Runeblade Saga Omnibus

by Matt Larkin

  While still the vampires endured.

  Sleeping away in the ages … Dead and deathless …

  The picture continued, depicting what Starkad could only assume was the founding of the city by this very river. The founding of it by these ancient vampires. Wakened, somehow.

  Miklagard had survived the mists, flourished where most of mankind faltered and dwindled. Because Otherworldly powers led them. Like the Serklanders who worshiped Fire vaettir, except these creatures might not be possessed by vaettir so much as tied to the ghost world. Living ghosts themselves, maybe.

  “What are you doing over there?” Hervor called.

  Starkad glanced back at the others. “I think … it’s not just Tanna. All the Patriarchs, even the emperor himself. They are immortals. These vampires.”

  “Not possible,” Baruch said. “No. That cannot be. These were just stories …”

  Starkad continued around the circle as it depicted the construction of the great towers of Miklagard. Rising as the empire rose. And finally, they fell into conflict with men whose hands were engulfed in flame: the Serklanders.

  So what did it mean? That Miklagard’s wars with Serkland were all that held the vampire lords back from expanding their reach? But Serkland was being hard-pressed by the Vallanders since they’d allied with the Aesir. Maybe the other empire had begun to redirect its forces to the front at Andalus. Leaving the Miklagardians freer to press into Bjarmaland. Toward Holmgard.

  So … Did they put these creatures in charge of every place they conquered? If they took Holmgard, if they enthroned a vampire king to rule it, they could use that as a staging ground to reach Sviarland or Kvenland. To flood their kind into all the North Realms.

  Starkad swallowed, looked back at Hervor. They weren’t really paying attention. Didn’t realize what all this meant. And if they had, it might well have broken them. Most people couldn’t handle the truth that their world was so very fragile. That at any moment, it might collapse, beset by horrors on all sides.

  And if their mission here failed, if they didn’t stop Tanna’s advance on Holmgard, they had more to lose than a single small kingdom.

  Meaning, no matter what it took, Starkad would kill Tanna and claim Mistilteinn. These Miklagardian vampires would learn what men of the North Realms had in them.

  10

  Long years of travels had brought Orvar to Miklagard once before, when fighting pirates on the Black Sea alongside his son. Another lifetime, really, and like the memories of his life, it was dimmed and distant, tainted by the red haze of fury that so consumed his every thought.

  Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance.

  For the world had failed him. For all he had known once, long ago, mattered naught.

  Vengeance.

  It coiled around his mind like a linnorm, venom-laced fangs sunken deep into his brain.

  Vengeance.

  Upon Hervor, first and most of all. Murderer. Murderer.

  And she had dared to come here, even knowing he had picked away at those nigh to her one by one. Craven, perhaps, she had fled and left her Grandfather to his urd. As the old man wilted and withered, perhaps Hervor even hoped Orvar would put an end to him and spare her the pain of doing it herself.

  He strode down the empty streets toward the tower rising up ahead of him. An impressive construction. One that had—in life—filled him with awe and inexplicable disquiet. Now, it almost beckoned.

  Naught else of the deaths around Hervor seemed to have fazed her. For she had so little soul left in her, perhaps, and cared naught for any save herself. And Starkad Eightarms.

  Hard to believe they had become lovers. Hard to believe she had love in her at all.

  Fitting, then, that the last thing Orvar would take from her before ending her was Starkad.

  Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance.

  Long had he waited for its fulfillment. So long peering through the haze of red, waiting for her to break. Too long, for she was already a pathetic, heartless wretch before he had begun. Too long, and now he was done with her.

  Vengeance, long awaited, and its time had come at last. And so Orvar would rip the beating heart from Hervor’s chest and bite deep into it, devour it whole and be sated. At least for a moment.

  And dare to believe, to hope, that might abate the pain that wracked him.

  For the deathless spend every moment trapped in the agony of dying.

  Stone steps led up to the single doorway in the tower, the door made of steel—not iron, of course—with banded strips across it. Shut tight, though few in this city would dare approach in any event. Nachzehrer, some had called these creatures in the North Realms, those few who did not mistake them for draugar. And perhaps they were related, but not quite the same.

  Orvar rapped hard upon the steel door.

  It creaked open a moment later, and red pinpricks of eyes greeted him from the darkness beyond. Darkness and a hint of dust in the air, disturbed despite a lack of airflow.

  “I am the Arrow’s Point,” he said. His Miklagardian was not good, but good enough. “Come to seek an audience with the Patriarch.”

  The eyes winked out and the door creaked open further, inviting him into the darkness.

  Orvar stepped inside, into a small landing beneath a stairwell.

  An iron-like grip snatched his elbow and pulled him deeper inside.

  The door slammed shut, leaving him in nigh to total darkness. But then, like any other creature of the darkness, he needed little light with which to see.

  His own eyes would no doubt have shone with red light as he turned toward the vampire holding his arm.

  The creature flinched, ever so slightly, clearly unaccustomed to seeing aught else of the Otherworlds walking in its city. “Move.” Its voice a whisper, hardly the rasping hollow thing Orvar’s own voice had become.

  Did vampires not fall prey to the rot of the grave? Or did they merely have a way to disguise its ravages?

  Such questions mattered little, in truth.

  Only one thing mattered.

  Vengeance.

  The drum, beating in his head, throbbing where his pulse ought to have been. A rhythm pounded out against his skull.

  Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance.

  The vampire guided him up the stairs, several flights of them, until they must have reached close to the top of the tower.

  Nigh to seven years now he’d suffered the agonies of death. Until the drumbeat had faded into the background enough he could—for brief moments—almost forget it was there. But it was never gone. Just as he would never live again.

  Vengeance.

  On a large landing, a man sat on a gold-embroidered couch resting upon a covered dais. Every speck of it bespoke opulence and grandeur and hubris on a scale that would’ve put an Ás to shame. The dais’s overhang glittered in the light from the braziers set nearby, the sides of it seeming plated with actual gold, and that engraved with elaborate designs.

  The walls were painted with equally intricate compositions, from flowing scripts to flowery red and gold patterns. Alabaster columns supported a small balcony that looked down on this landing from a higher floor on the tower.

  On this couch lounged a man in an elegant crimson robe, seeming every bit the statesman, save for the crusting of dried blood over his chin and upper lip and, yes, even partway down his neck.

  “I cannot recall being sought out by one of your corrupted kind before,” Tanna said.

  Orvar shrugged off the vampire escort, who released him. “Am I so much more corrupt than the aristocracy of Miklagard?”

  Tanna quirked a slight smile, exposing a hint of fang. “I was speaking more of your putrefying flesh than the subtle, labyrinthine politics of the empire. Admittedly, millennia of internecine struggles have created a game that would appear hopelessly impenetrable to an outsider. I cannot say that the bemusement of foreigners much concerns us, though.”

  Orvar struggled to untangle the vampire’s words which rather strained his ma
stery of the language. “I did not come here to exchange witticisms,” he finally said in Northern.

  Tanna frowned now, as if the sound of the words was distasteful to him. “No. Your kind are like wraiths,” he answered in Northern. “Driven by single-minded obsessions. No revenant could have built or even envisaged a society such as we have created here.”

  No doubt true. It became hard to think on aught else while that drum continued beating.

  Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance.

  “Perhaps not. But strange circumstances may have aligned our interests.”

  Tanna cocked his head to the side but said naught.

  “The foe I seek not only came to your city, but broke into your tower. Her mission to kill you may have been ill-advised. But given that she did try, perhaps you too might be motivated … by a desire for revenge.”

  “Why would I need your help? I have a small army of vampires hunting them even now. The blood of one of the intruders already helped me find their lair. They run low on places to hide.”

  Orvar frowned. He hadn’t known these vampires could do that. “Like you, she bears a runeblade.”

  That got Tanna leaning forward.

  “I know her. I know of her companions. Working together, we can hunt them and kill them, with less risk to yourself or your … progeny.”

  Tanna’s mirthless smile had returned. “Very well, revenant. Prove your worth and I will forestall my distaste for your kind. Tell me about these foreign interlopers. Tell me everything.”

  11

  Starkad led their crew down the dry tunnel. They’d passed a few more grates that led back to the upper city, but until daylight broke, it seemed safer down here. Much as Hervor misliked these foul tunnels, at least naught was trying to drink her blood here.

  Along the walls, more of those pictures—Baruch called them mosaics—decorated the tunnels.

  Many sections of them were cracked or even turned to dust entirely, exposing crumbling wall beneath them. Other parts were so faded or filthy she couldn’t guess at what they depicted.

  Starkad had told her he suspected these tunnels represented some sort of history of the vampire bloodlines. From what he could make of them, there might once have been twelve bloodlines. Perhaps one for each of the Patriarchs? That would make sense. The emperor must’ve appointed the highest ranking member of each line as a lord of the empire.

  Hervor had begun studying the mosaics herself at that. They depicted plenty of men and women who might’ve been vampires, but none she'd clearly call the emperor. As to who or what that emperor himself was—assuming he existed—Hervor had no idea.

  No clear indication in any mosaic. “Suppose he’s a lie?” she asked Starkad, when he paused beside her to inspect another picture. “Suppose the Patriarchs tell the people they report to someone, some shadowy figure. Just to keep them united, keep them in line?”

  “Could be. Doesn’t matter overmuch though. This only reinforces that we need to kill Tanna.”

  Obsessed with his mission? Right now, all Hervor wanted was to make it out of this city alive. She’d already filled her pouches with coin stolen from Tanna. She’d just as soon keep that and her life both. “I don’t get you.”

  “These vampires’ bloodlines have some kind of rough truce between them.”

  “And?”

  “If the Patriarch of one bloodline died, it would throw the others into chaos, scrambling to fill the void. While they fight each other, they’re not bothering with Holmgard.”

  Maybe. Hervor moved on, not eager to spend too long in one place. “You’re assuming the others wouldn’t band together to avenge Tanna.”

  “I don’t get the impression they much love each other.”

  Hervor grunted. “Doesn’t mean they’ll be pleased to find foreign humans coming in and murdering one of their number.”

  Starkad faltered, glanced at her. “You might be right. We can hope otherwise, though.”

  He didn’t get it. “How can you hope for aught after all we’ve seen? The world of men is fucking doomed, Starkad.” She glanced up at the others to make sure they were out of earshot. “It’s going to be trampled under by jotunnar. Or overrun by draugar. Or consumed in fire from the likes of Scyld and the Serklanders. Or devoured by the godsdamned svartalfar waiting beyond the Veil. And you didn’t even see the horrors in Pohjola.” She shook her head, finding a tremble welling up in her chest. Saying it all aloud … she’d been thinking Midgard would fall for a while. But she hadn’t really talked it over with him. “Maybe Odin can save us, maybe not. But naught we do is going to stop the end.”

  “You have no idea what Odin really is.”

  “Right, well, maybe don’t let Win hear you talk that way. Either way, we have to focus on what we can get out of life while some little bit of it is left to us.”

  A low growl echoed from the tunnel up ahead, where the others had treaded.

  Hervor exchanged a look with Starkad, then they both charged forward.

  Three—no, four—of those vampires had surrounded the rest of the group. One had Vebiorg pinned against the wall, the two of them wrestling and snarling, both growling.

  Höfund was circling another, big axe hefted up.

  A third had Win by the back of the neck while Baruch faced off with it, clearly not daring to draw nigh.

  The last was stalking around Afrid as she spun, trying to keep up with its erratic, shadowy movements.

  Hervor jerked Tyrfing free of its sheath and charged at that last one, trusting Starkad to help Win. She didn’t utter a sound, but the vampire turned at her sloshing footfalls, bared its fangs, and brought up its own short-bladed sword.

  Snarling now, Hervor lunged, chopped. Hit naught but air as the vampire twisted away, nimble as a damn bee. It darted around her like it was really made of dust blowing on the wind, so fast she could barely keep him in view. Her foot caught on her own ankle trying to turn about so quickly.

  Afrid lunged forward with a knife—she’d lost her spear on those rooftops. The vampire spun around, sidestepped, and cuffed her on the cheek. The blow actually hefted the shieldmaiden off her feet and sent her spinning around in the air before crashing down into the muck, sending a wave of it splashing over Hervor.

  Hervor shrieked, cleaving with Tyrfing into the vampire. It twisted away again, but not quite fast enough, as the blade bit into its ribs. Could it poison that which did not live?

  The creature howled in rage, hand to its side. Without warning it launched itself at her, sword whistling through the air.

  Hervor jerked Tyrfing up to parry. The impact jolted her arms and drove her backward. Odin’s stones, this thing was strong. It came around again, blade darting in toward her gut. She leapt aside, knocking the blade wide, though it still scraped against her mail.

  Reversing that parry, Hervor swung up at the vampire’s face. It bent backward with superhuman speed and she only caught the tip of its chin. Driving it into further frenzy.

  One of the other vampires was shouting in Miklagardian. Somewhere close behind her. She didn’t dare look, though. Take her eyes off this one for an instant and it was like to rend her apart.

  It flew into attack after attack, seeming as fast as Starkad. Faster, maybe. Her arms were numb from parrying it. Sweat streamed down her neck. No way she could beat this thing. Maybe Starkad could. Maybe Höfund could match its strength. But a human like her … All she could do was hold out and hope one of the others could get to her.

  The vampire’s blade gouged her thigh and sent Hervor stumbling backward, her leg threatening to give out underneath her. Falling in this muck with an open cut was like to lead to infection and slow, rotting death. Assuming the vampire didn’t give her a fast, messy end first.

  Something grabbed the back of her neck. And then she was sailing through the air, twisting round. Everything spinning. Chaos and whooshing air.

  A smack against hard stone.

  A fall. A splash.

  Darkness.
/>   12

  Three Moons Ago

  Out over the river, the funeral ship blazed, carrying away Gylfi’s corpse. Arms folded across her chest, Hervor watched the ship growing smaller and smaller. The sorcerer king had ruled Dalar for longer than she’d been alive. Much longer, in fact, if tales spoke true. He’d been the first to bring the North Realms word of the new gods.

  Odin himself had come to Gylfi and told him of the rise of the Aesir and the fall of the Vanir. Hard to imagine, really. The Aesir had been her gods all her life. Odin this all-knowing, withered old man. Except Starkad claimed to have met him, too … Either way, in her mind, when she tried to imagine the god, she saw someone much like Gylfi himself.

  The sorcerer had saved her life with his Art. On the other hand, in doing so he’d subjected her to torments of the Otherworlds. Gotten her raped and tortured, even if it might have all been in her head. Naught good came from the Otherworlds, and for a man to dabble in the Art invited horrors.

  It made it hard to grieve his passing. Besides, how did you let go of a figure like that, a man who’d been there forever? Holding Sviarland together, keeping the Seven Kings from destroying each other. Or maybe keeping any one of them from conquering all the land. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t wrap her mind around him being gone.

  And Starkad, he just stood on the riverbank, staring at the ship. Had hardly said a word in days. He’d had his own strange relationship to Gylfi and—like his connection to Odin—seemed loathe to explain in the least.

  Maybe he stood only a few feet ahead of her. Felt like miles, though. Like she could never quite grasp him. Not now.

  The new king, Svarflami—Gylfi’s grandson—he led the crowd back into the hall. Starkad broke away and followed the king, brushed right past Hervor without a godsdamned word. Not even a nod.

  Fuck him, then. If he wanted to wallow alone in his thoughts, she’d give him that. Let him do as he would. Instead of following the throng, Hervor stayed on the riverbank until the crowd had largely broken away.