by Matt Larkin
It was all troll shit, was what it was. Hervor had asked him to recall the friendship Jarl Bjalmar had shown them all. Well, sacking towns wasn’t friendship … So now what was Ecgtheow to do? He had an oath to Hrethel, and besides which, like the king said, blood joined them now. Ylva was his wife, and here she was, carrying his child, Hrethel’s grandchild.
So?
So he was well and truly fucked. No way around it.
Faint footfalls sounded along the beach. Ecgtheow whipped his torch up and turned slowly, scanning through the mist.
There. A silhouette approached, the mist seeming to coil about him and obscure his cloaked form.
Ecgtheow held his torch higher over his head. “Orvar?”
“Yes …”
“Hel’s crotch, man, you move like a vaettr. What’re you about now?”
The man pushed through the mist until he stood beside Ecgtheow, then turned to stare out over the lake. With the mist, you couldn’t see too far out there. Odin alone might know what vaettir lurked beneath those still waters.
Either way, Ecgtheow supposed men had to build in such places. You had to have water, even with the danger.
“You will go to war …” Orvar said.
Ecgtheow grunted. “Can’t say I much like the idea. Any way I turn it about, seems like I’ll be breaking faith with either my king and father-in-law or with my friend.” He turned to Orvar. “Oh, damn, but I suppose you wouldn’t know, would you? Our own dear Hervor, she’s the granddaughter of Jarl Bjalmar, noble-born and all.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He did know? Odd, that. Ecgtheow hadn’t thought it common knowledge. “Right, well, that’s the rough bit I find myself in. King Hrethel wants to storm Bjalmar’s hall and seize his lands, make an example of him—and not without cause. Still, it doesn’t sit well with me, and I’m not sure I want to be in any war band that heads that way. I … Well, I’ve got a wife thick with child, you know? Maybe a good reason for me to stay behind, watch over the town, protect the king.”
“Is it?” Orvar turned to him now and almost seemed to growl. “Is that cowardice that stays your hand?”
Well, shit. Nobody talked to him like that. Ecgtheow leveled a glare at Orvar that ought to have sent him falling back a few steps.
Not the Arrow’s Point, though. He just rasped and grunted. “You think Hervor so worthy of your loyalty? That she deserves the smallest hair of your mercy?”
“What else are friends for?”
“Friends? Friends … who lie to you? Betray you?”
“What’re you on about?”
Orvar did take a step back now, lowering the hood of his cloak as he did so. Beneath lay pale, sallow skin stretched a bit too taut and marred by old scars. His eyes gleamed red in the torchlight. He pulled away his tunic, revealing a gaping hole in his ribcage, one that showed clear down to bone. Rather than oozing blood, that flesh had turned putrid yellow-green, surrounded by gray. A whiff of rot seeped off that wound.
“Vileness …” Ecgtheow fell back, one hand over his mouth and nose, the other wrapped around Naegling’s hilt. “Draug.”
“Yes … Murdered. On Thule. By … Hervor.”
“No. The dead lie.” Ecgtheow lurched Naegling free of its sheath and held the blade between himself and the monstrosity before him.
“Why would I lie?” Orvar let his shirt fall back into place, covering the wretched sight. “Clearly someone murdered me. Who did you last see me with?”
“The draug prince, a prince of the old kingdoms … he slew you.”
“No.”
“She told us … she told us the tale.”
“And that woman never before deceived you over aught, has she? Never pretended to be a man in order to lie her way onto the boat? Never failed to mention she was the blighted daughter of the berserk Angantyr and Bjalmar’s granddaughter? That she had come aboard our vessel with the sole purpose of murdering … the Arrow’s Point.”
Ecgtheow tried to swallow but couldn’t get past the lump in his throat. “I …”
“You know I speak the truth … I have returned from the grave for but one reason.”
Skalds said most draugar focused on it, on vengeance. They wanted to avenge themselves on all who wronged them. It consumed them.
“I cannot trust you.”
“Oh, you can. Because you know I am not the one who deceived you. That bitch played us all … and lied over the murder she committed on Thule. And you praised her for it.” He took a step forward. “Did. You. Not?”
They had. All called her a champion for slaying the draug prince, while raising a horn in Orvar’s honor. Orvar, the famed warrior, champion out of Nidavellir.
“Starkad …”
Orvar waved it away. “You think he has any idea what kind of monster he travels alongside?”
Doubtful. Starkad wouldn’t have taken it well, learning someone murdered his old friend.
Ecgtheow spit. “Fuck.” He shuffled his feet along the shore. “Damn it!”
Well, there was not much else for it, then. Hervor had done what she’d done.
And now Ecgtheow would have to do what he had to do.
11
Godmund’s hall had a small balcony rimming the roof, accessible from the towers. Along this, Starkad walked with Höfund, the chill wind nipping at his face.
“I like to come up here,” the prince said. “Look out over the kingdom.”
“And gaze upon that which will one day be yours.”
Höfund chuckled, then spit over the railing, narrowly missing a man passing below. Rather than glare up as expected, the man scampered away and hid his face. No one wanted to challenge those living in the king’s hall, eh? After a moment, Höfund grunted. “Me? Never gonna be king of aught. I’m half human, I look human—”
“A little large for it.”
“And no jotunnar would follow me. Besides, Father sustains himself from time to time. He’s like to outlive me unless …”
Starkad barely stifled a groan. “Unless you taste the flesh of man?”
Höfund rubbed his mouth with his fingertips. “Mother didn’t want that. Said doing that made Father a monster.”
They passed behind one of the towers, then Höfund pointed away to the south. “This place you’re seeking, I’ve heard tale of it. There’s a valley … far to the south, the farthest reaches of Glaesisvellir. They say the passing of winters don’t even touch it.”
“So someone from the Old Kingdoms settled there?”
Höfund spit again. “Not much of a historian, me, but I heard a few tales from skalds, here and there. Your Old Kingdoms were set to fighting one another, fit to choke all Midgard on blood. Calling up the Art on one another like mist-mad fools.”
Starkad folded his arms against a sudden chill wind. “If the royal family of one of the Old Kingdoms did retreat here, they’d have thought themselves safe, beyond the wall.”
“Safe? Ain’t no fucking safe in Utgard. Sure as shit not safe for humans, runeblades or no. But you have the right of it. Some few men sailed around the wall, if you can believe that. Chanced Jörmungandr, I’d wager, and came to the court. And Grandfather, he gave ’em that valley … reckon they must have given something damned valuable in return.”
Valuable to a jotunn? The Old Kingdoms were famed for their treasures, so it could have been jewels, fine-wrought weapons, gold. Maybe even some masterwork wrought with the Art itself. More like, though, they’d given up some of their number for the jotunn king to devour or do aught else with.
It seemed a rather inconceivable coincidence if the runeblade had come elsewhere in Glaesisvellir besides where this Old Kingdom had fled to. They’d have brought Skofnung and probably a hoard of treasure beyond. And all Starkad had to do was take it from their corpses.
Unless … what if they had escaped the wars that destroyed their kin?
“Do they … yet live?”
Höfund shrugged. “Don’t rightly know. Heard men call that p
lace deathless, whatever that means. A man escaped from there, years back. Not right in the head, he seemed. I thought we ought to have put him down, but Father had him locked up in the tower. Brings him out now and again … I don’t know, maybe the madman amuses him.”
Madman … That did not sound promising. Still, if this man had seen the valley, he knew the way, and like as not, had some idea what might lurk there, living or otherwise. “I need to see him.”
Höfund chuckled. “Sure, why not? You’re like to have more success asking a troll’s arse for aid, but seeing either sounds entertaining enough. Father keeps him in one of the towers. Otherwise, he screams on about the dark.”
Starkad frowned. “Take me to him. Please.”
Höfund led Starkad up a winding staircase that the half-jotunn’s father probably could not have fit through to save his life. These upper towers must have been intended for human guests only. Or human prisoners. Starkad could not say which category the man he sought fit into. Maybe both.
The prince paused at the top of a landing and spoke briefly to a guard there, his words thick and unintelligible. The jotunn tongue.
The guard unlocked the tower door, and Höfund slowly opened it, then beckoned Starkad to step inside. Few adornments graced the room. A simple bed shelf padded with straw. A trunk in the corner. Discoloration on the wall indicated that something must have once been fixed on it—a picture or mirror maybe—but it had been torn down roughly.
The sole window was thrown open, letting in the chill. In the corner a man huddled over a candle, mumbling to himself and rocking slowly back and forth.
Starkad frowned.
Chances seemed good Höfund was right, and this stranger was beyond useless. But Starkad was here, and he needed all the information he could get on this valley.
Slowly he approached, hands raised in an effort to keep the man calm. “Who are you?”
The figure looked up. Half his face was melted off, flesh twisted and sagging. His gaze darted about the room, focusing on naught Starkad could see. “Bumbling … falling down … and down.”
Starkad cast a glance at Höfund, who shrugged. “Who’s falling?”
“Everything … everything … everything …” The man broke into a fit of weeping, shaking himself. Before Starkad could say aught to comfort him, his tears gave way to a raspy chuckle. “All is fallen …”
With a grimace, Starkad knelt beside the madman. “Do you have a name?”
“Oh. Oh. Oh, no! No, they take that. Take it and keep it for themselves! Keep it … keep it forever … until oblivion swallows without mercy. We … are falling. In the dark.”
Starkad moved to grab the man.
Höfund cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t touch ’em if I was you.”
Now Starkad looked back at Höfund. “I see.” He considered that a moment. Then he seized the madman by his shoulders, just now noticing one of the man’s hands was burned as well. “I need to know what you know.”
The man looked up sharply, firelight reflecting off his eyes in a faint red gleam.
Starkad lurched away, gained his feet, and put a hand to a sword. “He’s a fucking draug?”
“Uh,” Höfund said. “We can’t quite say, as such. Something wrong with him, that’s a sure thing. Partway there, maybe?”
What did that even mean? Either a man was living, or he was dead, and then, perhaps, risen as a draug. But Höfund seemed to think this man caught between the two states. Naught Starkad had ever heard should have made such a horrendous fate possible.
“In the dark … falling …”
And Höfund had been right to suggest putting this creature out of its misery, long ago. What game did Godmund play, allowing it to … live? Was that even the right word?
“A draug …” Starkad muttered. “Or something nigh to it …” Afraid of the dark. But not in the direct path of sunlight, so fearing that too? Afraid, always, of everything. What could possibly so afflict a man? Starkad released his grip on his blade and held his hands up again. “I do not mean you harm. They tell me you saw the timeless valley to the south.”
Now the man looked directly at Starkad. “You came? Oh, you came. I see it. Oft … see it … sees me. Watching. Me …? It’s watching … Scyld.”
Right. Starkad scratched his beard. “Scyld? Is that your name?”
The man chuckled. “Close enough … close.”
“Can you take me there, to the valley?”
The madman cackled, his laughter soon again becoming sobs that set his shoulders bobbing. “No coming … no going … always watching.”
“I must find this valley.”
“Heh, heh. Urd is … cruel to us all.” The wretched figure jerked into motion, patting himself down as if insects were crawling all over his body. This he gave over as suddenly as it began, then scrambled along the floor to where the trunk rested.
The creature flung open the trunk and began to hurl bits of cloth about the room. Finally, he pulled a wrapped parcel from the trunk. Eyes wide, he stared at the dirty cloth. A stream of drool slipped down from his mouth as he began to unwrap it.
Starkad tensed, fingers twitching. If the draug-thing had some kind of weapon Starkad would lop his head clean off and put an end to this.
Instead, though, Scyld unwrapped a silver arm ring, and patted it. “Oh so many times … I cast her … away. Always, she comes back to me. She wants to go home …” He looked up sharply at Starkad. “We’re not quite whole, you see?”
Swallowing, Starkad took a step forward to examine the arm ring. It was shaped like a serpent and decorated with intricate engravings that might well have been wrought in the days of the Old Kingdoms. Masterful in craftsmanship, and bearing runes he could not read. “You took this from there?”
“She wants … to go home.” Eyes far too wide, the half-draug offered Starkad the ring.
So, this must have come from a hoard of the kingdom that fled here. And this man had stolen it … and died on the way back? Either way, he found no peace. But an object taken from the hoard—whether or not it might truly desire to be reunited with that treasure—might serve as a catalyst for Starkad’s limited Sight. It might help him find the valley before winter set in.
Taking this treasure had clearly cost the creature before him. But then, Starkad had to find the valley. No choice remained to him. None ever did. The runeblades demanded he find them.
Fingers trembling ever so slightly, Starkad snatched up the ring.
The madman cackled weakly. “You’ll … take me home?”
“Never saw that before,” Höfund mumbled.
Starkad ran his thumb over the ring’s engravings. Yes, this ought to help him find the valley. He looked back to Scyld, this weak, pathetic wreck of a man. Perhaps facing the sight of his horror would break whatever madness had taken hold of Scyld. The journey might prove his death … but then, even that might be a mercy.
Slowly, he nodded. “Yes, Scyld. I’ll take you back to the valley.”
12
It was early in the afternoon, too early for most men to have started drinking, and only a few lingered in the great hall. Hervor sat there on a bench, watching the jotunn king, still uncertain what to make of him. Eating the flesh of man had made him a beast, if Starkad had the right of it.
Yet here he sat, playing tafl with this Hyrrokin of Thrymheim. Godmund had his chin in one massive hand, staring at the board, drumming the fingers of his other hand on the tabletop. The handful of other courtiers in the hall also watched the game.
One across from Hervor—one of Hyrrokin’s slaves—leaned forward. “She’s got him now. He’s lost too many pawns.”
Hervor cast another glance at the board, then shrugged. She had Tyrfing in her lap, polishing the pommel. Father’s legacy ought to have received better care than she oft had the chance to give it. This brief respite offered her a small opportunity to rectify that. “Maybe. Pawns are made to be sacrificed. The king has a few moves left to him.”
> Godmund grumbled something in his own language, then turned to her. “Tell me, then, Hervard, can you offer counsel as to how a king might extract himself from this situation?”
Hyrrokin snorted. “So you seek wisdom from a human now? My, have the fortunes of Glaesisvellir fallen since the days of Gothmundr.”
Godmund snarled and spat on the floor. “My father knew the value of humans, from time to time.”
Hervor shrugged. “If my king so wishes, I can advise him.” She rose and drifted over to the board, examining it a bit longer. It was oversized for a human, though the pieces still looked small in the hands of the two jotunnar.
Grandfather had favored the game, and she’d learned to play by watching him overcome many a visiting noble in her youth. Tafl was about long-term strategy, of course, and that was hardly Hervor’s strongest arena. But … she remembered plenty of tactics Grandfather had used to turn the tables on overconfident young men who’d thought his mind must be growing weak.
She pointed to a piece. “First move your king, or she’ll have you in but a few moves.”
“How would she have me from …” Godmund grunted. “Oh. Damn.”
Now Hyrrokin grumbled. “Getting advice from human boys. Fool old man.”
“Hervard,” Godmund said, “come and tell me what else you see on this board.”
“I see …” She glanced up as more people entered.
Starkad walking beside the half-jotunn prince, both seeming oddly vexed, and followed by a man in rags, his face badly burned.
She looked back to the board, then pointed at one of Godmund’s few remaining pawns. “This one, forward one space.”
“Eh?” The old jotunn stared hard at her a moment before taking her advice.
Starkad and Höfund settled in at a table, the former locking his gaze on her. Now the man wanted to talk? Well, now she was fucking busy. She pointed at another piece. “Pull that free to threaten her king.”
