Sons of Ymir

by Alaric Longward

  Roger spurred his horse and tried to jump down, and failed.

  A field of ice and spiky, deadly spears grew from under Roger and ripped him apart. It spread, killing men in the middle. A draugr was casting the spell, guiding it, sitting on his horse, another next to him, holding a fiery spear, and then, both fell from the saddle, one burning into crisp, another with arrow in his skull.

  I grasped the ice spell.

  I felt it fading as the draugr died, the braid dissolving like a cut rope, but I restored it skillfully. I took it for my own, the great power of the wintry death, I sent it back to the enemy ranks. Snapping, slaying, piercing, and splitting the enemy, I stopped many of the enemy from going forward.

  The enemy still came, seeing the broken line.

  Skidding, dodging corpses, dozens of them jumped to the hole made by the icy death.

  In the center, fifty nobles rode up, and jumped down, and rushed to block the hole. They banged shields together before the enemy, who thought of trampling them to the snow. They crashed to the skilled noble ranks, and lost so many men, men-at-arms had time to come to pluck the hole. The enemy pushed, tried, and stabbed; the line buckled and held.

  In the left, the situation grew worse.

  A draugr queen of exceptional beauty threw a spell in the middle of already pressed Alantian men-at-arms and militia of Nallist. It was not a visible spell, not by more than a gust of air, and still, the spell dropped twenty men and ten legionnaires. It robbed men of air, and many, holding their throat, were clawing out of the sphere. The queen, riddled by arrows, was laughing and calling for more spells, and I saw not what happened as the line of Dagnar militia near the dverger left-most ranks broke, and a company of Hammer Legionnaires surged inside, stabbing with swords, taking down a line of men, then hacking down dverger that came to help.

  I rode through the ranks and called for magic.

  Ice wall split into the enemy, cutting off many, and then, I let go of the difficult spell, the one that turned blood into ice. A captain, hacking down a female sergeant, and his company screamed and fell to the snow, crystal-white and red ice pouring from their bodies and mouths. Arrow struck my shield, another my helmet, and Thrum pulled me back.

  The enemy left flank finally found their bravery, and charged the dverger. The shields of the foe banged to dverg ones, and axes hacked them down. Some brave ones jumped over the dverger, in berserker joy, or just eager to die, and soon the entire line was embroiled in horrible battle.

  All along the lines, shieldwalls pushed into each other, furious men and women hacking over the shoulders of the first rankers. In many places, the shields made no walls, and terrible chaotic melee took place, embroiling like a cauldron of boiling vegetables. There, is such places, the draugr liked to hunt, killing men with spells of fiery whips, slashing all living equally cruelly. No matter what the battles were like, men fell in scores. I heard Hal screaming for their men to hold. I heard Maggon doing the same.

  The discipline of the enemy was starting to tell.

  I almost saw our people falling back, and back, and many falling dead as they tried to keep up. The enemy was chanting in many places through the lines. An enemy champion was dancing over a corpse of a captain, not far, before dying to dverg bolt, but the battle was turning.

  I saw the Stone Watchers rolling over two draugr and loping very near the enemy right flank, their mouths open now. Some companies of the enemy were turning to hold them.

  “Hold! Hold them! Hold them and take their honor! Take their fame! A bit longer!” I yelled, and rode back and forward, and for some reason, for some odd reason, they heard me.

  A boy in an overgrown armor lifted his spear and pushed it over the shoulder of his father into a man’s eye. “Hold the line! Take their fame!” he shirked. They pushed back. Men around them roared, wept, died, and pushed the enemy back.

  “Hold the line! Steal their honor!” a female man-at-arms cried, hacking down with a mace in a wild melee where the Hammer Legionnaires were embroiled in a desperate battle to get though the lines and rip and roll over our men.

  We held them. We pushed them back. We lost two to everyone we killed.

  The enemy, howling, collected all their draugr. They rode like mad, gathering men to the middle, just when the Stone Watchers hit their right flank with vengeance.

  The draugr stood forth. One died to a dverg caster, turning to ice.

  The rest released spells.

  Fire, a huge inferno, cut our center to ribbons. Snow melted, men turned to ashes, their armor melted, shield crashed, spears blazed, and steel and blood ran in rivulets. Black lines of dead marked the terrible attack.

  The center fell. Hundreds died.

  Maggon was rushing to us, his cloak on fire, yelling orders, and begging for more men.

  The enemy surged forward to the space formerly occupied by our men, some thousand strong, and began to deploy in a circle of spears and shields, standing on the still blazing men.

  The draugr were pushing to the shields and turning to make life horrid for the Stone Watchers, who were not butchering the right flank of Lisar’s army and rushing for the center.

  “Look out!” Thrum yelled.

  I dodged instinctively. A spear passed my head.

  I looked to the right and saw Lisar’s men trampling our archers.

  Hundreds were falling, the stakes useless, arrows spent. Many were running for the dverger ranks.

  I cursed as I looked from one danger to the other.

  The draugr in the middle were now releasing horrifying chaos on the Stone Watchers. I saw the standard falling in flames and companies turning to blackened corpses before the next line crashed to the enemy shield-ring. There, spears stabbed, swords hacked, and men fell, fiery draugr whips slashed, and then, I had no more time to gawk, for Lisar was coming for the dverger.

  She turned her troop towards us, lances flashed, and she rode over hundred more of our archers fleeing before her. They did it brutally fast, in a thick line. They rolled over our men, stabbing little, letting their horses pound their enemy to the snow.

  They eyed us and lowered the lances.

  Thrum spat and called out his commands. “Brace! Walls! Shields overs shields, and Nött curse the bitch and her bully-boys! Let’s show them what we are made of.”

  “Toadstools and boletus shrooms!” called someone, and they all laughed darkly.

  The dverger right, the ring of steel, tightened into a thicker formation, with spears and halberds pushing out from holes in the shield fortress, and then, magic flashed at the riders.

  Many fell, died in rain of ice, by bolts of lightning, as dverg casters called down magic on the riders.

  They came on anyway.

  They crashed into the fortress of shields and weapons.

  Many fell over their horse’s necks. Indeed, a horse was running over the shields, before falling and crushing dverger. The enemy stabbed, stabbed, and pulled swords, as ranks of them fell

  I saw the queen.

  Lisar had stopped and was looking for an opportunity. With her, was a horn-helmeted man, short and like a guard-dog. She saw halberds pulling down a man of White Lion, and then another, and she surged forward. Looking the dverger into the eye, she let loose a war spell. It was a forked lighting—terrible, powerful, and cast in the faces of our boys. It charred some of hers to crisp and then tore apart twenty of ours, their shields flying.

  Into this place, the practiced enemy rode.

  I pushed into the reeling formation to aid our dverger.

  I hacked down a horseman, then another, the dverger pulling two more down. The enemy pushed in relentlessly, dismounting, and while the outer edges of the dverger were doing well, the center was suddenly a death trap where men and dverger were butchered like cows for a feast. There I stood, hacking down man and horse at a time. I was roaring, slaying, a king of bones.

  Then, a fiery spell of fire struck my shield.

  I fell back.

  A fiery
whip slammed to my shield again and then over my helmet, tearing metal. The horn-helmeted prince was there, his horse wide-eyed with horror, amid his men struggling in the terrible press. He had a White Lion painted on his shield, and his men suddenly knew I was their real target. They all tried to kill me, they all turned for me, pulling swords where the lance was useless, and fifty of them were trying to get to me, many dying as they abandoned their other foes.

  Thrum’s dverger pushed on the edges. Ten horses and men fell.

  Thrum’s wall closed the ranks, and trapped over forty riders.

  I saw Lisar just outside the wall. Her son, inside. “Fallior!” she screamed.

  Then, I saw her falling from her horse, the horse a burning ruin braided by some spell by our boys. Outside, archers returning to battle were charging her and her men. Some nobles were there, stabbing at Harrian’s riders.

  I kept my eyes on the boy. He was glancing at his mother.

  “Hey, worm-bait, here,” I called out, and banged my ax on my shield. “Come! Let me give you a kiss of steel! Your mother’s rotten tit can wait.”

  “Bastard,” he cursed, and led many of his men at me.

  The fiery whip came down again, and again, and I blocked it, though the end snapped to my chain, helmet, and boot. Thrum came and chopped down two horsemen, before a horse kicked him back. I kept blocking Fallior, for the boy seemed single-minded about taking my head, and kept hammering the weapon at me. The men following him were dying, one by one, until one managed to drive a horse at me, mad with rage, and I fell under the beast. The man jumped from the horse and crashed on my chest, and I saw the whip going up as Fallior was struggling with a spear in his gut, and ax on his leg. His whip went wide.

  I pushed at the man before me. I snapped his neck and pushed at his horse.

  “Maskan, look out!” I heard Thrum screaming, trying to get up

  The horse changed into a man, a grinning man with a flowing hair, and the jotun kicked me back down and sat over me. He pulled my head to the side. The young man, fire whip high again, licked his lips as I struggled.

  The jotun struck me hard across the face.

  I cursed and braided a spell together. A brief, sharp, and deadly wind of ice ripped out from my hand, and the horse under Fallior fell into ruin. The draugr yelped, surprised, his whip killing two of his own men.

  He was snarling his way up, but a dverg hacked a halberd down on him, and I heard Lisar screaming.

  I turned my attention to the cursing jotun.

  “I’ll do it, then,” he rumbled. “Here.” He flipped his ax in the air and bashed it down on my chest. I tossed and struggled, and the ax missed my head. An owl swept down and turned into another of the Sons of Ymir. He came down fast, raised the ax-shaft, and tried to bring that down to my throat.

  The first jotun also had his ax up.

  Something grabbed me by my leg, and we all turned to see a white bear, lithe, sleek, blue-eyed, pulling me along. The jotun rolled off me, the other one crashed into him, and a pair of dverg died under us, and I was dragged over rank of dverger, then fully out of the battle, and for the woods with terrible speed.

  I tried to see.

  I saw a bear’s ass. Then, I saw owls turning into jotuns and chaos as they struck at me. I rolled on the snow and shifted into a bear as well. I swatted at something in front of me, and it howled and rolled away. I had blood on my claws.

  The bear that had dragged me out of the dverger ranks, was tumbling down a hill for the woods.

  “Finally!” I heard a jotun saying.

  I turned, and charged. An ax passed over my skull, the jotun that had swung it, fell over my head. He was screaming as I bit my teeth over his manhood, and then through them.

  He fell under me.

  I spat out flesh and a ball, and tore down at the face beneath me. I clamped down my claws at it and ripped into its face and clawed out his throat.

  The other jotun, ax high, charged from the side.

  I got up to my full length, and slammed into him, clawing at his face. His ax went flying, and I heard his knee cracking as I pushed him under me. He fell hard, hammering my sides, and I tore into his throat. He tried to shape-shift, but died in the middle of the effort.

  Panting, I looked down the hill for the bear.

  There was nothing there but bloody snow and woods swaying in the wind.

  I turned to regard the battle.

  I spotted Lisar.

  She was standing in the middle of the battle. Her standard was with her, some hundred riders were struggling to push the dverger back, but she was looking at the dead boy in their midst, silent, her hand on her chest.

  I charged. Snow was flying as I pounced through the snow.

  She turned and saw me coming.

  She raised her head proudly, lifted her barbed spear, and called for fire. It roared its way out of her hand. It was a thick, pulsing, stream of power, and I fell as I jumped past it.

  I shifted direction and dodged a man lunging for me and saw another spell coming for me, a rain of tiny fireballs. Few burned to my skin, and I rolled on the snow, growling. She kept calling for new spells and was gauging my movements carefully.

  I changed direction again, and disappeared into a group of enemy riders, tore down one, ripped a man apart, and snarled my way through a pair of archers. Men were running everywhere before me, and then several flew around, some in pieces. The lightning bolt tore through a horse next to me, it ripped across my flesh, and my back was flaming.

  I came out of the rout and saw Lisar very near. A line of riders obscured my sight, stalwart White Lion and Headless Horse yelling warnings, but I kept going.

  I crashed into them, felt spear and sword cutting into my flesh, ripped down a man and his horse, and jumped at her.

  I fell into Lisar’s barbed spear.

  I saw her eyes beneath me. I saw the yellow jewel in her bone-pendant flashing. I felt the barbs in my chest and then the spear breaking.

  I sunk my teeth into her, thrashed her around, shaking and tearing at her, and then, I fell with her on a bank of snow.

  I heard the yells of men, the cheers of so many soldiers, Thrum cursing, the weeping of the wounded, and smelled the piss and shit of battlefield.

  The smells of victory.

  CHAPTER 13

  When I came to, I was in a chamber in the Ugly Brother. I was weak and felt terrible. I was shaking with fever, and I had apparently pissed myself several times. There was vomit in a bucket, and broth that had long gown cold. A pitcher of mead was empty, and I knew Thrum had been sitting there, helping himself to my fare. I was naked.

  ​ “Shit, damn,” I cursed softly, as I tried to sit up. I managed it, though I also regretted it. It was pain here, pain there, and I was lucky to be alive.

  Again.

  The wind was whistling, and I heard the groaning of stone and flinched as I stepped on a dead mouse. I turned my head and stared. Nima was there, I found, sleeping in an angry heap next to me. She wore only a tunic, and she had a hand on my ax and leg over my shield, both close to the bed. She looked powerful, dirty, and vicious. I saw a dog looking at me and wagging its tail in the doorway, but he, or she, dared not enter as Nima shifted.

  I lifted a blanket, and placed it over her bare ass.

  I heard a chuckle. Thrum stepped thought the door and looked at her. “I think she is guarding her investment,” he whispered. “She says she is the queen, but she wants a coronation and a proper wedding. She showed me a paper. Her brother has been demanding a title.”

  “I forgot to mention Saag,” I said, and wondered at a missing end of a toe. “How—”

  “You’ll limp for good,” he said. “You are much more scarred than Morag ever was. That’s what you get when you don’t have a proper father.”

  I nodded and looked at my chest. A bloody bandage was on it, and many others all across my body.

  “In case you wondered,” he said with a cruel smile, “we won. The line broke, but th
e Stone Watchers routed the enemy. They scattered to die in the woods. Some tried to flee to the city and past the tower, but none made it. Literally, none. We have two thousand prisoners who eat better than before. We have just three thousand men left ourselves, and the Stone Watchers. What now?”

  I held my head, and shook it. “I must think how to secure the land. We need the ships to move between Fiirant and Alantia. We must find the best, and the fittest men to take north. It will take time. I will have a realm after this is over, won’t I? I already have a queen.” I smiled at Nima, who was snoring gently. “She undressed me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gods help me,” I said. “I remember nothing.”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t here. She insisted we all leave. She was medicating you, and I don’t know what she did. She’s entitled to it all, isn’t it? You made her your queen. Now. We must speak of two matters.”

  I smiled. “Yes. What was the scroll you had?”

  He looked sheepish. “A manifesto of love.”

  “What?”

  He tossed it to me. I opened it up, and a huge number of names had been written on it. There were hundreds, perhaps a thousand. They were noble names, and men of influence, and money. One name had been crossed over.

  Hal’s.

  At the bottom, was a set of newer ones. One was Saag’s.

  I looked at Thrum. “What is this?”

  He smiled sadly. “Hal gave it to me before the battle. He had retrieved it from one of Roger’s men. While Roger was held prisoners, he was still gathering support.”

  “For what?” I asked him.

  “That list,” he said cruelly, “is a list of men who have sworn to challenge your crown after the war. If you win, they would drive you out. Seems your Saag’s not happy how Nima holds all the power in the family. Hal retrieved it, and gave it to me. Seems he thinks he might benefit from your gratitude more than Roger’s. There are others of Roger’s family, that would be worth following, but he chose you.”

  “They gave me their oaths,” I said. “They took my help.”