The Song of the Ash Tree 03 - Already Comes Darkness

by T L Greylock

  Raef was quiet for a long moment, trying to fathom a means to thwart both Fengar and Bryndis. “There must be another way.” And yet he could not see it. “Even if we bring warriors through the Dragon’s Jaw, even if we gather up here,” Raef flung his arm above them, indicating the ledges and level places that made up the side of the mountain, “in numbers greater than Fengar’s, there is no way down. We might kill some with arrows, but then the rest will hide and wait and the hostages will die.”

  “And the fortress will never be breached from below.” Siv’s voice was calm, but Raef sensed an underlying sorrow that she was not yet willing to release to him.

  They stood in silence, each contemplating the ruins below, until Raef sighed and glanced at the stars and the moon above.

  “It is time we went back. The night is no longer young,” Raef said.

  Siv nodded but her gaze lingered on the hostages until Raef had ducked back into the tunnel from which he had emerged. Then she frowned and followed, though she stopped and hesitated where the starlight still fell upon her.

  “You came this way?” Siv asked.

  “Yes.”

  “As did I.”

  “Something is at work here well beyond us.” Raef was quiet, stalled on hands and knees in the passage. “I have seen its like before, though I had hoped never to know it again.”

  “The labyrinth of Jötunheim?”

  “Yes.” Raef crept forward and heard Siv enter the tunnel behind him. “In Vannheim, we are told that mighty Ymir’s heart is buried in the deep waters of the fjord. I wonder if it lies here instead, and if that heart burns still with rage over what the Allfather did to him.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  They emerged at the base of the Dragon’s Jaw to the sound of weeping. The sobs were soft and weak, and at first Raef could not see their source. Eiger’s bulk was hunched over, but his broad back did not shudder and when he stood and turned to face Raef and Siv as they emerged from the Jaw, his fleshy face, free of tears, was twisted with revulsion.

  At Eiger’s feet, Skuli shivered on his knees. Spittle hung from the young warrior’s open mouth. His cheeks were streaked with tears and blood. And his eyes were nothing more than mangled, pulpy orbs, all crimson gore where once they had been pale blue.

  “What happened?” Raef went to Skuli and dropped to his knees in front of the younger man, but his words were for Eiger, who had retreated into the glow of the lantern. Raef placed a hand on Skuli’s shoulder, his own fingers trembling almost as much as Skuli’s body, but the slight touch sent a shudder through Skuli and he jerked back and began to scream.

  It was the scream Raef had heard in the mountain and now he was desperate to silence it for no doubt the whole valley could hear Skuli’s terror. But his words, his pleas, went unnoticed and Raef, grimacing to himself, placed one hand over Skuli’s mouth and then wrapped his arm around the warrior’s neck and pressed Skuli against his chest, muffling the blood-curdling cries. Skuli fought him at first, fought for air, fought against Raef’s restraining arms, but Raef held him there until the will to resist fled from Skuli’s limbs, leaving him limp in Raef’s arms, his breaths reduced to wretched, mewling gasps. Skuli’s head hung back and the ruined eyes stared up at Raef.

  “What happened?” Raef asked once more.

  “He came out like that.” Eiger’s voice was flat and free of compassion, but there was something else picking away at the edges of his words, something like fear that might unravel any moment.

  Siv nudged something with the toe of her boot and Raef saw it was a knife, long and lean in the moonlight, but the blade was stained with blood, as were Skuli’s fingers, and Raef thought of his own knife, lost now to the Dragon’s Jaw, and his own blood that lined the edge.

  Raef stood and hoisted Skuli onto his shoulder, draping the young warrior as he would a deer downed in the hunt. To his relief, Skuli whimpered but made no other sound.

  “What are you doing?” Eiger stared at Raef, the lantern highlighting his disbelief. “Better to end his misery.”

  Raef glared and gave no answer, but turned and headed back the way they had come.

  Bryndis waited, wrapped in a woven robe dyed a deep blue and trimmed with white fox fur. A single candle lit the tent and a bowl of soup that no longer steamed was discarded on a stool. She was sitting when Raef pulled aside the tent flap, but he could guess that the ground had been well-worn by the tread of her impatient feet. The black ink that lined her eyes had been wiped away, leaving her looking vulnerable and young.

  Bryndis began to speak as Raef entered, but she stopped short when she caught sight of Skuli hanging from Raef’s shoulders.

  “Is he?” She let the rest of her question linger unspoken on her lips.

  “Alive,” Raef said. With Siv’s help, Raef unloaded Skuli and propped him on a pile of furs. The warrior was quiet now, his distress visible only in his tightly clenched fists. The blood on his face had turned to a crust but his ruined eyes still leaked fluid and Bryndis stared in dread and horror.

  “Odin has abandoned us, lady.” Eiger had followed Raef into the tent and now he loomed at Bryndis’s shoulder, his bulk separating her from the candlelight.

  “The Allfather had nothing to do with this.” Raef snarled, advancing on Eiger, who held his ground.

  “And you know the Allfather’s mind, Skallagrim?”

  Raef bit back the words he might have spoken and turned his attention to Bryndis.

  “Stefnir spoke the truth.”

  Bryndis closed her eyes for a moment, though whether to blot out the sight of Skuli’s disfigurement or the thought of the innocent life that would be ended in the light of the rising sun, Raef could not be sure. She went to the tent flap and called for aid for Skuli. When she turned and looked at Raef, her resolve was visible in every line of her face.

  “You know where I stand.”

  “I do,” Raef said, “and were they all of Narvik, I would defer to your right to decide. But there is a girl among them. She was in my care once. I do not intend to abandon her.” A woman came with fresh water and a clean strip of linen. She set to work dabbing the cloth to Skuli’s face.

  “Would that we could save them all,” Bryndis said, “but I do not see how it can be done, not without letting Fengar go free, and this I will not do.”

  “Send word that we will retreat, that the hostages must be released, that Fengar may leave Narvik unmolested. We can ambush him when he leaves the safety of the fortress.”

  “You would make me a liar?”

  Raef tried to hide his frustration. “I do not think you can be honest and victorious, Bryndis. Not this time.” The lady of Narvik looked unmoved. “Are you so fond of this harsh world you have known that you would see no other option? Are you so eager to show your resilience that you would send children to their deaths?”

  Bryndis recoiled from Raef, the tendons in her neck straining against the skin, her eyes sharp with anger. “You think I do this for myself? I do this so that we might be free of Fengar, so that we might have a new king, one chosen by the voices of the warriors, not the voices of a few.”

  Raef shook his head and spread his hands. “There are other ways, lady.”

  “Perhaps I was wrong to call on Vannheim.”

  “Do not make me your enemy, Bryndis. We have enough of those.”

  “Do you threaten her?” Eiger placed one hand on Bryndis’s shoulder and the other on his sword hilt.

  Raef kept his gaze on Bryndis. “She knows I do not.”

  Before Bryndis could speak again, a new voice interrupted them, weak and trusting, as Skuli spoke his first coherent words.

  “Lord? Are you there? Will you not help me?”

  Raef held Bryndis’s gaze for a moment longer, though what he might hope to convey to her, he could not say, then went to Skuli’s side.

  “Here, I am here.” Raef took Skuli’s hand between both of his. The other man’s skin was cold and dry.

  “I had to.” Skuli�
��s voice took on a measure of strength. “I had to do it.” Skuli’s fingers tightened around Raef’s and he grew agitated, pushing himself off the furs with his other hand and reaching out as though he might latch onto Raef or whatever he could find.

  “I know.” Raef took Skuli’s other hand and held them both, hoping to calm him, to give him some peace. “I know.” They were not empty words. Whatever had found Skuli in the Dragon’s Jaw, whatever had brought him to mangle his own eyes, Raef had felt it, too, and it lay over him still. When Skuli grew calm again, Raef pulled him to his feet and led him to the tent flap. Raef pushed aside the heavy canvas and then looked over his shoulder at Bryndis. She met his gaze but neither of them spoke and Raef left her.

  Raef had not heard Siv leave the tent, but she was gone and had not lingered nearby. But whatever troubled Siv would have to wait. The Vannheim shelters were quiet when Raef, supporting Skuli, approached, but a few men left on watch rose to meet him.

  “Find ale, mead, whatever we have, and clean cloth,” Raef said as he laid Skuli out beside a fire. Two warriors hurried off to do as he asked. A third stared at Skuli’s face, his fingers finding the hammer amulet that hung at his neck. Only then did Raef remember that he had tied his around Skuli’s neck. It was no longer there and the loss of it gnawed at Raef. Ignoring the gaping warrior, Raef pulled his remaining knife from his belt and ran his whetstone along the edge until it satisfied him. By then the two warriors had returned clutching several full skins. Raef opened one and took a swig, glad of the sweet mead as it lined his throat. Then he signaled for them to prop Skuli up so that he might swallow.

  “You know what I must do, Skuli?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  The sockets had to be cleaned. Raef was no healer, but he knew he could not leave the remains of Skuli’s eyes to fester and rot.

  “Then drink. And then drink some more.”

  Skuli emptied three skins of mead before he slumped against the knees of the men holding him up and let the skin fall from his hands. Raef held the point of the knife in the flames until it began to glow, then, steeling himself with a steadying breath, began to carve out the pulpy eyeballs. Skuli flinched under his touch but did not cry out and Raef hoped he could not feel the searing heat of the blade, could not feel his flesh being scraped from bone.

  When he finished, Raef splashed mead across the empty, blackened eye sockets, then followed that with water to wash away the rivulets of blood that lingered on Skuli’s cheeks. The bandage was ready and waiting and Raef wrapped it again and again around Skuli’s head, sealing away the wound. When it was done, Raef leaned over and pressed his lips against Skuli’s hair.

  “You are in the gods’ hands now.” Raef got to his feet. “Do not leave him alone.” The three warriors nodded as Raef rinsed his hands with more water and took another gulp of mead. He longed to rest but the night was not through with him yet.

  It was not difficult to find Siv. She was perched on a fallen tree at the edge of the camp, and though the ruined fortress was cloaked in darkness and beyond their sight, Raef knew she saw it as clearly as if the sun were shining.

  She acknowledged Raef with a small smile and he sat beside her for a long moment before speaking.

  “I have never seen you like this.” Raef took her hand. “Will you not tell me what troubles you?”

  “My sister is up there.”

  They sat in silence. Raef brought her fingers to his lips and kissed the tip of each.

  “You never told me her name.”

  “Bekkhild.”

  “And what are we going to do about Bekkhild?”

  TWENTY-SIX

  They hung the hostage at dawn.

  It was not a child, as Stefnir had promised, and Raef breathed a sigh of relief as he tilted his face up to the cliff top where the body dangled. Cilla lived. Raef wondered if Fengar’s belly had roiled at the thought of slaughtering a child.

  The dead man had been stripped of everything but his lank, dirty hair and his skinny corpse would be left for the crows. Raef had only to look at Bryndis’s face to know that the lady of Narvik knew the man. But she remained resolute and her eyes harbored no trace of tears as she turned her horse away from the cliff and urged him back across the valley.

  Siv gazed up at the dead man for a long moment, then she and Raef turned their horses and followed in Bryndis’s wake. They had reached the outer shelters when a startled cry rang out and Raef saw a warrior staring back at the cliff, pointing and shouting words he could not make out.

  The body was on fire. It burned without wood, without oil, but even from that distance, Raef could see the flames had consumed the corpse with ease. As voices around him murmured that perhaps Fengar meant it as a kindness, that he had chosen to spare the dead man from scavenging beaks and teeth, but Raef knew in his heart that the fire was not of Fengar’s making.

  “Vakre is here.”

  But Siv’s eyes were on Bryndis, who had spared the flames only a glance, then continued on into her tent.

  “I will speak with her,” Siv said.

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “No.” Siv ran a hand down Raef’s forearm, then she, too, vanished inside the tent. Raef waited for a time, pacing, catching snatches of murmured words, but as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky and still they did not emerge, he resigned himself to a long wait and returned to the Vannheim shelters.

  Skuli’s bandage had been changed already that morning. The soiled one had been burned and a fresh cloth layered over his eyes, but already it was stained with blood and other fluids. He had spoken only a little, Raef was told, but neither had he appeared to sleep. Raef could only imagine what tormented Skuli’s mind, could only imagine what ravaged in the self-inflicted darkness. He had been placed in a shelter and made comfortable with warm furs, and a steaming bowl of broth and a hunk of hard cheese had been set within easy reach, but Skuli reacted only a little to Raef’s voice and said nothing in return.

  “His mind is gone,” Njall, another captain and Skuli’s good friend, said to Raef as he stepped out of the shelter.

  Raef shook his head. “No. His mind wavers. But it is not yet gone.”

  Njall looked uncertain but Lochauld, the young warrior from Axsellund, nodded his agreement. “The gods will give him back to us, but only if Skuli makes that choice.”

  Raef did not think the gods had much to do with the twisted blackness of Skuli’s mind, but he kept his doubts to himself, for Njall seemed to find understanding in Lochauld’s words.

  “We have preparations to make,” Raef said to the two warriors. The knowledge that Vakre lived and walked among Fengar’s men had steeled his resolve to the promise he had given Siv in the grey hour before dawn. “More hostages will die if the lady Bryndis will not retreat from this valley. She does not seek my counsel and the far greater part of the warriors here are hers, so I cannot force a decision upon her. I mean to assault the fortress tonight.” Raef looked up at the sky. Heavy clouds drifted on the western horizon. “With luck we will have cloud cover to shield us from the moon’s light.”

  If Njall doubted Raef’s plan, if he found it foolish and dangerous, he kept that to himself as they spoke of the preparations that had to be made, and Raef was sure he saw the lure of battle-fame in Njall’s eyes. The chance of success was small, the chance of death great, but if they could succeed, their names would be carried on the tips of reverent tongues, even to the very gates of Asgard.

  Leaving Njall to seek out Dvalarr the Crow carry out his orders, Raef was returning to Bryndis’s tent when a commotion on the edge of the shelters drew his attention. Raef hesitated, for he longed to know what had transpired between Siv and Bryndis, but the shouting grew louder, rougher, and Raef had no choice but to address it.

  The scene was grisly. A body lay on the ground, the skin sliced in countless places and marred with rope burns everywhere else. The man’s face was beaten beyond recognition, and a symbol was carved into his chest. The Odin rune.<
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  Two men, warriors of Narvik Raef recognized, knelt beside the body while three more stood above them, weapons bristling, curses and accusations flying from their tongues. They faced four men wielding axes and there was death in the eyes of each man.

  The first attack came from one of the Narvik warriors as Raef stepped into their midst. He seized the man’s cloak, halting his momentum, and yanked hard, putting the warrior off balance. He stumbled back among his comrades and turned, seething, on Raef.

  “Enough!” Raef drew his sword and saw fear in the Narvik warrior’s eyes. The men eyed each other uneasily but no one moved. “What has happened here?”

  “These dogs hung Buruld from a tree,” one of the Narvik warriors shouted. “Trussed him up like a pig and bled him.”

  Raef turned to the other four men. “What offense did he commit?” They were silent. “Answer me.”

  “They have only done the Allfather’s will.”

  Raef spun to face Eiger, sword pointing at the other man’s throat. The Great-Belly’s son had approached silently and he stood before Raef without fear. His thin lips were turned up in a satisfied smile that spread across his fat cheeks.

  “What have you done?” Raef tried to keep his anger contained, but it seeped into his voice.

  Eiger spread his hands. “I have sought only to return us to the Allfather’s good will.”

  “By murder?”

  “Odin hung himself upon Yggdrasil for nine days and nine nights.” Eiger gestured at the dead man on the ground. “These have only done so for the span of a morning. What is that compared to the Allfather’s suffering?”

  Raef flung his sword to the ground and lunged at Eiger. The fat man could not react in time and Raef, gripping Eiger’s fur collar, hauled him to his knees. “These?” Raef, leaning so close to Eiger’s face that he could see a tiny scar in the other man’s eyebrow, fought the urge to draw his knife and slit open Eiger’s belly so his guts might worm free. “There are others?” Eiger clenched his jaw shut. “Where are the rest?” Still Eiger would not speak and Raef threw him to the ground.