by Matt Larkin
Baruch climbed the ladder, fiddled with the trapdoor, then eased it open. The Miklagardian slipped into a room above, then beckoned the others to follow.
Vebiorg surged up the ladder before Starkad could even move. Despite himself, he was almost glad she was here. And on their side.
He climbed up next. The room inside was not dissimilar to the one they’d entered Nikolaos’s palace from. A blood circle painted with runes ringed the trapdoor, and various crates lined the walls. A storeroom. And they could only assume that, like Nikolaos, Tanna would have his own guards just outside to deal with intruders.
Hervor followed him up, and he grabbed her hand to help her crest the ridge. Win came next, and finally Höfund. Starkad looked over his crew, then down the hatch. Arete had already vanished into the darkness, perhaps intent to report back to Nikolaos. He’d made clear he couldn’t have this traced back to him, whatever doubt his actions might have cast upon him. She probably had orders not to stay too close.
“All right,” he said. “We don’t know how many vampires may lair in here. So we need to go in quiet. If we’re discovered, we lose the element of surprise.”
Afrid whimpered, mumbling something to herself. Starkad had no time to coddle her. Arete had provided her with a new spear. That had to be enough for her.
“Let me go first, then,” Vebiorg said. “I’ve got the best senses and I’m good at being silent.”
“Fine. Do it. Let’s go.”
The varulf slipped over to the door, then eased it open. Then she disappeared down a dimly lit hall. Starkad stalked after her, keeping low, keeping his footfalls light. No guards after all. Maybe Tanna only worried about vampire intruders.
The hallway let out into a large foyer broken up by twin winding staircases leading to a higher floor. The whole room was completely empty still.
Vebiorg glanced back at Starkad.
So which way would they find Tanna? Upstairs, probably. He pointed to the nearest of the staircases. The varulf stalked over to it and started up, Starkad a few steps behind her.
A shadow dropped down from above, in the corner of his eye, like it had fallen from the balcony. He turned, only to see six vampires had leapt down into the foyer, landing amid his crew, more than half of them coming down in his blind spot.
How the fuck had they known?
Afrid ran and ducked behind the stairs. Damn it, he knew he shouldn’t have brought someone so young on this mission.
Höfund, flailing with his great axe, charged straight for a vampire. The creature moved so fast it almost seemed a blur as it dodged behind him, then brought a warhammer crashing down on the half-jotunn’s back.
Shit. Starkad didn’t have time to save them all.
He leapt over the side of the banister, drawing his swords all in one motion and whipping them in a cross as he fell. His blades sunk into a vampire below him, drawing forth spurts of blood and sending the creature shrieking like the damned from the gates of Hel.
“I’m sorry!” Afrid wailed. Starkad spun to see the shieldmaiden run toward one of the vampires. The creature jerked the shieldmaiden behind himself and advanced on Starkad. Over its shoulder, Starkad gaped at Afrid. “I just … just didn’t want to die!”
One of the other vampires had Baruch pinned the opposite staircase. He screamed as it bit down on his throat. The vampire jerked its head back, ripping out Baruch’s jugular in the process and spraying a shower of blood across the marble floor.
Hervor shrieked, sunk Tyrfing into a vampire up to the hilt. The creature writhed as the runeblade’s pale flames scorched it. She had it well in hand.
Starkad had to see to this one. The creature lunged at him, a knife in each hand. He parried one, dodged the other and cut with his second sword. But the vampire had inhuman speed and much lighter weapons. They set about their dance, and it was all he could do to keep up. His swords gave him reach, but it amounted to little when the vampire didn’t fear minor wounds. Naught much seemed to faze it, in truth.
More vampires were pouring into the foyer. This was all a fucking trap. This had all gone wrong. “Flee!” he shouted. “Back to the tunnels, flee!”
At his words, Hervor jerked Tyrfing free of her foe, spun around and lopped its head off. Starkad didn’t even have time to marvel at her move, so pressed by the vampire. Instead, he gave ground willingly, retreating back toward the same hallway they’d come from.
“I’m sorry,” Afrid shouted again, from somewhere beyond the stairs. Starkad had no time to think on her.
An awful grunt escaped Höfund, followed by a crash to the floor, but Starkad couldn’t see him.
Hervor raced to Starkad’s side, then past him, maybe helping one of the others. Starkad kept giving ground to the knife-wielder, until he came back to the hall. He needed just a slight chance to break off and run, but this vampire wasn’t giving—
A wolf flew through the air, tackled the vampire, and bit down on its throat. Snarling, growling. Rending flesh. Vebiorg jerked away and dashed down the hall. Starkad needed no invitation to follow.
Hervor and Win were already back in the cellar, engaged with human guards. Hervor cleaved into one and Win felled the other.
“Jump!” Starkad bellowed. “The tunnels!”
Vebiorg snapped at something, but he had no chance to see what. He raced to the trapdoor, dropped down, and slid to the edge. Then he dropped down into the darkness.
20
Odin’s stones! Hervor dashed blindly down another tunnel, took the next bend, and took off running again, her feet squelching in Odin-knew-what.
“Do you even know where you’re going?” Win shouted, a half step behind her.
“No!”
“Then how do you know we do not run in circles?”
Hervor didn’t even bother to answer that. The vampires were much faster than humans. She needed to keep changing directions until she was certain they’d lost their pursuit. Naught else really mattered. If they did wind up going in a circle … they were probably all dead.
She’d lost track of Vebiorg. Could only pray Starkad was back behind Win, following. Everything had turned to troll shit. Afrid … Hel take that bitch. Hervor had believed in her, liked her. And she’d betrayed them.
Hervor’s chest hurt from sucking in heaving breath after breath. Made it hard to think clear. To understand why Stonekicker would do it. Fucking craven.
Hervor’s foot skidded on sludge and she blundered into the tunnel wall.
Win caught her, kept her from toppling over into the muck. “I don’t think this is the way back to Nikolaos’s estate.”
Hervor didn’t fucking care, so long as they got away from Tanna’s palace.
“This seems almost like we’ve wandered into an actual maze.”
“I agree,” Starkad answered, trotting up behind them. “And I barely managed to find you. Without Arete or Vebiorg, we’re wandering blind down here.”
Hervor spun on him. “They got Höfund!”
“I know.”
“This is on you, Starkad. You brought us here, and now one of our crew is in Tanna’s hands.”
Win held up his hands. “We don’t have time to cast blame upon one another. If this place is a deliberate maze beneath Tanna’s holdings, we need to focus our efforts on finding egress.”
Starkad grimaced. “I might … I have good instincts. I may be able to find a way through.”
“Instincts?” Hervor asked. “Did they warn you about Afrid?”
He winced. Maybe he didn’t deserve it. But who else was she to blame?
“Shit,” she mumbled. “We can’t go forward. We have to go back for Höfund.”
Starkad flinched and stared at her with sad eyes.
Win was already shaking his head. “We do him no good by sacrificing our lives in a vain attempt to reach him. Tanna’s minions already caught us unawares and handily defeated us. Our numbers are fewer now.” The prince left the mention of Baruch unspoken.
The Miklagardia
n had died for this mission. He’d escaped this city long ago, earned his way free from slavery, made a life for himself. Since coming back here, he’d lost Fjolvor and then his own life.
“Stonekicker has betrayed us,” Win finally said. “Vebiorg is missing. Höfund is captured. Are the three of us to do what seven failed to?”
“We’ll find a way to go back for him,” Starkad said. “Not now, though. Right now, we need to get free of this place. The only way I can see to do that is to press on and try to navigate this maze of tunnels.”
And Hel take them both for being right. Why the fuck did Höfund have to throw in his lot with Rollaugr? And the big man had trusted her and Starkad to help solve this. She’d failed him, every way a friend could. When she’d asked for his help to save Starkad from the witches of Pohjola, Höfund had come running. And this was how she repaid him.
“Lead the way, then,” she snapped at Starkad.
He did, heading out a few steps ahead of them. He paused at an intersection. Thinking? Or … Oh. Odin’s bleeding stones. He was trying to use the Sight to get Otherworldly guidance. Even the thought of it had the hair on Hervor’s arms standing on end. Maybe that insight had helped them a time or two. Still, it seemed a fell, even fey gift—or a curse. She couldn’t help but mistrust aught that didn’t come from the human world. More so now, given all she’d seen in the past seven years.
Starkad led them down bend after bend. Maybe the Sight told him where to go. Maybe he just wandered nigh as blind as she had, but didn’t admit it. Didn’t want them scared any worse than they already were. He needn’t have bothered if that was the case. She couldn’t have gotten much more scared.
Down the next tunnel, the sound of metal scraping over stone reached her. What now?
Even Starkad glanced back at her, a hint of concern on his face. “I’m fair certain we need to continue this way.”
“Then let us do so,” Win said.
With a nod, Starkad pressed on. They came round a bend and the source of the sound became clear, if hard to believe. Great sweeping blades the size of a man flashed out of grooves in the walls, cutting across the hall in an arc one way. Then the other.
Behind them, the sound of grinding stone echoed through the tunnel.
“Not this way,” Hervor said.
“I’d say not,” Win agreed.
Starkad frowned. “Who would build this?”
Tanna probably, though Hervor didn’t much care, truth be told. She spun around and doubled back. Only … hadn’t the bend been to the left when they’d come around? No, she must just be exhausted. It was right.
Beside her, Win was blinking, shaking his head.
Whatever. Hervor started down the tunnel. That grinding sound just kept going and going, like a mill inside her head. There was another intersection, with a way to her left and a way straight on.
As she approached, a section of the wall maybe five feet on a side began to shift over the floor, grinding, closing off the intersection. She spun around, gaping, finding Starkad and Win doing much the same.
“How …?” she mumbled. How and why would anyone build something like this? It made no sense.
“These vampires predate even the Old Kingdoms,” Win said. “Perhaps they know secrets long forgotten by the world.”
Even if that explained the how, it hardly said much about the why.
Starkad swept his torch close to the wall that had closed off that intersection.
“Are we being herded?” Hervor asked.
He was still inspecting the now-flush block. “I’m not sure. I suspect all this was designed to confuse as much as herd. Given centuries … millennia, even, with which to work, the vampires must’ve designed this place to hinder their own kind as much as humans.”
“So what do we do?” she demanded.
“Naught has changed save that we could not go back even if we wished to do so. We must press forward and seek another escape from the undercity.”
Hervor grimaced. An awful, sick realization settled on her gut. They were going to die. Despite all they’d survived, her and Starkad, all they’d been through, they were overmatched this time. Facing foes they barely understood. Caught in a game where they didn’t fathom the rules. And they’d been defeated at every turn.
So then, it was only a matter of time before Tanna or some other vampire cornered them and killed them. And she couldn’t think of a damn thing she could do to change that.
21
“How did you know where they’d be?” Orvar asked Tanna as the vampire Patriarch led him to a dungeon beneath the palace. This far down, they had to be adjacent to the sewer system Hervor and the others had fled into.
Tanna chuckled ever so slightly. “Ah. A particular gift of mine. If a human willingly surrenders his—or her—soul to me, I can see through her eyes.”
Tanna’s agent among Hervor’s crew. “Who was it?”
“A girl, really. A child among them I cornered when they first attacked my tower. She begged for her life. So I gave it to her. After tasting her blood, of course, and binding her to me. Maybe I’ll even make her one of us, someday.”
They entered a corridor lit by small torches stuck in sconces, with steel doors every so often. Tanna bypassed several such doors before pausing at one. He twisted his hand oddly and something clicked. Then the door popped open on its own.
Orvar raised an eyebrow but said naught. He caught the edge of the door and flung it the rest of the way open. Inside, the vampires had chained up the big man who’d been working with Hervor. Bigger even than Ecgtheow had been, in fact—Orvar sometimes wondered what happened to him.
If some fell urd, he deserved it. He too had been on the crew on Thule. The ones who had abandoned Orvar.
Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance.
This other man might’ve been half jotunn, actually.
“Did you know,” Tanna said, drawing a small vial from beneath his robes, “we studied a concoction those fire-worshipping Serklanders developed? We developed our own formula for it, one which we use in large quantities to repel any attempt at naval invasion. This small quantity of it has other amusing uses, though.”
The vampire handed Orvar the vial.
Orvar uncorked it. It just smelled like oil to him. Looked like it, too. “What do I care of it?”
“Liquid fire, my friend. Water will only make it spread. It just burns and burns …” Tanna cocked his head toward the big man chained to the wall. “I must see to the other interlopers. One of them carries a runeblade I intend to claim.”
Hervor herself, in fact.
“Amuse yourself with the oaf and learn what you can. When you’re finished with him, tell Nilos and he’ll have you brought to me. I wouldn’t want you to miss the end.”
No. Orvar definitely wouldn’t want to miss that.
Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance.
Tanna strode back down the hall they’d come from, leaving Orvar alone with the big man.
He drifted into the room and paced around. Tanna’s people had manacled Hervor’s companion’s hands behind his back, with those manacles then chained to the floor.
“Reckon you’re the one, ain’t you?”
Orvar cocked his head at the man’s words. “She told you?” As far as he’d known, Hervor had gone to substantial lengths to keep anyone from learning of her crime of betraying and murdering him. How important this man must be to her, if she trusted him with such dangerous knowledge.
The big man shrugged, jiggling the chains in the process. “Gonna have to kill you eventually. Just being upfront about that.”
Orvar chuckled, a sound that made the big man recoil. His laughter had that effect on the living now. It sounded hollow, Otherworldly. Perils of being among the damned. “Who are you?”
“Höfund Godmundson. You?”
Good question. “Once, Orvar-Oddr Grimrson. Later, they called me the Arrow’s Point. There was a time I thought I left even that name behind. Now, I am dead. So perhap
s I am Orvar, or perhaps something else.”
“Huh. Kinda overlong answer to a simple question. Like to hear yourself talk?”
Orvar frowned. Then he caught Höfund with a hook to the face. His blow sent blood and spittle flying. A moment later, the man spit out two teeth.
“Did you know I had a half-jotunn son?” Orvar shook his head at the thought. “I passed into Jotunheim once, and lay with a jotunn woman.” His son had been big like Höfund, but with an easy smile. “I dare not even show myself to him now. Not after what Hervor made me into.”
Höfund spit out more blood. “Reckon maybe you deserved it. Either way, most people what pick up a sword or axe or spear got some blood on their hands. Children and farmers might get the chance of being good. Maybe. Not even sure on that account. Warriors, we got different rules.”
“Indeed.” Orvar punched him in the face again, twice. Then he landed a blow to the man’s gut. That one sent the half-jotunn retching up blood and everything else in his stomach. Orvar landed another hook to the man’s left ribs with a satisfying crack. Two broken, if he made his guess. With his other hand he punched Höfund’s right side, cracking another rib.
The big man dropped to his knees, hacking and coughing, sputtering up more blood.
Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance.
“Rules,” Orvar muttered. “Blood for blood. The evil bitch murdered me and must reap her reward.”
Inexplicably, Höfund laughed between coughing fits, blood soaking his teeth and dribbling down his chin. “Evil? Ain’t any such thing so far as I’ve seen. There’s just the people what you care about, and the people what you don’t.” He wheezed again, obviously pained to draw breath. “Your way’d leave all Midgard bloody.”
Utter drivel. Orvar knelt down, bringing the man’s face level with his own. “Death provides one clarity of thought and purpose the living could not fathom. Blood is everything. You do not understand. But you soon will. When your soul is cast into the void to drown in eternal torment beyond this life, then you will know I have told you the truth.”