Fire and Lies

by Angela Chrysler

  Before Kallan could object, Rune fled the room, leaving her to scramble for a skirt to cover her legs.

  “Stand down!” Bergen ordered, his sword raised to the Dokkalfar.

  “We aren’t here for a fight!” one of them said, despite the hole dripping blood where his eye had been.

  “Back off!” Bergen howled.

  Behind him, barely a handful of his own men perched, ready for the word to attack. Desperation hung on the Ljosalfar with a madness that taunted their tempers to the edge.

  “We look for aid!” the Dokkalfr cried, burdened beneath the weight of his comrade, who leaned on him nearly unconscious.

  “There is no medicine here that can be spared for Dokkalfar blood!” Bergen said.

  “Bergen, hold!” Rune called as he ran from the keep. “Stand down!”

  Bergen tightened his grip on his sword.

  “Brother, look at them,” Rune bade, placing a hand on Bergen’s shoulder. “They can barely stand.”

  “Wielders of craft…armed with lies and deceit,” Bergen grumbled. “These are the sons fashioned from the grounds of Svartálfaheim!”

  “Ragnar?”

  Kallan’s voice cut through the tension, easing Bergen back as she stepped to the front.

  Despite the socket of his eye still flowing with blood, Ragnar smiled.

  “My lady,” he gasped and nearly broke into a sob. “My eyes didn’t deceive me. I knew I had seen— I’ve come to do your bidding.”

  The formality required the last of his strength and Ragnar dropped to the steps, taking his comrade with him. To her knees, Kallan fell, pulling her Seidr and administering her skills.

  “These men need aid!” Kallan said.

  “They’re Dokkalfar,” Bergen reminded her, not so eager to invite them in.

  “So am I!” Kallan bit back.

  “We hold no oath to their kin,” Bergen said, pointing at them with the tip of his blade.

  “I do!” Kallan glared as Seidr poured from her hands into her kin.

  “Enough,” Rune said, putting an end to their squabble. “Bring them in.”

  With a scowl, Bergen gripped Rune’s arm.

  “We have no room for our own.” Bergen held his voice low enough for only Rune to hear. “The Hall is full. Torunn is forcing us to set up wounded here in the yard.”

  “We’ll make do,” Rune said as his men lifted the dying Dokkalfar from the steps. “We’ll have to. Against Forkbeard, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

  Bergen released Rune’s arm and the Ljosalfar carried the Dokkalfar inside.

  With great agility, Kallan rose to her feet, fastening her hair behind her shoulders. Her golden eyes sharpened with a determination that bombarded Rune with worry.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  Kallan exhaled with a huff of impatience.

  “This battle is not yet over,” she said, rolling up her sleeves. “I have work to do.”

  Stomping off after Bergen, Kallan pushed her way into the Hall before Rune had a chance to argue.

  Kallan scanned the length of the room. From the double oak doors to the steps of the kitchen, past the throne to the screens passage and up the stairs, Kallan assessed the numbers that filled the Great Hall with blankets, furs, and bandages. Bergen’s men found a vacant corner for the Dokkalfar near the kitchens and settled them in as Rune joined Kallan at her side.

  “Are you certain you can handle this?” Rune asked, earning a sharp glare from Kallan.

  Within moments and without a word, she found a place to begin and settled herself down on the floor beside the first of thousands to be treated.

  The scent of boiling leek and onion filled the Hall as Torunn ordered the onion soup be served to every soldier. Where the scent of herb rose from gapping stomach wounds, they moved on, leaving the soldier to die clutching fast to their sword in hand.

  The fires roared and the smith and tailors were constantly at hand to assist with stitching or the searing of wounds as needed. Screams filled the Hall late into the night as the keep became a second battlefield, where mutilated limbs were sawn off and cauterized. Other wounded lay awake, writhing in pain as they slowly bled out through their bowels.

  Soon, the stench of blood and death mingled with that of burned flesh and seeping bowels that filled the keep, adding a level of nausea that placated their nerves with numbness. From soldier to soldier, Kallan passed, administering Idunn’s apple and submitting the spell where it could help. But there were too many to be seen by one as she did what she could to pull from her core and keep them alive long enough to be seen by Torunn or Geirolf.

  The lanterns devoured most of their oils by the time the last soldier had been healed. Exhaustion emanated from those left standing as the last of the screams died down to subtle groans.

  “You should sleep,” Geirolf said, not bothering to wipe the blood from his hands. “I don’t trust those Seidr apples of yours to do what the body should.”

  Kallan glanced with deadened eyes. Silently she nodded, until her head wobbled into a shake as she dug the sleep from her eyes.

  Exhausted, she turned to the great doors of the Hall and, without a word, walked into the cool night air. Stiffening her back against the sudden cold, Kallan blankly turned for the stables and Astrid.

  The stench of corpses hit Kallan’s nose the moment she opened the doors of the keep and descended the steps to the courtyard. The rains had come and gone sometime during the night while Kallan worked on the wounded, leaving the dampened stench of the smoldering battlefield. The cold of night had settled in, adding a chill to the air and a silence that encumbered the forest. Animals had not yet returned to their burrows, bringing an unnatural hush to the silent wood.

  On the other side of the Klarelfr, the desolation spanned the plains to the trees that began where the land rose up. Only the fog obstructed her view as she scanned the endless carnage that was Gunir’s plains. The bodies had long grown cold.

  Releasing Astrid’s reins, Kallan slid off the horse and made her way through the dead. The ground squelched beneath her feet, emitting a pocket of odor with every step that reeked of feces and burnt flesh.

  They had been quick to flee and left with no time to go back and collect the wounded. Now she stood among them, hopelessly examining the field, desperate for any sign of life. The mangled bodies of Dokkalfar rested where they fell alongside the desecrated Ljosalfar. Abandoned weapons lay in the waste. Several swords had been broken. A few had their blades bent back to prevent their use in Odinn’s Hall, lest their owner consider vengeance.

  Huffing, Kallan stopped and studied the wide field of corpses. Her breath rolled into tiny puffs of fog as it punched the air. Tears, too dry to fall, burned her eyes.

  The heavy crunch of a boot jerked her attention around, and she met Rune standing at a distance behind her. His hair hung with the same somber tone as the battlefield. He said nothing as he stood. His exhausted death-like stupor mirrored her own.

  “My father—” Kallan gasped, gazing upon the dead. “He sent Aaric to Alfheim.”

  Rune took a step closer.

  “He loved my mother once…in Svartálfaheim.” Kallan tried to remember all the memories, all the pictures, and there they were before her again. She saw each one as clearly as she saw her bloodstained hands. “A woman… She needed me. The woman who killed Gudrun…but Father was in the way.” Kallan gazed at Rune. The tears glistened in her golden eyes.

  “Swann found a Seidi… Aaric killed Swann to hide it,” Kallan said. “And Borg…” She couldn’t begin to explain what she had watched him do to the body.

  Rune went white as a quiet rage filled his eye and he clenched his teeth.

  A lone tear spilled down Kallan’s cheek. “Aaric killed my father.”

  Kallan shuddered. Looking back to the dead, she hugged her arms tight.

  “This… I never wanted this,” she gasped and shook her head, viewing the carnage.

  “Never wante
d this,” she whispered.

  Rune stepped through the corpses.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he gently spoke, coming to stand beside her.

  “I couldn’t leave them,” she said, looking to each corpse. The tears flowed free. “They knew me once. I couldn’t leave them.”

  The wind rustled, upsetting the silence. A cold wind blew and bit her face.

  “I can see everything now…yet almost nothing. Images that come and go. They cloud my mind. And this, none of this…” Kallan shook her head. “This is never what I wanted.”

  “My lady?”

  The ailing voice cracked as it reached them.

  Together, Kallan and Rune turned to the shaking hand of a bloodied warrior, too mutilated to identify his race. Ignoring the blood and waste, Kallan fell to her knees beside him, and ever so gently, raised him from the ground.

  Empty eyes that couldn’t see searched the sky as Kallan grasped his black hand already chilled by death. The stench of bowel pierced the air as Kallan leaned closer. She barely made out the unmarked side of his face left untouched by Fand’s Seidr flame.

  “The voice of my lady reaches me in my final hour,” he spoke.

  “Eilif,” Kallan gasped, recognizing what little remained of his face in the darkness. The Dokkalfr turned to Kallan’s voice.

  “I see you,” he muttered blindly, unaware that his remaining eye no longer worked. “You’ve come for me. My dearest friend.”

  He tried to smile, revealing his blackened teeth through a distorted face.

  “You have come to guide me then to Odinn’s halls,” he sputtered, gasping through the pain he no longer felt.

  Kallan opened her mouth to speak, ready to correct him and tell him she still lived, but stopped herself. Clamping her jaw, she nodded, tightening her grip on his cold palm as she willed her sobbing silent.

  “Yes,” she finally forced from lips. “I am here.”

  “My dear, sweet lady.” Eilif relaxed into Kallan’s arms, suddenly calm. “My queen.” Kallan pursed her lips against the tears that fell.

  “I am sorry.” Eilif gasped. “I —”

  “Sh…” Kallan hushed, grateful for his blindness.” Sleep now, dear friend. Sleep.”

  Slowly, she wrapped her fingers around the hilt of her dagger sheathed at her waist.

  “Kallan,” Eilif began. “Will you feed the children?”

  Tears flowed as Kallan nodded.

  “I promise,” she whispered.

  “You must feed the children,” Eilif said then deeply gasped as his body stiffened against the blade of Kallan’s dagger.

  “Kallan… K… Kallan.”

  Eilif whispered her name until, with his final breath, he entered Odinn’s halls.

  Sobbing, Kallan closed his eyes and then mustered the strength to ever so gently lower the body back to the ground as she withdrew her dagger from his heart.

  No longer holding back the flood of tears, Kallan wiped Eilif’s blood on her skirts and forcefully sheathed the dagger. Lifting her face to the sky, Kallan stood several arm lengths away from Rune, who watched quietly, unable to speak the words to ease her heartache.

  Kallan shuddered against the cold as the wind rushed over the dead. Rune dared a step toward her.

  “Kallan,” he spoke.

  “He was a scribe in my father’s court.” Kallan balled her hands into fists. “We would run the streets… He climbed the Livsvann with me once.” Kallan smiled through her tears as she remembered. “He couldn’t even lift a sword.”

  Rune kept his distance.

  “He was a scholar!”

  The words shook the silence as her voice reverberated through the night.

  “He didn’t belong in battle! He couldn’t even fight!” Kallan turned to Rune. “How can I win this? Whatever men may fall, I lose. If I fight with you, my own kin dies by my hand! I can’t possibly stand against my enemy knowing you oppose—”

  Kallan lost the words and searched the night for the answers.

  “I don’t belong anywhere,” she muttered.

  “Kallan.”

  Closing the last of the space between them, Rune pulled her into him, and Kallan, wrapping her arms around him, welcomed his warmth. Dropping her head onto his chest, she buckled beneath her grief. There in Rune’s arms, Kallan cried until the last of her tears were spent.

  The fog rolled peacefully over the sleeping dead and Kallan turned her head against Rune’s chest.

  A dark figure moved in the darkness. Kallan raised her head and focused her eyes to see. The figure grew larger as it stumbled carelessly over the bodies. A moment later, the fog rolled with the wind and the figure emerged. Kallan gasped.

  Standing in the dark, she and Rune stared at the hunched forms of Joren and Daggon. They leaned against the other with the last of their strength. With whitened knuckles, they peered across the dead at Kallan and Rune. In the hand at his side, Daggon clutched Gudrun’s pouch.

  A stream of smoke rose from Rune’s pipe as Rune gazed out his chamber window. Across the Klarelfr, a handful of men collected the dead onto pyres. Rows of smoke pillars rolled to the sky. He had listened with Joren, Torunn, Geirolf, Bergen, and Kallan as Daggon quoted Gudrun’s words back perfectly.

  “She said nothing more?” Rune asked, lowering the bit from his lips.

  Daggon shook his large, red head. His scars flickered like shadows across the firelight.

  “I did as she instructed.” Regret filled his words.

  “A sleeping spell.” Rune stared with disbelief, mulling over the success rate in his head. “You want to put the entire army to sleep?”

  “We’ve done it before,” Kallan assured him, remembering Thorold’s army.

  “Will it cover Forkbeard’s forces as well?” Bergen asked, less concerned with the impossibility of their proposal.

  “There is only enough left for one spell,” Kallan said, knowing the bundle in Daggon’s hand was all that had been left of Gudrun’s furtive supply. “If we wait for Forkbeard’s troops to arrive, it won’t cover everyone, and I can’t differentiate Ljosalfar from Dokkalfar from Dani. When I administer it, we will lose some of our own for a period.”

  “Everyone will sleep,” Bergen said.

  “We will still have to fight Forkbeard’s forces,” Rune said, deciding. “But there is enough to maintain Aaric’s army?” he asked, peering across his room at Kallan.

  She nodded.

  “How does it work?” Bergen asked, eager to hear all the details.

  Kallan was quick to oblige.

  “Once I release the spell, it spreads,” she began. “I have some control over where it goes, but whoever comes in contact with it—whoever breathes it in—will sleep. There is no selecting one man from the next, but with the right runes, I can protect a handful of us.”

  “Will it put Aaric to sleep?” Bergen asked.

  “If Aaric is as skilled in the Seidr as we think he is,” Kallan said, “he’ll be able to avoid its affects, but he’ll be alone.”

  “Alone should give us the advantage to take him down,” Rune said.

  “That might be all the time we need to do this,” Bergen said.

  “How long will they sleep?” Rune asked from his window.

  Kallan sighed as she ran the calculations over.

  “A lot of this depends on the dosage, and how thin it’s spread,” she answered. “If a full batch is used for one man, he will sleep for a week. If a fraction of the usual dosage is used for a whole army, they may sleep for only moments. In one test Gudrun and I did, they only experienced a substantial case of drowsiness.”

  “How much can you produce with this?” Rune asked.

  “This is the last of Gudrun’s supply,” Kallan said, “It may yield half a batch for what you’re suggesting. I can guarantee the armies will sleep, but only for minutes.”

  “That isn’t much,” Bergen grumbled.

  “That wasn’t Gudrun’s goal.” Kallan quelled a smirk.

&
nbsp; “What do you mean?” Rune asked, withdrawing from the window.

  A gleam hardened Kallan’s eyes.

  “Based on the advancement of Aaric’s abilities and the state we found Eilif in, they were under the influence of another spell…one that blinded them to me.” Kallan relaxed her shoulders. “This sleeping spell will break it.”

  “How soon will it work?” Bergen asked, cutting Rune off.

  “The spell immediately passes through them,” Kallan continued. “Within moments, everyone will be unconscious. It will take maybe twice that long for the affects to subside and their bodies to clear it…maybe longer, but not by much.”

  “What kind of state can we expect them to be in when they wake?” Geirolf asked.

  Kallan gazed at the old healer.

  “Disoriented. Confused. Many may experience severe headaches. Possible nausea. One or two may not wake up,” she warned.

  Releasing a plume of smoke, Rune looked to his scout. “Joren. Where are Aaric’s troops now?”

  “They’re regrouping,” Joren said. “We expect them to be ready to advance at daybreak.”

  “And Forkbeard?” Rune asked.

  “They’ll be here by midday,” Joren said.

  The coals cooled and the embers died in Rune’s pipe as he submerged himself in thought. “Only fourteen thousand stand against Forkbeard’s forces.”

  “What will you have us do, Rune?” Bergen asked, desperate for any plan better than the one Daggon had.

  Rune relit the coals and drew long and deep from his pipe. He blew the smoke as everyone in the room waited for an answer. Unseen, he shifted an eye to Kallan, who stood charged at the ready to fight.

  “We’re waiting for your orders, sire,” Geirolf said.

  Rune sighed, and fought down a smirk.

  “Fall back,” Rune said. “We’ll give them Gunir.”

  “—Are you mad?” Geirolf barked.

  “—We’re a handful against thousands!” Bergen quipped.

  “—What of the wounded?” Geirolf asked.

  “—We can’t just leave them!” Torunn cried.

  “We have no choice!” Rune barked through the chaos, instilling order once more. “The city has been taken! We have no alliance to fall back on! All who we have are here!”