Viking Lost

by Derek Nelsen

  From the back, Tor saw the silhouette of what must have been two huge figures hovered over the source of light.

  “It’s biting me!” Orri screamed. Tor stepped forward. Experiences from long ago reared up inside and Tor’s muscles knew what needed to be done. He let the blade sing.

  It tore through flesh and bone. Lethal and deadly.

  “Aaaaagh!” Something rolled across the floor, but the hulking figure didn’t fall. “Svikar!”

  The silhouette turned, lifting Orri off the ground by one of his arms as if the fat Viking were just a child’s toy.

  A small flame was coming from Orri’s stomach, illuminating the gory scene like a single candle in a dark cathedral. The giant figure turned toward Tor.

  “You cut his head off!” squealed Svindl. Orri looked small and insignificant in the hand of the goliath.

  The light was poor, but Tor caught fleeting glimpses of the creature’s ugly face. It looked to be in shock. Ice Breaker had bathed in its blood. Tor retched from the stench of the stuff that had an oily blue sheen.

  “Over ‘ere, Svin! He got me wif his sticker!” a deep, angry cry shouted from across the room. Tor turned but saw nothing, so he squared up against the giant still standing before him.

  “Put that thing down before you hurt someone,” whistled Svindl. Then he tossed Orri into the air, caught him by one of his legs, and slung him at Tor like a club. The small fire exploded across Orri’s chest as Svindl whipped him back and forth like a little boy taunting his sister with her favorite doll.

  One of Orri’s hands slapped Tor across the top of his head knocking him to the ground. Runa helped him back to his feet while Kiara cowered in the corner, blowing into her soul with her eyes wired shut.

  “You cut me deep, big man.” Svindl sneered, his eyes glowing green in the light of Orri’s flaming chest. Orri hung lifeless, upside down at the troll’s side.

  “Svindl!” Svikar’s voice came from across the room, but Tor forced his focus up to the enemy he could see.

  “Keep an eye out for his brother!” Tor shouted.

  “I don’t see anything.” Runa near broke his eardrum with her screams.

  Tor peered into the shadows for movement but found it hard to concentrate with the spectacle of the giant troll dangling fiery Orri around by his legs.

  “Leave ‘im be and come get me before you lose your head, you idiot!” yelled an angry Svikar from the darkness.

  The massive troll, Svindl, at least twice as tall as Tor, huffed and turned his head. Tor saw his chance to free the Viking, and swung the blade as hard as he could, cutting the creature’s arm off at the elbow. Orri and the fire fell with it.

  “Aaaaaayyyyeee!” Svindl howled, like a dozen pigs trapped between two mountains scraping together. It was terrible.

  “My arm! Can’t you do nothing right, Svindl? You let ‘im cut off me best arm!”

  “Your arm?” squealed the angry Svindl. Orri’s flaming stomach lit the scene better now that he was so still. The troll looked fierce, more angry than in pain. Its disembodied arm lay between Tor and the knobbly toes of its left foot—the massive paw still gripping Orri tight.

  “Come get me, you big oaf. Then I’ll show you who’s arm that was!” Svikar shouted from the darkness.

  “I’ve ‘ad about enough of hearing from you.” Svindl craned his neck toward the darkness but with one eye still bent toward Tor and the sword. “I tell you what, Svik, you can ‘ave the arm and the men, and I’ll keep the rest! I’m sick of hearing your voice ringing in my head all the time, anyway. Two hundred years I’ve... Well, good luck wif this lot. Now you can ask them anyfing you want.”

  With that, the troll kicked the dismembered forearm, with Orri still in its clutches, into the darkness toward his brother’s hiding place.

  Tor watched Orri and the light of the fire skid away, and suddenly, he could see nothing of the monster standing overhead.

  “Don’t you dare leave me ‘ere Svindl, or I’ll...” came the voice from the shadows.

  “You?” Svindl cut his brother off before he could finish. “You’ll do nothing but give these buggers your eyeballs. That’s all you’ll do. Your skull might make a nice table for Frickel or one of the dwarf lords.” For a moment there was only the sound of heavy, labored breathing overhead.

  “You wouldn’t leave me ‘ere, would you, Svin? Not your older brother?” Svikar’s voice was more amicable now.

  Svindl’s labored breaths gave way to stone grinding underfoot as the beast seemed to pivot away but then stopped.

  All was black except where Orri lay burning, some fifty steps away. Tor tensed as the beast corrupted the air with every foul exhalation. Tor raised the sword higher as he eased back next to his wife. He recoiled and pinned Runa against the wall when he heard a splash. The Troll’s oily, wet spittle bathed his feet as it soaked through boot and sock.

  Incredibly quiet for such a massive beast, Svindl slipped off in the other direction, allowing Tor to breathe again.

  “Don’t you leave me ‘ere!” Svikar sounded like he could’ve been crying. “You need me!” The stone walls drank the hollow ring of his voice the way a river drinks raindrops. “If you do this you will no longer be my brother, Svindl! Come back.” He sniffed, and his voice got quiet. “Stupid oaf.”

  Candle Stick

  Tor did not lower his blade. The other troll was still somewhere near Orri.

  “I’ve got to get Orri.” Tor started forward, but Runa grabbed his arm.

  “No,” she said.

  Tor was resolute. “I don’t want to, but I have to. I can’t leave him behind. Not with things like that running around.”

  “I agree with Runa,” said Kiara. “It’s too dangerous.”

  Runa ignored her. “Forget Orri, but we do need his fire. Kiara should get it.”

  “What?” Kiara wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go.

  “We’re not sending Kiara.” Tor focused on the darkness surrounding Orri.

  “Look, Tor,” Runa slapped his shoulder, “you always take everyone’s side except mine! It’s time you started putting your wife’s needs ahead of everyone else’s!” Runa grabbed his chin and made him look at her. “You are smart enough to realize that Kiara’s the reason we’re down here, right?”

  Kiara’s face burned. Then her heart stopped when Tor put his sword in his torch hand and drew back like he might slap Runa back to reason. Instead he dropped his shoulders, exhaling almost sadly.

  His aggression scared Kiara, but it didn’t stop Runa. She wasn’t done sowing her poison. “That girl’s the reason you had to fight Vidar—you’ll have to admit that at least. Everything’s gone wrong since she showed up, and still you protect her over me?”

  “I’m not putting her before you,” he assured her. “I’m just not willing to make a sacrifice of her to prove myself to you.”

  Then she put her arms around his waist. “Tor, when we married, you said you’d take care of me. You made a promise.”

  “And I’m going to.” He looked down to her. “Of course I will.”

  Runa put her head against his chest. Her eyes reflected fire, and her burning stare made her feelings clear—that everything bad that had happened to her family since the Vikings arrived had been Kiara’s fault.

  “Husband?” Runa sweetened her tone. “Can I tell you something that will help us both.”

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Don’t start pretending you’re still a Viking now. It’s too late for that. I need you to be smart, like a farmer. If something happens to you, then what? Can this little prayer warrior save me?” She smiled as she crushed his soul. “No. We all die. Not just me, but Orri and...and the girl, too.” She could barely get the words out.

  Kiara felt Runa’s words as deep as any cut, but she had a point. If something happened to Tor, then all was lost. She straightened her back, and even though her body began to shiver uncontrollably, she spoke as bravely as she could.

&nbs
p; “I’ll get the fire—you keep an eye out for the troll.” She ducked under Tor’s raised sword and ran forward toward the light. After she got close to Orri, she slowed, like a mouse stealing cheese from the cat’s dish. The light blinded her to whatever might have been lurking in the shadows. Orri’s chest moved with a ragged breath. “He’s still alive.”

  “The troll or the Viking?” asked Runa.

  “Both, I’m afraid.”

  Runa followed Tor, who approached cautiously with his sword and eyes up. Orri lay there, a vine penetrating his abdomen burning with orange and yellow flame. Orri was stirring, still in the troll’s severed grip.

  “We need to get him free, then get out of here.” Tor turned back to the darkness he’d left behind.

  “He’s burning,” said Kiara.

  “It’s burning,” Runa corrected. “He’s got one of those vines coming out of him.”

  “Should we put it out?”

  “Leave it,” said Tor.

  “It’s a gift from Freyja that we’ve light at all in this miserable place.” Runa gave her thanks.

  “A gift from Freyja?” Tor and Kiara both rolled their eyes.

  “I don’t know how that vine is staying lit, but leave it be. If not for his might, Orri may still be of some use as a candlestick,” Runa said.

  The fire reflected off Ice Breaker, highlighting streaks of blood where it had done its work. “We need to get away from here.” Tor tried to peer past the flickering shadows. “An injured beast is more dangerous than one that is whole. Who knows what the smell of trolls’ blood might attract?”

  The girl kicked at the hand. She’d never seen anything so frightening. It was disproportionately large, even for the size of the beast it was emancipated from.

  “Hurry,” whispered Tor. “Let’s get him free.” His eyes and sword still pointed outward.

  The smell of it was terrible. The large digits were gross, with a thick layer of filth built up under cracked, broken nails that looked like they’d been chewed short by crooked teeth—blunted from prying the heads off of helpless victims.

  Kiara cringed as she sunk her fingers into it and pulled back on one of the nails. The finger she had chosen was about as big as one of Orri’s legs, and the more she pulled the more it seemed to tighten on the poor man, as if still alive.

  “This is disgusting,” whispered Kiara. “Is there anything agreeable about a troll?”

  Orri groaned as the hand closed around him, but when the fingertips touched the flame spewing out of the Viking’s stomach, they jerked back spastically, knocking Kiara onto her back. Tor quickly grabbed one of Orri’s feet and dragged him from the palm of the monster’s dismembered paw, keeping a wary eye on the rest of the fingers as if they were a set trap.

  “Pitiful.” Runa’s face had grown an edge. She was not nearly as beautiful in this light, wearing disdain the way most women wore braids. She watched as Tor helped Kiara up off the stone floor.

  Kiara ignored her. She was done trying to make friends with this woman.

  “Look at the way it burns,” said Runa. “What’s happening to him?”

  Kiara reached down to try to pull the vine out but stopped short when she saw the sharp barbs. It writhed at her approach like it was looking for someone to bite.

  Lowering the sword, Tor cut the head off the flaming snake close to Orri’s stomach, making Runa a nice little torch. More vine crawled out to take its place, growing slowly but steadily from the wound. He cut the head off the snake again, shaved the thorns, and lit it—another torch, and yet the vine kept coming.

  He passed the next one to Kiara.

  “Help me keep an eye out for the other troll. If we’re lucky it slunk back off to its hole to die.”

  “Maaaaaa!” cried a little brown and white goat, pushing past Tor to nibble on the snake.

  Runa shoved it away.

  “Maaaaa!” it cried again, then started making a meal of the barbs and scrap Tor had sent to the ground.

  “Tor,” Runa kicked the goat aside, “you really are the worst farmer. It’s no wonder your sons were always hungry when most of our flock avoided the stew pot by hiding down here. Think of how much time you wasted in the woods searching for the little devils while they were lurking right under your feet.”

  “Is that what you really think?” A gravelly voice echoed from the shadows. “You reckon you can just climb up a wall until you break through to the other side? Sorry love, but that ain’t the way it works. Come closer. I won’t hurt you. Not now, anyways.”

  They turned as one toward the voice. It was a head. As if resting on the ground, two large green eyes glimmered sideways from the shadows, not much farther apart than a man’s.

  “Stay back.” Tor’s knuckles cracked as his grip tightened around Icebreaker’s hilt. “I am capable of defending myself.”

  “That is an understatement, Norseman.” The troll ground its teeth.

  “I don’t think it can hurt us,” said Kiara.

  “Stupid girl,” scolded Runa. “Its brother was twenty feet tall.”

  “It won’t hurt us ‘cause it can’t. It’s been there the whole time, watching us.” Kiara let her torch lead the way as she eased toward the green eyes.

  “If it likes the taste of Christians, as I suspect it does, don’t expect my husband to come save you.” Runa seemed so proud, refusing to accept that they were all in the same sinking ship.

  Kiara wondered if Tor was ever going to get sick of her nonsense. She turned her focus toward Svikar. That beast said he’d seen the moon. He’d hunted atop the barrows. If they couldn’t just climb out, then he was the only one who’d know how to get them home.

  As she approached, the light of Kiara’s torch illuminated a long nose and heavy brow. Svikar was exactly the way Erik had described trolls in his stories. But its exaggerated features were more like a child’s drawing of an old man than of a dangerous eater of the weak.

  How it was alive she could not say—much less how it managed to talk. This troll had lost the battle. Tor had reduced it to its mind, with a big ugly mouth to tell you what it was thinking. What it could smell with that long, crooked nose, what it could hear with those long, pointy ears, and what it could see with its bulbous, reflective, green eyes was anyone’s guess.

  “I can still bite.” The head clicked its teeth together playfully. “Come back. It was just a joke. I’m sorry to disappoint your mother, but I’ve never eaten a Christian. And by the smell of you, I’m interested in starting now.”

  “I’m not her mother!” Runa corrected.

  “I figured,” laughed the head.

  Tor circled it, poking a yellow tooth with his sword. “You are Svikar, then?”

  “If I were still wearing my shoulders I bet you’d remember.”

  “Stay away from its mouth,” Runa advised from a distance.

  “Umph, owww.” Orri shifted, his stomach still alight.

  “How is he alive?” asked Kiara. “He’s been on fire for half an hour.”

  “Even if you put that fire in his belly out, he’s never going to stop burning,” said Svikar.

  “Shut up, troll,” said Tor. “You’ll be dead long before he is.”

  “Oh, I don’t know ‘bout that. The weeds ‘ave got ‘im pretty well done already,” said Svikar. “Did you put that hole in him?”

  “No.” Tor looked as confused as his wife that he was having this conversation.

  “Can’t even blame whoever did that to ‘im, either.” The troll seemed to like to talk.

  “This wasn’t fate or coincidence or bad luck. No, it was all the fat man’s doing. I can smell it. His soul was coming ‘ere sooner or later. You all always get what you wanted in the end.” Svikar looked over to Runa. “You are on your own, love. And you won’t be making it out of ‘ere, either.”

  “Come on, girl,” ordered Runa. “Make yourself useful and see if you can find some wood—anything to make a sled out of. Maybe we can make something to get these goat
s to drag Orri for us.”

  “Heh, heh. You won’t be finding any sticks down ‘ere,” said the disembodied head, “only blood vines. And they’ll be finding you, not the other way around, if you know my meaning.”

  Tor looked worried, like he knew Svikar’s meaning exactly.

  Snake Tongue

  “Orri, you fat slob. You got us down here, so if this hurts blame yourself. And be glad we don’t leave you to that.”

  “‘That?’” Svikar sounded offended. “Be nice now. I’m not a ‘that.’ I’m an ‘im. I’ve got a heart, you know.”

  “You don’t even have a neck,” said Tor. “Come on, Kiara, grab an arm.”

  Runa nodded as if giving Kiara the order herself.

  Kiara hesitantly did as she was told. They dragged Orri down what looked to be a wide corridor. With each step the glow of the torches exposed etchings cut into the high stone walls. Images of tall things, short things, and swords, hammers, axes, and rings, and chained up beasts. Pictures of men and serpents and vines and flames. The goats followed, nibbling at the bases of the torches they carried.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” asked the gravelly voice. “’Cause I do.”

  Kiara looked at Tor, who did not turn but instead gave Orri’s arm an extra tug as if signaling to ignore the troll and keep pulling.

  “You don’t want to go that way this time of night,” said the troll.

  “Night, day, how can you tell?” Tor gave Orri’s fat wrist another tug.

  “Wait,” Orri’s voice was fading.

  “Christian,” Svikar pleaded. “You wouldn’t let ‘im leave me ‘ere like this? His wife hates you more than I ever could, she does. I saw the whole thing. And you heard his vow. He’ll never take your side over hers. Trust me on that—you need me.”

  Kiara looked over at Tor again.

  Tor kept pulling, one strong arm gripping Orri’s, the other holding the sword ready at his side. “Ignore him.”