“What are you?” asked the voice again, echoing from the branches overhead and seeming even more disconnected from the skeletal beak.
Oddrún studied the skins draped over the monster’s chest and saw elongated human faces, mouthing pitiful silent pleas. “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered, as the monster launched itself at him.
Sigvald dropped to his knees and gasped in pain. There was no light inside the mound and every few feet he stumbled over a root and crashed to the ground, scraping a little more skin from his ragged wounds. The place was a warren of crudely carved tunnels and stinking, rotten meat. Every now and then he fell onto something wet and yielding and pulled his hands back with a grunt of disgust, glad of the darkness. The further he went, the more the soil was replaced by body parts and pools of blood, and the more hopeless his quest seemed. “How will I find anything in here?” he muttered, using his sword to feel his way through the shadows.
After a while, he felt the walls drop away on either side and realised he was in some kind of open space. The atmosphere felt a little less oppressive and his footfalls echoed around him, as though he had entered a vast cave. The smell here was worse than ever and after a few steps he realised why. In the centre of the chamber was a huge circle of corpses. He felt the touch of rigid fingers and cold, slippery skin and stumbled to a halt. He pursed his lips as he reached out to examine the flesh and bones. He realised that they had been piled together with branches and leaves to create a gruesome nest.
“Maybe the soul is at the centre of it?” he wondered aloud, unnerved by the flat, alien sound of his own voice. He hesitated as he considered his next move; then, holding one hand over his mouth and nose, he grabbed onto a femur and hauled himself up onto the bloody mass.
Thrashing its translucent wings, Bargau jammed its beak deep into Oddrún’s neck.
The pair tumbled back, with the creature’s head lodged under Oddrún’s chin.
Bargau wrenched its beak free, shaking its leafy neck and howling at the starless sky. It was so busy celebrating the ease of its kill that it did not notice that Oddrún was neither bleeding nor in pain.
As Oddrún climbed wearily to his feet he felt another branch snap and noticed again that the creature winced. As it rounded on him, he grabbed the gold casket from the ground and lurched off into the trees, with the monster close behind.
Sigvald slid wildly down the inside of the nest, ploughing through ruptured organs and crumbling bones. He kept his hand clamped over his face as he came to a halt at the centre of the huge, reeking bowl. “Where is it?” he muttered, patting the surrounding carnage with his hands. To his dismay, there was nothing but corpses, lashed together with bracken and moss. His fingers traced across dozens of leering faces and broken bones but found nothing that could be described as a receptacle. “Where is your soul?” he groaned, flopping back into the rotting meat. As he lay there, feeling cold blood running over his skin, something rankled at the back of his thoughts. He had the horrible feeling he was missing something obvious. He played Doctor Schliemann’s words over in his head. “Bargau is bound to this place,” he repeated, mimicking the doctor’s lifeless drone. “It’s the last sliver of his ancient world—a fragment of another time. He wouldn’t take his soul beyond the borders of this forest.”
At the word “forest”, Sigvald leapt to his feet. “Of course,” he cried.
Oddrún pulled his hood back into place and ran. Every few yards his disobedient limbs sent him sprawling across the mounds of dried leaves, but each time he fell, he pitched off in a new direction, always staying a few steps ahead of Bargau’s thrusting, skeletal head.
After several minutes of wild sprinting, the giant began to find that his odd, reeling stride actually gave him an advantage. He lurched and swooped around the branches with a drunken fluidity and gradually began to leave the creature behind. Bargau howled in frustration as his prey raced away from him with no sign of tiring.
The bizarre race continued like this for nearly twenty minutes and Oddrún’s lungs began to burn horribly. Just as he felt his knees beginning to buckle beneath him, the monster halted and tilted its head on one side.
Oddrún took the chance to rest for a moment, slumping gratefully against one of the trunks and looking back at Bargau’s strange behaviour.
The monster was spinning around and jabbing its long neck through the trees, emitting a ragged snorting noise. Then it turned its head up to the canopy of leaves overhead and let out a roar that was even more tormented than anything Oddrún had heard so far.
Abandoning its prey, the monster dashed off in another direction, shrieking as it went.
“Sigvald,” cried Oddrún, lurching after the strange creature. “He’s coming for you.” As he ran, Oddrún noticed an acrid tang in the air. “Fire?” he muttered. After a few more minutes there could be no doubt—pale tendrils of smoke were fingering their way through the dark trunks and pooling in the hollows. Oddrún felt a sudden tingle of hope.
They burst out into a large clearing and Bargau dropped to its knees in horror. There was a huge, silent bonfire, blazing up ahead of them. Already the flames had spread from the mound at the centre of the clearing and ignited dozens of the surrounding trees.
As Oddrún stumbled to a halt behind the creature, he watched the flames dancing and leaping between the branches, enveloping tree after tree.
Silhouetted in front of the blaze was Sigvald, dashing back and forth with a pair of flaming branches and jamming them into the carpet of dried leaves as he ran. “It struck a deal with the forest,” he cried, his face locked in a manic grin. “It bound its soul to the trees. The whole forest is the receptacle. That way, the trees knew Bargau would never leave—never betray them.”
At the sound of Sigvald’s voice, the creature lurched to its feet, but before it could approach him, another row of trees erupted, shaking the ground with a series of silent explosions. Bargau whirled around, unsure which way to turn as tree after tree was engulfed in flames. Finally, it made a decision and charged towards the blazing mound at the centre of the clearing, but before it could reach the opening, the whole structure began to collapse inwards, spouting a thick column of smoke as its roof slumped to the ground. Branches and bones span through the air, leaving trails of sparks in their wake and Bargau cried out, in rage and pain. As it crumpled to the ground, lumps of moss, leaves and dried skin broke away from the monster’s flesh.
“Sigvald!” gasped Oddrún, stumbling through a hail of golden embers. The fire was spreading with phenomenal speed. Flames could now be seen in almost all directions and the heat in the clearing was quickly becoming unbearable. “We have to leave!”
The prince nodded in reply and threw down his brands. But before leaving Bargau to its fate, Sigvald strode over to the fragmenting mound of skin and leaves and drew his sword. “Not without proof,” he muttered, hammering the blade through Bargau’s neck and sending its skull bouncing across the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sväla turned and squinted back across the Wastes, shaking her head in confusion. For a desperate moment, she could not remember where she was. Thousands of snow-clad shapes were stumbling through the deep drifts towards her. It looked as though the whole, gleaming landscape was in motion. Above this bobbing avalanche of snow-capped heads, veins of colour threaded the sky, sculpting the clouds into vast, leering faces and painting the mountains a lunatic shade of pink.
“You said we needed to follow the star,” growled a voice at her side.
She turned to see the hulking shape of Ungaur the Blessed, peering down from between the jaws of his wolfskin hood.
“But that doesn’t seem to be an option anymore.” He held his staff up towards the sky, so that the bones and fetishes rattled and fluttered in the storm. “Unless you see something I do not.”
Sväla looked up through the flickering moonlight, unsure what he meant; or who he even was. Then, as memories began to filter through her jumbled thoughts, she recalled
the strange light they had seen. Ungaur was right; it was gone, but to her shock, she realised that she had not even thought about it for days. She had not been considering their destination at all. For as long as she could remember, she had just been plodding through the snow like a mindless automaton. Her old life seemed like a distant dream with only the endless snow as reality. She shook her head and tried to speak, but the furs wrapped around her head had frozen to her lips, and all that emerged was a muffled grunt.
Ungaur patted her on the shoulder and revealed his mouthful of black needles. “Don’t worry, Sväla, your suffering will soon be over.” He waved his staff back over the heads of the advancing crowds. “Hunting has become impossible and the salted meat won’t last another week. Your crusade is almost finished. Then you can lay your weary head down in the snow and wait for Völtar to carry you away.”
Sväla stumbled to a halt and pulled the furs from her face. Her skin was so cold she barely noticed the top layer of her lips peeling away. “I know what you want,” she croaked, “but you won’t get it.” She pointed her iron knife at Ungaur’s chest. “A shaman can never be our chieftain, however much he craves it.”
Ungaur’s grin remained fixed on his face as he nodded at the distant shape of Svärd. “I would never presume to steal anyone’s throne.”
Sväla lifted her chin, revived by the poison in Ungaur’s words. “I have the will of the tribe behind me.”
Ungaur waved his staff at the figures shuffling past. “Really?”
Sväla looked around. The Fallen were stumbling on, but their shoulders were down and their eyes were blank. To her surprise, she felt no trace of regret or doubt at the sight of their suffering. This was the only course open to them. They must fight or die. While Sigvald lived, they could not. She strode away from the shaman with growing certainty in her voice. “There’s no way back, Ungaur; other than victory.”
As Sväla lurched off through the snow, leaving Ungaur behind, she pictured Hauk leading her on towards her prey: straight-backed and fearless as he waded through the drifts. Her body was layered with scars and wasted with hunger, but as she recalled her husband’s strength, it seemed to flood through her. Her wiry muscles throbbed with such energy that she felt almost drunk on it. She picked up her pace and hurried after the ghost she had summoned from the ice.
After a while she noticed that her imagination was playing tricks on her. The figure of Hauk suddenly veered off to the left, taking her away from the pass she had been making for. “Hauk?” she tried to say, but the words just growled at the back of her throat. She found she was almost running through the snow to keep up with the figure. As it neared another narrow ravine, the ghost dropped to its knees and began to leap through the snow in dog-like bounds. In fact, she realised, it was not man-shaped at all, but more like some kind of hound. No, she thought, squinting through the eddying snowflakes, not a hound, a wolf.
She looked back and saw that she was leaving the others behind, but she could not bear to slow her pace. “A wolf,” she thought, forgetting that she had conjured up the creature, “so far north?”
She scrambled and crawled after the wolf as it raced down the gulley towards a glittering frozen lake. “Hauk?” she whispered, as she saw the animal a little clearer. Had he become a wolf? Was this the shape of her husband’s spirit? It was larger than any wolf she had ever seen and as she gained on it, she noticed that it was looking back after every few bounds to make sure she was still following, watching her with cool, intelligent eyes.
Then she began to hear a soft, slightly prim-sounding voice. It echoed around the steep-sided ravine, seeming to come from all directions at once, but she had no doubt that she was hearing the creature. “The Norscan queen followed the deity,” said the wolf, “a servant loyal and true.”
“Völtar?” whispered Sväla, stumbling to a halt in confusion and awe.
The voice echoed around the rocks again, sounding close enough to be a whisper in her ears. “In her exhaustion, the brave warrior queen doubted her own eyes, but deep in her heart she sensed the unlimited power of the divine being. She sensed that one final act of faith would lead her to her journey’s end.”
“Völtar,” repeated Sväla, jabbing her iron knife at the storm clouds and breaking into a sprint.
The wolf disappeared from view, turning left at the far end of the gulley.
Sväla hurried after it but as she stepped out onto the frozen lake, there was no sign of the creature. Her disappointment was short lived as she realised why her guide had led her down the narrow pass. Glinting in the moonlight, just a few miles down the valley, she saw a vast golden palace hanging in the sky. She gasped and dropped to her knees. Tears of relief and exhaustion filled her eyes, as she recognised the building from her visions. “Sigvald,” she laughed through her tears, levelling her knife at the incredible structure. “We’ve come for you.”
As the others began to file out of the gulley behind her, a chorus of weary cheers echoed around the rocks. Valdür and some of the other elders dragged her from the snow and embraced her in fierce hugs.
“Sväla the Witch!” cried Valdür, raising his javelin to the massing crowds.
“Sväla the Witch!” they roared back, their eyes bulging in wonder as they edged towards their queen.
Sväla allowed herself a little smile as the crowd grew and the cheering continued. Then she noticed something odd: a flash of green in the snow. She stooped down to pick it up and realised it was the stem of a flower, ending in a single white lily. For no reason she could explain, the flawless petals filled her with dread. As the crowd pressed closer, howling her name and clapping her on the back, she noticed another sound, drifting on the wind.
It sounded suspiciously like laughter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Autumn had come to the garden, plucking the leaves from the trees and covering the lawns with a carpet of brass and bronze. Long before they stepped onto the grass, two slender shadows announced the arrival of Sigvald and Oddrún. The shadows passed unnoticed over mounds of pulsing lilac skin and trembling amethyst wings. Sigvald’s subjects had abandoned themselves to various forms of pleasure, filling the garden with a chorus of sighs and gasps. Only two figures rushed from beneath the trees to greet him.
“My lord,” said, Víga-Barói, in his usual, unctuous tones. Then, as he saw what had become of his once-beautiful prince, he recoiled. “What’s happened to you?”
Sigvald glared back at him. His beautiful mane of hair was gone and his scorched, blistered skin was littered with cuts and bruises. Even his ornate armour was twisted into odd new shapes, jutting out from his limbs like a series of glinting leaves. Without the gangly giant at his side, he doubted Víga-Barói would even have recognised him. “Where’s the daemon?” he snapped, ignoring the knight’s question.
“Lord,” answered Baron Schüler, who was standing a few feet behind Víga-Barói. “The daemon has gone.” The baron’s sunken eyes flashed with hope as he studied the prince’s wounds.
Sigvald’s frown deepened. “Gone?”
The baron pulled anxiously at his beard. “Yes, lord,” he said, waving toward the centre of the garden, “but I believe its servant has something to show you.”
Sigvald grunted in surprise as he realised that the tent had vanished. Belus’ orchard was still there, but it was now surrounded by a low, stone wall and to reach his patron, Sigvald would have to step through a gate of intricately-wrought iron. As he limped towards it, the prince sighed in admiration. He ran a finger over the cool metal, tracing the outline of a naked, dancing figure. He shook his head and dropped to his knees for a better look, forgetting his pain for a moment as he followed the voluptuous curves of the design.
“Look,” muttered Oddrún, gesturing through the metal, to the orchard beyond. “The daemon’s servant.”
Sigvald reluctantly turned his gaze from the gate to the fruit trees beyond. A cobbled path snaked between the trunks, ending at the small clearing where the
y had previously spoken to Belus Pül. There was no sign of the daemon, but the pale, spider-like bundle of limbs was still crouched on the grass next to its scrolls of parchment, with its single ear turned in their direction.
Sigvald shoved the gate open and limped into the orchard, followed by Oddrún and the others.
As the prince approached, the scribe scuttled down the path towards him. When it was just a few feet away, the strange creature paused and, with an elaborate flourish of its needle-tipped arms, laid two scrolls out on the grass and then withdrew beneath the trees.
“Where is my patron?” cried Sigvald, waving at the huge bird skull in Oddrún’s arms. “I’ve completed the trial. Bargau is no more.”
The pale nest of limbs shivered slightly, either in fear or amusement, then scampered forwards and tapped its inky digits on the two scrolls.
Sigvald glared around the orchard with gritted teeth, then shook his head and dropped to his knees, gasping with pain as he stretched his torn muscles. He picked up the nearest parchment and squinted at the densely packed lines of text. The whole thing was beautifully illuminated, showing several images of a knight in flashing gold armour. Sigvald’s scowl vanished as he recognised his own face in the vivid, hand-painted scenes. He realised he was reading the story of his life, from the day he first encountered the daemon.
“Bless you, Sigvald,” he muttered, grinning as he studied the wild excesses recorded on the vellum. Then he paused and adopted a more serious expression. He had reached an illustration of two figures standing on the rooftops of the Gilded Palace. It showed the moment Baron Schüler first described the brass skull worn by Mord Huk. At the memory of the skull, Sigvald nodded eagerly and hurried past the subsequent scenes, until he reached the end of the scroll. He held the paper up to the moonlight and shook his head in horror. The text described his return to the garden and explained the absence of the daemon.
[Heroes 04] - Sigvald Page 24
