Runeblade Saga Omnibus

by Matt Larkin

  The big man shoved the pouch half inside his trousers, but frowned and shook his head. “Ain’t leaving without you.”

  She fought down the smile his stubborn loyalty almost brought to her face. “Listen to me. I have to go after Orvar. You’re in no state to aid me now.” He opened his mouth, but she talked right over him. “No. You know it’s the truth. You come along you’re more like to get me killed than help me. But I cannot allow this to go on. I must deal with my mistakes. Vebiorg will aid me.” Assuming the varulf even lived. “But I cannot do what I need to do if part of me fears you’re about to do something blisteringly foolish like charging in to rescue me. So I want your …” And here it came, back to this. Always back to it. “I want your oath, Höfund. If I do not return before the last tide of the day, you get on the ship and sail from this place.”

  “I ain’t giving no such oath.”

  Hervor grimaced. Stubborn bastard was nigh as bad as Starkad. And she would not be responsible for his death. No more. She slapped Höfund.

  The big man backed away, hand to his check, mouth gaping.

  “Your godsdamned pride is like to get us both killed. Give me your oath!”

  The half-jotunn spat on the cobbles, glared at her a moment. “You want it so much, fine. I give you my oath. I’ll leave on the last tide. So you’d best be there too.”

  Hervor nodded, trying to keep her face looking hopeful, as much for her benefit as his. With any luck, she and Starkad and Vebiorg would all be on that ship with Höfund.

  But Hervor hadn’t been much favored by luck of late.

  30

  The corpses of men and vampires lay strewn around Tanna’s tower. Blood splattered the walls, dripped down from the ceiling, and coated nigh every floor in the place. And Starkad was not yet finished. He’d worked his way to the top, slaughtering everyone he could find loyal to the fallen Patriarch.

  None of it sated his rage. And so he delved into the hidden basements beneath the tower, killed a man smoking a hookah, and cut through Tanna’s collection of semi-clad and naked women in the room beyond. Some few of them were vampires, but most human. Starkad paused his slaughter only to sate his thirst on one.

  The room was decorated with plush pillows, several heated pools, and numerous alcoves. Fluted columns supported the chamber, which seemed wider than the entire tower. Torches on those columns illuminated Tanna’s collection of whores.

  Except whores got paid.

  Maybe Tanna was not to blame for all the wretched urd that had unfolded in recent days. Still, his invasion of Holmgard had sparked this conflagration, and Starkad aimed to make certain no other Patriarch wished to repeat such folly.

  Besides, he had something to see to here. Some things could not be borne without recompense.

  From an alcove, a vampire dropped from the ceiling, snarling as he tried to ram twin knives into Starkad’s throat. Mistilteinn split his skull down the middle.

  The women had been screaming from the moment he started his grim mission. As a mortal man, he’d never have stomached such a massacre. Now, sickening as it was, the blood was almost as arousing as the exposed flesh.

  He came around the column to see Afrid Stonekicker, clad only with a sheer sheet around her waist and naught at all over her chest. Along with two other women, she was crouched back in an alcove. The others cowered behind her, looking pathetic compared to the corded muscles on Afrid’s arms and her defined abdomen.

  Starkad snickered. “I suspected I could find you in this tower. Even I did not realize this was how Tanna would repay your service.”

  Afrid drew her chin up, the little defiance spoiled by the slight tremble in her lip and the whimpering of the women behind her.

  Starkad growled at the three of them, baring his fangs. Even Afrid fell back a step, hit the pillowed benches lining the alcove, and had nowhere else to go. That drew a snicker from him. “So you whored yourself to your enemy for a few days’ more life.” Starkad shook his head. “Or did he promise you immortality?”

  The sound of her pounding heart, luscious and terrifying, made clear Tanna had not fulfilled any such promise, had he even offered it.

  “What do you want?”

  He chuckled. “I have to wonder where we’d be if you had not betrayed us. Maybe things would’ve worked out much the same. The unfolding of urd will not be denied. Your fate, too, seems inevitable.”

  Afrid moaned, ever so slightly. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “How does he take you, whore? In the pools? Do you get on your hands and knees? Does he use the couches?”

  Afrid flinched with each word. Shit, maybe Tanna and his men had tried all of the above. “Is that what you want?” Her voice sounded nigh to breaking. Pathetic. The once proud shieldmaiden broken by the horrors of the Otherworlds. “You can have me any way you want. Take me from here, and I’ll … I’ll pleasure you every day. I’ll be your slave!”

  Starkad couldn’t help but frown to see a warrior so fallen. Destroyed, body and soul, by forces she could not have imagined dwelt here. Nor could she have hoped to have survived them. Still, she could’ve died with some courage, same as Baruch or Fjolvor or Tveggi. Maybe more of the crew, too, Starkad wasn’t sure. He didn’t know what had become of Win or Vebiorg, or even Hervor now.

  He drew in a breath and blew it out. He didn’t require breath, of course, but the motion was so ingrained it still served to help calm him, focus his thoughts. “I came here to kill you. The only thing I desired from you was vengeance.”

  Afrid closed her eyes tight, raised her throat, and then stared defiantly at him. “Then just do it. Be done with it.”

  Starkad sneered at the fallen shieldmaiden. “Seeing you so pathetic, I find you not worth the killing. Go. Run from here and escape the city if you can.” He almost couldn’t believe his own words. All this slaughter and he’d been thinking of finding Afrid and avenging her betrayal. But then, he’d never imagined finding a naked, abused young girl.

  The shieldmaiden stared at him with such fury he half expected her to attack him, try to force him into giving her some semblance of an honorable death. Maybe he would if she tried it. Instead, she edged around him, followed by the other two, then made a break for the entrance.

  “So,” a hollow, ghostly voice said from the shadows.

  Starkad snarled as he turned.

  Orvar-Oddr had caught Afrid by the throat and hefted her off the ground. One of the draug’s arms was severed at the elbow and one of his legs was a ruined mess Starkad found hard to believe even supported his weight. “All this, and you find mercy in your heart for the very wretch who betrayed you.”

  The girl wriggled, arms flailing uselessly against the draug. Her cheeks had begun to take on a slight bluish tinge. Starkad almost pitied her. But letting her go was a far cry from doing aught to save her.

  Orvar actually grinned. Unlike a vampire, a draug had pronounced canines on the top and bottom of his mouth. Almost made a bite from the creature seem worse. “I admit—I am shocked to see you survive Tyrfing’s venom. I would’ve thought it impossible even for you. And able to speak again? Never.”

  “I didn’t survive.”

  “No, I suppose you didn’t. Neither of us did. Ironic, I suppose. That bitch shieldmaiden killed us both, led us both to this wretched unlife, and with the very same weapon.”

  Starkad nodded. “I have no quarrel with you. We were friends for long years.”

  Orvar snickered, squeezed his hand tighter until even the faintest of thrashing went out of Afrid. Then he tossed her corpse aside. “While you lived, I hated you with blinding passion, as I hated all my former crew. All life. Dead, I find you almost tolerable. Why is that?”

  “We have no quarrel, you and I,” Starkad repeated.

  “Oh, perhaps not. But the other shieldmaiden yet lives, and your death will hurt her worse than aught else. Unfortunately, I see no alternative but to put an end to your suffering.” Orvar drew a sword from over his shoulder.
>
  Starkad shook his head and drew Mistilteinn. “I don’t wish to fight you. Believe me when I tell you, you do not wish to fight me. You are maimed, and I carry a sword that can slay even ghosts such as us.”

  Orvar stalked forward, shaking his head. “You’re right. I don’t truly wish to fight you. But I have no choice. I have to end this. My very nature compels it. In the end, we have few choices in our lives, if any. Even fewer in death.”

  The choking grasp of urd. Orvar clearly felt it too, crushing him. And the draug was obviously in no state to be denied.

  Starkad bared his teeth. And he charged in, runeblade gleaming in the torchlight.

  31

  The main door to Tanna’s tower had been cleaved through and kicked in. Beyond, the carnage started in earnest. Bodies cleft in twain, so many severed limbs and heads Hervor couldn’t even judge how many men and women had fallen here. The halls stank of blood and shit, the odor so powerful it churned her gut.

  Everywhere she looked, people and vampires were eviscerated and hewed to pieces. If Starkad had done this alone, he had reached a new level of destructive capability. It looked more like a whirlwind of blades had swept through the tower, passing up and down the stairs and leaving naught but viscera strewn in its wake.

  Hand to her mouth at the overpowering reek—to say naught of the awful sight—Hervor stalked back down the first flight of stairs. Where was everyone?

  A pair of barely clad women ran shrieking from the tower’s basement, glanced at Hervor and the chaos, and bolted for the main door. So he’d gone below, then.

  Hervor charged down those stairs, allowing a few other naked whores to escape around her only because she couldn’t otherwise get past them. The screams echoed from beyond a satin curtain. She threw this back and came into a recently abandoned chamber thick with reeking smoke and oil fumes. The fleeing women had overturned tables and cushions, leaving broken ceramics littering the floor, no doubt from one of those strange pipes the smoke billowed out of.

  What in Odin’s stones was this? Who would possibly suck smoke into their lungs on purpose?

  The clang of metal on metal rang out from behind the next curtain, so Hervor charged through that as well and out into a larger chamber, this one strewn with small pools and pillow-lined alcoves. The room where the naked women had been?

  Orvar was there, slashing at Starkad, who parried attack after attack, offering his own offense only weakly and on rare occasions. Starkad still didn’t want to kill him, but Orvar seemed to have no problem slaying Hervor’s former lover.

  Which wasn’t going to happen. She jerked Tyrfing free and charged in, growling.

  Orvar spun, keeping both of them in view. “Finally. I was beginning to think she wasn’t coming. I could hardly begin the last verse of this warped tale without all the players.”

  “Just shut up!” Hervor roared. She swiped Tyrfing at him.

  Orvar knocked her blade aside with ease, danced around her, grinning with those hateful fangs of his. “Would you begrudge me the end you yourself have wrought? All of your lies and betrayals, your very own actions guiding us ever toward this culmination of urd?”

  “I don’t want to kill you …” Starkad said.

  Orvar chuckled, even the sound making Hervor cringe. “Nor can we stay locked in eternal combat as though this were some poorly conceived tale of gods and heroes. For we are none of us either of those things, are we?”

  “If you can’t do it, Starkad,” Hervor said, “then I will.”

  Growling, shaking his head, Starkad did fall back a step.

  Orvar snickered again, bringing his sword up. The loss of half an arm seemed to bother him little, though his savaged leg did give him a slight limp. Nevertheless, he whipped his sword around in masterful arcs that forced Hervor to give ground.

  Maybe Tyrfing would’ve made up for him being more skilled than her—especially considering she had to fight left-handed—but naught accounted for him being stronger, faster, and having unending stamina.

  Still, she’d told Starkad she’d do this herself. And she had one thing going for her. One area she could finally match Orvar.

  Rage.

  Shrieking, Hervor slammed Tyrfing against Orvar’s blade, whipped it back at his face. The runeblade tore through the putrid remains of the draug’s cheek, and he turned his head aside for an instant. Hervor spun her blade around to thrust, but Orvar knocked Tyrfing aside and brought his knee up into her gut.

  The blow sent her staggering back only to crash into one of the pools. The water might’ve been waist-deep, but on her arse, it rushed up over her head. She scrambled for the surface, barely held on to Tyrfing, and brought the blade up, expecting to get her head cleaved in two in the process.

  But the draug had backed away, toward the entrance to this chamber, chuckling. Drawing it out. Actually enjoying all this?

  Fuck it. If he wanted to enjoy his vengeance, then so would she. Soaked, she trudged out of the pool and stomped over toward the draug, Tyrfing clasped in both hands. “I will end you this night.”

  Another mind-grating chuckle. “Perhaps. But you two shall accompany me through the gates of Hel.”

  Starkad groaned, but Hervor couldn’t well spare the time to look at him.

  Instead, she charged Orvar once more, whipping Tyrfing around in a savage arc.

  Orvar dodged behind a column, and her runeblade cleaved through a torch sconce wedged into the stone column and held fast. Oh, Odin’s hairy stones! Hervor placed a foot on the column and heaved, knowing Orvar might come around the column any moment. But without the runeblade, she was already fucking dead, so what did it matter?

  Except the draug hadn’t closed in on her. Indeed, he’d stooped to snatch up the fallen torch, holding it awkwardly in the same hand as his sword. “It struck me some time ago that you might come here in the end. And after what happened in that ruined temple, well, I imagined a most fitting end to our saga.”

  “You truly talk too much,” Hervor said. Tyrfing lurched free and she stumbled backward several steps.

  “Oh … but you’ll want to hear this. And while I did not imagine Starkad would live, it does seem fitting he too should join us here at the end. Urd bound the three of us together. If any tell our tale, they will say how we lived and died, close as lovers.”

  “What are you on about?” Starkad said, his voice coming from Hervor’s left. Orvar’s strange words must’ve drawn him in.

  “Your whore has surprised me with her tenacity. Her ability to survive and overcome one perilous challenge after the next. I would’ve been a fool to think she could not have made it here.” Orvar shrugged. “Besides, if I did kill her, what would I have to make my wretched existence worthwhile? Servitude to a vampire Patriarch?” He sneered. “Not so appealing.” He flung the torch not at Hervor, but at the curtain separating this room from the smoking chamber.

  The fabric ignited as if it were fresh kindling and Hervor stumbled away from the sudden inferno. “You soaked the curtains in oil?”

  The draug chuckled again.

  The blaze brushed against the walls, and even the stone caught fire, a line of flame shooting around the perimeter of the room and igniting alcove after alcove. Pillows ignited into blazes, the satin drapery becoming a conflagration.

  “Oil?” Orvar said. “They call it liquid fire.”

  An explosion rocked the smoking room—the only godsdamned exit—with enough force Hervor pitched over onto her arse. The scorching wind tore the curtain to pieces, those flaming fragments landing on the ground. Streams of fire shot along the chamber in winding arcs, as if Orvar had poured this foulness almost at random.

  Hervor scrambled away from the spreading blaze, regained her feet, and found flames had leapt up between her and Orvar. No sign of Starkad.

  “You see, the Patriarchs have barrels and barrels of this stuff stored to fight off Serklander invasions,” Orvar said. “They fling it at ships from great contraptions you wouldn’t believe. Smells
like oil, but then, the stench of hookah smoke rather covers that up.”

  Heat washed over Hervor’s face as the blaze continued to leap around the room, spreading in all directions. Everywhere she turned, the flames rose up. How the fuck did stone burn?

  “So,” Orvar said, deftly stalked around a curving line of flame, sword in hand as he closed in on her. “I don’t really have to kill you now. Just stop you from getting out. Shouldn’t be overly difficult considering the way out is on fire. On the other hand … running you through might offer some satisfaction.”

  The draug lunged at her. Hervor fell back. Fire singed her arse, forcing her forward, and she barely got Tyrfing up to parry Orvar’s overhand chop. He rained down another blow, and another, driving back, almost into the flames.

  Orvar bellowed a feral war cry, swinging down again. Hervor’s arm—already numb—gave out and she pitched over sideways. Her left hand landed in the flames and squelched in the oil-like jelly. Fire leapt up her arm. Red agony nigh blinded her. She was only dimly aware of her own screams. She stumbled from the flames, shrieking, toppled into the pool and splashed under water.

  It took her a heartbeat, face under the now warm water, to realize the fire was still burning her. Underwater. Hervor screamed again, sucking down a lungful of water, burst through the surface to be struck by the sound of Orvar’s maddening cackles ringing out through the chamber.

  She knew she was wailing but couldn’t stop. The fire just kept burning her. It brushed from her arm up her neck, scorching her left cheek.