“I am but a noble, you are a queen, and I share none of my mother’s greed and insolence,” Shaduril said, though the look on her face was tight with indignation.
“I don’t believe you,” Lisar said simply. “And I don’t want you. I will have you locked below, until Balic decides what is to be done with you.”
I stepped in. Lisar turned in shock. I bowed. “A moment, my lady,” I said and walked towards them. Lisar took a cautious step away and Shaduril winked at me.
“What are you—“ Lisar began, but I waved her down. The eyes behind her mask enlarged with fury.
“This will be worth seeing,” I murmured, and wished I were right.
I stopped before her Shaduril, gazing at her pretty face, and I knew I’d miss it.
I moved with lighting speed, and grasped her ears, and tore them off, along with the magical earrings that let one take any female form.
Mir stood there, shocked, in her robes.
I couldn’t know her reasons aiding me, but I could guess. Mir, so hated by Balic and the others had used Shaduril and her earrings to meet with Aten-Sur, terrified she might be executed, trying to avoid any orders they might give her. Then, she had decided to take Shaduril’s face, since she wanted to glory of killing Baduhanna, and she had helped me to get past Dansar’s Grave, close to Baduhanna. Oh, she had enjoyed killing Aten-Sur. Too much. Aten-Sur had thought she’d risk much, and she had.
Her eyes were huge with shock, and I rolled away, as many things happened.
Lisar didn’t hesitate. A roaring inferno left her hands, as the Queen of the Draugr attacked the draugr she had sworn to kill.
Mir fell aside, her hand moving, as she sought to answer. The fire from Mir’s hands roared at Lisar’s chest, and dissipated. I backed off to stand next to a desk, and looked on as the two draugr attacked each other savagely.
“Help me!” Mir roared, as Lisar’s fire consumed her robe, her leg and arm, no matter how fast she was moving. Her spells were doing nothing more to Lisar, except to make the protective force all the more visible.
“Die,” I hissed.
“You think you can beat her alone?” she roared and yelped, as she fell down stairs.
Lisar stepped to the doorway, and that’s when I stuffed my hand in a bag. I came up with the last of bombs I had taken from Quiss’s ship.
I threw it.
The thing flew in the air with pinpoint accuracy, and shattered against the draugr’s back and the spell that covered her.
A boom rocked the tower. Lisar yelped and fell to the darkness after Mir. I saw, for an instant, how her robe was shredded, and her helmet had fallen off. Her naked rear and back were blackened, but I wasn’t sure if the wounds had really hurt her. The bomb had been a powerful thing, but apparently only made the draugr mad. I heard her cursing below.
I surged forward. I lifted the sword, and heard Mir roar in agony in the stairway.
Then there was a shadow on the doorway. A naked female body, adorned with jewelry and a bone necklace entered.
I surged.
The Queen’s hands moved, and the room was illuminated in a terrible, bright light. I roared in pain, as the light stabbed my very being. It hurt like thousand Lifegivers, and made me rock back to the wall with all my strength.
I fell though the wall.
That saved my life, because a spell followed me. The power of hurtling air tore over my prone body, and slapped inside the room I had fallen in. It flattened three men, who had been getting up from a table. They slammed into a wall with bone crushing force. They had been scribes, likely.
I saw her looming in the broken doorway. Her eyes were glowing with anger and the mysterious power blazed around her, a sphere of energy gaining red color with her rage. She stepped forward. “King Maskan,” she said stiffly. “I’ll capture Mir in a bit, but I guess I have to pay attention to the jotun, first. How many of my kind have you killed?”
“Only a few,” I answered, backpedaling, before I remembered what I was, and changed. Raven fluttered away from the pool of fire which opened where I had been lying. The terrible draugr was casting a new spell, and the window I was winging for turned into an inferno. I dodged in a flurry of feathers, slammed to the curtains, toppled over to a crushed desk, and changed again, hardening my skin into thick pelt of a lizard, a Sauk, with claws the size of swords.
Her eyes widened inside the helmet, and she actually shrieked, as I charged across the floor, tail slapping at furniture, hissing.
I jumped on her, hoping to tear her head off with a single swipe of my claws.
I was hurtled back to the room, through a bed, another desk, roaring with pain of the barrier burning around her. She was chuckling, and I heard her stepping into the room, crunching glass and rubble under her shredded boots. I pushed myself to my knees, and I realized I was man sized again; my armor sizzling with fires, and there was something on my cheek. It was a wound, running across my already burnt forehead to my jaw, bleeding terribly, and my ear was half torn.
“Pretty boys are unsuitable kings,” she said. “And you should not look good when we bury you in the pyre of Dagnar, upon my coronation. I want there to be a corpse of an enemy king, and you shall look like a warrior king, indeed!”
She was delusional, paranoid, half mad, I decided, and had been like that probably ever since she had died. I snorted, spitting blood. “Balic promised it to dozen others, you fool. Did you know Aten-Sur was there? I think he expected to have it as well.”
“You lie!”
“No, but you are beyond reasoning,” I said. “You will get nothing. You have done nothing to get Dagnar. There are others who fought there.”
“Perhaps,” she said, laughing inside her mask, “the one who empties the throne, is the best fit to sit on it? Alas, for you, and I care not what you planned to do with the rabble outside the walls, but both you and your Aesir bitch shall fall today. But thank you for leading Mir to me! I have wanted to kill her ever since I heard of her.” She was braiding together a mighty spell, the slight tremble in her arms made it clear.
I slipped a ring into my finger.
The look in her eyes was one of confusion.
She took steps forward, and then turned around to see six Maskans, all staring at her, all in different postures. I nearly forgot to move, expecting the mirages to do so for me. She whirled in an arc, summoned a thin, fiery whip with six heads. The whip slapped around to hit two of the mirages. She stiffened, horrified, as she figured out she should have struck at the space she had seen me last.
I was moving already.
A spell left my hands, an intricate, brutally twisting spell, filled with coldest ice of Nifleheim, the terrible winds and frost, woven into a lethal death.
The ground under her froze.
The floor and the air itself turned frigid. The spell grasped her legs, then her knees, and advanced to her naked waist, consuming her. She gasped, and turned to look at me. She was beautiful as the Lifegiver’s light, her skin coppery, the thick dark locks billowing far to her back. The beauty didn’t hide the snarling evil she was, as she fought the spell.
She lifted her hands, and pointed them at me.
My ring-spell had dissipated.
Before she could, the ice conquered her chest. The fiery energies around her pulsed angrily, her bone necklace glowed, and something exploded.
The room rocked.
I fell with rubble, tumbled down, and hit the floor below hard, then careened down again amidst a rain of stone. I was sure the whole tower would come down on our heads.
When it was over, I was three floors down, laying on a pile of rubble. Above me, yawned a half destroyed tower, with thick timbers and precariously hanging stone and furniture peeking on three levels. The sky was visible high above. Bits of stone still crumbling.
I had to move. I turned my head, didn’t see the enemy Queen, but instead, saw her helmet. I grasped for it, delighted my arms worked, and pulled it from the rubble, holding onto it.
Screams of warning filled the fortress. Men were running, hollering, and I knew I was nearly out of time.
I concentrated, and felt my bones moving. I felt my skin changing, and my gear altering into that of the queen. The deception was perfect, but the pain was not helping me keep it. I could barely lift myself. I was terribly hurt, but I tried my best to get up. I put on the helmet. I did my best to sit up. I saw Mir.
She was trapped beneath a huge stone, and was moving, her legs crushed.
I got up, and tottered forward. I lifted her head, and looked into her eyes. “Wait. Don’t go anywhere.”
She actually chuckled and shook her head. “You won. You did.”
“I did,” I said painfully.
I walked to the courtyard, where I stood with terrible anger, as the two thousand troops stared at me. I lifted my hand, and silence fell. “Balic is coming. The enemy doesn’t know it, but they sent an assassin. The jotun is buried under the rubble.” My voice was anything but feminine, but I was also hurt, the shriek hard to ignore. The legionnaires were shouting curses at their enemy. I lifted a hand towards the West. “The bastards tried to kill me. But, we shall get the last laugh. Balic sent a message. He is close, just over the hill. You will march out there, and slaughter them, with Balic. Do it.”
“The dverger?” asked a high officer, with a gold helmet. “And you sound strange, my lady. Are you sure there is such an order from the High King? They are—”
“Coming. The enemy is going to fall, as Balic is near,” I said, with as much conviction as I could, my voice cracking. I stepped forward, and faced the man. “March the army out, silently, into the darkness, and attack them. Get their attention. Make Balic’s attack sure to succeed. After, kill what you can, scatter the rest, and then, you shall come back. Or will you not avenge your queen?”
“Lady, the orders—” the man began, with a begging voice.
I drew the officer’s sword, and rammed it through him.
“Who is next in command?” I swooned from pain.
A young man stepped forward. “I am, Lady.”
“There are new orders. By Balic. By me,” I said, and lifted the sword to him. “Will you obey us?” He blanched, bowed, and turned to command his troops.
I watched the two thousand men of Vittar, a fine army, march out of the gate in silence, full of confidence in Balic, their queen, and ultimately, into their deaths.
I walked up to the Gatehouse, where three men saluted me.
“Keep the gates open,” I told them, and they obeyed.
Two hours later, Dansar’s Grave was ours.
The next morning, the army marched out, outfitted in the gear of our enemies. I watched Illastria, who had been healing people, whispering to her ear with kind words. Illastria carried her bag of healing supplies, and came to me, her eyes questioning. I shook my head. My wounds would wait. She would have plenty to do.
I gazed at a stone cellar, where Mir was chained head to foot, and guarded.
The doorway was heaped high with stones, securing her from all possible escape. She had failed. I had outwitted her.
And yet, the bitch had smiled.
CHAPTER 26
It was early afternoon, and cold, bitter wind whipped through the Grimwing Pass. Occasionally, a snowflake lingered on my burning skin. With tiny, stabbing sensations they announced the full coming of winter, as did the gray masses of clouds pushing over the Blight. The weather turned odd, dangerous, with lightning travelling somewhere high up in the mountain. The up-surging rocks walls made the disorderly, miserable marching army shiver with fear. The barren, terrible heights of the Blight were not one to build confidence, and we felt like we were marching to Helheim. They made us feel small in comparison, insignificant, and considering the bloodletting of the past days, it was a feeling we knew well.
Life was cheap.
The land looked so forlorn, one found it hard to imagine anyone might have trekked the trail, though the evidence was scattered around us.
Weeks of war had strained the pass itself, not only the people traversing it. The inns and taverns which had stood in the pass were devoid of life. They were lonely affairs anyway, and miserable people were huddling in the shadows of such buildings. A Hammer Legionnaire sat on the side, with a broken knee, and he stared at our passing with huge, terrified eyes. He pulled on his helmet, and drew his sword bravely, but none touched him. Horse turds, flies, discarded gear littered the muddy road. Even furniture could be seen, where it had not been hacked into firewood.
Seven thousand makeshift soldiers were plodding through the Grimwing Pass, headed for the enemy. Of the few thousand which had marched out of Dagnar, we had left half behind, the worse off, to hold the Dansar’s Grave. We had received thousands of archers and peasants from the overlying towns and villages, and they stared at the sights with huge eyes. Most had a sword, armor, shield, and spear from the Vittar’s Legion, who had fallen and surrendered. The two thousand dverger were marching in the front, the fairly seasoned Dagnar’s population in the middle. Fleet boys on horses rode up and ahead.
We marched so for hours.
I was in a sorry state. There was something terribly broken in my side, a deep, withering pain. I kept spitting blood, pushing away waves of nausea. The wound across my burned face made me swoon with pain. A jotun’s strength kept me going, where most men would have fallen to the side of the road. I was swathed in a bearskin cloak; my hair matted with blood, and a brooding, terrible face was holding a grudge at anyone who tried to approach me.
Except for Quiss.
She rode next to me, and tried to persuade me to allow a wise woman, or the occasional doctor, to help me. Or even Illastria, who was hovering near.
“Will you? She will just—”
“No,” I said gruffly. Then, I regretted saying anything, since the pain was like a stabbing knife. “No,” I whispered.
“How will you fight?” she insisted. “You cannot. She might have something to take care of the pain. And you are spitting blood. You need help. And why are you casting such baleful looks back at Dansar’s Grave? Mir?”
“Yes. Obviously Mir. She is caught, but I killed Shaduril. The poor girl was there, pretending to be her mother, sad and torn. Couldn’t say anything to warn me. It makes me ill.” I sighed and shook my head at her in a form of apology.
“You are feverish.”
I nodded. “And you are asking too many questions. I cannot follow in my state.”
“An excellent way to go to battle, eh? A General not able to follow the battle for the pain.”
“I’ll not take medicine,” I said acidly.
“Forget Shaduril for now, at least. She’s not here. Let her rest.”
“I will try,” I whispered, guiding my horse around a stone, which had offensively decided to set itself in the middle of the road. “But I hate Mir. Especially what she did to Shaduril, and to me.”
“She’s not here either,” Quiss said again. “She was locked in a thickest room, and barred in, as you asked. Her legs are crushed. And you spared her because you want to kill her in public?”
“Yes,” I said thinly. “That is so. A public execution of a traitor is in order. Or, if we die, just let her rot there. And yet, I don’t trust her. Not even inside that stone room.”
“You shouldn’t trust her.” Quiss shrugged. “But, what can she do, eh?”
“I don’t trust her,” I said. “But, at least, she is now locked up. You are right. I’ll try to concentrate on something else.” I gave her a long, appreciative look. “I’m grateful to you.”
“For throwing my life into your lap?” she asked wistfully.
“Yes,” I said with a smile.
“Or just filling in, when there is a need for qualities you lack, like good sense?”
I chuckled tiredly. “Yes, in things like that. I am grateful. Couldn’t be more. Though I am just as grateful without medicine.”
“But, you won’t listen to me in everything, eh?” Quiss
said, and clearly resisted the urge to touch my chest, to see how bad I was off. She was mumbling, concerned, as she searched my face. I knew I had blood on my lip. She spoke gently. “We made it this far. You did well. You became a king in everything but name in the city.”
“Not sure I want it anymore,” I answered. “I’d rather be a thief. Or a pirate, like you.”
“I only captured enemy or pirate ships,” she reminded me. Then she smiled impishly. “Mostly that is. But thieving is hardly an honorable profession. I think you need to steal Balic’s crown, if a thief you must be.”
“Balic’s crown,” I said, amused. “So, not only should I take Red Midgard back, but the Verdant Lands? March this rabble through Malignborg, and sit on the pyramid? How many lives will that cost?” I raised my hand to forestall her objections. “I know. What we are doing here is to save the North from Balic. But, his evil is rooted in the Verdant Lands. The draugr will, even if we succeed in stopping them here in the North, keep at it, somehow, in any way they can, hoping to bring death to Midgard. Yes, we should have a plan to topple the lot.” I held tight to the reins of the horse. “I think Falgrin and Ygrin still have kings to deal with it. Baduhanna, she will lead them. And whoever they want to raise in Red Midgard to the crown. I’ll just help.”
She smiled wistfully. “You broke your heart, but you did well.”
“I also found it,” I said, eyeing her with love. “I broke it, and found it.”
“You had better live,” she muttered, blushing. “As for Baduhanna? She is all about battlefields and strategy, by what I have heard and seen. She might be the mighty weapon for the living, but perhaps, there are others? You did better. You had nothing, save for the dverger. And, yet, you escaped Balic. You lured Balic into a terrible killing field. You sent the dverger to fight and block Balic’s legions, used some of them to make a nightmare of the city he so desired. You killed many of the dead royals of the south, and Balic’s army is a roasted mess. And Ikar. You were already thinking of Ikar. And then, you figured out Mir’s deception. You might have saved Baduhanna just like that. I might help you from time to time, but you are far from as stupid as you look.” She winked.
The Queen of the Draugr: Stories of the Nine Worlds (Thief of Midgard - a dark fantasy action adventure Book 2) Page 37