Twilight of the Gods

by Scott Oden

  And Dísa drove the point of her spear up into the roof of his mouth. She turned loose of the weapon as the Dane’s corpse fell back. Auða scrambled and came up with the man’s shield. Dísa drew her Frankish axe. At their backs, the Geats finally found their courage. With roaring cries and curses, they made a wall of shields at the head of each ramp.

  The air grew thick and hot with the stench of exhaled breaths and pierced bowels; a mist of blood erupted from riven throats; blades hacked at grasping hands, leaving blood-slimed stumps in their wake. Men fell under axe blows and spear thrusts, creating a treacherous morass at the feet of the defenders. Rivulets of steaming gore flowed down the path. Time held no meaning. For attacker and defender, there was nothing under heaven but that tiny strip of land at the base of the embankment. Men died for it, killed for it. It became the center of the world.

  Dísa fell back, stumbling over the carpet of corpses as Rannveig took her place. Her shield arm was numb from repeated blows; though its edge had grown hacked and ragged her shield nevertheless protected her, deflecting spears and blades, axes and hurled stones. She bled from half a dozen wounds. She put her back against the embankment and struggled for breath. Near her, Auða—blood-blasted and sweating—knelt alongside Geira. She struggled to tie off a tourniquet above Geira’s elbow, to slow the loss of blood from where a Danish sword had mangled her forearm. She reckoned Odin’s weather had left that blade notched and dull, turning a clean blow into a welter of torn flesh and broken bone. The older woman’s pain-filled eyes found Dísa’s but she did not see her.

  Dísa suddenly realized she stood in a lull. The Danes had pulled back; she could see through the milling Geats that the enemy was regrouping on the far side of the Scar. Rannveig took the opportunity to attack the ramp itself, but the weight of men had driven the iron spikes deep into the rocky lip of the ravine’s bank. A breeze blew smoke their way. At least, she thought, the breeze was cool.

  Sigrún’s voice cracked through the ringing in their ears. “Move the wounded! Get them to the gate!” As Dísa nodded, she felt something behind her, touching her neck. She turned to look. A root wiggled like a blind worm through the earthen embankment. Frowning, Dísa touched it … and felt a shriek of alarm rising up from deep inside.

  “SHIELDS!”

  * * *

  “TENACIOUS HEATHENS,” FATHER NIKULAS SAID. The priest had hoped the first charge of Kraki’s Danes would be enough to break the resolve of these Raven-Geats, but he had obviously misjudged their mettle.

  “They have their good-luck charm with them, their fierce little bird to egg them on,” Konraðr replied.

  Nikulas sniffed. “Courage like that is wasted on these godless pagans.”

  “I quite agree. Starkad, clear that path while our Danish friends regroup.” Then, over his shoulder, Konraðr shouted. “Pétr! My Rock!”

  “Lord?”

  “How precise are those mangonels of yours?”

  “We have their range,” Pétr said, chest swelling with pride. “We can put a missile wherever you desire, my lord.”

  “I desire one on that path, yonder,” Konraðr said, turning back. “Make it so.”

  The lord of Skara motioned for Starkad; the chief of his household company nodded, turned to his cadre of archers, and raised his sword. “In volley,” he bellowed. “Loose!”

  * * *

  EVEN AS THE CRY SPILLED from her lips, Dísa heard the tell-tale shhhunk of hundreds of hemp cords slapping bracers, hundreds of bow-staves snapping forward, hundreds of fletchings hissing against jute-wrapped grips. She dropped to a crouch, her ragged-edged shield canted to cover as much of her body as possible. Auða dragged a cast-off shield over Geira, and then hunkered under her own. Their eyes met as the first arrows fell.

  “What was it you said when you first went to him? ‘The old hag sends me to live a thrall’s life’? Some useless thrall you are,” Auða shouted. Iron-headed shafts struck the embankment with a muffled whump; others thunked against shields or ended their flight with the eerie wet thud of pierced flesh. The deadly hail wrenched gasps from the throats of the Geats around them. Men Dísa had known since birth screamed and died under that merciless barrage; she peeked out under the rim and saw Rannveig’s body jerk beneath the impact of half a dozen shafts and pitch forward, her raven-haired corpse tumbling from the path and into Vänern’s dark embrace.

  Three arrows struck Dísa’s shield, one cracking through the boards to stop inches from her face. “Mother of whores!” she snarled, glancing over at Auða. “Next time, remind me to keep my fool mouth shut!” The younger woman scuttled crab-like over the slain. “Let’s get her inside. We can’t hold here.”

  Auða nodded. She lifted the edge of the shield covering Geira. Dísa saw her cousin’s face harden, her eyes narrowing to dagger points of ice. Reverently, she replaced the shield—as fine a warrior’s death shroud as any. “I am going to kill those sons of bitches,” she growled.

  Dísa’s lips peeled back in a snarl of hate. She could hear the Danes massing for a fresh assault, with chants of “SKA-RA!” and “GOD WILLS IT!” But, almost drowned out by the clamor and racket of Danes stoking their courage, Dísa caught a more ominous sound: the thump of those accursed engines.

  An incendiary missile lofted over the trees. Dísa stood; she followed its smoky flight and knew the end of things was upon her. Her scream of defiance echoed to the heavens …

  21

  Kraki Ragnarsson watched the incendiary crash into the embankment, raining coals and fiery splinters of resin-soaked pine onto the narrow path. He heard the screams of the heathens, smelled the stench of their burning flesh, and knew God was with them. His Danes were the Fist of the Almighty; they were the vengeance of Heaven, set to wreak havoc among the Pagan. He raised his sword aloft. “God wills it!”

  And with an answering roar, Kraki led his company of Danes up the ramps. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead; one missed step to either side meant a sixty-foot plummet into the cold waters of Lake Vänern—likely bouncing from the narrow walls of the ravine first. The ramp creaked under his weight. It creaked, but it held. Soil and rock trickled down from beneath the ramp head, its iron spikes buried deep. Above them, the palisade walls of Hrafnhaugr loomed. He saw pale Geatish faces between makeshift embrasures, cloud-and-smoke-diffused sunlight gleaming from brass helmet crests. Arrows spat down at them in irregular intervals. One ricocheted from Kraki’s helmet; another rebounded from the tightly woven links of his mail hauberk.

  Snarling, the Danish captain crested the ramp and leaped onto the narrow path. He expected resistance. He held his shield at the ready, his sword unwavering; Corpse-wand, he called it, and etched down its damascened blade, in the letters of the Greeks, was a bit of Scripture he’d gotten from an old Varangian at Miklagarðr: You are my war club. With you I shatter nations; with you I bring kingdoms to ruin.

  Kraki saw no one alive. Geatish corpses lay heaped among his beloved Danes about the ramps; smoke from the burning embankment set his eyes to watering—it stank of roasted meat and singed hair. Kraki stepped forward, the churned ground underfoot a slurry of blood and other less vital fluids. He was on the verge of ordering his men to raise the standard and move up to the postern gate when a chilling scream rent the air.

  Through the veil of smoke came a pair of bloodstained figures. Both were women—witches, Kraki was sure; the taller of the two limped and panted, her whuffing breaths like a lioness on the hunt. The left side of her face was charred, and her left eye had burst like an egg. The right eye gleamed with battle madness. The other woman was little more than a girl. She came on in eerie silence, her lips drawn over her teeth in a bestial snarl. She clutched a Frankish axe in one fist; with the other, she drew a long-seax. Both had hair as black as a carrion-bird’s wings, worked with fetishes of bone and silver, and a raven tattooed on one cheek.

  “The Geats send their women to do their fighting,” Kraki said. He swung his sword in a figure-eight pattern, and then se
ttled into a fighting crouch. “Come, then, hags! Come and I’ll send you to hell to whore for your master!”

  * * *

  DÍSA DID NOT REMEMBER THE incendiary’s impact. Nor did she recall the engulfing flames or the dagger-like splinters of wood; the choking embers or the cries of the wounded, burning under a blanket of smoldering debris. She only remembered Auða’s scream.

  It was the frustrated cry of an injured animal, wordless but expressing a world of meaning in its intensity. Dísa found her kneeling, clutching her face. She crouched beside Auða and pulled her hands away. Flames had blackened the left side of her cousin’s face, charred it like meat left too long on the spit, and the eye was a ruin that leaked blood and jelly. It would never see sunlight again. In Auða’s other eye, Dísa saw madness.

  She understood. Dísa could hear the Danes coming up the ramps, their voices rising as they drew near. The ramps creaked under their weight. Auða stared at her with singular intensity. If we must die, the look in her remaining eye said, let us call down the daughters of Odin and earn our place at the Allfather’s blood-soaked table. This, too, Dísa understood. She found her cousin’s sword and pressed its hilt into her hand.

  “For Hrafnhaugr, cousin,” Dísa rasped, taking up her Frankish axe. Together, they rose on unsteady legs. Auða breathed hard, panting through the waves of agony that assailed her as they strode toward the first Dane to leap from the ramp.

  He was a man of some consequence, Dísa reckoned from his war-rags. He wore heavy mail beneath a richly embroidered surcoat, cinched by a thick leather belt decorated with rosettes of hammered gold; of gold, too, were the chasings of his helmet, from the dragon crest running along the crown to the wide nasal and the hinged cheek pieces. The man who wore it was beardless, scarred, his cleft chin jutting forward, his bristling mustache more silver than black.

  Prosperous man or poor man; jester or king … it made no difference to Dísa. She felt a rich vein of hate bubble up from the dark recesses of her soul—hate for the Danes and their foreign god; hate for the eager shears of the Norns, who had cut the life-strands of her folk and dyed them in blood; hate for the Witch-man and his foolish crusade; hate for the prophecy that caused all this. Dísa narrowed that hate into a lance. With it, she would kill this bastard. Kill him, then the man after him, and the next man after that. She’d keep killing until the cut of an axe or thrust of a blade sealed her fate. This was her purpose, she realized. To kill, and to die.

  The man said something in harshly accented Danish. His warriors laughed. Dísa, however, ignored them. She kept her focus on a place just behind the hymn-singer’s sternum, where his foul heart beat its staccato rhythm. She heard Auða growl her rage.

  “Come,” the wretch said, more slowly now, as he slashed the air with his sword and dropped into a fighting crouch. “Come and I’ll send you to hell to whore for your master!”

  And Dísa Dagrúnsdottir came, with Auða a step behind her. She skipped the last step and feinted low with her seax, drawing the Dane’s shield; as he sought to parry that phantom blow, Dísa came down with her axe. She hooked the top edge of his shield.

  The Dane rolled his shield, dislodging her axe and causing Dísa to stumble. With a low chuckle he punched forward, smashing the central boss full into Dísa’s face. The younger woman pitched back as though a mule had kicked her. She lost her axe; the blow drove her against the smoldering embankment. She slid to one knee with thick ropes of blood starting from her nose and mouth.

  Without missing a beat, the Danish chief shifted and caught Auða’s sword on his. Steel rasped and rang. He pushed her away. Blow followed blow in quick succession—thrust, draw, slash, riposte; their hilts clanged together, iron grating, then sprang apart. Auða drew back and struck again. Her notched sword hammered the rim of his shield and broke. She screamed in rage …

  Dísa heard the death-blow fall. She heard the hiss of air through the Dane’s clenched teeth, the crunch and snap of mail links, the slaughterhouse sound of a blade cleaving into flesh. She shook the blood from her eyes and watched Auða fold around the Dane’s sword. He’d struck her low, just above her right hip. Damascened steel cut through Auða’s mail like cloth, through muscle and sinew like water, and wedged in the column of her spine. Auða shrieked—more from frustration than from pain—and tried to rake the Dane’s eyes out as she crumpled to the ground. He kicked her off his sword, leaving her to bleed out while he turned his attention to Dísa.

  “You must be the one Lord Konraðr calls his ‘little bird,’” he said, slinging Auða’s blood from his blade. He looked her up and down before snorting in derision. “My lord is easily impressed. Come. Let us finish this. I have a piss-hole of a village to sack and burn.”

  Dísa wiped at the blood with the back of her hand. She hawked phlegm and spat it at the Dane’s feet. “Going to be hard to do,” she growled, “when you’re dead.” She stood, her seax held loosely at her side, and walked to the center of the path. Dísa kept her off-hand side to him. “Come on, then, fat man! Or are you afraid that a girl is all that stands between you and the gates?”

  Baring his teeth in a snarl of rage, Kraki Ragnarsson slung his shield away and charged.

  * * *

  FROM ATOP THE PALISADE, GRIMNIR watched the bull of a Dane charge the slender form of Dísa—blood-spattered from her time in the crucible of the shield wall and singed from the impact of the fiery missile. He watched, and did nothing.

  “He will kill her, skrælingr,” Úlfrún said, coming alongside him, her voice an urgent hiss. “Let me—”

  “No. This is her fight, win or lose. Stay out of it! Your men, they are ready?”

  “They’re at the gate. Say the word and they’ll drive these Danish swine into the Scar. If we go now…”

  “When one of them dies,” he replied.

  “You’re a cold bastard.”

  Grimnir grunted. “You’ve forgotten what it’s like, is all. If you ever knew it.”

  “Knew what?”

  His eye gleamed as he glanced sidelong at her. “How it feels to tread on Death’s cloak. This lot, they’re never more alive than when they’re an arse-hair away from slaughter. If she lives, she’ll remember this till she’s called to the grave. You’ve died, what, twenty-nine times? This little wretch will have one death. Look around.”

  Úlfrún did. She could see others peering over the palisade’s crenellations, their hands gripping the wood with tension-whitened knuckles. Even old Sigrún was watching, gnawing her lip out of concern for her granddaughter. “This is for them,” she said, barely above a whisper.

  “She wants the glory, the honor, the name. These things aren’t baubles to give, only earned. She earns them now.”

  * * *

  DÍSA COULD FEEL THEIR EYES upon her, but she did not care. She kept her attention riveted on the man who thundered up the path. Harness crashed, lungs drew smoke-laced breath, and tendons creaked as he drew his sword back. But Dísa did not seek to go toe-to-toe with him. He was a mailed behemoth, and she was no fool.

  As his sword whistled down, with enough force behind it to split her from crown to crotch, Dísa dove left; she struck the ground on his off-hand side, rolled, and came up behind him. She lashed out with her seax. But she did not aim for any place covered by his heavy mail—no, that was folly; instead, as he whirled about, pivoting on his left leg, Dísa thrust her blade under the hem of his hauberk and ripped it back, the notched and jagged blade tearing through cloth, skin, muscle, and sinew. She felt it grate on bone. The Dane bellowed; his hot blood splashed across Dísa’s fist. He tried and failed to latch on to her with his free hand. She came to her feet and danced out of reach of him and his long blade. He staggered toward her, dragging his injured leg, one hand clutching at the blood-slick hem of his mail while the other held his sword hilt in a death grip. His scream of rage recalled Auða’s, not a handful of minutes before. At the ramps, the Crusaders answered his scream with shouts of vengeance; they wanted to be let off
their leashes, but their discipline was like iron. While their captain stood, there was yet hope.

  “What’s wrong, Dane?” Dísa said over the clamor. “I thought you were eager to finish this? Come! Strike me down!”

  Kraki took another step before sinking to one knee, his sword point-first in the ground and its cross-guard holding him upright. He glared at Dísa, spittle dripping from his chin.

  From the palisade above her, Dísa heard Grimnir’s voice: “Stop toying with that wretched kneeler and finish it!”

  She favored the top of the wall with a sidelong glance, spat blood from her mouth, and inverted her grip on her seax. She stalked to the Danish chief, pale now and sweating despite the chill.

  He raised his head, his eyes defiant.

  “Any last words, wretch?”

  A smile split Kraki’s features—humorless and cruel. He nodded. Drawing a last deep breath, he roared: “Danes! To me!”

  And like that, the hounds of war slipped their chains. Dísa backpedaled, eyes wide as a wall of iron-shod Danes bore down upon her, Kraki’s dying laughter lost to the crash of mail and thunderous war cries. Dísa saw her own death reflected in their snarling visages …

  From behind her came an answering roar. Dísa flinched as bearskin-clad giants lumbered past her, into the teeth of the Danes—and mighty Brodir led them. An axe in both fists, he was the point in a wedge of berserkir.