RuneWarriors

by James Jennewein

  Thidrek watched Jarl’s body plummet from the high battlements and splash into the murky waters of the moat. He then ordered Redhelmet and Blackhelmet to fish out the body and cut off its head so that it could be stuck on a pike and placed atop the castle wall, the displaying of his enemies’ decapitated heads being one of Thidrek’s most favored pastimes.

  Dane heard Jarl’s war cry, and spurred by the sight of his friend fighting alone, leaped into action. Braving the barrage of arrow fire, Dane vaulted the ramparts, and spying a cabbage cart in the courtyard directly below, he gave an angry cry as he jumped, landing safe amid the green heads of cabbages. He grabbed a bow and a quiver of arrows off a dead guardsman, calmly took aim, and knocked out the two enemy bowmen in the tower. Then he threw a rope up and over the south rampart wall, helping Astrid, Orm, Blek, Lut, and Drott to rappel down into the courtyard to safety.

  Slowed by an onslaught of more arrows, they took cover behind the cabbage cart. Trapped, with nowhere to go and no way to help, all Dane and the others could do was watch in agony as Jarl tried in vain to defeat Thidrek. They bore witness to Jarl’s final moments of heroism. And when the awful end finally came, and his body went toppling over the battlements, disappearing from view, Dane felt a sudden pain in his chest, as if an enemy arrow had just pierced his heart.

  Moments later, Dane was shaken to his senses as Orm pulled him up onto the cabbage cart. His head clearing, Dane saw that Drott had secured a team of horses to the cart and that Astrid and the others were already aboard.

  “Ho!” Drott bellowed to the horses. He snapped the reins and the cart took off, clattering across the courtyard. Still dangerously outnumbered, with arrow fire raining down upon them, they raced past rubble and throngs of villagers streaming out the castle gates. Two Berserkers ran up raising broadswords, but Astrid flung her last axe to finish one off and Dane speared the other. Orm hurled a barrage of cabbages, knocking several more in the head, and soon they were through the castle gate and on their way to freedom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THIDREK’S THRILL FOR THE KILL

  Once past the rabble streaming from the castle, they sped up. Drott drove the horses hard down the rutted dirt road, winding round the base of the mountain toward their village, where Dane’s people were in hiding.

  Dane’s mother and the other families were in mortal danger and had to be warned. For now, like a nest of vipers disturbed, Thidrek’s death squads would be sent in all directions, wreaking vengeance on those villages that had shown the poorest attendance at the day’s festivities. And since Dane and his folk had caused the uprising and escaped, it would no doubt be Dane’s village that would first feel the brunt of Thidrek’s wrath.

  No one in the cabbage cart spoke, still grieving over Jarl’s demise.

  Dane, lost in worry, felt Astrid take his hand. Their eyes met.

  “It’s not over, is it?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  Dane shook his head no but mustered a brave smile. He pulled her close and kissed her forehead. The soft wisps of her hair brushed his lips, giving him momentary comfort.

  “Will he send men?” she asked.

  Dane grimly nodded, throwing a look back at the castle, fearing Thidrek would send more than just men.

  Back on the battlements, Thidrek was in an exhilarated rage. He’d just killed Jarl, the kid with the great hair, and watched his limp body fall into the waters of the moat. Oh, the joy of killing! With the Shield he’d felt invincible! But the girl? Where had she gone? How could she have slipped from his grasp? She was the prize he yearned to possess!

  He scanned the horizon, desperately scouring the countryside for a glimpse. And there, on the road northward, he spied Dane and Astrid escaping in a wagon with the other renegades.

  “There she is, Grelf!” he cried. “With the defiant one and his friends, in the cabbage cart!” Thidrek’s eyes were ablaze with vengeance as Grelf came rushing up, anxious to report.

  “Sire, I’m afraid the people are rioting,” said Grelf, breathless. “We’ve lost three quarters of our men, the Berserkers have deserted us, and our manpower is running dangerously low. And the shopkeepers—well, the sell-through on the merchandise wasn’t great and they all want their money back. I say we cut our losses and retreat, sir, before they overrun us and we wind up in the dungeon ourselves!”

  “Retreat? Retreat?” Thidrek’s eyes burned in their sockets, his cheeks aflame with fury. He took Grelf by the throat, choking him. “I am Thidrek the Terrifying! I don’t retreat, I attack!” Thidrek then shoved Grelf aside and turned to Redhelmet and Blackhelmet, who’d just appeared on the battlement.

  “Proceed with countdown. We launch in thirty seconds!”

  “But sire—” said Grelf, as the awful truth sank in. “The Hammer! You’re not actually thinking of using it, sir! It’s strictly a deterrent!”

  “Yes! I’m using it to deter those bloody bastards from escaping! And that girl—no one runs out on me, understand? My kingdom could use a little fireworks!” Thidrek’s eyes then went to the Hammer. “And so could I!” Mesmerized by its magical halo of light, drawn to its supernatural power, he moved, unafraid, directly into its shower of sparks, bathing in the glowing energy field, as if wishing to become one with the Hammer itself. He reached out to touch the Hammer, and his body arched backward and shook, as if seized and shaken by the gods themselves, sparks dancing across his body. Grelf heard a mad cackle issue forth from his master’s lips and then watched as Thidrek stumbled, released from the Hammer’s otherworldly grip.

  And when Thidrek turned again to face them, Grelf and his men recoiled in shock. Thidrek’s face was now the mask of a fiend, a man possessed. As if all the perverse and deviant desires inside him, all his hatred, all his destructive impulses, had been made manifest at last and could be seen upon his face, his true nature revealed. His eyes burned madly as he continued the countdown, intoxicated by the power he soon would unleash.

  “Fifteen!…Fourteen!…Thirteen!…” he shrieked, eyeing his target, doing last-second calculations as to distance and trajectory, and shouting instructions to his guardsmen as they moved the catapult into position.

  Grelf stood back in horror, now realizing where Thidrek was aiming the weapon and what he intended to do. The wagon was speeding down a road that led to a small valley of tiny villages scattered along the base of the snow-covered mountain. If the Hammer were to hit high on the mountaintop, near the outcropping of granite peaks, the resulting avalanche, comprised of both glacier ice and huge boulders, might be of such monumental proportions as to—well, it could be catastrophic. Grelf gulped. The death toll would be…in the thousands. Mass destruction, indeed. Oh, my, he thought, am I to be a party to such wholesale devastation? “Five!…Four!…Three!…” But then he thought of the unique opportunity to be had in plummeting land values, which would allow certain savvy speculators, like himself, to snap up most of the valley at bargain prices, thereby giving him the comfy retirement property he had for so long coveted.

  So he just stood and watched as Thidrek screamed, “Two!…One!…Fire!” and Redhelmet threw the launch lever and the catapult sprang loose, unleashing the unknown upon the world….

  The flight of Thor’s Hammer was like nothing Grelf had ever seen. End over end it spun, soaring through the sky, arcing ever upward on its trajectory, spinning faster and faster, blue sparks radiating off it like miniature bolts of lightning. As it reached its apex, the Hammer itself began to glow redhot from within, as if some inner force at its core had been triggered. And then an even more amazing thing happened. From directly above it, bolts of lightning shot down from the clouds and zapped the Hammer, instantly turning it whitehot and sending out a silver-and-blue light show of sparks, connecting and commingling with more jagged bolts from above, as if the Hammer were getting recharged by the gods—its source of power.

  And then far, far in the distance, at the very peak of the mountain where snow met rock, the Hammer struck, explo
ding, sending an apocalyptic cloud of fiery smoke and debris into the sky. Even miles away, the concussive sound it made was thunderous. Grelf heard a yelp of pleasure from Thidrek. And then, getting a sick feeling in the pit of his belly, Grelf saw that his worst fear was coming true. The explosive power unleashed in the Hammer had been of such an earth-shattering magnitude, half the mountainside had been blown away and was now slowly, inevitably rolling down, a gigantic wall of rock and ice that looked like it would not only swamp the wagon with Dane and Astrid, but easily engulf all the villages of the valley as well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A GIGANTIC TURN OF EVENTS

  Astrid’s hand found Dane’s and held fast. The horses pulling the cabbage cart stopped and they, too, looked up to see what had caused the thunderous noise. Was it a volcanic eruption this far north?

  “The Hammer…,” said Dane, realizing what had happened.

  And then they saw what was coming. Though the avalanche was still high above them on the steeply sloping mountainside, Dane quickly calculated that there was nothing they could do. The avalanche was too high and too wide and coming too fast for them to get out of the way, even on horseback. He grabbed the reins of the horses and urged them on, faster and faster. But in his heart he knew he was finished.

  Then the wagon wheel hit a rock and broke, and the cart itself fell apart, and Astrid, Drott, Fulnir, Blek, and Dane went tumbling to the ground, as the horses ran on with the remains of the cart dragging behind them. Instinctively taking Astrid by the hand, Dane stood there and looked up, unable to take his eyes off the descending wall of ice and rock. The sound of it was now deafening.

  No one spoke. With the certain knowledge that these were the last precious moments of his life, Dane turned for what he believed to be his final act: kissing the woman he loved. But he was surprised to see Astrid turn away and point up the slope. What now?

  Then Dane saw it too. Something moving down the mountain. It wasn’t the avalanche. It was Thrym the frost giant! Dane’s heart lifted at the sight. Obviously, he’d gotten the message and traveled south along the snowcapped range of mountains that connected his Mount Neverest to their much smaller peak, traversing in mere hours what men would take days or even weeks to travel. And now, carrying what looked to be an armload of fir trees, Thrym was bounding down the mountainside, crossing far too low below the snowline for his own safety.

  He stopped at a ridgeline at a dangerously low elevation, putting himself right in the path of the avalanche, above the spot where Dane and his friends stood. And then, Plop! Plop! Plop! The giant jammed the trees upright into the snow, one right next to the other, quickly forming a rather crude but serviceable wall, a barrier with which to brake the onrushing calamity.

  Would it work? They held their breath.

  The thundering mass of snow and rock hit the wall of trees with a deafening crash and, to Dane’s utter amazement, it held. Dane, Astrid, and the others cheered as they saw the avalanche churn to a grinding halt, the rock and ice boulders piling up behind the tree wall. Hurray! Thrym’s plan had worked! But no!

  The huge avalanche piled up and up and spilled over the tree wall. And now, like water through a spout, a mass of countless ice boulders, many more than ten feet tall, came rolling and tumbling straight for Dane and his friends, and straight for the village behind them—Dane’s village.

  All at once Thrym bounded forth—Boom! Boom! Boom!—and in one heroic leap he flung himself in front of the advancing avalanche, using his own body as a shield to block its flow. And this did work, though sadly, all too well. Hitting his body, the avalanche lost its momentum, and the onrushing rubble of rock and snow came to a rumbling stop. The giant’s entire body disappeared under a great mound of ice and trees and other fallen debris. The village was saved, but the giant had been buried alive. The last Dane had seen of Thrym, before he disappeared under the heap of ice and earthen rubble, had been the giant’s left hand, balled into a fist, bashing in vain at a boulder that had fallen on top of him, and soon that boulder too had been covered, and Thrym was gone.

  They waited, hoping for some sign of life or movement, but nothing stirred.

  Finally, Thor’s Hammer itself came tumbling end over end down the slope and landed with a thud on the pile of rubble. The long handle was dented in one or two places and the iron of the hammerhead scuffed a bit, but otherwise it was none the worse for wear, a few sparks still buzzing off it.

  The whole of the sky now eerily darkened with storm clouds. Rain began to fall, a light pitter-patter at first, spattering Dane and Astrid and the others as they ran to the mound of rubble and began to dig furiously, trying to get to the frost giant in time. Dane did not know if the wet spots on Astrid’s face were from the pelting rain or from the love she felt for the giant, and he did not ask.

  For several minutes they worked side by side in silence, digging furiously, lifting off the chunks of glacier ice and granite rock, the rain sheeting down now as the sky opened up and shed its own tears for the fallen giant. Soon they found him, lying motionless beneath the rubble, his deep-freeze sheen beginning to melt in places from having come down too far into warmer climes.

  Astrid touched his face, and a piece of his beard broke off in her hand. His features began to dissolve into watery slush. The pelting raindrops only worsened it, drenching them all and washing away the tears of those who were crying, which was pretty much everyone.

  Thidrek sat atop his horse at the rise in the road, watching this pathetic display of sentiment. Pig slop, he thought. Putting yourself out to save anyone but yourself? What a pointless waste of time and effort. This was weakness of the worst order. Feebleminded frailty. Something his father most certainly would have approved of—and at the thought of this, Thidrek spat in anger.

  Thidrek dismounted. He stood in the rain, waiting for Dane and the others to finish, a bitterness rising in the back of his throat. The boy known as Dane was to die: that was all he knew. All he craved. Drawing his sword from his scarred leather scabbard, Thidrek strode down the muddy trail toward the shambles of huts they called a village. Amid the hard rain, all Thidrek felt was the cold hatred rising inside him and the anticipation of blood about to flow.

  “You dare defy ME?”

  Dane’s whole body went rigid, the voice sending a jolt up his spine. He turned to face the one man he hated with all his heart, the man who had killed his father.

  Prince Thidrek stood in the sheeting rain, holding the Shield of Odin in his left hand, a broadsword in his right. His usual smug smirk now gone, Thidrek’s face, Dane saw, resembled a death’s head, with a cruel grin and eyes incandescent with rage.

  “Thidrek, you’re not looking too well.”

  “Well enough to kill you, boy,” Thidrek muttered, stepping toward him with purposeful strides. “It’ll be an unspeakable pleasure to rid this earth of you once and for all.”

  “Funny,” Dane said, “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  The fight then began, and a great one it was. A furious clatter of sword against shield, of steel against steel, of man against monster—at least that’s how the storytellers were later to tell of it. An epic battle between right and wrong, between him who saw love as the source of human strength and him who saw it as the source of human weakness. Armed with only a broadsword, and a dented one at that, Dane delivered his own share of terrible blows. But the Shield of Odin that Thidrek had firmly in his grasp turned away each thrust, blocking every move Dane made, no matter how much strength or speed the young man could muster.

  And as the fight grew fiercer, so did the storm, the sky turning so black with roiling thunderclouds, it blocked the sun. A great gale began to blow, taking the roofs off huts in the village, bending back trees, and blowing down fences. Soon the ground had grown so soupy with mud, the two men kept slipping and falling in it as they fought, so begrimed and bespattered with mud and slush, Dane’s friends could barely tell them apart. Those watching from the village would later
say that, in the end, all they could see were the silhouettes of two mud-darkened figures, one standing with a shield, the other on his knees, as they were illuminated in the flashes of lightning that came more and more frequently.

  Scarlet slashes of blood ran from Dane’s wounds as the gleaming purple light of the Eye of Odin stared out at him, all-seeing, all-knowing. His clothes hung in tatters from his rain-slicked body, as with his last bit of strength Dane brought his broadsword crashing into the Shield, breaking the sword in two.

  Thidrek gave a grunt of pleasure. Dane, now without any weapon or strength to continue, fell back and lay in the mud, his spirit broken. Looking up into the heavens above them, he could see that a cyclone-like funnel had descended from the lead-gray sky. He and Thidrek were standing in the very eye of the storm, the winds whipping round them with such force, they created a deafening roar.

  Then Dane saw Astrid. She’d run out to him from the safety of one of the huts she’d been watching from. Another figure—Fulnir, it was—ran behind and grabbed her, trying to pull her back to safety, but she wouldn’t budge. She stood there, fighting the winds, shouting something to Dane. But no words reached his ears, for he could hear nothing save the howling wind. Objects were being sucked up into the funnel now—leaves, twigs, chunks of ice. Then Dane saw what she was trying to do. She’d taken a knife from her boot and was reaching out with it, trying to give it to Dane. Once she saw that he saw it, she threw it; but the knife itself was so light, it was sucked straight upward into the tornado. And she was pulled back to the huts by Fulnir and out of harm’s way.

  Thidrek stepped toward Dane, raising his sword. The closer he came, the closer came the Eye of Odin, its bejeweled centerpiece agleam, Dane’s gaze fixing upon it; it seemed to be calling out to him. All the world dropped away then, and all he could hear was the shrill and wailing cry of the wind; all he could see was the glittering bits of starlight in the Eye. Then it seemed that his mind had entered the Eye itself, had become the Eye, in fact; for now, from a completely different vantage point, he could see himself lying there in the mud, the wind whipping his hair and his tattered tunic. And then even the wind seemed to fall away, and the only sound that came to him was the voice of his father intoning the words, “He who fights blindly will be defeated.”