by AJ Cooper
He dropped a sturdy rope down, helped his sons go claim the land
Three sons he had by Aelwin, blessed mother of our race:
Hjarta, Himnall, Helgur all saw the Ulfr’s great disgrace
The Ulfr wed their sisters, and their women cast dark spells
They offered up their children, and trolls were on the fells
Only the Green Dragon—let all men praise his name—
Could kill the Ulfr witches with his powerful red flame
At once Lord Henrik shouted, “You stay with me, skald. Your voice is as pure as honey and your fingers quick as White Wolves in full sprint!”
Brand did not want to leave Gunnar, but an earl’s words were law.
By now, Gunnar had fallen asleep from the mead. He had good dreams of the Green Dragon and the white-garbed goddess of victory, Vana, and woke in good spirits; but sensed that good spirits were not commonplace in the Darkling Wood, where he would go.
CHAPTER FIVE
At dawn, Lord Henrik gave Gunnar a white mare named Snowbell. The fletcher gave Gunnar fifty arrows, and the bowyer gave Gunnar a finely-strung bow of mountain yew. The blacksmith offered him a leather jerkin with the symbol of White Wolf Keep stitched onto it.
“No,” Gunnar refused. “Armor slows a man down.”
Then Gunnar hopped on Snowbell and followed an escort through the open gate. He followed the escort through the cold, windy plains of Frostfall for perhaps two hours when the Darkling Wood appeared in the horizon. A wooden wall blocked entrance. Yet stretching above the wall were tall pines—dark green, almost black against the steely gray peaks of the mountains. Not far off in the distance was an impossibly tall wooden watchtower, and gathered behind it were numerous tents and perhaps a dozen men, outfitted with swords, spears, bows, and other weaponry.
The escort left him as soon as he reached the camp. The dozen men were gathered around a large campfire, roasting haunches of meat in the bright flames.
“Greetings!” Gunnar thundered. Snowbell stopped her trot.
A man in an iron breastplate got up from the campfire. A scar ran across the length of his face and his nose was crooked, perhaps broken. He had thick, dirty blond hair and light blue eyes. “You are the new man, eh?” he said. “I am Captain Jannik. Have some elk skewers. You’ll need your full strength when you go in the Darkling Wood tonight.”
“Why night?” Gunnar said. “Surely that is the most dangerous time for an expedition. In morning I can see well.”
“Aye,” Jannik said. “But night is when the evil is gone. We sent two men last night—Agni and Rannulf—to find the source of the evil in the woods. They’ve not come back. We need you to go there and find them and rescue them before the evil takes them.”
“Your men have legs, Jannik, and so do you. You are not cripples. So why are you sending me? Why aren’t you sending these others?”
The men around the campfire looked up at Gunnar and glared at him.
Jannik walked up to Gunnar and put a hand on his shoulder. “The darkness has taken them. If they go into the Darkling Wood, they will become part of the evil in the woods. They were not careful when they entered the forest. They let the curse touch them.” He looked at Gunnar grimly. “If they stray from the fire… if they get too cold, they will succumb.”
A chill ran up Gunnar’s spine, worse than the harshest ice-throes of winter. “And what about you? Why don’t you go with me?”
“The watchtower needs a captain,” Jannik answered. “Without a captain these men will die, and if they die, the evil will flood the wall, and there will be no hope for White Wolf Keep, and no hope for all Badelgard.”
The sun set in a dazzling display of gold and red. A White Wolf howled in the mountains, heralding the coming night. Fully armed, Gunnar unsheathed his sword and rode Snowbell through the vast wooden gate. He took one look back and Jannik was staring at him, eyes mournful as if he were watching a man going to his death.
CHAPTER SIX
They came with fire and steel.
They came on dragon’s back.
They called our customs vile
They killed us to the last.
As Brand sang the last bit of the famous song, “Lament of the Ulfr,” the sound of applause filled the main hall of White Wolf Keep. In the Skalds’ College, Brand had not been the best student, not by any means. But these rustic northerners were not used to good entertainment, only war, dull clothing, and constant cold. Compared to the amateurs they were used to, Brand was a musical genius.
“Thank you,” he said, and bowed.
The ladies were looking upon him with fawning expressions. The men seemed equally enthralled. Only Hilda looked unmoved, focused solely on eating her porridge.
“You’ve done well,” Lord Henrik called out from his throne. “Perhaps if we sent you to fight the evil in the Darkling Wood, you could vanquish it with the purity of your voice.”
“Milord,” Brand said. “Forgive me for prying, but you have sent my best friend to fight the evil there. Just what is this evil?”
“It’s nothing!” Lord Henrik said. “He will be back soon. Now, play on! Play a song of fear… a song of horrors and dark times. Make my hairs stand on end.”
“Very well,” Brand said. He began strumming his lute to the sound of the song “Fell Winter.”
A winter will fall over Badelgard
A winter that never ends
Children will die of hunger
And the Ulfr, crawl up from their dens
And the Ulfr, crawl up from their dens
Ice will fall from the heavens
The dead will return from their stones
The starving will feed on each other
And a corpse shall sit on the throne
And a corpse shall sit on the throne
Men will abandon honor
Kin will turn against kin
Snow-age, dark-age, White Wolf-age
’til the Ulfr have their revenge
’til the Ulfr have their revenge
The applause returned. Lord Henrik clapped and cheered the loudest of the lot. But Hilda stood up and shouted, “How dare you sing of such things?” then stormed out of the hall.
“One moment,” Brand said. He set his lute against the wall and ran after Hilda, following her outside into the windy night.
“I am sorry, lady,” Brand said.
“I am not a lady,” Hilda said. “I have killed men before. Have you?”
“No,” Brand said. “But it’s just a song—it isn’t a prophecy. At least, most people don’t think it’s a prophecy.”
“Where did you learn it?” Hilda snapped.
“The headmaster at the Skalds’ College taught it to me,” Brand said. “He heard a madman singing it in Andarr’s Port and wrote it down. It means nothing. Surely a man who has no grip on reality cannot speak truth.”
“Don’t you think singing that is treasonous to the sons and daughters of Badelgard?” Hilda shouted. “It celebrates the Ulfr, who used human hearts in their rituals—who ate the flesh of men and women both. They worshiped a demoness, The Great Mother!”
“I hate the Ulfr as much as you do, if not more,” Brand said. “I have been to the land of Blackfold. I have been in the house of an Ulfr witch. Can you say the same?”
“I do not know where Blackfold is,” Hilda said. “I assume it is in the east.”
“It is the most haunted land in all Badelgard.”
“I doubt it,” Hilda said. “I believe Gunnar has gone to the most haunted land in Badelgard.”
“What do you mean?”
“Agni and Rannulf were my friends,” Hilda said. “They were called to the Darkling Wood. I fear for their lives. You should fear for Gunnar’s life as well, but I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because he means nothing to me. He is not my friend. And he is a fool to have accepted the earl’s demand.”
“Perhaps if you had a heart, you would care,
you cold, cruel dog,” Brand said. “He is my friend. I am his skald; I am to sing of his deeds. If he dies, I must kill myself by honorary law. Don’t you understand?”
Hilda frowned. “I used to be idealistic, like you. I used to believe in honor. But when Chieftain Harram raped me repeatedly and I tried to use reason with him, I realized that honor wasn’t going to get me away from him. There are no valkyries watching over us. There are only three things to guide us: strength; guile; and pure, dumb luck.”
“I hope I never grow as bitter as you,” Brand said.
“I hope you do,” Hilda said. “I hope you learn to put honor second. Because I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to kill yourself if Gunnar dies, as he most certainly will. I think you’re a good boy, Brand. And I think you’d be a better boy if you stop singing such vile songs.”
“I am not a boy. I am a man,” Brand argued.
“Musicians, storytellers,” Hilda said. “A dreamer is always a child. Until you take up the sword of a warrior and pledge yourself to an earl, you will always be a boy in my eyes.”
Brand glared at her. “What makes you so certain that Gunnar is going to die?”
A hint of compassion fell over Hilda’s face, but she quickly hid it. “The Darkling Wood is a deadly place.”
“Gunnar has survived deadly places before.”
“There is evil in that forest, and the evil is hungry,” Hilda said. “The darklings feed on fear and human flesh. The earl has sent Gunnar in the tiny chance he might cure the evil—so tiny it’s more likely that animals learn to talk. In the infinitely more likely chance that he will die, the darklings’ hunger will be sated for a while.”
“So you mean to tell me that the earl sent Gunnar as a sacrifice?” Brand said incredulously.
There was no emotion in Hilda’s voice as she said, “Yes.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gunnar stood in the cold, silent forest on the other side of the wooden wall. Snow lay on the ground and on the boughs of the pines. Darkness was spreading across the sky, now. There were no owls hooting, no nightingales singing. And as Snowbell’s hooves crunched against the snow, it became evident that there were no animal tracks either. If Gunnar’s gut didn’t tell him otherwise, he would think the forest was completely empty.
He trotted deeper in. Directly in front of him, towering above the dark pines, was an impossibly tall, snowy peak. The men of the watchtower called it Devil’s Tooth.
The silence deepened as Gunnar trotted further into the forest. The silence became a sound in his ears, a constant hum.
He was a mile into the lonely forest when unease set in. His heartbeat picked up pace. A chill ran through his bones, and it wasn’t caused by the snow or wind. Only after a few long minutes in that heightened state did he see anything.
In the distance were two humanoid figures, leaning against the trunk of a pine. Gunnar kicked the stirrups and trotted up to them. One of the figures was an adult woman and the other was a young boy of no more than four or five. Both were lifeless and frozen solid, their eyes dead and glassy. The woman had her arm rigidly wrapped around the child’s shoulder; the child’s right hand was solid as an icicle against the woman’s waist. The woman’s stomach was swollen and distended; Gunnar would have thought that she was with child, had the boy’s stomach not been similarly swollen. Death did strange things to bodies.
Gunnar gave a passing thought to giving them a burial. But there were more important matters at hand than the dead. He had to find the two missing soldiers, Agni and Rannulf, and these were not soldiers. They were mother and child—innocent, harmless creatures whom Lady Vana had not smiled upon or protected with her valkyries. He kicked the stirrups and trotted away.
Snowbell’s breath turned to fog in the cold as she huffed and trotted quickly through the forest toward Devil’s Tooth. Gunnar looked around as the darkness fell. From the looks of it, the Darkling Wood was only about a mile in length and two miles wide. He would find Agni and Rannulf—or their corpses—very soon.
Gunnar’s heartbeat was audible against the silence. So was Snowbell’s. “Agni? Rannulf?” he shouted at the top of his lungs, more to break the silence than receive a response.
There was a loud howl from the mountains. Gunnar could tell it belonged to a White Wolf due to its loudness and purity of tone. He drew his axe.
“Agni? Rannulf?” he shouted again.
He looked to his left and his heart went cold. There, frozen standing up and leaning against a large tree trunk, were the bodies of two grown men. One had a thick brown beard and the other, a thin blonde one. Both wore steel armor emblazoned with the standard of White Wolf Keep—the same breastplate that the blacksmith had offered Gunnar. In their lifeless, frozen hands were swords of a non-Frostfallian make. These had to be Agni and Rannulf.
Gunnar hesitated. Their eyes were lifeless, but he felt their gazes on him. He swallowed his unease and dismounted. Slowly, he walked up to them. He grabbed the brown-bearded man’s sword. He tried to pull it out of the frozen, lifeless fingers. He pulled again but it didn’t budge. He yanked hard with a sharp cry and the icy fingers cracked and fell off onto the ground.
The sword had the “AP” runes of Andarr’s Port. He glanced over to the other one. The blond man’s sword had the “BH” runes of Blackhelm Keep. They were not locals; they were recruits for the watchtower. Gunnar could not read books or scrolls but after a long warrior’s life under the service of many lords, he recognized the many keeps’ runes.
After a struggle, he ripped the sword from the other corpse’s fingers. This time, he broke off the entire hand and removed the iced-on limb with a hard struggle.
The darkness was complete, now, and Gunnar wanted to go home. At the least, he wanted to go to the campfire near the watchtower. He hopped on Snowbell and noticed, in the dim light of the moon, that the two corpses were smiling. Nauseous, Gunnar went away at a brisk canter, swords bundled in his left hand.
The White Wolf howled again.
He had ridden scarcely ten yards when the woman and child from before were back in view, leaning against a different tree trunk. Gunnar gulped. Sensing his trembling heart, he shouted, “I will slay every demon and ghoul in this forest. I know you hear me, devil! Enjoy your last few moments.”
He dismounted, ran over to the frozen woman, and slammed the bit of his axe into her skull. Her head split in two frozen parts and fell to the ground. He hesitated with the child, but reminded himself this was a demon, not a boy. He slashed sideways with as much force as he could muster and sent the child’s head flying. Next, he cut off both corpses’ legs.
“Now you can’t move, devils.”
The boy’s head spoke as it rolled across the snow. A voice—childish yet cold as a snake’s eyes—said, “Neither will you.”
Blood sprayed Gunnar from behind. He turned around, heart pounding loud as a drum. Agni and Rannulf were there. In the blond man’s hands was Snowbell’s torn-off head.
“I’ll gut you like an elk!” Gunnar screamed.
Both Agni and Rannulf were smiling, and blood rimmed their mouth. Without hesitation Gunnar kicked them both to the ground, slashed off their heads, and then chopped off their feet and hands. He prayed to Eliane, horse goddess, that she would give Snowbell eternal rest. He dropped the swords. Then he asked all the gods who’d listen if they’d save him, as he took off toward the gate at a dead sprint.
He reached the gate exhausted. His heart raced so fast he worried it might rupture. He pounded on the gate. He dropped his axe and beat the gate with both hands.
“Open!” he screamed. “Open up!”
He looked back. More dead had followed them to the gate, all frozen and staring at him with cocked heads and smiling, hungry lips.
“Open!” he screamed even louder. “Open, now, or I swear…”
He looked back. The dead had drawn closer. A figure in a black cloak walked out of the shadows toward him, moving across the snow yet leaving no footprints. P
rotruding from the sleeves were long, withered green fingers.
“You vicious human warrior,” a woman’s voice said from inside the cloak. “Why have you harmed my children?”
Lining her hood were Ulfr runes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the middle of the night, Brand awoke short of breath. He had a nightmare, one which he could not remember. One thing he knew, though; he had to go to the watchtower and save Gunnar even if it was a losing battle. Quietly, he got up from his bed and threw on his fur cloak. He packed his lute and what little provisions he had into a sack. Then, with as much silence as he could muster, he left through the door, tiptoed past the earl’s chambers, crept down the stairs, and peered into the main hall.
The two guards were sleeping on the chairs and snoring. Brand snuck past them and walked out of the large double doors into the cold Frostfall air. There, standing on the wooden patio that overlooked the humble gray-brown dwellings of White Wolf Keep, was Hilda.
“You’re going to the Darkling Wood, aren’t you?” Hilda said, looking ahead. “Crafty boy.”
Brand paused. “And you? What are you doing out here on the patio?”
“My business is my concern alone, boy,” Hilda said. She grasped the hilt of her sword. “You know, if you walk to the Darkling Wood, Gunnar will be long gone. The evil there will already have taken him. Only a horse will do.”
“How do you know so much about the Darkling Wood, Hilda?” Brand asked.
“I’ve spent a long time in Frostfall,” Hilda answered. “Storytellers—dreamers like you—have told me about what lies in the Darkling Wood. The evil of the Ulfr remains there, and the dead live again. If the evil does not feed, it grows hungry. And if it is hungry, it will spread past the wall. Henrik would never admit this, but the real job of the Frostfall marcher lord is to feed that evil. The half-breeds to the north do not bother us much; it is only the power of the Darkling Wood that Badelgard needs protection from.”