I shapeshifted and tried to stand, slipping in the snow and ice that had entered the tower from the gutted outer wall. I looked up, saw one of my enemies holding my sword, and then, he tossed it out.
The bastards were jotuns. One of them had knocked me down the night I had gone to meet with Antos. They worked with the draugr.
They shapeshifted together. I saw two figures hurtling through the air, white owls both, and land amid our men, tall, terrible, and fey.
The axes hacked around with lightning fast strikes. The axes killed men like sheep. They took heads and arms, split armor and skull, and they tossed and kicked men down the stairs, their eyes never leaving me. Men with pikes and spears were rushing up, many our allies from Aten. One jotun, having chased men away from the floor, straddled the stairway, hacking down, taking hits from long spears, and still laughing, while his friend turned to me.
“Jotuns,” I sneered. “Hel’s servants? How is that possible?”
“We are more than jotuns,” the one approaching me snarled, his beard swinging. “We are kin,” he added, white teeth flashing, “but also ancient enemies. It is the plan of our king, and none of your business. No time for the tale, boy. You are Morag’s traitor ilk, and it pleases us to see you join them in their dark slumber.”
“Come, then,” I snarled.
His friend was wading down the stairs, his ax slaying men with every swing, like a butcher hacking at a cow carcass.
My opponent came at me with his ax flashing.
I lunged under the ax and picked him up. I turned him in the air and ran forward, crashing into the other jotun. We rolled down the stairs, cursing, breaking over twenty of our soldiers, beating, kneeing, and striking each other furiously. I saw a jotun’s face just above me, felt his hands on my throat, and as we rolled down the stairs, I pushed his chin as hard as I could, and his skull cracked on a stone-step. His eyes rolled in his head, and we ended up below, and I saw he had died. The other jotun was getting up, cursing and howling, as our men were pushing pikes at him, and then, he remembered me.
I found my enemy’s great ax and chopped it on his face, then on his neck, and he went to his knee, and toppled, pushed by our pikes.
The men around me were panting, frightened, as they looked up at me, unsure who was the enemy, and who not. I pointed the ax upstairs.
“Do not come up, and if anyone but me comes down, kill it,” I told them. They backed off, nodding. “And if I don’t come back,” I said as I began climbing, “listen to your queen.”
As I climbed, I called for magic, a braid of ice. I stepped over corpses, over battle scorched rocks, and found Balic was still standing on top of the stairs on the level I had left him. His eyes widened, he grimaced, and cursed softly, and he braided tougher a spell. He gleamed with a protective sphere, and then, he thrust his orb at me.
I threw the spell his way.
It was the simple, powerful braid of ice. The ice grew out of the walls and the stairs around Balic, and he was trapped. He fell on his arse, one arm stuck in the shifting ice, and the dark stone flashed as he released his spell. What had torn down Aten’s palace, walls of Dagnar, and gods knew how many southern fort, released its power, not at me, but at the roof. The already gutted tower shook as stone and mortar, brick and siege gear flew in an arc as his terrible siege spell bit to the roof. I was battered by the debris, and as I dashed forward, guarding my face, the dust thick, I found the stairs. The ice was still spreading, but I stomped up the stairs, nearly slipping many times, pulling myself up with the terrible ax, and I was finally rewarded to see Balic struggling to get released of the ice.
He was still stuck, his ankles twisted, but his arms were free. He was covered in dust, and he didn’t look golden and great, but frightened and surprised.
I roared and crashed my ax on him.
It bounced away from his sphere, and he held his hands over his face, clutching his stone and staff.
I hacked away, like a mad thing, limping around him, slipping, striking again and again at the sphere that kept him alive. It shimmered, shivered, and thinned.
Finally, he remembered to act, and his staff thrust up at me.
I acted fast and struck my ax down. The globe of protection was shattered, the ax went through it and split the staff.
Apparently, the artifact was one that summoned lightning.
That lightning exploded in our face. I was thrown back and fell down the stairs. My plate armor fell apart as I crashed to the floor, and I grimaced and felt my skin was on fire. I tossed and turned, found snow, and threw myself in it. I turned and got up and found I was dressed in my chain skirt alone, in one of my plate boots, and leather pants. My smoking skin was crudely burned across my chest. I rummaged in the ruins of the armor, and pulled out something, and stuck it in my pocket.
I got up, stepped forward and looked up. The ice had disappeared and was a powdery cloud, moving gently near the roof. It looked a brilliant, white rain, as thick as the dust had been.
“Balic!” I roared. “Baliiic! Did you run?”
Then, I saw him. He was stepping forward. His armor was mangled bits of gold and metal, and he held neither the black stone, nor the staff. His right hand was shredded, and his face and chest were black pits of mangled flesh and skull. “Look! Look what you did to me! I was the most beautiful of the draugr!”
I snarled. “So might a turd claim a kingship over vomit,” I said. “Come, One Man. It is time to pay back for the lost lives of Midgard.”
“It wasn’t my fault! I was raised by the Hand of Hel and the Serpent!” he yelled, stepping back, and then, he stepped on the end of his blackened staff and roaring, hollering, rolled down. I picked up the double bitted ax and limped for him.
He twisted with surprising agility, and as I axed him, he managed to leap aside and come to his feet.
He braided together a whip of dark fire and struck down at me.
I moved under it and struck him across the face, taking his teeth.
He fell back, lost the spell, and eyeing me with desperation, rushed for the gutted wall, calling for some spell that might save him as he fell.
I was faster, and I jumped after.
I chopped down with the ax.
I smashed through his skull, chest—breaking some magical artifact that popped loudly— and lopped his corpse in half. Half fell out of the tower, and I stepped on the other half, before it followed in. I grasped the golden hair, hacked at the neck, and stared at the mess.
I shook my head and tossed it to the side.
I felt a presence.
I felt my heart beating faster, and fear was coursing its way down my limbs, making them shake.
I turned to look up at Rhean, who stared down at me from the top of the stairs with a look that was full of pleasure. Her eyes glanced at the mess that was Balic. She was excited by the entire thing.
“Will be hard,” I forced myself to utter, while I leaned to the mess that had been my plate and chain and picked up something, “to make him lead your fanatics. Will look odd, won’t it, when the One Man won’t be around to resurrect his victims. Perhaps you can make some excuse?”
She shook her head. “I have a way around that. To be honest, he was growing tedious. The dead are terrible lovers, did you know? At least the males.”
A way around that? The mess that was Balic? Who would raise their dead? Her mistress?
She opened her hands. In them, were items. There, the accursed earrings that Mir, Lith, and Shaduril had used and what had led to such terrible consequences.
The death of Baduhanna.
I forced a grin, and hid my dismay as well as I could. “Alas, Rhean, they only work when you take a female figure. Balic was, barely, a male.”
Fury played on her face.
“You didn’t know that, did you, vampire?” I mocked her.
She pocketed them and nodded. “No, I didn’t. I have had no time to dwell on such details. Well, I am allied to jotuns, am I not? One must take
his place, for a time. I must make do.”
“How are you allied to them? Who are they? How and why? What happened twenty years ago? And who is the Hand of Hel? Are there more than one, across different times?” I demanded, as I walked forward.
She looked at me with pity. She pulled out something else. I froze. “The Book of the Past. Almost holy to Red Midgard. It has an answer to your questions. Remember, a general of Hel, Medusa, led her army to the east. The jotun clan of Sons of Ymir went with her. Let us just say, that while not in love with us dead folk, they absolutely loathe your clan. There is a good reason.”
“So,” I said as I looked at the book. “You are as much a thief as I am. What reason?”
She had killed Thrum for them?
Or, perhaps, Thrum never had them.
“I am,” she said proudly, “a queen, not a thief. I was the Queen of Malignborg, and I should have been the High Queen of Midgard. I was honest, I was good, I was kind, and I was fooled. I am now what I wasn’t then. I am the death of Midgard, and its Queen, and I shall sit over its bones. The mistress promised me this.”
“Bones won’t feed you, will they?” I asked. “Will you not answer any of my questions?”
“We’ll bring in new blood, boy, when the old one is spent. There are other worlds,” she said.
I frowned. The gates were closed.
“These thoughts are too large for you,” she said, and raised the book. It burst into a ball of blue fire, and she tossed it before her. I looked at it in horror, and she softened the look on her face. She was intrigued and not angered. She looked over my shoulder to the stairways. “Your men coming?”
I shook my head. “I will deal with you. You cannot turn them against me.”
She laughed. “Ah, very clever. I could, you know. Men especially have no resistance to a vampire, and no mortal to me, save for the very mightiest ones. I suspect you will struggle, won’t you? There is royal blood in you, but you are … raw.”
She considered me for a while, and I took another step towards the stairway.
She laughed softly. “Few could deny me, when I was alive. I said I was good and honest, but I was also married to Balic. I was young, when I learned of love. I learned love is not something one is ashamed of. Alas, my last lover was pitiful. Poor Gal, Lisar’s husband. I had him, though I didn’t intend to make him my king, as it was claimed. He was just a pitiful relief. Oh, well. I am babbling. You know nothing of such past matters, champion.” She tilted her head and looked dangerous, like a wolf about to devour a deer. She spoke softly, suggestively. “You fought well. I’ll remember you. I could try to make you mine forever.”
I snarled at the thought.
She nodded, having expected the response. “Very brutal, Maskan. A true warrior, you sound like. I could try, still. We, the few dead woven of this curse of night, can recall the spirit we have drained of blood, and sometimes, rarely, they heed the call and can become blessed like we were, but they are often lesser creatures. Very few can be like I am, or those who remain of the Ten from the Stone.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I stepped closer.
She noticed and shook her head. “You will not make it, boy. I can flee, or I will use my magic. I know my spells, and I’d not use ice on you. I see you have grown and find ice and cold your friend now. Still, I’d rob you of your skin, jotun, if you would challenge me to such a battle.”
“I’ll just ax you, vampire,” I said. “No trouble with that, is there?”
She shook her head, her eyes twinkling with excitement. “I do like males who threaten me. I will not flee, nor will I call for spells. I need not do either. I will just command you. You will struggle, as I said, and it will be painful, confusing for you, since you are powerful enough to try, but you cannot defeat the night.” She laughed softly. “Balic always wanted to raise you. I could try to make you like we are, but as I said, it is rare one heeds the call, and few are powerful. I’d not demean you like this. I’d not make you less than you are now. You’ll simply die, and I’ll have you buried under this fort. It will carry your name.”
“Thank you,” I said, stepping close to the stairs.
I wasn’t sure what her weakness was. They all had one.
“You are welcome,” she answered, and shook her head, her red eyes pools of madness. “If only I were alive. Such a man as you, or rather, a jotun, would have been a pleasing thing in the bed. Perhaps,” she laughed, “I can make you an offer. I sometimes give my worst foes, those who are worthy, the bloody, terrible champions who shed blood to kill me, a pleasing end. All vampires have skills they are best in. Mine? I’ll break your heart with love. I often break mine, as well, after …” She went quiet and smiled wistfully. “What say you?”
And that was her weakness. She was mad, dead, terrifyingly powerful, and still … partly a woman.
She wanted a man. She had collected them.
She still did.
“If die I must,” I snarled, “then let it be a pleasing end. It would please me to see an ax in your skull.”
She grinned. Her eyes flashed as she looked down at me, and I felt her power in my head. The voice that had guided, and chided me, had been a child in comparison. The power I felt was not born from magic, not a spell braided out of the Filling Void. The vampire could touch my mind, and it came naturally to her, like breathing to the living. It could simply force one to obey. It could make a king cry with fear, it could render a champion helpless, it could turn all mortals into her meek servants. She was a manipulator of the living, a perversion of life, a corruptor of lovers, and a slayer of the helpless ones, and most all were just that before her power.
That would have been me, once. A helpless mortal.
But I wasn’t helpless, or alone.
With the aid of the spirit, the god, or an ancient jotun Bolthorn, I had a chance. I had an ally, an expensive, odd, and dangerous ally. It would cost me a bit of the human that was Maskan, for the voice would ask me for a price that any jotun in Nifleheim, Jotunheim, or Muspelheim would pay with no feeling of remorse, but not so a human I had grown up to, or the law-making Morag who made Red Midgard into a just land of honor.
And yet, the human had to die for a moment, as the jotun would have to fight.
I could call it then.
I opened my mouth to pray to it.
“Silence,” she said. “No spells, jotun.”
I tried. I struggled and fought and tried to speak. I thrust my foot to the snow, felt the cold ice on my skin, but I couldn’t call for the creature.
I lunged.
“Kneel,” she said simply. “Take your human form.”
I stopped and nearly wept. I went to one knee. I shrunk to my man-sized shape. It was no trick I tried to play on her, for I had no choice. The vampire I had met before had been deadly. His commands had been hard to resist, but I had no chance to fight Rhean. She had been right.
She would kill me.
I pushed back at her power, but her eyes flashed, and she buried all resistance under her dark power, her mind stripping me of defenses, one by one, anticipating all my thoughts. It was as if her hand was grasping my soul, smoothing from it all thoughts of struggle, and I couldn’t think of anything but pleasing her, of obeying her wishes. She was like a man wrestling with a young boy, toying with all my attempts to defeat her.
Trembling, I stayed on my knee.
“A mighty looking man-form, jotun,” she whispered. “A mighty, if a raw mind you have, my boy. You do struggle, which is rare. I am tempted.”
She walked down the stairs, came towards me, and dismissed her furs.
She was not young, nor very old, and the lines under her eyes made her oddly attractive. She was lithe, with a generous bosom and wide hips, and her shapely leg was revealed in a slit of an ancient silken dress, black as night, as she stepped down. She had a sword on her hip, gold hilted with a silver skull on the pommel. She released her hair, and the red wave covered her bosom and back. T
he red eyes never left me.
“I’ll give you a kiss of death on your throat, Maskan, and you shall die,” she whispered. “I’ll take your blood, and it will hurt. Go on both your knees.”
I trembled as she walked down to me. My other knee went down.
“Put the ax down, as well,” she purred, and then, the demand no longer felt like a pleasant one. It was a disappointed one, like a lover to a failing husband, and I closed my eyes and put the ax down, not letting go of it.
She frowned a bit and stopped just at the bottom of the stairway, so close to me. She excreted her full will on me, and I felt my heart was bursting. I groaned with pain.
I managed to hold the ax.
It would do me no good. I couldn’t even speak. I couldn’t call for the creature or lift a finger.
“Love,” she whispered. “You impress me. You do. Listen. Choose. I shall let you decide how you will die. I hold your mind, and you cannot break free. I shall kill you, and you will not be able save yourself, and you will die while struggling. I’ll feast while I have a craving for warmth, jotun, and that craving will bother me while I feed, and when bothered so terribly, your death shall be a painful, cruel, and a long one. Stop struggling, jotun, and let me in fully. You will find my mind in the very depths of your soul, soon a part of your most inner self, and we shall be together, like wine mixing with water. Then, you shall love me, like I will you. You truly will. You will no longer fear, nor will there be pain. Give up and love me, even for a moment, and after, tell me you shall love me. Do this, and I shall give you an easy death, a gift from lover to another, a gentle kiss.” She looked at me sadly. “Choose fast.”
I fought the panic. I slumped in the snowy floor and knew I’d not break the hold she had on my head. I simply could not.
All I could do was to buy time.
She wanted to play, to take her time with me, and she would trade a terrible death for an easy one, if I just gave up struggling. She said she would get inside my head, into my mind, deeper than ever, and I would even learn to love her, if I did.
That was almost more terrifying than dying.
Sons of Ymir Page 15
