by Matt Larkin
Spirit worlds. Muspelheim and Niflheim … Svartalfheim. And Afzal’s suggestion was to try to brave them all? “You jest.”
“It’s all Naliajuk could think of. You must find whatever spirit holds your soul here and confront it.”
Starkad groaned. “When you say it is powerful enough to drag me through a nightmare trek along every spirit world? How am I to fight such a formless, hateful foe?”
Afzal glanced at the seal—Naliajuk, apparently. “I cannot fight your battles for you, brother. And you cannot afford to linger in one place. These worlds will close in around you and destroy you. If your soul breaks before you can overcome your captor …”
Starkad crawled over to where the man sat and nodded grimly. If his soul broke, it would be the end of him. But it had become if. Afzal had offered him a faint hope once more, assuming he spoke true, assuming this was not one more trick. He clasped Afzal’s forearm. “I have missed you.”
“And I, you.”
Something bellowed outside the cave, a tremendous roar that bubbled out of the waters and made the cavern tremble.
Afzal jerked his head in that direction, then back to Naliajuk. “Go with her. She’ll take you as far as she can. She cannot cross from this world—save back to the World of Moon—but she can take you close to a boundary. Your untethered soul may pass into the next sphere.”
“But—”
Another roar.
“Go!”
Dammit. Starkad turned to where Naliajuk had already leapt into the water. He jumped in with her and—admittedly with some trepidation—wrapped his arms around her throat.
A powerful twist of her tail sent them diving into the waters, barely giving Starkad the chance to hold his breath. She sped him past cavernous tunnels he’d not even noticed on the way in, and then out, into open waters.
Little light pierced the depths, but he saw shadows passing around him. Shadows the size of cities. Benthic creatures of unimaginable bulk and power.
Naliajuk hurtled the pair of them through the waters, past those shadows. She banked, turning at a nigh vertical angle, and raced upward.
On and on waters streamed past him. His ears popped. His lungs expanded, feeling apt to burst at any moment. A bright light glared at him from above.
Naliajuk wriggled free of his grasp, spun around and stared at him. His lungs were on fire. The seal jerked her head upward.
Unable to spare her even another heartbeat, Starkad swam straight up.
18
Every step was pain. Ecgtheow wanted to collapse and lie in the snow. Of course, he’d bleed to death rather quick that way. Then again, if he kept running, that would still happen.
“What the fuck are they?” Hervor rasped, seeming almost as breathless as he felt.
The creatures kept hitting them then disappearing into the mist. At first, he wasn’t sure, thought it was a trick of the darkness or something. But now he’d seen two more of them. They seemed like they could actually turn invisible, or something nigh enough to it. Little shits weren’t even five feet tall—not hunched over like that—but how did you fight what you couldn’t see?
“Hiidet,” Pakkanen answered Hervor, as if that explained aught.
Ecgtheow was hardly in much shape to fight. If not for Latham, he’d be dead already. The pirate had killed another one of these things. Abominations were harrying every step they took though.
Half their crew had wounds from those claws. And here, Ecgtheow felt flush, feverish, like every step ought to be the last; he pitched forward and splattered his bloody face in the snows.
“K-kill us … all …” His words hissed out of the hole in his cheek. Dizzy. Hard to think …
Gylaug pushed forward, guiding their passage, though Ecgtheow doubted he knew where they were going. Away from the croaks, he supposed. The creatures may have looked like frogs, but they scrambled up trees like fucking lizards.
“What are hiidet?” Gylaug demanded.
“Land vaettir,” Pakkanen said. “They come up from the ground.”
Popping out of rocks or something? Ugh. Ecgtheow was going to retch. He had to stop. He had to stop.
Except Latham kept on pushing him.
“Tales say they take victims underground. Some they eat … some they … make like them. Try to come inside you.”
Latham spit. “Can’t say I want any frog man thing inside me. I’m too pretty for eyes like that.”
“Then move faster,” Gylaug snapped back at him.
The pirate did, pulling Ecgtheow along until his legs gave out beneath him. He slumped down, pulling Latham to the ground beside him. “I c-can’t … I can’t …”
“Odin’s stones,” Hervor said. “Get up, Tiny.”
Even Pakkanen was bent over, hands on his knees, panting. How long had they been running? An hour?
Gylaug grumbled, doubling back behind Ecgtheow. He swept his torch around, as if he was going to see an invisible monster out in the mist. “Catch your breath. Just a moment, mind. We cannot allow them to catch us.” Pirate was scratching so furiously at his scar it had started bleeding.
“They’re herding you.” The voice came from the mist. Wudga stalked forward, sword in hand, that dripping with black blood. “They drive you deeper into the hill country.”
“Herding?” Latham said. “I’m not a sheep.”
“We can’t let that happen,” Hervor said. “Wudga, you killed a hiidet? You know something of them.”
“A hiisi,” Pakkanen wheezed, as if naming the shits mattered in the least at the moment.
“Kobolds,” Wudga said. “That’s what they call them in your lands.”
Kobolds? Fucking children’s stories as far as Ecgtheow knew. Except, children’s tales don’t usually rip out your face nor bite through to your shoulder. “K-kill … them.”
Wudga moved to Ecgtheow’s side, then rustled through his own pack before pulling out some cloth and ceramic vial. “They’re vaettir. You can only kill their hosts. If they can, they’ll drag you down and take your body as a vessel. Whatever they’ve inflicted on you now will pale before the horror of serving their twisted whims.” He uncorked the vial and an acrid smell reached Ecgtheow.
Though he tried to pull away, Wudga grabbed him and poured the vial over his wounded shoulder. It stung for a heartbeat or two. Then it burned like Wudga had dumped acid over him. Ecgtheow shrieked as his flesh sizzled and popped. Wudga slapped a hand over his mouth and shoved him up against a tree, held him there while the burning spread. Ate his flesh, by the feel of it.
Ecgtheow pushed at him, but with one arm, he couldn’t match Wudga’s strength.
“What in Hel’s crotch are you doing?” Latham demanded.
“He’s losing too much blood. All of you are. The blood excites them. And their bite carries virulent diseases. If we don’t treat this, he’ll weaken until he falters. And then he’ll be a ripe host for one of them.”
Ecgtheow thrashed at that. He sure as the gates of Hel didn’t want those things inside him. Not them, not any vaettr.
Finally, the burning eased off. Wudga removed his hand, then began to wrap the cloth around Ecgtheow’s shoulder.
“We can’t let them herd us,” Hervor said again, as if anyone had forgotten. Her scratchy voice grated on Ecgtheow’s nerves. She was half bent over, too, holding her ribs again. “We have to push through them and break free in another direction.”
“She’s right,” Wudga said. He tore off another piece of cloth and set to binding Ecgtheow’s leg.
Gylaug scoffed. “Easy to say. We cannot fight such monsters. We have barely survived thus far. A head-on assault—”
“Is our only chance,” Hervor said, then grunted in obvious pain herself. “You heard Pakkanen and Wudga. These creatures will hunt us down one by one and use our bodies. You think we want to go wherever they’re leading us? Into an ambush, perhaps? Maybe there’s more of them where we’re headed.”
Ecgtheow groaned at even the slight relief Wudg
a’s ministrations had given his shoulder and leg. Still felt like his guts were burning him from the inside out—too much to hope that would go away. “Don’t suppose … we have overmuch option, really.” Loath as he was to agree with Hervor. “Wherever they want us, we … don’t much want to be there.”
Latham chuckled as if aught about this was the least bit amusing. “Right you are, then. Instead of where they’re herding us, we charge them and let the shitters send us to the gates of Hel. I feel fair certain that’s a nicer, warmer place than here.”
“I’ve made my decision,” Hervor snapped. Had she? And who the fuck put her in charge? “We push through, hard and fast, before they can change tactics.”
Gylaug looked about at each of them, nodded, and drew his seax. “Let it be done, then.”
19
Tyrfing gleamed with fell fire, a light obscured by the thick black blood coating its blade. Hervor panted, wobbled in place over the fallen hiisi, and took another faltering step forward.
Ahead of her, more cries of battle. Fleshy thwacks as swords and axes bit into hiisi flesh. Screams, as claws rent men to pieces.
These trollfuckers were all but endless.
Torch in one hand, runeblade in the other, Hervor raced forward. Gylaug came into view, a pair of hiidet atop him, slashing and rending while he thrashed in a vain attempt to dislodge them. One had him by the leg and was dragging him away.
Hervor bellowed—or tried, since it was more of throaty growl at this point. The one on the pirate’s leg turned its head. Tried to leap away. Almost fast enough.
Tyrfing sheared through its gaping maw and out the back of its skull, lopping the top of its head clean off. She whipped her sword around.
The other hiisi leapt off Gylaug, shimmering and vanishing in mid-air. A light thump as it hit a tree trunk. Must’ve been scrambling upward given how the boughs shook. Hervor launched herself at the tree and swung. Her blade sliced cleanly half a foot deep into the trunk but hit no flesh.
A shadow from the corner of her eye. She spun, trying to bring her sword back up. A solid mass slammed into her chest and bowled her over. She landed in the snow, dropped her torch, and struggled to get her arms up to protect her face.
Claws slashed at her almost too fast to see. Rent through the mail on her forearm and tore flesh straight down to the bone. Fuzzed her head with a haze of pain. She was shrieking in horror, in agony.
Black blood splattered her face. She could barely see its source in the chaos. Gylaug’s seax was embedded in the hiisi’s shoulder. The creature shrieked, spun on the pirate, tearing the seax from his grasp. It leapt at him. One of its claws caught him in the face and he fell, screaming, clutching both hands to the wound.
Gasping, Hervor lunged forward with Tyrfing, drove the blade through the hiisi’s back and out its chest. The thing shuddered and railed. Wiggled as it tried to free itself. Should’ve been dead. Should’ve been really fucking dead.
Gylaug’s seax was still lodged in its shoulder.
Hervor grabbed that with her right hand, the twinge of pain in her shoulder naught compared to the pain in her forearm. She jerked the blade free and cleaved it down into the back of the hiisi’s skull before it managed to slide off Tyrfing. The creature finally fell still and slumped down to the ground.
“My eye!” Gylaug was wailing. “My eye!”
Oh Hel.
Tyrfing squelched against the hiisi as Hervor jerked it free, her teeth grit against the pain in her right arm.
Naught much she could do for Gylaug at the moment. Still wobbly, she forced herself to head toward the next flickering torch, the screams of battle.
Kustaa was there, axe swinging round in great mighty strokes that would no doubt leave the man exhausted—assuming he hadn’t passed that point some time ago.
Ecgtheow had fallen and Pakkanen was half-dragging the man away while Latham tore into a pair of hiidet with his battle-axe. Utter chaos.
Hervor charged in and swiped with Tyrfing. The runeblade caught a hiisi under the ribs and bit through, deep enough to hit spine. Black blood oozed over her hand as she yanked the blade free. Felt like her arms were turning to water. Like they’d just fall clean off her shoulders.
She turned.
Caught sight of a shimmer flying through the air at Latham’s back. She’d opened her mouth, tried to shout a warning that came out as a rasp. The hiisi collided with Latham, sent him stumbling forward into the path of the one he was fighting. That one slashed its claws right over his gut. Latham doubled over, even as the one on his back sank claws into his shoulders.
“No!” Hervor screamed, running for him.
Those oversized teeth sunk down on the back of his neck. The sickening sound of bone crunching hit her as Latham’s screams fell silent almost instantly. The hiisi jerked its head from side to side, then back. Ripped a chunk of Latham’s spine out. The pirate’s head lolled limp to one side, held on by naught but a strip of skin and muscle. The hiisi rode him down as he fell, still ripping into him with claws.
Hervor’s stomach lurched. She stumbled and had to steady herself. Then back up, charging. Tyrfing gleaming as it cleaved into Latham’s murderer. The runeblade sheared through its arm and into its neck.
The disfigured monster pitched over, clawed hands now wrapped around its own throat.
The other one leapt at her before she could get the blade back up.
She saw it, seeming to fly through the air. A distorted shimmer of claws and fangs and slimy yellow flesh. Her death in its bulging eyes.
Wudga came out of nowhere. His runeblade caught the monster in mid-air and sliced it almost straight down the middle. The two halves landed to either side of Hervor, showering her in gore and blood. Bits of intestine hit her in the face. Slimy fluid stung her eyes.
Unable to stop herself, she bent over and retched up what little remained in her stomach. Her gut kept clenching.
Alive … she was alive.
She was alive.
Her hair was plastered to her face with blood and she didn’t want to know what else. Obscuring her vision. Looking up through it, Kustaa was cutting down a hiisi. As another closed in on him.
Odin’s giant stones! “We … we cannot push through,” she rasped. “Retreat.”
No one really looked to her, save Wudga. Probably couldn’t even hear her words over the chaos and slaughter. The men dying on her mission.
“Retreat!” Ecgtheow bellowed, his voice wheezing through the hole in his face. “Retreat!”
At least someone heard her. He caught her eye, glared at her. At least for the instant before Pakkanen pulled him away. The man blamed her for all this. For Latham’s death.
And he should.
Fuck!
Gasping at the pain, she stumbled after Ecgtheow and Pakkanen. A glance back at Kustaa … He and Wudga were making a fighting retreat, following them.
Gylaug was up when she reached him, struggling to move forward with one hand still clasped over his right eye.
“Move!” she shouted, caught his arm, and dragged him onward.
Straight into whatever madness the hiidet had wanted them in the first place.
The darkness only dragged on. It had to be night—almost pitch black save for the torches, and those barely cut through the mist here. The hiidet continued to harry them every step. Except, now that they were moving in the other direction, the monsters didn’t stick, didn’t hold any line.
It removed any doubt Hervor had left about Wudga’s observation.
As they pushed into a dale, she came to a tree that was bent and twisted back on itself. Its bark had turned black, looked almost like ash. Rotten to the core.
Hervor gave it a wide berth then almost stumbled into another just the same. So warped its branches scraped the ground and tangled in their own roots. The inside seemed to weep black sap that looked more like tar than aught else.
“We’ve reached the lands of Hel,” Gylaug mumbled.
Hervor turned to hi
m. He had removed his hand from his face. Exposed the gaping hole where a hiisi had torn his eye out. Four red lines marred his face above and below that weeping red void, gouges deep enough some of them probably hit his skull.
If she hadn’t already retched, she would have, to look at him. Instead, she forced herself to look ahead. More of the rotten, twisted trees. In fact, it seemed like this whole dale had fallen to some horrific pestilence.
“We cannot travel in such a place,” Pakkanen warned. “We court death.”
Dozens of croaks sounded out behind them, growing closer.
Dammit! Gods above, she wished Starkad was here. He might know what to do. Hervor swallowed. “We have no choice. They’ll tear us to pieces unless we find a place to hide. Wudga!” The man was by her side almost immediately. “Can you find a way through here, a secret route?”
“I’m not sure. This is their place …”
“Try, damn it.” There was no going back the way they’d come, that much was certain. It was forward or death.
Wudga nodded, face grim, and slipped off into the mist.
More croaking, and closer than ever.
Great steaming piles of troll shit. “Move!” Hervor said. “Forward.”
The warped trees made navigating the dale like wandering a maze. She had to turn, double back, duck under a tangle. A thorn tore through her trouser and cut into her thigh. Naught compared to the pain and blood loss in her arm though.
She ducked under another overhanging branch that had grown down into the ground. Just keep pushing forward. Just keep moving.
Someone moved past her, through the mist. Kustaa. Didn’t even meet her gaze. Did he blame her for Latham?
Hel.
“Over here,” Wudga’s voice called out from the mist ahead.
She edged forward a bit. The roots and branches were so thick she could barely see a damn thing. “Where?”
“Here. This way.”
She followed the voice, ducked under another overhang, and came into a clearing—if you could call a hollow no more than eight feet across a clearing. A slight rock pile had prevented the roots from rising up here, and Wudga sat upon that.
