A Gathering of Ravens

by Scott Oden

  The pale prince of the Tuatha half-turned, brow wrinkling, and fixed his emerald gaze on her. There was a flash of recognition. “You,” he said. “Go back to sleep, child. This is no concern of yours.” He flicked his hand at her, a negligent gesture. But Étaín suddenly felt her limbs grow heavy with the chains of weariness. She could barely move, so deep was her exhaustion. She craved sleep … just a few hours …

  You are the beacon of Christ!

  The echo of Blind Maeve’s voice galvanized Étaín. She shook herself, sloughing off the Tuatha’s enchantment as if it were but a handful of sand he’d tossed at her.

  “Dog of Satan!” Étaín crossed herself. “I adjure you, elf, through the might of the living and the true God, that you are put to flight from this place!”

  The Tuatha hissed and flinched from her words, as though the very syllables stung like embers flung from a fire. He drew himself up and started to speak, but the black-haired woman forestalled him. She spoke a sibilant word to him in a language older than humankind; then, she began to sing. It was a soft and rhythmic chant, a threnody that evoked a woman’s tragic end. In her mind, Étaín saw the tall cliffs of the Irish shore, green and chalky; she saw a copper-haired woman at the precipice, the wind snapping at her cloak. Red-eyed from weeping, she mourned for her lost love, taken by the gods of the sea, and called upon the Mórrígan to bring her succor. And as the song reached its crescendo, Étaín felt the burden of that woman’s grief. It was her own—a weight so heavy it threatened to suffocate her in its melancholy folds. Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes; seeking solace, she took a step toward the edge of the precipice of Carraig Dubh … and then stopped. She felt the burden lifted.

  “For the Lord is my shepherd,” she said to the dark-haired witch. “My mercy and my refuge; my support, and my deliverer—He who teaches my hands to fight, and my fingers to war!” Étaín leveled the seax at the pair. “I warn you for the last time: the son of Bálegyr is not for you! Go, elf, and take your whore! Trouble the world of Men no longer!”

  The Tuatha’s pale face screwed up in a rictus of hate. He stalked past the woman, his hand falling to the hilt of his leaf-bladed sword. “You presumptuous little ape! You want that wretched fomórach? Then let us see how well your hands have taken to your Nailed God’s teachings!” Metal rasped on metal as he slid the elf blade from its scabbard. “Fight or run,” he said. “It will make no difference.”

  Étaín stood her ground.

  His word will be your blade!

  “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”

  Suddenly, the Tuatha recoiled; as he staggered back a step, Étaín heard the clash of scales followed by the sharp crack of an arrow splintering on the breast of his hauberk. Behind her, Bran of the Uí Garrchon roared:

  “… Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven!” By stanza’s end, the silver-bearded Gael had drawn, nocked, and loosed a second arrow. It struck less than a finger’s width from the first, and had the same effect: the willow-wood shaft with its broad hunting head shattered against the scales of the Tuatha’s corselet. “Get to your mate, girl!” Bran said, fishing a third arrow from his bag. “An’ we’ll send off this sorry lot, eh, lads?”

  “Oh, aye! And get feckin’ rich to boot!” Dunlaing bellowed. “That one yonder, she’s a right prize! The Witch of Dubhlinn, she is! An’ I’d wager good King Brian will fill our laps with silver if we bring him her pretty head!”

  Étaín nodded; quick-footed, she darted wide and to the left. The elf prince made to follow, but a third arrow—which passed so close to his face that the fletching nearly tangled in his silver hair—brought his attention back to Bran.

  “Aye, to me, you devil!”

  And, lips writhing in a snarl of contempt, the Tuatha crossed the interval between them with murderous purpose, eerie green eyes burning in the half-light. Bran cursed; a fourth arrow went wide. Bristling in defiance, the old Irishman slung his bow down and clawed for his axe even as the Tuatha’s sword sang a death note in the chill air above him.

  And Bran of the Uí Garrchon would have died beneath the Tuatha’s sword if not for his kinsman, Ruadh Mór. Though more a poet than a warrior—and no great shakes at either—that swag-bellied son of the Ua Feghaile nevertheless managed to catch the Tuatha’s mighty blow on the iron-banded shaft of his spear. The blade rebounded.

  Ruadh Mór yelped and backpedaled as the Tuatha’s riposte nearly took his head off.

  Nor did Dunlaing stand idle, though it was the dark-haired woman who had the younger Gael’s attention. He stalked toward her, malice smiling in his eyes. The Witch of Dubhlinn smiled back. Her lips pursed, she whistled an eerie tune …

  … And called forth the darkness. It flowed down from the heavens like a mist, a stygian blanket that covered the summit of Carraig Dubh and snuffed out the faery light at the crown of the Black Stone. And this darkness—so terrifying and absolute—came on with a sound Étaín had heard before … a sound like the rustling of a thousand pairs of wings. “The ravens,” she gasped. “Outside Badon!”

  Étaín stumbled; she fell to her hands and knees as something passed over her. Crabwise, she scuttled on by feel, making for the last spot where she’d seen Grimnir’s prostrate form.

  Out in the darkness, Dunlaing screamed as though unseen knives flayed him alive. There came a sound, then, like water pattering on the dew-slick grass. Like a stricken ox, Ruadh Mór bellowed his son’s name; she heard Bran curse after him. Closer at hand, the low, unearthly chuckle of the Tuatha sent a chill down her spine.

  “Grimnir!” she hissed. She clutched his seax like a talisman. Her free hand brushed the stone; she flailed around, growing more desperate by the moment, until her fingers met warm flesh. For a brief and terrifying instant, she thought she’d grasped the foot of the elf prince, his sword poised above her head like Damocles’ own. Then, she felt a hobnailed sandal; though she curled her nose at the rank stench of sweat, her hand nevertheless raked up his body. “Get up, you skrælingr bastard!” Étaín punched him in the ribs; she pummeled his chest with her balled fist and slapped him across the fanged mouth. “Get up!”

  Moonlight trickled through the veil of darkness. Étaín’s sight returned by increments. She glanced up, wild-eyed, and saw a twisting cloud of birds. Something pale glimmered at the heart of the maelstrom—a jerking manikin of blood-slick meat that she recognized as Dunlaing. He fell to the ground and lay there, quivering. Ruadh Mór ran toward him, waving his spear over his head like a farmer trying to scare off a flock of crows. One giant bird—a coal-black brute who could likely count the span of its life in centuries—wove in between Ruadh Mór’s mad flailing and, in a gesture that reeked of contempt, casually raked the swag-bellied Irishman’s eyes out. Ruadh Mór screamed and reeled, hands clutching the bloody ruin of his face. Other birds dove in, plucking at his scalp, tearing at his patchwork tunic with their talons.

  Étaín cried his name as he ran from the hideous flock. She cried for him to stop as he stumbled past the smiling witch … and over the deadly precipice of Carraig Dubh.

  Bran alone remained; as he scrambled for his fallen bow, he looked plaintively at Étaín. There was no rancor in his gaze, no condemnation, only sadness—she realized he wanted to look up to discover she had fled. He snatched up his bow, clawed for an arrow …

  The pale prince of the Tuatha bent and picked up the shattered head of an arrow, a handspan of shaft still attached. With inhuman grace, he straightened and slung it at Bran with a snap of his wrist. It struck the silver-bearded Gael in the crook of his right elbow, the broad iron head slicing muscle and tendon. Bran grunted; he loosed prematurely, his arrow wobbling in weak flight.

  The elf snatched it from the air, twirled it about, and launched it back at the archer like a dart, its flight steeled by a whispered word. Bran spun away, thinking he was protecting his head and his vitals from some trickery. But that arrow struck with enough force to drive the air from his lungs. It too
k him low, piercing muscle and the bones of his spine to lodge deep in his vitals. Gasping, he stumbled on legs gone suddenly useless and went down hard, writhing as he tried to grab at the fletching of the arrow protruding from his back.

  Laughing, the Tuatha turned away.

  At her wits’ end, Étaín stabbed the seax deep into the stony earth, twisted it, and drew it out. Bits of damp soil clung to the blade. Then, clenching her jaw, she drew the edge along the meat of Grimnir’s thigh. Black blood welled, and she smelled a strong scent of wet iron. “Your people died on this land,” she whispered, smearing the dirt on the blade into the cut. Her eyes never left the long and sinister face of the Tuatha, his green eyes a-sparkle with malice. “Their blood soaked deep into it; their bones rotted beneath it. Their voices are on the wind. They bid you rise. Rise and take your vengeance, son of Bálegyr.”

  “What did you say to him?” The Tuatha sheathed his sword; his green eyes shimmered in the moonlight, holding in their depths the promise of long torment.

  With her allies dead or nearly so, Étaín felt her will to fight ebb. She rose to her feet and backed away from the pair, leaving Grimnir’s seax where it lay—across his belly.

  “What did you say to him? Do you think that carrion will rise up and save you, like your Nailed God?”

  “Make a sacrifice of her, Nechtan,” the Witch of Dubhlinn said. “The night wanes. Give her to the Mórrígan, so that our plans might bear the Great Queen’s blessing.” Nechtan, though, gave no indication he heard her.

  “Do not touch me,” Étaín said, one hand braced against the rough stone monument. She risked a glance off to her left, at the crumbling edge of Carraig Dubh. “I’ll not go to your heathen altars, witch! I will give myself to the true and living God, first!”

  “Foolish child,” Kormlada replied. “So naïve to think you have a choice.”

  Nechtan stepped over Grimnir’s prostrate form. He loomed over Étaín like the pale shadow of Death. “Where is your redeemer now, little ape?”

  19

  “Where do the dead go?” Grimnir stirs the fire, his eyes as bright as the sullen embers that crackle up and swirl into in the overcast Danish night. The threat of snow hangs heavy in the air. “Our dead, not theirs.”

  Old Gífr, who is his mother’s brother, looks up from his work—tending the edges of a score of iron broadheads with a yellow-gray whetstone—and spits; in the dancing light, his face looks as cold and immobile as a bust of fire-blackened ivory. “Nár! Where do you think, eh?”

  “Helheimr,” Grimnir says. He stabs at the fire’s heart. “To the great hall of Éljúðnir, to await the horns that will call us to Ragnarok and the breaking of the world.”

  Gífr chuckles. Beneath a heavy brow, ancient eyes smolder like molten iron as he rasps the stone along the damascened arrowhead, forged from metal that had fallen from the sky when the world was young. “You’re a precious sort of fool, little rat … and an idiot to boot if you think Helheimr is our portion!”

  “Then where?” Grimnir replies, a defiant jut to his narrow jaw. His face is sharp, wolfish; though his swarthy hide bears the scars of a warrior in his prime, something in his manner betokens a juvenile—sparse are the bone fetishes in his stringy black locks as he tosses his head and glares at his elder. “You’re so high-and-mighty! You tell me where the dead go!”

  Gífr raises the arrow and squints down the shaft, then looks askance at his younger companion. “Not to some piss-damp hall in Helheimr, where there is no mead and no fires. We are the sons of the Wolf and the Serpent!”

  “Where, then?” Grimnir’s lips skin back in a snarl of contempt. “Faugh! You don’t even know, do you? Some goði you are! Useless old wretch!”

  Gífr lays the stone aside and takes up an oiled cloth, using it to wipe the freshly honed arrowhead clean. That done, he eyes Grimnir across the fire. When he speaks again, his voice is an eerie chant:

  I know a hall standing | far from the sun,

  In Nástrond, under the | shadows of Niðafjoll;

  War-reek rages | and reddening fire:

  The high heat licks | against heaven itself.

  Here are the kaunar, | sons of Wolf and Serpent;

  Plundered of life on | Miðgarðr’s hateful shores.

  Here they abide | in strife without end;

  Until the death-note blows | on Gjallarhorn.

  “Nástrond!” Sparks crackle skyward as Grimnir stabs the fire’s heart again and again. His eyes gleam no less brightly. “Until the death-note blows!”

  “But not you,” Gífr says. Grimnir glances up. “Not now.”

  “What are you yammering on about?”

  “Not you, little rat.”

  “Why?”

  Gífr takes up a new arrow; he raises his stone, spits on it, and strops it along the broadhead’s edge. “Nástrond’s for fighters, not some dull-witted bog skrælingr like you, done in by a bit of elf witchery. You are dumb as a stump, aren’t you? You recall nothing of what I taught you? The death songs of the jötunn, the metallurgy of the dvergar … these things are real, and their power comes from stock and stone, blood and bone; the glamour of the alfár? Nár! That comes from a weak mind. If you die in their wretched snares it’s because you don’t have the will to get yourself out!”

  “Ha! What do you know, then? I’m not dead, you miserable old git!”

  “Prove it,” Gífr says.

  Grimnir starts to protest, but a sharp pain in his thigh brings a hiss of rage to his lips. Then, as heavy flakes of snow start to fall and the dark lowering sky promises an icy squall, another voice echoes from the heart of the crackling fire: “Your people died on this land. Their blood soaked deep into it; their bones rotted beneath it. Their voices are on the wind. They bid you rise. Rise and take your vengeance, son of Bálegyr.”

  Grimnir woke.

  His body did not jerk with the shock of consciousness; rather, he was just suddenly aware—aware of his dreams fading and the waking world pressing in on him. The sensations of smell and sound were the first to come back to him. And pain. Dull wires of barbed agony threaded through his muscles; his joints and bones ached as from long exertion, and there was a taste of brackish iron on his tongue. He felt a familiar weight resting across the corded muscles of his belly. It was the cold iron blade of his seax.

  For an instant, Grimnir feared he might have slept too long and given his black blood a chance to stagnate in his veins. But no. While his body felt as heavy as a corpse, he had not gone to slag. His heart yet beat; his lungs expanded, taking in the myriad scents around him—the salt decay of the sea and rich dampness of the soil; corpse rot and ancient cerecloth; fresh blood and fear-sweat … and beneath it all, the faint musky stench of his own kind.

  That wretched foundling was right. Grimnir’s lips twitched and curled, peeling back in a sneer of triumph. Half-Dane was near. But … where? And where was he? Not in that blind hag’s precious cottage. No, not anymore. And not in Dubhlinn, either—the place around him felt remote, far from the haunts of Men. Wind whistled through chinks in stone, and the insects …

  No, not insects. Grimnir’s eyes opened to slits. What he took for the trilling of crickets resolved into voices. Something passed over him, then: a pale shadow whose sinuous gait raised the hackles on his neck. What’s more, he knew it for what it was—and just so, the glamour that had cloaked his dreams faded and the truth took shape: vestálfar. Miserable whiteskins! They’d taken him in his sleep.

  “Where is your redeemer now, little ape?” the wretch said.

  Grimnir heard a familiar voice answer him. “I am the wheat of God,” Étaín replied, and her strength of conviction caused even him to flinch. “Even as I am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts! I long after the Lord, the Son of the true God and Father, Jesus Christ! I am eager to die for the sake of Christ!”

  The vestálfr hissed in anger.

  “Take her, Nechtan!” a third voice added—a woman’s voice. “The Dark Queen demands tribu
te!”

  “Be silent, daughter of Murchada!” this Nechtan said. “I would make a slave of her, as I will make of this one!” And Grimnir knew the whiteskin wretch meant to bend him to his will by filthy magicks, to keep him alive even after indolence had hardened his black blood and robbed him of his long life. The very idea of it kindled an elemental fury in his guts; rage surged through his veins.

  Étaín’s voice cracked like a whip. “My only master is Christ Jesus!”

  “No, little ape. You will soon call me master, same as he! You begged me for a weapon, Kormlada? I will oblige you … from this pair I shall breed you an army! Imagine a horde of such empty vessels, bereft of purpose until you fill them with your dark will! We—”

  Grimnir did not give him a chance to finish. With a snarl of contempt—as much for the agony that sought to rob him of movement as for his enemy—Grimnir seized the hilt of his seax and rolled up into a fighting crouch, his weight on the balls of his feet.

  “Nechtan!” screamed the woman, Kormlada. Her warning hung on the night air as Grimnir struck. His blow came low and fast. Even as Nechtan turned toward the sudden motion, his hand reaching for the hilt of his sword, the first three finger lengths of Grimnir’s blade caught him below the hem of his hauberk, behind the right knee. Cloth, muscle, and sinew parted equally beneath that honed iron edge, forged in the flames of an elder age.

  Nechtan cursed; he staggered sideways. Instinct caused him to claw at the wound with his sword hand. But as his right leg buckled and he went down on one knee, the pale prince of the Tuatha realized his error: his scabbard had twisted so that the hilt of his blade pointed away from him, out of reach. He went for it with his left hand, but Grimnir’s next blow split the Tuatha’s flesh between wrist and index finger. Nechtan groaned; he glared up at his ancestral enemy, emerald eyes wide with disbelief.