Twilight of the Gods

by Scott Oden

  “Who is this Konraðr and what business does he have with my people?”

  “That’s Lord Konraðr to you, bitch,” the man snarled. “He’s the lord of Skara, across Lake Vänern, and his business is the business of God Almighty. The Pope has commanded an end to northern heresy, and we’ve come to see it done!”

  “A crusade.” Dísa spat. “And what will happen to them, the two you captured?”

  “They’ll be given the same chance I’m going to give you.”

  “Me?”

  “Aye, girl. I’m taking you back with me. Lord Konraðr’s going to want to question you, himself.”

  “And you’ll give me a chance, you say? To do what?”

  The man stood. “Kiss the Cross, or hang from it.” He gestured with his knife. “Drop that onion slicer, girl. Shimmy out of that mail. Come quiet and demure-like and my lord might show mercy and give you over to Father Nikulas. He could always use a good nun.”

  Dísa stood, staring at the man, at this Dane who’d trespassed onto the lands of the Raven-Geats. Not trespassed, she corrected herself. No, this one had come for war—just as the prophecy predicted. She answered him:

  “The blood-reek wafts | like dragon breath

  And hides the pallid face of Sól.”

  “Blast your pagan gibberish! Don’t test me, girl,” he said. “If I have to drag you out of there it’s going to go hard on you.”

  Slowly, deliberately, Dísa drew her seax. The tight confines of the ravine amplified the sound of steel rasping on leather. It sounded like a dozen serpents, hissing in a cold rage. “I am a Daughter of the Raven,” she said. “Bearer of the rune Dagaz, the Day-strider, chosen of the Norns. I am a servant of the Hooded One, immortal herald of the Tangled God. My mother was Dagrún Spear-breaker, who was skjaldmær, shieldmaiden of Hrafnhaugr in the land of the Raven-Geats. How are you called?”

  The man ducked his head and spat. “I am He-Who-Will-Break-You if you don’t quit this foolishness and come out of there.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Why does it matter to you?” He shifted, eyes narrowed, the knife in his blade hand held loose at his side.

  “I want to know the name of the first man I kill.” She raised her seax, forcing his gaze to follow that rune-etched blade.

  Around them, the roots hummed.

  The man’s face grew grim. “You think this is a game, bitch? Oh, no. The time for games is over!” He stepped toward her. “Drop—”

  Dísa’s free hand snapped out. Unseen, she had drawn her Frankish axe; now, she slung it side-armed. It struck the ravine wall next to the man’s head, rebounding and showering him with dirt and splinters of loose scree. “God’s teeth!” he swore, flinching back and protecting his eyes. “You stupid little cun—”

  In that moment of distraction, when his attention was bent more upon himself than on her, Dísa struck. She struck hard and fast, as her grandmother taught her. And, as she’d learned from Grimnir, she struck to kill.

  She sprang as he recovered. Her breath hissed through clenched teeth, steaming in the rancid air of the ravine. She swept her seax up—the power of her blade hand steadied by her off hand on the pommel—and felt the first four finger-lengths of the blade crunch through the bone of his chin. The blow cleft his jawbone, shattered his teeth, tore through the roots of his tongue, and wedged in his palate. He staggered, screaming through a bloody froth as he clawed at the span of steel violating his face.

  The man fell to his knees, his knife forgotten. Dísa loomed over him. Her eyes were harder than iron. She watched him thrash, drowning in the blood that pumped down his throat and into his lungs. He clutched at the wall.

  Of her own first kill, Auða had told her how she felt fear, remorse; she’d admitted to being sick when she realized she had taken a child’s father from them, a woman’s husband, a mother’s son. That awesome weight of being responsible for another human’s death had struck her to her knees. The second came easier, and the third, and all the killings after. But that first …

  And yet, Dísa felt nothing. No fear, no remorse. She did not care that this nameless bastard might have had brats, or a wife, or a heartsick old mother. He had chosen to come here. He had chosen to step foot in the land of her people, bearing a message of hate none of them wanted any part of. He knew the risks—and he had underestimated her. She stared into his eyes, saw his desperation for the gift of life, and felt savage triumph.

  She was ready to kill the next hymn-singing son of a bitch who crossed her path.

  Snarling, Dísa seized the back of the man’s head and leaned her weight into the pommel of her seax. The blade slid through the ruin of his skull and into the stem of his brain. Dísa saw the light fade from his eyes. He slumped back, fell sideways, and bled his last in that foul sulphurous trickle cutting through the floor of the ravine. The roots of the trees hummed, and then fell silent.

  “Bear witness, Eirik Viðarrson,” Dísa said. “Do not haunt this place. Take this soul with you and begone. Let his punishment be to serve you in the next world.” She rocked the hilt of her seax back and forth, grunting as she tugged the blade free from the wreckage of the man’s face. She crouched and was wiping her seax on his surcoat when a thought occurred to her. She would need to prove her kill. Prove it to Grimnir, to her grandmother. She needed a trophy. But what? An ear? A thumb? His shriveled manhood?

  A slow smile spread across Dísa’s face. She took up the man’s own knife, got a feel for its weight, and went to work …

  When Dísa Dagrúnsdottir left that ravine, intent on following the nameless man’s trail back to his camp, she’d added a gruesome trophy to her gear: a golden-brown scalp, still damp with blood.

  * * *

  DÍSA CREPT LIKE A SHADOW through the woods, aided by overcast skies and a drifting fog that rolled down from the hill country west of the Horn. The man she’d killed had not come far from his camp. It lay less than a mile from the ravine. And as the sun reached its zenith, the forest came alive with the dull thump of axes, the thud of hammers, and the hiss of saws. Men shouted and called out commands as they snaked logs to the banks of the Hveðrungr River and set about repairing the half-burnt bridge.

  Dísa gave them a wide berth. She slunk around the center of all the activity and came upon the banks of the Hveðrungr from the west. From her vantage, she could see the bridge was largely intact, though the end that rested on Geatish soil was charred and missing timbers. Peering across to the far bank, she suddenly apprehended the source of the lights she’d seen reflected in the clouds, last night.

  An army was camped across the Hveðrungr River.

  To Dísa’s untutored eye, it looked like a riot of tents—hundreds of them, from canvas sheets hanging from a tripod of spears to elaborate pavilions needing ropes, poles, and pitons to stay erect. Fires burned, their smokes adding to the haze of fog. Dísa could see scores of men going about their daily routines: making food, fetching water, tending weapons and harness; grooming, repairing, praying and cursing. And upon every banner, sewn onto every surcoat and gambeson, painted on the face of every shield, she saw a black cross, the hateful symbol of the Nailed God.

  Fear twisted in her gut, more for Flóki than for herself. To imagine him at the hymn-singers’ mercy made her sick at her stomach. Obviously, at some point he and his lads had encountered the vanguard of the crusading army. Outnumbered, perhaps aware of why they’d come into the borderland between Geatland and Swedish territory, the four young Raven-Geats had faded back to try and hold the bridge over the river. But why hadn’t they sent word back to Hrafnhaugr? Was it pride? Was this how Flóki meant to make his war-name? Now, he was either dead or captive. And Dísa could not simply run until she found out; either way, she meant to bring him home.

  Since there was not yet any thaw, the Hveðrungr was not in spate. This worked to Dísa’s advantage as she prowled farther west, away from the camp. A few hundred yards down the bank, she discovered a spot where boulders broke the
river’s surface, forming a cataract that boiled and hissed on its way to Lake Vänern. Taking a deep breath, she scotched across these, cloak flaring behind her, and faded into the undergrowth. She listened for sounds of alarm. But when no hue and cry arose, she crept nearer to the encampment, intent on working out where these hymn-singers might keep their captives.

  So focused was she that Dísa almost blundered into a sentry.

  It was a groan that warned her—the cracking tendons of a man stretching, moving to relieve the numbing boredom of piquet duty. Dísa froze. She sank into the shadows and peered through the foliage. Not three spear-lengths from her she spotted an older man who had the look of a Norseman about him. His hair and beard were the color of pale gold, his face scarred and weather-seamed. Beneath a cloak trimmed in fur, he wore a hauberk of dull gray mail. A watchman’s horn hung from a strap over his shoulder. He turned slightly as another man came up from the camp—younger, his hair and sparse beard a reddish-brown, but also clad in war-rags and sporting a spear and shield.

  The old sentry frowned. “You’re early,” he muttered.

  “Nay,” the newcomer replied. “I’m not your relief. Lord Konraðr’s ordered the watch doubled. One of the surveyors has gone missing.”

  “Which one?”

  “Haakon, I think. The lord says it’s the same lot who tried to burn the bridge. We got two of theirs, so they’re going to get a few of ours. Maybe use them to try and barter an exchange.”

  The old sentry shook his head. “Haakon’s a good man. I will pray God keeps him safe among those damnable heathens.”

  “Amen.”

  Moving with agonizing slowness, Dísa inched back in the direction she’d come. She cursed under her breath, frustrated by this wall of men who fortified the camp. Dísa knew she could distract them, but to what end? She needed to infiltrate, to enter without their knowledge so she might be free to seek the hymn-singers’ gaol. She studied the overcast sky, sniffed the chill air.

  Night would soon fall. She could use the coming darkness to slip through cracks in the sentry wall, use it to disguise her identity once she was inside the camp. With the patience of a hunter, Dísa crept into a covert between two sentry points and waited for darkness to descend.

  14

  Konraðr the White knelt on a prayer bench, his ermine-fringed mantle spread out behind him. Clad in a hauberk of silver and black mail, his white surcoat sewn with a black Teutonic cross, the lord of Skara clasped a paternoster between his pale hands and prayed—for forgiveness, for the remission of sin, for victory. Most of all, though, he beseeched the Lord God, Almighty, for succor, for an end to the nightmares that plagued him.

  Around him, the pavilion swayed. Night had brought a snow-laced gale down from the mountains to the west. Sleet ticked against the heavy canvas walls; the center pole, carved from the heartwood of a great oak, creaked with each gust. Flames danced in the wrought-iron brazier, its smoke curling up toward a hole where the harsh wind could snatch it away.

  From the next chamber of his pavilion, he could hear the rattle of glass, the tinkle of silver implements as Father Nikulas prepared his nightly draught—a foul concoction of herbs and tinctures that, when mixed with raw Greek wine, did much to abate the fevers that had plagued Konraðr since returning from the East.

  “You have the hands of a healer, my friend,” Konraðr had said, after the first draught proved efficacious. “Where did you learn this art?”

  Nikulas had smiled, then—a rarity for the man, who gave new meaning to the word dour—and replied: “From the sisters of St. Étaín, at Kincora. They raised me after my parents died in the Burning of Dubhlinn. I brought their art with me when I came to enter the Lord’s service, at Lund.”

  But regardless of the priest’s efforts to heal his war-shattered body, the fractures in his soul remained. Each night it was the same: an endless parade of screaming faces with their hot and reeking breath, their bloody hands clutching at his legs; the fetid stench of bowel and bladder, of rich marrow and foaming gore; the single, burning eye of the gray-bearded old man. Him, most of all. He wandered the fringes of Konraðr’s dreams, clad now in a voluminous robe with a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his features. He wandered and glared, cold guile replacing the innocence Konraðr remembered from Constantinople. That eye, wreathed in fire, caused the lord of Skara to awaken with a scream on his lips, his body bathed in a cold sweat.

  “Why do I fear him now, O Lord?” Konraðr whispered, the paternoster—fifty beads of red coral, amber, and boxwood, trimmed in silver and sporting a crucifix of enameled silver—rattling as his hands trembled.

  Konraðr’s colorless eyes fell upon the open codex on the shelf of the prayer bench. He knew the page by sight, its illumination done in the Byzantine mode and saved from the fires of Constantinople by a learned monk in Count Baldwin’s entourage. And though Konraðr could not make sense of the writing—in Greek rather than the vulgar Latin he was accustomed to—he knew it for what it was: the Gospel of Mark. In the margin, near the bottom, a fair hand had sketched an image of a storm-tossed boat, a Christ-figure in the bow depicted in red ink.

  And Konraðr knew, then, that the Almighty had sent him his answer.

  “‘And rising up,’” he said, eyes closing as he recited the passage from memory, “‘he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea: Peace, be still. And the wind ceased: and there was made a great calm. And he said to them: Why are you fearful? Have you not faith yet?’”

  Konraðr sighed. The nightmares were a test of faith, and the Adversary took the shape of the old man—whose gaze had been kindly in life. The Adversary thrived on fear, and fear undermined faith. It made men question the will of God. Even the slightest crack in the righteous armor of faith gave the Adversary a toehold. Konraðr understood now. If he gave in to fear, damnation was but a step away.

  “My lord?”

  Konraðr stirred at the sound of the priest’s voice. He crossed himself, kissed the crucifix at the end of his paternoster, and rose to his feet. Father Nikulas brought him a horn cup. Konraðr took it, saluted the priest, and drained it without pause. He felt the draught’s warmth spread through his belly and limbs.

  “You are troubled, my lord?” Nikulas said, taking the cup back from Konraðr. “I do not mean to pry, but I heard you reading from the Gospel of St. Mark.”

  “I fear, sometimes, my faith is not enough,” Konraðr said, turning to look at the open manuscript. “What if I am wrong? What if this whole endeavor is nothing but a trick of the Adversary to take us further from God? What if I am cursed, in truth?”

  “Then I would say you do not understand fully the words of blessed St. Mark,” Nikulas replied. “Have you not faith, my lord?”

  “I do.”

  “Then why are you fearful? Trust in your faith, and trust in the word of the Lord whose work we do. The Adversary does not want the sword of Saint Teodor brought to light, so the wretch fills your mind with doubt. What we do, here, we do for God and for king—by bringing the light of Christ to this forgotten corner of your cousin’s lands, and by providing him with the tool that will win glory for the God we serve! Do not doubt, lord. Rejoice!” Father Nikulas’s eyes burned with righteous fervor. “Rejoice! For we are where we can do the most good!”

  Konraðr nodded. He felt new strength flood into his limbs. “You are right, Father. As always. You—”

  Spectral voices whispered to him. She comes, they hissed. Day-strider, Dagaz-bearer, raven daughter! Konraðr turned, eyes narrowing as he sought to make sense of the clamor rising around him. She comes!

  “My lord? What is it?”

  Konraðr raised his hand, motioning Father Nikulas to silence.

  “There is … an intruder,” Konraðr said after a moment. He spoke slowly, as if in a trance. “A girl. She comes to steal back our captives. She is a Geat, but … but they have not seen her like, and she frightens them. There is a … a shroud over her, around her. Something protects her. Something not of God.�
�� The lord of Skara looked up, fixing the priest in his colorless stare. “Where are our captive Geats?”

  “In the chapel tent,” Nikulas replied, frowning. “Under guard. One cries for his brother, who was either slain or escaped, and will likely convert when the time is ripe. The other remains defiant. Him, we must make an example of.”

  Konraðr nodded. He crossed to the door-flap of his pavilion, twitched it aside, and said to the soldier on duty: “Fetch ten good lads and bid them come to the chapel tent, but quietly! Raise no alarm. Go.” He turned back to Father Nikulas. “This is a little bird we must capture, for she is worth far more to us alive than dead.”

  * * *

  THE DARKNESS, THE RISING WIND; the cold and the spitting snow, they all worked in unison to provide Dísa with the cover she needed to slip past the cordon of sentries. The camp straddled the old, overgrown road that led south, away from the territory of the Raven-Geats. It boasted no defensive works; tents grew like fungus between the bare-limbed trees. Most were dark but some glowed with lamplight from within, the snap of canvas punctuated by ripping snores and low voices. Fires crackled, and racked spear shafts chattered together in the gale.

  Dísa drew her cloak tight about her, her hood slung low, and kept to the tree thickets as she wandered the fringes of the camp, looking for some sign of where they might keep their captives.

  She bit back a curse.

  The young woman had the sensation of a thousand eyes on her. Dísa was conscious of the fact she sported no cross upon her person, and that she looked like something that had crawled from the woods; she knew she could not pass even the most casual scrutiny. If she stepped into the open she was certain her crude disguise would fail. She’d be exposed, and the teeth of the Nailed God’s dogs would rend her limb from limb. Still, she moved deeper into the camp, toward the center. There, a sprawling pavilion occupied a low hillock, a last rise before the weed-choked road descended to the bridge.