Sons of Ymir

by Alaric Longward

  “They’ll be ready,” the driver grunted. “They are all on their toes with the high and mighties here. The four vampires and her darkness make things work smoothly.” He poked me viciously, and I bit at the finger. He clutched it away and chuckled. “Beware, Ilk,” the driver said. “I once saw a rat pet. It belonged to that lady of Olin in our barracks, and she used it to torment those who didn’t give her love and appreciation. If she had held a shroud on that face of hers, she would not need a rat to punish anyone with!” he laughed. “Ugly for a draugr, she is. That rat ate some brothers who denied her fun, didn’t it? Make sure to lock the rat up, if you sleep .”

  They chuckled. They didn’t sleep. They missed it.

  “I like her, the lady,” the draugr holding me muttered. “She has a personality, rather unlike others in the Spire and Dome. She has no agenda but love making. She spreads it.”

  The driver hooted. “She spreads what? Her legs? Her rotten thighs? She does! You have had her? You fool. No dead one should love. You cannot forget her, ever! She must treat you terribly to lift the spell! Or you must have another, better than she is. That just feeds the affliction, of course. You are completely lost.”

  “It is my misery and not yours. I’ll give the rat to her as a present,” he murmured, his dead, intense eyes glowing with single-minded purpose. “I’ll tell her you don’t think she is pretty.”

  He looked glum. “She would prefer your jugular, I bet,” the driver laughed. “You won’t find her. They will be moving. You might just want to snap the rat’s neck.”

  The driver eyed me, and I could see it grew attached to its own idea.

  The draugr that had me, on the other hand, took the opposite view. “No, no. I’ll keep her.”

  “Him ,” the other one crumbled. “Got balls you could play dice with. Fat and juicy. Maybe just fat. It looks dirty, after all.”

  “Whichever, but I’ll keep it. Just should find it some flesh to nibble on,” my friend muttered. “I’m sure our people left some bits and pieces behind, if they left.”

  They laughed hollowly.

  The remainder of the journey I spent sitting in the lap of the rat-loving draugr. I watched the hills as we came closer and closer to them. They grew out of the dark gray fog like forgotten behemoths, and soon, we saw there were old ruins on the hillsides.

  “I wonder,” the driver murmured. “What happened to the poor bastards in the hill, long ago.”

  “What happens to poor bastards all over,” the rat-lover answered. “They get cooked in their own guts, that’s what happens. Annoyed a wrong king or just caught a nasty disease of snot and shit. They all suffer, love. They will, again, soon.”

  “I hope we make some treasure, if they let us go,” the driver said.

  “We’ll rob the corpses, as usual,” my friend lamented. “The boat-scum hope the same. They want a break from this labor. The generals? They’ll not take us. Besides, they’ll need us to collect the corpses soon enough.”

  The words were ominous, and the silence oppressing until we reached the edge of a craggy hills, and a captain commanding the wagons raised his haggard arm to the air.

  On the closest low hillside, doors were opening. The hill was suddenly a beehive of undead activity. A streams of walking corpses rushed down the hill, and I saw a larger cave opening halfway up the hill, inside which lights flickered. We rode forward again as horn blared in the evening air, briefly and lazily, and without any apparent urgency.

  On the very top of the hill, on the crest, a cavalcade appeared.

  There, wearing a brilliant red, rode the queen of Malignborg, and the mind behind many of the undead plots looked down. Rhean was speaking to four others. They were pale, dangerous looking men. They were her spawn, her former lovers, and all watched her with adoration and servitude. Her eyes went over me, and even from afar, I felt compelled by those orbs. I felt the love for her.

  The dread she instilled in a mortal heart made me also angry.

  I bit down on my draugr, who didn’t notice.

  Her bastard ilk wore gold and black, all looking splendid, as if the dead were having a party. Their horses stood silent as the nasty creature took her time to oversee the activity below, and then, she whipped her horse and rode from the hill.

  She didn’t go to the hill above us, but she rode to the crags. Then, I saw some light.

  Deep in the hilly lands, amid crags, was a tower of stone. Lights flickered from small windows. It was thick as the Ugly Brother, a fortress with a natural wall, part of the mountainside, but still likely hollow. It overlooked a great deal of the land around it. As I watched, it seemed to change, to be covered by magic, and appeared exactly like any part of the mountain.

  The Serpent Spire.

  The enemy was well-hidden in plain sight.

  The wagons rumbled the last moments for the hillside, and I, looking up appreciatively at my new friend, let go of his finger and slipped from his hands.

  “Hey!” he called out. “Get back here! I’ll find you something later. I promise!”

  “See, I told you—” I heard the other one complain, but I rushed into a snow-filled ditch and around the hill and eventually to the crags.

  Nothing was moving out there. Not a thing.

  It was late when I looked up the stone tower. I circled it and scurried about in confusion.

  There was no apparent way in.

  I ran around it again, sniffling, pushing my snout in every hole, and scraping the rough stones on the base. I smelled nothing but decay and rock, snow and grass, and horse manure. Nothing gave away an entrance. I looked up. There were no lights. No windows.

  Had I imagined it?

  Still, Rhean and her ilk had ridden this way.

  I looked around the crags around the Spire. Rough ways wound up and down the craggy hillsides. There were horse tracks going past the great stone spire. They disappeared into the depths of the hills. Some ran left, others right.

  No horses had trampled the snow and mud around the great spire. None had entered it.

  There was no entrance.

  Then, I heard cows mooing to the west. I turned and hastened for a well-churned route past two hillsides. I scampered up and down, cursing the slippery mud.

  I came to an edge of valley, not far from the stone spire, and looked below.

  A herd of cows and many horses were running along a rough stony side of the hills. They were driven for a village below me and had left the northern edge of the valley, where pastures were still rich with grass. The trail they took by the edge of the hillsides had been churned into a huge, muddy rut. Men or draugr were herding them.

  There were small villages in that valley, with pastures, and the sea and the far-away coast gleamed on the west edge of it. It looked like a hidden paradise amid the terrible island.

  I rushed down to the closest village, and it was dark when I got there.

  There were dogs prowling the streets, and I hesitated. Men were riding the streets as well and looked well-armored and alert.

  And still, the houses were rustic and seemed to be all involved in making dinner. The smell of lentils and cabbage wafted from each doorway. A rat was never wrong.

  Rhean would not be there.

  I turned to the north and looked at the stony hillsides. They were spattered by mud, and I wasn’t sure if there was another track in the north end of the valley. I ran along the track anyway, suffered indignities from muddy horse shit, and sneaked forward along the wall. I ran along it, until I saw something odd.

  In one place, the tracks were right next to the wall.

  In that place, it seemed like horses and cows had galloped against the rock. I sniffled the tracks and then nearly died.

  A troop of draugr burst from the wall. Their horses neighed wildly, and their riders grinned as they thundered away, rotten and terrible, in armor both of the Hammer Legions and archaic. Some were merely skin and skeleton. There were more and more, and I shivered in a rut as hooves splashed s
eemingly all around me.

  It seemed to last forever.

  Then, suddenly, the cavalcade was gone.

  I found I was still in one piece. I heard the creak of a gate and sprung for the wall that was hidden by magic.

  I passed through an illusion and crashed into a gate, bounced back, and charged forward again through a tiny crack in a massive gate set on a side of mountain and dodged between the legs of two draugr who noticed nothing.

  I sprinted to the side, found a barrel, and hid behind it. I looked around.

  The hall was meant as a muster-hall. Beyond it were dark doorways that led both up, likely for the distant Serpent Spire, and down. They were heavily guarded and closed, though now another troop of draugr was going to move out, for a doorway down below was shuddering. Then, it was pushed open and in rode a troop of riders out of the depths, their eyes cold and their voices harsh. Halberds, spears, and poled hooks were swinging over their shoulders.

  I noticed two creatures emerging from a hall to the side. There, the guards would spend their miserable time. These two were captains.

  “Hurry up,” yelled a draugr with a golden bracelet, rotting white face, and lustrous, blonde hair. She was standing in the middle of the hall. “Must not linger. Hurry up and get out and do your duties. We march, we march, and you must guard the land when we do. Hurry your bones, you dog-faced bastards.”

  And they did hurry. Gear jingled, blades clanged, and they all were rushing.

  With the commander of the gate, there stood another figure. It was a woman dressed in embroidered gown, her face white as snow, and lips blue. She wore enough gold to feed a fair-sized town for years, jingling and blinking in the torchlight. Her eyes were not on the army preparing to ride out.

  They were on the shadows. She was casting something, and then, her eyes went white.

  She had sensed something? She had smelled the manure on my coat?

  It mattered little. She was seeking something, and she was sensitive and dangerous.

  She was a draugr with special skills. I stayed still, very still.

  She hesitated and frowned.

  Then, she whistled.

  It was a long, high whistle, and it was answered.

  Out of the guard loped four hounds.

  They were not your usual guard dogs.

  They looked large like ponies, and they were not barking. They were, in fact, dead. Their ribs showed under their shaggy furs, and one had a skeletal snout, filled with sharp bones.

  They looked up at their mistress, listened to her hissed instructions, and then began sniffling and walking about.

  Like any rat would, I shivered with fear. The hounds, with their snouts on the stone, would make me very uncomfortable in a moment.

  I looked at the shadows and knew my time would soon be up. The dogs were meticulously seeking every spot.

  One dog raised its snout, his eyes on the barrel that hid me. Its shaggy ears twitched. It walked forward, snarling softly.

  I cursed, waited, and sprinted forward.

  I did it so fast, the hound simply stared at me dully as I slipped between its legs, bit at a dangling, rotten nut, and tore away as fast as I could.

  The hounds turned and sprinted after me, in mute silence.

  Their draugr mistress saw me and frowned.

  I jumped on a horse of a splendidly armored draugr captain, waited for a moment, and then sprung on another.

  The dogs bowled to the horse.

  What followed was utter chaos.

  I jumped for a horse to another and bit down on each. The draugr were thrown, the horse bolted, and in a moment, the entire herd of horses were whinnying and rushing around the hall, back down the passageway. Draugr, with their spears clattering together, were howling with anger, some with fear, and when I last saw the hound-master draugr and the captain of the guard, they were about to be trampled on by tens of horses. Two of the dogs were but broken bones and bits of meat on the stone.

  I laughed, it came out as a squeak, and the horse beneath me whinnied and kicked.

  I flew and landed on a draugr, whose mount was galloping onto the bowels of the cave. I fell off him to the rear of the horse and bit down. We, the draugr and the rat, both hung on. The horse and twenty others were riding like mad down the occasionally lit tunnel, which seemed to go on forever. I hung on for dear life.

  One horse fell and took down another. Then, a draugr was crushed to the wall, and the horse fell on the path of most others.

  Ours jumped over it, skidded on the wet floor, and we went on.

  “Stop! Stop it!” the draugr screamed, losing his spear to a low hanging ceiling. “Why won’t you stop?” he begged and kept begging until we came to a land under the mountains, a seemingly eternal land of darkness, and it felt like we were riding across the night sky.

  Still the horse went on, panting, its legs bloodied.

  Then, I realized I was biting down on it.

  I let go, fell off, and landed on my feet on a rock.

  The draugr and the horse went on, riding to the darkness beyond.

  I stood on the rock, sniffling the air.

  I heard noises, the groan of rock, the shuffle of feet, the song of an underworld. I realized it was mainly under the sea.

  That the miserably island had such a secret, was breathtaking.

  The darkness beyond, I noticed, was dotted with lights, far and wide. I heard the dripping of the water and then the clink of armor. I heard whisperings, I smelled blood and old death, and felt familiar terror.

  There, somewhere in the vast darkness, Rhean, and perhaps her mistress, would be hidden.

  I saw a cluster of lights to my right. There were many such blinking spots. They were weak, but still, my best bet to finding something useful.

  I charged forward. I rushed for the lights and then, after scuttling a long while in the dark, stopped.

  I had found, no doubt, Dome.

  There, below the ground, were the ruins of an ancient city, a settlement of buildings that rose higher and higher in layers and did indeed resemble a rough dome.

  It looked like a rough dome because many were broken buildings.

  Who had built it, when and why, was a mystery. It had obviously been there for ages.

  Candles and torches burned in the depths of the buildings. The walls were finely crafted, with intricate details, and only the roofs were missing.

  I was lucky they were.

  I changed into an owl and took to my wings. My sight was immediately much improved. I flapped around the area and nearly plummeted from the sky in shock. I noticed that all around the great city, there were statues. They stood in ranks around the place. They were black and gray and looked like a gallery of some mad god sculptor. There were tens of thousands of them, perhaps more, and some were kneeling, others looking up. They were eerie and looked old.

  I glided around the structures of the dome and found a great market-place. I saw more massive statues surrounding the huge area and remains of old booths. There, I saw a terrifying throne.

  It was a throne of snake-headed woman. There were a hundred growing from her skull. The female was kneeling, and you could sit on her lap. She was looking up to the sky, her four arms wide, palms up as if she was praying. The seat was dark as night and surrounded by fire. Before that seat moved a figure.

  Nay, I saw many figures.

  It was Rhean and many others.

  I watched from high as a vampire was being dressed. She stood in the middle of the great city, in her own domain, in her finest dress, and her four vampires were next to her in battle armor. They wore white chain, and all held swords. Two women, likely draugr, were removing Rhean’s dress, and two were waiting with white armor and a fine sword and shield, one with the skull and serpent symbol.

  I fluttered around the market and then landed high up on a ruined wall. I watched the party of evil below. I watched Rhean.

  And loved her.

  I loathed, hated, and loved her. I sho
uld have feared her, but Bolthorn’s boon gave me a way to fight them. That rage was churning deep in my chest, mixing with the love, and I felt sick for it.

  Rhean was listening to a draugr, an old king of some sort with an ancient iron crown on his head. With him stood a lady of golden hair, golden skin, still as the throne and silent.

  On Rhean’s belt was the Black Grip.

  The gauntlet, made of simple steel with pale jewels, didn’t look exactly like it once had. It seemed of different color, it had undergone subtle changes, and I knew its magic gave it odd powers of change over times.

  And yet, I knew it immediately.

  An artifact of vast powers made by the eldest of the dverg, the same who made the weapons of the gods, it was linked with the most ancient of royal jotun blood. It was a sentient thing, a magical storehouse of memories, capable of giving you great power, of teaching you mysterious spells of the past kings and queens who had used it. It could speak you of the past, if you only listened. One of those spells, a mighty spell of binding, could seal entire rooms, caverns, making them impregnable to efforts of opening them.

  I had released Baduhanna from one.

  Opar hoped, I was sure, to restore what my father had locked inside Mara’s Brow.

  Below, Rhean was enraged. “You will fix it this issue very instant! There is no time for such failures!”

  The king nodded and kneeled, speaking softly.

  I hesitated and flew down towards the party of foes. I dove around statues and stalls, and then, deepening my feathers into black, I settled on one of the statue’s snakes. I watched Rhean preparing.

  She was speaking to the king.

  “Pray tell me, King Marc Tenginell, is everything well otherwise? I will not hear of trouble in the ranks,” she asked, her dress off, and servants bringing forth silken undergarments, leather battle gear.

  Tenginell .

  The Tenginell House had been destroyed by my father, as had the Danegell one. My mother had taken the House as her own.

  Was he one of the very ancient kings of Dagnar?

  He rasped his answer. He was dry as parchment, and his eyes were milky white. Long, silken hair hung around his shoulders. “All is ready. The gates are going to be opened, and the quarrelsome captains have been beheaded. The enemy in Ygrin is moving nothing on the board, and we will surprise them. The draugr inside Mara’s Brow will be ready, and the cavalry is near the keep, also waiting for you. Morag and his wife are there—guarded, hidden, and ready. He will guide you. Red Midgard’s army and Crec Helstrom are facing our legions, which wait for you as well. Falgrin will join the battle on Crec’s side. We shall take the keep fast.”