She was close, she was on guard, ready to rip me apart. She might do that even if I gave up.
Patience. I needed patience. I needed … time.
Then I thought of what she had said, and felt a moment of hope.
I let go of the ax. I let go of the struggle and breathed deep, inhaling her power into me.
I felt I lost a grip on something much more important than the ax.
The terrible, oppressive power she had over me seemed to overwhelm me. Then, to my horror, it felt less terrible. It felt almost warm and welcome, and she was a lover in my head, caressing me, calming me. My mind was screaming warnings, but she was now deeply buried in my head, and soon, I looked up at her with admiration. She commanded me. She told me what I could do, and couldn’t do, and I felt my heart quicken at the sight of her.
She smiled and came to stand before me.
I stared at her, as her cold hands touched my bare shoulders and chest, her finger playing in my wounds, drawing blood. She was trembling, anticipating the pleasure of my death, the taste of my flesh and blood, and she was whispering in a language I didn’t know, soothing, almost gentle. She came to my side, her hands still touching my skin, her ice-cold touch exploring my body. She smiled, and I twitched as she moved my hair and kissed my neck, but there was no bite, no death yet.
I still smiled at her and tried to touch her.
I still couldn’t move, nor speak.
She kissed my throat, slowly at first, and then with passion. She moved before me, her lips on my throat, her body pressing into mine. Her hands were impossibly strong, as she grasped me, and then, she ripped at the chain skirt, which came off with a jingle. She tossed it off, and her hands opened my belt, and she pushed her hand into my pants. She slipped her hand deep, and her fingers found my manhood. She caressed it, gently, patiently, and then, her cold hand pulled it out. Expertly, kissing my face now, she stroked it, until I, to my shame and still full of love for her, was fully aroused by the creature of Hel. She was moaning softly, and I gasped with pleasure, which made her smile, almost gratefully, with relief.
With mad, undead love.
I had seen it in Lith and Shaduril before.
The rebellious thought disappeared as I enjoyed her touch, breathing heavily.
She finally clutched my hair, while she stroked my belly, then my balls and ass, as she pulled me close. “Kiss me, Maskan,” she said huskily, and turned my head down towards her. “Love me. Touch me, but better you have ever done to others. Let it be your last pleasure.”
Her lips came for mine, dark fog issued from them. Sharp teeth flashed behind the lips, and her tongue, black as night flickered in her mouth.
Her lips crushed into mine, she tasted of wine, of herbs, of honey, and I struggled as much as I could, but couldn’t stop, didn’t want to end the freezing kiss, or her tongue from playing with mine. She pushed me on my back while devouring me and climbed over me with passion. My hands were pulling open her robe, caressing her breasts, her hips.
A tug in my mind disturbed me. It whispered of shame. Of loss.
I had let the vampire close, and I would never really forget her.
She had also let herself close to me.
She pushed herself against me, pressed her body tight to me, full of cold love and passion. I raised my arms and put them around her hips, pushed my hands under the dress, and she trembled with pleasure. She grasped my hand and pushed it on her thigh, and then between her legs. She was cold, and still, due to her manipulative power, also desirable.
I touched her and stroked her, gently, then with desperate need to please her. She responded with pleasure.
She moved, wiggled and pushed herself on me, ripping her dress, and then, she enjoyed herself, as I did. She moved like a snake, rhythmic, and strong, demanding, and her lips were hungrily pressing into mine, as she panted and gasped, and had me.
Then, finally, the vampire moved with desperate need, close to climax, finding the perfect rhythm. Suddenly sitting up over me, she arched her back. Her eyes to the roof, she trembled as she ground herself on me, her hand grasped my balls, and she, almost like a living woman, had her pleasure with such power, she nearly broke my back. She held me down with terrible strength and moved on me.
She wanted to see my pleasure.
She aided me, moved and moved, her hands skillfully playing, and then, soon I had mine, and she, perhaps, again hers.
We lay there on top of each other, staring at each other, enemies, and what power she had forced on my mind, was weaker for a moment.
The love for her remained.
The control, her mind in mine, was … asleep, drowsy.
For just a moment, she was simply happy, like a living thing, and unable to do more than enjoy the warmth of my body, and what I had given her, and she to me. And perhaps, the vampire too, felt love, and not only lust, for she spoke. “Tell me,” she whispered, “that you loved me.”
“Yes,” I whispered, allowed to speak.
I moved just slightly, and she tightened the hold on my hair, her face still full of joy.
Then, her face hardened.
She pulled my head to the side, savagely, and spoke huskily, the lust not quite spent. “Now, Maskan. Be still. It was wonderful, and I want to keep my promise. It will be fast and clean.”
The deadly fangs came down, thirsty for jotun’s blood.
My hand was buried in snow. Her command threatened to overwhelm me again, and the love I felt for her was confusing, nearly stopping me from struggling, but I forced myself to act. I had the moment and the ability to speak.
I also had her close.
“Aid, aid me against the terrors of Hel’s minions. Lives for a boon. Bolthorn, heed me,” I whispered.
And Bolthorn heard. This time, I heard him. The voice was old as mountains, grating and icy, inhuman, and cruel.
Ten lives. Ten faithful lives, the voice echoed. Ten lives and you shall never fear or obey the dead again.
And I, about to die, agreed.
Yes.
An ancient jotun, mighty as gods, a thing of chaos, a creature of bitter, ancient grudges, father and grandfather to jotuns, and rebel Aesir, and traitorous Vanir let his magic flow to me, through the great distance. Even when the gates were closed, his power touched me and aided me, his own distant blood.
A jotun is a natural, berserk fighter.
He fights like a wounded animal, like a father for his child, a mother for a babe, and fights to bring himself honor, and to his family. A berserk, mad creature can stomp over an army, can rip his ax at the enemy until the battle is over, and only then die.
That wasn’t enough to stave off the vampire.
A rage a god might experience was needed.
Such anger filled my mind, and would, always when an undead tried to terrify me with their powers.
It burned away fear, it replaced compliance with bitter rage, and filled me with battle-power, making me tremble.
My fist smashed to her face just as she was descending on my throat, and the hand on her hip, took a hold of her dress and belt. I threw her to the wall, ripping her clothing. I rolled over, struck her again, and watched the red eyes filling with terror. I hammered at the vampire with burning rage, breaking bone, breaking skin, twisting her arm. The disgust at her touch, at what she had done, the fact she had forever made me love her, at least a bit, gave me such angry rage, I’d rip her apart.
She fought back.
Her dress in tatters around her, she struck hard and nearly broke my neck.
I spat blood and head-butted her, and then began to squeeze her throat, to twist it.
She thrashed desperately under me. She pulled at my hands, tore skin and muscle, but I kept at it. She let out a desperate gasp, and then, I felt terrible pain in my hip.
She kicked off, and I fell back.
There was a dagger on my leg, and I had to tear it off.
The rage wasn’t gone. It was there, filling my soul to the brim, making
me mad with anger. The creature was backing up the stairs, her arm and wounds already on the mend. She was shaking her head; a begging look on her face.
The spell of love, of seduction, still haunted me, still compelled me to obey her, but the rage overcame it, and I managed to grasp the ax.
She fled, and I went after her.
She fled to the roof, and there, wind whipping around her bare, white skin, her hair whipping in the wind, the evil and the beauty seemed to blend with the shadows. She danced away from me, backing off.
I watched her go, and then, I pulled out and tapped the crescent of the Blacktowers which I had picked up from the ruins of my armor and saw Grinlark, which I had dropped to the snow, twisting, growing to full size, and Balan’s portal opened before me, and behind her.
It had once doomed Morag to death, as I had unwittingly carried it to my father.
It had killed Lith, who had tried to take Dagnar for herself, before Mir and Balic.
And now, it gave me a chance to kill the snake of snakes.
I roared and jumped in, and before I even came up behind her, I swung the ax.
The blade struck her back, and she fell forward, as I straddled her. The ax sunk through her, it bit deep into her spine and ribs, and I placed a foot on her neck.
“Die, love,” I roared, as I pressed her neck with my heel so hard, something broke.
Then, a spell struck me.
It was a spell of cold, bitter wind. It was strong, terrible, much stronger than most magic I had faced, and I fell on my face and rolled across the roof. I lost my Blackthorn crescent, and my sense of direction, and the rage as well. The cold whipped at my skin, and while no jotun of frost should suffer so, the spell was powerful enough to hurt me.
I tried to grasp it, and found the braid, beautiful, powerful, and impossibly complex, but I couldn’t rip it apart, or to capture it. It was made by someone like me, by someone of the old blood.
I saw, just a glimpse, of a figure kneeling next to Rhean, pulling the ax of her back. Then, just before the storm threw me over the edge, I saw the figure walking off and helping Rhean. I saw she held Grinlark.
Then, I fell and shapeshifted into the eagle, my eyes on the sky.
No owls.
Only snow.
I plummeted and twisted in the air, and saved myself just in time. I flew back, and circled the roof.
I saw my ax, I saw the roof and where the battle had been fought. I saw tracks, and then, I saw nothing.
She was gone. Whoever had helped her had seemingly disappeared.
I flew down and changed. I picked up the ax and looked dully at the partly collapsed roof. I was suddenly exhausted, tired beyond all, my leg was throbbing, my old wounds aching, and still, I knew I wasn’t done, and had no time to rest.
Not, if I were wise, that is.
There was a throbbing feeling of a threat, of an expectation that was still unfulfilled.
I was due to make a payment.
I walked to the edge of the roof and looked down.
The city was mostly burning by now, Nallist’s streets were dotted with embattled fighters, and judging by lumps, some already covered in snow, there were hundreds of dead, perhaps thousands. There were enemy and refugees fleeing in all the directions. The harbor street was a sea of fire, and thousand rebels were running for the shattered keep. Many were hauling supplies.
Below, I saw men.
I looked down at them, and they bowed. I took a long, ragged breath. “Any men of Aten alive?”
“Hundreds, lord,” said a man from Dagnar. “They did well.”
“Send ten up here,” I said. “And tell them I need men who know the legions.”
He hesitated and then went down.
I looked out to the sea, and in the blizzard, hugging the coast, desperate for safety, ships appeared. They held two new legions, and I smiled at the confusion, when they arrived at the sea-gates, and found the city locked against them. Nima had taken it as well. They finally began rowing past it.
It had been a long day of surprises and losses, and of a single, terrible failure.
But still, things were moving according to the plan.
We had their most of their food.
“King Maskan,” I heard, and saw ten men of Aten, looking dubiously up at their former enemy, a king of wounds, the jotun of the north, who stood in the blizzard half-bare, and smiled down at them.
“Come up,” I said. “I have a need of you.”
When they were dead, I, less Maskan than ever and the shame of my father, walked down to find armor and weapons, for a battle was coming.
BOOK 3: THE UGLY BROTHER
“Lisar Vittar? She is here, then.”
Nima
CHAPTER 10
Men spoke about it later. None had seen it, but all knew, nonetheless.
They knew I had killed them.
Bolthorn had been sated. I felt my father watching. I felt I was losing the part of me that gave me the right to rule men. My kingship was defiled with rumors of my own making. Morag had been infamous for the harshness of his laws, not for the lack of them.
I had to wonder, if he too, could speak with Bolthorn. I had a feeling he had rejected the old creature’s boons.
Everything what Rhean had hinted at, the morsels she had dropped on my plate, made me itchy to find out more. Medusa’s clan, our kin, allied to draugr? A war with the dead, not too long past? And they had a way, no, two ways in, and Morag wasn’t one of them?
What were they? A clan. Kin, they had claimed. And only twenty years past, they said, Hel had tried to take the land. The Mouth of Lok had claimed the same.
There was truth to it.
There was something about the northern quest of the dead, something about Mara’s Brow I didn’t understand.
I would have to find out. But before that, I had to win a war. I was stuck in a fort with all the supplies for an army, and that army would come for it.
I looked like a king again. I wore one set of the gleaming silvery chainmail the jotuns had worn. The other one I had hidden in a trunk. I had taken their gear, their clothing, their steel-reinforced boots, and it was all dverg made. It was no plate, but it was more agile and mostly intact. I had a pair of long daggers, and I had their axes, one on my hand, the other one on my belt. One had had a large round shield on his back, strapped and ready to use. I held that now. I wore one of their helmets and wondered at the power of the figure that had saved Rhean. Surely, it, too, had been a jotun.
I feared keeping the fortress would be an impossible task if more jotuns joined the armies that would have to try to take it.
I was pulled from my thoughts.
The general of our men, Maggon, still alive, his face sweaty even in the gutted fort, was bowing before me. He had a look of fear in his eye and probably thought I’d invite him to the roof, should he have any bad news to share.
“Tell me.”
“The men are tearing at the floor of the first level,” he said. “It is hard going. The stones are heavy.”
“Can you,” I asked, “dig a moat inside the fort or not?”
He nodded. “We can dig it, but it won’t be deep. They must break the floor, and it is sturdy as shit. There is an old floor under this top one. I have men who actually built this. They have looked at the beams below, and the pillars, and tell me the keep might fall apart, especially with the damage it suffered in … the battle. It was rotten to start with, the wall. Whoever designed this monstrosity had more ambition than skill. It was the old lord Wilred, no doubt. Thank Odin he is dead. They hanged him in the woods after he tried to hide from the Hammer Legionnaires.”
“The courtyard of the keep itself and the wall around it?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “The courtyard is … not for us. The wall around it shattered in two places. The wall around the city is damaged as well, but the good news is that the keep itself is only breached right there, where the gate was. The breach runs all the way to the
top. The roof, well …” He shrugged. “There is plenty of it left, but the supports are damaged, where not gone entirely. Something had a terrible effect on them. The doorways to the outer wall have been utterly blocked. They must come through down there. Unless …”
“Unless they have siege, but I doubt they will wait to set it up,” I said, and was happy the dark stone Balic had used to knock down halls and wall likely had no twins. I had not found it. I had also lost the crescent of the Blacktowers.
“We man the keep, rotten or not,” I said. I turned to look at Saag. “A thousand archers will go out. You will harass the bastards as well as you can. No sleep, no rest for them. Make sure what supplies from the ships will not easily be carried to the legions. When you find their ships, do not harm them.”
Saag looked pleased by the order. He would be out in his own element. He had a role to play, after all. I had asked Nima, but she insisted she’d stay in the keep.
The fight in the keep would be one in a deadly trap.
He bowed stiffly. “Yes. And Nima?”
“Nima?” I asked him. “Nima will command the archers here. She wanted to rule Red Midgard, as did you, and it has to be taken back.”
He bit back an answer and went to find his men.
“How many do we have?”
The general shrugged. “Two and a half thousand infantry in the keep and near two thousand archers, if a thousand leave. They’ll be infantry when the arrows run out. We have the moat coming, and we are building a rough wall inside the hall, and getting everything set up on the stairways, as requested. I’ve added my own surprises. The catapults are ready, as are the ballista, and Aten’s men shall use them. They know best how. It is their gear, is it not?”
I nodded. “Good. Now, we just have to wait.”
I watched outside, wondered at the blizzard, and tried to forget Rhean. I would never fear her as I had, and I would have weapons against her power, but the seed she had sown in my soul would always be there, marring my love for Quiss.
The thought of the creature made me both curl my fists with rage and to weep with loss.
And whoever had saved her would pay equally.
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