Iron Axe

by Steven Harper

  “Your offer of hospitality means a great deal, sir,” Danr said softly, “but I’m here as an emissary from the Stane. We have to talk to the earl right away. I just came to make sure Talfi was all right.”

  “I’m more than all right.” Talfi was pulling on a cloak. “If this involves trollwives, I’m going with you.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The great hall of the keep wasn’t quite as great as Danr was expecting. The low ceiling beams, blackened by centuries of smoke, almost brushed Danr’s head, and the rushes on the floor hadn’t been changed in quite some time. The long table that ran the length of the room was a scarred survivor of too many feasts, the tapestries on the walls needed cleaning, and a thin fire burned on a hearth that hadn’t been swept. Aisa and Talfi, however, looked about in awe, and Danr wondered if they saw the same room he did.

  A door banged open, and Earl Hunin strode into the room with two guards close on his heels. Behind them came little Rudin, White Halli’s son. More guilt lumped in Danr’s throat at the sight of the boy. Rudin would live without a father in his life because of Danr.

  Behind Rudin came Hunin’s brother, the priest, still robed in his vestments of half black and half white. He carried his stick, and Danr was reminded of Bund’s cane.

  However, Danr’s main attention went to Earl Hunin. The man was different, even to Danr’s normal eye. At the trial, he had seemed tired and unhappy. Now he moved with purpose and power. His white-blond hair, so like his son’s, gleamed in the firelight, and his very presence pressed against the walls and beams. On his left hand he wore a ring of black iron, a sign of mourning. Hunin apparently had decided to act as if his son had died. A bad sign.

  “So it’s true.” Hunin’s face was red and he was clearly trying to keep his ire in check. Danr found himself feeling small and wanting to flinch. “The exile Stane who destroyed my son has the audacity to enter my keep and demand an audience.”

  “My lord.” Danr wasn’t sure if he was supposed to bow or not. He was a prince now, and didn’t a prince outrank an earl? Still, he had nothing to gain by making the man angrier than he already was. So Danr bowed, and he felt Hunin’s anger heavy on his back. “I’ve returned. Not as an exile, but as a prince of the Stane. And an emissary. I am … I’m …”

  Danr floundered. He should be using language that sang, words that rang off the walls, demands that made the trees pay attention. His voice should thunder in the mountains. But none of those things happened. He wasn’t worth any of that.

  You’re nothing but a farmer’s … a farmer’s …

  He paused again. He couldn’t complete the thought—that he was a mere farmer’s thrall. Was it true that a truth-teller couldn’t even lie to himself?

  “All right, listen,” he said. The words tumbled out, hard and cold as truth. “I’m here on behalf of Queen Vesha of the Stane. They’re as desperate as a hundred cats in a washtub, and they’ve figured out how to claw their way out from under the mountain. In a few weeks, the doors will open and an entire countryful of dwarves and giants and trolls will boil out. The Fae will become upset about that, and you know they’ll declare war. You also know that Balsia stands between the Stane and the Fae, and the Fae won’t give a pile of pig shit that all these Kin are in their way. Queen Vesha”—he touched the gold torc at his throat—“is offering an alliance with you and any other humans who want in.”

  “Huh,” Talfi said.

  “That was … forthright,” Aisa murmured.

  “My mother had the same problem,” Danr murmured back. “The truth is never pretty.”

  “You crushed my son,” Hunin said in a voice as cold and sharp as a snowflake, “and only the prospect of war with the Stane kept me from taking your head.”

  Danr ducked his head beneath a stab of guilt, but at least Hunin hadn’t asked a direct question, so Danr could make a more careful answer. “I did hurt your son. You’re also the earl, and by now you must have heard a lot of stories about what really happened that day. You know what led up to the fight, and you know that I hurt Halli to stop him from killing someone else unfairly. I wish I could have done everything differently, and that’s the truth. But now we have something bigger to worry about. An avalanche of the Stane are coming with Queen Vesha at the head. You need to decide whether you and your army want to join it or stand in its way.”

  “Words.” Hunin’s voice remained cold, and he gestured with his black iron ring. “How do I know these words that float in the air before me are true? How do I know the worthless exile isn’t lying to save his own worthless skin?”

  He had asked a direct question, and Danr had to answer. “I’ve been made into a truth-teller just like my mother, my lord, and I can’t lie any more than you can bear to tell your brother here that you still feel guilty about those things the two of you used to do together in the stables when you were boys.”

  Here both Hunin and the priest flushed identical shades of angry red. Danr winced internally and hurried on. “You know I wouldn’t come back to face my own death over a lie. I have nothing to gain. Not only that, but I wear the queen’s torc, and I bring you the queen’s treasure.”

  With a desperate prayer to the Bird King, Olar, that Vesha wasn’t having some awful joke at his expense, Danr took the carved stone box from his sack, set it on the table, and opened it.

  It was empty. Danr’s heart sank.

  “Is this meant to be an insult?” Hunin demanded, still upset over the stable remark.

  “No.” Danr studied the box, trying to force his thoughts into some kind of speed. He wished for Talfi’s quick mind or Aisa’s quick tongue, but he had neither. Perhaps the box itself was the gift? No. Mere stone and iron, no matter how prettily carved, didn’t rate a gift to a future king.

  Aisa leaned over for a better look, and her shadow fell across the box. Shadow. The carvings on the box reminded Danr of the shadowy patterns Bund had woven for the Twist. And then he had it.

  “For you, my lord,” he said, and plunged his hand into the box. On his hand and wrist, he felt a strange wrench, exactly like the one he had felt when Bund shoved him into the Twist—the box was a Twist put into solid form. Then he touched something cool and smooth. Danr yanked out his hand and a gleaming pile of gold and silver coins clattered on the wood. Talfi and Aisa gave identical gasps. Danr himself was mightily impressed. The pile made the little jar of silver Alfgeir had handed over look moth-eaten and poor. The box itself was no less impressive. It was Twisting Danr’s hand into some sort of treasure vault back under the mountain. Danr wondered if he had snatched something at random or if Vesha had chosen the coins in advance for effect. Hunin, however, remained impassive. Danr decided to see what would happen if he tried again.

  “And more!” He plunged his hand into the box and came up with a pair of goblets made of beaten gold and set with sea green emeralds. The handles of each were formed into breathtaking figures of Fell and Belinna, the gods of love and beauty, harvest and war. Danr had never seen anything so rich or beautiful in his life.

  “Those look nice,” said Rudin. “I want to drink from one.”

  Hunin looked more interested, but not entirely won over.

  “The Stane offer gifts of friendship to the earl.” Danr reached into the box a third time and pulled forth a human skull. It had been gilded, and the gold shone like fire. Jewels encrusted it—glowing diamonds lined the eye sockets, red rubies made scarlet stubble on the jaw, pale pearls fitted across each tooth, purple amethyst rounded the ears. It was enormously heavy, and Danr almost dropped it at the unexpected weight.

  Before Hunin could react, the priest rushed forward, black and white robes rustling. His face showed utter shock. “Bal himself,” he whispered in a trembling voice. He placed both hands on the table on either side of the skull and kissed the top. “His skull has been lost since the Sundering. It’s said he walked with the Fates, Nu, Ta, and Pendra, themselves.”

  “The Fates weren’t kind to him if they allowed that to
happen to his skull,” Aisa murmured.

  For once, Danr recovered quickly. “Now it has returned. As a gesture of goodwill from the Stane.”

  Hunin finally looked impressed, but still wary.

  The priest straightened and gave Danr a serious look, apparently for the first time. “You must tell me. Are the draugr plaguing the Stane as well as the Kin?”

  Danr couldn’t lie. “Of course they are.”

  “What do the Stane know of it?”

  He tried to hold the words back but found he couldn’t. “The Stane are the cause. They’ve chained Death herself and are draining power from the draugr to open doors under the mountain.”

  Behind him, he heard Talfi draw in a breath, a sound echoed by the priest. Rudin fiddled with the buttons on his cloak.

  “Why would they do that?” the priest asked.

  “They need to escape from under the mountain at any price,” Danr said in truth.

  Hunin went white, and Danr wanted to run away from such anger. “This is … an abomination! The Stane are feeding off the dead. No amount of gifting can—”

  Danr tried to reverse the damage with more truth. “It’s the only way out for them—for us—my lord. The Fae have imprisoned the Stane underground, just like they’ve enslaved the Kin. If we do nothing, we’ll starve in less than a year. We want to end the Fae threat. If you help us, the threat will end faster. The Fae slavers will stop coming sooner, Death will be released sooner, everything will end sooner.”

  Hunin’s lips were tight. “Balsia and the Kin have been fractured for centuries. I have an army of my own, drawn from many places in Balsia, and I am swelling our ranks more and more. We have strength, we have power, we have ourselves. The Kin will take our rightful place in the world, whether the Stane and the Fae wish it or not.”

  His voice echoed off the ceiling and walls and the table, thundered against Danr’s bones, and Danr understood now what Filo meant when he said even the stones listened to Hunin speak. Talfi and Aisa were staring, rapt. It was frightening. Danr closed his right eye, expecting to see some kind of magic or perhaps a hollow shell of speeches and an emptiness inside. Instead Hunin’s own power slapped him hard. His son’s permanent injury at the hands of a Stane had created a change in him, given him a desire—a need—to change the rest of the world. In Danr’s eye, Hunin had become a great sword, one that could cut in either of two directions.

  “What do you intend, my lord?” Danr asked.

  “I will unite Balsia under a single king,” Hunin thundered. “We will throw off the yoke of the Fae.”

  “Then let us help you,” Danr said.

  Hunin leaned toward him, and it took all Danr’s will not to lean back. “A Stane. Destroyed. My. Son.”

  “I’m Kin, too,” Danr replied quietly. “Can you blame all Kin for my actions, too? A king—a true king—should put aside his own problems and think of what’s best for all his people.”

  “The half-blood has a point, Hunin,” said the priest in a gentle tone Danr hadn’t heard from him before. “We have strength, the Stane have wealth. Perhaps we should combine the two.”

  Danr held his breath and closed his right eye. Through his left, he saw Hunin perched on an edge. He could go in either of two directions. And then he tipped, just a little, toward Danr. Danr’s heart beat fast. Hunin opened his mouth to speak—

  —and Rudin interrupted. “Is this the troll who hurt Papa? I miss him. I’m scared he’ll die and the trolls will eat his ghost.”

  At the sound of his grandson’s voice, Hunin tipped back again. His face went hard, and he touched the black iron on his finger. Danr knew he had decided against him, would never, ever side with him, but didn’t want to say so just yet.

  “Indeed,” Hunin said. “Dark Emissary, you will have my answer after I have had time to consider. My headman will show you where to sleep.”

  He had lost. Cursing silently, Danr made a rough bow and withdrew from the hall. The headman, a short man who ran toward plump, met them in the foyer and with few words showed them to a room with a table, a pair of benches for beds, and even a window. A brass brazier provided heat. When the headman had shut the door, Danr leaned against the stone wall and blew out a hard breath. “Shit.”

  “Do princes swear?” Aisa asked beside him.

  “This one does.”

  “It didn’t go too bad,” Talfi pointed out. “He didn’t say no.”

  “He won’t say yes. Not ever. I saw it.” Danr paced the small stone floor. A candle burned on the table, and Filo lit a second. “Damn it! We were so close! It makes no sense that he’d say no.”

  “Emotion,” said Aisa, “rarely makes sense.”

  “It was his grandson,” Danr sighed. “The earl was ready to side with us until Rudin spoke up. A few wrong words from a child are going to create a war.”

  “Humans against Stane,” Talfi mused. “Won’t the fight be one-sided? The Stane can’t even fight in daylight.”

  “But at night, they’ll rip the Kin to pieces. You didn’t see how many Stane were down there, or how big those giants were,” Danr said. “If the Stane come out and the Kin aren’t already their friends, it’ll be really, really bad.”

  “Why do you care so much?” Talfi asked suddenly. “We humans weren’t very good to you. It seems like you’d join the Stane.”

  “Do you want me to?” Danr asked.

  “I’m just wondering. I mean, you could just walk away. That torc around your neck and the treasure in that box would set you forever. Why not do it?”

  Suddenly Danr had had enough. Enough poking and prodding. Enough questions and demands. Enough curiosity and stares. Angry words piled up and burst. “Because I’m not a monster!” he snarled. “Because someone in this whole Vik-shit of a world has to do the right thing for once! Because I learned that people like Orvandel and Aisa and you, Talfi, are worth more than a pretty piece of metal!” He pulled the torc off his neck and flung it away. It clattered and clanged. He turned his back on them then, not wanting them to see the unexpected tears that welled in his eyes.

  A long moment of silence followed. Then a wrapped hand touched his shoulder. Aisa. “There is more to it, my Hamzu. If you were only worried about me and Orvandel and Talfi, you would simply warn us so we could flee.”

  “It’s not … it’s … not …” The falsehood, the lie that it was nothing, wouldn’t come. He hardened his jaw in an effort not to speak and swiped at his eyes instead. The rough stone wall rose hard before him.

  “Only secrets have power,” Aisa said softly. “When you say things aloud, you vanquish them. Tell us, your friends, and become strong.”

  Secrets bubbled black and powerful inside him. He didn’t want to vomit them out. The taste would be more than he could bear. But Aisa’s careful, patient presence pulled them forth. He stared down at his hands. “I destroyed him, Aisa. I let the monster out and I took his life. He’s not dead, but he may as well be. I heard his bones break, I felt his blood on my skin, I heard him scream. And I liked it. I wanted him to die. Hunin and Rudin used to have a son and a father. Now they have nothing but a sack of meat. It’s all my fault.”

  “It isn’t,” Aisa said. “If you hadn’t done exactly what you did, I would be dead and my draugr would be haunting that road. And you had nothing to do with Death’s chain.”

  “I know that in my head. But not here.” He touched his heart. “So. At the very least I can balance out what I did to White Halli. Either I can help end the upcoming war sooner so the Stane can release Death, or I can find the Iron Axe and cut Death’s chains. Then I’ll be free of White Halli. And maybe … maybe I can find a real home.”

  Another pause. Then Aisa’s hand tightened on his arm. “I am sorry, Hamzu.”

  “For what?”

  “I was a … poor friend on the road. I said I didn’t feel guilt, and that was cruel of me. I should have understood what you were saying.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Aisa. Never be sorry.” He wanted to e
mbrace her, hold her close, but the memory of her fear held him in check. Instead he forced a small smile. “Now you know why I’m forging this alliance. And why I have to find the Axe.”

  “Er … my lord?” It was Filo. He held out Danr’s torc before him. “May I say something?”

  “Oh.” Danr had all but forgotten the young man was there. That was a little embarrassing. He took the torc back and bent it around his neck. “What are you thinking, Filo?”

  “You wanted information, my lord?”

  Danr came alert and turned to him, as did Aisa and Talfi. Filo shifted, now uneasy at being the center of attention. He licked his lips and glanced around, as if the earl might leap through a wall at him.

  “Filo,” Danr said, a little surprised at how easily he was taking up authority, “just spit it out.”

  He coughed. “Not long after your trial, a number of riders galloped out of Skyford. I wasn’t on duty that day, but my friend Munor was. He said he heard they were headed for Xaron. A delegation to talk to the orcs.”

  Aisa and Talfi traded looks. “Why would Hunin send men to the orcs?” Talfi said.

  The news came with a weight. Danr sat heavily on one of the table benches. It creaked beneath him. “To negotiate an alliance with them.”

  “If the orcs ally with Hunin and his army,” Aisa said, “the earl has no need to join the Stane. He will happily fight against them instead.”

  “Why isn’t he just joining with the Stane right now?” Talfi said. “The Stane are powerful and united and ready to welcome him as an ally. I’m not a king or an earl, but it seems stupid to turn down an offer like that.”

  “I don’t know,” Danr said. “Every time it looked like he was ready to accept it, something happened to tip him back. He’s angry enough at the Stane—at me—to raise an army and start a war. Maybe his plan is to ally himself with the orcs and the merfolk, destroy the Stane, and use the plunder to attack the Fae. The Stane are still a little weak, and he might be able to do it, if he has enough friends.”