by Matt Larkin
Starkad’s frown only deepened. The Aesir lived without the mists because of the World Tree, not any power of their own. Some of them might’ve been immortal, but he’d not have preferred to think of them as gods. Maybe least of all since he’d lost his chance at immortality among them.
They were men and women, arrogant ones. But he could not deny they had powers, strange gifts. Odin especially. Starkad’s dreams had been plagued with cryptic visions of Miklagard ever since they left Kaunos. He’d seen the city in his mind before they got here. Worse, then, to arrive and find it matched his visions. Such made it hard to dismiss his dreams.
Odin was fucking with him again. Or … warning him.
It wasn’t words with the Ás though. Naught so explicit nor useful. No, Odin had to keep up his mysteries. So he taunted Starkad with shadows, with the hint that something ancient dwelled in Miklagard. Something even Odin didn’t fully understand … and maybe feared. That alone was enough to give a man pause. Odin, who’d faced Niflung sorcerers and the Vanir and linnorms and who knew what else, seemed apprehensive of this place.
Had Odin sent Starkad here? Starkad had thought his own choices had brought him, but as long as Odin kept messing with his dreams, how could he be sure? Maybe it didn’t matter overmuch though. He was here now.
“As best we can surmise so far,” Win said, “twelve Patriarchs rule Miklagard. They alone claim to have seen the emperor. If we assume for the moment this emperor exists, his sole province appears to be preventing outright war between the Patriarchs, and only just, at that.”
Baruch nodded. “The Patriarchs themselves aren’t seen much either, for that matter. Tanna is one of them, though. Each Patriarch is responsible for a district in the city as well as a prefecture of the empire at large.”
“Pre-what now?” Höfund grumbled.
“The largest divisions of the empire,” Baruch answered. “Kaunos is in Tanna’s prefecture.”
“So,” Hervor said. “Which district of the city does he rule?”
Baruch shrugged.
Now the shieldmaiden pulled away from Starkad’s back to stare at the Miklagardian. “You don’t know ?”
“I had seven, maybe eight winters when I was taken into slavery and sent to work farms around Kaunos. And before that, I didn’t spend my time mingling with the lords of the city. I spent it begging, scrounging, and stealing just enough food to avoid starving to death. I spent it running from shopkeepers and guards. And sometimes getting caught. Being forced to …” Baruch grimaced, then spat into the fire.
Fjolvor scooted closer and put her arm around her husband. She never said much, really. Baruch leaned against her, glowering.
“Not so happy to be back here, then?” Afrid asked.
“No. ”
“Something is wrong with this city,” Vebiorg said, still not drawing back inside the window.
Baruch scoffed. “A great many things are wrong with any settlement so large. Shoved into tight confines, humans become more like animals.”
That did get Vebiorg looking at him, head cocked sideways.
If Baruch appreciated the irony of talking to a varulf about men acting like animals, he gave no sign of it.
Starkad cleared his throat. “So what we need is more information. We’ll sleep here tonight and use the morning to scout the city. The nine of us together might attract too much attention, so we’ll go in two groups. I’ll lead one and Hervor will lead the other.”
Win bristled. “As a prince of Holmgard—”
“As a member of the crew you’ll do what I godsdamned tell you to. Rollaugr hired me to lead this quest. If you could’ve done it on your own, you would’ve. You’ll go with Hervor, Höfund, Tveggi, and Vebiorg. Learn whatever you can.” Starkad looked to Baruch. “You’re with me. Fjolvor and Stonekicker too.”
The prince scowled at him, then rose and stomped over to where Vebiorg stood at the window. The two of them began whispering to one another. No doubt whining about Starkad. He couldn’t say as he much cared.
Hervor leaned in close to his ear. “I appreciate the honor of command, but I might’ve preferred to stay by your side.”
“I need someone I can trust to watch over the others. Win’s got too much pride and Vebiorg is like to be driven by her nature.”
“Huh. Suppose so. Listen.” She rubbed his arm. “When this is done … We still need to talk. Think about where we’re going from here. ”
“Wherever the next adventure is.”
She groaned. “You jest? We’ll be rich after this. Surely it’s enough for you?”
He shook his head. “You know it doesn’t work that way for me. And I’m not having this conversation again. Get some sleep. The sooner we finish this, the sooner we can leave Miklagard.”
Hervor grimaced, mumbled something under her breath, and crawled as far away as the narrow confines allowed.
Starkad shut his eyes. They’d taken oaths to stay by each other’s side in all their journeys. But she’d known who he was back then. Known well his curse would never let him rest nor hold wealth.
No peace. No children.
Just the road. And them.
And for a little while, he dared to believe that might be enough for her.
3
W hatever Starkad had said about placing Hervor in charge of a team, it sure as fuck seemed he just wanted to push her away. After all they’d been through, still he couldn’t open up about what went on inside his head. No, but she could harbor a guess.
Bastard.
Never listened to her. Not really.
Höfund tromped along beside her as she strolled the market, drawing stares everywhere they went. “Something I been meaning to talk with you on. Ain’t had much chance, really.” He glanced back at where Vebiorg was trailing behind them, probably not out of earshot given her nature, but maybe Höfund didn’t know that.
Win and Tveggi were across the street, talking to a street vendor. The prince was not nigh so fluent in Miklagardian as Baruch, but better than the rest of them. Which wasn’t hard, really.
“See, the thing of it is,” Höfund said. “Right, well, best be out with it. A while back, I came to be thinking—”
“Focus on the reason we’re here. ”
“Oh. Uh, sure.”
Maybe it would’ve been best to have out with it. Tell him things would never go the way he wanted and he might as well look elsewhere. Except, the thought of seeing the big man’s grimace didn’t sit well with her. Besides, right now, she really did need him focused on the mission. Höfund was the strongest of their crew and she couldn’t well afford to lose his loyalty.
Win trudged over to where Hervor and the others had stopped. “None of the locals know exactly which lord rules which district. Apparently the lords don’t readily show themselves. Maybe they fear being murdered for their despotism. So they work through an interminable chain of intermediary officials.”
Hervor sighed. “You mean we’ve been wasting our time.”
“Perhaps not. There’s a primicerius’s office up the street, and, even if the official does not directly tie back to Tanna, he is more like to know of the lords than any common man.”
“A what’s office?” Höfund asked.
“A primicerius.”
Höfund chuckled. “Sounds like a beast what needs slaying. Got an office though. Ain’t heard that before.”
At least he still had his sense of humor. “What exactly is a primicerius?” Hervor asked.
Tveggi glanced around as if this was all some big secret. Hand on his sword hilt. Ever watchful of his prince.
“A primicerius,” Win said, “is a subordinate to a tribune. Nigh as I can tell, tribunes are officials who administer the city on behalf of the Patriarchs.”
All right … “I thought the Patriarchs ran it on behalf of this emperor?”
“Odin alone knows how many titles fall in this chain. What is of consequence here, though, is that this official receives plebeian inquiries directly. That is to sa
y, we can talk to him ourselves, this very day, assuming we’re willing to pay enough to push ahead of other claimants.”
Hervor didn’t bother asking what plebeians were. Not only was the city laid out in a maze, it was as if the inhabitants had worked their whole social structure into a twisted knot to mirror the landscape. “Just lead the way.”
As it turned out, “this very day” was used rather liberally. The primicerius’s office was practically drowning in people waiting to plead their cases. All of whom had probably laid down bribes to get ahead of the others. Which meant Hervor had been standing around for at least four hours before the man’s assistant even called them in.
Didn’t really leave her in a gracious mood.
Nor did the man’s sneer when he looked upon her and her crew. The pompous little shit sat behind a table laden with books, ink vials, and no less than a dozen coin purses. Plus some construction of beads that slid along a rod. A child’s toy?
“North Realmers,” the man said, in a grating accent. “What do you want?”
Hervor stifled her shock at hearing him speak—if you could call it that—her own tongue. “Where do we find Tanna?” she demanded.
“Diplomacy,” Win urged, motioning with his hands downward.
Hervor rolled her eyes. “Please … tell us where the fuck to find Tanna.”
Win groaned, rubbed his temples. “Primicerius. We’re lately out of Kaunos and have come in the hopes of establishing a mutually beneficial trade agreement for both our peoples. We need to arrange an audience with the Patriarch and thus require directions to his district.”
There was that sneer back on the Miklagardian’s face. Would it seem less obnoxious if she cut off his nose? Might soften his features a bit.
“The Patriarch does not see merchants himself.”
Win looked around a moment, then leaned on the table, pulling another jingling pouch from inside his shirt. “We’d be more than willing to plead our case to his immediate junior, if you could but direct us to the right place.”
The Miklagardian’s sneer eased, ever so slightly. Almost haltingly, he reached for the pouch, then drew it open to look inside.
“Tanna’s tower is nigh to the river, east side. Call upon the tribune there. Now, if that shall be all?”
Win motioned to Tveggi, who produced yet another pouch from inside his shirt and dropped it on the table. How much coin had the prince brought ? And did he intend to give it all away in bribes in their first two days in the city?
“So,” Win said, “supposing someone wanted to see the lord himself, how would that someone go about that?”
Huh. What exactly was the price for revealing information about one’s lord?
The official opened the second pouch as well, brow rising slightly. “Supposing that were the case, the person might find the Patriarch has a private palace, but spends most of his time in the tower. That he not only works there, but often lives there, in highest reaches, if stories hold true.”
Well, whatever the price, the wretched little man seemed more than willing to sell out his lord. Any oaths of loyalty he’d ever taken clearly meant troll shit to him. Hervor didn’t bother trying to keep the disgust from her face.
Shaking her head, she turned and left, trailed by the others.
Outside, Win turned about, orienting himself, before focusing on a spire rising above the city in the distance. While countless towers dotted the skyline, some seemed substantially larger and more elaborately decorated than others. Each a tower of a Patriarch? “It’s that one,” Win said.
More than a short jaunt from where they were staying, by Hervor’s estimate. “We need to let Starkad know before we do aught else.”
Hervor sat with her back to the wall, watching the door in their cramped apartment. Vebiorg was beside her, while Höfund and Win appeared caught up in stories about friends lost in the recent strikes against Miklagard. Tveggi was with them, though the old man mostly just nodded along rather than speaking.
“So,” Vebiorg said.
Hervor had almost wanted to move away when the varulf had slumped down beside her. Maybe she wanted the woman along for her strengths, but still. Didn’t mean she wanted the savage creature close at hand.
“So,” Hervor answered, not looking at the other woman.
“You’ve the scent of blood on you.”
“You can smell that?” Hervor had washed a good many times since last she’d slain anyone.
Vebiorg snorted. “More a sense of it. Plenty of shieldmaidens, they’ve fought, bled, killed. But some of us, we’ve seen more battles than others. Maybe too many. I get that sense from you. Strange, for one so young. How many winters have you seen?”
She hardly thought about it anymore. Her life had been chaos for so many … “Twenty-six now, I think. Counting this one just past.” And summer here was hot enough she almost missed the winter. “What of you?”
“Not sure. Forty, maybe.”
“Forty ? I’d not have taken you for even my age.”
Vebiorg shrugged. “My kind age more slowly. I can remember when the Vanir were still the gods. Later, I was fair young when Sigrlami was king. The uh … the pack died. The king took me as a slave. Used me to keep watch of his hall while he slept. Used me for … his desires sometimes. But he died, too, some few years later.”
Killed by Arngrim, Hervor’s grandfather. Hervor kept her face studiously expressionless.
“Rollaugr’s father took the throne, offered me freedom if I fought for him. Seemed a fair trade. Can’t say the other warriors ever took well to me, though. You ever have people look at you with fear, even when they’re your own allies?”
“Sure.” Hervor had rather cultivated such a reputation on purpose in her pirating days. “I used to dress as a man, figured it’d help to keep my enemies scared and my allies in line. That they’d take me more seriously and I’d be less like to need to draw a blade.”
“Why’d you stop?”
Hervor rocked her head gently against the wall. Honestly, she couldn’t even say exactly when she’d stopped trying to be Hervard. “The last time … I guess the last time was around when I met Höfund.”
“Wanted to be a woman for him?”
Hervor snorted and Vebiorg chuckled. “Let’s call it a coincidence. After that, I was in this place, this valley in Jotunheim.”
“Troll shit.”
“Swear on Odin’s almighty stones.”
“Uh, on what now?”
Hervor grinned. “Place was like a vision of Niflheim, ghosts included. Just me and Starkad there, and us trying to fend off the dead. And I just … I don’t know. By the time I made it out, I was kind of … tired.”
“Fighting the dead will do that, I hear.”
“No, I mean to say, I was tiring of the life I’d led before. I’d been a raider, a pirate, a … murderer, more than once. I’d fought draugar and finfolk and svartalfar.”
“And ghosts.”
“Yes.” Saying it all aloud, she couldn’t fathom how she wasn’t dead ten times over. Maybe that was the reason behind the supreme fatigue. “Maybe I didn’t … want to be the person I’d been up till then. A real bitch, actually.”
Vebiorg chuckled. “You’re talking to a female wolf, mind you.”
“You’re saying you’re not a bitch, then?”
“A right terror when I don’t get my night meal timely. Three things you never take from a wolf. Their food, their mate, or … their pack.”
One of which Vebiorg had already lost.
Hervor sighed. “I had some friends a few years back. Couple of other shieldmaidens. A pack of varulfur down in Skane killed one of them. Maybe the same pack that took down Gylfi.”
“Huh. That why Starkad hates me?”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“I can smell his loathing.”
Hervor turned to look at her more directly. Could she really? “Anyway, no, Starkad wasn’t even there when it happened. With him … a varulf ki
lled his mother.” One of the few bits of his past he’d actually shared with her, after his ordeal with the mara.
Vebiorg grunted. “Never been to Sviarland. Didn’t do either one of those things. And I didn’t choose to let the wolf inside me, either. Eightarms’s scorn grows tiresome.”
“He’s … complicated.”
“More complicated than a woman half possessed by a Moon spirit? Always losing control of my rage and lust? Torn between animal and human sides?”
Hervor ran that over in her mind. “Honestly? Maybe more complicated still.”
Vebiorg raised an eyebrow at that, but said naught more.
It was well into the afternoon before Starkad and his team returned. Baruch and Fjolvor slumped down by the crates, him seeming to try to comfort her. Woman was clearly miserable. Not that Hervor could much blame her. Miklagard was overcrowded, filthy, and corrupt. And Fjolvor hadn’t wanted to come before seeing all that.
The city beat Pohjola or many of the other far-flung places Hervor had visited, if only because no horrors of the Otherworlds were trying to kill her.
Win fell into explaining what they’d learned to Starkad and the others, with Starkad asking only the occasional questions.
Finally, their leader scratched his beard and looked around the room. “Any attempt to make a meeting with Tanna is like to fail. From what Win has said, the lord has underlings to handle his tasks. ”
“So we meet with one of those arse buckets,” Afrid said. “And when they start talking like donkeys, gut them and then search for Tanna.”
“Imbecile,” Tveggi mumbled.
“Sorry,” Afrid said. “I couldn’t make out your words over the sound of some old man farting.”
Baruch held up a hand to each of them, before either took it to blows. “Anyone working for Tanna is like to have numerous guards. Even if we overcame them—and they might not allow us weapons inside—we’d then have the tower alerted to our presence, searching for us. Total chaos.”
“Chaos is an opportunity,” Afrid offered.
