Runeblade Saga Omnibus

by Matt Larkin

  The sun’s rays scorched his brain. Seared it as if in punishment for his many crimes. Fiery justice, well-deserved, pouring down on him from the heavens.

  A glimmering figure drifted along his periphery, a tall female, lithe as the others. Radiant and glorious. She mounted the disc beside him, then stepped before him, her form blocking out the sun’s justice.

  Blinking through what little remained of his damaged vision, Starkad stared at her. The perfect, sensuous curve of her jaw. The enrapturing gleam of sunlight sparkling in the irises of her eyes. The sun caught and glittered off her golden hair.

  “Ogn …”

  She wore a white dress so sheer it concealed naught at all, with numerous slits allowing it to billow around her in the breeze. Her half smile was enough to restore his faith in life. His love lowered herself, slow and gentle, until her soft hands pressed against his blistering chest. Until her hips rested upon his.

  “I’ve wait so long …” he mumbled. “So long to see you again. To tell you all things I failed to say … I just …”

  She smiled, brushing a finger over his lips. Her hands traced along the line of his jaw. Settled beneath it. Closed around his throat. Still smiling, she squeezed. “You denied me this.”

  Starkad thrashed under her grip, but she had the strength of the Otherworlds. No mortal could match her glorious power.

  “This world, my very birthright among the liosalfar. You denied it to me. Denied me the light.” She was still smiling, speaking softly, as if to a lover. But the sunlight had faded from her eyes, replaced by a darkness that seemed to swirl within them. Her sky-blue irises became the color of midnight.

  “Driven to madness and utter despair I took my own life and fell, into shadow.” She leaned so close, her lips just brushed his own. “Like you. Caught in the dark. Oh, how I waited for you, hungering on the edges of the Veil while my prey lay ever just out of reach.”

  His vision dimmed from lack of air. It felt like his eye was going to pop from its socket.

  Ogn giggled, murmuring. “Can you even imagine my elation when the draug and his pet sorcerer called me forth and set me to my task? I needed but a piece of you … to drag the pitiful hollow you call a soul into my realm. A hair, taken in simple, meaningless scuffle … And you were mine. Always and forever.”

  He strained against the golden chains, tried to reach her. The links refused to give way.

  “The longer you hold out, the more entertaining this proves. Please …” She released him of a sudden and he gasped in air, choked, coughed, and sucked in some more. “Please, dear Starkad. Endure … Hold on to what is left of your mind. I would long savor the ravaging of it. Given the choice, I would draw out its decay until the end of time.”

  “What … are … you?” he rasped.

  She laughed, the sound no longer high and clear as it had been in life, but thick, as if bubbling up through tar. As her laughter rose, the blinding light around him dimmed and gave way to lengthening shadows. The other liosalfar faded away, vanishing like their realm of eternal light.

  “Oh,” she purred. “Well, I am not a liosalf, thanks to you. Shall I show you the truth of what you wrought from me, my darling? Watch closely then. I’ll carry you from horror to horror until naught remains of your wretched soul.” She leaned in close. Her teeth had become a maw full of irregular fangs, her tongue an elongated and bulbous thing. She licked it across his face, rough and scraping.

  A hideous thought hit him, a memory, that he had lain with this creature before. Many times, that she had sucked his life out of him one lurid encounter after another. As she would now.

  She pressed her face against his ear, even as her hands unfastened his trousers, his body responding despite his objections. “By the end, my darling, you may have guessed in what state you have left me. And perhaps …” Her hand closed tight around his cock and stroked it. “Perhaps there will be just enough of you left, to become like me.”

  21

  How much time had passed? It felt long, quarter of an hour. Maybe twice that. Battle made it hard to keep track of things. Hard to keep your senses. Hervor knew that. Knowing it didn’t make it any less confusing.

  Wudga had wrapped his arms around her. Probably trying to still her shivering. Maybe just trying to keep her chattering teeth from giving them away.

  Everything hurt. The battering on the hillside had bruised her still healing ribs. Even breathing was agony. Blood was seeping through the bandage on her arm, oozing from the wound Wudga had seared closed. Maybe she was lucky to be alive. Didn’t feel overmuch like it though.

  A shadow hopped and lurched past their hiding place. A hiisi, not quite invisible, as it stalked the bog. Searching for them.

  Odin’s stones. The hiisi served the dragon. She had not seen that coming. That creature was the very incarnation of destruction. It was chaos made flesh. She could not imagine aught working for it.

  “We have to move now,” Wudga whispered in her ear. “If we linger too long, they might double back and find our trail.”

  “F-fire …” The mist would get inside them, if the cold didn’t kill her first.

  “We can’t. Not here, not yet.”

  She nodded, lacking the strength to argue. Besides which, Wudga was no doubt correct. If the hiisi spotted her, she’d probably envy Gylaug his swift death. Poor bastard probably hadn’t even had time to be scared.

  The memory of his leg torn free, flying through the air as the dragon’s teeth crunched him … that thought turned her stomach. Poor bastard.

  Wudga led her away from the hill, maybe deeper in the dale, maybe out of it. She couldn’t begin to guess their whereabouts anymore. For all Hervor knew, they were headed back out of Pohjola. They should be headed out. Coming here had been mist-madness.

  But now … Now Starkad had no other hope left.

  Careful of every footfall lest she make a noise, Hervor followed behind Wudga. Every breath she took let the mist inside her. How long did it take to go mist-mad? To lose your soul? Was she there already?

  She tried to slow her breathing, but her pounding heart wouldn’t cooperate. She was going to die here. Every instinct screamed that inside her head. After everything she’d been through … she was going to die out here, alone in some bog far from Sviarland.

  But the ground beneath them grew drier as Wudga led on, muck giving way to snow once more. Back into the tangled maze of roots and branches and thorns, but Wudga seemed to know where he was going. Of course, when she led men, she pretended to know what she was about even when she didn’t have the first clue. Acting confused was a good way to lead to mutiny or panic among a crew.

  Maybe Wudga just figured any direction was better than staying nigh to the linnorm. Hard to argue with that, either.

  And then, without real warning, a flicker of light shone up ahead. Hervor’s steps quickened and pushed past Wudga, barely able to think of aught save fire. Naught else mattered so much as that.

  Fire is life.

  The others had a small campfire going. Pakkanen, Ecgtheow, and Kustaa. All that were left now, and praise Odin even they lived. Ecgtheow lay on his side, his skin distinctly yellow and putrid looking.

  Kustaa was cradling one of his arms. Bruised, maybe even broken. The pirate coughed, shuddered, coughed again and spat out a glob of black phlegm.

  “What happened to him?” Hervor asked, knowing how slurred her own words would be.

  Pakkanen sniffed, shook his head. “He drew too close to Ajatar.”

  Hervor collapsed in front of the fire. “Ajatar? The linnorm?”

  “I know it by reputation only … one of the fiends that lurks in Pohjola. A dragon of plague and devastation. An abomination of utmost chaos.”

  Even after all she’d seen, Hervor had never thought to witness aught like that linnorm. Maybe had never really believed such things real.

  Wudga knelt beside her. “Day will break soon. We must use that time.”

  She snorted. “There’s no day
here.”

  “There is, and even if it is not light, it is lighter. The hiidet will become less aggressive in the day and this may grant us the only chance to escape this wood. We have but to pray they do not discover this flame before then. Kindling such a thing poses a dire risk.”

  Ecgtheow murmured something, pushed himself up on his hands and knees, and shook. “Fire … without fire …”

  “Without fire we’ll all be dead anyway,” Hervor finished for him.

  Pakkanen rubbed his hands together before the flame. “I wish I could say this will be the last horror before us, but I fear otherwise. Perhaps we should retreat while we are still able to do so. The further we press on, the more the Otherworlds are like to bleed into this one.”

  “No!” Hervor snapped. “I’m not going back without killing Loviatar. We do that, and Latham and Gylaug died for naught.”

  “They died … for you … Press on … and we may all die for naught,” Ecgtheow said.

  Hervor flinched. With any luck, the others wouldn’t question what he meant when he claimed they died for her. Maybe think he referred to this being her quest. “We all understood what we risked in coming here.” Except, she hadn’t even begun to guess the horrors they’d faced here. “We—and the fallen—all knew the risks. Naught has changed. We press on, after the North Star, and we finish this.”

  “Mist-madness,” Kustaa said, and spat in the fire.

  Everyone stared at him. Now he bothered to speak? Hervor rolled her eyes. “Ecgtheow, we faced worse than this on Thule.” Probably a lie.

  The big man opened his mouth, sputtered, coughed, and gave over whatever argument he’d intended. He was cradling his wounded shoulder. Poor bastard looked like he’d be lucky to live out the day. Then again … maybe none of them would.

  Hervor felt chilled and flushed all at once, shivering and sweating. Light-headed and too nauseated to even consider food. Truth be told, they were all headed down to meet Hel. But if that’s what it took … as long as she killed Loviatar first, Väinämöinen claimed he’d know, and would start the ritual to save Starkad.

  She rubbed her face. “When daylight comes, we have to move on, head north. Pakkanen will still guide us. Keep it quiet, keep torches to a minimum. If we can bypass the hiidet without drawing their eyes, we might make it.”

  Ecgtheow coughed, wheezed. “If … even one … spot …”

  She looked to Wudga. “You are adept at sticking to the shadows.” And they all knew why. “You must help us skirt around the hiidet.”

  Wudga stared hard at her. Finally, he nodded.

  22

  Wudga was out in front, not far, but farther than Ecgtheow could see through the mist. Pakkanen was just behind, a shadowy silhouette. Ecgtheow supposed the pair of them knew what they were about. Knew which way to go. All a warrior like Ecgtheow could do now was keep his gaze locked on Pakkanen and keep walking.

  An hour of sleep had been enough to remind him he was still alive. Mainly because on waking, all the aches hurt fresh. Pakkanen had stitched up his face before he slept. Then given him some draught that tasted like troll piss. Supposed to help with the fevers. Ecgtheow didn’t suppose fever was his worst issue though.

  He needed a draught that protected him from fucking kobolds and linnorms, was what he needed. That and about three score hours of sleep, a barrel full of mead, and a hunk of well-cooked meat. Mammoth was the best there, sure, but he’d have settled for venison. Pork. Rabbit. Bear. He’d have settled for a damn squirrel if it would’ve stilled the rumbling in his gut.

  Not that he expected he’d be able to keep any of it down if he had it.

  Behind him, Hervor and Kustaa brought up the rear. Silent as death, the pair of them. Except for Hervor’s occasional stifled coughs. From the look of it, bitch had whatever malady had befallen him. Another day, maybe, and she’d be where he stood now. Small comfort that offered.

  Best he could do now was focus on keeping quiet. Last thing they needed was more of those kobold bastards running amok, invisible and vicious as a badger with a thorn in its arse. He’d heard tale of the things, of course. Mostly horror stories out of Nidavellir, men claiming they haunted the mines. Hadn’t paid much heed to it though. Who would? Sounded like sailors’ fancies about mermaids and sea monsters.

  Hel, maybe those were out here too.

  A loud croak echoed from off to his right. Another followed behind them. Another to the side once.

  “We’ve been spotted,” Hervor said.

  Next he knew, that runeblade was gleaming in her hand, flame seeming pale next to the crackling fire of her torch.

  Groaning, he yanked his own blade over his shoulder. So much for stealth.

  Scampering, just to his side. Couldn’t see a damn thing, but the snow crunched, branches rustled. And the croaking.

  Hold. Had to wait for them to show themselves. Had to wait …

  His lungs felt like they were filled up with rocks. Every breath rattling in his chest like it would crush his heart.

  Hold …

  A faint shimmer darted just in front of him. A clawed track in the snow. Roaring, Ecgtheow swung at the open air. His broadsword thwacked into something invisible and sent black blood splattering his face. The kobold crashed into the snow, its shimmer faded, revealing its wicked bulging eyes.

  Thing was already scrambling back to its feet, hissing spittle at him.

  Ecgtheow twisted and caught it across the face with his backswing. Tore through a gooey eye and hit the skull beneath. The momentum sent him stumbling forward, crashing atop the creature.

  Slime and brains washed over him. He tried to push himself up. His palm caught in goo and he slipped, slapped his face against the abomination. Creature was dead, thank Odin, probably on its way to Hel already.

  Ecgtheow rolled over, pushed himself up from the snow and struggled to his feet. More rustling from the trees, shimmering. An almost deafening chorus of croaks. Fucking army of the things.

  Behind, Hervor was tearing through them with her runeblade. Sure made him miss Naegling.

  Ecgtheow spat. “Come on then.”

  A shimmer just beside him caught his eye and he spun, swinging. Too high. The creature ducked, plowed into his gut and ripped claws over the back of his hand. His broadsword tumbled from his limp fingers but he managed to heave the creature into the air even as he fell.

  The kobold—visible now—spun in mid-air and landed on its feet like a godsdamned cat. Ecgtheow struggled to regain his own, knowing it was too late. He was a dead man. They were all fucking dead.

  A bellow erupted from the woods, so loud even the kobold faltered, turning its disgusting face to the noise. A heartbeat later, branches crashed aside as a man—a giant of a man, even to Ecgtheow’s eyes—came blundering out. The man slammed right into the kobold, one hand around its slimy throat. His momentum didn’t slow in the least as he caught the monster and carried it along.

  He just kept charging right up to a tree and rammed the creature bodily into the trunk. And he was still roaring. Before Ecgtheow could do more than drop his jaw, the giant’s other hand came up swinging an oversized battle-axe in a wide arc. The blade split the kobold’s skull down the middle and wedged into the tree.

  Almost at once, the giant man grasped the handle with both hands, yanked it free and spun, clearly intent on finding more foes.

  “Höfund?” Hervor rasped from behind Ecgtheow.

  He knew his jaw was still hanging limp, but he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. Where in Hel’s frozen underworld had this man come from? And how could Hervor possibly know him?

  Gaping, he looked back and forth between the two of them.

  “Run!” this Höfund bellowed, accent strange and thick.

  Couldn’t say he needed a second invitation for that though. Ecgtheow snatched up his sword and raced forward, trudging over to where he’d last seen Pakkanen. Seemed a fair time to be anywhere but here.

  Blundering through the mist, he almost
collided with Wudga. The man’s own sword was slick with blood once more. Volund’s son was terrifying in the night, it had to be said. What kind of man dealt so handily with the Otherworldly? One with a half a foot in those worlds, Ecgtheow supposed.

  Wudga waved him on, pointing to a faint flicker of torchlight. Pakkanen, most like. Ecgtheow kept running, chest heaving, heart feeling apt to burst any moment. Hervor’s unexpected friend may have saved them for now, but Ecgtheow still didn’t expect to see nightfall. His whole body seemed ready to collapse.

  Wouldn’t do anyone the least bit of good dwelling on it though. Best keep moving. Keep killing kobolds where he saw them. Best die fighting, die on his feet in a way that would make his son proud.

  Forward, then. Keep running.

  The land was sloping upward. Growing harder and harder to make each step.

  Maybe here was where he ought to stop. Turn, face the kobolds. Buy the others a moment, a few breaths more. Couldn’t say as he ever forgot seeing the Axe sacrifice himself that way back on Thule. Couldn’t say as he’d ever seen a braver man. It’d be good to be remembered like that.

  And then the twisted trees gave way to scattered pines. Up the slope. Out of the cursed dale.

  They’d made it?

  He was still alive?

  Pakkanen caught his arm, jerked him forward. “Don’t stop. Keep moving. The others will catch up once we’re clear.”

  Clear … didn’t sound possible, that. Still, he kept running. Few moments more. Right up until his legs gave out. He dropped to his knees in the snow, fell on his hands. Breathing hurt. It hurt like Hel herself was squeezing his lungs.

  But it was a bit lighter here, outside the vale. Storm clouds still raged above, thundering. The occasional streak of lightning illuminating the sky.

  Pakkanen dropped down beside him. “What happened back there?”

  Good question, that. Couldn’t say as Ecgtheow knew the answer, though. Before he could catch his breath, the others came tromping out of the mist, winded all of them, even that giant Höfund.