“You might find him difficult to kill,” whispered the girl, running her fingers across Valdür’s entranced face.
“I’ll find a way,” snapped Sväla, trying to hide her fear at the men’s bizarre behaviour.
“Oh, there is a way,” replied Freydís, walking casually across the room towards another set of curtains.
Sväla rushed after her with her knife raised. “Where are you—?” she began.
Before she could finish her question, Sväla found herself being dragged back by a pair of iron-hard arms. “What’s this?” she gasped, feeling a spearhead pressing under her chin.
“Leave her be,” muttered Valdür in her ear.
“What are you doing?” she howled, unable to believe that her old friend would betray her in such a way.
Valdür shoved Sväla to the floor and pointed his spear at her. “Don’t harm this girl,” he growled, his whole body shaking with rage. “She’s innocent.”
Freydís laughed as she stepped into the next room. “Oh yes, quite innocent.”
“I won’t touch her, Valdür,” gasped Sväla, climbing carefully to her feet. She sheathed her knife and raised her hands in a placatory gesture.
Valdür watched her closely as they followed the princess into the next room.
Sväla shook her head as she faced yet another bizarre assault on her senses. The room they had entered was like the lair of some crazed taxidermist. Hissing oil lamps revealed rows of skeletal remains lining both sides of the small room. None of the corpses resembled any creature she had ever seen before. They were all vaguely reptilian, with long, lizard-like skulls and spiny, serpentine tails but all of them had been mangled into unnatural shapes, with arching, wasted wings and upright, humanoid postures. Behind the skeletons were floor-to-ceiling shelves, crammed with hundreds of spherical glass jars, each holding smaller lizards suspended in a cloudy solution.
It was not so much the sight of the rotting, waxen creatures that unnerved Sväla, it was the sound they were making. The body cavities of the standing ones had been strung with piano wire, and as they watched Sväla’s approach they jerked into motion, plucking at the strings and creating a chorus of menacing arpeggios. As the larger figures played, the ones in the jars began to twitch, opening and closing their mouths in unison and producing a gurgled, liquid refrain.
The princess noticed Sväla’s dismay and smiled, throwing her arm around one of the spindly shapes. “A wedding gift,” she sighed, before hurrying on through the next pair of curtains.
As the men hurried after the princess, Sväla stumbled to a halt and looked back the way she had come. “Ungaur,” she muttered, with a rush of guilt. Indecision gripped her for a second, then she rushed back into the drawing room.
The first thing she noticed was an awful smell of rotting food. She looked around in confusion but could not see where the appalling stench was coming from. The corpses of the fallen Norscans and the two nymphs could not have decayed so quickly and although there were plates of half-eaten food scattered around the room, they could not account for such a dreadful stink.
Then Sväla noticed something else strange.
Ungaur had vanished.
She scoured the room for the shaman, but could see no sign of him. She dashed over to the spot where he had fallen and noticed that there was a smear of blood across the polished floorboards, leading back towards the dining room.
“Ungaur?” she cried, stepping through the next set of curtains and looking down the length of the long table. The charred head was still on the plate grinning back at her, but there was no sign of the shaman. She cursed under her breath. “I’ll be back soon,” she cried, without much hope of being heard, then hurried back through the rooms after the princess.
Sväla clamped her hands over her ears as she raced through the taxidermy room and pulled aside the next set of curtains.
She found herself back outside the palace and gasped at the bitter cold. She shielded her face as she stumbled out into the storm, blind for a few moments as the snow lashed into her eyes. Then she saw a group of figures, huddled together by an ornate metal railing and she realised she was standing on a broad balcony, hung out over the moonlit wastes.
“We’re over here, my angry little savage,” called the princess, waving Sväla over to the railings.
Sväla pulled her furs over her head and struggled through the icy weather. As she reached the group of figures, she saw that one of her men was sprawled at the feet of the princess, with blood pooling from a deep gash in his throat.
She drew her knife and looked at Valdür and the others in confusion. They were standing in a semicircle next to the princess, whispering urgently to each other.
“What happened?” she cried, crouching in the snow to examine the fallen man. He was dead. “Valdür? Svärd? What happened?”
The men ignored her and kept whispering, but Sväla noticed that Valdür’s javelin was dripping with fresh blood. She looked back at the princess and saw that she had wrapped her pale skin in a long coat of glossy black sable and was watching her closely from within the deep hood.
“They will do that for a while,” the princess explained, nodding at the men. “Then one of them will kill the others,” she shrugged, “so he can keep me all to himself.”
“You said there was a way to kill Sigvald.” growled Sväla through clenched teeth. “What is it?”
The princess ignored her question and pointed up at the palace. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” she asked.
Sväla turned and looked up at the tower looming over them. It was hundreds of feet tall, gilded from top to bottom and built in the semblance of a willowy, female figure. Far above, in the snow-laden clouds, Sväla could just make out the figure’s elegant hands, cradling a glittering, winged heart.
“They just call it the Sixth Tower now,” explained the princess, stepping to Sväla’s side, “but when Sigvald built it, he named it after me.” She pointed up at the distant face that crowned the tower. “Do you recognise me?”
Sväla nodded vaguely, and placed a hand on her knife, deciding to waste no more time on the vile woman. But before she could even draw the blade she noticed that all the men had stopped whispering and were staring at her. She sighed and moved her hand away from the weapon. “Yes, yes,” she said. “I understand. The tower is you.” She turned to face the princess. “What do you want?”
“What do I want? I seem to remember that you blundered into my chambers, peasant. I seem to remember that you butchered my servants and hurled abuse at me.”
Sväla continued gritting her teeth but could think of nothing to say. To kill the woman was clearly impossible, at least while the men were watching, but she could not simply abandon Svärd and Valdür.
Freydís stepped closer. “Sigvald no longer builds towers for me, peasant, do you understand? He can barely remember my name. His love has burned itself out, just as surely as all his other passions.” Her voice grew shrill as she pointed at the billowing curtains. “He’s left me here to rot, along with all his other toys.” She grabbed Sväla’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Can you even understand what that means? He’s betrayed me!” she screamed, spitting into Sväla’s face and shoving her back and forth. “I gave him everything. I sacrificed my own family to assuage his wretched lust. And now the devious, inconstant, lying bastard has left me to die.”
Sväla shrugged herself free of the princess’ grip and backed away, shaking her head in confusion.
“I want you to take me with you!” cried Freydís, rushing after Sväla. “That’s what I want! Do you understand? I know exactly how you can kill him and I’ll tell you everything—all his shameful little weaknesses.” Her lips pulled back into a dreadful snarl. “Just take me with you, peasant, let me be by your side when you gouge his rotten heart out.”
Sväla’s head reeled. “You want to kill your husband?”
The princess nodded eagerly and closed her eyes for a second, savouring the idea.
Sväla looked over at the bickering men. Their voices were now raised and Svärd was jabbing his finger into the chest of one of the older men. “If I agreed to take you with me, can you bring them to their senses? I can’t take you anywhere without the help of my people.”
Freydís nodded again and swapped her snarl for a girlish grin. “Easily done,” she said, reaching into her furs and drawing out a length of silk. She stretched the material across her face and knotted it behind her head, obscuring her delicate features. Then she stepped over to the men and spoke to each of them separately, gently stroking their faces as she whispered in their ears.
The men’s expressions softened as the veiled princess spoke to them, and as they shuffled back towards Sväla, they were all smiling enigmatically, as though in possession of a wonderful secret.
“Are you with me now?” said Sväla, unable to hide the disgust in her voice.
The men nodded in reply, but only Valdür spoke. “If we are to rescue the princess, we must find the others. We’re too few to guard her properly.”
“Rescue?” gasped Sväla, looking over at Freydís.
The princess laughed.
Seeing the anger welling in Valdür’s face, Sväla raised her hands and nodded. “Yes, you’re right. We must return to the main gate. The princess is going to lead us to Sigvald.” She frowned at Freydís. “We’ll need food before we can—”
Sväla’s words were cut short as one of the Norscans howled in pain.
As the man flew back into the shadows, with a tentacle wrapped around his head, Sväla recognised the same stink of rotting food that she had noticed earlier.
Freydís cursed and backed away.
The Norscans crouched low with their weapons drawn and peered into the whirling snow.
They all heard the sound of crunching bone and a muffled, terrified scream, then there was silence.
“What was that?” hissed Sväla.
Freydís shook her head in disgust. “One of Sigvald’s lackeys. My husband wanted to be sure I—”
Another tentacle flew out of the darkness, this time from another direction. It lashed itself around Svärd’s neck and jolted him forwards.
This time, Valdür was ready. He jammed his spear into the pale, undulating flesh and pinned it to the floor.
The others followed suit, skewering the twitching limb with their weapons.
Svärd grasped the feeler with both hands and heaved it towards him.
A bellowing roar filled the night as a massive, bulbous head swung towards them through the snow.
The Norscans gasped in horror at the sight of Ansgallür the Famished. His globular, gelatinous eyes were rolling in pain as he unfurled dozens more of the tentacles from beneath his chin, and his gaping mouth blasted them with the smell of rotten meat as he continued to howl.
The Norscans cried out in disgust as cold, flabby limbs wrapped around their necks and torsos.
There was a loud crack and one of them slumped in the monster’s grip, his neck broken.
Now there were only three of the men left, each of them struggling to turn their long spears towards the limbs at their throats.
Sväla had no such problem. She rammed her iron knife down into the rubbery muscle, sending a torrent of warm blood up over her chin. The limb jerked back and, rather than holding it in place, Sväla allowed it to recoil, taking her with it, so that she hurtled towards the monstrous head. As she neared the bulbous shape, she launched herself at one of its eyes, jamming her blade straight into the saucer-sized pupil. Blood and fluid poured over her as she slapped against the ruptured eyeball.
The monster lurched back towards the railing with another furious cry, dragging its victims with it and hurling one of them from the balcony, sending him spinning down towards the snowy wastes below.
Sväla struggled desperately to free herself and see who had fallen. Only two of the men remained and it was impossible to see which. “Svärd?” she screamed. “Valdür?” Her stomach lurched as the howling monster lifted her up into the air and drew back its arm to throw her out into the storm.
Then the limb around her waist stiffened, before dropping her back down onto the icy flagstones.
As the storm screamed around them, the monster’s limbs thrashed wildly through the snow. It was hard to see exactly what was happening, but Sväla had the distinct impression that the head had rolled onto its side.
She wrenched herself free of the tentacle and staggered back from the railing, raising her hand to her eyes in an attempt to see more clearly.
Svärd and Valdür were still alive. The two men were still struggling desperately to free themselves from Ansgallür’s grip.
The monster had slumped back against the railing and there was blood pouring from its gaping mouth as well as its eye.
There was a third figure standing in front of the head and, with a jolt of shock, Sväla realised it was Freydís. She had grabbed a spear from the floor and thrust it into her jailer’s mouth.
As Ansgallür leant back from the princess, gargling blood, the railing buckled and screeched beneath his weight.
“Send him off the edge!” cried Sväla, charging forwards and slamming her shoulder into Ansgallür’s vast face.
Valdür and Svärd followed her lead and shoved the head back against the railing so that the metal shrieked and bowed out from the stone, causing the head to slump back even further.
Freydís wrenched the spear from Ansgallür’s mouth and grinned triumphantly, blowing her guardian a farewell kiss as she planted her foot in his face and shoved.
With a final grinding moan, the metal collapsed and Ansgallür tumbled from view.
Sväla let out a victorious howl as the face span away from her into the storm. Then she noticed a smaller figure, trapped in Ansgallür’s grip as he fell: Valdür the Old, still straining to free himself as he plummeted to his death.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Clouds flickered, pulsing with mercurial light as they gave birth to a single, drifting shadow. Far above the tumbling peaks hung a landscape so strange that no mortal eyes could ever have perceived it. The shadow, however, lifted its gaze to the dreamlike canopy of sounds and shapes, pausing for a moment to admire the view, then it continued on its way.
After a while, the shadow became aware that it had form and shape. Vague, ethereal legs were powering it across the clouds and a jumble of half-formed memories filled its head.
As the lights flashed and failed, they wrenched the shadow in and out of being. In the moments of pitch darkness, the shadow felt itself dissipate and die, only to be reborn in the next lurid burst of crimson or green.
The shadow travelled on for what seemed like an eternity, climbing and rippling across the surface of the clouds with an inexplicable sense of purpose. Over time, the flashes of light became more sporadic, and the shadow felt itself slipping back into mindlessness.
Just as it thought it might be consumed by oblivion, the shadow spotted something unusual on the next bank of clouds: a small, circular structure, built from mud and straw and topped with a cone-shaped thatch.
The shadow paused, haunted by a memory that cowered at the back of its thoughts, unwilling to fully reveal itself. Then it hurried towards the building, determined not to drift back into nothingness—at least not yet.
As the shadow washed over the walls of the crudely built hovel, it heard a piercing shriek. A sudden urgency gripped the silhouette as it slid beneath the gnarled, wooden door.
The tiny building was filled with noise and movement. A woman lay sprawled on a bed of furs gasping for breath, pale and trembling with exhaustion. Her sweaty hair was plastered across her face as she looked up at the tribesman standing over her.
“A boy,” grunted the man, peering at the bloody, struggling shape in his hands.
The shadow recoiled in shock at the sight of the man’s face.
The tribesman was shockingly familiar. His brutal, shaven head was crowned with a short Mohi
can and pierced with claws and bones, and his powerful, muscular body was naked, apart from a filthy loincloth and a crudely hammered piece of iron over his right shoulder. The shadow rippled over his face, tracing the harsh lines and the scarred flesh in an effort to place him.
As the shadow studied the scene, it felt a familiar emotion: an unpleasant, gnawing pain deep in its soul. The sensation grew to such an unbearable degree that the shadow hurried on, slipping through a second door at the back of the hut.
Rather than returning to empty clouds, as it expected, the shadow found itself washing across mounds of corpses. A sea of fallen tribesmen was spread out before it, covering the horizon with broken limbs, splintered shields and pale, grimacing death masks. As the shadow drifted across the ruptured flesh, it recognised some of the men’s faces, but there was movement and noise on the horizon and it did not pause to investigate.
Not all of the tribesmen were dead. As the shadow hurried on, it picked out a crowd of warriors, howling victoriously and thrusting their javelins at the shifting landscape above. At the heart of the group was the man with the Mohican. The shadow looked back towards the hut in confusion and saw that it had vanished. Turning back to the crowd of cheering men, it saw that the tribesmen had lifted their chieftain up onto their shoulders and were dancing back and forth with him.
The man laughed and lay back across their hands, closing his eyes and revelling in their praise. His body was covered with fresh wounds and bruises, but he seemed oblivious to anything other than his victory. After a few minutes he demanded they put him down and waved to a small figure, trailing after the others.
“My son!” he cried, eliciting a fresh cheer from his men. “Have you ever seen such a fighter?”
The shadow rippled over the slender youth, to examine him more closely.
The boy was only ten or eleven at most but his wiry frame was knotted with muscle, and already carried several impressive scars. His blue eyes flashed with pride as he lifted his bloody javelin in reply, laughing along with the others and shaking his long mane of blond hair, as the men lifted him up onto their shoulders and hurled him into the air.
[Heroes 04] - Sigvald Page 28