by Scott Oden
The steep slope was thick with rubble: stone from the foundations, splintered timbers, planks, and boards, and bodies—whole and in parts, savagely ripped apart by the longhouse’s impact. He recalled, then, that Gautheimr was where the injured lay. Grimnir picked his way down carefully. He paused only once, when his eye lit upon a tuft of hair lodged in the drift of rubble. Grimnir recognized it; it was the scalp he’d given to that soft-headed woman, Berkano—the scalp of Örm of the Axe. But of the Otter-Geat, he saw no sign. Grimnir prized the scalp from the ruin, tucked it into his belt, and carefully picked his way down, descending the last few treacherous feet to the island’s surface.
The place had a reek to it. Grimnir wrinkled his nose and spat at the stench of corruption rising off the mud-slimed stones, a combination of rotting fish and vegetation and ancient decay. Rot-blackened tree stumps littered the island’s surface, and among the rocks and pools of muddy water he could see detritus from the surface—pottery shards and rusted iron hoops from broken barrels, a ship’s keel draped in clinging fronds; a bone thrust from the muck, too long to be from anything human.
Grimnir went slowly, the ground underfoot as treacherous as the descent from Hrafnhaugr’s ruins. As he neared the center of the island, his ears pricked up; from ahead, he heard the hollow splash of water, as though dripping from a cave roof.
The sound came from a fissure that split the rock. It was narrow, barely wider than the span of Grimnir’s shoulders, but that it led to the barrow’s heart was beyond doubt. The air wafting from within was so foul that it made even a bog-dwelling skrælingr wince. He stood for a moment at the fissure’s edge, black-nailed fists clenching and unclenching. He half-imagined himself a whelp again—hiding in the trees along the fjord while the crawling horror that was Niðhöggr, the Malice-Striker, writhed up the slopes of Orkahaugr.
Grimnir snarled and spat. Nár! I am a whelp no longer!
His good eye afire in the smoke-wreathed gloom of night, the last son of Bálegyr entered the fissure and sidled down into the dark. There was no labyrinth, at the end of the narrow fissure; no golden bed of treasure, only a single cavernous chamber, its far entrance still underwater—a sinister black lake that reflected a sickly blue-green glow that lit the chamber. The radiance came from patches of mold and fungi clinging to the rocky walls. By that thin light, Grimnir beheld a giant mound of bones—thigh bones and skulls, rib cages and spines. Some were animal, he reckoned, but quite a few were human. And on this eerie divan rested the remains of a giant wyrm, a fleshless skeleton inside a hide of bone-laced armored scales. His own words came back to him, told over a smoldering fire: “a creeper, it was, half serpent and half lizard. Longer than a wolf ship, it was—longer even than the dragon ships of the Norse—and it pulled itself along on two clawed legs. Scales of bone armored it above and below, pale as man-flesh on its belly but darkening to the colors of moss and lake mud along its back. That monstrous head…”
That skull, with its wide-set eyes, heavy jaws, and fangs the length of Grimnir’s forearm, was pierced through its heavy brow by a sword. It was a long-hilted weapon, with an acorn-shaped pommel and a plain cross hilt, its black iron blade untouched by the centuries. Grimnir could yet see the doom-haunted runes etched into the fuller.
“Sárklungr,” Grimnir hissed. To reach it, he would have to clamber up a drift of bones; instead, he knelt. There, at the edge of the dragon’s grisly mound, was a skeleton unlike the others. A kaunr skeleton, draped in tattered lengths of corroded bronze mail, with links of gold still gleaming amid the blue-black verdigris. Its rib cage was shattered; long furrows split the bones, and one arm foreshortened, as though the dragon had bit through it.
Grimnir’s nostrils flared; a heartbeat later, he heard the clatter of rocks as a foot dislodged them. His hand dropped to the hilt of his seax. A familiar voice profaned the silence. “Merciful gods,” Úlfrún said, her words echoing. She cradled her axe in the crook of her arm. “This is where he died. My kinsman, Sigfroðr, this…”
“Faugh!” Grimnir said. “If you believe that, you’re a precious sort of fool, wolf-mother. There was never any kinsman called Sigfroðr. The wretch who took your hand and put that damnable geas on you lied.”
“Oh, aye,” Úlfrún replied, a dangerous glint in her pale eyes. “Because everyone lies but you, is that it? Stand aside, skrælingr! That sword is mine! There is a destiny that needs to be fulfilled! A reckoning between the Old Ways and the New! The prophecy—”
“Oh, aren’t you all high and mighty! What are reckonings and prophecies to a lowborn guttersnipe like you?” Grimnir said. He rose from a crouch; in his hands, he held the skull of Raðbolg Kjallandisson. “You think you know the score? Tell me, then: who is your precious Grey Wanderer? Name him!”
“He is the Raven-God; Lord of the Gallows; the shield-worshipped kinsman of the Æsir; the Allfather! He is Odin!”
Grimnir laughed and shook his head. “Wrong, little fool! Oh, he might have worn the rags and hat of the so-called Grey Wanderer, that one, but it wasn’t him. The one-eyed bastard-lord of Ásgarðr is innocent in all this, though I’d wager my life he approved of it. Aye, and heartily so!”
“Maybe it’s you who are lying,” Úlfrún said. “You want the sword for yourself, don’t you, you double-crossing swine?”
“Of course I do! It belongs to me! But why didn’t I just take the sword, then, if that’s what I’m after?” Grimnir replied. “Nár, you straw-headed idiot! What happens to you if mine is the hand that frees Sárklungr? Do you think your geas will just let you drift along, absorbing death after death? Or do you think the one who did this to you will just heap all your many deaths on you at once for your failure? Let’s find out, eh?” He reached for Sárklungr’s hilt …
“Don’t,” she said, licking her lips. Her eyes flickered from the long hilt with its acorn pommel to Grimnir’s saturnine visage. “Say you’re telling the truth. Say it wasn’t the Grey Wanderer who did this … then, who? And to what end?”
“My mate, Halla, figured it out, ere the sun caught her,” Grimnir said. He tugged a small bag from the breast of his hauberk, unlaced it, and shook its contents out into his palm. Amid the oath-rings and fetishes were four chestnuts. Úlfrún peered closer. Each one bore a scratched rune: Ansuz, Isaz, and a pair of Naudiz. A-I-N-N. He put them in the right order with the flick of his black-nailed thumb: N-A-I-N. “Náinn.” Grimnir spat and crushed the four chestnuts in his vise-like grip.
“Náinn?” Úlfrún glanced sidelong at him. “Who is Náinn?”
“The beardling lord who forged Sárklungr. Hammered it from the heart of a fallen star as a troth-gift for the eldest daughter of his cousin, Kjallandi.” Grimnir glanced up at the hilt protruding from the wyrm’s skull. “It was good work, and Kjallandi coveted it. But his eldest daughter, Skríkja—she who bore me into this world—was already pledged to another, a son of the king of Niðavellir, no less. That idiot, Náinn, took offense.
“Aye, this was back before the Tangled God came among my people, doling out platters of blood-soaked meat to the nine households he’d chosen to serve him, Kjallandi’s among them. But it wasn’t goat’s meat or cuts of beef. Nár! That bloody feast Father Loki shared out was the monstrous afterbirth of Angrboða, who’d borne the mighty Fenrir, the serpent Jörmungandr, and silent Hel. Those who partook of it were forever changed.” Mail jangled as Grimnir thumped his chest. “They became kaunar. And ere the beardlings drove my folk from Niðavellir, Kjallandi slew Náinn and took Sárklungr from him.” Grimnir’s voice dropped to a near-whisper, taking on a chanting cadence as he recounted the blade’s history. “He drew it against the Æsir, on the fields of Jötunheimr, when the lords of Ásgarðr came to take Loki’s children with Angrboða off to face the judgment of that raven-starver, Odin. And when the Allfather called for our doom, Sárklungr rode Kjallandi’s hip across the Ash-Road to Miðgarðr. He killed Hrauðnir with it, on the slopes of Orkahaugr, and its point took Bálegyr’s eye ere Kjallandi was defea
ted. He slew those cursed Romans with it, in the Atlas Mountains. And when he fell in battle, his son Gífr brought Sárklungr back to Skríkja, his sister, who was Bálegyr’s wife and queen of the kaunar. She dealt this wretched wyrm a grievous wound with it, ere it killed her.” Grimnir hefted the skull of his kinsman. “And Raðbolg, here, rammed it into the beast’s skull and died for his trouble.”
Úlfrún nodded slowly, taking in the enormity of the sword’s lineage. Finally, she said: “If this were Náinn’s doing, how so? That was no draugr I saw, no walking corpse animated by hate and vengeance.”
Grimnir stared at the skull in his palm, stroked its forehead in silent benediction, and then laid it back down with a measure of reverence. When he straightened, anger had darkened his features. “Náinn had three sons. Two died on Sjælland, in the 999th year. The last one, a dvergr rat called Náli, was the wretch who opened the Ash-Road for me, when I sought Bjarki Half-Dane. He reneged on his promise, and we came to blows. I thought the bastard was dead … but it was him, I’ll warrant. He caused your geas.”
Úlfrún shook her head. “Why? I had nothing to do with this feud. Why would a dwarf seek me out?”
“He chose you to get his father’s sword back,” Grimnir said with a shrug. “Likely, he expected you to take my damn fool head off somewhere along the line. Killed Halla when he realized she’d bring news of him to me. The swine’s been playing us like a lute ever since.”
“If I take the sword?”
“Your geas ends.”
“I don’t want that bastard to win,” Úlfrún snarled.
“Then take it and give it to me,” Grimnir said, glancing down at the skull of Raðbolg. “I have a use for it. Take it,” he hissed. “Break the geas.”
Úlfrún stared up at the dragon’s skull, the sword spiked through its forehead. Nodding, she mounted the drift of bones. Thighs and ribs shifted and clattered around her; skulls bounced off her shins. She struggled, reaching with her good hand until her fingers brushed the pommel of Sárklungr. Úlfrún of the Iron Hand stared into the knife-toothed maw of the dragon, its thick bones gleaming in the bluish luminescence. Sweat beaded her forehead; her eyes shifted to Grimnir. “If I die, kill him with it,” she said. And with a deep breath, she grasped the hilt fully and drew the dwarf-forged blade from Malice-Striker’s skull.
Nothing happened.
Grimnir exhaled a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He saw no changes in the woman as she slid back down to stand beside him—she didn’t suddenly age, nor did she scream as the passing of the geas inflicted twenty-nine deaths on her. She simply held the sword up, studied its rune-carved blade, still diamond sharp and free from rust. For a moment—a long moment—she pondered her future, weighed her options. She glanced from the blade to Grimnir and back again. And slowly, she held the hilt out to him.
Grimnir wasted no time. He took possession of Sárklungr, holding it with exaggerated reverence. Here was a link to his past—a sword he’d last seen centuries ago, riding the hip of his dour and single-minded kinsman, Raðbolg.
“What will you do?”
Grimnir glanced sidelong at the bones of Malice-Striker. “Unfinished business,” he said. “You?”
“If she lives, I want to take the girl, Dísa. I want to show her there is a world beyond all this death.”
Grimnir nodded, only half hearing. His kept his gaze fixed on the blade of the sword. “If she’ll go, take her.”
And thus, without another word or even a backward glance, Úlfrún of the Iron Hand turned and retraced her steps from the barrow. Grimnir waited, listening as she negotiated the fissure and emerged into the night. As her footsteps faded, Grimnir turned to the hide-covered skeleton of the wyrm. He slapped the flat of the blade into the palm of his off hand. “So much for your wretched prophecy, eh? Let’s see what that one-eyed raven-starver does when his little pet shows up without its head!” Grimnir kicked aside a reef of fallen bones and was on the verge of clambering up to straddle the wyrm’s spine when harsh laughter stopped him. He glared over his shoulder, good eye ablaze. He spied a figure moving in the shadows. A figure clad in a voluminous cloak and a slouch hat, who leaned on a gnarled staff. A figure whose single eye met hate with hate.
“Grimnir son of Bálegyr,” it said. Its voice was like the rasp of stone on craggy iron. “My wretched cousin. There’s still a small matter between us, niðingr. You owe me a hymn-singer.”
“Náli son of Náinn.” Grimnir laughed as he turned to face the figure. “I see your new master lets you wear his hand-me-downs! I’d be impressed if I didn’t know that under all that mummery, you’re still the same white-skinned little runt I left to die on the Ash-Road. Faugh! And you’re right about there being a small matter between us! I owe you a death!”
“Your little troll-woman?” Náli laughed. “Touching, that you’d care for one such as her. But you were always the sort who picked up strays. Which reminds me: when I’m done with you, I’ll fetch your little bird back to my master. He fancies that sort … the ones who break and do not bend.”
“So-ho! You’ve still got a little fight left in you?”
Náli drew off his slouch hat. His right eye was gone, sacrificed to the Allfather; the left burned as bright as a forge-glede; though still pale and black-bearded, there was a newfound strength to the set of his jaw. He threw back his cloak, revealing heavy, straight limbs under a hauberk of close-woven mail. Náli rapped his staff against the damp stone; the glamour cloaking it faded, revealing its true nature: a spear. Its ash shaft reached an arm’s length beyond the crown of Náli’s head, with the final quarter of the weapon being a broad, lugged blade forged from black iron and etched with doom-haunted runes. “Oh, you wretched skrælingr,” Náli snarled, dropping into a fighting crouch. “You have no idea!”
* * *
AS DÍSA WATCHED, THE GIANT Brodir roared the Allfather’s name, calling on the lord of Ásgarðr to bear witness. In response, something opened deep in the berserkr’s soul—a doorway to a world of suffering and blood. And through this stepped a creature of nightmare. It looked like Brodir—kind, gentle Brodir—but Dísa could see nothing of Brodir’s humanity in this ravening beast’s eyes. It was a thing of cold crypts and blood-soaked fields, a shield-biter who knew nothing of mercy.
Splayed fingers seized the nearest Dane by the head. And though the man wore an open-faced helm, one convulsion of that titanic hand crushed iron and bone with equal ease. Brodir slung the dead man like a flail, beating a second Dane to his knees. The fellow raised his shield and stabbed at Brodir’s legs with his notched sword. Oblivious to a ghastly wound opened in the muscle of his calf, Brodir lifted that wounded leg high and brought his heel down on the crown of the kneeling man’s head. Plates of bone ruptured and vertebrae crunched as the berserkr’s weight drove the Dane’s skull down into his chest.
“ODIN!”
But Dísa did not stand idle. As the four Danes turned their attention to defending their lord—who twice tried and failed to heave himself to his feet—Dísa threaded in among them, her naked seax like a surgeon’s blade in the close confines of the gate’s ruins. She hamstrung one Dane and cut his throat as he fell; a second she shoved from behind. He stumbled into Brodir’s path, screaming as the berserkr seized his head in one hand and his blade-arm in another. Slabs of hate-fueled muscle writhed; the fellow’s screams turned to piercing shrieks as Brodir ripped his arm off.
A third Dane backpedaled into Dísa, his face white as a winding sheet and splashed with blood. Wild-eyed, he smashed an elbow into her face, turned to finish her off, and died when Brodir’s massive fist punched him in the center of his back, driving the shards of his rib cage into his heart and lungs.
The remaining Dane turned and ran, bleating like a wolf-worried sheep. He tumbled down the outer face of the gate ruins in his haste and vanished from sight.
That left only Konraðr and the priest. Brodir turned on them, jaws champing, spittle flecking his beard. While the lord of
Skara scrambled for the hilt of his sword, the bearded priest stalked into the berserkr’s path. He raised his cross-topped staff, and the words that spilled from his lips bore the power of the White Christ.
“Let the Holy Cross be my light!” the priest thundered. “Let not the Devil be my guide!” And Brodir—giant Brodir—shrank back. Dísa watched as the huge Northman staggered, flinching as though each syllable of the priest’s incantation bore a poisonous edge. “Step back, Satan! Step back!” The priest thrust his staff into Brodir’s face. “Get thee behind me, Satan!”
The berserkr quailed. And Dísa, snarling in hate, stepped unseen around the giant’s trembling body. The words dripping from the bearded priest’s lips caused her eyes to water, her skin to burn. Still, she did not pause. Rage drove her, shielded her from the worst of the Nailed God’s malign influence. And, in answer, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir rammed the blade of her seax into the priest’s black-cassocked chest … and twisted.
“For Flóki, you cross-kissing son of a bitch!”
It was as though someone snuffed out a candle flame.
“S-Saints preserve me! My … My l-lord…” Nikulas reeled away, dropping his staff to clutch at the gaping wound under his sternum, as though by fingers and will alone, he could stem the freshets of blood that jetted through his hands. He stumbled and sank to his knees. “L-Lord?”
Dísa reached for the crucifix-topped staff …
“No!” Konraðr roared. The lord of Skara surged to his feet, sword in hand. A wild swing drove Dísa back. The girl scurried beyond the Crusader’s reach and dropped to a crouch, bloody seax at the ready.
“Brodir!” she cried out in warning. The berserkr shook his head to clear it, and Dísa saw the fire in his eyes had abated. They were the kind, gentle eyes she recalled. Whatever had goaded his rage had faded—or been driven out by the priest’s incantations. “Brodir, look out!”
