Dirt rained down on Flyn as the roots withdrew through the ceiling. Fafnir's daughters fell to the ground, causing the chains around their necks to clatter. Hengest had helped Flyn put on the belt and affix the collars to the corpses before he left the vault. Now, the eight chains ran from his waist to the prone wights, two directly out from his sides and the other six arrayed between in an arc. Flyn had slung Coalspur, but kept the dwarrow axe in hand. As the wights began to stir, he was glad for the precaution. The she-dwarfs rose in eerie unison and stared at him from behind their thin, white manes. Flyn bent his knees and flexed his grip on the haft of the axe, preparing to dispatch all eight if they rushed him.
The vættir opened their mouths and began to sing. It was the dirge of the dwarrow, the same song Flyn had heard from the horde of wights in the valley. In the confines of the tomb, the voices of Fafnir's daughters rang loudly, harmoniously. The music, given voice by the dead, was strangely beautiful.
To Flyn's immense relief, the wights turned and began walking towards the passage.
“Very well, my ladies,” Flyn said. “Lead me to grandmother.”
The chained wights traversed the passage with surprising ease, a mindless grace guiding their movements. Still, Flyn was certain travel was going to be difficult while tethered to eight corpses. The dead sisters fanned out after they ascended the stairs and began walking at a measured pace. Thankfully, they went right by Flyn's abandoned pack and he snatched it up without breaking stride.
A sharp whistle prompted him to turn his head. On the hill above, Inkstain, Ulfrun and the dwarrow wizards watched him. The giantess raised a hand in farewell and Crane's voice carried across the distance.
“For the honor of the Valiant Spur, Sir Bantam Flyn!”
Flyn raised his own hand in parting.
A great clattering echoed across the barrowlands. On a distant hill, Flyn spied the chair of Lord Reginn, his host arrayed along the ridge. The warriors were striking their shields with their spears, sending forth a ringing salute of steel.
TWENTY EIGHT
Deglan was encased in cruelty. The harsh winds of Middangeard buffeted his face, the savage laughter of the berserkers filled his ears and in every direction his vision was choked with dead men. He was back in the wilds, in the cold, unforgiving embrace of this cursed land, eyes squinting against stinging flurries and the glare of the sun upon the snow.
Arngrim Crow Shoulders had called a halt to the march in an expanse of field hemmed by sparse holts. For days, Deglan had watched the vegetation grow steadily more scarce as he journeyed north with his captors. The trees here stood meekly, as if hoping to be ignored by the bleak tundra which held increasing dominion over the landscape. When the jarl commanded the column to stop, Deglan slid off the back of the horse he shared with Sigrun, allowing the woman to aid his dismount. She had led the animal towards the trees to be tethered and Deglan yearned to follow, to get out of the wind, but the sight of the deep drifts between he and the pitiful holt defeated the notion.
Gritting his teeth against chill and rage, Deglan glowered at Crow Shoulders' twelve sons as they tormented the Dread Cockerel. Howling and hooting, the men kicked at the coburn as he whirled at the end of his chain, desperately trying to come to grips with his assailants, but the berserkers merely laughed and danced out of the way. One of them always held fast to the end of the chain collared to the Dread Cockerel's neck, and would jerk it taut should the knight get too close, pulling him to the ground. Deglan had never known a man who could outmatch a coburn in brute power, but every one of Crow Shoulders' bastards could manhandle their captive with frightening ease, their shaggy faces full of mirth as they made sport of his helplessness.
Deglan had watched this wretched scene repeat every time Crow Shoulders' army stopped and the Dread Cockerel's obsessed pursuit of Flyn's sword needed to be arrested. Fortunately for the knight, the rests were few, and mostly for the benefit of the horses. After all, an army of corpses needs no respite.
Two thousand draugr had been released from Bólmr's moat on the day Crow Shoulders gave the order to march. Save for his dozen offspring, the jarl brought no living men, leaving them behind to garrison his fortress. Deglan hated to admit it, but it was a wise plan. The Dread Cockerel, driven by fate, possessed a well of nearly inexhaustible endurance. Even the hardiest men would eventually be left behind, to say nothing of an army that needed to be fed. So, Crow Shoulders had assembled a force which needed no such provision; his twelve preternatural sons, two thousand walking corpses and a husk.
Deglan averted his gaze from the Dread Cockerel's plight and turned his scowl on Slouch Hat, who stood beneath the small stand of snow-laden evergreens. The husk was in deep conversation with Crow Shoulders, but the pair were too distant for Deglan to hear their words, especially over the wind. Standing beside the hulking jarl, Slouch Hat looked thin and frail, not needing so much as a cloak against the cold.
“Scheming, bloodless scarecrow,” Deglan muttered to himself. He would have spit, but his face was swaddled in the depths of a woolen mantle, leaving only his eyes exposed.
The husk had always been too clever by half, and Deglan had no doubt that all of Arngrim's schemes had been birthed in his stuffed head. The felling of the Wardens, the use of the draugr, it all reeked of Slouch Hat's calculating mind. The husks involvement explained much which had niggled at Deglan's brain. Despite his distrust for the dwarrow, they were a formidable race and he had been surprised that a mortal had dared risk their ire by despoiling the sacred resting places of their fallen. Even a feared warlord like Crow Shoulders courted his own destruction with such blatant aggression. But with a husk whispering in his ear, one which bore the crown and craft of the Goblin Kings, Arngrim must have been swollen with confidence. With Slouch Hat as councilor and ally, the jarl's revenge was within reach. Crow Shoulders wanted Fafnir's head, and by the look he now wore on his grizzled face, he believed he would soon have it.
The fool! He was being used. But for what?
“What do you want, Slouch Hat?” Deglan asked aloud. It had become a regular utterance, a question often asked of the wind since their march began. So far, the frigid gusts had not answered.
Another harsh bellowing of laughter brought Deglan's attention back to the berserkers. The Dread Cockerel was now face down in the churned snow, trying to rise, but the brothers had grown bored and were now dragging him around by the neck. Hissing, Sir Wyncott managed to flip over on his back and gripped the collar with both hands to keep it from strangling him as he was pulled roughly across the ground.
It was said Middangeard bred hard men. Well, it had also packed ice around one already inflexible gnome. And he had had a bellyful of this barbarity.
“Enough!” Deglan growled, striding towards the guffawing pack of fjordmen. “I said enough, you pelt-wearing, bear-fucking sons of whores!”
He did not know if the men understood his words, but some insults are plain in any tongue. His sudden interference drew the brothers' attention and they ceased dragging the Dread Cockerel, fixing Deglan with predatory stares.
“Do you want to bloody kill him?” Deglan demanded, watching as the grins returned to the surrounding faces. The berserkers had found fresh prey. Predictable as hungry dogs.
One of them stepped forward and, grabbing Deglan by his thick wrapping of cloaks, raised him bodily off the ground in one fist. The man chuckled as he shook Deglan, spinning slowly in a circle to amuse his brothers with the display. The rough movement caused Deglan's hood to fall away from his head and the wind sliced into his suddenly exposed pate. When the man grew tired of shaking him, he pulled him close, forcing their eyes to meet. The berserker's beard split to show a wet, menacing smile. Then, the fjordman spoke in the tongue of the Tin Isles, heavily accented.
“We. Eat. You.”
Deglan returned the smile. “And I will split your arsehole in half when you try to shit me out.”
With that, he slammed his forehead into the man's nose. His own eyes squeezed
shut as pain and lights pulsed through his skull. When his vision cleared he found he was still dangling at the end of the berserker's arm. The lout was still smiling. He was not even bleeding. Opening his fingers, the berserker let Deglan tumble to the snow. Several of the other brothers loomed over him, their cruel faces twitching with the anticipation of violence.
Deglan felt someone grab him under the arms from behind and pull him to his feet. There was strength in those hands, but not the crude power of the berserkers. Craning his head around, he found Sigrun standing behind him. The thrall woman's face stared sternly at Crow Shoulders' sons and she exclaimed a string of words in the Middangearder tongue, tilting her head sharply to the side in a gesture of dispersal. The berserkers leered at Sigrun for a moment, before slowly backing away with over-exaggerated deference, one of them even bowing. They allowed the Dread Cockerel to stand and escorted him over to the nearest tree, wrapping his chain around the thickest bough. They stood guard, but left the knight unmolested. For now.
Deglan shrugged roughly out of Sigrun's grasp and turned on her.
“Tell your master to control his damn litter,” he said, thrusting a finger at the thrall. “Sir Wyncott will be of no use if those twelve animals kill him!”
Sigrun ignored Deglan's rancor and looked at him with weary, yet compassionate eyes.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
Deglan transformed his pointing finger into a dismissive wave. “Fine. It is I who should be asking that of you.”
As one of the few beings on the march who actually needed rest, Sigrun was not looking well. As a thrall she was well accustomed to hardship, but five long days through the rough country with little food or sleep was visibly taxing the woman.
“You should be resting while there is time,” Deglan told her.
“As should you,” Sigrun returned.
“I am Fae,” Deglan said, pulling his hood over his head once more. “I will succumb to this blasted clime long after you, my dear.”
Sigrun's chin lifted slightly, her countenance hardening. “Would you wager? I have survived much in my years of life, brief as they may seem to you.”
Deglan allowed the strength of her stare to wither his own. He was wrong to undermine her fortitude with his aspersions. A slave's life was beneath all things, save pity, and those who endured it did not deserve to have their resilience challenged or questioned. Especially this slave, who had done him no wrong.
The day they left Bólmr, Deglan had become incensed when he learned that Crow Shoulders meant to bring Sigrun on this grueling journey. The jarl did not need her to translate, not with Slouch Hat nearby. Could the rutting goat not do without his bed servant for even one night? Deglan had learned the answer to that question during their first camp. He shared not only a horse with Sigrun, but a tent as well. It seemed guarding a gnome was woman's work. That is, until Crow Shoulders summoned Sigrun to his own tent, sending one of his sons to roust the poor woman from the feeble warmth of her palette to attend him in the middle of the night. Deglan had soundly cursed the berserker, but had been forced to silence when the man began kicking snow through the tent flaps and atop his blankets. Once Sigrun was gone, Deglan was left alone and unguarded. After all, where could he go? Setting off alone across the hoary wastes was not an escape, it was a surety of death. The thrall had come back to the tent some time later, and Deglan could hear the exhaustion in her breathing as she lay down to catch what sleep she could with the remainder of the time allowed.
They had been given three such rests in five days, and each time Sigrun had her deserved repose interrupted by Arngrim's base needs. The latest rest proved just how base the jarl's needs were. Upon Sigrun's return, Deglan heard her whimper slightly as she lay down. It was a tiny sound, quickly swallowed and silenced, but his healer's ears heard the pain and it had taken every bit of will Deglan still possessed not to rise and insist to attend to the thrall's hurts. Had he his herb satchel, he would have, but with no supplies there was little he could do but shame the woman, so he feigned sleep and said nothing in the morning. Still, it rankled him deeply and he cast daggers at Crow Shoulders' feathered back during the following ride.
“Well?” Sigrun insisted, unsatisfied with his silence. “Would you wager?”
“No I will not wager,” Deglan said, keeping the bark from his voice. “I would see us both survive this. And Sir Wyncott, too.”
“The coburn will outlive us all,” Sigrun said, her eyes flicking over to where the Dread Cockerel was chained. “Theirs is a breed that values self-preservation.”
Deglan snorted. “Well, so do gnomes.”
“Truly?” Sigrun countered. “For I have seen a gnome openly challenge twelve known slayers, men who would surely have left him little but a pile of offal upon the snow.”
Deglan raised his eyebrows and gave the woman a pointed look. “As a breed, gnomes value preservation. As individuals, I am bloody daft.”
A small smile intruded upon Sigrun's wan face.
“My thanks for the rescue,” Deglan added.
“Come,” Sigrun said, extending a mitten-clad hand. “I have a fire prepared, and food.”
Deglan followed her to a patch of ground the thrall had swept clear of snow. While it was tempting to build fires in the shelter of the trees, out of the wind, the rising heat often caused the snow to come dumping down from the branches. In Middangeard, an unexpectedly extinguished fire could prove fatal for those dependent on its warmth. Deglan had learned this the first time he griped about Sigrun's campfire placement and been soundly set straight by the thrall.
She now squatted before the fire and stirred the pot suspended above the flames. She ladled the steaming contents into a bowl and passed it to Deglan. He took it carefully, reveling in the warmth that seeped through his own mittens and into his fingers. He sipped from the edge of the bowl, knowing that the frigid air would soon cool the soup. It was little more than broth, and Deglan drained it so quickly he could not have given testament to its taste. It mattered not, for it was the heat he savored. He nearly moaned with rapture when Sigrun offered him a second bowl.
“I wonder how long we shall stop?” he mused, keeping his eyes on the gorgeous flames.
“Crow Shoulders calls a halt only for food or sleep,” Sigrun answered. “But never for both.”
Deglan grunted his agreement and nursed the broth. The woman was right, of course. They would soon be on their way. More hard riding on the backs of shaggy horses, the wind blistering any flesh it could touch. North. They moved ever north. A raven in flight would have discovered a queer sight if it happened to look down upon their company.
One coburn, afoot, clad in little more than rags leading twelve men draped in wolf pelts and the skins of bears. Each man was also afoot and bristling with weapons, loping like the predators whose fur they wore, keeping pace with the coburn through the drifts. A bowshot behind would be two horses and half a dozen pack ponies. Upon one horse, a large man wearing a cloak of black feathers, and on the other his female thrall, riding double with a gnome astride the saddle in front of her. And behind the riders, a hideous sight. A husk leading two thousand dead men across the snow, their shambling frames clad in rusting mail, their shambling steps leaving a dirty swath in the snow behind them.
This was how the army of Arngrim Crow Shoulders proceeded, every day and sometimes through the night. They had passed through lands ruled by other Raider Kings, men who would have called their karls to fight the encroaching warlord had he trespassed with a force of living men. But the sight of the draugr kept Crow Shoulders' fellow jarls behind the walls of their holdfasts and ringforts. No lord should expect his loyal retainers to fight the dead. There was no glory to be had, no wealth, only the horror of crashing spears with a foe who did not bleed, did not fear or flee. None had challenged Arngrim and he had provoked none to action, leaving the thorpes they passed unharmed, taking not so much as a loaf of bread from the peasants. Today, however, Deglan had seen no sign of
fort or hamlet and surmised that they had left the inhabited lands of Middangeard behind.
Crow Shoulders bellowed a return to the march before Deglan was through his second bowl of broth and he watched miserably as Sigrun dumped the remaining contents of the pot onto the fire. Slouch Hat strode close by on his way to rejoin the milling ranks of the draugr, but he did not spare so much as a glance at Deglan. He could feel the closeness of Jerrod's iron crown, hidden beneath the husk's hat, and a sickening ache settled in his head until the dread heirloom passed by.
Deglan spent the day's trek lost in dark thoughts. He settled into the uncomfortable trudging of the horse and his own brooding. He could feel Sigrun at his back, the only thing warm and soft in all of Middangeard. Once, he felt drowsiness begin to overtake him and he lurched forward in the saddle. He would be damned if he would lean back against the woman and sleep, using her for his own comfort like the wretch that rode ahead of them.
Again, they rode into the night. Deglan's gnomish eyes saw well in the paltry light of moon and stars, but during their first night's march he had wondered aloud how Crow Shoulders and his sons were able to keep a proper path in the darkness. Sigrun had informed him that it was some spell of Slouch Hat's which bolstered their mortal vision. She too benefited from the sorcery. That was when Deglan discovered the husk's mastery of the iron crown extended beyond commanding the draugr. It was an unsettling, though not unexpected, revelation.
The nights were long in Middangeard and seemed to lengthen the further north the army traveled. Arngrim called another halt hours before the sun was to rise, and commanded his sons to rest as soon as they erected his tent. The berserkers then built for themselves a massive bonfire and loitered around the popping flames. They always slept under the open sky, lolling beneath their bearskins and drinking sparingly from the store of mead carted by the pack ponies. They chained the Dread Cockerel nearby, but not so near that he benefited from the fire. Arngrim had barely seen fit to clothe the knight, giving him stinking rags, rife with holes. Amazingly, the coburn betrayed no discomfort and even appeared to sleep, as if the knowledge that he was once again on the path to claim Coalspur was enough to keep him warm.
The Errantry of Bantam Flyn Page 52
