Ship of the Dead

by James Jennewein

  This was the same argument they’d had since they were boys, vying for dominance, and Dane knew nothing would be solved until they were actually out on the quest and his leadership skills proved superior, as always was the case. So he proposed they share the command and Jarl grudgingly accepted. That settled, Dane said to Lut, “Where is this Passage of Mystery?”

  “It is north of here, a week’s ride.” Lut regarded the apple, and for an instant Dane saw a look of hunger flash across his face. “It would be safer in my custody,” Lut repeated.

  “She put the apple in my hands,” Dane said. “Besides, we have to move fast. Which means, I’m afraid, you’re not coming, Lut.”

  “But I’m the only one who knows the way.”

  “You’ll draw us a map,” Dane said.

  “A map? Hah! You’ll need more than directions. You’ll need wisdom,” Lut said. “And I have more of it in my left buttock than both your brains combined!”

  “He has a point,” Jarl said.

  Lut’s wisdom had saved their skins more than a few times. But there was something worrisome about the old man’s insistence on coming—like he had some other motive for being on the journey. “All right, Lut. But the first time you slow us up, you’re going home.”

  Lut told Dane and Jarl not to tell their fellow villagers the reason for their impending trip. Everyone in the village hated Thidrek, which meant they all would like a crack at killing him again. The elders would insist on a special meeting to elect who would go—and by the time the nominations and speeches and votes were finished, Déttmárr the Smith would probably be dead.

  So it was kept secret, sort of. Two more men were needed to round out the party. The towering twins Rik and Vik Vicious were ideal candidates, but they were off representing the village at the semiannual bear-wrestling matches. Ulf the Whale was also unavailable, still sick from eating a vat of spoiled pickled herring. Although they weren’t the first choice, Drott the Dim and Fulnir the Stinking eagerly agreed to come along. Dane figured that if Lut faltered along the way—which Dane thought highly likely—either Drott or Fulnir could make sure the old man returned home safely.

  Thus, it would be a party of five, with Dane’s pet raven, Klint, scouting the skies. Next morning the horses were saddled and they were set to leave when William appeared on foot, his bow and quiver of arrows slung over his back. Somehow he had discovered their plans. “Thidrek killed my parents and made me a slave. Of all of you, I’m the one who’s suffered most at his hands. I’m coming—and if you don’t agree, I’ll steal a horse and follow you anyway.”

  Knowing that the boy would make good on his threat, Dane gave in.

  Right from the start, Lut knew they were in for trouble. He suggested they take the safer trail north that hugged the coast over flat terrain, then veered inland. Dane disagreed, saying, “Skuld insisted we not delay. We’ll take the more direct route into the mountains.” Lut’s warnings about the mountain route proved accurate. The trail was full of hard climbs and steep descents, yet Dane pushed the party on relentlessly.

  Each morning he roused everyone before dawn to break camp and take to the trail, where he set a fast pace all day, refusing to stop and make camp until long after the sun had disappeared from view. Jarl did not challenge Dane to slacken the pace. Indeed, he was more insistent to quicken it to reach Déttmárr before the smith expired. And as the trek wore on and Dane drove everyone to the point of exhaustion, tempers began to fray. Even Dane’s best friends, Fulnir and Drott, began to question his decisions, and at noon on the sixth day it all came to a head.

  They stopped in the shelter of tall pines to water the tired horses and Lut dismounted, saying he felt the call of nature. Though perfectly true—the old man’s bladder wasn’t what it used to be—it was the burning sensation in his chest that had him worried, and he needed a private place in which to take his potion of powdered willow bark.

  His chest pains had been growing ever more acute for days, and now his potion offered only limited relief. On the morning prior, Fulnir had spied Lut taking the bitter powder and out of curiosity asked what it was. “Oh, just something for the usual aches and pains,” Lut had assured him nonchalantly. Had Fulnir believed the lie? Lut didn’t know. He hoped he had. With so much uncertainty now fraying their group, the last thing they needed was news of Lut’s deteriorating health.

  Because then Dane would leave him behind. Which would force Lut to reveal what he had read in the book. If he told them the real reason they were on this road, would they continue, knowing the horrible place it led? As Skuld had said, a person chooses his road of fate. And Lut had to make sure they kept to the road they were on. Or the world, and everyone they loved in it, would meet a very nasty end.

  Once safely out of sight behind a tree, Lut took a pinch of powder from his leather pouch and swallowed it with water. The taste of it was wicked and he choked a bit getting it down. Strange how something so awful could have such power to do good. Thoughts of death stole over him, but he chased them away, forcing into his mind images of all his favorite foods and every woman he had ever loved, including all six of his wives.

  Upon his return, he found Dane and Fulnir having heated words.

  “We should make camp here,” Fulnir said. “The horses need rest—we need rest.”

  “We’re going on,” Dane said. “I want to reach the smith’s by tomorrow.”

  “Fulnir’s right—we should camp here,” Drott said. “An extra day won’t hurt us.”

  Dane looked at his friends as if they had suddenly become his enemies. “An extra day? We delay for one hour and by the time we reach Déttmárr he could be dead. And thus any chance we have to bring Astrid back. So if you even care about that—”

  “Of course we care,” Fulnir snapped. “We care for Astrid as much as you or we wouldn’t be with you. But I say we camp here and get an early start in the morning.”

  “You say? Has your stink-breeze gone to your brain?” mocked Dane, poking Fulnir in the chest. “Since when did you assume leadership?”

  Lut saw Fulnir’s jaw tighten in anger. “Maybe someone else has to, Dane. You’d ride us all over a cliff if it meant easing your guilt over Astrid.”

  “Guilt—?”

  Lut rushed forward and grabbed both of them by the arms before the fists started flying.

  “The ache in my hip bone tells me a storm approaches,” Lut advised. “Here among the trees would be a fine place to shelter.”

  Dane looked up at the blue sky, where nary a cloud was seen. “My eyes tell me your aching bones are wrong, old man. If you and the others are too tired to follow, then stay here. I’m going ahead.”

  “So am I,” Jarl said. Without another word they mounted up and set off up the trail. William was gone, too, in a cloud of dust.

  “Let them go,” Fulnir said. “I’m tired of being ordered around by Dane anyway.”

  “If we don’t go now, we’ll never catch them,” Lut said. “Hurry, help me onto my horse.”

  “Don’t you understand? He doesn’t want you along,” Fulnir said. “I think the only reason he asked me and Drott to come . . . was to take care of you.”

  Of course Fulnir was right. But Lut knew the party had to stay together because all their fates were intertwined. Dane needed Lut, even if he didn’t know it. Lut demanded to be put atop his horse, Fulnir reluctantly complied, and the three went galloping up the trail.

  A light breeze from the west suddenly blew up, and as Lut rode on, the ache in his bones worsened, accompanied by a disturbing thought. He had read in the Book of Fate how and when he was going to die. But what if Skuld wished to punish him for reading his fate? A flick of her quill could easily change everything. He could die tonight, tomorrow, or even in the next moment. He felt a chill of terror at the awful realization that everything he’d thought was certain could now be anything but.

  Distant thunder rumbled. Oh, help me, Odin, for I fear I ride to catastrophe!

  Chapter 6
r />   Ship of the Dead

  Grelf the Gratuitous trudged along the mosquito-infested riverbank realizing that he had reached a new low in his career as bootlicking lackey. Once he had been one of the top practitioners of his profession, serving as brownnosing yes-man to the rich and powerful. Now look at me! he despaired. Toady to a rotting corpse, the stinking undead, a cursed draugr. He was a disgrace to the Loyal Order of Sycophants. Was there even such an order, he wondered? If not, he made a mental note that he would have to start one.

  “How long must we walk?” asked the draugr Thidrek, riding piggyback atop Grelf. “I thought you said the falls were but a mile or two inland.”

  “I’m sure that dull roar we hear are the falls, my lord,” Grelf replied, short of breath. “They must be just around the next turn in the river.”

  A local villager had told Grelf how best to reach the falls. They were to journey along the coastline until they came to a spot where three small islands lay immediately offshore. There they would find a river that flowed through a narrow gap in the mountains and emptied into the sea. Once they had found the river, Grelf and Thidrek left their horses on the beach and set off on foot—rather, on Grelf’s two feet—with Grelf carrying a torch to light their way. “Do you suppose we might stop and rest?” Grelf implored.

  “When we’re so close?” Thidrek said. “Push on—a little faster if you will.”

  “Of course, my lord,” Grelf mewled, plodding along the muddy riverbank through swarms of mosquitoes. He was the only source of blood in the immediate vicinity, so the insects greedily bit him about the face and hands, not even landing on Thidrek, whose veins were as dry as dust. Grelf started to feel faint from the exertion and blood loss. “Is it possible, my lord, that you could walk on your own for a while?”

  “And foul my boots in the mud?”

  “Right, sire, what was I thinking?”

  “You’d just have to lick them clean anyway,” joked Thidrek.

  “Of course, sir,” Grelf said with a forced chuckle, “you’re so kind to spare me that.”

  Back when Thidrek lived his princely life, one of Grelf’s many duties in his castle had been to be sure his master’s wardrobe was smart and spotless. “A tyrant must look stylish while terrorizing the populace,” Prince Thidrek would say. “One smudge of dirt and my image of invincibility is ruined.”

  Now that Thidrek was undead, keeping up appearances was proving even more difficult. The main problem was masking the aroma of his slowly rotting body—a stench that even Thidrek could not endure for long. Grelf, being practiced in the alchemic arts—learned while concocting poisons to eliminate Thidrek’s rivals—had turned his skills to perfumery. After several tries, he’d hit upon a concoction of conifer resin oil, myrtle, and crushed flowers that was powerful enough to offset the smell of rotting tissue, at least for a while.

  “There it is!” Thidrek cried. Ahead in the moonlight Grelf saw a magnificent cascade of water, perhaps a hundred feet high, that thundered down over a mountain cleft into a deep, wide pool. He felt a swat on the back of his head. “Hurry, Grelf!”

  Hurry? It wasn’t like the dead were going anywhere, Grelf wanted to tell him. But he hastened onward, struggling along the riverbank, and soon, gasping for air, arrived alongside the falls at the base of the mountain. Thidrek climbed down from his back and Grelf fell to his knees, exhausted. “What’s wrong, Grelf? A little hard work too much for you?”

  “Just a moment—to catch my breath—my lord.”

  “Now, now, I won’t have you slacking—not with us on the brink of success.”

  They had been “on the brink of success” many times before, trying to find Hel’s Ship of the Dead. For a whole week now they had been trudging up the coastline, exploring every river that emptied into the sea. Seven times they had gone upriver and seven times they’d found nothing. Grelf secretly hoped they would fail again; the last thing he wanted to see was more horrific draugrs.

  Along the way Grelf had learned all about the legend of the Ship of the Dead. Centuries ago, Thidrek told him, when the gods were warring, Odin had sent a giant wave to destroy Hel’s ship. It was said that the wall of water had swept the craft and its draugr crew to shore and all the way up a river, where at last it had sunk beneath or near a waterfall, and there it lay to this day, its magical secrets there for the taking. Grelf no longer believed there was such a ship, and even if there was, it seemed doubtful that they would ever find it.

  Thidrek took the torch from Grelf. “We mustn’t dawdle.” Grelf followed his master, edging toward the falls along the treacherous rocks slick with wet moss.

  Thidrek disappeared from view, and Grelf realized he had slipped through a narrow gap between the curtain of water and the vertical rock face. For a moment Grelf considered fleeing, jumping into the river and letting the current take him down to where the horses were tethered. He would gallop away, taking the other horse too, and be free of his rotting lord!

  But he hesitated a moment too long, and Thidrek’s skeletal hand grabbed his collar and pulled him through the passageway. When his eyes adjusted, he saw he was now behind the waterfall, standing at the entrance to a gaping black cave.

  “Weren’t thinking of escaping, were you, Grelfie?”

  “No, my lord! Never would I leave the side of my master.”

  Still grasping Grelf’s coat, Thidrek pulled him close. The stench was overpowering and Grelf almost gagged. “Good. Because if you ever did leave my side, you would regret it. Most painfully.” Thidrek released him and started into the cave. Grelf followed like a slouching, whipped dog.

  Entering the chamber, Grelf saw its dimensions were enormous—certainly large enough to accommodate a marooned warship.

  “Keep a sharp eye for anything protruding from the sand,” Thidrek said. “If the ship is here, most likely it’s buried.”

  Farther into the cave they went, the roar of the waterfall dying behind them. If the ship was here, Grelf thought, the wave carrying it this far inland and this deep into the cavern had to have been truly monumental.

  Grelf tripped over something and fell into Thidrek. “Idiot! Watch your—” He froze, his gaze fixed on the floor. Poking through the sand, illuminated in torchlight, was a long, pointed piece of wood, the very thing Grelf had stumbled over. Thidrek dropped to his knees and brushed away the sand from around it. The carved head of a strange beast began to appear.

  “It’s the figurehead!” Thidrek shouted. “We’ve found it!” Thidrek rose to his feet, done with his part of the manual labor. “Start digging, Grelf. Hurry!”

  Grelf started scooping away handfuls of sand. Thidrek struck him hard across the ear.

  “Faster! Make the sand fly!”

  And Grelf did. He not only felt like a whipped dog, he dug like one too.

  Soaked by the cold, relentless rains and feeling the ache of death upon him, Lut struggled to keep up with the pack. Though night had fallen, Dane had driven them onward across a vast and treeless plain that fell away from the mountains to the east. When the rains came, as Lut had known they would, they were caught out on the flat and shelterless expanse with no place to hide. On they rode in the punishing rainstorm, the once-dry streambeds now raging torrents that threatened to sweep horse and rider away. The worst, Lut feared, was yet to come. He spied the flashes of lightning in the distance, and with the accompanying booms of thunder growing louder, he knew Thor’s fury drew nearer. Their one hope was to reach the far side of the plateau and find refuge before lightning charred them all.

  Lut cursed Skuld and her book. He had embarked on this journey expecting to survive it. But now it seemed she was just playing with him—and could snip his thread of life at any moment. He prayed to Thor for mercy. Stop this storm so I may live the night!

  But mercy was not to be his. As Lut’s horse crossed a creek swollen with rushing water, Thor at last found his mark. The night exploded with sudden light and sound, and the flash of lightning struck so near, the force of its h
eat scorched Lut’s face and he lost his sight completely. Beneath him his panicked horse shrieked and reared—and Lut fell backward, still blinded, and his whole body went cold as he plunged into the icy waters of the creek. Caught in the swift current, he tumbled upside down underwater as it swept him on.

  When at last he struggled to the surface, gasping for air and coughing up water, he had regained his sight and saw the creek had merged with another, far larger one. He was in a much stronger current, twice as deep, with the banks too far to swim to. Fighting it would be futile. Best save his strength for keeping his head above water as long as he could.

  Swallowed by the blackness of the night and the fury of the river, he thought of surrender, of just letting go. Had he not journeyed life’s arduous path long enough? He had lived twice as long as most men, and lived it as fully as possible, filling his days with both the bitter and the sweet.

  He heard a dull, distant roar. He wondered what the sound was—then remembered that the plain they’d been crossing ended in a precipitous drop to a valley far below. That was where the current was taking him, over a cliff and hundreds of feet down to a violent and painful death. His reaction was one of instant indignation.

  By the gods, no! he railed. Of all the indignities! A man my age does not deserve to die crushed upon rocks!

  Spying the stream bank in a flash of lightning, Lut fought his way toward it. The roar of the water grew louder and the current gained strength as it was funneled toward the precipice. Weakening now, the pain like a knife in his chest, blinded again by the battering rain, Lut fought on, thrashing and splashing, bent on this not being his journey’s end.

  Another boom of thunder, and the surging river smashed Lut against a rock, his face scraping along it as the current swept him on. He clawed at it trying to find a handhold. But the rain-slick rock gave him no grip and off he slid, rushing toward the cliff. In a frenzy he spied another rock, looming just ahead at the cliff’s edge. He came rushing toward it and made a desperate grab. Sliding across the rock, Lut’s fingers found a crack in the rock—and miraculously held on. Fearing the fierce current would tear him away, he reached up with his other hand and soon found another handhold. Half submerged in icy water, and having a tenuous hold on the cold rock, he prepared to do the difficult work of pulling himself up and out of the river. But with the little strength he had left, it seemed impossible. He couldn’t hold himself here forever; the current would soon take him. Climb he must, or at least die in the trying. He looked up at the rain-slick rock. No, he wouldn’t climb just yet. He would rest here awhile. Yes, rest and wait. Perhaps the strength would come to him. Just hold on, Lut, hold on.