The laughter from the men only infuriated the youth. His head whipped round until he found a small boulder. He growled and dived for it, glared at Ygval and launched it at the thing into the distance with a grunting scream.
It seemed to fly for ages.
Then it connected to the rock in the snow, and time slowed down.
The boulder smashed into five pieces, but the stone . . . crumbled. It exploded outwards, sending shards flying.
‘DRAUGR!’ Ygval shouted. ‘To arms!’
‘What did you do?’ Helga screamed.
Ognvald didn’t reply. He stared into the distance at something only he could see, his face frozen in abject terror.
A cold wind lashed at their backs, picking up strength and speed, whipping up the snowflakes on the ground – and now Audun saw them too: shapes in the air, gliding towards them.
‘Ward your thoughts!’ Helga screamed. ‘Don’t believe anything!’
he loved you
The voice entered Audun’s head like water seeping through an old roof.
he loved you and you killed him
‘Shut it,’ Audun said between clenched teeth. He tried to scout out the others, but they’d disappeared behind an odd milky-white fog.
your father loved you and you killed him because of your whore mother
Audun’s back convulsed and arched as the thing on the wind touched him.
and she loved you too and you threw it away because you’re worthless worse than worthless you are harmful
The feeling of being probed suddenly stopped, as if the thoughts had pushed up against something they couldn’t penetrate: something at the core of him.
‘I am not,’ Audun said. ‘They deserved to die.’
you do
‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘maybe I do. But you already did – and when I go, I won’t be stuck in a hole.’ He could taste the rage on the air as the draugr sought a way in.
your rage will destroy you
‘Yes, it will,’ Audun said, and found to his surprise that he meant it. ‘I don’t mind.’
The draugr screamed in frustration, the sound grating on Audun’s spine.
let me in
let me in let me in let me in
Audun looked at the swirling form in the snow. ‘No.’
he will kill you all even you and the other one you’re going to suffer you’ll suffer you’ll—
A speck of light appeared in the centre of the draugr. The flame spread in a circle, burning upwards and down, outlining the stretched and torn figure of a human in flames.
A maniacal cackle echoed in Audun’s head.
suffer suffer suffer suffer suffer
The milky fog around him dissolved and he found himself staring into Helga’s eyes.
He was about to speak when she grabbed his head with both hands, pulled him in and kissed him, her fingers moving in his hair, heat blossoming in his face and travelling with astonishing speed to the rest of his body.
When she broke contact, moments and ages later, they both caught their breath like divers. A moment, then he caught her eyes again. They twinkled, and her mouth twitched in a barely suppressed grin.
‘Had to see if you were alive,’ she said.
‘Mm,’ Audun said, utterly unable to form words.
‘Take these,’ she said, pulling his hand out, palm up, and placing two slivers of wood in it. ‘They get hot. Find the draugr and stab them.’ The runes in the wood glowed faintly.
Audun looked around. The first man he saw was Sven, and he pushed off immediately.
The old man held a rock in his hand, the jagged edge pointing towards his face. Charging through the chaos, Audun leaped and caught Sven by the elbow, pulling hard and struggling as the old raider’s arm moved with determination to hit himself in the head. Audun’s hand closed around the slivers and he struck out towards the shimmering form in front of Sven.
When the wood hit the draugr, the sizzle in the palm of his hand almost made Audun drop the weapon. The flame sprung into life where the point met the form in the air and a flickering, orange circle spread quickly to fill out a human shape. The draugr’s piercing scream set Audun’s teeth on edge but he held the flaming splinter still, gritting his teeth as the hairs were singed off the back of his hand.
Sven came out of the trance and coughed violently. ‘Bastard,’ he hissed. ‘Bastard.’ Tears streaked down the old man’s face.
Lost for words, Audun gave him a quick, hard embrace and ran off to help the next warrior.
*
‘Seven,’ Sigurd said.
‘And nine of mine,’ Skadvald said.
They stood to one side, watching as the men methodically went about stabbing into the ground, dislodging enough frozen soil to bury the dead. Some of the men had killed themselves with blades. Others had simply ceased to live.
‘And Ognvald?’
Skadvald paused. ‘He’s . . . troubled,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ve taken his blade away for now.’
Sigurd looked Skadvald straight in the eyes. ‘I look forward to fighting an enemy I can see,’ he said.
Skadvald didn’t reply. He didn’t have to.
Thirty yards away, Helga walked amongst the bodies. ‘There was a battle here,’ she whispered.
Sven walked beside her. ‘So there was,’ he said. ‘Must have been a while ago, too. I couldn’t help but notice—’
‘—that the draugr weren’t all of the same size.’
‘Exactly.’
Helga stopped and looked at Sven. ‘Don’t worry too much about it. They were old souls, and whatever they met is long gone. Now I’ll need you to leave.’
‘Why?’ Sven looked ahead. ‘Oh.’
Curled up in the snow ahead of them, Thora suddenly looked very small, shivering and moving her mouth silently as she rocked back and forth.
Helga’s fingers found the cord tied around her waist and searched until they found a small pouch. A pinch of herbs travelled to her mouth, where she rolled them around on her tongue, grimacing all the while. Moments later she had a smooth, round green pellet in her fingers.
‘You won’t like me for this, sister,’ Helga whispered.
Then she jumped on the prone woman, pinning her arms beneath her own knees. A moment’s shock, then Thora started screaming and bucking – but it was too late. Helga’s free hand shovelled snow over the smaller woman’s head and sought out her nose, pinching it shut. As Thora’s mouth opened once more to shriek, Helga dropped the pellet in and threw a half-hand of snow in after it, then pushed off and rose, red-cheeked with effort as Thora started to cough.
A heavy hand landed on her shoulder and yanked her around. ‘What have you done to her?’ Skadvald said. ‘Undo it – now. Or I’ll break you.’
‘Let her go,’ Audun said, stepping towards them both.
‘Back off,’ Skadvald growled, grabbing Helga’s shoulder harder.
‘No,’ Audun said, calmly unhooking the hammer from his belt.
Helga gently placed her hand on Skadvald’s, then she drew a deep breath and pressed her thumb down, hard. The big raider screamed in pain as his hand slid off her shoulder, forcing his body to follow.
Helga twisted and suddenly Skadvald was on the ground.
A coarse laugh broke the stunned silence. They all turned to see Thora, sitting bolt-upright in the snow, a fierce gleam in her eyes.
‘You’re alive,’ Skadvald said.
Thora ignored him. Her focus was on Helga as she clambered to her feet. ‘No one has done that to me and lived.’
Helga grinned. ‘I take it you never had an older sister?’
‘I should kill you, you know,’ Thora said.
‘You should,’ Helga said. ‘Broth first.’
Thora grinned.
The two women
walked off side by side, leaving Audun and Skadvald standing like puzzled oxen, staring at each other and trying hard to figure out what had just happened.
*
The heath slowly changed to hill, and the hill to mountainside. All around Ulfar, raiders clambered up the steep incline with varying levels of grace.
‘They can fuck this mountain with a boar tusk,’ Oskarl grumbled. ‘And not one of the nice smooth ones.’
‘Stop your complaining, you big girl,’ Sven said up ahead. ‘It’s always grumbles and moans with you Eastmen.’
‘We just like to describe the world like it is,’ Oskarl said. ‘That way no one gets disappointed.’
‘How do you not just kill each other all the time?’ Ulfar said.
‘Sometimes we do,’ Oskarl said.
Below them, the landscape stretched out until the colours blended into soft curves of white on grey on white. Ulfar had seen most of the men cast a glance in the last bit of climb, and then resolutely look forward.
The dark army was there, behind them and drawing closer. They’d caught glimpses of it from time to time, but now they were starting to feel its presence, like heavy clouds before thunder.
‘WATCH OUT!!’ The scream was raw, immediate, and without thinking, Ulfar threw himself to the ground and felt the mass of the boulder whoosh past. A dull crunch followed by screaming suggested that someone further down hadn’t been so lucky.
‘Giants!’
Ulfar glanced up and cursed: two massive silhouettes were outlined against the grey-white sky, and one was holding a boulder the size of a grown horse. Moments later the giants vanished behind the onrushing rock. Ulfar pressed his head against the cold ground and winced as it shook with the impact.
When he looked up again with his one good eye, three shapes were moving, scurrying up the hill with speed towards the giants. Their screams, high-pitched and inhuman, drifted down towards the cowering raiders.
Sven.
Thora.
Ognvald.
One of the giants bellowed something deep and incomprehensible, grabbing the other’s arm and pointing. Moments later, the two huge figures stepped back from the edge.
Thora reached the top of the hill and launched herself after them. A rock the width of her torso shot through the air where she’d been moments before, missing Sven’s head by inches as the old raider and Ognvald reached the top of the hill side by side and disappeared.
For a moment there was absolute silence. Then a sharp northern wind carried a bellowing roar from beyond the edge.
‘COME ON!’ Sigurd screamed, and all over the hillside, the raiders scrambled to their feet, rushing to follow them.
*
The first thing that struck them was the smell: a musky animal stench, only ten times stronger. Then blood.
A lot of blood.
The next thing was the upturned foot of a giant, lying on its back.
Skadvald roared and charged past the foot, which reached up to mid-chest.
No one followed.
None of the men had seen a giant before, but they’d all seen their share of dead bodies – and this one was as dead as they got.
About twenty yards further on, they saw the body of the other one. Skadvald stopped in his tracks and stared.
Ognvald, Thora and Sven stood around it, panting and grinning maniacally at each other. Thora and Ognvald carried a dagger each, and Sven held one in each hand. Thora tried to say something, but all that came out of her was a strangled chortle.
The raiders gathered around them in a half-circle. No one was in any rush to step any closer to them than strictly necessary. Sticky giant blood cooled as it pooled around the feet of the three.
After a moment, Thora found her voice. ‘I needed that,’ she said.
‘Mm,’ Sven said.
Ognvald just grinned. Then he turned to his father. ‘I’d like my sword back,’ he said. Skadvald looked at his blood-soaked son, standing next to the corpse of a giant, holding what was for all intents and purposes a skinning knife. Then he reached for his belt and silently unhooked a sword, passing it over hilt-first.
‘Thank you,’ the boy said, sheathing the sword at his side. Then, almost as if he was noticing them for the first time, he looked at the assembled raiders. ‘So. Are we going to the top of the mountain or what?’
Without any big speeches, the group started up again. Audun pulled on Ulfar’s sleeve as they walked past the dead giants.
‘Look,’ he said under his breath.
The bodies of the big creatures were covered in knife wounds, stabs, slashes and gouges. They’d both been hamstrung and one of them, which might have been male, wasn’t any more.
Ulfar’s eyes opened wide as he took in the pure fury of the onslaught. ‘Looks like they’ve been done over by a pack of wolverines,’ he muttered.
Audun looked up ahead at the forms of Sven, Thora and Ognvald. ‘I don’t think I’d bet on a pack of wolverines against those three,’ he said. ‘Remind me to be on their side when the thunder comes.’
‘I don’t think you’ll have to wait too long for that,’ the lanky Swede replied.
They walked on in silence, leaving the dead giants behind them in a halo of cold blood.
*
A moment was all it took.
The climb ranged from the steep to the nearly-vertical and then back again, rising all the time. When the sight-lines opened down to where they’d come from, forests of trees they knew to be six times the height of a man and at least a day’s walk to get through were nothing but a smudge in the white. Ulfar led the way, stumbling onto cracks and crevices that made up a path of sorts, always leading upwards, until the ground evened out and they reached a plateau roughly circular, four hundred yards across.
And then, in that moment, he knew.
‘It’s here,’ he said to Sigurd.
The old raider stopped and looked around as Skadvald walked past them. ‘Here?’ he said.
‘Here,’ Ulfar said.
Sven looked around at the blue-black snow-capped stones. ‘It’s less colourful than I’d imagined,’ he said.
‘What are you talking about?’ Skadvald said, turning away from the far edge and stepping towards them.
‘He says the Rainbow Bridge is here,’ Sigurd said.
‘Makes sense,’ Skadvald said.
‘Really?’ Sigurd said.
‘Well,’ Skadvald said, grinning as he unhooked the axe from his back, ‘they seem to think so.’
He looked at the far edge of the plateau as Sigurd and Sven glanced at each other.
‘You go first,’ Sven said.
Sigurd rolled his eyes and walked towards the far edge. He stood there for a moment, then walked back towards Skadvald and unhooked his own axe, limbering up, rolling his shoulders.
‘Oh fine,’ Sven said. ‘I’ll bite.’
He walked towards the edge of the plateau. Slowly the landscape came into view, far away valleys stretching towards him, hills and lesser peaks rising to meet his eye.
Then the deep valley below and the two-mile slope that led up to their plateau.
And the mass of bodies ascending, human and troll.
‘Oh fuck,’ Sven said.
*
The raiders of Stenvik and Skadvald’s men prepared for battle like they’d done all of their lives: all around the plateau practised hands checked armour straps, reinforced leather strips on sword hilts and pushed padding into helmets where needed. Some of the men joked around, while others looked inward, staying silent.
Ulfar watched as Old Thjodolf crept up to the edge and looked down. It looked like he was measuring something, index finger moving against his thumb. Then he went back to the packs and unwound a bundle of spears, arranging them carefully by thickness and jabbing them on the ground in a line
leading from the edge. The spear on the far end was longer and thicker than the others.
Sven was talking to Askell, a big hulk of a man, pointing towards barrel-sized boulders strewn about the big plateau. Behind big Askell, a handful of men of similar shape all hung on the old raider’s every word.
In his own world, Sigurd took two steps back then two steps forward, swinging his axe in ever-widening and quickening arcs. With every swing another year dropped off the chieftain.
‘This is it, isn’t it,’ Helga said at his shoulder.
Ulfar made an effort and managed not to jump. ‘Yes. I think so.’
‘How is your wound?’
‘Still can’t see out of the eye,’ Ulfar said, ‘but there’s no pain, which I should be thankful for. Healed over quick. I’ll be useless in the fight.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Helga said. She thought for a moment. ‘Would you believe me if I said I still don’t know why I’m here?’
Ulfar smiled. ‘Oh, I would. I don’t.’
Helga touched his arm. ‘I think you know more than you realise.’
With that she left him and walked over to Skadvald.
‘I’m pretty sure I don’t,’ he mumbled. ‘I don’t even know where—’ His jaw snapped shut and a sensation burned its way up and down his spine. Lips pursed, he closed his eyes.
He did know. He knew exactly where they needed to be.
When he opened his eyes again his body had relaxed. ‘Sven. Sven. Where is Sven?’ Pushing past warriors, he found the greybeard standing next to Sigurd. ‘We need to twist the position of the men to the left.’
Sven turned and looked at him. ‘Why?’
Ulfar squeezed his eyes shut and held his forehead with one hand, trying to keep the thought still. ‘It’s going to be . . . important.’ When he opened his eyes again, he saw the trace of a glance between Sven and his chieftain.
Sigurd shrugged. ‘Fine. I’ll go and tell Skadvald.’
‘Thank you,’ Ulfar blurted out. ‘I—’
The voice swallowed up Ulfar’s words.
‘RIGHT: WAVE GOODBYE TO YOUR COCKS, YOU GOAT-BOTHERING PUS-FACES – THEY’RE COMING!’ Thora moved back from the edge.
The Valhalla Saga Page 83