by Matt Larkin
“So,” Win said, “supposing someone wanted to see the lord himself, how would that someone go about that?”
Huh. What exactly was the price for revealing information about one’s lord?
The official opened the second pouch as well, brow rising slightly. “Supposing that were the case, the person might find the Patriarch has a private palace, but spends most of his time in the tower. That he not only works there, but often lives there, in highest reaches, if stories hold true.”
Well, whatever the price, the wretched little man seemed more than willing to sell out his lord. Any oaths of loyalty he’d ever taken clearly meant troll shit to him. Hervor didn’t bother trying to keep the disgust from her face.
Shaking her head, she turned and left, trailed by the others.
Outside, Win turned about, orienting himself, before focusing on a spire rising above the city in the distance. While countless towers dotted the skyline, some seemed substantially larger and more elaborately decorated than others. Each a tower of a Patriarch? “It’s that one,” Win said.
More than a short jaunt from where they were staying, by Hervor’s estimate. “We need to let Starkad know before we do aught else.”
Hervor sat with her back to the wall, watching the door in their cramped apartment. Vebiorg was beside her, while Höfund and Win appeared caught up in stories about friends lost in the recent strikes against Miklagard. Tveggi was with them, though the old man mostly just nodded along rather than speaking.
“So,” Vebiorg said.
Hervor had almost wanted to move away when the varulf had slumped down beside her. Maybe she wanted the woman along for her strengths, but still. Didn’t mean she wanted the savage creature close at hand.
“So,” Hervor answered, not looking at the other woman.
“You’ve the scent of blood on you.”
“You can smell that?” Hervor had washed a good many times since last she’d slain anyone.
Vebiorg snorted. “More a sense of it. Plenty of shieldmaidens, they’ve fought, bled, killed. But some of us, we’ve seen more battles than others. Maybe too many. I get that sense from you. Strange, for one so young. How many winters have you seen?”
She hardly thought about it anymore. Her life had been chaos for so many … “Twenty-six now, I think. Counting this one just past.” And summer here was hot enough she almost missed the winter. “What of you?”
“Not sure. Forty, maybe.”
“Forty? I’d not have taken you for even my age.”
Vebiorg shrugged. “My kind age more slowly. I can remember when the Vanir were still the gods. Later, I was fair young when Sigrlami was king. The uh … the pack died. The king took me as a slave. Used me to keep watch of his hall while he slept. Used me for … his desires sometimes. But he died, too, some few years later.”
Killed by Arngrim, Hervor’s grandfather. Hervor kept her face studiously expressionless.
“Rollaugr’s father took the throne, offered me freedom if I fought for him. Seemed a fair trade. Can’t say the other warriors ever took well to me, though. You ever have people look at you with fear, even when they’re your own allies?”
“Sure.” Hervor had rather cultivated such a reputation on purpose in her pirating days. “I used to dress as a man, figured it’d help to keep my enemies scared and my allies in line. That they’d take me more seriously and I’d be less like to need to draw a blade.”
“Why’d you stop?”
Hervor rocked her head gently against the wall. Honestly, she couldn’t even say exactly when she’d stopped trying to be Hervard. “The last time … I guess the last time was around when I met Höfund.”
“Wanted to be a woman for him?”
Hervor snorted and Vebiorg chuckled. “Let’s call it a coincidence. After that, I was in this place, this valley in Jotunheim.”
“Troll shit.”
“Swear on Odin’s almighty stones.”
“Uh, on what now?”
Hervor grinned. “Place was like a vision of Niflheim, ghosts included. Just me and Starkad there, and us trying to fend off the dead. And I just … I don’t know. By the time I made it out, I was kind of … tired.”
“Fighting the dead will do that, I hear.”
“No, I mean to say, I was tiring of the life I’d led before. I’d been a raider, a pirate, a … murderer, more than once. I’d fought draugar and finfolk and svartalfar.”
“And ghosts.”
“Yes.” Saying it all aloud, she couldn’t fathom how she wasn’t dead ten times over. Maybe that was the reason behind the supreme fatigue. “Maybe I didn’t … want to be the person I’d been up till then. A real bitch, actually.”
Vebiorg chuckled. “You’re talking to a female wolf, mind you.”
“You’re saying you’re not a bitch, then?”
“A right terror when I don’t get my night meal timely. Three things you never take from a wolf. Their food, their mate, or … their pack.”
One of which Vebiorg had already lost.
Hervor sighed. “I had some friends a few years back. Couple of other shieldmaidens. A pack of varulfur down in Skane killed one of them. Maybe the same pack that took down Gylfi.”
“Huh. That why Starkad hates me?”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“I can smell his loathing.”
Hervor turned to look at her more directly. Could she really? “Anyway, no, Starkad wasn’t even there when it happened. With him … a varulf killed his mother.” One of the few bits of his past he’d actually shared with her, after his ordeal with the mara.
Vebiorg grunted. “Never been to Sviarland. Didn’t do either one of those things. And I didn’t choose to let the wolf inside me, either. Eightarms’s scorn grows tiresome.”
“He’s … complicated.”
“More complicated than a woman half possessed by a Moon spirit? Always losing control of my rage and lust? Torn between animal and human sides?”
Hervor ran that over in her mind. “Honestly? Maybe more complicated still.”
Vebiorg raised an eyebrow at that, but said naught more.
It was well into the afternoon before Starkad and his team returned. Baruch and Fjolvor slumped down by the crates, him seeming to try to comfort her. Woman was clearly miserable. Not that Hervor could much blame her. Miklagard was overcrowded, filthy, and corrupt. And Fjolvor hadn’t wanted to come before seeing all that.
The city beat Pohjola or many of the other far-flung places Hervor had visited, if only because no horrors of the Otherworlds were trying to kill her.
Win fell into explaining what they’d learned to Starkad and the others, with Starkad asking only the occasional questions.
Finally, their leader scratched his beard and looked around the room. “Any attempt to make a meeting with Tanna is like to fail. From what Win has said, the lord has underlings to handle his tasks.”
“So we meet with one of those arse buckets,” Afrid said. “And when they start talking like donkeys, gut them and then search for Tanna.”
“Imbecile,” Tveggi mumbled.
“Sorry,” Afrid said. “I couldn’t make out your words over the sound of some old man farting.”
Baruch held up a hand to each of them, before either took it to blows. “Anyone working for Tanna is like to have numerous guards. Even if we overcame them—and they might not allow us weapons inside—we’d then have the tower alerted to our presence, searching for us. Total chaos.”
“Chaos is an opportunity,” Afrid offered.
Starkad shook his head. “Too risky. I see but one option before us. We wait until well after dark, then scale the walls once no one is out and about to see us. Hervor and I pulled off something similar to kill the king of Njarar.”
Oh, Odin’s stones. Not more climbing. “We nigh died in Njarar. One of our men did fall to his death in the process.”
“He was a drunk,” Starkad snapped at her. “And your complaints hardly help our situation.�
�
Hervor clapped her mouth shut. Was that how it was going to be now?
Fine. If he wanted to climb, she would fucking climb.
And afterward, they’d be having a godsdamned talk.
4
Four Moons Ago
So little remained of the home Hervor had once known. Grandfather had but a few servants left, and a single pair of warriors. Perhaps Hrethel thought himself generous to allow the fallen jarl even that much, but Hervor could hardly forgive the slight. Nor had Grandfather recovered from his mistreatment at Hrethel’s hands.
Wrapped in a blanket, the old man wheezed on his chair—one could hardly call it a throne with no jarldom left—then set to coughing. A fit of it seized him and he shook, trembling, before finally hacking up a glob of phlegm onto the floor. She didn’t much want to believe the thickness had him, but the signs seemed clear enough.
Hervor flinched, trying to cover her reaction. She stood before him in his ruined hall, alone for the moment. The fields and towns had been taken by Hrethel, and this empty compound now served as a pitiful reminder of a past she’d disdained.
Until it was gone.
Gunther was dead. The other thegns, too, save a few who’d taken up with new lords now.
Some maybe Hrethel had driven away. Others had turned up dead in Deeppine, torn to pieces. Grandfather had blamed bandits. Hervor knew better. The Arrow’s Point would never be done with her. One by one, he hunted and destroyed everyone she’d ever known.
Probably only left this hall in peace because he knew her grandfather was dying a slow, awful death.
“I just …” Grandfather wheezed. “Just want … what’s best for you.”
Hervor frowned. Not long ago she’d have sneered at that. Would’ve chafed at the reins she’d have accused him of placing on her. Petulant bitch that she was. “I know that.”
She should’ve known it before he was dying. Should’ve done a lot of things, maybe. He’d always been the one extending his hand, trying to let the past lie. And she’d wasted uncounted winters being too much the fool to see it.
Grandfather cleared his throat. “An offer came for your hand.”
Hervor shook her head. Grandfather may have wanted the best for her, but she wasn’t interested in marrying any man save perhaps Starkad, and he had made clear he’d not wed her nor anyone else.
“Just … listen. This Höfund is a prince, son of a foreign king.”
Höfund? Odin’s stones. Höfund was a king’s son all right—the bastard son of a godsdamned jotunn king in Utgard. He was a friend, true. Shit, once she’d even lain with him and Starkad both together. But marry him, leave Starkad? No. Never. “Even if I fancied him, I am bound to Starkad.”
Grandfather snorted, coughed, and shook his head. “Eightarms hasn’t given you … aught but grief. Nor will he. What future do you … see with him?”
Her only future, really. She’d made her choices and given her oaths and she wasn’t the kind to walk away from either. Starkad had spent the better part of a year convalescing here, once he’d been strong enough to leave Gylfi’s hall.
Väinämöinen had been long gone by the time Hervor had returned from Kvenland and found Starkad a wreck of his former self. Her lover was blind in one eye and half blind in the other. Weakened, walking like both his legs were broken. Grimacing like every breath was pain. Best the song-crafter had been gone—elsewise, Hervor might’ve gutted him for his part in all that.
And with no völva and hardly a servant, Hervor had done her best to ease Starkad back to health. Maybe she’d gotten nigh to that, but there was no going back to what he’d been. Same as Hervor, really. She wouldn’t ever have full use of her right arm. Some things you had to come to terms with.
Finally, she shrugged again. “I made my decision long ago.”
“Hervor … you are the last of our line. If you …” He broke into another fit of coughing, but she could well guess what he’d intended to say. If she didn’t bear an heir, their family ended with her. It wasn’t like the thought had never crossed her mind. She just didn’t have a half decent answer for it.
One of the inner doors creaked open, and Toril poked her head in.
“What is it?” Hervor snapped at the servant.
“There’s men outside, Jarl. Say they’ve come to call on Eightarms.” Grandfather wasn’t jarl of aught more than a ruin, but Toril just kept up with the title all the same. The woman was some few winters older than Hervor and had always been around. Served Jarl Bjalmar her whole life. Now, it seemed she couldn’t accept things had changed.
Then again, neither could Hervor. “What men?”
“Aun of Upsal, he says he is. Got a pair of warriors with him, too.”
Aun was an Yngling, the former king of Upsal. Didn’t reign long, though, before his enemies showed up and took the throne right out from under him. Maybe because he was a craven and a weakling. Still, he’d sheltered her and Starkad a few winters back, so she could hardly turn him away now. A woman had to remember her debts. “Where’s Starkad?”
Toril fidgeted. “Out in the yard, flailing away.” As usual.
Hervor glanced at Grandfather, but he’d already fallen asleep, head slumped to one side. “Fine. Bring them into the courtyard. And then stoke the braziers in here, make sure Grandfather is warm enough.”
Winter had already settled in. The old man couldn’t afford to fall too cold.
She made her way out of the hall and into the yard. Hrethel’s forces had breached and burned much of the outer wall. When Hervor had gotten back, she’d helped them patch it herself. The shoddy work wouldn’t have kept raiders out, but it served well enough to hold back the worst of the mist and wolves and such.
Starkad spun and twisted out there, whipping both swords around with almost his old speed, if not quite his old surety of foot. Hervor approached, careful not to draw too nigh on his blind side. Sneaking up on him was like to get her killed.
“Starkad.”
Panting, he turned to her, and let his swords droop.
“Aun is here.”
Even as she spoke, Toril opened the main gate for Aun and his two men, if you could call them that. One of them was young enough he probably just barely qualified. Hervor squinted at him. Actually, that looked like one of Aun’s sons, if she wasn’t mistaken. Grown a bit since last she’d laid eyes on him.
Starkad sheathed his blades and walked to meet Aun, slow and steady, maybe trying to conceal how winded he was.
“Starkad Eightarms,” Aun said. “King Gylfi said I’d find you here, but I almost didn’t dare to hope. You’ve all but disappeared of late.”
Starkad scratched his beard. “King Aun.”
Hervor rolled her eyes. At this point, Aun was even less a king than her grandfather was a jarl.
The king hesitated, as if expecting someone to say more. To invite him in for a meal, perhaps. It would’ve been the custom, but Hervor had next to naught to offer him, and if he couldn’t well see that by looking around, he was twice the fool.
“Ah,” Aun said after a moment. “So, I suppose I best come to the reason I’m here.”
Seemed wise. Hervor barely managed not to say it aloud though.
“Well,” the former king said. “You’ve no doubt heard about Ole the Strong out of Reidgotaland. He’s a cousin to King Hrothgar and fancies himself a prince. So he set about trying to make his own kingdom …”
“And wound up taking yours,” Hervor finished. She had no patience for a man who couldn’t even admit his own weakness. Or cowardice, really, since he’d fled at the first sign of the battle going against his men, from what she’d heard.
“He did, in fact. And I’ve come to hire you to deal with him.”
Starkad spat. “Murder him, you mean. Thing is, I know Ole. I fought beside him some years back. And now you’d have me hunt and kill him.”
Aun fidgeted. “Yes, well, you know me, as well, and I’ve offered hospitality and shelter to you and yours in t
he past.”
“And we’ll pay you well,” one of the other men said. “Not just silver, but gold. A lot of gold.”
“Who is this?” Starkad asked.
Aun glanced at the other man. “Lennius of Sjaelland.”
Another Reidgotalander? A rival of Ole’s, perhaps. And that meant Aun was dragging Starkad into a feud between princes of another country. Not an ideal place to be.
“Starkad …” Hervor said.
He stiffened slightly, but didn’t look at her. Of course he didn’t. Because he damn well knew what she’d say. “How much gold?”
“Your weight in it,” Lennius said.
Hervor blew out a breath. That much gold … well, it could turn around even their flagging fortunes. Still, she’d spent years trying to eradicate the Ynglings. She might have called her vengeance sated, but urd truly had a wicked sense of humor to see her now trying to put one back on his throne.
“I’ll do it,” Starkad said.
Hervor wanted to be able to smile at the thought of so much gold. Wanted to, but then, was Starkad really ready for this? Or was he doing this as much to prove to himself he still could?
Much as she needed the wealth, none of this sat well with Hervor.
5
“We cannot well climb in daylight,” Starkad said, “so we’ll scout the area until then. Best to be as familiar as possible with these streets and alleys in case aught goes wrong.”
Hervor rolled her eyes. Naught had ever gone wrong with any of Starkad’s mist-mad plans, had it? No, unless you counted a few dead allies here and there. No, but still, they’d climb the damn tower, murder a lord of the city, and get out without the slightest trouble.
“Small groups,” the man said. “Avoid attracting notice as much as possible. Hervor, you go with Win.”
“I go with my prince,” Tveggi said, standing not a foot away from Win. Damn bodyguard probably helped Win piss most days, too.
