by Matt Larkin
And somewhere, in the back of his mind, a woman’s voice sang to him. Offered him strength beyond that of other men. Offered him endurance unmatched by mortals.
But she was for Lyngi.
A pair of warriors closed in. Sigurd blocked an attack from the first on his shield and hacked his sword across the man’s face. He tried to twist aside from a sword blow from the other, but it caught his thigh and sent him stumbling into the mud.
His blade slipped from his grasp as he sloshed down, and he tumbled end over end down the hill, finally coming to rest in the silt beside the riverbank. Panting, he struggled to push himself up, even as his attacker charged down at him, shrieking in primal rage.
Sigurd gasped.
He let his fingers close around Gramr’s bone hilt. Almost instantly, he felt the aches and pain recede. Not gone, but buried in the back of his mind. Growling, he rose to meet his foe, slipping the runeblade free as he did so.
She was for Lyngi, damn it!
The man lunged at Sigurd.
Sigurd twisted to the side, suddenly once again as fast as if he were fresh in this battle. A simple swipe of Gramr along the man’s back should’ve sent him stumbling to the mud. Except the runeblade sheared right through the warrior’s chain, and bit through his spine. The man didn’t stumble, he pitched over sideways, wailing.
A visceral hunger seized hold of Sigurd’s guts and commanded his arms. Barely aware of what he did, he reversed his grip on the runeblade. Roaring, he drove the sword straight down through the fallen man’s back. It punched through mail and flesh and bone with ease.
A euphoric energy pulsated up Sigurd’s arm, not unlike climaxing inside a woman, and yet at the same time, he felt as though he gorged himself on a royal feast. The warrior’s life and soul oozed out of him in waves that had the man thrashing, though each such convulsion proved weaker than the last. Until at last, Sigurd’s victim fell still.
Sigurd jerked Gramr free with a slurch. The sword seemed to shine with etheric light, almost as though aflame on the edges, casting a fell gleam against the mist.
And its strength fed into Sigurd, a power unlike aught he’d ever known or imagined.
By the Aesir!
He was like a god himself.
He’d meant the fallen man’s urd for Lyngi … unfortunately, he’d have to accept simply killing the king.
It did not take long before his foes looked upon him as if they, too, saw him as one of the Aesir.
Because Sigurd was godsdamned invincible.
Men came at him, sometimes three, four, five at a time. He killed them all.
Gramr sliced through shields and mail like a knife through well cooked meat. She shattered weapons. She drank rivers of blood and never seemed sated.
Until he couldn’t even guess how many men and women he’d slain this day. Two score? Three score?
No, more than that, he suspected.
Tiwaz and Regin had achieved their aims. They had hardened him into a razor-sharp edge like a blade himself, and one escaped from beyond the gates of Hel. The men around him were caught in a mire, their movements sluggish and predictable. Their tactics—or lack thereof—almost comical.
So many of them thought to rely on brute strength, and, facing one who not only matched their strength, but did so with sharpened reflexes and grace, found themselves like children fighting a man.
In the intervals, the brief respite between bouts of slaughter, Sigurd could see it on the faces of his own men.
Awe.
None of them would call him boy again.
Lyngi had clearly never imagined Sigurd’s men would claim the hills, for the man’s cavalry charge was ill considered and poorly coordinated. And Sigurd found Gramr nigh as eager to drink the blood of horses as that of men.
The day waned and twilight settled, and still he fought on, even when so many others slunk off or fell to their knees, gasping for breath.
Gramr had allowed him to become what he’d truly always been.
Blood coated his arms, indeed, drenched every speck of his clothing.
He saw Thrain engaged with a pair of men. Sigurd charged forward to help, but the Vall cut down his foes with precision. The man turned and nodded at Sigurd and together they pressed on, fighting their way through Lyngi’s forces.
But the Vall stopped soon, staring at a corpse. Sigurd made his way to the man’s side and knelt to examine the body.
A shieldmaiden, her helm knocked aside, hair covering her face. Audhild …
Sigurd blanched, looking up at Thrain. Once, he’d told the man he imagined living a life with her.
“A common warrior is no fit queen, I fear,” Thrain had said that day.
Sigurd’s breath gave out and he had to lean on the ground with one hand to steady himself. “I didn’t think …”
“Didn’t think people you knew would die?”
Thrain clapped him on the shoulder. “Maybe something to remember later. For now, best to do what we came here for, lest this all be pointless.”
Grunting in acknowledgment, Sigurd forced himself up again. He wanted to retch, but he couldn’t quite say why. He’d seen so much death in the past days. Why should this one matter so very much?
And he still found himself clenching his teeth and grimacing as he advanced.
Sigurd rammed Gramr through a man’s sternum. The runeblade tore through armor and bone so easily it allowed him to fight in a way he’d never considered with another weapon. A glancing blow went from leaving bruises to slicing a man to the quick.
He tore through the line around Lyngi, the king giving ground before Sigurd’s furious assault.
Though he’d never seen the man, the way Lyngi’s followers surged up to protect him left little doubt as to his identity. Nor the dark urd soon to befall him.
Sigurd plodded forward at a steady gait, half expecting Lyngi to turn his tail and flee back to his city. A shieldmaiden charged Sigurd. A single swipe of Gramr severed her leg at the knee, showering Sigurd in blood and adding her screams to the chorus.
And then Lyngi shoved his own men aside, clearing a path toward Sigurd.
Not a craven after all.
The king bore a sword and a heavy shield, arms fit to his station, and was clad in mail and a helm that guarded his cheek bones but had gold worked across his brow. He wanted everyone to know him as king. His mistake.
Lyngi surged forward, sword swinging in a tight arc.
Sigurd caught the blow on his shield and returned the strike. Gramr carved a gouge into Lyngi’s own shield, one so deep the king stumbled backward, gaping.
Offering a grin, Sigurd closed in with a series of small slashes. Splinters flew from Lyngi’s shield, then whole shards of wood as Gramr ate through it. The runeblade reduced Lyngi’s protection to kindling, but even Sigurd was heaving with exhaustion once that was done.
He cared little, though. Let this take time. Let Lyngi see his end coming.
“The last son … of Sigmund Volsungson … has come to you.”
The Baian king took advantage of Sigurd’s fatigue and came in with a blow toward Sigurd’s neck.
Sigurd barely jerked his own shield up in time to keep from having his head taken off.
Roaring, Sigurd swiped Gramr upward. A clumsy move, without much real power. But it was unexpected, and the runeblade sliced through Lyngi’s mail and gouged his chest. The king’s sword toppled from his fingers and his hand went to his wound.
A vicious chop from Gramr cleaved through the staggered king’s temples and sent half his head tumbling away.
Sigurd spit on the fallen body. “For Father.”
A murder of crows circled the battlefield, an army of shadows above the fallen armies of men. Already, the clang of steel had dwindled, the screams of pain replaced by the moans of the dying, or those who wished they were so. Sigurd threaded his way through a sea of corpses that would all need the pyres soon lest they rise as draugar.
Not all men had the strength of soul
, the will to rise as such, or so Regin had explained once. But how were the survivors to choose the weak from the strong, the valiant from the craven? The hateful from the frightened. No, someone must come to the field and burn it all. A bitter task, especially given that the march of boots and the spray of blood and viscera had turned the hillsides to stinking, muddy slush.
And when night fell, men would worry over ghosts drifting among them, unseen but eager to bring doom upon the living.
Limping, Sigurd wended his way as best he could toward the northern stretches where he’d last sent Erland. The mists had thickened as evening drew nigh, and he could make out precious little ahead. Were all battles so chaotic, unable to see your own men much less tell them from the enemy? Skalds’ verses so rarely mentioned the mist turning war into such madness.
He had not made it halfway when Thrain came to him, coated in grime, with black marks staining his face. His gait, too, seemed unsteady, as he no doubt bore wounds of his own. “Hjorvard yet lives, but Erland’s band has fallen. The thegn is dead and Osmund calls for the survivors to regroup with us.”
Sigurd grimaced, then shambled over to Thrain and clapped him on the arm. “I’m glad you survived.”
“Barely, and I’m like to be less glad of it come morning when I’m pissing blood.”
A grunt of acknowledgment was all Sigurd had to offer for that. He’d had his share of mornings like that under Regin’s forging and Tiwaz’s oft harsh tutelage with the sword.
Together, he and Thrain made their way to the north, where Hjorvard’s men were hacking down the last of what must have been three ships’ worth of Sigurd’s warriors.
He glanced at Thrain who nodded. The Vall then trod off and immediately set to cutting down Baians.
“Hjorvard!” Sigurd roared. “Hjorvard, the son of Sigmund has come for you! Your cousin already stands before the gates of Hel! Have you the stones to join him?”
Men came at him then, and Sigurd tore into them. As the first fell, a fresh surge of energy and fury boiled up from inside him. Or perhaps from Gramr, for she lusted for their blood, seeming to pull Sigurd along after her. Another and another fell at his feet.
He was growling like some berserk of legend, he suddenly realized. Severed limbs and heads dotted the ground around him where moments before a wall of men had stood against him.
Blood dribbled from his own mouth. Had he taken a blow to the head? Or had that of others sprayed over his teeth? He could scarcely tell anymore.
A man stepped from the mist, curved axe in one hand and iron-studded shield in the other. “I am Hjorvard, boy. You struck down Lyngi?”
At last. “I am Sigurd Sigmundson. And now you—”
“I don’t fucking care.” Hjorvard spat in the mud. “Lyngi was a troll’s cock, but he was my blood. Means I’ve got to split your skull, boy.”
“Stop calling me boy.”
Hjorvard grunted, then shrugged. He charged forward, seeming slightly slowed by fatigue.
Sigurd blocked the axe on his shield. It struck with a great thunk that numbed half Sigurd’s body and sent him stumbling to the ground while splinters flew from his shield.
Roaring, Hjorvard hefted his axe overhead to make good on his promise to split Sigurd’s skull.
Sigurd rolled to the side, unable to move his shield arm with much grace. The axe splashed down into the mud, splattering Sigurd’s face.
He’d never be able to rise.
Already Hjorvard was rearing back once more.
Sigurd jerked Gramr around. The angle was all wrong, but the runeblade carved right through the bone in the man’s shin and sent him stumbling.
Now Sigurd rose and stood above Hjorvard. “Your cousin murdered my kin. You …” He panted, barely able to catch his breath as the man stared up at him. “You just chose the wrong side.”
He swung Gramr down in a wide, overhead arc, splitting Hjorvard’s skull as he had meant to do to him. Except the runeblade kept on carving, all the way down to the man’s spine, embedding itself halfway down Hjorvard’s torso.
With a growl, Sigurd yanked Gramr free, releasing a fresh bubbling of blood in Hjorvard’s chest even as his corpse toppled over.
“Now you are bound for Rijnland?” Thrain asked.
The two of them sat across a fire from one another, outside the gates of Drezdany. Sigurd had neither the men nor, in truth, the need to claim Lyngi’s city for himself now that its king had fallen. They’d allowed those of his men who remained to flee inside.
Sigurd rubbed his chin. “Hjorvard must have his own nest of supporters in my homeland, and my allies are few. Yet I can hardly ignore my inheritance. I can offer limited plunder but … I’d still ask you to come with me.”
Thrain ran a tongue over his teeth then poked at the fire. “For a time, perhaps. Seeing a grateful king on the throne of Rijnland might have its advantages.”
Sigurd chuckled. “I assure you. It will.”
He’d have a kingdom to secure, yes.
And oaths to keep before too long.
Part II
Year 69, Age of the Aesir
Winter
9
Ice had frozen over the Rijn and allowed Sigurd to walk along it out to the tiny island where this duel was to take place. Evening drew nigh—and who fought at dusk rather than dawn?—and only made the lake seem the colder.
Still, considering the army gathered outside the gates of Xanten, where Sigurd’s father had once held court, a fight between himself and one other seemed the surest way to avoid slaughter.
Even if Hring’s champion was the legendary Starkad Eightarms himself.
No man had long stood against Sigurd, but skalds had told tales of Eightarms’ victories long before Sigurd was born and were like to continue their verses for a thousand years more. Thus, Sigurd choose his steps with slow, practiced care, torch out beside him to keep the gathering mist at bay.
The mercenary had chosen the island, away from the sight of either army, for reasons Sigurd couldn’t guess. It was fitting, though, that if Sigurd wished to hold his kingdom, he should be forced to face a worthy opponent at long last. This he’d told himself, last night, when sleep wouldn’t come, as he’d stared into a dwindling candle flame.
Despite his slow pace, his toes still skidded along the ice. Ahead, snow-drenched evergreens covered the island, concealing its interior where Sigurd could only assume Eightarms already lurked.
A legendary warrior, perhaps, but Sigurd had been tempered by dverg cruelty and Tiwaz’s instruction. Sigurd liked his chances. And if he won, he’d have Troels’s oath of servitude and send Hring limping back to Sviarland.
Troels was no more than Hjorvard’s upstart thegn, but by allying himself with Hring he’d given the foreign king an excuse to try to extend his kingdom into Rijnland. And Sigurd had no intention of paying tribute to anyone, least of all a foreigner.
On reaching the island, Sigurd trudged through the snow, up the small slope, until he reached a narrow plateau. Large rocks jutted up from the snows, breaking up an otherwise even landscape the size of a king’s hall.
A wind from the north whipped against Sigurd’s face and tugged at his cloak. A bitter evening indeed. Sigurd wedged the torch in the snow then rubbed his hands together before it, trying to get the blood flowing once more. A little numbness in his fingers might cost him his life this day.
Against a man whom men called so fast he was said to have eight arms, Sigurd could afford no disadvantage.
“They say the last Volsung is a warrior worthy of the name.” The voice came from the tree line, deep and somehow too at ease with the coming night.
Sigurd lifted his gaze to see a cloaked figure drifting toward him, seeming hardly impeded by the snow. The man was tall and covered in scraggly blond hair, with a thick messy beard. A pair of sword hilts stuck up from behind his shoulders.
“Starkad Eightarms,” Sigurd said. “You are a legend for your prowess. Praise from you a man can be proud of.”
Eightarms favored him with a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. In fact, something fell seemed to lurk behind those orbs, a darkness that seemed to shimmer in his pupils. “In truth, I didn’t really wish for this. I’d hate to kill a man like you, with such potential. My employer rather insisted, though.”
Sigurd rose, slipping Gramr free of her sheath and taking up his shield. Had he known Hring would send Eightarms, he might not have made the challenge … maybe. On the other hand, the surest route to victory was through boldness. Through the utter refusal to bow to the whims of other men or give in to that which they called impossible.
Eightarms drew his own blades. One of them gleamed fell in the fading light. A runeblade.
And from the look on the man’s face, he’d recognized Gramr as a weapon of a similar kind.
The foreign warrior began circling Sigurd, much like a wolf, waiting to lunge. Sigurd turned with him but otherwise held very still. If Eightarms wanted to play the wolf, Sigurd could play the bear. He had strength and power, both.
Without warning, Eightarms charged in, one sword going high, the other low.
Sigurd fell back, catching a blade with his shield and ducking the other one. He swung in counter, but Eightarms got his high blade back around with startling speed. The man moved like a winter wind, blades whistling with such grace and momentum Sigurd could barely keep up.
The setting sun was in Sigurd’s face and, try as he might, Eightarms wasn’t letting him guide the fight around. Indeed, it was all Sigurd could do to keep the mercenary from lopping his head off. Sigurd feinted with Gramr, intending to catch the man in the face with his shield. Eightarms barely reacted to the feint, instead, swiping his own runeblade up Sigurd’s side.
It took a breath for the pain to catch him. Then it hit him like a white-hot brand. That sword had cut through mail, gambeson, and flesh deep enough to scratch a rib. Sigurd gasped in pain, falling back and swinging his shield wildly in a desperate attempt to buy space between himself and Eightarms.
