Sword of Doom

by James Jennewein

  Catching an urgent look from Dvalin, Lut knelt on the floor and drew out his leather runebag. He opened it and let the rune pieces fall into his lap. Each piece was a small, flat tablet made of bone the size of a large coin, with a single runic letter inscribed on one side. Cupping the runebones in his hands, Lut closed his eyes, going to a place deep inside himself where the tortured cries of the queen could not be heard. He began to chant the names of his forefathers, beseeching the gods for guidance, and then he threw the runes in the air, and down they came, dropping plink, plink, plink to the stone floor.

  Saying a silent prayer of his own, Lut opened his eyes. Some of the pieces had landed rune side up, the rest blank side up. In the dim firelight Lut peered at the runes, quietly interpreting the message.

  What he saw was baffling. He could not explain it. The king demanded an answer.

  “So? Which is it, seer? Male or female?”

  Lut could only stare at the runebones in a growing panic. The gods had certainly picked a fine time to play games. The truth lies in opposites. What on Odin’s green earth did that mean? All he had asked was a simple question: male or female? And the gods gave him this! He wracked his mind, desperate for a clue, some shred of illumination. But no, they had to confound him with puzzles about opposites. He suddenly wished he’d never become a seer at all. A shipbuilder. A cheese maker. Even a dung merchant. These were far more reliable trades. Why hadn’t he listened to his mother and taken over his father’s tannery? Sure, the odors were off-putting and the work laborious, but the hours were good and the pay reliable. No! He had to become a soothsayer. A wise man. The one everybody else looked to for answers to all their problems. What had that gotten him? Nothing but hassles and heartache—and women, he realized. Lots and lots of lonely women. So maybe it hadn’t been so bad after all.

  It suddenly came to him. He understood. Of course! The answer was so obvious. Why had he not seen it before? He jumped up and hurried to the queen, barking out orders to her attendants and the midwife, now knowing what he had to do. In his many years as village healer he had brought scores of babies into the world. He had even assisted birthing some of the very same kind he now faced.

  “Seer!” said Lord Dvalin. “Your answer!”

  Without looking up from what he was doing, Lut calmly told the troll ruler to be quiet and stay out of the way. The problem, he told him, wasn’t the “baby” refusing to be born, but rather the “babies.” It was twins, and they were competing to be first to enter the world.

  “But—but—” Dvalin sputtered. “My wife?”

  “She’ll be just fine if you get out of the way!”

  Lord Dvalin blanched, not used to being spoken to so rudely. But his own wife, Queen Veshlah, lifted her head from her pillow and said, “Leave him alone—he knows what he’s doing.” And Dvalin did as he was told.

  With gentle sureness, Lut made a few adjustments in the birth canal, and sure enough, a short time later out came a squalling baby troll….

  “A female,” said Lut, holding the bawling infant aloft and handing her to an attendant. And moments later, her equally loud and squirming baby brother appeared, wet, pink, and hairy. It was a boy and a girl. The opposites told of by the runes. The infants were wrapped in swaddling cloth and presented to the mother, and everyone oohed and aahed about how cute and adorable they were. Lut thought that the infants were about as cute and adorable as newborn mole rats, but he wisely kept this sentiment to himself.

  But no one looked happier than Lord Dvalin himself. When his wife raised up her twins and laid them in his arms, and the troll lord gazed down into their pink, wrinkled faces, Lut saw Dvalin light up with a look of such love, it filled Lut with a warmth he knew to be the love he felt for every living thing, whether it be the world’s tiniest insect or the world’s biggest troll.

  Lord Dvalin came and started to hug him, but Lut being so tall and the troll lord being so short, the troll kept hugging Lut’s leg, and Lut was made a bit uncomfortable by this and finally asked Dvalin to stop.

  “Thank you, seer, thank you,” said the Lord of the Trolls. “How can I ever repay you?”

  “Well,” said Lut, “just off the top of my head, a couple things do come to mind.”

  When he put the torchlight to Fulnir’s face, Dane flinched at the sight of him. Covered with dark bristles of hair, Fulnir had ceased to look like Fulnir. With his glazed-over eyes, his heavy, open-mouthed breathing, and his gray-mottled skin, Fulnir had begun to look positively feral. As Dane forced himself to look down at his friend—or the creature that used to be his friend—he still could not bring himself to act. He had brought out his knife but was unable to use it. All Dane could think of were the times Fulnir had saved his own life, and it felt terribly wrong to now be ending his.

  It was then that he heard Drott say, “Stand aside.” Turning, he saw Drott beside him, tears streaming down his face, now holding a heavy rock that had fallen into the pit, gathering the will to do the most awful thing he ever could imagine. Dane stepped aside. Drott crossed the pit floor to where their friend lay. Drott said something to Fulnir that Dane couldn’t hear. Drott raised the rock to crush Fulnir’s skull, Dane closed his eyes, unable to watch, and then a voice rang out. “Stop!”

  With great relief Dane opened his eyes to see that it was Lut calling from the rim of the pit above, saying that he might have a cure. Moments later Lut was lowered into the pit, and from out of his cloak he produced a sheep’s bladder filled with what he breathlessly explained was a wulfdrekka, a folk-remedy concoction of various herbs and spices used by the trollfolk to ward off the symptoms of the wulf-bite sickness. The troll lord, he said, had given Lut a batch of it as a thank-you for having birthed his wife’s babies.

  Lut came and looked at Fulnir, alarmed at how far the sickness had progressed.

  “Will it work?” Dane asked.

  “We have to try,” Drott said, still shaken.

  Lut nodded. “Yes, we will try.”

  Dane and the others helped hold Fulnir down while Lut forced the foul-smelling liquid down his throat. He growled and snapped, but they managed to get most of it down him, and in a matter of moments he fell into a deep, undisturbed sleep, and for the first time Dane actually began to feel hopeful. And then he heard the voice of Dvalin calling down to them.

  “I have decided to spare you!”

  Fulnir, still fettered to the log, was lifted out of the pit by the troll lord’s guards. With an enthusiasm bordering on giddiness, all the others climbed up a rope ladder the trolls lowered for them, Dane being the last out of the pit. And the first thing he asked Dvalin, after congratulating him on his new twin arrivals, was where they could find buckets and water.

  The troll lord gave him a look and asked why. Dane said that, to try to save Thrym’s life, they would need to pour large amounts of cold water on his body; the water would freeze and recrystallize his icy form.

  “But there’s no time for that, son,” said Dvalin, explaining that Greb and his soldiers were sleeping off their night of drinking. “Soon they’ll be awake and be coming to kill you all, and there’ll be nothing I can do.”

  “But Thrym is my friend,” said Dane, and he said it with such a firmness of feeling, the troll lord realized that the humans could not be persuaded to leave their frost giant.

  “You realize I’m committing treason by aiding a frost giant,” Dvalin complained.

  “But as leader of the trolls,” said Drott, “couldn’t you just pardon yourself?”

  Dvalin mulled this over and clapped Drott on the shoulder, proclaiming, “This is truly a wise man.” He then ordered his guards to show Dane and the others to the village well.

  The guards and even their ruler pitched in, and a bucket brigade was formed from the well to the pit. Water was passed from troll to human and vice versa until at the pit edge, the buckets were upended and water rained down upon Thrym. The life-restoring liquid immediately froze to him, and astoundingly, his body began to gain
back the ice that had been melted and hacked away.

  While he worked, Dane saw Jarl in the water line, taking buckets from one troll guard and handing them to another. Jarl wore a grimace, Dane wondering if it was due to the hard work or the distasteful idea that he was touching something trolls touched. Regardless, Jarl labored without complaint, and Dane thought if ever there was a picture that proved enemies could put aside their hatreds and work together, this was it.

  But it was not to last.

  A loud war cry pierced the air, and everyone turned to see Commander Greb leading hundreds of troll soldiers across the meadow toward them. A squad of soldiers pushed a wagon full of flaming logs—and Dane realized they meant to dump the burning cart into the pit on top of Thrym.

  Dane shouted, “Put out the fire!” and ran to intercept the cart, his only weapon the bucket of water in his hand. Drott and Ulf followed Dane’s lead, and then everyone, the troll lord and his guards included, dashed with water buckets toward the onrushing cart.

  Commander Greb tried to cut Dane down with his sword, but Dane used the bucket as a shield, ramming into Greb’s chain-mail-covered chest, knocking him into the path of the oncoming cart. The soldiers pushing from behind saw this and swerved the cart; it tipped over, accidentally spilling its contents onto their fallen commander, who was trapped under the burning logs. Greb screamed in panic. Dane did the only thing he could do. He threw his water onto the flames. Those behind Dane charged in, too, emptying the contents of their buckets, and in moments the flames were doused enough for the soldiers to pull their singed commander out from under the logs.

  Greb lay in the grass, the tunic under his chain mail still smoking. But he was alive—saved, in part, by the very humans he despised. Greb got to his feet, brushing himself off and clearing his throat, looking particularly subdued. At last, Dane thought, he has seen the error of his ways and is about to tell us that just because humans had hurt them in the past didn’t mean all humans were out to do them harm.

  “Kill the humans!” Greb screamed instead. Weapons raised, the soldiers rushed at Dane and the others—until Lord Dvalin stepped in their path, ordering them to stop. “You don’t command my soldiers,” Greb raged at his master. Again he ordered his soldiers to attack, but with their ruler in their way, they hesitated. Dane was wondering how long this test of wills would last, when a horse galloped into their midst, forcing the soldiers to scatter.

  Astrid reined her horse to a stop and shouted to all, “We have returned with the magic of the gods!” Kára’s mount trotted up, pulling a small sled that carried something covered with fresh-cut pine boughs. “You have heard how the Hammer of Thor fell to earth outside our village—and how a mighty wind returned it to the heavens,” Astrid said. “This sacred tool of the gods was made in ancient times by your very ancestors, is that true, Lord Dvalin?”

  “It is true. It took my people two hundred years to forge the Hammer itself. The largest tree on earth was honed to serve as its handle.”

  “When the Hammer fell to earth,” Astrid said, “a sliver of its handle chipped away. Our cart, which carried the relic, was too large to pass between your trees. So we went back and retrieved it.” Astrid nodded to Kára, who removed the pine boughs to reveal a sliver of ancient wood, six feet long, that convincingly looked as if it had come from Thor’s Hammer. “Thor himself touched this wood! His almighty hands grasped its surface! And he who possesses this possesses the power and favor of the gods!”

  Dane saw that Dvalin and the troll soldiers were staring in awe at the fake relic. He would learn later that Astrid and Kára had spent hours singeing and rubbing dirt into the wood grain to make it appear ancient, and surprisingly Kára had not worried for a moment about breaking a nail.

  “Lord Dvalin, please accept this gift from us, so it may reacquaint your people with the greatness of your past and, we hope, lead you all to a proud and powerful future,” Astrid said.

  Tears streamed down the faces of the trolls, and Lord Dvalin especially wept copiously as they went on their knees before the supposed relic, touching its surface with their tiny, gnarled hands. All were swept up by the emotion of the moment—all save Greb, who was fuming that a piece of wood had usurped his command.

  “How do we even know it’s real?” he asked. “It could all be a pack of lies!”

  Lut stepped forward and said with the deep, mystical tones of a wise man, “Only those who believe will share in its power.” Greb thought about how he could argue with that. He gave up, kicked the ground, and stalked away.

  Dane smiled to himself, marveling at Lut’s sagacity. Later Lut told him it didn’t matter that the relic was a fake—if the trolls believed in it, if it helped them reconnect with the glories of their past and gave them strength and hope for the future, what was the harm? “Besides,” Lut said, “think what neighboring trolls will pay to come and touch the relic. Faith is all-powerful, doubly so if it brings in revenue.” This was the kind of wisdom you can’t argue with.

  24

  THE RUNE SWORD SINGS

  Astrid’s heart was soaring as they moved over the treetops toward the ice cliffs. Thrym was alive and well, and they were riding him again!

  The water from the troll well had stirred him back to life, refreezing over the melted holes in his arms, legs, and chest, recrystallizing, and restoring him to health. How thrilled she had been, when Thrym had first come climbing out of the pit, to see the smooth solidity of his broad chest and limbs, to see him walking and talking once more.

  Many of the trollfolk had cowered in fear as lambs before a wolf when they saw him again towering over them. But to put them at ease and assure them of his friendship, he had gone down on his knees, bowing before Lord Dvalin—even in this position, he still dwarfed Dvalin—and in his deep and sonorous voice Thrym solemnly promised he would go to Utgard and end the brutal war on their kind, as a gesture of peace and goodwill.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” Dvalin said, “could you also return the trolls taken prisoner?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Dane, catching a look from Thrym. “We’ll do all we can to free the captives.”

  And then Dane heard Jarl mutter, a little too loudly, “Free dung-hearted trolls? What next? We give them piggyback rides?”

  Thrym had swung his head round and aimed an icy look at Jarl, and it had amused Astrid to see how swiftly it had chased away Jarl’s unfeeling attitude.

  There was still the question of what to do with Klint the raven. Their trek would take them into the windswept, frigid wastes where only men of ice could survive for long. Klint had barely survived being frozen once on this trip, so Dane decided that his friend should stay where the climate was more hospitable to feathered creatures. Astrid thought the bird would follow them anyway, such was Klint’s devotion to Dane. But as they had departed the village to much fanfare—the brooding Commander Greb and his top lieutenants conspicuously absent from the cheering send-off—Astrid heard Klint’s caw! caw! coming from high in the forest treetops. There she saw the bird perched cozily next to another shiny black raven—a female, she suspected. It seemed Klint had found a friend and was enjoying her hospitality already. He called out again, a jocular squawk that to Astrid sounded as if he were saying, “Farewell! Have fun freezing your faces off!”

  Thrym leading the way, the party followed the wide path torn through the troll forest by the attacking frost giants. Since they were short on horses, Astrid, Drott, and William rode in the rope harness slung round Thrym’s neck, along with the still-trussed Fulnir, who, groggy from the potion, had yet to have any more fits. The coarse wolf hairs that had sprouted on Fulnir’s face were now falling out, and his fangs, which had lengthened to twice their normal size, were receding back into his gums.

  “Look at you, almost human again!” Drott gushed. “We were about to start calling you Fulnir the Furry.” Drott plucked at a few bristles on his friend’s face, and this brought a loud growl from Fulnir. “Uh-oh—he’s still got a w
ay to go,” Drott cautioned.

  “That was my own hair you just yanked out, clotpole!” Fulnir cried.

  “See?” Drott said to Astrid and William. “He is almost human! He sounds just like Fulny again!” This good news was relayed down, bringing cheers from everyone.

  “What was it like being a wolf?” William asked.

  “Did you want to sniff people’s butts?” Drott asked.

  “No! Well…yes,” Fulnir admitted. “But I fought it.”

  “Which urge was strongest?” Drott asked. “The desire to sniff someone’s rear or tear their thoat out?”

  “Well, usually the throat,” Fulnir replied, “but a couple of you had particularly strong scents, and I think it best, for your own sakes, that I not answer any further.”

  “That,” said Dane, “is most wise.”

  Before long, all his wolfen hair had fallen out and Fulnir seemed back to his old malodorous self. He was untied, and Astrid delighted in seeing her two friends laughing and joking again. Her spirits were lifted, but only for a moment, for the sun-white ice walls of Utgard far in the distance reminded her of the perilous task ahead. They were venturing to a place few humans had ever visited—and from which even fewer had ever returned. Worse, they were going when the giants and trolls were at war.

  “How did the war with the trolls ever start in the first place?” asked Astrid.

  “Trolls made Thor’s Hammer, the Hammer killed giants. So the giants made war on the trolls,” Thrym said.