by Matt Larkin
Pakkanen followed, still helping Ecgtheow, but paused when he saw her, gaze lingering on her arm. The shaman shook his head. “I must stitch that before you bleed to death.”
Dizziness was already making her wobble. No point in arguing. She stumbled over to the rocks and half-sat, half-collapsed there. Tyrfing clattered against them as it fell from her grasp. The moment she released it, the dizziness increased.
“We have no time for stitches,” Wudga said. He pulled a knife and held it in a torch.
Oh … Odin’s lumpy trollfucking stones!
She didn’t bother protesting. Wudga was right.
“If the tales are true …” Pakkanen said. “The hiidet may be in service to a greater power. They seem to be moving with purpose.”
Hervor grimaced. “I don’t give a flying fuck what their purpose is or whom they serve. Naught will stop me from killing this Loviatar if that’s what it takes to save Starkad. I will cut down every last hiisi in Pohjola if needs be.” She looked to Wudga. “Do it.”
Hervor hadn’t quite been able to stifle her scream as Wudga seared her wound closed. Not that she really thought they’d have been able to rest long in that clearing in any event. The hiidet wanted them moving, clearly.
They pressed on, until the mist itself seemed green tinged and foul-smelling, like it had mixed with sulfur and marsh gas. The ground underfoot began to squelch, no longer snow, but slush and mud and muck.
The further into the dale they pressed, the more bog-like it became.
Beside her, Gylaug suddenly yelped. The pirate disappeared beneath waters deeper than any of them had expected. Only to surface a heartbeat later, thrashing.
Hel.
Gylaug flailed, hands slapping at the uneven surface beside Hervor. She dropped to one knee and reached for his arm. His slick wet hand slipped from her grasp. He slapped again, and she caught him.
Grunted in pain as his weight pulled on her bad shoulder—her bad arm. She caught his wrist with her other hand, then pulled. No purchase, no way to get the pirate back on the semi-solid mud. In fact, he was pulling her in with him. Her feet and knees squelched, slid, closer and closer to the spot he’d fallen in.
Kustaa dropped down beside her, caught Gylaug’s elbow, and heaved. With the other pirate’s help, they pulled Gylaug up onto the mud, spraying the pair of them with freezing bog water in the process.
Hervor fell onto her back and lay there, panting, heedless of the mud seeping in through her mail. Gods above and below, what she would give for a good night’s sleep. Or three.
Voices carried on the wind, like whispers. Not quite the croaking she’d come to expect from hiidet.
Hervor pushed herself up. “What is that?”
Pakkanen turned about slowly. “Many men have died here.”
“Ghosts?” she mumbled. Not ghosts.
“Perhaps. There is a presence that hardly welcomes the living.”
Didn’t need a shaman to know that much. “Up,” she said, groaning as she rose herself. “Everyone up. Move. Move now.”
Someone—Ecgtheow maybe—out in the mist grumbled under his breath.
And they were pressing on again. What choice remained but forward?
Every step ushered in new aches, twinges of pain, regrets. Maybe … maybe she’d been a fool to betray Orvar? No. No—he had deserved it ten times over. The murderer had earned the urd that befell him and more. She could not allow agony and anguish to make her doubt herself. Starkad needed her strong. She’d kill Loviatar. And then she’d fucking kill Orvar-Oddr again.
Onward they pushed, until they came to a rocky hill rising up like a turtle shell out of the bog. The tree cover was lighter there, roots barely able to break through the stones.
Behind, she heard Gylaug’s teeth chattering, clanking together at irregular intervals that grated on her frayed nerves. She ought to have had sympathy, of course. The pirate had lost his godsdamned eye for this.
But all she could think of was getting out of this cursed muck and getting dry. Would do him good, too. Panting, she climbed out onto the lowest of the rocks, scrambled to the next, and then the next. Always climbing. Every single fucking time she went somewhere, she was climbing mountains or hills or walls.
Her muck-drenched boots slipped on a rock, skidded, and sent her stumbling to one knee. That banged hard against the stones, sent a jolt of lightning straight from her leg to her brain. Left her groaning.
Kustaa caught her under the arm, heaved her up, and pushed her onward. No rest for any of them.
So she kept on climbing, always upward. She crested the peak of the hill. Only, the top of it dropped inward like a bowl littered with jagged rocks jutting up at every possible angle. Among them, a dozen or so tunnels bored into the hill as if some worm had eaten its way through a giant apple.
What was this? A caldera? The middle of a bog hardly seemed the place for one.
Pakkanen huffed up beside her, stared down, and shook his tattooed face. “Ill omen here.”
Yeah, well, all of Pohjola seemed an ill omen as far Hervor was concerned. Soon as they were done here, Hel could have the whole land back and no one would miss it.
“Are those lava tubes?” she asked. They looked a bit different than the ones she’d seen in Glaesisvellir, but she was no expert on such things.
Pakkanen just frowned, staring at them or something she couldn’t see.
She glanced back over the ridge. Gylaug was struggling to climb and Kustaa had gone back to help him. Ecgtheow fared little better, though he’d made it a bit higher. Wudga was missing again, of course.
And from the bog, more croaking.
“The kobolds draw nigh,” Ecgtheow said from below, pointlessly.
Hervor looked back to the tunnels. Many were steep, almost vertical, but some bored at an angle they might manage. “We can take shelter in those.”
Pakkanen mumbled under his breath before answering. “The hiidet are land spirits. They may well have carved out those passages themselves. Besides, if the tunnels bore down under the bog, they may be flooded in places. Walk there and we may find ourselves trapped.”
They were already trapped, in case he hadn’t noticed. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Death comes for us now,” Gylaug said, teeth chattering even as Kustaa helped him up the rise. “I see … valkyries … but choose glory.”
Shit. The pirate was losing it. Delirious with blood loss or cold or whatever fever had taken Ecgtheow. For that matter, she wasn’t feeling well herself. Still, they needed to—
The rocks in the bowl trembled, and she glanced at them. An instant later, one of the tunnels exploded.
A grayish serpent erupted from the tunnel, gaping maw bigger around than she was. Its reptilian eyes seemed to take in all of them at a single, soul-piercing glance. Had to be a hundred feet long, most of it still buried in the tunnels. A pair of thin forelegs crushed boulders beneath them.
Hervor froze, unable to move. To even think clear. She needed to do something. To scream maybe. That seemed hard right now.
The creature might have looked like a giant snake, except for those two limbs and spiny ridges running along its back. It had strange, wing-like flaps at the back of its head. From behind those hissed a green and black miasma that made her feel ill just to look upon.
“Linnorm!” Gylaug bellowed, jerking his seax free of its sheath.
At his roar, the dragon surged forward, crushing and overturning stones with its momentum. It darted at Gylaug before Hervor could even manage a scream. The dragon’s maw snapped shut around the pirate, crunching him and a chunk of the rock he stood on in one fell bite.
Blood gushed out of the dragon’s mouth. One of Gylaug’s legs flew free. Spinning through the air before splattering on the rocks.
The dragon reared back, swallowed whatever was left of the pirate whole.
Its movement shook the stones and sent Hervor tumbling over backward. The whole world spun, end over end. Rocks banged her sh
oulder, her legs. Her head. Sent white light blinding her.
A deafening roar.
She was falling. Tried to grab something. Her hand snared on a rock and twisted the wrong way. Back slammed against something sharp. Still tumbling over backward.
She splashed down into the bog and went underwater. Foul muck shot up her nose, scorched her sinuses. She flailed, caught the edge of a rock. Pulled herself upward, burst into air and heaved bog water from her lungs.
Couldn’t breathe.
Hurt.
Her torch was gone and she couldn’t see a fucking thing through the mist. Water was freezing. Her hands already shaking.
Screams coming from above. Crashes. A rock bigger than she was slammed down not a foot from her face, splintered, and plummeted into the bog. Still screaming … Oh. That was her.
A thud and a groan sounded a few feet away though she couldn’t see what had fallen. Who had fallen, more like. Groaning in pain, she climbed up onto the rocks.
Her heart was stuck in her throat. Dragon … Not possible.
Dragon … Linnorm. Stories …
Tyrfing sat on the rock above where she now knelt, wedged between it and the hill. Water was streaming over her face. Couldn’t be sure, but she thought maybe she was weeping with the fear. Absolute terror.
She lunged upward, caught Tyrfing’s hilt, and raised it. The moment she claimed it the runeblade flared to light, its pale gleam reflecting off the mist and doing little to improve her vision.
She needed a damn torch.
Where were the others? Dead? All of them?
“Where are you?” Her words were slurred, broken by her chattering teeth. They were all going to die. Devoured by this monstrosity far beyond the lands of men. Mist-madness had brought them here. Her madness. “Where are you, you bastard?”
She sounded like a little girl, crying.
She turned about, slow, runeblade out before her. Maybe she’d die. Maybe. But Tyrfing might be able to slay even a linnorm. She just needed one strong blow.
Something massive splashed down into the bog, sent a wave of icy water sloshing up on to her. Linnorm was in the bog. Swimming, hunting her.
Hervor sucked a shuddering breath in through her nose. She had to run, but where? The mist had blanketed everything. She couldn’t even make out her feet.
Oh, Odin. Odin, please. Please …
A hand slapped down over her mouth. She flailed, tried to scream, but arms jerked her to stillness. Then her captor spun her around to face him.
Wudga.
He was alive at least.
Slowly, he withdrew his hand from her mouth, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her after him. The man jumped down from the rock, landing in the mud with a faint squelch. Hervor wished she could have managed half so quiet. Muck splashed around her as she landed.
Wudga jerked her forward, seeming able to navigate the semi-solid ground around them despite the mist.
She wanted to ask about the others but dared not speak, instead letting Wudga silently guide her away from the hill. He paused, crouched low, and she mimicked him.
Ahead of her, unseen, another splash sounded, followed by a rush of water over her shins. Dragon must’ve swum right past them. Could Wudga see it? Could the dragon see them? No … No, it would have struck already.
Wudga pulled her forward once again, stepped out of the muck and toward a twisted tree. The trunk had split here, spilling the noxious black sap, though most of it seemed to have hardened into an obsidian-like amber. The tree must have once towered high, for the hollow left when it split was a good three feet around. Wudga pulled her inside the opening, up close against himself, and put a hand to her mouth.
Hardly needful. Hervor could not have formed a sentence if her life depended on it.
Outside, the dragon roared again.
Hervor could not stop shaking.
20
His breath was gone.
Water filled his lungs once more.
Desperate, Starkad swam upward through a flurry of bubbles. And then he burst through a veil of water and out into open sky. He spewed water and sucked down precious, beautiful breaths of air.
Treading water, he blinked beneath the blazing sun. It seemed too close now, so bright it nigh blinded his remaining eye. He had to look away, force his gaze lower, and not on the waters reflecting that absolute brilliance. He found himself in the middle of a small lake.
Around it lay a sandy beach dotted by palm trees like those he’d seen on Vanaheim in another lifetime. Other trees spread out beyond them, almost seeming to glitter, like some imagined, pristine paradise. Starkad swam for shore, fighting through the pain in his wounded leg and side.
Before he’d even reached it, a sweat ran along his forehead. This world was blisteringly hot. Not the searing blaze of Muspelheim, perhaps, but a relentless, pounding heat. He pulled himself onto sand that itself burned his hands.
Damn.
Now what? Grunting, he yanked off his mail, then the leather pads beneath it. Damn armor was like to fry him here. In Vanaheim—Asgard—without the mists, the sun sometimes shone so bright it could actually burn your skin if you stayed overlong in it. This world seemed like to achieve that in half the time.
He looked up into the tree line. A whole flock of rainbow-colored birds watched him. Creatures of red and blue and green, more vibrant than aught he’d ever imagined. One in particular—a red and blue-feathered beauty—stared hard at him, spread its wings, and cawed.
Starkad shook his head, still trying to catch his breath. Despite the heat, this world didn’t seem so bad thus far. Better, for certain, than aught he’d seen of late. He tried to run back in his mind what worlds he’d passed through, but the memories drifted away like smoke and he couldn’t hold on to them.
He’d come from beneath the ocean, he knew that much. That meant … Noatun, the World of Water. And here, the blinding sun … Alfheim, perhaps?
Rising, he loosened the laces of his tunic, then trudged off beyond the trees. His leg threatened to give from under him with each passing step.
He wandered through the glittering woods, passing chittering animals that jumped from branch to branch and stared at him. More brilliantly colored birds, as well, all looking down on his passage.
Crashing water sounded in the distance, and he followed its noise. He came to a stream that ran through mild rapids and dropped down over a series of waterfalls. Upstream or down? Starkad scratched his beard, then threw up his hands and wandered up the stream.
This he followed for half of an hour, perhaps, before the trees broke away into a clearing. Within it, fluted marble columns rose up and scraped the sky. Those had to be fifty feet tall, maybe more. They ringed a path that led to an equally massive temple, as if the place had been built for those larger even than jotunnar.
An unpleasant thought, actually.
But still, Afzal had told him he needed to do something. He needed to … The thought seemed so close he could almost touch it, but it wouldn’t stay in his head.
Shit, but he missed his swords. Wandering into such a place unarmed did not much appeal, and less so given he couldn’t recall what his intent here was meant to be. Whatever it was, though, it surely lay within.
As he drew closer, he realized the temple had eaves that overhung its walls, but no actual roof. The merciless sun beat straight down through a large atrium, glittering on a pool within. A pool the size of a godsdamned lake. Lush greenery spread out around the pool, even crawling up the interior walls of the temple.
He could not long look at it, though, for the figures in and around the pool demanded his undivided attention. They looked like men and women, true, most naked, the others close to it. Their skins shone so bright they almost seemed to radiate a hint of light, an encompassing aura all around them. Their eyes held the faint glow of sunlight. Some of them bore golden crowns or arm rings that reflected the sunlight, glittering with almost painful brightness.
Never in all his wander
ings had Starkad gazed upon such perfection of the human form. Enraptured, he drew closer to the pool, hands limp at his sides. Barely aware he was doing it, he pulled off his shirt and cast it aside.
Then he waded into the waist-deep waters.
The liosalfar drifted closer to him as he approached, forming a ring of beauty around him.
A pair of women drifted forward, and he could not tear his gaze from their perfect breasts. From the pink nipples that begged his worship. From the need to bury his face in one of those bosoms and at last be freed of all his suffering and cares.
He moved toward one of the women, hand outstretched.
Her smile turned to a sneer. “Murderer.”
“What?” He faltered.
“Betrayer,” she said, now advancing herself.
Starkad backed away, but hands held him in place.
“Touched by the dark,” someone behind him said.
“Changed by it.”
“Foulness.”
“It must be burned pure.”
“The sin of shadows runs deep.”
Hands lifted him up from the waters, carried him on his back, and he found he had neither the strength nor the desire to resist. They judged him, and he deserved it.
The cloud beneath him became a mighty disc of gold, like a coin the size of a man. His arms and legs were bound to it by glittering golden chains, though he did not remember any of the alfar binding him or even having aught on them with which to do so.
The disc floated several feet above the surface of the water, held him in the dead center of the atrium. The alfar ringed him and sang, their lilting strange voices almost enough to distract him from the sun beating down on him. Its rays heated the gold beneath him until he felt his back sizzling. The skin on his face and exposed arms and stomach began to crisp and blister.
And still the alfar sang.
That blinding light seared Starkad’s eye, and yet, while they sang, he could not close it. Could not do aught save stare at the sun, even knowing it would soon burn out his other eye and leave him utterly blind. But that sun demanded his unwavering obedience.