A Sacred Storm

by Theodore Brun

  ‘You murdered Sviggar’s heir.’

  ‘I removed all obstacles between Sigurd and the throne.’

  ‘And Finn the archer?’ He could still see the grotesque contortions on the face of the king’s bodyguard as he writhed and choked on the mead-hall floor. His murderer had never been found.

  ‘Sviggar’s guard dog had to go. Too loyal. Too effective.’

  ‘You poisoned him.’

  ‘A mercy!’ protested Vargalf. ‘I spared him a broken heart, after the loss of his wife and such.’ She had been one of the nine women sacrificed and hung from the Sacred Oak.

  ‘And the king? You murdered him, too?’

  ‘You look surprised! But the old fool insisted on staying alive for so long. It was rather simple in the end. Hardly more than a nudge in that direction. Of course, Finn would never have let it happen. But you – your mind was so often on other things.’ His mouth curled sardonically. ‘And now the harvest ripens for the greatest slaughter the north has ever known. The Wartooth has his thousands. Sigurd has his. And there is nothing anyone can do to stop the coming deluge of blood.’ A hard, cruel edge had crept into his voice as he spoke, and his eyes glinted with a kind of bleak joy.

  It sent a chill through Erlan’s heart. ‘Your master work?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘For whom? For the Wartooth?’

  ‘That old boar? No, no! Oh, it’s taken some goading on the Danes’ side, to be sure. Harald survived the man I sent to kill him. A shame, since his sons would have been sure to seek revenge. But the effect was the same. He blames the Sveärs and dreams of Valhöll and a glorious death.’ Vargalf sniggered. ‘I fear when death finds him at last, he’ll be sorely disappointed.’

  ‘Who, then?’ Erlan demanded, so urgently that he twisted on the chain. ‘Who do you serve?’

  There was a noise as the door opened. Vargalf glanced over. ‘Another fair question. And you shall know that answer, too.’ The first guard shuffled in awkwardly. ‘Ah – at last!’

  Erlan watched, dread squirming like a snake in his bowels. First they brought in two large caskets: one heaped with firewood, the other full to the brim with lumps of coke, the special fuel the smiths used to make a flame hot enough to temper steel. After that a water butt with a wooden ladle, and last of all, a large metal basin full of glowing coals, which they emptied into the fire-pit directly below him. At once, the heat off the coals coiled like ivy around his legs.

  ‘Are you familiar with the process of smoking meat?’

  Erlan had become so used to the cold and dank that his skin had almost forgotten what it was like to be warm. But pleasant as it felt, he knew this wasn’t for his comfort.

  ‘The trick is controlling the temperature and the timing. The coke gives heat. The smoke gives flavour. The water slows it all down. It’s really quite a skill.’

  Vargalf told the guards to wait for him outside.

  Once they’d gone, he began prowling back and forth, muttering to himself, throwing dark glances up at his prisoner. Erlan shifted awkwardly. Pain snarled through his wrists. The heat was becoming more intense, yet still not unpleasant.

  Those of Vargalf’s words he caught he couldn’t understand. Another tongue, perhaps, making him wonder whether Vargalf was from another land entirely. And yet... there was something familiar about the sound of it – how every word was hard-edged and guttural.

  The heat was growing. Erlan looked up. The beam was only three or four feet above him, but it might as well have been as far as the moon. The soles of his feet began to prickle.

  Vargalf ceased his mutterings, his gaze settling on the glowing coals.

  ‘There’s something honest about a fire.’ Vargalf snorted. ‘Perhaps the only kind of honesty I respect. In the fire, nothing can hide. Everything is peeled away to its hardest, irreducible core. And if it’s strong, it endures – is made stronger even – tempered by the flames. And if not... then even the strongest part of it is destroyed for ever.’

  He looked up.

  ‘I wonder what you will find – at the core of you. And will it endure?’ He flashed a wicked smile, then turned and seized a couple of lumps of coke and tossed them onto the coals. For a while, they remained unchanged, but soon the heat began to seep through them, making them glow, the air above shimmering as the temperature rose.

  Erlan flinched with the lick of stronger heat. His calves began to smart, yet still it was bearable. Vargalf’s dark eyes were glowing orange in the flame-light.

  ‘Too soon for more?’

  Erlan braced himself as Vargalf tossed more lumps of fuel onto the fire. He’d witnessed Vargalf’s skill too many times now. Had seen how he could draw an ocean of pain out of a man and still keep him alive, if only by a hair’s breadth. He clamped his jaw tight. There were no more choices to be made. All he could do was endure, and see where the fire would lead him.

  The rising heat slithered up his legs, whispering of the pain to come. He sucked in sharply.

  Vargalf sighed. ‘So we’ve begun at last! Let your body drink in the heat. The fire will speak to your bones, take you to what is real. You’re lucky. Few will ever see what you will now.’

  Erlan tried to shut out the pain building in his feet and legs, focusing instead on the parts of his body not yet enveloped by the stifling air.

  ‘One thing I see clear enough,’ Erlan rasped. ‘Saldas rides you like a man.’

  Vargalf’s face curdled and he snatched another lump of fuel and tossed it onto the fire. ‘Again – your ignorance,’ he snarled, angrily. Erlan felt new waves of heat rise around him. Sweat was running in rivers down his spine. ‘It is she who does my bidding, though she hardly knows it. The same as Sigurd.’

  He tossed a piece of firewood into the flames. Quickly it began to smoke. Then he threw another and another and the smoke grew, billowing upwards, forcing its way into Erlan’s eyes and nostrils. He coughed, feeling the heat climb a notch, squeezing a groan from his throat.

  ‘Good,’ soothed Vargalf, in a languorous voice. ‘Perhaps we’ll muzzle that insolent tongue of yours before much longer.’ The wood was burning hungrily, cracking and popping as the flames bit into it, the smoke seeping like a smothering fog down into his lungs.

  ‘Sigurd has been mine since I came here. It was simple enough to turn him against his father. A little flattery, a word to prod here, a reminder of some slight there.’ He chuckled. ‘Every man has his darkness. One needs only to draw it to the surface. With Sigurd – resentment of a father, jealousy of a brother. Once I knew that, I could make him do whatever I wanted. Murder, betrayal, incest... and soon slaughter on a scale never before imagined.’

  But Erlan was beyond answering – the heat consuming his feet and legs was overpowering, turning every vein, every sinew in his body to fire.

  ‘If Sigurd lives, I’ll make him drown the world in blood. To the furthest horizon and beyond. Fire, slaughter, rape, pillage... Death!’ Erlan looked down. Vargalf’s face was flushed, his eyes inflamed, the outline of him wavering in the smoke and burning air.

  He closed his eyes and focused on the pain.

  ‘Slowly, slowly,’ he heard Vargalf say. ‘We mustn’t rush you.’ There was a sizzle and blast of steam, which scalded his skin, stole his breath, but the ratcheting heat stalled, just a fraction. The ladle rattled as Vargalf tossed it back in the bucket.

  He knew Vargalf could play this game for hours, keeping him just beyond the breaking foam of death. He felt his skin blister, felt the fire inside him like a living thing – seeping through him from his feet, through his thighs, into his guts, closing around his heart like the fingers of some fire-wight.

  His mind turned inward, pain swirling like a fog. And suddenly in it he saw his heart burst into flame, saw layer after layer peel away, ignite, curl and crumble to ash, each one bringing with it memories, flashing like ghosts through his mind.

  The steam and smoke and stench all vanished. He saw Sviggar’s body, stiff and cold; felt his temple
s throb the morning he awoke in the wood; saw Lilla, regal and white under her bridal veil; tasted the muddy water of the Fyris; heard the awful howling in the darkness and the bite of winter on his hands. He tasted the Watcher’s blood, its iron tang, felt its searing fire as dark magic rushed through him. There was Kai’s laughter, the crushing cold of the lake; vomit and sea-salt on his lips; the musk of his father’s sweat in his nostrils; and then he saw her. Her face under the silver surface of the water, the crimson clouds, the swirling brown hair, and last of all that hideous, gaping wound.

  He looked down and saw the knife in his hand.

  In his own hand...

  That was when the scream ripped out of him like a slaughter-yell, shattering his ears. His body thrashed wildly, the chain a shriek of grinding metal. He opened his eyes.

  The chamber was different now, the shadows alive, slithering, swaying, writhing in every unlit corner, flitting across his vision through the billowing smoke and steam. And all around him, Vargalf’s laughter rang.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Kai heard the scream.

  It turned his blood cold, summoning him to his destiny. Or his doom.

  He was close. He could see the guards’ silhouettes beyond the hard-packed road across the tufted grass. They hadn’t even turned their heads.

  He slipped over the road and went to ground, his shield-rim jabbing into his back. He bit his lip to stifle the pain. It was too unwieldy. He’d have to do without the thing. He slid it off his back and stowed it in the grass.

  He eyed the guards. Maybe he could just rush them. But there were two of them, both bigger than him. Together they’d squash him like a toad. No. A little cunning was needed.

  His gaze happened to alight upon the eaves sloping off the smokehouse roof and suddenly he had an idea. He foraged around beside the road until he found what he was looking for. Two stones – smaller than his fist, but big enough to make a decent noise. He slipped them into his pouch, then crept round to the back of the smokehouse, where he took off his cloak. The roof edge hung level with his chest.

  Right, my lad. Here’s where you earn your bread.

  He shoved the axe into his belt, propped the spear against the eave, then hopped onto the roof, digging his fingers into the thatch, pulling himself higher till he’d got his whole body up there. Satisfied, he lay flat to catch his breath and listen.

  No alarm. No running footsteps. The thatch was warm. He put an ear to it, but couldn’t make out much. Some muttering. A sort of panting.

  I’m coming, brother.

  But first there were these other bastards. He hauled up his spear beside him, then squirmed higher up the roof until he was just below the swirling smoke-hole. Carefully, he drew his knees under him so he was almost sitting and looked through the smoke down the other side.

  There were the guards, crouched on their hams. He waited and listened. Now and then, one of them spoke and the other replied. He waited a little longer until both of them laughed at some joke, then quickly shuffled round the smoke-hole so that now he was directly above them, hardly twenty feet away.

  He held the spear tight, the thatch even tighter. His axe was digging into his back. That wouldn’t do. He wriggled his feet, wedging his heels deeper into the rushes to take his weight. Then he reached behind and pulled out his axe.

  I need another bloody pair of hands, he thought, jamming the axe-head under a foot so that he could extract one of his stones.

  Here goes nothing.

  He held his breath and lobbed it high into the air. A couple of seconds later, there was a thud as the stone landed in the darkness somewhere off to the right, out of sight of the guards.

  He waited for a reaction.

  Nothing. Brilliant. Deaf as fucking posts. He pulled out the second stone and was about to throw it when one guard nudged the other.

  ‘Hear that, Orn?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A noise. Round there.’ The guard nodded round the side of the smokehouse.

  ‘Go take a look then.’

  Kai waited for the first guard to stand but instead, after a bit, he shrugged. ‘Bah! Probably nothing.’

  ‘You’re a lazy turd, Dofri. Anyone ever tell you that?’

  ‘No one’s stopping you going.’

  Kai launched his second stone. Another thud in the dark.

  ‘There you are,’ said the one called Dofri, getting to his feet. ‘You must’ve heard that.’

  ‘I heard it,’ nodded Orn. But still neither moved. ‘Well?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, off you go then.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Someone’s got to stay here, ’case that crazy bugger wants something else.’

  Dofri cursed and slouched off into the shadows.

  Kai’s heart quickened. From his perch, he watched Dofri disappear and smiled. Below him, Orn had his back to him, facing into the night, still crouched on his hams.

  Kai squeezed his axe, drew a deep breath and began to slide.

  His backside scraped the thatch, faint at first, but louder as he gathered speed; the bottom edge was fast approaching, the axe was ready in his hand.

  Orn must have heard him. He began to rise and turn. But it was too late – his doom was falling, hard and heavy as Thor’s hammer. He looked up. Kai saw the surprise in his face. He went for his hilt, but Kai was over the edge and landing on his feet, neat as a tomcat.

  For a heartbeat, they stared at each other, the surprise in Orn’s face turning to fear. But Kai’s axe was already falling. The edge sank deep into the guard’s neck. Kai ripped his arm back and Orn’s head flipped over in a spray of blood.

  Orn slumped to the ground, fanning the grass with his blood, but Kai was already moving. He dashed away from the doorway into the shadows, the spear still gripped in his left hand.

  Fifteen paces. No more. Out of sight, in range. He stopped and turned.

  He hadn’t time even to catch his breath. Dofri had heard the noises and appeared at the run, brandishing his spear.

  Kai grinned.

  He saw Dofri stand over Orn’s body, saw his head snap up, searching the shadows for Orn’s mysterious killer. The guard waved his spear blindly. ‘Who’s out there?’ he called, voice trembling. ‘Answer me!’

  Kai answered with a snickering laugh, a laugh born in the shadows and holes of the forest, a laugh no longer his. Dofri stood rooted like a rock, uncertain, his spear lowered. But Kai had no intention of going forward to test it.

  Dofri felt afraid. His guts were water. He peered into the blackness, eyes straining. And suddenly he saw: two eyes, pale and wild, then a glint of metal – a pinprick lancing out of the night.

  The spear was halfway through his neck before he realized what it was. But it was much too late. He was on his back, blood already filling his throat. He blinked, disbelieving, clutching at the shaft. His legs were shaking, but he couldn’t do piss-all about it. And then a shadow appeared over him.

  He saw the face, streaked with filth, hair jutting everywhere in dirty yellow spikes, eyes pitiless as a wolf. The mouth was a gaping hole of rage and savage madness.

  It was the last face he ever saw.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  ‘Look at me, filth!’

  Erlan raised his head. Through the writhing air, he saw Vargalf, his long sharp nose, his hollow cheeks, those cold, sneering lips. They were moving.

  ‘You make much of forswearing your past, don’t you, cripple? Of refusing your father’s name? And now you have another – the Aurvandil.’ He spat on the floor in disgust. ‘A name you won at great cost.’ His eyes darted upwards, sharp as spears. ‘A name that cost me much, too.’

  Erlan heard the words but didn’t understand. He saw only a sea of shadows, felt only the burning air.

  ‘The Witch King was my father!’ Vargalf hissed. ‘Do you hear me, cripple? You – killed – my – father!’ The words were a shriek now, driving into Erlan’s brain like a blade. ‘Blood cal
ls for blood vengeance! I mean to have it, and more. I want your pain, your will... Your very soul.’

  A memory leaped from the depths of Erlan’s consciousness. The Witch King. The Watcher. Suddenly Vargalf’s pale face shattered into a thousand pieces and he saw again the towering Watcher’s strange and fearful beauty.

  Vargalf was spawn of the Witch King? An overlord?

  There was a new dark edge to his voice now. ‘You killed my father, cripple, but his lord – the one I serve – can never be killed. In his thrall is a host more numerous than the stars and they will carry on his work – in every land, among every people. And I mean to finish his work here. I’ll see every tribe of the north in thrall to him before I’m through.’

  This was the way the Watcher had talked – of lords and tyrants, of wars and rebellions that Erlan didn’t understand. Yet at the memory of him, something stirred in him, something beyond the pain. A kind of strength, a kind of rage, waking like a vengeful beast that had slept untroubled a long time. And suddenly out of him ripped a monstrous, mad, swaggering laugh.

  For a second, Vargalf looked wrong-footed. His face darkened and then he snatched up more coke. ‘Something amusing you, cripple? Let’s see if you can laugh this off.’ He slung it on the fire.

  ‘I – drank – his – blood,’ Erlan hissed slowly, like some black-souled draugr in a saga-tale.

  Vargalf watched him and gradually the hard lines around his mouth knotted into a smile. ‘Is that so, cripple?’ he murmured. ‘Then my father is in you now, too.’

  The dry heat suddenly surged through Erlan’s head like a red flood. His sight was changing, shedding veil after veil as it went deeper, and the more he saw, the more he screamed. He saw shadows fuse into solid things that shifted and moved. Living things with limbs and sinews, black as coal; feet and claws, pointed and cruel. He saw figures clinging in dark corners, figures hanging from the smoke-stained rafters, figures peering at him from atop the beam. They slavered at the burning air, black tongues licking black lips until they shone.