“Au noht,” said Yowrnsaxa.
Jane grunted and tried to rub her eyes with her shield arm. In other circumstances, that would have been fuel for a bit of teasing, but in that cave, I didn’t want to tease anyone. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It will fade.” And as soon as I’d said it, it did.
With the ability to see in the dark, I perceived faint, blurry forms at the edge of the trowba. Most of their features shivered and jittered, but their faces…their faces cleared if I stared at one long enough. Their expressions displayed rage, repugnance, and revulsion.
Ahead, water gushed out of the wall fifteen feet in the air. It cascaded into a pool that almost covered the entire floor of the cave—only a path about three feet wide skirted the underground pool on the side opposite the waterfall. Sunlight streaming in from the cave’s mouth bounced and shimmered on the surface of the pool. As we approached the pool, Althyof stopped walking.
Without pausing his trowba, he pointed at Veethar and the horses and pointed across the pool. Veethar nodded and led the horses, single file, along the path. Althyof pointed at Jane, Sig, Skowvithr, Mothi, Yowtgayrr and me, and once again pointed at the path. We followed Veethar, who was about a third of the way around the pool. Althyof followed us, straining his voice for volume, his lyrics harsher and stentorian.
When Veethar reached the other side, he stopped and turned back to watch our progress. Althyof lagged behind us, waving the others to come along. He motioned us on with impatient gestures when he saw we’d slowed to match his pace.
I turned and looked back when we reached the other side of the pool. I kept expecting a tentacled monster, straight out of The Lord of the Rings books, to attack us from the pool. The walls of the cave toward the entrance sparkled in the sunlight, the cave’s mouth blazing with warm yellow light.
Althyof reached us and waved us on, making room for the others. We walked away from the pool of water, which now looked as black as death. It would be the perfect time for Tolkien’s beast to attack us if it existed.
I should have been watching the other direction as it turned out.
With a roar, a huge shadow loomed against the darkness of the deep cave. I spun, hands flying to the butts of my pistols. One of the horses snorted, and another squealed in fear. Keri and Fretyi ran to me and pressed against my legs, whining and looking into the darkness with significant anxiety.
With a clatter, Mothi’s axes were out, and then everyone was drawing weapons. Althyof’s cadmium red cartoon daggers flared to life, their blades pulsing in time with the trowba. The roar sounded again, seeming closer and angrier.
“What the hell is it?” hissed Jane, her voice tight.
Keri growled, sounding twice as big as he was, though he remained at my side, pressed into my leg.
“Dad?” asked Sig, his eyes round.
The roar came a third time, and Slaypnir screamed in response. Keri’s growl turned into a snarl, and Fretyi barked like an attack dog on high alert.
“Be ready,” said Meuhlnir.
“It’s not natural,” muttered Veethar.
The skyuldur vidnukonur stood beside their men, legs apart, shield-side leg forward, weapon-side leg back, shields up, and Jane shifted her stance to match theirs. “Dad?” asked Sig again, fear quivering in his voice.
“It’s okay, Sig,” I said. “Stay with Skowvithr, no matter what happens.”
His expression twitched, seemingly at war with itself—like he wanted to laugh but was too scared. “‘It’s okay, but if everyone dies, stay with Skowvithr.’ You’re a dork, Dad.”
Footsteps thumped on the cave’s floor, and something snarled in the darkness. It wasn’t a friendly sound. Slaypnir screamed again, shaking his head and pawing the ground. I drew Kunknir and Krati, holding them ready, and walked forward to clear my sight lines.
The roar sounded again, at a deafening volume. Whatever it was, it stood fifteen paces away, and it was monstrously big. It opened its mouth and roared, and with the noise came the odor of death and decomposition.
“What the hell is it?” I shouted over the din.
As if it had been waiting for us to speak, the thing charged before my shout echoed into the depths of the cave. It came on all fours, chuffing like a steam engine gathering speed. It galloped toward us, claws or talons of some kind scuffing against the hard-packed clay floor.
It emerged out of the darkness like a demon rising from hell. Its eyes glowed red, and its fangs glistened with a ropy slime that dripped over its decaying gums and splattered on the floor. Where it still had fur, it was wiry, coarse, and dark brown, and where it had fallen out, old, dry sores disgorged maggots by the handful. It was a bear.
A Brobdingnagian, brainsick bear. A dead bear.
Kunknir thundered in the tight confines of the cave, followed by Krati. The muzzle flashes of the two pistols made the bear stop his charge and shrink back, but the rounds that slammed into the thing seemed inconsequential to the beast. He rocked forward on all fours and roared at me.
“No use!” shouted Veethar, pushing up beside me. He stood tall and threw his arms out to his sides. “Tvala!” he commanded.
The bear shook his head, easily the size of Veethar’s torso, staggering for a moment, before shuffling forward, eyes blazing.
“Kera ayns ok yek seki!” Veethar shouted. “Tvala!”
“Hooth ow yowrni!” shouted Mothi as he stepped forward. “Strikuhr risa!” As he began to swell up like a time-lapse view of a bodybuilder, he sprinted forward, an axe in each hand.
“Mothi!” yelled Sig. He took a step forward, but Skowvithr planted a hand on his shoulder and held him back.
The bear swung his head toward the growing Isir charging him and roared. Mothi roared back and lifted his axes high.
Meuhlnir’s hammer whistled by me, end over end, the runes of his name glowing in my enchanted sight. “Ehlteenk!” Meuhlnir shouted.
I squeezed my eyes shut before the thunder sounded, wondering for a second how lightning would deal with us being underground. A heartbeat later, the bolt passed by me, the skin on the right side of my body tingling and burning with its passage. I cracked open my left eye. The lightning streamed in a burning blue, horizontal line from behind me into the bear’s wide chest. It sizzled and popped for a moment, like fatty meat cooking over an open flame, then faded. A large burn in the shape of a rough circle smoked in the middle of the bear’s chest, but other than that, he seemed unaffected.
Meuhlnir’s hammer bounced off the dead bear’s skull, and as it did, two things happened at once: Meuhlnir shouted, “aftur,” to bring the hammer back to him, and Mothi struck the bear with both of his double-bladed axes, chopping deep into the thick flesh of the bear’s neck. The bear screamed in rage and lashed out at Mothi, but he was already lunging away. Yowrnsaxa leapt forward, shield held high, running to guard Mothi’s flank. The bear glared at her and swiped at her shield with his other arm, and the blow sent Yowrnsaxa reeling back, dazed.
Small arms fire would never turn the tide of this battle, even with the enchantments on the pistols. The bear had no wings to puncture to force a retreat. I holstered my pistols, wishing for another kind of weapon.
Keri and Fretyi pressed into my calves, one on each side, alternating whimpering and snarling, tails tucked, ears back. I wondered if they would stand with me if the bear attacked.
A scene from the movie The Thirteenth Warrior splashed through my mind like a blast of cold rain. It was the scene in which the party of Norse warriors discovered that the Ven worshiped bears. Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan, the Arabic thirteenth warrior, asks how to fight a bear, and Buliwyf answers: “With spears.”
“How do you say ‘spear’ in the Gamla Toonkumowl?” I called.
“It’s hardly the time—”
“Tell me!” I cried.
“Sbyowt,” said Sif from where she was ministering to Yowrnsaxa.
I replayed all the lessons Meuhlnir and Mothi had given me about vefnathur strenki. Fix the image of wha
t you want to happen in your mind, they had said. Then say the words.
I imagined a twelve-foot-long metal pole tipped with a long, tapering blade. I imagined the blade glowed the way Althyof’s daggers did. I fixed that image in my mind, held my hands out in front of me, and said, “Sbyowt.”
The spear condensed out of the air, dream-like, solidifying and gaining weight as it did so. The last thing to appear was the tip, which ended up looking more like a lightsaber out of Star Wars than Althyof’s blades.
Mothi was leaping and rolling, striking the bear at every opportunity. Meuhlnir came forward, trying to taunt the bear into ignoring Mothi.
I glanced at Jane. “Stay with Sig,” I said.
“Hank, don’t you go…”
But it was already too late—I was running forward, the huge spear clutched in my fists. The bear’s eyes locked on the glowing tip and he chuffed, almost as if he were asking what the red thing was. “Mothi, get ready!” I shouted.
The bear’s eyes shifted to mine, and he roared in my face, the stench of death and corruption overpowering. The bear reared back on his hind legs, towering over me. I raised the tip of the spear, waving it in the bear’s face. He snapped at the tip, and when it moved, I dipped the tip of the spear in under the bear’s chin, meaning to skewer him in the throat, but the beast was wily and cunning, and as I slid forward to skewer him, the bear slipped to the side, allowing the burning tip of the spear to crease the side of his neck. With horrific speed, the bear lunged forward and swung a mammoth, claw-tipped paw in a wide, flat arc aimed at my head.
“Hank!” Jane screamed.
It was as if that massive paw was coming at me in slow motion, but I, too, was mired in sluggish time. It came closer and closer, and as it did, details of the paw grew clearer: the scars on the fleshy pads, the cracked claw on his middle toe, the tufts of dead hair falling from the loose skin of his ankle.
“Down!” yelled Mothi as he leapt at the bear’s exposed back.
The puppies knocked me down, one crashing into my legs and the other slamming into my torso. They hit the floor next to me, and scrambled away, their claws scrabbling on the clay. The spear bounced out of my hands as I hit and immediately disappeared. The bear angled his swing down, trying to catch me anyway, and he almost did. His decaying paw swept by my head, missing me by mere inches.
Mothi slammed into the beast’s back, sinking both axes in to the haft. The bear roared and shook as if trying to dislodge a fly. Mothi planted both feet between the beast’s shoulders and strained to pull the axes apart, tendons and muscles bunching and quivering. The bear twitched his fur again, but otherwise ignored Mothi’s efforts.
The bear loomed over me, malevolence burning in his eyes, foul pus dripping from his open maw. I tried to scrabble away, but the beast was too quick. He roared in my face, splattering me with the viscid pus. I gagged on the stench of it, trying to get away—digging into the clay with my elbows and heels, pushing with all my strength. The bear chuffed in my face as if he were laughing at my weakness.
An immense, black power swept around me and slammed into the bear, and though it staggered a half-step to the side, the relentless thing came on.
“It won’t die,” wailed Jane in a voice with no strength in it. Behind me, she clattered to her knees, too exhausted by the attempt at killing the dead bear to stand.
“He’s already dead. Death magic is meaningless against him,” said Veethar, in a calm, level voice.
Yowtgayrr whirled by me, spinning in mid-leap, blades flashing in my enchanted vision. He swept along the side of the bear, still spinning, blades slicing into the bear’s side, ripping away chunks of dead flesh. The bear turned his head to the side and bellowed in anger, but Yowtgayrr was already gone, circling behind the beast.
“Ehlteenk!” Meuhlnir yelled, and again thunder boomed as lightning streamed into the cave on a flat, horizontal trajectory. This time the bolt slammed into the bear’s face, igniting some of his loose fur.
Yowtgayrr sprinted toward the wall beside the bear’s other flank, planted his foot high up on the wall, and sprang backward, twisting his body as he flew so that his longsword carved a long, deep furrow across the beast’s spine.
The bear spun, nearly crushing me as he did, flinging Mothi off without his axes, which were still embedded in the bear’s back. The beast swung at Yowtgayrr, moving faster than a bear that size should have been able to. Yowtgayrr feinted to the side, then rolled forward, leaping to the side at the last moment, sinking both his longsword and his dagger into the beast’s shoulder as he passed.
I rocked to the side and crawled, wincing, on my hands and knees out of the bear’s range. “How do we kill him?”
“He’s already dead—” began Veethar.
“No shit! How do we kill him again?” yelled Jane as she fought her way to her feet through sheer force of will.
The bear roared at Yowtgayrr, but try as he might, the thing couldn’t touch the Alf sverth hoospownti. Yowtgayrr danced past the bear, making cuts into the bear’s dead flesh at will, but he had limits, he would tire, he would make a mistake eventually, and the bear would be on him.
I glanced around at the others. Althyof stood in the center of us all, singing his trowba, dancing in place, his cartoon-daggers growing and shrinking, stretching and thinning. He didn’t dare stop, or the lantvihtir would be on us. Veethar stood, arms at his sides, watching the bear move, almost as if he were entranced. Sif knelt by Yowrnsaxa’s side, wrapping her arm where it oozed blood. Jane stood in front of Sig, looking like she’d gone ten rounds with Muhammad Ali, and Skowvithr stood at her side, hand on her elbow. Meuhlnir was dragging Mothi away from the bear, not having an easy time by the look of it. Freya and Pratyi stood side by side, heads together, talking in each other’s ear to be heard over the din. Frikka was…not there.
“Veethar! Where’s your wife?” I shouted.
Veethar turned as if in a dream and looked at me. His eyes were empty, dull. He whispered something under his breath, lips in constant motion. “What?” I said.
The dream came back to me, the dream I’d had at Tholfr’s inn. I’d forgotten it in the days since—written it off as the reaction of my subconscious mind to the sound of Jane practicing with Yowtgayrr. I couldn’t be sure, though, if the dream had really happened this way, or if my mind was taking events of the present and treating them like a memory, like déjà vu.
Even so, the memory of the shaggy arm whistling through the darkness to decapitate Veethar burned and sang in my forebrain. I lurched to my feet and grabbed Veethar by the shoulders, twisting him around me in a circle, so I was between him and the bear. His eyes settled on mine for a moment and cleared. His gaze flicked over my shoulder, and his eyes jerked wide, wide open.
I spun, and yelled, “Sbyowt!” The long spear coalesced in my hands, the lightsaber tip gleaming. The huge undead bear lurched at me, one paw whistling at me with all the bear’s considerable weight behind the blow.
I dodged to the side, but I was too slow. I jerked the spear into the path of the blow, hoping the metal shaft would be strong enough to deflect the massive paw.
It was an insane hope, and the shaft shattered like ice struck with a hammer. The force of the blow was immense, and it left my arms numb to the shoulder. I staggered back, and the bear roared, his disgusting spittle splattering in my face.
“Look out!” shouted Veethar from somewhere behind me.
The bear’s other front paw was sweeping toward me, already too close for me to dodge. I dropped the bottom of the spear and lashed out at the bear’s paw with the glowing, flickering tip of the spear. The bear screamed in angry defiance as tip of the spear sliced and burned its way into the center of that massive paw. The bear jerked his paw away, dragging me toward his body until it dawned on me to let go of the spear.
The zombie bear swung his head and looked at the spear impaling his paw. He tried to grasp the spear with his teeth, but on the wrong end, the glowing tip burning his to
ngue and mouth. The bear glared at me and roared again. I tried to back away, to get out of the bear’s reach.
Quicker than thought, the bear lashed out with the paw still impaled by my spear. I dodged to the left and pain exploded on my right side. The broken shaft of the spear skewered me through the right side of my chest.
“Hank!” shouted Yowtgayrr. The bear lifted his arm, dragging me up into the air, and shook it, rattling the bones out of me. The bear kept jerking his arm this way and that in savage sweeps. I flopped to and fro, no thought left.
“Ayta sbyowt!” shouted Sif. The spear sticking out of my side dissolved into mist, and I flew away from the bear, six feet above the ground. Jane and Sig screamed a duet.
In the moment before I slammed into the ground, I saw her—Frikka—kneeling against the far wall of the cave in the shadows there. Her gaze met mine, and she was crying, the tears looking like red gold to my magicked eyes. Kuhntul’s words sang in my mind. I am here to warn you, Hank, son of Jens. I’d asked her what she was there to warn me about. A betrayer, Kuhntul had said. A traitor.
I crashed into the hard clay floor, the impact jarring all thoughts and memories from my mind. I bounced once and skidded into the shallows of the black pool of water. I lay there, feeling hot and cold all over, feeling sick, not yet aware of any pain, wrapped in a cocoon of shock and concussion.
Frikka raced to my side—she was far closer than anyone else, as if she knew I’d land where I did. She rolled me onto my back, out of the cold water. “I’m so sorry, Hank,” she whispered in my ear. “Veethar was to die, and I—” She broke down into uncontrollable sobs while she pressed her hands to my side.
Where she pressed, it burned as if she held a red-hot iron poker to my skin. She kept whispering about how sorry she was, but I couldn’t find the strength or the will to care. Dizziness swept through me like a tsunami, followed by intense nausea, before I started to shiver. A burning pain radiated from my side where Frikka worked, something that felt alive, like snakes crawling under my skin, trailing hot wire.
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