The spell of darkness died.
Sand looked up, trying to get up, his sword up.
I stepped on his sword and hacked down. He twitched, and his skull was cloven. He was still.
I turned to look at Asra.
She was taking steps back.
“You will take me to your father,” I snarled.
“No, he will meet her soon, in a day or two,” she said. “I don’t want you two to meet. It won’t end well. Happily, you do not know where Euryale is.”
She shook her head, stepped back again, and then, she changed into an owl, great, white, and fast. She flapped for the doorway.
She flew into a heavy net, and that net entangled her.
I watched the dverger surround her, to pull the net together. I watched her changing into a raging bear, into a wolf, a small wolverine, and finally into herself, eleven feet tall and fierce, beautiful, and she remained stuck. In the end, Thrum stepped next to her and bashed her in the knee with a hammer and then in the temple. She was down, moaning.
Urac walked for her.
I stopped him. “I will aid Lok,” I told him. “But you will have to obey me.”
He licked his lips nervously and then bowed. “Lok thanks you, surely,” he said, face full of mad relief. “My Dana will be dead, but Lok shall survive.”
I nodded. “Do you know where the Serpent Skull is. This Euryale.”
“This I know not,” he said sadly. “I have no idea.”
“If you follow me to the end,” I told her, “and I succeed, you shall have a great task. You will get your heart’s desire. It will be a great trick, worthy of your god.”
He bowed. “I agree. I have none else. What, pray tell me, are you fighting for now?”
I grinned. “For me and a promise. Thrum?”
“King?” he said, as Urac stepped back.
“Take the ships you came here with,” I told him, “and join the legions. Take Urac here, and Sand. Row north, and I shall meet you on the coast. If not? Then, you find a way to die in a manner you find pleasing.”
“Aye, King, of course,” he murmured. “I’ll start planning for just that.”
I walked out, my eyes on Asra. I found Tris leaning on the doorway. She lifted her eyebrow. “Well. My dear Nima warned me this would be interesting.”
“You brought your friends along to the Riddle,” I said. “Why? You must have known it would end badly for them. You were supposed to come alone, and we were supposed to ask you about the anagram. You were simply supposed to—”
“Oh, hush. Friends. We knew each other from years past, all serving the legion of Aten. Why?” she said. “I owed the hook-nose money. Lots of it. Gult was insufferable dolt. You saw him. Barely coherent. And my captain, the man you killed, bedded me every chance he had. He knew I helped smugglers and took a cut, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted and took more. It was an opportunity, see? And still, you learnt something from the Black Ship scrubbing turds?”
“I did,” I told her. “You did well, even if it wasn’t intentional. In fact, it might have saved Midgard. We needed the time to get Thrum here. You made it all perfect. None is hunting me now. I have a chance. You will be well rewarded.”
She nodded, pleased. “I cannot stay. They know I was there in the Riddle. So, I am coming with you. How will you find this Opar?” She shrugged at my look. “I listened. I did. So what?”
“Where I go, you cannot go,” I said, “but as agreed, you and Nima can figure out how to reward you. She’ll give you a piece of Red Midgard. Any piece. I care not. Excuse me.”
I went to crouch before Asra. Her eyes were open, and she held her temple. “Where … can I find your father?”
“I cannot,” she said. “I cannot tell you. My oaths are to him, and our clan. You could be wrong.”
I nodded and smiled. “I too miss that bond.”
She smiled. “When I first saw you, I despised you. You were without your jotun’s powers, a human more than one of us. And still, that human, he was brave. You went against Raven, Balic, and tried to save Baduhanna. You fought armies with rabble and challenged the south and prevailed. No human could do that. Jotun might. I saw you in Dagnar, planning devious traps for our foes. You were madly brave and strong. No oaths. No old ways. Just Red Midgard. I envied you. No burdens of your kin to weigh you down. But you must know the humans hate all of us. They will never—”
I stroked her cheek. “I know now. I also know my father, and your kin were greedy, selfish, and forgot to share it with our gods. I shall not do the same mistake now. I spit on all my dreams.”
She shook her head. “Don’t find Father. He hates you. All Ymirtoe. He won’t listen. Don’t stop him from his quest. He might save us all.”
I rubbed my face. “Aye.”
I got up and turned away, my heart pumping.
“Don’t try to find them,” she called out. “I will hate the jotun who kills my father. It would release me from my oaths, but I will hate you!”
I looked back at her. “He makes his own decisions. And I care not if you hate me, if you and I will lead our kin to victory, riches, and power. You and I shall marry, and rule well, in love, or out of it. Alas, that I love Rhean.”
I left, and spoke with Urac, Tris, and Thrum. Then, I took to wing.
I had a way to find the enemy.
I had to follow the corpses.
BOOK 5: THE SERPENT SKULL
“Alas, it matters little if you betrayed us or not. I still must kill you.”
Maskan to Opar
CHAPTER 16
I slid across the sky and then beat my wings furiously as I lost altitude. It was dark, overcast, and the wind promised more snow for the north. While adopting an animal shape, a jotun instinctively knows how to take advantage of its unique powers and learns how to enjoy the wonderful sensations of flight, the enhanced sense of sight.
It took experience to fully understand how and when best to utilize those skills.
Where a sensible eagle would be asleep in its nest, I was struggling with hail, wind, and general misery. I flapped my way through it all and passed over the Arrow Straits. I hugged the coast and searched the snowy, relatively calm sea until I finally spotted our naval force. There were the food transports and the transport galleys of the Grinning Mask and the Skull legions. I spotted the standards the new legion had taken. They had chosen the Six Spears. There were others, picked up from the battlefield. There were over sixty such ships, and I begged the enemy would not send the galleys south. They would sink our fleet. Some were sinking, nonetheless. The sea had not iced over yet and wouldn’t for week or two, but I spotted two ships that had floundered and several that leaked.
I left them. I’d meet them in the north, if I survived and if they did.
I flew north and cut out to the sea, cursing the darkness, the unpredictable weather, and circling the Bay of Whales for hours. I saw a few ships. I saw the crews working hard on the decks, and they were mostly sailing for the east, for the Golden City.
Then, I spotted something.
There was a ship sailing for the north . It was silent and had not a soul on the deck. The name was The Vigilant Wife. The hook-nose had mentioned it.
I banked and flew around it.
It would be filled with corpses. I smelled them immediately, the stench of carrion.
It was a fat, lonely ship in the middle of the gray and black sea, and a single lantern shone in its cabins. I flew down for the ship, and around it, seeking a sign of life, but found none. The helm was housed in a sheltered aft part of the ship, and no pilot, officer, or captain stood on the decks. The crow’s nest was also empty. If it was crewed by men, there would be a watch on the deck.
The crew would be draugr.
It looked like a ghost ship. It was the one.
I approached the ship again and made a relatively graceful landing on the aft deck. I hopped around the slippery railing, then the deck, and considered the aft part of the ship, which had been covered by leather c
anvases. There, I saw a man holding the black-wooded helm. He was staring ahead, over the horizon, and was long-dead. Not bothering to hide his condition, he was a rotten-faced man with filed teeth and lank hair in a ponytail. The draugr needed no guidance as to where to go. They stood no watch. They wouldn’t be asleep. They would adjust the sail and go back down. They knew the route very well.
I hopped on the deck and flapped my wings to keep my balance and then saw an open hole.
I didn’t hesitate and shapeshifted.
I, a huge rat, slithered down to the stairs. Assaulted by smells and sounds, I was careful. I descended, hopping softly from one step to the other. A galley, used a decade ago last time, was to my right. Bones littered the floor, and old kettles held the aroma of beef stew, long rotten. In front, behind a ragged screen, I saw glimpses of a lower deck.
I sneaked forward and found dozen draugr sitting around a table that had been nailed down. A hundred long-forgotten hammocks swayed with the movement of the ship, forlorn. Some had a skeleton in them. The crew was playing cards and cursing.
“Again and again,” said one, a nearly skeletal draugr. “You have been cheating even before we died.”
“I cannot help it,” said a draugr in a rich, red coat and a flamboyant, wide hat. “I never could, and even less now.” His voice was soft and unapologetic.
Another one touched an old bottle filled with liquor, stared at it, took a swig and smacked his lips. It didn’t please him, and still, he tried again.
The skeletal draugr was shaking his head. “Not long now. I’ll be happy to see this duty end. They’ll put us on shore soon. Stop using the cards in your belt! I see you!”
The flamboyant draugr spat dryly. “I’m the captain, and I cheat all I want. I’ll be careful ashore, I will, if we play with the living. With you lot? I need no subtlety.”
“Is it true?” asked the one who had taken a drink. “They are nearly ready?”
“They are,” said the captain, pulling out a high card from his hat. The skeletal one was grinding his teeth together in rage. “The Serpent Skull is nearly ready with the lot. All geared up, put into companies and armies. She has her generals and captains and plans. I doubt we shall be on the land for long, eh? The victory will be swift, and we own Midgard. Soon, we’ll go where we please, eh, loved ones?”
They all looked glum.
“No,” said the skeletal one. “We’ll be left to rot in some scummy port until they put us to work again. They’ll not let us go. They’ll find new wars, new continents, new damned worlds, and we’ll be hauling the stiff ones again in some god-cursed river of piss in Muspelheim.”
The captain pulled all the coin on the table to him, his eyes gleaming. “I doubt they need to haul them anymore, boys. You have seen what her highness has built. We are past those times, my lovelies. They shall enjoy Midgard and start planting carrots, maybe. As for now, a few days to Ygrin and then to work, my sweet boys. Then, we’ll see.” She caressed the skeletal one’s face, cracking his skin with a ring.
I realized the captain was a female.
“I hate the Dome,” one of them remarked. “Filthy hive of villains. Too many candles. Seems like a waste.”
“It is a waste,” the captain agreed. “But they are rich, and waste what they like, eh? And it is our filthy hive, isn’t it? Better than what’s on top. No place less liked in the north. Filled with the sick, the dying. I don’t mind the dead, but the dying? They are all so noisy and whine like children. Never could abide children.”
Ygrin .
They were going to Ygrin, our ally north of Falgrin. Dome was their city. I had never heard of it.
“Damned nasty island,” the skeletal one muttered. “I hear they’ll take Mara’s Brow in a day or two. They say it shall be glorious.”
“Aye, they will. And the army will march as well. Mara’s Brow is but a personal business to the ladies in charge. Nothing but a silly scheme they are running, though a good base … wait,” the captain said, looking at her belt, seeking a card that would give her the victory. Then, there was a call, and most all got up, cursing.
They were going to trim the sails.
I slipped out and found a stairway to the hold.
There, I found the corpses.
A hundred or two lay in piles covered with sheets, blankets, or leather hides. Their feet stuck out towards the middle, in four rows, heaped high over the ballast stones. They were mostly officers and sergeants of the legions, most fallen in Alantia and in various battles, and had likely left Nallist just before I took it. I stalked through them and alarmed some fellow rats, who soon went back to their snacks of flesh and eyeballs. The heroes had been hacked to death, many killed by arrows, and few even strangled. They all had legs and arms, and were, I supposed, prime corpses to be raised.
The draugr had been doing it for twenty years. They had been collecting them in a city of Dome, some sort of filthy island filled with sick and dying.
Opar, he would be there.
I blocked the anxiety out of my mind and settled in a corner to wait. I waited and watched my fellow rats feasting.
Two days later, half starved, I found I had arrived in Dome. I heard scrambling legs on top, the call of gulls, and soon, they were opening the deck above. Light shone down all the way to the hold.
A draugr looked down and grinned, his eyes gleaming. “Rise and shine, pretties. Join the brotherhood, aye, even you, sisters! Welcome to the Serpent’s Spire and the Dome under!”
***
The island, located off the coast of Ygrin, was a dismal place. A terrible one.
Slinking along the deck, my whiskers assaulted by the smell of dead things of the sea, I could see the barren coasts of Ygrin far to the north. Even further, where the Bay’s northern independent counties and duchies began, beyond them, I could see the great steppes blended with the Blight, the mountains far, far away.
The western coast held cities and valleys, which would, come spring, be bountiful and rich, but only for a while. The capital of Ygrin was located far in the hills, but their harbor and trade city of Illon was visible to the west. There, spires and walls gleamed in the pale morning light.
Then, we glided past the southern peninsula of the island, and I only saw the villages and woods.
There were dozens of miserable communities.
People had gathered to watch the ship arrive. They were madmen, hermits, filthy and dangerous. I saw them walking on the shores, fingers clutching sticks and stones. Others were sick. They were missing parts of their body. Hand, fingers. Leg, nose, ears. Many were old, poor, and destitute. This was the place the north sent her unwanted, those it wanted to forget, and no solider or noble came to it gladly.
There was a small harbor ahead with a stone pier and a tiny fort that jutted above a miserable village. The fort was made of wood, and some sort of soldiers stood on the walls, likely made up of the worst scum the north had to offer.
The island itself was long and barren, and beyond the village, the center of it was filled with forests and high crags.
“The count’s waiting,” said the draugr captain. “He sits on his horse like a sack of turds. Looks sullen, doesn’t he. I don’t like them sullen. One would think he knows better than to irritate us. I took the head of his brother-in-law a year ago for sneezing. Can’t let go, can he?”
“Aye, he cannot,” said the skull-face. “He might follow his brother-in-law soon.”
“Cover up, boys,” the captain said. “They’ll all join us soon enough.”
I felt them braiding spells together and saw the dead taking living appearances. They were sailors, pirates, smugglers, and bastards the lot, but now looked alive. The captain’s face smoothed into red-painted cheeks and highbrow and her men into salt-bitter sailors.
The count, I saw, and his men were all silent and waiting.
The village was empty, the doors closed. Wagons by the dozens, muddy and old with bedraggled mules and horses, were waiting.
&nb
sp; One of the count’s men was coughing.
They were likely all alive, but not on the side of the living. They took coin and kept their mouths shut. The count watched the ship mooring in his miserable little harbor, where fishing boats and small dinghies clanged against each other in their moldy misery, and he said not a word as the draugr commandeered wagons and horses, silently dropped a bag of coins on his lap, and proceeded to unloading their grisly cargo.
He stood there, waiting, sweating, terrified, and knew very well what was happening.
Soon, the first wagons were pulling out of the village.
I slithered out of the ship, ran down the gangplank, and rushed under a wagon. Then, I slipped inside, squatting under a former captain of Aten, a young man once.
I bided my time, and the wagons lurched forward. The sounds of the harbor filled with the sounds of the birds. After some more waiting, I poked my nose out from under the cover.
I was grabbed by the neck. I squealed with surprise and prepared to shapeshift.
“Well,” said a white-bearded, rotten draugr driver, whose friend had seen me. “Fat and juicy, eh? I mean them corpses, aren’t they, my rat friend? Haven’t seen this one before. Must sail the other ships usually. I’d remember one that large. Looks like a dog.”
“I like rats,” the draugr holding me murmured. His eyes were gone, and fires burned behind the dead flesh in his skull. His lips were dry and black. “I remember I used to like cats and had a dozen. But now, rats. Rats are smart and survive anything. Well … except being squeezed.”
He didn’t squeeze, to his luck.
The driver scowled. “Cats. Cats ate my shoe, once. Give him a morsel, eh?”
The draugr looked behind and considered ripping a bit of flesh of a body, but then shrugged and kept stroking me.
I relaxed somewhat and looked over the dozens of wagons rattling on a rustic road, over a land of snowy landscape, for the craggy hillsides still free of snow. There were glimpses of green grass, bright as morning, and even some late flowers. The hills were rugged, and huge tower-like ravines ran between them.
“Will they be ready,” my draugr muttered. “I doubt they are ready.”
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