And as he did, he saw the Marid walk out of the surf behind him, not ten paces away, opposite the group of draugrs.
He hadn’t felt its presence; only chance had caused him turn at that moment. The dhow hadn’t sailed away. The Marid had sunk it.
The spirit glared at Asgrim with its all-black eyes. Its gaze went from Asgrim to the burning torch in his hand.
Asgrim locked eyes with the Marid. “No one sails my ship but me,” he said as he rammed the burning torch against the oil-soaked hull of Sea Eel.
The ship’s hull ignited in a flash, forcing them away from it. The Marid screamed in anger and rushed forward. Asgrim dropped the burning torch in the sand and grabbed Heart-Ripper. Holding the silver shield in front of him, he turned to face the Marid.
The Marid staggered to a stop, covering its eyes with its forearm as it turned away. Behind Asgrim, the flames crawled up the side of Sea Eel, quickly spreading across the longship.
“Fool!” shrieked the Marid. “What have you done to my ship?”
“No,” snarled Asgrim. “My ship.”
Bizarrely, Asgrim was calm as he stepped forward, swinging Heart-Ripper. The Marid, still facing away from the shield, blocked the sword strike with an upraised arm. Impossibly, the blade did not cut through the spirit’s arm, but rebounded off the bone. The jarring impact almost made Asgrim drop his weapon. It was like chopping at a tree trunk.
Impossible!
The Marid shrugged off the wound, lashing out at Asgrim and solidly connecting with his shield. Asgrim flew back through the air, his vision suddenly blurry. When it cleared, he saw the silver shield had been ripped from his arm. Its straps were broken and the metal had bent in half. The Marid stalked forward, and Asgrim knew he couldn’t get up in time. But at that moment, a burning torch flew through the air, striking the Marid in the face, sending sparks flying. The Marid slapped at its burning head, glared at Alda, and then drew its sword. Asgrim climbed back to his feet, Heart-Ripper in his grip, and moved to place himself in front of her.
The spirit glared at him. “Northman, that Saracen talisman you wear only stops me from taking your body. It won’t prevent me from killing you. And you will die slowly, as will your woman. I shall wear her skin as a nightshirt.”
Asgrim spat at the sand near the Marid’s feet. “Gods curse you. Come on, then!”
Enraged, the spirit advanced, but then it halted. A confused expression spread across its face as it looked past him. Asgrim glanced behind himself, and his mouth dropped open in disbelief. Sea Eel blazed and crackled as the flames consumed her. But walking from the burning longship, literally stepping into thin air, was his brother Bjorn, followed by his dead crew. The spirits—and spirits they had to be—shone like flames, but they were translucent, little more than smoke. And behind them, standing on the burning deck of his ship were Freya and Frodi, watching the dead advance toward Asgrim and the Marid.
Bjorn grinned. “We fight together again one last time, older brother. One more chance for the Valkyries to take notice of our courage.”
And then Bjorn stepped right into him, somehow passing through him and becoming a part of him. Strength and power flowed through Asgrim. Then Gorm Louse-Beard stepped into Asgrim, who again staggered under the sudden rush of strength that flowed through his muscles. A heartbeat later, Harald Skull-Splitter, his spirit face beaming with anticipation, also joined with him. In moments, every single crewman whose body had been possessed by the Marid joined with Asgrim, filling him and giving him unimaginable strength.
Asgrim turned and faced the Marid, knowing he did so as an equal. The spirit glared at him. Its eyes betrayed its doubt. “Fool. Your northern magic will fail you, just as the easterners’ failed them.”
“We shall see, draugr,” said Asgrim.
They came together, swords flashing, hitting so hard that sparks flew through the air. They struck at one another with such force that the bones of lesser men would have shattered under the impact. Again and again, they fought in a cycle: attack, parry, counter-attack, withdraw. And then the cycle would begin again. Move, shift, strike, block, strike, and strike again. Asgrim’s world became very simple and very focused: kill, kill, kill.
The Marid was skilled with a blade and was unbelievably good, but Asgrim fought with the borrowed strength of his men and the need to defeat this thing. Despite Asgrim’s borrowed strength, the Marid was still more powerful, and slowly, the spirit began to force Asgrim back. It took the offensive and kept it, striking again and again, and Asgrim could do nothing more than ward off its blows. Asgrim knew he would make a mistake before long, and the spirit would strike him down. He was becoming tired, and the Marid had to realize that. And then Asgrim remembered another duel many years before, against a man that he had thought too old and too tired to stand against him, and he grasped at the only chance he had. Asgrim lashed out at the Marid’s front leg, purposely overextending himself. As he expected, the spirit stepped back, parried his blow, and then struck back at Asgrim’s exposed leg. Pain shot through Asgrim as the Marid’s longsword scraped along his thigh, and the spirit grinned with triumph. But the Marid had not expected the hook punch Asgrim had already launched with his empty hand. His blow caught the Marid solidly in the jaw, and despite the agony in his leg, Asgrim pushed with his thighs, drawing power from them. Asgrim heard a loud crack as the Marid staggered back, its jaw broken. Asgrim lashed out again, this time with Heart-Ripper, and cut the Marid’s sword hand off at the wrist, sending both sword and fist flying to the sand. The Marid stared at the stump of its severed sword arm, and then howled in anguish and rage, rushing Asgrim. But instead of meeting the attack, Asgrim dropped to one knee and then rose up, catching the Marid over his shoulder and sending it flying through the air behind him.
The Marid slammed against the side of the blazing longship. In a blur, Alda rushed past Asgrim, hurling the mostly empty jar of oil at the spirit. The jar smashed into the spirit’s forehead, shattering and sending the remnants of the oil over its head. Flames caught in its hair and then spread over its body. It jumped to its feet, spun in place, and then staggered toward the ocean.
“Asgrim,” Freya’s spirit called out from the burning deck of the longship. “It is a creature of the sea. It draws its power from the ocean.”
Asgrim leaped onto the back of the burning Marid, ignoring the pain from the flames. He spun the spirit about and shoved it back, back, back—until its body slammed into the burning hull of Sea Eel.
The Marid’s black eyes stared at Asgrim through the flames that devoured its dead flesh. Its open mouth was a black hole, where teeth cracked from the heat.
“You want my ship, draugr?” snarled Asgrim. “Take it, then!”
Asgrim slammed Heart-Ripper through the Marid’s sternum, pinning it to the hull of the burning ship.
He staggered back, falling onto the sand. And all at once, his borrowed strength drained from him. The Marid screamed and thrashed, but could not pry itself free. Bright green flames sprouted from its body, covering it in an intense heat. Just before Asgrim had to cover his face and look away, he saw a flash of the spirit’s true form, its pebbled green skin covering a torso that looked more like an eel than a man. The monster’s head was overlarge and hairless, and its all-black eyes were the size of a man’s palm.
Hands grabbed him and pulled at him. Utterly spent, he was only vaguely aware that Alda was dragging him from the inferno that had been his ship. Around him, the dead Franks and Danes dropped to the sand, unmoving.
The green flames blazed out and were replaced by orange and red tongues of fire. The Marid was now an unmoving black cinder.
He heard Freya’s voice, so faint that it seemed to drift in the air. “Asgrim Wood-Nose, she is proud of you.”
Sea Eel burned to the water line.
The Marid was destroyed, banished.
* * *
Alda took him back to her hut to treat his injuries. There, in her small hut, she wrapped his burned hands in clot
h and covered them in an ointment that relieved the worst of the pain. Then she stitched the long gash in his leg. He would recover, but he would probably walk with a limp for the rest of his life—a small enough price to pay for defeating a spirit as powerful as the Marid. With the help of his dead men and the guidance of Freya, they had survived. He was grateful, and, in truth, he had much to be grateful for. Alda had found a half-burned box in the charred remains of Sea Eel. Inside was a leather sack holding the five hundred silver pieces Abid had paid him, which was more than enough to pay his wergild and start a new life with Alda, a life free of violence and raiding.
He was done with his past. It was time to start over, to make a family, and to bring life into the world rather than take it. He prayed his brother and the others who had come back from the dead to help him had, this time, been taken by the Valkyries to Valhalla.
Later, when the tide was low, they rode a captured Frankish horse across the sandbar and toward the mainland.
“We’ll go somewhere else,” he said. “A new chance for both of us.”
She didn’t say anything, but he felt that she understood him. She leaned her cheek against his back, squeezed him tightly around the waist, and sighed. He felt her breath on his neck.
Despite his pain, he smiled and kicked the horse into a trot. Alda yelped and clung tighter to him.
What man could change his fate?
He could.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Black Monastery Page 23