by Matt Larkin
Oh, fuck.
That roar went on and on. The flames around Ilona’s hands grew in intensity until Hervor could barely stand to look upon the witch, so bright was the fire.
Screaming herself, Hervor pushed forward, both hands wrapped around Tyrfing’s hilt. “Die!”
A sheet of flame leapt outward from Ilona and soared for Hervor.
Hervor did the only thing she could think of. She threw herself flat onto the ground. The sheet sliced the air like a scythe. It caught the back of Hervor’s mail and melted it in an instant, spraying molten iron over her leathers. She screamed as pain washed over her, rolling along the ground in a desperate attempt to smother the burning.
The effort sent fresh lances of agony through her body. Hervor rolled over.
Ilona’s skin had taken on the color and texture of coal, beneath which simmered incandescent light.
The witch, the pyromancer, was going to roast Hervor alive. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. No chance to escape. Except forward. Hervor flung herself toward the witch, swinging Tyrfing wildly as she did so.
The tunnel trembled around her, as if fresh lava was about to rise up from the earth and fill the whole tube once again. Maybe not far from the truth.
Tyrfing sliced partway through Ilona’s right knee, and the witch fell onto her left one, flaming hands catching herself. Still shrieking in fear, in pain, in rage, Hervor lurched upward. Tyrfing caught Ilona beneath the chin, split her skull halfway back to her spine, and tore out through the top of her head.
Ilona pitched over, her body shuddering, trembling just as the tunnel trembled.
Ash and smoke and flame erupted from the witch’s rent skull, spraying over Hervor and sending her tumbling to the ground, arms over her head in a feeble hope of protecting it. Another explosion washed over her, flung her from her feet, and sent her careening down the tunnel.
Everything went black for a brief instant.
Hervor moaned, then pushed herself up.
Everything was still black, save for a tiny hint of light from outside the tunnel. All the flames had gone out, all at once. A profound darkness and stillness had settled over this place.
As the ringing in her ears faded, she made out other sounds. Battle raging outside.
Starkad.
Troll shit. He was still facing off against Odin knew what. She had to help him.
She tried to stand, but her legs gave out from beneath her and she slammed, face first, into the hard stone of the tube. It was warm now. Warm and beckoning her to lie down and never rise.
32
Seskef roared again, swiping Skofnung around so quickly Starkad had no choice but to parry. The runeblade slammed into Starkad’s sword and snapped the folded iron in two. Starkad lurched backward out of the way of another strike, twisted around to put a Skjöldung warrior between himself and Seskef, and then fell back several more steps.
He used the opportunity to cut down another man who’d been trying to engage him while he fought the prince. Then he flung the useless hilt into the face of a shieldmaiden who tried to charge him. The crossguard caught her head on, blood exploding from her shattered nose as she dropped like a rock.
Seskef shoved his man aside and launched into another series of brutal attacks.
The prince was nigh to as fast as Starkad and seemed possessed of almost inhuman strength and stamina. So this was what the princes of the Old Kingdoms were like. It felt like fighting a fucking draug. Except a draug armed with a damned runeblade.
Starkad retreated further, parrying when he had to but careful not to let the blades clash head on. He couldn’t afford to lose this sword. Vikar’s sword. Not this one.
Another warrior raced in on him.
Starkad twisted, kicked the man in the back of the knee, and grabbed him by the throat as he fell.
Seskef cut right through his own man without a moment’s hesitation. Starkad released his human shield and snatched up the man’s dropped sword as it fell. Before Starkad could do aught else, the prince flung the corpse aside and launched more attacks.
Duck, parry, weave.
Riposte.
Seskef turned Starkad’s counter with ease, continuing to bellow at him like a berserk. Like a man gone fey. Whatever foul Art the Old Kingdoms had called upon, it had made their princes into sorcerer-kings far more terrifying than even Gylfi.
Seskef vaulted over a fallen man, coming down with a mighty chop that could have split Starkad in half. The move was too wild, too savage, though. Starkad had thought the warriors of the Old Kingdoms fought with more control. It was, after all, damned hard to change direction in midair.
Rather than jump back, Starkad stepped forward, thrusting one sword up into Seskef’s gut. The prince’s gilded mail turned the blade, but the impact stole all wind from Seskef, all strength from his attack. He toppled to the ground and smacked his face on a rock.
Starkad spun back around and brought Vikar’s sword down on the prince’s helm. The blade didn’t pierce, but it dented the protection and surely would daze any living man. Indeed, Seskef collapsed into the ground.
Before Starkad could finish him, another man raced in, screaming about the prince. Starkad cut him down.
A figure emerged from the tunnel, but not Hervor. That was … Scyld. Had he come here too? The man lurched, in obvious pain, blood seeping from fresh burns covering half his body. But he looked … younger?
Starkad blanched.
What the fuck?
How was he here, in the past? How was any of this even possible?
The rank stench of carnage was everywhere. The ground had become a muddy slush of blood and guts. How many people had Starkad just slain? A score? More than that?
Starkad turned back to Seskef. The prince was rising, shaking himself. Blows like Starkad had dealt ought to have left him concussed and, more like than not, unconscious. But Seskef stood, bringing Skofnung to bear once again.
Damn it. Starkad took a step back. His foot slipped in blood and he skidded, then tumbled over a corpse. He landed on his arse, sending a jolt through his tailbone. For an instant, he considered the undignified spectacle he presented.
Such a petty concern, really, under the circumstances.
Seskef lurched forward, shaking his head as if trying to loosen cobwebs from it. Blood dribbled down his chin. Bastard must’ve banged his teeth into his tongue.
Rising, Starkad spit blood out of his own mouth. Well, he’d earned himself no few scrapes here too, though he’d been careful not to let Skofnung touch him. Hel alone might know what the runeblade would do if it struck a blow. Still, Starkad’s mail was scratched to pieces, pounded into his leathers, bits of it hanging on by a few chain links.
He bore his own swords up as the prince closed in. Seskef launched forward with renewed savagery and even less control than he’d shown before. His wide overhead chop would’ve split Starkad from shoulder to crotch. Would’ve, had Starkad not leapt backward.
His feet landed in more mush and squelched down. It made his next move a little unsteady as he lunged forward, swinging both blades in opposite arcs. The prince didn’t recover quickly enough and caught both of Starkad’s swords across his chest.
The damned mail turned them again, and they scraped along the golden links without causing serious harm to the man inside.
Starkad barely got his blades back in position to parry Seskef’s counter-strike.
The prince had him on the defensive again. Parrying, dodging, always falling back and giving ground.
If Starkad could but put a little distance between them he might turn the prince’s wild attacks against him, but—
Another wicked stroke sent Starkad stumbling. Rather than give the prince the chance to attack from above, Starkad lunged forward, caught the prince about the knees, and sent the both of them tumbling into the mud. Swords slipped from their hands.
Everything was chaos and bashing elbows and mud splashing up in his face. Over and about they rolled
, Seskef bearing down on him with iron-like muscles. Starkad reached for the dagger at his hip. The prince’s fist caught him in the face.
The next instant, Seskef’s iron grip closed around Starkad’s throat. The hand pushed him down, into the mud. Choking. Everything going dim. Couldn’t see …
Starkad flailed about limply.
Seskef’s hand kept closing. Tighter, tighter. Down into the mud. Drowning in blood … Urd.
His final … urd …
Starkad’s palm brushed over a blade. He closed his fingers around it. Jerked it upward.
Skofnung drove right through Seskef’s face. Punched through his lip, teeth, out the back of his skull.
Starkad lurched upward as the prince’s grip slackened. He gasped for air, retching out blood and muck. The wound around Skofnung kept widening. The prince’s face split apart farther and farther. His skull cracked, as if drawing away from the point of impact. Until the entire head inside that golden coif collapsed into gore.
Agonizing pain shot through Starkad’s hand. His palm bore a cut by his thumb, where he’d grabbed Skofnung by the blade. That cut was oozing blood fast. Even as Starkad watched, his skin pulled away from the wound. The cut grew deeper, the wound widening with each passing breath.
He grunted at the pain, doubling over with it as his hand slowly ripped itself in half. Starkad stared at it in utter horror.
No. No. No!
Not his hand …
Not …
The wound spread further, exposing bone. He screamed at the agony.
“Skofnung stone,” someone said in Old Northern.
Scyld … he held Skofnung, trying to touch the pommel to Starkad’s hand. To the wound? The stone in the pommel?
Starkad grabbed the runeblade by the stone, letting it press into his palm. It was cold. At first. Then heat surged through his hand, replaced quickly by burning, as if a red-hot brand were pressed against his flesh. He screamed and tried to drop the blade, but Scyld wrapped his own hands around Starkad’s, clenching his fist.
And the madman smiled. Except he didn’t look mad. Nor even yet full grown. His eyes flashed red, like a draug. Or fire.
He held Starkad’s hand in his own, so tight Starkad could do naught but grit his teeth against the pain. And at last the burning stopped. The young man jerked away from him, and Starkad fell over, back into the muck.
Slowly, he lifted his trembling hand before his eyes. The whole of his left palm was charred, the edges an angry red. And yet, the cut had sealed over, as though burned closed with hot iron. He groaned, almost unable to swallow for the pain.
The boy had moved to the prince’s body and knelt there now, shaking his head. He tore the silver arm ring from the prince’s wrist and stood there, inspecting it.
Starkad gaped.
No.
No.
This was not fucking possible.
But Scyld—young Scyld—slipped the arm ring onto his own wrist and then sauntered away, out into the town.
Grunting with effort and pain, Starkad pulled himself up. How could this have happened? With his one good hand, he dug through his satchel until he found the silver arm ring. The same serpent-shaped arm ring the boy had just now taken.
And had given to Starkad … eight hundred years later.
Starkad doubled over with the pain in his hand, in his body, in his mind. And he lay in the mud.
33
T he tube wall was no longer warm as Hervor steadied herself against it, making painfully slow progress back out toward the town. She’d come to with a pounding head, skin blistering from her burns. The sounds of battle had disappeared while she was out. Walking wasn’t so bad, save for the bouts of dizziness that kept washing over her.
She followed the long tube all the way out. Blood had dribbled down the slope and now ran in tiny streams toward the tunnel she emerged from. A few corpses had toppled down into the tube’s depression, too.
Climbing over the lip would be a bitch. Instead, she trudged her way over to where the path descended more naturally into the tube. There she paused, hands on her knees, fighting with a fresh wave of dizziness.
Deep breaths.
Just keep breathing.
Grunting, she pushed on. On the slope above the tube, dozens of bodies littered the field. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn two war bands had clashed here not long before.
No, but it was one war band. And Starkad.
Odin’s balls. He must’ve slain twenty, thirty people this day.
The night had settled down, and, with the mist, it was hard to make out much. Indeed, the mist seemed thicker than before. Heat no longer radiated out of the ground. Beyond, a figure was dragging away a corpse in gilded chain.
Seskef.
Clearly dead and therefore no longer her problem.
Hervor might strike whoever it was down, but Starkad was a more immediate concern. He must be around here somewhere. Please, Odin, let him not be one of the many corpses. If aught had befallen him, she didn’t know what she’d do. She didn’t want to think of …
A groan came from several feet behind her.
She turned, hand on Tyrfing’s hilt, and stalked closer. There Starkad lay, propped up on one elbow, seeming at best half-conscious.
Praise Odin. He yet lived. If they got out of this, Hervor would sacrifice a goat to the Aesir, she swore it.
She knelt by Starkad’s side. “Can you stand? Are you hurt?”
He groaned, unclenched his hand, and then gasped.
Hervor caught his wrist and pulled his palm up to inspect it. It had been scorched, parts of the skin actually turned black and flaking off. “Odin’s balls … How did this happen?”
“Skofnung …”
“It’s still back in the altar, I just saw it.”
“Seskef had it. Different … different version, maybe?” He groaned and sat all the way up, looking at her. Whatever he was thinking, his face had become a mask.
She ran her tongue over her teeth, trying to work through all of this. She’d killed Ilona. Starkad had killed Seskef. So hadn’t they broken the curse now? Ilona had tied the altar to Skofnung. Everything came back to the runeblade. When Starkad had driven the blade into the altar, it had sent them both back here, to when this all started. So …
Hervor cleared her throat. “I think, if we remove the runeblade from the altar, maybe we can get back to where we were. I mean to our own time.”
Starkad grunted his assent, and she helped him stand. “I have to find my weapons. I need Vikar’s sword, at least.” He stumbled about in the mist, inspecting the bloody field, until finally he bent down to retrieve the blade.
A flake of snow fell upon Hervor’s armor. It melted almost at once, but she turned to look at the town. Hard to tell through the mist, but definitely a flurry, snowfall. Weren’t they in summer?
Frowning, Hervor trudged a little way from the path, over to the spring. Steam no longer rose from it. The hot spring had cooled.
A moment later Starkad put a hand on her shoulder. “We should go.”
“What does this mean?”
“It means we don’t belong here.”
She shot him a glare. Either he didn’t care about whatever had changed here or, more likely, he was refusing to let her in on his thoughts. Bastard was always like that. Could he not just trust her?
Perhaps not, because he started back toward the tunnel on his own.
Grumbling under her breath, Hervor followed. After all they’d been through, still this distance from him. Still he could not open himself up to her.
Stupid son of a godsdamned troll couldn’t see what was right in front of him. Shit, maybe they’d have never even lain together if she hadn’t browbeaten him into it. Oh, he’d no doubt lusted after her before that. Had to have. Man had stones and a cock and two good eyes. Had to feel the urge like anyone else.
But he hadn’t done shit about it until she’d forced him to.
So if she was waiting fo
r him to break down and recite skaldic poetry and profess his … what? His fucking love for her? Love was for maids in skalds’ tales around the fire. Hervor was a shieldmaiden, a warrior. She knew lust well enough.
That was it. That was all she’d ever had room for in her life.
You got the need, you could always find a man willing to help with it.
So why in the gates of Hel did she feel like Starkad should be more than that? Why would she even think he could be more than a walking cock when the need arose?
“Bastard,” she mumbled at his back.
He stiffened, like he might have heard her. Maybe he’d just heard her say something but couldn’t make it out. Either way, he just kept walking, right up to the obsidian altar. He paused, glancing at Ilona’s corpse behind it, then nodded grimly.
Hervor joined him. There the runeblade rested, stuck in the altar, runes reflecting the dying light from her torch. “So you drove the thing in, best you take it out.”
He grunted, then wrapped both hands around the hilt. Then he heaved upward, groaning with the strain of it. Skofnung edged its way free, a hair a time. The screech of metal on stone echoed through the tunnel. Then all at once it broke free.
The air about them shimmered again.
She hated this part.
The pressure built inside her head. It burst like a bubble and sent her sprawling end over end, unable to see or hear even when she finally came to a rest on her back.
SLOWLY, her vision cleared. The ringing in her ears abated.
The tunnel was dark, the only light coming from the torch she had dropped. Starkad was pushing himself up from the ground, now looking about the lava tube as if in confusion.
Hervor groaned, rose, and stumbled a few steps toward Starkad. Were they back?
The torch sconces were empty, the torches in them long since turned to dust. Ancient bones lay behind the altar now. Crumbling and dusty. Ilona’s corpse … but that had always been there.
