The Blood Debt: Wolf of the North Book 3

by Duncan M. Hamilton

  The Markgraf cleared his throat, and Rodulf reached for the Stone.

  ‘All of my lords are familiar with the expansion in the North,’ the Markgraf said. ‘It has made many of them very wealthy. The mercenaries will be used in the continuation of that expansion, and in securing the gains we have already made.’

  ‘Be that as it may, my lord, we would expect to have been consulted in this process.’

  ‘Every individual who knew of this plan would be one more opportunity for word of it to reach the ears of those who would oppose its execution. They might have had time to put together an organised force, making our task harder or completely impossible. The information was kept to only a few for very good reason, and I shall make no apologies for that.’

  ‘Very good, my lord,’ dal Geerdorf said.

  A group of other noblemen approached dal Geerdorf and began whispering to him. Rodulf found dal Geerdorf’s behaviour ridiculous. He knew exactly what was going on; he had been in on the plan from the very start, before Rodulf even. He also knew that he would be elevated to duke as soon as the Markgraf became king, and would enjoy his status as premier peer of the kingdom in both name and reality. The men he was speaking for were entirely in the dark because they were not important enough to inform, and Rodulf wondered what dal Geerdorf hoped to gain by championing their cause. There had to be something, because there always was. Men like him didn’t lift so much as a finger unless there was a benefit to be had.

  He wondered again which one of them was sending him the notes. He held the debts of more than a dozen men there, but his suspicions were not limited to them alone. He flicked his eye from face to face, searching for some reaction, anything that would tell him who the guilty party was. One of them was responsible. He knew it.

  Dal Geerdorf spoke again, forcing Rodulf to concentrate and direct some of his resolve to the Markgraf.

  ‘Now that the force is assembled, and their existence can no longer be hidden, might the nobles be informed of your plans? The use of such a large force of mercenaries is somewhat unusual, and there will be those disappointed by missing out on the military commands that might otherwise have been expected.’

  And the coin that goes with it, Rodulf thought.

  ‘While the northern silver is a welcome addition to the treasury, the continued strength of the Mark depends on the land thriving,’ the Markgraf said. ‘Our nobles and people are required here to ensure that happens. After so recent a war we can’t afford to put men and women vital to our prosperity in harm’s way. The silver has allowed us to ensure they remain safe, yet we are still able to open new territory in the North, something all of you gathered here will benefit from.’

  There was a murmur of approval from the crowd, which came as a relief. Rodulf had been confident that as soon as they were told there would be a personal benefit to each of them, their attitudes would quickly fall into line.

  ‘When, at least, will the campaign begin?’ dal Geerdorf said.

  Rodulf could not help to admire how brazen he was. He was in it all as deep as anyone, yet still he made out that he was championing the interests of the ordinary noblemen and as clueless about the whole thing as any of them. He was popular among them, and in public always appeared to be on their side. The reality was that he rarely went against the Markgraf. It occurred to Rodulf that doing so had always been in his best interests, but that might not always be the case. He would be a dangerous enemy, and the sooner he broke him, the better.

  ‘The army will ready itself to march as soon as it is fully assembled,’ the Markgraf said. ‘I am told that will be by the end of the week at the latest.’

  He watched dal Geerdorf stand protectively at the head of the group of lesser nobles, and when realisation finally struck Rodulf, he almost laughed aloud. How could he have been so foolish as to have missed it? Rodulf wasn’t the only one aware that the Markgraf was now without an heir. Who better to replace him than the premier peer of the realm, a man whose popularity with the nobles knew no limit? Dal Geerdorf wanted the throne for himself. The relief of seeing it all before him hit Rodulf like a fresh and fragrant breeze. The notes were dal Geerdorf’s doing, an effort to distract Rodulf from what he was really up to. Nonetheless, might he actually know something that he was planning to use against Rodulf? Having direction lifted a great burden from Rodulf’s shoulders. Dealing with dal Geerdorf was now his priority. One way or the other, he had to go.

  CHAPTER 22

  Wulfric’s first reaction was to laugh in the man’s face. Despite having heard countless stories of draugar over the years, he didn’t truly believe they existed. Perhaps they had heard of him coming, and knew who he was. Perhaps they wanted to have some fun at his expense, to make a fool of the great Ulfyr.

  ‘What are you putting in the ale here?’ Wulfric said, looking at his glass.

  He waited for a laugh, but when none came, he looked at each of the men in turn. They all looked deadly serious.

  ‘It’s not a light matter, wasting the time of a royal officer,’ Wulfric said.

  ‘Neither are draugar,’ the man said.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Wulfric said.

  ‘Neils.’

  ‘Listen to me, Neils. I’m from the Northlands, where Jorundyr slew the last of the draugar. That was centuries ago. There’s been neither sight nor sound of them since.’

  ‘It wasn’t the Northlands,’ one of the other men said.

  ‘What?’ Wulfric said.

  ‘Where the last of the draugar were slain. It was here. In the Hochmark. Wasn’t called that back then, but this is where it happened. Not far away, neither.’

  Wulfric shook his head, but Neils spoke again before he could disagree.

  ‘It’s true,’ Neils said. ‘We’ve got stories here about Jorundyr’s battle against Fenrik—’

  ‘Fanrac,’ Wulfric said.

  ‘It’s Fenrik in the stories down here. Anyway, there are dozens of old stories. All the villages around here have them. Some of the people hereabouts even keep to the old gods. We’re not much like the city types around here.’

  Wulfric took a deep breath and searched for some patience. ‘Say I believe you. What exactly is your problem?’

  ‘Started a few months back. Just animals then. We thought it was wolves gettin’ busy. Then Hermann went missing. He was old. We thought he might have slipped and fell, or died of old age out there. We went looking. Aelwyn, the tanner’s daughter, went missing that evening while we were searching.’

  ‘Could still be wolves,’ Wulfric said.

  ‘No. Every man here has seen what wolves can do. I’m sure I can say that of you too. This wasn’t wolves. Gunther here has seen one. Seen a draugr.’

  Wulfric turned to face the tavern keeper. ‘You’ve seen one?’

  He shrugged nervously. ‘I reckon so. I make schnapps with the winter flowers that grow in the north meadow, near the barrow.’

  ‘The barrow?’ Wulfric said.

  ‘Aye. That’s what it’s called. Might not be a barrow. Could be anything. No one’s ever dug into it to find out.’

  Wulfric scratched his chin. Part of him thought that someone had put these men up to playing a prank on him—Grenville perhaps—but they appeared to be in earnest. He had seen more than one thing that defied belief in his life already—a glowing stone high in the mountains and a man who could blow himself up with magic alone. Perhaps this was not so far-fetched?

  ‘What else?’ Wulfric said.

  ‘Another herdsman. Two children. Something got through the palisade when there was still snow on the ground, but there were no tracks. We repaired it as best we could, but we’ve found marks on the planks where they’ve tried to get through again. People are afraid to leave the village. At night, even inside the village, people are afraid.’

  Wulfric took a long swallow of ale, and thought as he wiped the foam from his beard. Draugar. It seemed almost too much to believe, but then again he had seen magic, and he had been given a
gift from the gods. Stranger things had happened.

  ‘I’ll ride over in the morning and take a look.’

  IN THE COLD MORNING AIR, with a mist hanging low over the pastures, the barrow looked like nothing more than a shallow hill. Wulfric rubbed his tired eyes and gave it another look, realising that the three men from Ulmdorf who had accompanied him were waiting for a reaction. He found it hard to believe that this might be where Jorundyr had fought his final battle. Any time his stories were told, the location was always given as being in the next valley or somewhere along the course of a river they all knew. This seemed too far away, but he had to admit that with first-hand knowledge of how a story could modify the truth, anything was possible.

  ‘Doesn’t look like much, does it?’ It was all Wulfric could think of to say.

  ‘It isn’t much,’ Neils said. ‘Not during the day, at least. At night there’s something not right about the place. Always been like that, but it feels worse now.’

  Wulfric scratched his beard. ‘I’ll take a closer look. Best you wait here.’

  As he rode toward the grass-covered mound, he wondered if this was the poisoned fruit that his fame had borne. Would he be waylaid at every village by people with over-active imaginations who wanted to see the famed Ulfyr in action for themselves? He couldn’t discount the fact that they were telling the truth, though. He had been tormented by bad dreams all night; draugar everywhere he looked. Everyone he knew, a draugr. The thought of it still sent a shiver down his spine even though the memory of it was fading. Everyone knew that people had nightmares when draugar were near, but was it the chicken or the egg? Did he dream of draugar because he had been told of them, or because they were actually there?

  The men of Ulmdorf faded into the mist behind him as he grew nearer the barrow. It was out of place in the flat pasture, but otherwise innocuous—little more than a grassy mound. His horse grew skittish as he slowly started to circle the mound. He couldn’t deny there was something odd about the place. His skin tingled, although that might have been the touch of the cold mist to which each exhale added. What more would the villagers expect of him? He was told that it had been a hard winter in Ruripathia—difficult to imagine when he had been in the heat of southern Estranza and Darvaros—and starving wolves were always more daring the following spring. Gunther may have thought he saw a draugr while picking flowers, but fear caused the imagination to do strange things.

  Wulfric’s heart sank when he saw a hole in the side of the barrow. It was barely large enough for a man of average size to crawl through, and Wulfric was anything but average. He looked back at the others, partially obscured by the mist, and wondered if they would expect him to crawl inside. He had never been presented with the prospect of a confined space before, and found it far from appealing. He wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to squeeze through it.

  There was mud smeared around the hole and on the grass, as well as a pile of soil and rubble spread out over the ground, but no fresh tracks that Wulfric could see. He wondered if the hole might be the sign of grave robbers. The pile of soil suggested that to be the case—it looked as though someone had dug their way in, not out. They might have killed the young woman and the shepherd to cover their tracks, but it was difficult to stomach that they would sink so low as to kill children for whatever baubles might be contained within. Grave robbers and wolves, though? The logical part of his mind refused to believe it could be anything else. The rest of it wanted to stoke up the fire, bar the doors and remain safe inside four solid walls.

  Whatever was going on, there didn’t appear to be any immediate danger.

  ‘It’s safe to come for a closer look,’ Wulfric shouted.

  The men made their way over reluctantly.

  ‘Over there’s where I saw it,’ Gunther said, pointing to a stand of trees closer to the village.

  Wulfric nodded as though he was considering the evidence carefully, when in reality he would have preferred to have been on his way into the mountains.

  ‘Are you going to go in and take a look?’ Neils said.

  Wulfric had been hoping they’d come to the conclusion that it was grave robbers on seeing the hole, but even he was having a hard time believing that now.

  ‘I won’t fit,’ Wulfric said, feeling his stomach clench at the idea of squeezing through the tight entrance with who only knew what waiting for him on the other side.

  Neils looked at him with frightened, disappointed eyes. Wulfric silently cursed Jagovere for turning the spotlight of fame on him. Should he try to live up to people’s expectations, or draw a line that he would not cross? The thought of being thought of as a coward filled him with more fear than the idea of the small opening.

  ‘If it’s draugar, then we’ll be best off cleansing the whole barrow with flame. We’ll need to dig a second hole in the top to let the smoke out, and lamp oil and dry wood to get the fire going.’

  ‘You’ll go in and set it?’ Neils said.

  Wulfric nodded. ‘Aye. We’ll need to widen the hole a touch, but I’ll go in.’

  CHAPTER 23

  Dozens of men came out from the village to help with the work. They attacked it with the vigour of men wanting something that had plagued them for months put to an end by that day. Wulfric thought about helping, but didn’t want to be exhausted by the time he finally had to venture inside. Instead he sat sharpening his sabre, and watched them dig back more soil from the entrance, revealing an archway of roughly hewn stones nearly as tall as a man. There was no disputing the fact that the mound was not a natural feature. It had been created by the hand of man. Or something else.

  They bored a hole down from the top of the barrow, and a man who claimed mining experience swore that they had broken through into a void below. The hole was not big, but would be enough to vent the smoke and allow the fire to burn long enough to erase whatever ancient remains lurked within.

  The idea of draugar still existing was so fanciful that Wulfric found it hard to prepare himself for what was to come. In all likelihood, it would be nothing more than several trips in and out to build a fire. He felt no sense of fear, nor the energy that usually welled within him in anticipation of a fight. It was always a bad idea to approach a potentially dangerous situation in a casual fashion, so he forced himself to take it seriously. He got up and walked to the doorway. The men stood about it warily, none taking their eyes from the dark opening for more than a moment, terrified that a draugr would rush out at them at any time.

  ‘I’ll go in and take a look around,’ Wulfric said, finally starting to appreciate the potential danger that lay ahead, and the innate fear that all men held for dark and forgotten places. ‘Then I’ll come back for the fuel.’

  He looked over the men, all holding their tools tightly in terror.

  ‘I don’t expect anything’ll get past me, but keep your wits about you.’

  Wulfric took a lit torch from one of the men, and waved it into the barrow entrance. Its flame illuminated the first few paces, and Wulfric advanced.

  The first thing that occurred to him was the cold. It was far colder than outside, but that was not surprising considering the whole thing had been covered in snow and ice up until only a few weeks earlier. It would take months of warm sunshine to penetrate the ground. There was a musty scent on the air, how he imagined death to smell. He did his best to ignore it as he inched farther down the passageway, torch in one hand, sabre held out before him in the other.

  He listened carefully, but all he could hear were the sounds of his boots scraping on the flagstones below and the fluttering of the flame on his torch. There were many stories about the draugar and how they behaved, and as many that said something completely different. Some said they could not come outside during the hours of daylight, while others said that a more powerful type, the Hoch Draugar, could tolerate sunlight—while yet others said that once a draugr had tasted human flesh it was impervious to the light of day. It was hard to know what to believe, and the same was
true of how to kill them.

  There were two constants, however. One was fire, the other was a blade of Godsteel, or Telastrian steel, as they called it in the South. Wulfric’s modest blade was the whole reason he was here in the first place, and he doubted very much there was any quality in it that would match that of Godsteel. He started to wish he had not called at Ulmdorf until he was on his way home, with a new Godsteel blade in his hand.

  The passage widened until he was in a chamber so large the light from his torch did not reach its sides. He looked around, but there was nothing he could make out, other than the small shaft of light that came down from the chimney hole the men had bored in the roof. He wondered who had built this place, and when. How could it be that something important enough to warrant all the work it must have taken to build the barrow came to be completely forgotten? Then it occurred to him that perhaps it hadn’t. One of the men said that Jorundyr fought his final battle near to that spot. Wulfric didn’t think for a moment that this might be Jorundyr’s grave, but many battles would have been fought in the area during the final days of his crusade against the draugar. Thousands of men would have died, and perhaps this barrow housed their remains. It brought sorrow to his heart that men who had given their lives to rid the world of draugar might find themselves turned into one. Then again, there might be nothing more there than dusty old bones.

  He walked to the end of the barrow, his light slowly bringing into view what awaited, like an object emerging from the mist. A man—or what was left of him—sat on what could only be described as a throne. Wulfric’s eyes widened in awe as he inched closer, taking in the magnificent display before him. The throne was of gold, embellished with rubies and polished black stones the like of which Wulfric had never seen before. All manner of riches lay at the dead man’s feet—coin, jewels, jewellery, weapons decorated with precious metals and gems. How such a trove had remained here for so long amazed him. Fear was the only thing that could keep men away from such wealth. There was enough there to allow a man to live like a lord in the south, and even Wulfric, for whom riches normally held little appeal, was tempted by them. Nonetheless, his eye fell on a magnificent sabre. Even in the gloom he could tell the blade was made from Godsteel. He could take it and be done with the whole foolish journey. When he returned to Brixen, he could say he had found the forge and the blade. It was so magnificent to behold, there would be no one to doubt his story.