“But how did Nidhug get the Skull?” Thorfinn asked.
“He was a Hel-warrior who searched for the War Skull and found it. But instead of summoning Hel so that She could retrieve the Skull, Nidhug used it to teach himself sorcery, gain prolonged life, and to defeat other Hel-warriors the enraged Goddess sent against him. And now I am supposed to do what he did not.”
“Return the War Skull to Hel?” Valgerth asked.
Bloodsong nodded. “Yes.”
“Then, make that what we must do.” Valgerth frowned.
“And,” Thorfinn said, “all that stands in our way is Nidhug, his sorcery, and his, let’s see, what was it? Oh, yes, his army!”
“Aye.” Bloodsong looked up at the sky, then back at her companions. “That is all.”
They all fell silent at the thought, then Huld surprised everyone by laughing. They looked at her. She shrugged. “Why so grim? I’m not worried. I would have been, before, but not now. There are eight soldiers less than an hour ago. Right? And if you two strip naked before attacking Nastrond, the soldiers that are left will let you stroll right in.”
“I will drink to that!” Thorfinn took a long swig from the wineskin as everyone laughed.
“I always regretted not killing Nidhug before we escaped,” Valgerth noted, fingering the leather-wrapped hilt of her sword. “There are blood debts owing between him and me.”
“As there are for me,” Bloodsong agreed, “even more now, after what he did to my village, to Eirik, and to my son.”
“And to you,” Huld added, “and perhaps by now to my Norda. We all have good reason to see him destroyed, except perhaps for Thorfinn?”
Thorfinn sat the wineskin aside and held Huld’s gaze. “All who live under Nidhug’s thumb would like to cut it off.”
Huld nodded. “Then we all want the same, and to help Bloodsong.”
“Let’s ride for Nastrond!” said Valgerth. “Agreed?”
Bloodsong hesitated, thinking about the Hel-saddle and the lost stallion. But she couldn’t waste any more time looking for the beast. The horse had been headed south down the forest trail. So were they. She could only hope that they would find the steed as they rode southward, or at least be able to pick up the tracks again.
Bloodsong stood. “Yes. Let’s ride. The sorcerer has no doubt detected more of his soldiers dying. And he is certain to soon launch another attack.”
JALNA MOANED apprehensively. Another wave of torturing nightmares built within her mind. Then suddenly the new horrors vanished.
She heard voices and opened her eyes, blinked away tears, saw Nidhug looking up at her. Cold hatred filled her.
“Enjoy yourself, slave?” He laughed.
She made herself yawn. “Already morning? I was having the best dream.“
Three soldiers and four slave women stood nearby. She looked for Tyrulf. He was not there.
The king again wore his dark hood to cover his face. A stench of death wafted up to her.
“We have much left to discuss, slave. I witnessed your nightmares but still do not know your true identity.”
“Perhaps I am just a slave.”
He laughed at that. “Get her down.”
Two soldiers shoved the platform into place and climbed up while the third guarded the four women.
“Run!” Jalna shouted at the women. “Fight! Take weapons! Kill them all! Try!”
The women looked up at her in confusion. They huddled closer together.
“You are not sheep! He’s going to kill you!” she screamed at them. “Kill him first!”
Nidhug hissed an incantation.
Jalna lost the power to use her voice.
The soldiers unchained her numb feet.
“Do not be gentle with her,” Nidhug ordered. “Feel free to touch her where and how you wish.” He chuckled. “She enjoys it.”
Jalna tried to curse at him but no sound emerged.
One grinning soldier held her tighter than necessary, hands roving, while the other freed her wrists. Circulation burned its way back into her hands and arms as she was carried to the cavern wall and dumped roughly on the cold, rocky floor. She resisted having an iron collar clamped around her neck, but her exhaustion made her struggles ineffectual. A long length of chain ran from the collar to an iron ring embedded in the cavern wall. The soldiers walked away.
Jalna was surprised that her hands had been left unchained and even more surprised when one of the soldiers then returned and placed food and water within reach.
At first she thought the food must be some new torture, some ingenious cruelty Nidhug had devised. Perhaps, though suddenly ravenous with hunger, she would be unable to eat the food because of some unknown spell. Or perhaps the food was poisoned to give her fresh pain without killing her.
She reached out and lifted the earthenware jar of water. She sniffed it, sipped it, waited, but no pain came. She picked up the wooden plate and sniffed at the bread and cheese, nibbled at each. Still no pain came. Soon, her hunger overcame her caution. She had assumed, not long ago, she would never eat another meal. Surprised that she even had an appetite after all that had happened, and considering her surroundings and uncertain future, she nevertheless attacked the simple food with undisguised eagerness.
As she ate, she watched the four women being chained to the Skull. They were struggling now, but too late.
One soon hung before each eye socket and another in the center. The fourth was stretched between chains embedded in the top of the Skull. Not knowing what to expect, the four apprehensively twisted their heads this way and that. Remembering Jalna’s warning, they were now begging the king not to kill them.
The soldiers left the chamber.
Jalna finished her food and drank more water. She cautiously tried to use her voice again, hoping the spell might have faded, but discovered she still could not make a sound. Inwardly cursing Nidhug anew, she sat back against the wall, and with the comfort of the food within her, felt sleep pulling at her, exhaustion taking its toll. She resisted, determined to stay awake.
Screams awakened her. She saw that the purple glow of the Skull was brighter. The pulsings and energy discharges on its surface came closer and closer together as if attuned to a racing heartbeat.
Nidhug stood before the Skull, his back to her, arms upraised, shouting above its rumbling moan and the screams of the four women. The women were writhing madly, their bodies glistening with sweat, smoke rising from the Skull where it touched their bare skin. The stench of burning flesh filled the air.
Rays of purple light suddenly began to stream from the women’s heaving bodies, rays that slanted downward, bathing Nidhug’s body.
Slowly, the screams and struggles of the women weakened, and Jalna saw with horror that their flesh was withering, even as they feebly continued to jerk against their chains.
The purple rays from the women dimmed, then vanished. Four skeletal corpses now hung from the Skull. The purple light pulsed more and more slowly as Nidhug lowered his arms. Then he turned and came toward Jalna.
She noticed that his step was now quick and firm, unlike the slow, unsteady gait he had displayed a short time before. Jalna sat with her back against the rocky wall, stared defiantly up at the approaching man. Her paralyzed legs were stretched out before her.
As Nidhug neared, the stench of death came to her again. He stopped and looked down as he pulled away his silken hood. He began to speak then, but Jalna’s horror-stricken gaze stopped him. With sudden unease, he pulled off his gloves and gasped at what he saw.
Though strength now flowed through his veins and he felt like a man in his prime, his hands had remained those of a corpse. He raised skeletal fingers to his face and felt the taut contours of a death’s-head. Panic rose within him. The rejuvenation spell had failed to restore his youthful appearance.
Nidhug hu
rried back to the Skull, searching his mind for reasons the spell might have failed. The energy he had expended on the Hel-warrior must be the cause. He had to make Bloodsong his prisoner at once! With the Skull in decline, she posed more of a threat than he had thought.
From among the scrolls on the table he picked up the one he had brought from his tower chamber. He studied the Runes and incantations. He closed his eyes, emptied his mind, drew his concentration slowly tighter, spiraling in to focus on the spell as he drew energy from the Skull. He visualized a series of Runes blazing with purple fire and twisted his thoughts through their shapes and secrets. He began to incant a phrase with measured cadence, repeating a series of Runic sounds over and over, drawing to his mind and flesh transforming radiation from the Skull.
His body became one with his consciousness and merged from physicality to spiritual essence. Now more ghost than flesh, he sank through the cavern’s floor and continued down, deep into the rocks beneath Nastrond as he mentally continued repeating the incantation.
When he sensed different surroundings, he stopped chanting, opened spectral eyes that flickered with purple fire, and saw in the total darkness around him that he stood in a small cavern, circular, low-ceilinged, completely enclosed by cobweb-draped rock walls.
He resumed his physicality.
The air stale with the stench of death, the floor was strewn with the corpses of black-clad warriors, the decayed remains of all the Hel-warriors Nidhug had defeated through the centuries. Many were no more than skeletons with scraps of black leather clothing clinging to their bones. Rusted mail shirts covered the ribs and arms of a few.
The king chanted a different phrase, energized his disciplined will with necromantic radiation channeled from the Gray Between through the conduit of the War Skull of Hel, and commanded the souls of the defeated Hel-warriors in the realm of agony to which he had banished them to return to their former bodies. Disembodied screams slowly filled the cavern as the cries of souls in unending pain obeyed Nidhug’s order.
First one and then another of the corpses on the floor began to stir, to jerk and writhe as unnatural life crept back into their tattered flesh and bones.
The screams became louder, hoarse, gasping, ragged cries of agony emerging from decayed throats and tongueless mouths. Disturbed by the spell’s progression, squirming albino corpse-worms awoke from their centuries-long sleep to escape the awakening dead.
Satisfied, Nidhug concentrated anew and began chanting a different Runic formula, willing Hel-horses into existence, willing the reanimated corpses to rise and mount the skeletal white mares.
Already feeling fatigued from his efforts, he willed into physical manifestation a Hel-horse for his own use and mounted. All around him the moaning, screaming Hel-warriors awaited his command, clutching their black-bladed Hel-swords in corpse-clawed hands. Hel-horses pawed impatiently at the stone cavern floor, their eyes of purple fire flickering like Nidhug’s own.
Gathering his concentration into a new focus, Nidhug shouted words of command.
He and the mounted dead vanished from the cavern.
The Hunt of the Damned had begun.
* * *
The four companions left the forest behind as they descended to a lower elevation. They rode through a region of low, rolling hills. Snow lay in patches, here and there. Bloodsong and Valgerth rode in the lead, talking eagerly. Huld rode beside Thorfinn, irritated with herself for wishing she could be riding beside Bloodsong. With one hand she held closed against the cool a heavy gray cloak taken from a slain soldier.
“So, a Witch you are.” Thorfinn made a new attempt to start a conversation with the increasingly sullen young woman.
“You saw me heal Bloodsong’s wounds.”
“That I did. And you are feeling stronger again?”
“The healing spell drains me, but my strength comes back with rest.”
“How long have you been a spell-caster? You seem rather young.”
“I’m nearly sixteen,” Huld answered defensively, “and I have been casting spells all my life. I was practically born working magic, according to my parents. My mother saw a vision of the Goddess Freya just before I was born, proclaiming me a powerful priestess come back to the flesh.”
Thorfinn laughed softly
Huld gave him a scathing glance. “You laugh?”
“In awe and admiration. Was Freya as beautiful as the tales say?”
“I have never seen Her myself, but those who saw Her before my birth claim that the older I’ve grown, the more I’ve come to resemble Her. Perhaps that is why my parents loved me so much, since I looked like the Goddess Freya, I mean.”
Thorfinn was silent for a moment. She lies inventively, he thought. I like her. “Huld, aren’t you worried, just a little, about riding with Bloodsong? Your Freya is not friends with Bloodsong’s Hel, if the old tales are believed.”
“Freya is my Goddess, but Bloodsong is my friend,” Huld instantly replied, surprised to realize it was truly the way she felt. She suddenly wondered if Bloodsong felt friendship for her. At that moment, it seemed to matter very much, which began to irritate her again. She had at first been suspicious of the Hel-warrior, even repulsed. When had her feelings changed? “Besides, Bloodsong was thrown by circumstances not choice into association with Hel.” But does that matter to Freya? she wondered.
“There is something else I have been wondering about, Huld. What happens if Bloodsong does return the War Skull to Hel?”
“You have ears. Guthrun will be set free, as will Bloodsong, if Hel keeps her promise.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant what will Hel do if it gives Her increased power? What if the tale Hel told Bloodsong is a lie, as I suspect? If Hel is as evil as I believe, might She not wreak terror upon us all? Perhaps extend Her icy domain? Cover the sun with clouds and the Earth with ice and snow? Might it mean Fimbulwinter, when summer never comes and the end of the world as we know it nears? And if that happens, how are we going to feel about having helped? Bloodsong wants her daughter back and turns a blind eye to the potential evil she may unleash.”
Huld felt even more irritated. She could see no way around Thorfinn’s questions. What, indeed, was she doing helping an enemy of Freya? “You can always turn back if your conscience bothers you too much,” she finally said, thinking about herself but knowing she would not turn back.
“Where Valgerth rides, so do I,” he answered, “and there’s little doubt but that she will be loyal to Bloodsong to the death. I sometimes wonder if she doesn’t love Bloodsong more than she loves me,” he added with a forced laugh.
“They survived slavery together. I suppose that forges strong bonds.”
“Of course,” he quickly agreed. “Did you know they were friends even before being made arena warriors?”
“No,” Huld begrudgingly admitted. “But I’ve heard the ballad about how Bloodsong became one, how she refused to go to Nidhug’s bed, so was sent to the dungeons for the guards’ pleasures, but killed the first one to touch her with his own sword.”
“For which she was given the choice,” Thorfinn said, “of death by torture or death fighting in the arena.”
“Was Valgerth made an arena warrior to punish her for also spurning Nidhug?”
“No, Huld. She did something even more forbidden. She fell in love with another slave. She’s never told me his name, or hers.”
“What? Hers?”
Thorfinn shrugged. “Love is love.”
She looked at Bloodsong and Valgerth riding side by side, but in a new way. Was it jealousy she now felt? She immediately rejected the notion. Valgerth laughed at something Bloodsong said, reached over, and squeezed Bloodsong’s hand.
“Val would not tell Nidhug her lover’s name,” Thorfinn said, also watching the two friends. “He tortured her, of course, but still she refused to say the name, even while
knowing he could and eventually would use his sorcery to find out. Then, when her pain began to bore him, he did use sorcery, brought her lover to the dungeon, and tortured him—”
“Or her—”
Thorfinn nodded, “—or her, to death while Val was forced to watch.”
“I hope Hel gets Her cold hands around his neck and—” she paused. “But had they been seen? Did someone tell on them? How did Nidhug even know? I suppose there were many spies. But if they had been seen, why wasn’t the lover’s name known to the king before he—”
“He plays games to amuse himself, Val says. Who knows why he does anything?”
“But why even care if they loved?”
“Again, who knows? Power, perhaps.”
“Or just plain evil.”
“That, too.”
“I bet Nidhug was nicer before he started using that cursed Skull.”
“Nicer?” Thorfinn shook his head. “Nice enough to betray Hel and keep the Skull for himself? No, he must always have lusted for power. Maybe he was powerless as a child.”
Huld thought of her own childhood and suddenly wondered how much of Nidhug’s motives she might share? She loved Freya, but did she love the power of wielding Witchcraft even more? Norda had warned her to guard against that very thing, many times, but—
“Nidhug punished Val most cruelly of all by using sorcery to make certain she would never be able to bear a child. Then he threw her into the arena slaves’ pens.”
“No children? How horrible! Why do that?”
Thorfinn shrugged. “It amused him, perhaps. Or he assumed she and her lover had dreamed of one day being free to have a child together.”
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