by Matt Larkin
She whipped Tyrfing around in an arc, hoping to keep Starkad at bay. “We don’t have to do this.”
“Urd brought us invariably here.” Starkad stalked forward, his own blade now steadied with his other hand, mirroring her posture. “It demanded this from us. The strands of fate bound us to this end, maybe from before either of us was even born. I tried … to think I could master urd. But it held me in its grasp, just as Odin promised. I denied him, like a fool.”
“You sound like one now.” Urd was one thing, but Starkad wasn’t making any sense. “We still have choices.”
He roared, coming in with rapid swings, though the fatigue had slowed him a bit. Hervor concentrated only on parrying. Tyrfing gave her additional stamina to carry on where she otherwise might have faltered. She had to count on that now.
Orvar’s maddening cackles echoed around the room, interspersed by the clang of metal on metal and the heavy panting coming from her and Starkad. Again and again his blade passed a hairsbreadth from her flesh. A fell rage had taken him, a madness Orvar had engendered in him.
And she had lost him.
The thought—the utter certainty—hit her like a blow from a jotunn’s club. It hammered her mind down into pitiful numbness, unable to form a thought, even as her body continued to fight on reflex. A numbness and a rage of her own. Burning, searing at what she had lost.
At a future turned to ash by the Arrow’s Point.
At her worst fear come to light.
Shrieking, she whipped Tyrfing up to parry. The runeblade tore through Starkad’s other sword and continued up, cleaving into his chin and out the front of his mouth.
He toppled backward, moaning and clutching a hand to the spot where she’d half severed his jaw. He was on the ground, writhing.
Dying.
Tyrfing’s poison would do its work.
No.
No.
Fucking no!
Orvar’s hysterical cackles now drowned out even the sound of Starkad’s whimpers of pain. Odin’s … Oh … gods … what had she done?
She stared aghast at Tyrfing, blood trickling down into its runes. It demanded blood. Always, always blood. Never sated.
Starkad fell to his back, thrashed. Convulsed. Poisoned …
Oh fuck … oh gods no …
Hervor backed away, unable to bear the horrid sight of what she’d done. Her lover … her beloved … her future … dying.
“Hel take you all!” she shrieked and flung Tyrfing to the floor. It slid along the stone, flames winking out.
Urd … he had said.
Urd.
The fate of the damned. Like her. Like them all. Damned, all along.
Unable to still her frantic breaths, Hervor fled down the nearest tunnel.
Damned, because hope had always been a lie.
Part III
Eleventh Moon
Year 31, Age of the Aesir
24
Rivers of agony surged through Starkad’s veins as he writhed on the floor, unable to still the convulsions even as he cracked his skull on the stone over and over. The runeblade’s poison arced through him in burning pulses.
It ought to have killed him by now.
Like in the Otherworlds. He’d wanted to die. Ought to have died, over and over.
His tremors eased just enough that he managed a feeble groan. A gasp of pain.
An agonizing, failed attempt to roll over onto his side. Followed by more wretched, burning breaths.
The dim awareness that blood was oozing from his split jaw. That the bone hung loose, half-severed on one side.
A figure crouched over him. Rotting, as dead as Starkad soon should be. Almost as dead. Orvar-Oddr. A fallen friend … “You’re dying, Eightarms. Slowly, in agony, poisoned by both the runeblade and its viperous owner.”
All Starkad could do was grunt. Any attempt to move his jaw resulted in fresh bouts of blinding pain.
“She sunk her fangs into you, didn’t she? Filled you with her venom, her lies. Poison that you swallowed for years …” Orvar shook his head. “The dead are not known for their mercy. I hated you. All of you who left me. Those who sent me in the first place. Everyone left alive. I hate you all. But, almost, I pity you, Eightarms. Once the most glorious, famed warrior in the North Realms.”
Starkad groaned.
Orvar chuckled his hateful laugh once more. “What are you now? More than half blind? Maimed? Even if you weren’t poisoned, it seems you would never speak again. Maybe never eat solid food. Did she bring you to this end? Or perhaps, as you supposed, it was all urd.” He snickered at some private joke Starkad had neither the time nor the strength for. “In the name of old friends, I offer you one gift. To end this swiftly for you. I can tear out your throat and be done with it.”
Done with it all … Done with the suffering and lies and betrayals and constant disappointments. Maybe, in the Otherworlds, part of him had longed for that. It had been what Ogn had wanted, of course. To see him give up and lose himself.
But Starkad wasn’t the giving up type. Maybe that was urd, too.
Snarling, he shook his head, as much as his wounds allowed at any rate.
Orvar chuckled again. “Then die in agony or live in worse if you somehow manage it. Either way, we heap suffering on the one who brought us here.” He rose, baring fang-like teeth. “Speaking of her, it’s time for me to go and put an end to this. How far do you think she made it?”
Without another look, Orvar rose and strode down one of the tunnels, leaving Starkad alone in the chamber.
The only sound was the fading crackle of Starkad’s torch and his own moans of torment.
It took all he had to pull himself up to his feet. The suffering Tyrfing had wrought inside him had dimmed, casting the pain in his jaw into even starker relief.
Torch in one hand, the other supporting himself on the grimy wall, he limped and plodded down one of the tunnels. Didn’t matter which, other than that it wasn’t the one Hervor and Orvar had gone down.
He had no idea what had become of Win, save that the prince appeared to have taken Tyrfing, since both were missing and he didn’t recall Orvar claiming the runeblade.
He couldn’t bring himself to much care anymore.
I swear to stay by your side, then. I give you my oath of love, Hervor. I swear it! I swear it!
He’d given Hervor his oath … And she’d forced him to become an oathbreaker. And herself in the process.
Maybe Odin’s spell prevented Tyrfing from quite killing him. The runeblade had ravaged him, though. Torn through him like a blistering scythe, slicing and burning and destroying. He’d felt it, carving up his insides and leaving him hollow and pitiful. A shell of what he’d been. A shell of a man.
It felt like his jaw would just fall off any moment now. Would he die of that? He’d surely be praying for it if he had the slightest inclination to believe Odin would hear his prayer or, if he did, be able to do aught for Starkad. But Odin wouldn’t do troll shit, wherever the fuck he was. He’d failed to warn Starkad about Miklagard and failed to warn him about Hervor.
Or maybe it was unfair to lay the blame for the last on the Ás. Starkad had mistrusted Hervor when he thought her a man and mistrusted her twice over when he learned she’d lied about that. And somehow, along the way, he’d let the mistrust slip.
I give you my oath of love, Hervor. I swear it! I swear it!
Starkad was a fool. Almost the same trap he’d fallen into with Ogn, and this one more painful somehow. This time, a betrayal years in the making. Years he had stayed by her side. Allowed himself to believe that, despite his curse, he might yet have a life for himself. Might have … love.
Hel, for so long he’d been afraid of the very godsdamned word.
Rightly so, it seemed.
Each step only served to refresh the pain jolting up his body. The hideous torment in his jaw. The growing weakness as his blood seeped away. So in the end, he would die down here in the sewers, alone and damned.
Orvar had not been far off the mark in that guess.
I swear to stay by your side, then.
Starkad growled, the effort of it sending a fresh stream of blood gurgling out of his lips and down his beard, staining it even more crimson than it was.
His oath … Broken. All their oaths … turned to shit.
Oathbreakers, damned into the pit of Nidhogg, their souls to be feasted upon for eternity in the worst possible torment imaginable. Worst save perhaps for the torment of being betrayed. Of losing … losing …
I give you my oath of love, Hervor.
Lost.
One of his feet gave out beneath him and he slammed down on his knee, the pain of that barely registering next to the other agonies already consuming him. To see daylight again …
To escape this …
“You are bleeding rather profusely.”
A woman’s voice, but Starkad had not the strength to turn and look. Maybe never the strength to trust a woman again.
Arete strolled around in front of him and crouched, level with him. She dipped a long-nailed finger into his beard, pulled it back bloody, and stuck it in her mouth, sucking it like the taste alone had her in ecstasy. “Mmmmmhmmm. Oh, yes.” She licked her lips. “Ancient, powerful …” Her face suddenly turned down, and she pursed her lips. “And poisoned. Bleh.”
Starkad glared at her. Given the choice, maybe he’d have killed her. If one oath was broken, why not all of them? How could his word mean aught anymore?
“Well,” Arete said, and drew her finger along his cheek, seeming careful of his nigh-unhinged jaw. “I’d offer you immortality once more, but I guess you can’t really answer, can you?” She murmured something nonsensical to herself. “No. I suppose, then, I will simply have to take silence as assent.”
Starkad lurched away from her, trying to bring up the torch to swat her.
Arete caught his arm, sneered at him, and shook her head. A swift twist of her wrist sent the torch clattering out of his hand. “That was uncalled for. I’m giving you eternal life. One day, maybe, you’ll be grateful for it. I will fulfill the full promise of the bargain the Ás king tempted you with. I will make you whole, and more than whole.”
Another lie from another treacherous woman.
He scrambled away on his arse, making almost no progress.
The vampire woman suddenly grabbed him, one hand under his legs, the other around the back of his neck, and hefted him up. “I advise you not to scorn the gift. If your behavior continues, you will leave me no choice but to let you wither away. Either way, I think one thing has become abundantly clear, Starkad. One thing surely even you must admit now. There is no way back to the life you have known.”
And all oaths were broken.
Arete had brought Starkad to a dark chamber. Maybe he was beneath Nikolaos’s palace, he wasn’t sure. She’d laid him upon a stone slab. This place could’ve been a crypt. He had not the strength to care, so he’d closed his eyes, drifting in and out of consciousness.
At one point, he realized someone had bandaged his jaw. The bandages had soaked through with blood. It wouldn’t be too much longer now, and Hel would have him.
Even the pain had grown dim, distant, as Arete shook him, forcing him to look at her with his hazy eye.
“It is not easy, what I intend, and it requires you to drink the blood of Kvasir, our most sacred relic. I have procured a sip for you, Starkad.” Arete frowned. “But you have to drink willingly. One way or another, you’ll die soon. When that happens, your soul will be lost in the Penumbra. Or … it could be bound here, tied to your corpse that you might go on with beautiful unlife. Choose immortality … and I will prepare the ritual.”
He grunted, unable to speak. To choose it … She’d offered it to him before and he’d scorned the gift. Maybe he’d been a fool then. He’d walked away from immortality for Vikar’s sake and look where that had brought him.
But then, he’d accepted Odin’s foul bargain, betrayed Vikar to buy himself a few years’ more life. The Ás’s spell had changed him, warped him into something not quite human. But still close to a man. What Arete offered—there could be no deluding himself into thinking he could hold onto his humanity after this.
Then again, what had humanity given him? Blood and death and betrayal. Everyone he’d cared for was gone or had turned on him. Even Hervor. Especially Hervor.
His dark urd had brought him here.
Arete was holding a bronze goblet in one hand, the other on Starkad’s chest. “Choose. Before it is too late. If you would claim what I offer, you must do so soon. I need time to prepare.”
Choose …?
As if life or urd had given him so very many choices. No, the strands of fate had guided him from one crime to the next. A strange, twisted life had brought him—a betrayer, a murderer—into the arms of one who’d visited those same crimes back upon him.
Urd.
Long had he wished to deny it, to hope he might be the master of his own existence. Hubris, perhaps. For urd bound all lives together.
Starkad had walked away from immortality and that mistake had haunted him, until he’d leapt at Odin’s terrible bargain for a fraction of what he’d truly wanted. There would be no coming back if he turned from the gift a second time. No, he’d surely be bound for the gates of Hel.
Maybe he deserved that, too. But some part of him wanted to forestall that end. To hold back the final darkness, and to … to be revenged upon those who had brought him here, urd or no.
Ironic, really. The strange, winding cycles of vengeance had bound Hervor to Orvar-Oddr and the both of them to Starkad. An unending circle of blood. Why then should this not become the next step?
Trying to fix Arete with his one good eye, he gave a slight nod. All he could offer in his current state. Odin had brought darkness into Starkad’s soul. This seemed but the extension of what the Ás king had begun so many years ago.
Arete smiled—showing her fangs—and squeezed his hand. Then she drew away and bit her arm. She smeared the blood on her fingers, knelt and began drawing something on the floor.
Starkad shut his eyes, letting out a shuddering breath. A coldness was seeping into his limbs. Hel’s breath was on his face. He could almost feel the servants of the dark goddess circling, clawing their way closer to his soul. Climbing up over his legs—they prickled with gooseflesh and needles. The damned were coming for him, coming to bring home one of their own.
His heartbeat was already slowing. Too much blood loss. Not even Odin’s dark spell could abate the inevitable end of such a wound as Hervor had dealt him.
He tried to flicker his eyes open, only saw shadows. Plays of light and darkness. Arete had lit candles, flitting across the room, seeming a wraith, almost.
Hard to breathe …
The ghost was at his side, tilting his head up. Forcing his lips apart a hair, the movement further ripping his jaw. She poured something hot into his mouth and over his wound. The taste of iron, of copper. Warm at first, then icy as it settled in his gut. The only thing he still clearly felt. Even the pain was finally gone.
“I wish I could tell you not to be afraid. Everything has its price. I will incant the ritual to help bind your soul to your corpse.”
Corpse?
“Before it is finished, I need to kill you.”
Her voice sounded so far away. The play of light and shadow dimmed, fading slowly into blackness. Her voice changed in tone, now speaking the alien words of the Otherworlds. The sounds seemed to bombard his skull like a crushing weight. They bore down upon his chest.
Upon his face.
The pressure increased and the words grew louder. They echoed off the walls and reverberated off the air itself. A hint of vision came back to him, dim and cool, as if color and warmth had been siphoned out of the world.
And in the shadows, creatures drew nigh, crawling on all fours like lizards, though they looked somewhat like foul perversions of the human form. Hairless, with skin that
bled off wisps of shadow. Eyes that gleamed with cold blue light. And teeth like fangs, a whole maw of them, like a shark’s.
The creatures skittered closer to him, crawling up the stone slab where he lay immobilized, dying. With razor-sharp claws, one of them scrambled up along his legs, tearing dozens upon dozens of tiny cuts along his shins, then his thighs. Then his gut.
One of them had bitten his wrist.
Another was gnawing on one of his biceps.
A third dug a claw into his forehead and used it to begin peeling back the skin. Flaying him.
Fresh pains washed over him in waves of torment.
The words stopped and a fresh bite burned into his neck. His blood seeped out, leaving him cold.
Everything went hazy, faded into nigh total blackness for a heartbeat. His last heartbeat. His lungs exploded and the pressure was gone. His vision snapped back, revealing the hideous creatures gorging themselves upon his flesh. And he could move.
Starkad bucked, trying to dislodge the abominations. He managed only to topple from the slab and land in a great heap along with three of these things. They clawed and bit and tore at him.
Arete’s words once more rang out, a cacophony in this shadowy world, demanding and unrelenting, even if Starkad could not understand them. He roared, twisted around, and managed to pin one of the things underneath him. He slammed a fist into its skull.
Then he jerked his elbow back into the maw of another. That sent it toppling over backward, leaving just the one gnawing on his thigh. With a great cry, he slammed his palms together on both sides of its temples.
As expected, the creature collapsed, clutching its head and rolling over onto its back.
Starkad tried to stand, but his legs gave out. His heart wasn’t beating, but still, something coursed through his veins. Warm. Powerful.
His hands were shaking.
Arete was still beside the altar, now a mere shadow, a trick of the light, her movements slow, as if through quicksand. As Starkad watched, though, her form flickered. It seemed to split in half, a ghostly apparition ripping itself partway out of her. Her double was etheric and yet more clearly real and distinct than her other form had been.