“Is this the work of the woman in the forest, Excellency?”
“What woman?” the king snapped.
“The beautiful blonde woman who bewitched you.”
“I remember no woman,” Hetidn said, but Althyof thought he caught a glimmer of recognition in his gaze.
“Your Excellency,” began Althyof, “if you permit me time to examine you, I’m sure I can compose a trowba to rid you of this spell.” His voice rang with confidence, but even as he said them, he recalled the results of the last trowba he’d sung against the blonde woman.
“No,” snapped the king. “We attack in half an hour.” The king spun on his heel and walked away.
Althyof glanced at the faces within hearing distance. They all wore the same expression: resignation. Shaking his head, Althyof walked away from the small army of men.
It’s not honorable, he thought. But it’s also not honorable to betray one’s king, even if the king is an insufferable fool. He shook his head. If he obeyed Hetidn, it would be to perform a dishonorable act. But wouldn’t the dishonor rest on Hetidn’s shoulders? Then again, if Hetidn was dishonorable, so was Serklant as a nation, and as a citizen of Serklant, the dishonor was his to share.
Althyof strode into the darkness, his mind awhirl, his stomach churning. There had to be an answer, had to be a solution, a way out. The answer came into his mind as if someone had whispered it in his ear, and his pace picked up. He sang a trowba of stealth and ran toward Hokni’s palace.
Technically, what he had in mind was a betrayal of his king, his countrymen, but outside the technicality, it was the perfect solution. He would eliminate the pall of dishonor from the attack.
Althyof snuck onto the palace grounds, and into a vacant room, where he let the trowba draw to an end and composed himself. He beat the dust of travel from his clothes as best he could. He would still look out of place—who attended a wedding in rough traveling clothes? At least he wouldn’t look as if he’d walked in from the road itself.
Althyof followed the sounds of merriment to the large hall where the wedding party was in full swing. He slipped into the room unnoticed and stood in the shadows, looking around. Hokni was easy to pick out: a tall Tverkr wearing gold-spun robes and a stone crown on his head, whose gaze was one of lust and impatience. The small woman next to him was beautiful—a dainty Tverkr woman with amazing vermillion eyes.
Like he had every business being there, Althyof walked toward King Hokni. The king saw him approach, and a look of concern flittered across his features. He made a hand gesture at someone behind and to the side of Althyof, but it was too late to change direction or to stop—to do so would be to scream he was a danger to the king.
Althyof didn’t see the blonde woman in the shadows behind the table until it was too late. In fact, he heard her whispering to the king before he saw her. Hands fell on his shoulders and upper arms with grips of iron.
“Your Majesty, King Hokni,” he said. “I am Althyof, the enchanter and runeskowld.”
The king nodded. “So I am told,” he said in a mild voice.
“The woman behind you, Sire, has led King Hetidn to be outside your walls this very night. She has brought him here, whispering poison in his ears until he is ready to attack tonight. During your wedding party.”
“Yes,” said King Hokni. He didn’t seem surprised, or even concerned.
“Sire! I’ve known King Hetidn for many years, and I served his father before him. It is not a dishonorable family. Serklant is not a dishonorable nation!”
“Be that as it may, Hetidn is outside, planning to attack,” said the king.
“Yes, but bewitched, Your Majesty. Bewitched by the blonde woman behind you.”
“Do you hear that, Messenger? You’ve bewitched Hetidn. Have you bewitched me, as well?”
“Of course, Excellency,” said the blonde, her tone one of jest, but her expression serious.
“I thought so!” joked King Hokni. “Tell me, Messenger, to what end?”
“To bring Serklant and Yutlant to war.” Again, the woman made it sound like a joke, but her eyes told another story.
“She means what she’s saying, King Hokni,” said Althyof. “She isn’t joking as she makes it sound.”
“Oh, of course,” said Hokni with a broad smile. “Why, Messenger of Suel, do you wish our two countries to come to war?”
“Queen Suel’s reasons are beyond the likes of you.” Hokni laughed, but the Messenger of Suel didn’t. The king didn’t seem to notice, but his bride’s eyes widened, and she brought a small, perfect hand to her lips.
Queen Suel? Of Osgarthr? What would she gain from this? Althyof squinted at the Messenger and began to compose a lausaveesa that would reveal her identity.
The blonde woman winked at Althyof and disappeared. He heard the war cries signaling the start of the attack outside. Hokni looked up at him and grinned. “Seems you will need a new employer soon,” he said and laughed.
Ten
“And Hokni’s new bride looked at him as if he were insane. She got up and left the wedding feast, but Hokni didn’t even notice. Kuhntul had bewitched him, of course. She’d controlled both kings perfectly, playing one against the other.”
“Of course, the woman was no envoy of the Dark Queen,” said Meuhlnir, stroking his beard.
“No, but none of us knew that at the time. It appeared to be a play, a stratagem designed to make an invasion easier.”
“How so?” asked Neerowthr.
“By eliminating two strong nations, thus creating a power vacuum into which the Dark Queen could have stepped,” said Frikka.
“Exactly right,” said Althyof. “But Tverkar don’t think that way. Instead of creating a power vacuum, it galvanized the Tverkar, unified us—for once. We prepared for an attack on Nitavetlir, all nations working together in a common cause.”
“And when no attack came?” asked Veethar.
Althyof shrugged. “When no attack came, we decided to go on the offensive, to punish the Dark Queen for her interference. Meuhlnir’s entreaty served as a good excuse.”
“Hmph. And here I thought my oratory skills had carried the day.”
Althyof chuckled. “Not likely. It was a convocation of Tverkar you addressed. You didn’t insult anyone; how could we trust you? All that blather about common goals, common enemies.”
“Well, it was true,” Meuhlnir said.
“To you, yes. To the Tverkar?” Althyof spread his arms and shook his head. “There was no profit in your proposal.”
“Where was the profit in taking revenge?” asked Sif.
“Sometimes, my Lady Sif, vengeance is profit enough. Eh, Veethar?”
Veethar gazed at Althyof with a placid expression and said nothing.
Althyof shrugged. “We didn’t find out it was Kuhntul acting on her own until the battle of Raytyanes. As you no doubt know, Kuhntul created a bit of a stir.”
“How so?” I asked.
Althyof glanced at me, a crooked grin on his face. “She and Skuhgul—another of the Tisir—ripped through the Dark Queen’s karls like a sterk task, slaying them with a passion. Yarl Howkon stood and died with his karls. Despite his use of the strenkir af krafti, he couldn’t save his men, or even himself. Kuhntul and Skuhgul were too powerful, too furious.”
“And the Tverkar saw it and knew they’d been tricked?” asked Jane.
Althyof waggled his head back and forth. “In a way…We were there, undermining the keep walls. We heard Kuhntul and Skuhgul arrive—who could miss that frenetic bruit—and we rushed out of our tunnels, believing at first a cave-in was imminent. We saw them, sweeping through the men on the walls, white streaks that left blood and body parts in their wake. We didn’t recognize what they were at the time; we thought it might have been the work of a powerful vefari. When the din ceased, the gates of the fortress were thrown open, and two women stood inside, making gestures of welcome. One of them was the blonde woman from the tale I told. Kuhntul.”
&nbs
p; “And? What about your vengeance?” asked Mothi.
Althyof scoffed. “We’d just seen the two of them decimate an entire fortress of men—vefari, yarls, karls, thralls—indiscriminately. We may be a grumpy bunch, but we aren’t a stupid grumpy bunch.”
“Did anyone confront her?” I asked.
“I did,” said Althyof. “I demanded her name, and this time she told me. I demanded she explain herself, and she laughed at me. Skuhgul came to stand by her side, glowering and humming a spooky little tune. I thought it prudent to leave.”
I glanced at Meuhlnir, then shifted my gaze to Veethar. “The Tisir helped you in the war?”
Meuhlnir glanced at Veethar and said, “Yes.”
At the same moment, Veethar said, “No.” The two Isir locked eyes for a moment.
“Which is it?” I asked, but neither man would elaborate on his original answer.
Frikka took a drink of her mead. When she swallowed, she said, “Kuhntul and Skuhgul wore white during that battle. Are you aware that they appear as white or black depending on their intentions?”
I nodded.
“Well, in other battles, they or others of their kind appeared dressed in black.”
“And so we arrive back to ‘I don’t know’ as the answer du jour?”
“The what?” asked Meuhlnir.
“It means ‘of the day.’”
“Oh… As I said before, the role of the Tisir on Osgarthr is complicated.”
“These Tisir are fickle,” said Jane.
“They may be,” said Frikka. “But even so, ignore them at your peril.”
“But how can you trust what they say? How can you ever be sure if they want to help you or hurt you?” asked Jane.
Frikka shrugged and took another sip of mead.
“Well, using the color guideline that seems to be the only constant in the subject, Kuhntul’s appearance, in this case, is malevolent.”
“Yes, but to whom?” asked Veethar.
“I’m the one she came to.”
“Sure, but perhaps by manipulating you, she is acting against someone else,” said Althyof. “There’s no telling what any given Tisir is up to. They are a cantankerous lot.”
“Coming from a Tverkr, that says a lot,” said Mothi.
Althyof squinted at him and laughed. “I like you, lad.”
Mothi grinned. “I’m a likeable fellow.”
“Even if you do smell like dirty socks,” said Sig in a stage whisper.
“I’m not the one who doesn’t enjoy bathing.”
“Well, Cousin Mouthy, thanks for telling my mom.”
“Your mom had already discerned your lack of bathingness. I do have a nose.” Jane cocked her eyebrow at him. “I’m getting a prophecy. You will be bathing tonight.”
“Too bad you don’t follow Auntie Flicka’s example and keep your prophecies to yourself.”
“Boy,” I growled.
“Kidding, Dad. Geesh.”
I smiled and winked at him. “Me too.”
“Dadgumit! Foiled by Cop-voice. Again!”
Tholfr and his son banged in from the kitchen, each carrying three times as much food as our party could eat in two sittings. I didn’t complain, though, the scent of it made my mouth water.
After we finished supper, Jane and I went up to our room. I felt the way I did most nights after my Personal Monster™ had kept me awake throughout the previous night: groggy and fuzzy-headed. There was a fire blazing in the room’s little stone fireplace, and the room was sweltering. It felt good for a moment, but I had to open the window and let some of the brisk air in.
“What are your thoughts about all that?” I asked, trying for casual, but hitting the mark for awkward instead.
“About those three men who have to sleep in the stables because of this weird caste thing they’ve got going on here? I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I, but that’s not what I meant.”
“About this Kuhntul woman? She sounds like someone we don’t need to invite over to dinner.”
“Ten-four on that.”
“What was it she told you?”
“She said there was a betrayer in the party. A traitor.”
“Naw,” said Jane. “They could have betrayed us during the battle at Piltsfetl.”
“I know, that was my thought as well. Some of the others immediately pointed at Althyof.”
“Why?”
“Tverkar have a mercenary reputation.”
Jane shrugged and slipped into the bed. “Ah!” she exclaimed. “Bed! Warm and cozy.”
I shook my head. “You’re insane. It’s sweltering in here.”
“Well, I’m cold, so there. Plus, I don’t care if you’re hot, get your ass in bed and get to sleep. If you pull another all-nighter, I’ll have to beat you, and then your fancy new friends will know what a wimp you are.”
I climbed into bed and shoved the covers off.
Jane shrugged even further under the covers. “More for me!”
“Hog them all you want, dear,” I murmured and fell asleep.
Eleven
Mud mired us, Veethar and I, buried under a thousand tons of rock and swathed in darkness. A terrible beast lived in the darkness with us—I could hear it breathe and sniff, looking for us.
I couldn’t see an inch in front of my face, but I knew Veethar was in front of me, trying to lead me out of the blackness and into the light once more. He whispered incessantly, which rang false, but he kept it up as we trudged on and on.
The beast followed us, its steps just a fraction of a heartbeat off-time from ours. It was big, from the sound of it, and it was angry.
“Veethar, we have to get out of here,” I hissed. “There’s something in the darkness with us.”
Veethar turned as if in a dream and looked at me. His eyes were empty, dull, but his lips moved constantly, a susurration of sibilants sang in my straining ears.
“Would you stop that? I’m trying to listen for the beast.”
He nodded but didn’t stop.
A great, shaggy arm swept out of the darkness behind Veethar. I tried to speak, tried to shout a warning, but the words stuck in my throat. At the end of the shaggy arm gleamed four long, silver blades that whistled through the fear-thick air.
As I watched, the arm swept into Veethar’s exposed back, the blades slicing through him as if his body were made of tissue paper. His head separated from his neck, falling sideways in the great arm’s wake, lips in constant motion, empty, dead eyes glued to my own.
The beast was coming for me next. It clanked and banged toward me in the darkness, crying out and grunting.
Twelve
I awoke breathing hard, ears straining for the clanking, banging advance of the thing from my nightmare. Outside, practice blades crashed against shields, and a woman grunted. I peeled my eyes open and winced at the sunlight streaming in through the open window. The position of the sun meant it was late morning—around 10 or 11 if my guess was right. The thick comforter draped over me, weighing me down. I flung it off and swung my legs to the floor, groaning at how stiff I was.
My head felt as if I’d spent the previous night doing a week’s drinking and my mouth tasted like a monkey’s asshole. I stuffed my legs into my pants and dragged a shirt on, wincing at the myriad of aches and pains.
Someone had decided I needed rest, and it rankled. Why ask me if you’re going to do what you want, regardless of my answer? I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the irritation at the women who had my best interests at heart. Even so, being disabled didn’t mean I was a child. I can still make decisions about my own body, thank you very much. That wasn’t a fair thought, but I felt like shit and was grumpy to boot.
I blinked hard a few times, trying to clear the bleariness from my eyes, but it was obviously going to be one of those days in which my vision was blurry, my body was stiff, and my demeanor was bear-like. I wished it was as easy as that old Toys-R-Us commercial (Turn that frown upside down!), but i
t wasn’t that easy. It seemed as if changing my mood had been that easy before the advent of my Personal Monster™, but maybe that was just green-grass syndrome.
I glanced out the window, a bit amused by the grunting, the battle cries, the whump of wooden weapons on shields, the cheering. Wait, cheering? I lurched to my feet, shuffled my way over to the window, and squinted out.
In the empty space between the inn proper and the small grazing pasture kept for the horses of the inn’s guests, a fighting square had been laid out. In it, Jane stood, crouching behind her shield. Yowtgayrr stood opposite my wife, his narrow longsword and dagger held at the ready, sunlight skittering along the naked steel. As I watched, Jane leapt forward, feinting with her shield at Yowtgayrr’s head and slashing at his throat with her wooden axe. At the last moment, Yowtgayrr dodged to the side and swatted her across the rump with the flat of his longsword. Jane yelped and whirled to face him, eyes blazing, but the Alf was already gone, circling as she moved.
Jane struck with her axe, swinging blind, and it clattered across Yowtgayrr’s shoulder. Mothi, Sig, and the three Isir women cheered. Yowtgayrr staggered back, almost tripping himself.
The memory of Yowtgayrr fighting three Svartalfar during the attack on Veethar’s estate swam into my mind. He’d been so graceful, so capable, that he’d made his three opponents look like children fighting a master swordsman, but in the square below, he appeared slow and clumsy.
I turned from the window and laced up my boots, sitting in the chair next to the door. I thumped downstairs, pressing both palms into the walls in opposite directions. There was no handrail, of course—Osgarthr had no Americans with Disabilities Act. There wasn’t room for a handrail anyway. My knees and ankles screamed at me the whole flight of stairs.
Tholfr sat in his tiny office, almost dozing. When he heard me at the bottom of the steps, he sprang up and came out to greet me. “Was the room satisfactory, Yarl Tyeldnir?”
“Hank,” I said in a gruff, grouchy voice. “And yes.”
“Ah, yes…Hank,” he said with obvious discomfort. “Would you care to eat?”
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 63