whilst it wanders in the dark lands.”
Hervor frowned at the hunk of wood. “This bird will keep him alive?”
The Kvenlander set the statue down beside Starkad’s bed. “All things have their time. I will watch, and stave off the end, so long as I may.”
“Meaning we have time, but not much.” Bastard.
The man spread his hands. “When the last breath leaves the witch’s cursed lips, the wind will whisper of her fall. And hearing its song, I shall begin my own. A verse that might drive our foe from your companion.”
Hervor glanced at Ecgtheow and he nodded, albeit with obvious reluctance. “Fine.” She looked back to Väinämöinen. “How are we to find Loviatar?”
“Follow the North Star until you can go no further and the world ends at a pillar scraping the sky. The witch abides between this world and the next, in the place where all light dies and fire cannot touch.”
So. These witches lived in northern Kvenland. Ilona had come from there, had trained there with witches. What had she called them? Seidkonur? So were these witch-queens the descendants of Ilona’s people?
Either way, it mattered little. “We need to be off.”
“Oh, indeed,” Väinämöinen said. “For all the grace of the soul-bird and all the ministrations I might provide will not avail long. A moon, at most, and then time will have its due.”
A single moon?
Hervor didn’t spare the strange man another glance.
Part II
First Moon
Year 30, Age of the Aesir
10
More like than not, Ecgtheow shouldn’t have set foot on this ship. Gylaug had gotten word of Hervor’s call for help—Ecgtheow didn’t suppose he quite wanted to know how Gylfi reached the pirate out at sea—and had shown up in Upsal just when Hervor was off hunting a vessel to ferry them to Kvenland.
Timing was a bit too perfect to Ecgtheow’s mind. Such things bespoke of either dark urds, or men meddling with the Art. Or both.
And here he was, heading for unknown lands, and not for any raiding either. No, he could’ve stayed in Ostergotland. Ylva had begged him to stay with her, with their newborn son. Except word had reached him about Hervor come calling on Hrethel, and after all she’d wrought, he couldn’t rightly just let her be.
So he’d gone to kill her.
And somehow wound up sailing beside her, on the same crew once again with the lying, murderous shieldmaiden.
Such was urd.
A strong wind helped them make good time, too. Could be natural. Best to hope it was, he supposed. Either way, Gylaug had a cocksure grin on his face as he made his way to where Ecgtheow stood nigh to the bow.
“You seen these lands before?” Ecgtheow asked the pirate captain.
“Kalevala? Sure, I’ve raided up and down the Morimarusa and Gandvik, both. Plunder, trade—both can profit a man who knows what he’s about.” The captain had earned himself a fresh scar over his brow since last Ecgtheow had seen him. That, and a habit of scratching at it so fierce just watching pained Ecgtheow. “Never went to Pohjola, though. Not many a man has, leastwise not many who came back. Kvenlander men, fools and princes—much the same, I guess—sometimes they go up there hunting beautiful brides. Can’t say as I’ve seen too many of these brides, though.”
“And we can’t sail there?”
Gylaug snorted. “Want to guess how many ships have come back from those waters? Where they’re not frozen solid, they’re thick with more icebergs than I’ve got hairs on my arse.” Not an image Ecgtheow needed in his brain, but there it was. “Right, even if there weren’t for the ice, tales go way back about the spawn of Jörmungandr. Serpents fit to swallow a whole longship.”
“Huh. So who tells these stories if the ships get swallowed whole?”
Gylaug chuckled. “Don’t go doubting the wisdom of men of the sea, my man. You’ll wind up caught in Rán’s net faster than you can blink.”
Ecgtheow looked back from the pirate to Hervor. She hadn’t even bothered disguising herself as He
rvard this time. Was just standing by the gunwale and staring out over the deep, hand to her ribs. The shieldmaiden had clearly taken a beating not long before he came upon her. Bruises on her jaw seemed mostly faded, but her voice sounded like someone had tried to hang her. Maybe they did—she’d have deserved it, no doubt on that.
“Fancy her, do you?”
Not fucking likely. If he told Gylaug she’d murdered the captain of her own ship, would he throw her to the sharks? Sure as Niflheim was cold, she well deserved that too. That and a thousand torments beyond to go with it. Hervor was a traitor, whatever her reason. But she was clearly loyal to Starkad.
Maybe even in love with him.
Ecgtheow didn’t suppose that was much his concern, except he happened to like the man, notwithstanding his choice in women. So it didn’t much serve Starkad to kill someone trying to save his life. Not now. Still, there had to be a reckoning.
Hervor had stirred up a blizzard of troll shit and half of Sviarland wound up stinking on account of it. It wouldn’t hold for her to get to walk away without her fair share of the muck caking her.
“You spent a lot of years as a pirate,” Ecgtheow said.
Gylaug snickered. “More than a few. Kind of a family trade, truth be told. Don’t think that means I didn’t notice you changing the topic to avoid the question.”
“What?” Oh. Hervor … “I don’t fancy anyone but my wife. I was just thinking … you ever have a member of your crew go … too far?”
“Ugh. You mean what? Can’t say as we have all that many rules one has to follow. Just loyalty to your crewmates and to me, mostly.”
“And what if someone broke that rule?”
Gylaug shrugged. “What do you think happens to 'em? Don’t talk like you’re some child still wet from your mother’s teat. A man goes too far against his own, his own put him down. It’s the way it’s always been. Has to be. If you can’t trust the men at your back, you’re already halfway to the gates of Hel.”
Ecgtheow supposed he was at that, and from the sound of it, they were sailing closer with each passing hour.