The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1)

by Tony Daniel

  But Sigurth fooled them all. He covered himself in ashes from the mead hall and swore an oath of revenge:

  I have heard the Horn of Haki cry forth from the flames

  I swear upon that mighty soul-stirrer

  I will break the shields of the Saxehalter

  Beat those bright knives from their hands

  Dull my blade against the bones of cowards

  Stuff their mouths with mead hall ash

  And make their eyes a meal for ravens.

  Then he led his father’s surviving war band to Arnul, and

  Sigurth’s bright reaper dripped red with battle sweat.

  He sent many a weapon-wounded warrior down Helheim’s road.

  Yes, the blood swans fed well in the gore cradle that day.

  But I’m not Sigurth, Wulf thought. Sigurth was a hero, one of the great ones. I don’t want to cover myself with ashes and swear I’ll get my revenge. I’m…a defender. I don’t like to attack.

  This shouldn’t be happening.

  What if I was more like Sigurth…what would Sigurth do?

  Wulf knew the answer to that.

  “Okay.” Wulf turned to the war leader. “What I want is to turn the river red with the blood of Sandhaven so it fills the Chesapeake,” he said. “That’s what I want. But what I need is for somebody to help me to come up with a way to eject these invaders and bring peace back to the mark. Will you help me do that?”

  To Wulf’s amazement, on a signal from the war leader all three of the buffalo men sank down to their knees before him. The smoke in the hut seemed to churn around them, as if they were ghostly warriors appearing out of some kind of supernatural mist.

  “We pledge to do this, Lord Wulfgang,” said Tupakkalaatu. He looked at the others. “On our lives and lands.”

  “Aye,” the other two answered softly. “We swear.”

  The war leader rose and turned his gaze down at Wulf. “We will also see what we can do about changing the color of the river to red, m’lord.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five:

  The Law

  Ulla von Dunstig would have to keep her promise.

  That was the law.

  Now that Gunnar is dead, she owes that promise to me.

  Her duty is to obey. Mine is to bind her duchy to the kingdom.

  Would he enjoy marrying Ulla von Dunstig? That didn’t matter.

  Trigvi von Krehennest always did his duty. That was who he was. His nanny swore he’d been that way from his birth twenty years ago. For better or worse he couldn’t get away from feeling a sense of obligation to see things through no matter what he actually felt about them. Like now. He was doing his duty by watching something truly unpleasant that he really wished he could have avoided.

  He was watching Lars Bauch, his old college tutor, have his mind torn apart.

  Trigvi had taken his degree from Klugheit College at Raukenrose University, and Bauch had been his favorite tutor back in the day. Now his old teacher was on his knees and holding his head in pain.

  Standing in front of the docent was the undead being named Wuten. The draugar was entirely coal black, including his hair, his eyes, and his clothes. Everything. It didn’t look like skin. More like black marble. Trigvi had the feeling that if the draugar were cut open, his entire innards would be black as well.

  Especially his heart, Trigvi thought.

  If you could muster the courage to look at the draugar long enough—which Trigvi had done only when the draugar was paying attention to other matters—you could see that he had the head of a half-man, half-vulture. He had a curved beak. Yet he was a man in form. His manlike hair was cropped short, and Trigvi wondered for a moment how exactly the draugar cut it. Wuten was impervious to most weapons, including razors.

  He must use his own knife, Trigvi thought. What else would cut through his hair?

  Then there was the smell. Like a maggot-ridden corpse. Trigvi had never seen a man rot, but he had seen the rotten corpses of birds, cattle, and dogs. The same odor surrounded the draugar. It made you constantly fight the urge to puke.

  Bauch was terrified. Trigvi caught only the edge of the thought. The draugar was able to direct his thoughts like a spear into the mind of anyone who was a peg down from him within the hierarchy of the Talaia faith—and that meant everybody.

  Bauch groaned. “Please,” he said. “Your orders. We obeyed. All of us.”

  The draugar slowly nodded. Bauch collapsed onto his stomach as if his strings had been cut. While on the ground, Bauch sobbed, either because he was relieved or was in worse agony.

  Bauch had been the one who introduced Trigvi to the host. There had been only celestis, red-cake, back then. He’d played around with the substance in college. He’d been eighteen, and away from home for the first time—away from his father and brothers. Finally. He wanted to be his own man. So when Bauch secretly offered him the celestis along with a cup of blood to dip the wafer into—

  “Try it, m’lord. If it doesn’t leave you feeling more enlightened, more lucid, then you don’t have to partake anymore, and we’ll forget about it, all right?”

  He’d taken the wafer, dipped it in the blood, and eaten it.

  “Now I need a thimble full of your blood,” Bauch said. “Don’t worry. It’s symbolic.”

  So he’d cut his palm and put in some of his own. Share and share alike. That was the Talaia way, wasn’t it?

  It hadn’t worked out like he’d thought it would. At all. He was a bit ashamed to think that he hadn’t used the mind-sharing ability given by the red-cake to pick up knowledge or learn from others, mind to mind. Mostly he and his friends had used it to play pranks on townies and tried to dominate each other for a laugh. There had even been a chart going around on who was “down” and who was “up” in the domination-submission hierarchy.

  Despite what the docents had said, there was no equality. It was always one or the other for everybody.

  Now the draugar was demonstrating to Trigvi the true power of the new substance called ater-cake. The docents who had joined the Adherents may have thought of themselves as a collective, a sort of big mind thinking the thoughts of a divine being, but the draugar was showing them something Trigvi had also come to experience firsthand.

  What it was like to be mastered by an overpowering mind. Now the docent collective was bloodservant to Wuten.

  “Up,” the draugar hissed at Bauch. Bauch struggled back to his knees, his head bowed.

  “Master,” the docent mumbled. “I obey. We all obey. Please don’t hurt us anymore, we beg—”

  “The Hundred. Are they still hidden?”

  “As you commanded.”

  “And the hammer?”

  “Still not located. We’ve torn the library apart for clues.”

  Bauch began to tremble. He threw his head back and let out a scream. After what seemed a long time, although it must have been only a few eyeblinks, the scream stopped. Bauch flopped down on this belly once again.

  “Find it.”

  “Yes,” whimpered Bauch. They were within a league of the university, and so within range of the draugar’s mental willpower. Trigvi could imagine all the members of the Adherents in similar positions, down on the floor praying for the pain in their heads to stop.

  “I come,” Wuten said.

  The draugar turned to Trigvi, and the prince started back in surprise, even though he’d expected the call to attention in his mind. The mental presence of the draugar felt as if the being’s death smell had gotten inside him. Trigvi shuddered, and once again suppressed the urge to vomit.

  He had to obey. Yet didn’t want to resist. This was duty. It was his responsibility to work with the draugar, as his father had commanded. He was also crown prince of Sandhaven, new heir to the kingdom.

  The kingdom his father had secretly committed to serve Rome for the promise of rule of the north.

  Trigvi nodded in salute and spoke softly to the dark being.

  “Draugar Wuten,” he said. �
�It sounds like your Hundred are ready in the university catacombs. My men are ready, too. It’s time for Sandhaven to punish these animal lovers for what they did to my brother. When do we attack?”

  “First light,” the draugar replied, looking Trigvi in the eyes.

  He doesn’t blink, Trigvi thought. He just stares.

  “And you’ll be with us?”

  “I go to the Hundred.” The draugar turned back to the teacher still lying on the ground. He poked a toe into the docent’s side. “Undress.”

  Trigvi watched as his old docent stripped himself naked. The draugar took Bauch’s scholarly robe and put it on.

  Trigvi turned away.

  He did not enjoy watching Bauch suffer. But what they were doing here was not a game. He was keeping a promise he’d made to himself and to the law.

  Not to his father, or even to his brother. Blood and bones, no! The law.

  “I want you to make that land scream for what he did to my Gunnar,” King Siggi had said to him. “You’ll do that for me. Unless you don’t have the guts…or the heart.”

  They should scream while paying us taxes, Trigvi had thought.

  “Of course I will, Father,” he’d answered.

  “You don’t sound very convincing.”

  “I will do what I say,” Trigvi replied.

  King Siggi had gazed at him a moment—not too differently from the draugar’s stare. Then his father nodded. “Dutiful. Not much of a man, but dutiful. Your brother used to say so.”

  Yes, and Gunnar had always delivered the words with a sarcastic grin, Trigvi thought. Gunnar could make it sound like “dutiful” was the worst thing in the world to be, instead of the best.

  “I believe in the law.”

  His father had smiled at that and muttered, “The law is what the law-givers say it is.” He wore the same kind of sarcastic smile as Gunnar.

  To cold hell with King Siggi.

  To get the blood price from Shenandoah was required by law and honor. Blood spilled had to be paid for, if not in gold, then in the death and suffering of the offending family. This was the law that held kingdoms together and kept balance.

  Through the flaps of the headquarters tent, Trigvi could see it was dark outside. Dawn was a quarter watch away. Soon Raukenrose would scream, just like King Siggi wanted.

  Which didn’t mean he always followed his father’s commands. Siggi had said to him to “take care” of Adelbert von Dunstig. The fool had come with an offer to pay for Gunnar’s blood with land and silver. He’d known Adelbert when he was studying at Halbinsel Academy, and Trigvi had looked up to the young lord who loved the sea.

  He’d hurried and met Adelbert’s company before he’d crossed the border into Sandhaven. At a nearby inn, he’d listened to the proposal Adelbert brought to pay the blood price for Gunnar. It was generous. Land, and lots of it.

  His father might have taken the offer before. But now Sandhaven’s duty was to Rome.

  The draugar was the enforcer of this bond. He’d brought the ater-cake that allowed King Siggi to truly take control of the minds of the court and of his guard.

  The price was finding the hammer. Whatever it took.

  I am the one who brought the celestis to Sandhaven from the university, Trigvi thought. I am the one who started our transformation from barbarity into a civil society.

  That was why he’d balanced conflicting duties and dealt with Adelbert in a civilized way.

  Trigvi had slaughtered Adelbert’s company of soldiers, yes. But he had Adelbert sent to be sold as an indentured on the Krehennest wharves. The gang sergeant had chained the lord and marched him back to Krehennest, where he would be sold to a ship bound for the Old Countries. Adelbert’s contract, like all the indentured, called for him to serve the ship’s master for twenty years. Most of those twenty years he’d spend chained below deck to a rowing bench and an oar.

  You wanted the life of a sailor, Adelbert, Trigvi thought. Now you’ve got it.

  This was fair. Adelbert von Dunstig had not killed Gunnar, so he did not have to die. Trigvi could still hardly believe the actual facts, but the youngest brother, Wulfgang von Dunstig, had done the deed. Unlike Adelbert, Wulfgang von Dunstig had to pay with his life.

  “Burn the boy alive,” his father had ordered. “Do it slowly in front of his father. Make him howl.”

  “I’ll see to his execution, Father.”

  It wouldn’t be burning. The law was very clear on what a proper blood price ought to be for a murdered heir. The killer was to be sealed in a box of stout oak with the top nailed shut. The box was to be placed in a hole twenty hands deep. The hole was to be filled with dirt and stones. After that, the dirt was to be run over with horses until it was packed tight.

  Wuten took Bauch’s university robe in one hand. With the other, he swung a crossbow on a strap from behind his back. He took aim at the huddled form on the ground.

  “Wait,” Trigvi said.

  The draugar looked at him curiously. His gaze was even scarier when he wasn’t giving commands.

  “Killing him is a waste,” Trigvi continued carefully. “Let me put a pike in his hands and send him to the lines.”

  Suddenly the draugar was in Trigvi’s mind, probing. He was frozen in place. He felt as if a knife were scraping at his skin, flaying it off. But from the inside.

  Thou ask’st that I show mercy?

  Trigvi tried to bury any feeling he had for his old tutor somewhere deep. Not that the draugar couldn’t get to it if he wanted. But perhaps he’d overlook it, like soldiers missed a child hidden in an attic.

  The man’s mind is broken. I thought at least he might serve us by stopping arrows.

  A long pause. Trigvi felt like his insides were burning.

  Then the draugar was out of his mind.

  Wuten slung the crossbow behind his back again.

  “Very well,” the draugar said. “I go to release the Hundred.”

  Trigvi nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak without a trembling voice.

  Wuten slipped out of the tent entrance without another word.

  Trigvi followed behind and stood in the tent entrance, watching him go. The slightest pink shone against the black of night. Not time to attack just yet. But very soon.

  Trigvi called in his guards.

  “Get this man some clothes and a weapon,” he told the guards. Trigvi looked down at his old docent. “Give him to Zorn’s company, I think. Tell the captain to place him at the front when he attacks.”

  The guards dragged away Bauch. He was still whimpering.

  Yes. That would do.

  He would create balance. Order.

  Clean up the mess others make.

  The mess Gunnar made.

  Gunnar was selfish. I’m a fair man. Balanced. Ulla von Dunstig will see that.

  I will treat her so much better than Gunnar.

  She’s a duke’s daughter. She’ll be reasonable.

  Maybe she will one day love me.

  We all have our duties to perform.

  I do.

  So does Ulla von Dunstig.

  Chapter Twenty-Six:

  The Earl

  Wulf looked down at his father. His face was very pale. The duke lay on the buffalo rug pallet in the wise woman’s wigwam. A small fire burned in a nearby corner.

  His father seemed to be sleeping peacefully. His chest was covered with bandages. It rose and fell normally, but there was a rattle in the duke’s throat. Every third or fourth breath the duke would gasp for air.

  “He has wandered down the last lonely trail, but he dassn’t want to go the whole way yet,” the wise woman said. Her Kaltish had a full-on west-valley accent, but Wulf could understand her pretty well. He could also tell she was smiling. He’d only recently figured out that the buffalo people could smile. It was something you had to look carefully to see—the smallest upturn at the edges of their mouths, and their nostrils flaring out a little wider.

  “She means that he almost die
d,” Ravenelle said. “But she’s pulled him back from the brink.”

  “This little southerner knows herbs,” said the wise woman, nodding toward Ravenelle. “Said she learnt from an elf.”

  “Saeunn showed me a few things,” Ravenelle said to Wulf.

  Wulf pointed toward his father. “Will he be all right?”

  “His mind is addled, Lord. That won’t change.”

  “But the wounds,” Wulf replied. “Can you maybe tell me when he’ll wake up?”

  The wise woman shrugged her shaggy shoulders. “He’ll take a bit of broth today,” she answered.

  “Will he really be aware then? I mean—”

  “What Wulf is asking,” said Ravenelle, “is when will Duke Otto be awake enough to tell him what to do?”

  The wise woman shook her head. She was not smiling now. “That matter’s in the hands of the divine ones and the dragon. Never, maybe.”

  “He’s got to wake up.”

  “No. Rest is what he’s got to do. This man wakes too soon, he’ll go back to sleep forever.”

  Wulf knelt and put a hand on his father’s chest. Puidenlehdet, the wise woman, had taken him out of his bloody clothes somehow, and he was dressed in a cotton nightshirt. His bandages were made of the same material. The smell of fresh herbs from under the bandages was strong.

  “You have a shadow on the heart, Lord,” said the wise woman softly. She nodded toward Ravenelle. “The southern princess, she goes with you. To take care of you. Those she-men that got brought in, they can help me.”

  She-men meant human women. There were four lady’s maids from the castle who had survived the raid. Two of the maids were wounded, but none too badly, and the wise woman had treated them.

  “Okay,” Wulf said. “I’ll go. Soon.”

  “You’re not doin’ any good here.” She looked to Ravenelle. “You find him and you some food, eh?”

  Ravenelle did not seem at all irritated by the order from the wise woman. She reached down and tugged Wulf to his feet again.

  “She’s absolutely right,” Ravenelle said. “You look famished, von Dunstig.”