Fate of the Gods

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “I’m here!” He scrambled up and reached one of his hands over the edge to grab Natalya. “Okay,” he said. “We’ve got you. We’re going to pull you up.”

  “Hurry,” Natalya said.

  Grace looked at Owen. He gave a nod, and they pulled at the same time, lifting Natalya closer.

  “Give me your other hand,” Owen said, and as soon as Natalya raised it high enough, he seized it.

  After that, Grace and Owen hauled her up, each grasping one of her hands, until Natalya was able to get a knee up on the ledge. A few moments later, all three of them sat on the path with their backs against the mountain. Natalya had her eyes shut tight, chest heaving.

  Grace looked past her and scowled at Owen, breathing hard. “What took you so long?”

  “I don’t know.” Owen shook his head and looked downward. “I don’t know.”

  But Grace knew, and she wasn’t really mad at Owen. She was just scared at what had almost happened.

  “I’m sorry,” Natalya said.

  “It’s okay,” Grace said. “But we have to keep moving.”

  “Okay.” Natalya opened her eyes and nodded. “Okay.”

  They rested just a few minutes longer, until they had caught their breath, and then they resumed their climb. The abyss was still down there, calling for Grace’s surrender, but she refused to listen to it. She also still had doubts about what they would find at the Summit, and she continued to fear that they might fall before they reached it. But instead of dwelling on those questions, she focused on the placement of each foot with every step she took.

  Hundreds of steps.

  Maybe thousands.

  It became a kind of meditation in which she became lost, and up they went, until suddenly, without warning, there was no more cliff wall beneath her hand. Grace pried her gaze from the path and looked around, blinking. They weren’t at the Summit of the mountain, but they had reached the top of its sheer face, and the path led them away from the abyss, along a glacier that glowed blue in the moonlight. Its ice filled a gap between two ridges, and atop the taller of them, Grace saw the light, though it wasn’t as bright as it had looked from the canyon. But it was there.

  It emanated from within a huge, shimmering dome that rose out of the mountain like half of a giant pearl. Beneath it, cut right into the rock, was a doorway, and their path led them directly toward it. Grace continued to lead the way, and they walked the glacier’s edge until they stood beneath the entrance.

  “I think this is the end,” Owen said.

  “It has to be,” Grace said. “There’s nowhere else to go.”

  With that, they went inside.

  Even though Sean held the Piece of Eden in his hand, it felt impossibly far away, separated from him by hundreds of years and who knew how many miles. And the hands weren’t actually his. They were Styrbjörn’s, and the Viking still didn’t understand what he had. But he carried the dagger around, and he studied it, because he suspected it possessed some significance that went beyond its holiness as a relic of the Christ.

  “You should destroy that dagger or throw it away,” Gorm said. “It offends the gods.”

  “And how do you know what offends the gods?” Styrbjörn asked. “Do you speak for them? Are you now a seer?”

  They sat in the morning light around the embers and ashes of the previous night’s fire, still camped in the Mirkwood. Thyra kept to Styrbjörn’s right hand, while Gorm and several other Jomsviking captains faced him angrily from across the ring. They had not yet spoken of retreat, but Styrbjörn knew he was in danger of losing his army. He could feel it. If but one of the captains suggested they abandon their purpose, the rest would follow.

  “Palnatoke is dead,” Gorm said. “I do not need to be a seer to know the gods are displeased.”

  Styrbjörn raised his voice. “Palnatoke knew the length of his skein was set. He faced the end of his life in battle, instead of hiding in Jomsborg. This dagger had nothing to do with it, and you take away the honor of his death by claiming otherwise.”

  Gorm said nothing in reply.

  “I honor Palnatoke,” Styrbjörn continued. “And so I will seek vengeance for his death. But I wonder what you will do.”

  “Do not pretend you fight Eric for Palnatoke’s honor,” Gorm said. “You fight for—”

  “I do not think he pretends,” Thyra said. “I think Styrbjörn is as angry as you are at Palnatoke’s death, just as he is angry at his uncle. Can he not fight for both? For his crown and also the honor of his sworn brother? If you speak against Styrbjörn, you speak against Palnatoke.”

  She forged her words with the calm and steady assurance of a blacksmith’s hammer, and Gorm said nothing against them. The Jomsviking lowered his head under Thyra’s gaze, as though she were a queen, rather than a shield-maiden. Styrbjörn was surprised at how quickly he had come to admire Thyra and value her presence at his side. But now was not the time to weigh it.

  He pressed Gorm further. “I am still wondering what you will do to honor Palnatoke. How you will fulfill the oath you swore not to retreat.”

  Gorm looked up. “We will fight. But know this, Styrbjörn. We fight for vengeance. We fight for our oaths and our honor. We do not fight for your crown.”

  Styrbjörn nodded. In the end, it did not matter why the Jomsvikings went to battle. It only mattered that they fought. “Prepare your men. We march for the Fyrisfield.”

  Gorm bowed his head, but there was no love or respect in it. Then he and his captains left the fire ring, and when they had gone, Styrbjörn turned to Thyra.

  “Thank you for your counsel.”

  “I spoke only the truth,” she said.

  “I think you changed the tide of Gorm’s mind.”

  “But not my father’s, or he would still be here as well.” She looked at the dagger Styrbjörn wore at his waist. “I’m amazed Harald left that behind.”

  Styrbjörn looked down at it, and Sean focused more intently on the memory’s current, as he always did when the dagger became the focus of the simulation. “It seemed to be more than just a relic to him,” Styrbjörn said.

  “It always did. I’ve thought many times there must be power in it.”

  “What kind of power?”

  She tipped her head sideways, looking up into the trees, and her green eyes captured sunlight. “I would say that it drew others to him. Enemies would leave his presence devoted to him. But only when he wore that dagger.”

  Sean knew exactly what she had observed. That was the power of this prong of the Trident. But Styrbjörn still looked at the weapon with suspicion, even as he kept it at his side.

  A short while later, the Jomsvikings stood ready with their spears, swords, axes, and shields. Those too injured or weak from poison remained behind, while the rest marched that day toward Uppsala. Styrbjörn led them through the forest, at the head of their army, to show them that there were no more poisoned snares, and none of Eric’s warriors to harry them. They came within sight of the Fyrisfield in the later afternoon, where Styrbjörn expected to see Eric’s army mustered on the plain.

  But it lay empty.

  No warriors. No encampment. Just an open expanse of grass and marsh.

  “Where are your countrymen?” Gorm asked. “Surely Eric sent out the Bidding Stick.”

  “He must have gathered them north of here, at Uppsala,” Styrbjörn said.

  “Near the temple?” Gorm asked. “Why would he risk a battle there?”

  “Perhaps he thinks the gods will save him,” Styrbjörn said.

  Before they entered the plain, they fanned out and formed ranks, and then Styrbjörn marched the Jomsvikings forth at the spear point of their wedge. They emerged from the Mirkwood beating a steady rhythm on their shields with their axes, like drums. They chanted and marched, sweeping northward. To the west, the Fyriswater flowed down into Mälaren, and to the east, the marshes lay dank and reedy. Ahead of them, the green land swelled and dipped like the loosened sail of a ship billowing i
n the wind. It had been years since Styrbjörn last walked here, the land of his fathers, where he ran as a boy. Years spent in exile, waiting to avenge his father’s murder and claim his crown. At last his time had come. He could feel his rage and thirst for battle rising.

  “What is that?” Thyra asked.

  Styrbjörn looked at her. “What?”

  “Listen,” she said.

  At first, he heard nothing over the sounds of the Jomsviking march. But then he felt a rumbling in the ground beneath his feet, and he heard distant thunder, though the sky was clear.

  “Something is coming,” she said. “Eric’s army?”

  “No,” he said, listening. “It’s something else.”

  He searched the horizon as the sound grew louder, and nearer. The Jomsvikings ceased their chanting and shield-beating to listen. They halted in their march at the base of a low, broad rise, and they waited, weapons ready.

  “You’re right,” Thyra said. “That is no army.”

  “Whatever it is,” Styrbjörn said, “we will kill it, or destroy it.”

  Thyra didn’t nod, or agree. She simply looked at him with a blank expression he didn’t understand, and then returned her attention to the plain. Styrbjörn tightened his grip on his axe, Randgríð, and then he smiled at what was about to begin.

  A moment later, a huge beast appeared over the distant rise. It charged down toward them, bellowing, and at first Styrbjörn didn’t understand what he was seeing: a solid, many-legged mass bristling with horns, spears, and swords that spread almost the width of the Jomsviking line. Then Styrbjörn realized it wasn’t a single thing, but many, a herd of cattle hundreds of animals long and three or four deep. They had been yoked and tied together so that they moved as one, studded with weapons, a living war machine, unstoppable, meant to trample, crush, cut, and impale. Styrbjörn had never seen anything like it.

  It was an army breaker.

  Any warrior caught in its path would be maimed or killed, and Styrbjörn knew what was about to happen to the Jomsvikings. They couldn’t retreat southward, because the cattle would run them down. If they fled to the east, the marsh would simply mire them. That left but one route of escape.

  “To the river!” Styrbjörn ordered, waving his axe over his head, then blowing on his war horn.

  The Jomsvikings heard him, then turned and raced west to get clear of the behemoth. Thyra ran with them, and when Styrbjörn was sure she would make it to safety, he turned and sped directly toward the oncoming storm. The Jomsvikings’ eastern flank would not have time to get clear before the cattle slammed into their line. Styrbjörn had to find some way to break up the beasts.

  They stampeded toward him with wide, rolling eyes, and frantic bellows, mindless with fear. He returned Randgríð to his belt as the distance between him and the war machine closed. When the cattle were but yards away, he launched himself into the air using all his strength, sailing high enough to clear the first spears and horns.

  But as he came back down, a sword slashed his thigh, and he tumbled sideways onto the heaving shoulders of a bull. The beast threw him, and he nearly slipped through a gap between two oxen. His legs dangled among the pounding hooves, and the rushing ground snagged his heels, trying to pull him down the rest of the way to his death.

  Styrbjörn grabbed on to a heavy yoke and hauled himself up, using the rest of the wooden framework for support. His thigh bled heavily, and he had only moments to act.

  He pulled Randgríð from his belt and went to work hewing, splitting, and sundering the ropes and wood around him that made this herd into a weapon. Soon the thundering line of cattle fractured, and then it broke in two.

  But that wasn’t enough. Styrbjörn balanced and jumped along the surging backs of the animals to another joining, where his axe work made a second break.

  The war machine now charged in thirds, the gaps between them widening, the remaining tethers weakening. At least some of the Jomsvikings could now make for the openings that Styrbjörn had made.

  He turned and leapt from the rear of the war machine, landing in a hard roll behind it. Then he got to his feet and watched the cattle charging away from him toward his men, and a moment after that, the air shattered with the sound of impact. Shields tore, and men screamed, and metal rang. Some of the Jomsvikings made it safely through the gaps, but far too many went under, and they were spat out from under the cattle, broken and dying, as the machine rolled mindlessly onward.

  Styrbjörn raced through the muddy, shredded turf toward his men, but before he reached them, he heard a new sound coming from the north, this one familiar. He turned and saw Eric’s army charging down, coming to slay those that had survived the stampede.

  “To me!” Styrbjörn bellowed, raising Randgríð, and he blew the command on his war horn. Then he turned to face Eric’s army, and moments later, ranks of Jomsvikings formed around and behind him, among them Thyra and Gorm.

  “Shield wall!” Styrbjörn ordered, blowing again on his horn.

  “They outnumber us at least four to one,” Gorm said.

  Styrbjörn pointed to the west. “The sun will set soon. All we have to do is last. Today we show them how hard they have to work to kill us. Tomorrow we show them how hard we will work to kill them.”

  Around Styrbjörn, and in other pockets across the plain, those Jomsvikings who could still lift a shield fell back together, shoulder to shoulder, shields and spears outward. Thyra stood next to Styrbjörn, and she noticed his thigh.

  “Is it bad?” she asked.

  Though he felt blood pooling inside his boot, he said, “It is nothing.”

  She gave him a fierce and eager smile that surprised him, and which he returned.

  Then Eric’s army fell upon them.

  It was close bladework after that, thrusting with spears and swords, pushing back against the enemy with their shields. But Eric’s men were farmers and freemen summoned under the ledung, many of them inexperienced in battle, while the Jomsvikings were men sworn to raiding and war. For every blow one of Styrbjörn’s took, they returned five on Eric’s. Thyra proved herself skilled and deadly, and as the day wore itself out, the shield walls held, and as evening fell, Eric’s army withdrew across the Fyrisfield to their camp.

  The Jomsvikings gathered their wounded and their dead, and returned to the Mirkwood, along the boundary of which they found the remains of the cattle war machine. Many of the animals had died upon impact with the trees, and those that hadn’t appeared to have run deep into the woods. The men butchered several cows and ate beef that night, as much meat as their bellies could hold, and afterward, Gorm came to Styrbjörn at his fire.

  “I wish to swear to you, Styrbjörn,” the Jomsviking said. “I and all my brothers. We saw all that you did. Forgive me for doubting your honor.”

  “You are forgiven,” Styrbjörn said as Thyra sat by and stitched the wound in his thigh.

  Gorm continued. “They will sing songs about your feats this day, and tomorrow the Jomsvikings will fight and die by your side, to the last man if the gods will it. This is the oath we will take.”

  As Sean observed this memory flowing along, it struck him that Styrbjörn had acquired the unwavering loyalty of the Jomsvikings without using the power of the dagger.

  “Oaths tomorrow,” Styrbjörn said. “For now, there are wounded and dying warriors who need their captain. Go to them, Gorm, and you and I will talk again.”

  Gorm bowed his head, this time in sincere devotion, and left Styrbjörn’s fire ring. After he had gone, Styrbjörn stared into the flames, into the deepest, hottest hollow among the logs and coals. He would need a strategy for the next day’s fighting. Eric still had superior numbers, and he had yet to send his personal war band into battle.

  “This wound was far worse than you let on,” Thyra said.

  “I said it was nothing. And that’s what it was.”

  She shook her head, frowning.

  “What are you thinking?” Styrbjörn asked.

&
nbsp; “I am thinking that I would have you for my husband,” she said.

  He whipped his gaze toward her. The fire cast its light against her red cheeks, and into her hair and eyes. “Are you mocking me?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Why would you think so?”

  He looked away from her, flustered and unsure of himself.

  “Do you plan to marry?” she asked.

  “I will marry,” he said. “When I have avenged my father and claimed what is mine, I will marry.”

  She nodded, but with a slight frown. “You are the first man I have met who I think worthy to be my husband. And I think I am the first woman you have met worthy to be your wife.”

  She spoke with plain confidence, and she was right about the way he saw her, but he had kept those thoughts apart from the rest of his mind until he could properly consider them. Because this was not the time for those thoughts. He had a war to win, and an uncle to kill.

  “I think we should wait to discuss this,” he said.

  “I don’t think we should wait,” she said. “I would marry you tonight.”

  “Tonight?” He stared at her then, shocked by her boldness, but also admiring of it. “Why tonight?”

  “Because after tomorrow, you will be a king, and I don’t want you or anyone to think I marry your crown. I don’t marry Styrbjörn the Strong. Years from now, when our grandchildren sit at your feet, I want you to tell them of this night. You will tell them that I wanted you even in your exile. I wanted to marry Bjorn.”

  Styrbjörn liked hearing her say his true name, and had no wish to correct her. He regarded her for a long while, and she said nothing more, apparently intent on giving him time and space to think. It was true that he wanted to marry one day, and it was also true that he would want to marry Thyra above any woman he had ever met. But tonight? Must it be tonight?

  When looked at from a certain angle, there seemed to be madness in her words. Yet from a different angle, she made more sense than anything else he had encountered in this mad world.

  “In what way would you wish to marry?” he asked.

  “In the old way,” she said. “Witnessed by the gods.”