The Song of the Ash Tree 03 - Already Comes Darkness

by T L Greylock

  He landed hard, so hard his shoulder went numb, but he staggered to his feet, sword already loose, the naked steel eager to drink wolf blood. The horse had come to her feet, too, her fear now laced with pain. The smear of blood trickling down her left hind leg registered in Raef’s mind, but he had no time to assess the damage. The wolves were ready to spring.

  But the attack never came.

  The wolf closest to Raef, a tall black thing with yellow eyes, whimpered and flattened its ears back, then dropped to its stomach. The others imitated it and Raef spun in search of the source of their sudden fear. One by one the wolves began to slink away, bellies brushing the snow, but as the last one vanished from Raef’s sight, an animal scream blazed out of the twilight. Raef heard bones breaking and flesh ripping and then all was quiet and he knew one of the wolves had not escaped.

  “Raef, get in the saddle.” Vakre’s words were quiet and full of dread. Siv was there, tugging her bow free, and Vakre was reaching for Raef’s horse, who still snorted and tossed her head after her encounter with the wolves. Raef did not hesitate, his own fear hammering in his chest, and put his foot in one stirrup. Grimacing against the painful tingling in his shoulder, Raef pulled himself into the saddle and as three they raced away. He did not dare hope they had gone unnoticed by whatever had hunted the wolves.

  THIRTY-TWO

  It stalked them through the night.

  Raef was sure of it, though he never caught sight of anything. Instinct told him the creature was just out of sight and keeping pace with ease. The horses knew it, too. Whether the wolf-killer toyed with them or was judging them, Raef could not say. He could only hope the light of day might bring a measure of safety.

  They halted when the horses were at the brink of exhaustion. Dawn was not far off and the trees had given way to open land and a pair of narrow lakes between high hills. Vakre spotted an abandoned summer farm and they took refuge there, leading the horses within the three walls that remained to one small building and removing the heavy saddles. Their backs steamed in the air and they were too tired to eat the grain that Raef offered.

  The other building they took for themselves and Siv began to work on a fire. Raef did not want to stop for long, but he knew the value of rest, knew he could not arrive, wherever he was going, drained and without wit or strength. As smoke wafted through the one-room house, Raef stepped outside to empty his bladder, his gaze on the horizon. There was no sign of pursuit, but to Raef the air that should have been clear and bright and cold seemed tainted with a vile scent, so faint he could not be certain, but the feeling persisted and Raef was uneasy as he returned to the warmth and closed the door.

  “We should watch the horses,” Raef said. “Something is coming. We cannot lose them.” He rummaged in his pack for some morsels of food, careful to take only what he needed to sustain him. It would not do to exhaust their supplies. With dried meat and a scrap of hard cheese in hand, Raef went to the door once more, but Vakre stopped him.

  “I will do it.”

  Raef began to protest, but Vakre was already out the door.

  Raef found him hunched under the rotten remains of the roof of the second building. Two horses slept; one munched on the grain Raef had left.

  “Are you angry?”

  Vakre’s shoulders rose as he inhaled and he untucked his arms from where they had wrapped around his torso.

  “I am,” Vakre paused, “tired.” It was not sleep that Vakre spoke of.

  “I have not forgotten my promise.”

  Vakre acknowledged this by meeting Raef’s gaze. His face softened. “I know.” Vakre rubbed a hand down the side of his face. “I am well enough, Raef. Sleep. While you can.”

  Raef hesitated, but he was suddenly weary and did not resist. He left Vakre with the horses, wondering if the heat he could feel radiating from the son of Loki was a warmth Vakre welcomed or dreaded. Siv was asleep already, curled before the fire, her face burnished by the low orange hues. She stirred but did not wake as Raef kissed her cheek. It was only a moment before he followed her into slumber.

  When Raef awoke, the small fire had burned only a little and by the light streaming under the door he knew he had not slept for long. But it was the smell that consumed him as he pushed aside the blanket, choking on the thick, foul odor, like the smell of spoiled meat and a battlefield under the heat of the sun. Fighting back a gag, eyes watering, Raef woke Siv and reached for his weapons. He stumbled from the house, retching, but the high meadow was quiet and empty. Raef ran to the broken-down building and saw that the horses were safe and well. They showed no fear and the foul smell seemed to fade and shrink until Raef was left wondering if he had imagined it.

  Siv came up behind him and the troubled look on her face told him she had caught the scent as well. There was no sign of Vakre or a struggle.

  “He would not want us to worry,” Siv said, voicing Raef’s uneasy thoughts. Vakre would not have wandered off without a purpose and Raef was sure whatever foul creature brought the odor was responsible for Vakre’s absence.

  They waited. The sun climbed higher in the sky. They saddled the horses and prepared to ride but still Vakre did not appear across the meadow or on the snowfield that stretched up into the higher places behind the summer farm.

  When he could wait no longer, when the shadow of the countless birds rising to the sky darkened his mind, when he began to wonder if he would hear Heimdall blow the Gjallerhorn to call the forces of Asgard to the last battle, Raef swung into the saddle.

  He did not look back at the summer farm as he and Siv followed the narrowing meadow to where it vanished between two hills, but the gap in the hills was still far away when Raef heard Siv’s sharp inhale at his side. He followed her gaze to the snowfield and saw a figure running, fleeing. Vakre.

  For a moment, Vakre was alone and his silent, distant flight seemed like something from a dream. But then fear clutched at Raef’s gut as the hunter emerged, sweeping up over a hidden rise in the white-washed terrain on dark wings that skimmed the snow.

  The creature was massive, its wings stretching wide, its long serpent neck thrust forward as it narrowed the gap between itself and its prey. Vakre ran on without looking back, but then, perhaps catching sight of Raef and Siv and seeing they were on their way to safety, Vakre stopped running. He turned to face the winged death.

  Raef buried his heels into his horse and she charged forward, reaching full gallop in a few strides. As he drew closer, the sheer size of the creature became more apparent as it settled in front of Vakre, landing in the snow with all the lightness of a sparrow. Its wings remained spread, each longer than the tallest giants Raef had seen in Jötunheim, and from the tip of its lashing tail to the end of its snorting nostrils it exceeded the length of his father’s hall.

  The arrow whistled past Raef, unleashed from Siv’s bow where she rode behind him. It struck the creature’s throat, lodging there, and the creature swung its neck around, a fierce rumble charging up its throat as it registered the new threat. Dashing forward in the moment of its distraction, Vakre slashed his sword at the base of its neck, drawing blood that sprayed across the son of Loki’s face, but the beast took little notice of either wound and instead launched into the sky with effortless power and a single stroke of the immense wings.

  Eyes of starless midnight narrowed on Siv, and the beast, hovering on high like an eagle, tucked its wings and dove. The silence was overwhelming and then Raef heard his own shouts, hoarse and desperate, but the beast was not to be distracted and there was nothing he could do, his sword, his axe, all useless as the creature descended from the sky.

  The jaws opened as the beast closed in on Siv’s terrified horse, whose legs churned in fear, and Raef saw at last the pair of great, curved teeth protruding from the upper jaw, as long as a spear and bearing a promise of death and gore. The jaw snapped shut and did not miss, closing around the horse’s head. If the horse screamed in the moment of its death, the sound was caught in the creature’s throa
t.

  Siv still clung to the saddle as the creature flung the headless horse through the air and opened its maw in a scream of triumph that reverberated through Raef’s limbs. Siv and the horse’s corpse landed in a heap in the snow, the impact throwing the shieldmaiden clear of the saddle. She lay still.

  Raef had no chance to go to her, for the creature rounded on him now, but this time he and Vakre faced the attack together. Raef felt the heat of Vakre’s anger wash over him in a wave less than a heartbeat before the flames roared to life, consuming Vakre, billowing outward with ferocious hunger. The creature answered with a bellow of rage, rearing up and beating its wings at the flames. The air churned, tossed about by the strength of the creature’s wings, and the flames bent toward Raef. Throwing himself to the snow, he felt a heat so unbearable, so searing, it forced a scream from his throat. And then his cloak was on fire, his hair was smoking, his very skin seemed to smolder. Raef rolled through the snow and at last the flames went out and he was able to look up.

  Vakre, tucked into the heart of his cloak of fire, had risen from the snow, drawing the creature with him, and for a moment they hung high in the air, suspended in silence, and then they moved as one, Vakre’s blaze bursting forth even as the creature twisted and lashed out with one wing, striking the flames, and Raef watched as Vakre fell.

  The fire around Vakre went out, but not before taking root in the creature’s wing, and in that moment of bewilderment, the arrow found its mark.

  The shaft drove into the creature’s eye until only the tip of the fletching could be seen and Raef whirled to see Siv, on her knees, bow in hand as the creature’s scream ate into his ears, his heart, his bones.

  The beast plummeted to earth and struck the ground with a roar of fury and pain, but Raef was already moving to finish it before it regained its feet. The flaming wing beat against the ground but the fire only seemed to spread as Raef vaulted onto the creature’s belly and drove his sword down into the thick muscles of its chest. Again and again he plunged the blade and ripped it forth but still it howled at him, still it fought on, twisting so violently that Raef was thrown from his perch. Scrambling to his feet, Raef raised his sword over his head and brought it down onto the creature’s neck. The steel bit deep, severing bone and tendons, and the creature flopped in agony, the head dangling loose.

  When it lay still, Raef found he was on his knees, his heart thudding still in his chest, his shaking hands clinging to his sword. The will to breathe had left him and he had to work to force air into his lungs, his whole body tense, ridged, but at last he could breathe and he was able to rise.

  Siv was still kneeling in the snow when Raef got to her side, her face pale and still, but she grasped Raef’s hand as he laid his palm on her cheek. “I am fine,” she whispered, her gaze shifting to where Vakre lay, the air around him still shimmering with heat. “Go to him.” She got to her feet, clutching Raef’s arm for support, and he could see she was hurt. She would not put weight on her left ankle, but she steeled her face. “Go,” she said again.

  Vakre was alive. He stared up at the sky, his eyes empty, his breathing shallow, but he flinched when Raef put a hand on his chest and a storm washed through his irises as he inhaled sharply.

  “Be still,” Raef said, examining Vakre for injuries. There was nothing, not a bruise or a scrape. “Does it hurt to breathe?” Raef asked, sure Vakre was bleeding internally. The strength behind the creature’s wing would have leveled a house.

  Vakre was quiet for a moment, as though assessing his body, then pushed himself into a sitting position. “I am unhurt.”

  “It should have killed you.”

  “Yes.” Vakre hesitated, his brow creasing. “The blow was painful. But there was something else. Memories, I think. Pieces of thoughts so primal I cannot begin to comprehend them. Tastes and sounds and smells.” Vakre looked at Raef, his eyes shining with wonder. “It was full of malice and hatred long-fermented in a black heart. It knew only savagery. But I think you know what it was.”

  Raef turned and looked over his shoulder to where the creature lay in the snow. One wing still smoldered but the flames had not continued to spread, as though the cooling blood in the creature’s veins prevented the fire from growing.

  “An elder kin,” Raef said quietly. He rose and walked to the tip of the unburnt wing. The skin was stretched thin between slender bones, dark in color but suffused with something Raef could only describe as drops of dawn on the surface of a fjord still black with night. Vakre followed him, one arm supporting Siv as they came to stand at Raef’s side. “An ancient dragon, born in the first light of the sun, old when the gods were young.” Raef wished he could ask Finnoul for the secret name of such a creature.

  “The last dragons vanished from the nine realms even as the first men drew breath. Odin and his brothers hunted them to extinction,” Siv said. “How is it that this one has come to be here now?”

  “The borders between the realms are withering,” Raef said. He could not remove his gaze from the elder kin. “Imagine what ancient, forgotten horrors might call Niflheim home.” The realm of the dead belonged to the goddess Hel, and Raef did not doubt that she ruled over more than those who did not earn a place in Valhalla.

  “Was it merely chance that brought it to our path? Or was it set upon us?” Siv spoke the question that had been forming in Raef’s chest.

  Neither Raef nor Vakre answered at first, but then the son of Loki spoke, turning away from the elder kin. His gaze fixed on the snowfield above them and the path he had taken in flight from the dragon.

  “I left the horses because I knew something was out there,” Vakre began. “It was waiting, watching, calculating our strengths. A dragon dragged from the depths of Niflheim has never before seen or hunted man. Wolves, it knew. Wolves were not a threat. But it did not expect to find us in the woods, I think. We walk on two legs. If the Allfather hunted these creatures in a similar form, perhaps it feared us.”

  “Then why attack when it did?”

  Vakre frowned. “Perhaps when I got close enough to where it was hiding, it knew I did not smell of Asgard. The fear turned to hunger.”

  “Or you did smell of Asgard,” Raef said. “And the dragon sought revenge.” A whisper of wind on Raef’s neck reminded him that time was against them. He looked to the sky and the path of the sun. “We cannot linger. We have lost too much time.”

  With only two horses between them, Siv straddled Raef’s horse behind the saddle, one hand resting on his hip. She kept her bow strung, the arrows within easy reach, and all three of them waited for another winged shadow to fall across the sun. But their passage north was untroubled and when they came to rest under the cover of darkness, they had reached Vannheim lands.

  Raef knew the place, knew the river and the waterfall that, in spring, would roar. In the depths of winter, the cascade would be half frozen, but still Raef could hear the telltale fall of water just out of sight to the west. They crossed, leading the horses through ankle-deep, unhurried currents, and took shelter on the northern side.

  “With luck we can buy another horse tomorrow,” Raef said, dismounting and taking Siv’s hand. She slid down from the horse, her feet unsteady under her and her knees buckled. Raef caught her, thinking she was sore from riding without a saddle, but then he saw her eyes in the moonlight and knew her suffering had a different cause. When she did not protest when Raef scooped her up in his arms to carry her to even ground, his stomach clenched in fear.

  Siv grimaced and bit back a cry of pain as Raef stretched her out on a patch of earth free of snow. Her right hand flew to her side, to the bottom of her rib cage, but she yanked her fingers away at the first touch and this time her cry was sharp.

  As Vakre placed a blanket under Siv’s head, Raef undid the buckle of her belt and began to peel back the layers of leather, wool, and linen while trying to disturb her as little as possible. A sudden flare of light from Vakre’s hand made it bright enough to see a deep purple bruise sprea
d under Siv’s skin when Raef pulled up the edge of her linen tunic. It stretched from her hipbone up to her lowest rib, sustained, no doubt, when her horse was flung from the dragon’s mouth.

  “You should have said something,” Raef said, meeting Siv’s eyes.

  “Would you?” She stared at him, unblinking, and Raef regretted his words. Vakre offered her a skin of ale, but she shook her head and closed her eyes as she leaned back to rest her head on the blanket.

  Keeping his touch as light as possible, Raef placed his fingers on the discolored flesh, trying to determine the extent of the injury, but his probing revealed nothing. He sat back on his heels.

  “At the least, you have cracked the bottom of your rib cage,” he said.

  “And the worst?” Siv murmured, her eyes still closed.

  Raef was sure she already knew the answer, but he said it anyway. “Ruptured organs. Blood flowing into places it should not be.”

  “Then I would be dead already,” Siv said.

  “Can we be sure of that?”

  Siv opened her eyes and met Raef’s gaze but said nothing.

  Vakre rested the back of his hand on Siv’s forehead. “No fever. Yet.”

  That was a good sign. Raef rose and paced away from where Siv lay. “Tomorrow we will turn west. There is a village a day’s ride from here. We can seek a healer.”

  “No, Raef,” Siv said, her voice quiet but firm. “You must go north. To turn west now will place two fjords and a stretch of hills and valleys between you and the Old Troll. It will take time you cannot spare. You must take the shortest path, and that means staying on the eastern end of Vannheim’s fjords.”