A Gathering of Ravens

by Scott Oden

“Master, is it?” Grimnir hissed. He cast about, bent, and retrieved the old broom he’d pinched from he blind hag’s cottage. He struck the broom’s head off with a single angled blow of his seax, which left him with two and a half feet of sharpened oak. “Great prince of the vestálfar? Faugh! You whiteskin rats are naught but pale wights who play like you still mean something to the world!”

  “We are the victors!” Nechtan gasped. Pale blood spurted between his fingers; with each pulse of his heart, his glamour ebbed. “We slaughtered your kind at Mag Tuiredh! We harrowed the moors with the blood of your miserable people! We slew Balor—that pitiful one-eyed vagabond you called a king—and cast his thrice-cursed head into the sea! Wh-What … What have your wretched k-kind done?”

  “What have we done?” Grimnir’s voice dropped to a bone-chilling hiss. “Little fool, we made you lot fear us.”

  Driven by the power in his knotted shoulders—and fortified by the bestial rage of his people—Grimnir stabbed that oak handle down into the hollow of Nechtan’s throat. He hawked a wad of phlegm and spat it full in the dying elf’s face before shoving him away with the hobnailed heel of his sandal.

  For a moment, he towered over his fallen foe, grim and vulpine; from beneath a swarthy brow, red eyes gleamed like coals plucked from a fire. He swiped a hand through his tangled hair, fetishes of bone and silver rattling,

  “Foundling,” he said to Étaín, who still had a hand braced against the Black Stone; she nodded back. Grimnir’s smoldering gaze then shifted to Kormlada; he leveled the tip of the seax at her. “And who are you, eh? You smell like one of Half-Dane’s whores,” he said, with a sidelong glance at Étaín. “My brother’s bastard has his sire’s pathetic taste in women.”

  “She’s a witch,” Étaín said.

  Grimnir’s raised an eyebrow. “So-ho? Is she, now? A witch? Well, let’s have a bit of fun ere I send this ragged lickspittle back to my wretched kinsman!” He stropped the flat of his blade across his forearm, leaving a trail of pale blood in its wake. “Answer me this, witch: can you warm Bjarki’s bed without hands or a tongue?”

  “Cruach!” the Witch of Dubhlinn screamed.

  Grimnir heard an eerie whistle; he fell into a fighting stance, ready to kill whatever man or beast might step from the night. A multitude of rustlings followed the whistle. Grimnir tensed, eyes narrowed; he gauged the distance between himself and the witch, in half a mind to simply carve her head from her shoulders and have done.

  “Cruach!”

  “Bah! Call your lads!” He took a step toward her …

  Étaín called out a warning. “Grimnir! Wait—”

  Suddenly, ravens exploded over the precipice of Carraig Dubh—a swirling wall of darkness that hit Grimnir like a physical blow. He staggered, throwing an arm up to protect his eyes as hundreds of nail-like claws raked his callused hide. The sound was deafening; Grimnir roared and lashed out in a rage, felt hot blood spatter his knuckles as his seax sliced through feather, beak, and talon.

  And then, silence. Grimnir lowered his arm and straightened.

  Nechtan, the witch … both were gone, snatched up by that cursed flock of crows.

  The witch’s sorcery had saved her, and in the same stroke she had robbed him of his final expression of contempt for the vestálfar. She had stolen Nechtan’s body before he could defile it. Before he could repay the desecration of his father’s corpse. White-hot rage coursed through Grimnir’s veins.

  “Run!” he bellowed. “Hide behind your filthy walls! Tell that wretched oath breaker a reckoning is coming! Blood for blood! Hear me, Sly One, Father Loki! Bear witness, O Ymir, sire of giants and lord of the frost! Hear me! Blood for blood!” Grimnir screamed at the cloud-laced sky, lightening now into the twilight that preceded the dawn; he loosed a titanic howl, as deep and merciless as that of a hunting wolf.

  It echoed down the slopes, through cleft and hollow, until it reached the palisades and earthworks of Dubhlinn. The sound froze the blood of the Danes and Norsemen standing the night’s final watch atop the city’s ramparts; they stared up in dread at the tree-clad mountains, muttering prayers or clutching at the hammer-shaped amulets worn around their necks. The eldest among them shivered and hid their eyes, for they knew the sound. They knew it from their childhood in the frozen North.

  It was the voice of Fenrir, god of wolves, and to hear it meant the chains that kept the beast from the world were close to breaking.

  20

  Kormlada held Nechtan close as the raven-veil parted, revealing the familiar walls of her chamber atop Cuarán’s Tower. Dawn’s light seeped through the open casement as Cruach resumed his accustomed place there. The huge black bird ruffled his feathers; he stared down at them with the flat, expressionless gaze of his kind as Nechtan sagged against her, and then sank down onto both knees. The Tuatha groaned, wheezing, threads of blood oozing from his slack lips.

  In the rising light, she could see the extent of the damage. The stake had pierced him high in the chest, entering through the hollow of his throat above his sternum. A mortal would be cold and dead, already, but the Tuatha were wrought from sterner stuff. Still, Kormlada wanted to help him. She wanted to ease his agony somehow, but Nechtan shook his head. “L-Leave … me … b-be.”

  “Have … Have you magicks that can mend your flesh?”

  Nechtan smiled, then: a ghastly death’s-head grimace. “N-Not against … this. N-Not … anymore. Unless … Unless you c-can fetch a … a healer f-from the Otherworld…”

  Kormlada tried to stanch the bleeding; she watched, helpless, as the glamour of the Tuatha faded, as his anima bled out along with what little vital fluid remained in his veins. The emerald fires in his eyes dimmed, and his skin drew taut over his fragile skull to give him the appearance of a long-desiccated corpse.

  “There must be something—”

  “As I was walking all alone,” came a singsong voice behind her, “I heard two crows making a moan. Isn’t this a touching bit of theater.” Bjarki stepped from the shadowed doorway. He stroked the long plait of his beard, lips twisted into a malicious grin. “Nearly moved to tears, I am!”

  “Send for a leech, my lord!”

  “A leech?” he replied, crouching beside Nechtan. Bjarki eyed the broom handle, its placement, the blood; he shook his head. “There’s not a leech alive that can help this poor sod. I see you’ve run afoul of the little snuffler who haunts my steps, eh?”

  “Please,” Kormlada implored, clutching at the embroidered sleeve of Bjarki’s tunic. “Can you not help him? Your art—”

  Twisting, Bjarki struck her across the mouth with the back of one scarred fist. She sprawled back in a daze, blood from a split lip drooling down her chin. “Be silent, you treacherous hag!” He turned back to Nechtan. “You should have come to me, elf. What were you thinking? That you could best him alone?” Bjarki tsked. He leaned closer, his voice barely above a hiss. “The glory days of your kind are gone. Nothing but dust and memory. Against the likes of him, only another kaunr has the sand to come out on top.”

  A gleam of defiance returned to Nechtan’s eyes. He chuckled around a mouthful of blood. “Th-Then why … w-why would I … c-come to you?”

  Bjarki took hold of the stake and slowly twisted it. Nechtan stiffened, but did not scream. “Where is he?”

  “S-Soon … he w-will come … f-find you. S-Soon…”

  From his perch, Cruach cried out in the harsh voice of his kind:

  To the halls where dwells | Grendel’s bastard,

  To the Black Pool | to claim his weregild.

  Bjarki glanced up at the giant raven, eyes smoldering with sullen hate, and then back to Nechtan. The Tuatha’s bloody grin widened. “B-Blood of … Half-Dane s-spilled … spilled in Odin’s w-weather.”

  Slowly, Bjarki rose from his crouch, nostrils flaring as he exhaled. “Where is he?”

  “S-Soon…”

  Bjarki’s lips skinned back in a snarl of contempt. With both hands, he gripped the oak handle; he thrust
a hobnailed boot against Nechtan’s thigh for leverage, and hauled the thick shaft out through his body, foot by gory foot. Nechtan gave a gurgling cry, then slumped forward, dead before his forehead touched the floor.

  “And you,” Bjarki said, turning to Kormlada. The Witch of Dubhlinn struggled into a sitting position, her vision still doubled by the savage blow Bjarki had dealt her. He used the gory tip of the broom handle to push her back down. “Going behind my back, are you? How did you find him when I could not? How?”

  “Not me.” She nodded at Nechtan’s corpse.

  “Where was he?”

  Kormlada daubed at her lip; she glared up at Half-Dane, weathering the fury in his eyes and meeting it with a hatred of her own. “Carraig Dubh,” she said. “Nechtan cornered it at the Rock of Brule.”

  Bjarki nudged the oak stake at her. She flinched away from it, at first, braced for a fresh beating; instead, he gestured with it again. Kormlada grasped the handle and allowed Bjarki to pull her to her feet. Her head swam, her ears still ringing from the blow.

  “Was he wounded, my little snuffler?”

  Kormlada shook her head.

  Bjarki grunted. He turned away and began to pace; with each step, he rapped the point of the broom handle on the stone tiles. “Of course not. I am not so lucky. Why now? Why did he choose this moment to interfere?”

  “It … He seeks revenge.”

  “Of course he does.” After a moment Bjarki turned back to her; he dragged the weathered oak handle up and used it to gesture out the casement. “The snuffler seeks revenge.” Next, he lowered the handle to indicate Nechtan’s corpse. “This one sought … what? To end an old blood feud?” Finally, he leveled the stake at her. “But, why were you there, eh? What were you seeking? An end to Bjarki Half-Dane, perhaps?”

  Kormlada felt the precipice beneath her feet. Her breath caught in her throat. A wrong word, an insincere tone, and the makeshift spear that ended Nechtan’s life would author her own doom. The moment stretched for a lifetime as she weighed every conceivable response.

  “Why were you there?” Bjarki repeated.

  “It was not of my own volition,” she said at length, her voice steady. Kormlada looked past the angled tip of the broom handle—with its veneer of Tuatha blood—and met Bjarki’s serpentine gaze. “He summoned me.”

  “Why?”

  She conjured the answer from nothing; it was a bald-faced lie, but like the best deceptions, it was simple and spoke more to her understanding of Half-Dane than of Nechtan. She delivered it with perfect inflection—a woman’s disdain for the business of men. With a slight and contemptuous toss of her head, Kormlada said, “To boast.”

  And slowly, Bjarki Half-Dane lowered the stake. Chuckling to himself, he tossed the oak handle atop her bedclothes, heedless of smeared blood. He added to the insult by wiping his hands on a brocaded tapestry. “Draugen would have me bide my time,” he said. “Do nothing while the snuffler prowls and prods at my gate.”

  Kormlada sagged, suddenly exhausted. “If it is revenge he’s after, then that makes sense. He will come to you—”

  “On his terms!” Bjarki’s spine stiffened; when he spun back around his eyes were slits of cold fire. “That dunghill rat has called the tune since this dance began! I’m done following his lead!”

  “What will you do, my lord?” Kormlada studied Half-Dane anew; she could see the same lines in his face, the same arrangement of bones and distribution of features that she saw in the face of the fomórach atop Carraig Dubh. But in Bjarki there remained something … human. She realized, then, that for all his art, his ambition, his arrogance, and his presumption of power, Bjarki Half-Dane could never be the gold-giver he imagined himself to be. He was a pariah, hated by his own people as much as by the Men around him.

  “Not me,” he said suddenly. “You. You will betray me. You will go to him, parley with him, and gain his blasted confidence. That done, you will lead him by secret paths here, into Dubhlinn’s heart—tell him you know a foolproof way to plant a knife in my gullet. Lure the wretched snuffler in, and I will be waiting to spring my own trap!”

  “That beast will never trust me,” Kormlada said.

  “Make him!”

  “My lord, I—”

  In two long steps, Bjarki seized her; long, black-nailed fingers wrapped around her throat as he dragged her face to within inches of his own. His breath stank of wine and old meat. “Make him, or—by Odin!—I swear you will join your precious Nechtan in the Halls of Hel!”

  Kormlada tried to twist out of his grasp, but Half-Dane did not relent. His thumb ground into her windpipe, cutting off her air. He watched her face darken; her struggles ignited a light in his bloodshot eyes—a base and terrible lust. While she fought to breathe, Bjarki’s free hand pawed the juncture of her thighs, feeling for her sex through the fabric of her nightdress. Kormlada tried to knee him, clawing at his face with one hand while plucking ineffectually at his iron fingers with the other. Bjarki’s smile widened. He hauled her about and steered her back toward the divan, its bedclothes foul with Tuatha blood.

  From above them came an eerie laugh. It was Cruach, and he mimicked Grimnir’s voice down to the most minor inflection: “My brother’s bastard has his sire’s pathetic taste in women.”

  Bjarki stopped as though whip-stung. He shoved Kormlada back against the divan and whirled around to face the giant raven. The Witch of Dubhlinn coughed; she glared at Bjarki’s twisted back. “What did you say?” she heard him growl. “What did you say, you miserable squab?”

  Kormlada’s hand brushed the end of the broom handle. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself taking up the oak stake, spinning it around, and ramming it through Half-Dane’s groin till he screamed for death. In her mind’s eye, she was fast and agile enough to kill him before he could get on with raping her. But the Witch of Dubhlinn had wisdom as well as imagination—she was no warrior, but she had an instinct for vengeance and a serpent’s cunning. Half-Dane would pay; she would see to it. I will make certain of it! She coughed again, rubbed her bruised throat.

  Cruach repeated the fomórach’s laugh; his flat black eyes gleamed with inscrutable hate. “My brother’s bastard … pathetic.”

  “Pah!” Bjarki spat. “Come in arm’s reach of me and I’ll twist your wretched head off!”

  But even as he turned back to Kormlada, the brazen call of a distant horn reached her ears. Then another. They came from the seaward battlements, accompanied by a flurry of voices, indistinct but jubilant. She knew its meaning as well as he: the dragon ships had come. That Manx pirate, Bródir; Sigurðr of the Raven Banner, jarl of Orkney, and their ilk. Beneath striped sails, their black hulls slowly filled the broad Bay of Dubhlinn—thousands of mail-clad reavers and the sons of sea kings called by the ravens of war, whose axes thirsted for the blood of the Gael. These, the horns welcomed.

  Bjarki Half-Dane, nostrils flaring with the scent of victory, gave forth a bellow of triumph. “Ériu is between the hammer and the anvil, now!” He leered at Kormlada. “We’ll finish this later, after you’ve brought the snuffler to me.” Whirling, he stalked out of the room. She could hear him on the stairs, roaring for his slaves to fetch Sitric and Maelmorda.

  Kormlada pushed herself upright; with trembling hands, she smoothed her disheveled hair, adjusted her nightdress. Cruach fluttered down and perched beside her, on the back of the divan. Gently, almost lovingly, that monstrous bird caressed her cheek with his coal-black beak. There was concern in his eyes. In answer, she stroked the feathers of his breast in silent benediction.

  “Between the hammer and the anvil,” she whispered, “that’s where steel is forged. Find him, my love. Find the monster that killed our kinsman.”

  And Cruach, head cocked as he fixed her in his unblinking stare, nodded and took wing …

  21

  As immobile as the great Black Stone, Grimnir sat at the edge of the precipice of Carraig Dubh and stared out over the valley of the River Liffey. He watched a great host o
f dragon ships nose into the waters of Dubhlinn’s harbor, where brazen horns and shouts of fellowship greeted them. And away to the west, through the trees, he watched a yellowish haze come rolling down the valley toward Dubhlinn—thunderheads of dust raised by the tramping feet of an army.

  When Étaín came to him and brought his gear, Grimnir merely grunted. Nor did he seem to pay her any heed as she sketched out what had happened since Blind Maeve’s cottage. He did not offer to help retrieve the ponies the Irishmen had left at their camp, nor did he help see to the body of poor Dunlaing; he could have found the corpse of Ruadh Mór easily enough but made no offer, and when injured Bran called out for water and succor, Grimnir did not lift so much as a finger.

  Étaín did. Though harrowed by the cruel scourge of exhaustion, she nevertheless made Bran comfortable, laid poor Dunlaing under a cairn of stones, fetched the ponies, and tried to no avail to find Ruadh Mór’s body. Returning, she brought water from a trickling spring in the yew thicket, kindled a small fire, and made a stew of venison and cabbage. All the while, Grimnir crouched on his haunches, with his long arms folded around his knees and his eyes fixed on the valley below.

  Weary and disheveled, Étaín brought a bowl of stew to him and unceremoniously dropped it by his side. Grimnir looked askance at the concoction and sniffed in disdain. “Bring me meat, foundling. Red and raw. Not this slop.”

  “Piss off,” she replied. She made to turn away, but stopped. “No, you know what? You owe me! You run your mouth about blood prices and oaths, but what about life debt, eh? I could have left you to the elves, but I didn’t! I came after you! And this is my thanks? Bollocks!”

  Grimnir spat. “So-ho! Here it comes, then! What’s your price? A fistful of gold? The head of an enemy? A pound of flesh? What’s my life worth to you, you wretched hymn-singer?”

  But Étaín was too tired to fight. And she recognized in it a losing proposition. She’d sooner hold a storm to blame for its thunder than change a skrælingr’s ways. Coming after him had been more about repaying a debt of her own: regardless of his motives, Grimnir had followed her to Badon, plucked her from Hrothmund’s grasp, and carried her for six days when he could just as easily have left her to die. Her slate, now, was well and truly clean.