Across the Kolgan Sea

by Benjamin R. Babst

  He nodded. “Yes, the first kept my spirit in the waters, the other my strength. You must understand, lad, even if it might be hard to accept, that this was why I burned the forest to the ground. It took great efforts on his part to do all of this and I owe him not only my life but my chance to face a better fate. For all of that, this was the simplest thing I could do.”

  I scrounged through the bag again for some more bread while I thought that over. Justifying genocide like he was still didn’t make it right. He robbed hundreds of a “better” fate and yet he spoke as though his fate were the only one that mattered. But still, even in his shallow, fake-honor of an excuse, there was something deeper in its nature that reflected just what was happening here. Apparently, Solas was actively involved in freeing him from his curse, something I didn’t doubt to begin with, but it just didn’t add up. Hognosht also said it was Aegir who had the mercy to free him, but that didn’t make any sense. Aegir was directly involved in his freedom, yet Solas was the one who did it all. It dawned upon me just what that meant. Why Solas was able to foretell of things in fact. “You mean to say Solas is a servant of Aegir?”

  Hognosht opened his eyes so wide I could discern his iris from the rest of his eye, a hazel that was almost too dark to see on the backdrop of black. With his hand clasped over his mouth, he looked around. Eventually, he rotated the hand to close his eyes with his fingers. “I fear I have delayed too long to sidestep the matter. You are very astute, lad. Solas is indeed an acolyte of great faith to him, a man who realizes the mights of Aegir, both those tremendous and miniscule.”

  I fought it down, but that actually made me smile. Svartalfar under my command are attacking Elderbear as we speak and taking Solas as a prisoner at my behest. Knowing I was doing it just so he could be able to experience my revenge on behalf of all other Agrians made it even richer. Now he was going to face my justice. “Thank you for saying that, giant. You have lightened the weight of my judgment over your head.”

  Hognosht returned my smile, but instead of fighting the smile down, he fought down the laughter. He was completely unable to, however, and he bellowed so loud as to disturb a flock of birds in the distance. “Such courage it takes to say that before me, lad. Even with a limp and wounded sword arm, I would have expected some respect in your tone. I should warn you not to take him for some weakling. As a jarl alone, he is a mighty combatant, but even after that, Aegir heeds his pleas for help. Fire giant though I am, I would fear him at the peak of my strength.” Propping himself against his sword, Hognosht rose to his feet. “Now if you would please help me to my feet. It is indeed strange for me to ask, I know, but I ask for it more on the grounds of the assistance in mind.”

  By his elbow and rib, I pushed him up. He was heavy, and it felt more like he was trying to crush me with his weight. “So, are we going to fight now then?” I grunted.

  “If you would please, lad. I would prefer we do not.” He groaned, holding onto his bad knee when he stood on it.

  “Definitely not,” I exclaimed.

  “Hmphh, I see. You still hold me accountable for the deaths of your friends, the alfar. Erland, if I may call you by that name, surely you must realize that weakened as I am, I cannot properly pay for their deaths. Each strike shall be worthless.”

  “It will still ease my conscience by ridding their killer from this realm.” I ran over and punched him in the slice in his leg. He roared and swatted me away.

  As I recovered, he began to smile. “But it will not truly rid them all, Erland. Agrians are also responsible, correct? I wish to propose a compromise. To the west and in the depths of this mountain range are many families of trolls. I believe I shall make my residence there. On my way, perhaps I shall burn down every town I come across? The blood of an Agrian for each alf slain by my hand.”

  I rubbed my back as I thought that over. The offer hardly was satisfying, as it would be far worse in the far-reaching future. All I had was his word, and though he spoke as if he were honest, that hardly was reason to trust him. He said himself he loved his days of causing grief to the Shaloor. What was to say he wouldn’t return to that life instead of living with the trolls of these mountains? And even if he were to tell the truth, what of when he atoned for the deaths here? Trolls were far more infamous for their crimes than the fire giants, or even the Agrians. The level of wickedness they could achieve would be almost as terrible as the witches of Jarnvid. Only his life could appease me, and I had a way to do it that would allow me great ease in it. “Why yes, that sounds like it would work perfectly. You go right ahead and do that,” I lied.

  “Magnificent. I shall be on my way, then, if you would not mind.”

  “I do not mind at all, but for your own sake, please climb down.”

  He looked at me confusedly. “With my leg and arm, you would have me climb?”

  I traipsed over, trying to not bounce with the excitement of what I was thinking. “It would be a very easy descent even with two limbs I would say. Plenty of stones jutting out very far, ample footholds for someone even as large as you. Please, it will be much safer this way. The svartalfar are now under my rule and I have told them to shoot you if they see you. Besides that, it will have you on your way much more quickly.”

  He paused to think about that, staring down at the slope downward and calculating his chances. “I believe you are right.” Hognosht grabbed his sword and with a quick bow, he began to climb down. It was very slow going for him, having one hand holding onto a weapon and leaving him with one each of arms and legs. That gave me plenty of time to find a stout and heavy rock to lug over. I waited until he had gotten a quarter of the way down to spring my trick and then spoke.

  “Hognosht,” I shouted.

  The fire giant looked up at me.

  “I just thought of something you said. You’re going to pay for each alf life with the blood of an Agrian, right? Well, it just occurred to me.” I threw the rock and it hit squarely against his leg. He instinctively released his good arm, which caused him to balance only on one leg. Being on such a sheer ledge as he was, he began to fall head first. “You would have the same amount of blood as all of them put together,” I shouted just before he landed, his sword falling on him.

  Feeling victorious, I leapt down the stone platforms to confirm his death, knowing I could do it without any genuine concern. The first thing I noticed when I was down was that the sword did not go through the center of him. Rather, it just pierced the side of his stomach and rolled along his chest, both bleeding blue blood. It was still glowing, but the whiteness of his skin began to already fade away into the pale of death. He squirmed a bit still and rolled his head to face me. Before speaking to me, he spat blood at me in a spray. “So, lad, I see you would prefer the horn in your own hand. But tell me—” Twitching, he lifted his hand to grab his sword with the hand on the same side of him as it. “When you have had your fill of blood, do you expect it to not churn your stomach?” With a final grunt, he lifted the blade, but it did not even get past his head. That grunt of his shifted to a groan, and that groan to the exhalation of death and the sword clanged to the ground. All the while, I stood there staring him in the eyes, telling him, “I outwitted you, enter the afterlife with the singe of that on your ego.” It was almost haunting to see the life leave a fire giant’s eyes. They relaxed and widened like they saw something astonishing in the distance, and the spark of fire surged through them one last time before the hazel was overwhelmed by black.

  I just stood there for a while, content and proud at my victory over a creature as mighty as that. The crunch of feet on charcoal broke the silence and behind me I saw a group of svartalfar staring in awe. Among them was Wichel, who was scanning me for any sign of a weapon. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  Wichel, the one who always seemed to be singled out to speak to me, stepped forward and bowed. “We heard a loud noise and feared for your life, our jarl.” She swallowed some spit as she looked at the dead fire g
iant. “It is obvious we didn’t need to, though.”

  “Quite. Now escort me back to the horde; my work is finished here.”

  “Oh good. A feast has been prepared to commemorate your ascent to power.”

  I grimaced at her remark, finding it yet another way in which these wolves took to showing how shallow they were. I shook my head and progressed with them back to the banquet they prepared for me.

  Svartalfar have a most interesting diet, which I refused to partake in. The bulk of their food consisted of underground vermin roasted in an unidentifiable solvent of minerals and metals. Massive pots of clay each held the crispy remains of earthworms, maggots, spiders, and hundreds of other creepy crawlies—something I would have been satisfied with had they been the sorts that alfar would eat. Less common, but still prevalent were bowls full of chipped rocks arranged in a fashion that seemed oddly like a salad. The notion of eating rocks seemed distasteful to me, but of course, they lived mostly underground and most likely found the idea of eating foliage to be aberrant as well. But of all the atrocities to the culinary arts there, the crux of them all was standing right in front of me. An obese, boiled mole sat on a silver platter, basting in a coppery and noxious-smelling fluid.

  Despite the feast of starvation that was about me, I did find some humor in hearing the svartalfar’s take on how I killed the fire giant, a story I smiled at while sipping a horn of water. According to them, the giant was Surtur himself, and I was about to valiantly claim his sword from him. I was unarmed due to the pleading of my loyal servants, saying that surely the weapon I would use to slay Surtur would haunt me on later days out of its jealousy for the flaming sword’s brightness and anguish at its neglect. This didn’t bother the exaggerated alter ego of me for “with a swipe of my clawed hands, his sword arm became a stump, and with an earth shattering stomp of my feet, the giant Surtur fell to the ground in a landslide.” Legend had it I didn’t claim the weapon, as it had lost its magic and became brittle as unbaked clay when its owner died.

  Before they got to recalling how Surtur was freed from Niflheim, a loud, shrill noise rose above everything else and reverberated off the walls I stood in front of. It was heard more in the spine than it was in the ears, like long nails dragged across a scummy, metal pot, and the rustling of undergrowth was heard faintly beneath it. “The raiding party returns,” exclaimed the story teller, shifting seamlessly from the story to the remark.

  The svartalfar made room for the hunters to stand before me. It was a band of fifteen—three carried the prisoner by ropes and stones the size of hares, two from the side and one from the back. Eleven of them circled those three and their quarry with bow and arrow still drawn. From the last of the cadre came the painful squeal, or more precisely the instrument she held. The contraption had two parts, the bottom being a disc of smooth, black stone, the top composed of a wheel of thistles. When the top was spun by its handle, the thorns scraped past the slate and tortured the noise out.

  I smiled and jumped over the table to speak to Solas. He had absolutely no dressing except for a quill, which was impaled in his left forearm. Solas must have been stabbed by it in the scuffle, and the svartalfar just didn’t bother to take it out. I would have to reward their initiative later. “Do you know why I brought you here?”

  The “noble” looked up at me with a blank, uninterested expression. “I am from Agria, you’re from Shaloor. The motive is common, of nyo allure.”

  I don’t know what annoyed me more, his incessant need to speak in rhyme or his ignorance of the forest’s death. I grabbed him by the head to show him the landscape. Had I not turned his body as well, I would have snapped his neck. “No,” I shouted. “This is my motive.” I clenched his chin with my hands and forced him to look at the wasteland.

  Solas shrugged. “Pity.”

  “Pity? Pity?” I let my leg fly and find its way through the ropes to Solas’ bare stomach. “You, a servant of Aegir, sent a fire giant through here that slaughtered the alfar of this valley. I brought you here to face the consequences.”

  “I vould varn you to be kind to one of my stature. The alfar vere here because Freyr made them rally. After that day, all else was subsequent.”

  With people such as Solas, conversations end very quickly. You could speak to such a man just like me, with all due respect, and all he’d give you in return are insults both forward and backhanded. I turned to the svartalfar that held onto him and gave them another order. “Throw him in the lake. I’m sure that his master will look forward to his joining him.”

  They leaned him against the ledge, and the fool still wasn’t fazed by any of this. “Before you die by your ally, do you have any last words?” I asked him.

  The man simply looked at the water below and then at me. “You look remarkably like you were my nephew. How absurd.”

  That tore it, the final, greatest insult he could have given me. I walked up to him slowly, my head twitching with a leering, glaring scowl and whispered something in his ear. “If we’re related, it is as a half-breed to a pure-bred.” With one finger, I pushed him off the ledge and smiled as the freshwater spray reached my face from his crash. I studied the ripples in the water, wondering if they were maybe the nine waves’ daughters and the ironies involved if that were so. “He’s not drowning,” one of the svartalfar cried. “He’s fine.” The svartalfar’s remark stirred me from my stupor and drew my attention to Solas.

  The svartalfar were right. Solas wasn’t drowning. It took a moment for me to see all the way down to the bottom of the lake, what with the glare of the sun and the dust that was stirred upward, but it was clear the Agrian wasn’t even struggling for breath. Somehow, he’d also loosened the chains that held him tightly to the lakebed, yet he was walking around down there as casually as in his own garden. I had that foul feeling, and the svartalfar all had it too, judging by the foreboding whispers, he was using some foreign, unidentifiable magic to defy our intents.

  Solas then looked straight up at me, and I wasn’t able to tell what his expression was, but I could tell by the shaking of his head it didn’t mean anything good for me. Still staring at me, he grabbed the quill and pulled it out of his arm. He stood there as the blood shrouded him, and I stood there staring at him, wondering what he was doing.

  A breeze of warm air reminded me about how cold it was, and a cloud descended over the sun, intensifying my fears of what was happening. A loud crack of thunder took my attention away from the water-breathing man and up into the clouds above me. There was something about the rumbling that reminded me of that day I was dragged off to sea. The storm clouds above me gave even more reason to remind me of it, as the shadowy, bearded face of Aegir was staring once again down at me between the crackles of lightning.

  My heart skipped a beat and I stopped breathing as I snapped my attention back down toward Solas. Blood had completely shrouded him and was working its way up to the surface. “Fire your arrows.” I gave my orders to the svartalfar as loudly as I could, but I was so overcome by terror it was no louder than the footfall of a rabbit. I could only guess Solas began to rise upward and the entire lake began to follow him, creating a large bubble of water as he rose above the trees.

  I realized my command went unheard, so I repeated it again at the top of my lungs. “Fire your arrows,” I roared. The order went heard, but they might as well have not heard it. Those who were competent with the bow and arrow had already emptied their quivers before I repeated myself. All of those arrows simply sunk into the exoskeleton of water, and even those that did reach him had been slowed to the point that they hit him no harder than a flicking finger.

  A rain of sleet began to pour down upon us, quickly turning the floor into a mass of slips and slides and giving Solas’ water shield a layer of ice on top. The ice acted like a magnifying glass for Solas, allowing me to see his expression as the blood parted to make him visible. It was haughty and full of ichorous intent, but there was something else in it. A serenity,
a sort of peace one can only feel and show if one knows someone is in control or that one is on the side of such a person, the calm in the midst of the storm, if you will. All of this he disrobed from himself as he swung his arms wide open.

  At first nothing happened, but then the ice encapsulating Solas began to crack and then it broke completely, unleashing a halo of water impregnated with millions of shards of ice. I planted myself firmly on the ground to endure the incoming wave. There was only a split second that I was able to hold my ground before the black ice beneath pulled me off my feet and flung me along with the force of the water. A veritable sandstorm of ice shards were then flung into me. Arms, legs, face, anywhere that would hurt was where it tore into me and the only thing that hurt me more was when I was slammed against the jagged rocks behind me. I was able to move a good bit afterward, but I could almost swear I heard and felt my spine crack.

  Just before I ran out of breath, the water all passed by and dropped me to the ground. A massive chunk of the mountain beside me was ripped away from where it should have been. Svartalfar littered the terrain, all were knocked to the ground but some of them had the presence of mind to stick their swords into the ground to not get buffeted by the flood.

  The lake was completely empty, save for the freshly eroded rocks from the mountain and the pillar of water that Solas reserved for himself to stand on.

  “It was you,” I shouted as I flung a stone at the cultist, a stone that made it hardly half as far as it needed to. “Aegir has been the source of all my troubles and no doubt you’re the one who prayed for it.”

  “I did not cause your voes, young Shaloor, your exile is nyot my doing. It vas my god who brought you here, for me it vas a blessing.”

  His voice was in stark contrast to mine, his still eloquent and aloof, mine brunt and angry. I barked back, “Cease with the poetry, Solas. It doesn’t stop you from being the monster here.”