by Derek Nelsen
“Make a left, dwarf,” Svikar ordered. “I’ll take the lead from here.”
Slegge slid to a stop, ending with his hand on the massive column. “Well, I’m going right.”
“Good luck to you, then.” Svikar’s attention was behind them. “Alright, girl, no time to waste,” said the troll, “Let’s pick up the pace a little. I’ll tell you where to go from ‘ere.”
“You aren’t fool enough to let that head lead you into a troll hive, are you?” The dwarf cocked his head back as if he heard something, then slid his way to the right of the tree. “Follow a troll and you might as well cut out the middleman and wait for Hella back in the hall.”
“Tor”—Svikar’s speech was hurried—“what do you know about dwarfs?”
Taking his cues from both untrustworthy guides, all of Tor’s attention was behind them now. “I don’t know anything about dwarfs, Svik, but I’ve never had one lead me to the gates of Hel. Do you want us to leave you here or kick you as far as we can down the left branch?”
Kiara looked at Tor like he was being cruel to their worthless guide.
There was a sound behind them, like a distant storm. Even Tor could hear it.
“No, don’t do that.” Svik’s eyes twitched, and he gulped hard. “I’ll stick with you, my new friends.”
Tor moved Kiara’s hand over to grip the back of the dwarf’s cloak and pushed them off to the right. The sound was getting louder. It was like a heavy rain. Tor looked back, almost expecting the stone columns to be swaying like trees. They weren’t.
“Like the troll said”—Tor started using his sword to push off the ice and get more speed—“we need to pick up the pace.”
“Well, dwarfs are no friends to trolls, I'll say that. They're not friends to anybody, not even other dwarfs half the time.” Svikar knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on, but still the troll felt the need to sow his seeds of discord.
Tor noticed Kiara passing judgmental glances between all of them. Even him. But it was worse still to see the new fear in her eyes when she craned her neck back toward the rumbling.
“What is that?! Sound’s like a storm!” Kiara shouted over the noise.
“You won’t have to worry about it!” Slegge dodged the question. “We’ll be gone before they get ‘ere!”
“Will we be safe if we get to your country, Slegge?!” she asked.
“I can't say!” Slegge may have been blunt, but that was better than lying. “But you’ll be a lot better off there than here!”
Tor looked over his shoulder. Blue stars were dropping out of the sky and into the sea of fog. The haze was beginning to light up, like a thin sheet held up in front of a blue flame. He came to a halt. To either side of the river of ice, the spindly columns had become so tightly packed they were like prison bars holding them to the frozen path. Ahead, great masts—as massive as the one they saw splitting the river earlier—rose up high out of the black nothingness.
The world was ending.
“Dwarf!” Tor could feel his heart beating harder with every step. “We’ve got to stop!”
Kiara let go of Slegge’s coat like it was on fire. Without him for balance, she fell and slid till she swirled to a stop.
The dwarf skidded to a stop not twenty paces from the edge. “We’re almost there.” He skated back to help Tor pull Kiara to her feet, but his eyes were on the storm. “We don’t have time for this.”
Tor heard the rumbling closing in and could see the reflection of the blue light bouncing off and through the icy trees, but his fear was in front of him. While Kiara found her footing, he found himself easing down to his quaking knees.
The dwarf had led them to the top of a frozen waterfall, its crystalline floor bending down over the edge of Hel. Suddenly, it felt like the ground was tilting. Nobody else seemed to notice but Tor. With a resounding crunch, he stabbed the tip of Hella’s sword deep into the thick ice to keep from sliding toward the edge.
“Maybe we should have gone left.” Tor thought about everything that brought him to this point, and blamed Svikar. Only a troll could be less trustworthy than a dwarf, hocking souls to the queen of the underworld.
Hel's Back Door
“There’s a trail up ahead. I promise you’ll be safe.”
Safe? Closer to the edge? Tor couldn’t make the two concepts fit.
“A trail?” asked Kiara. “Where?”
“Swear you’ll keep me safe. No executions, no prisons,” Svikar demanded.
“Prison?” Kiara looked horrified, of the noise behind them or the statement, Tor couldn’t tell.
“Tor, you need to get up!” Kiara screamed.
Tor spun to see streams of vines slithering through the pillars like a flash flood, pulsing blue. It’s too late.
“Promise me!” yelled Svikar.
“You have my word,” Slegge agreed.
The slithering was deafening.
Tor looked at the edge, paralyzed. He couldn’t take another step. “Take care of her!” Tor spun on his knees to face the swarm. “I’ll buy you some time!” His knees shook like a newborn fawn as he eased his way to his feet.
He turned to Kiara and kissed her cheek. “Stay with Slegge!”
“There’s the Viking!” hooted Svikar. “I knew he was still in there. Kiara, follow the dwarf. Your God has saved you again!”
Like a falling star, the first vine dropped down from above, then another came, and another. Tor slashed one, two, then three in half, then bit the head off another. The chaw was dry, but by the time Tor was able to spit, it had taken the edge off everything that was happening, and the prospect of what was yet to come.
Tor knew he was going to die, but he wanted it to mean something. He wanted Kiara to have a chance to get home. “What are you waiting for? Go!” He wanted them to at least try. All he could do was give them that chance. He had to part the waters.
Upstream, the river raged, deep with a flow of phosphorescent vines. The first trickle slid past their feet, biting at ankles to try to keep from sliding over the brink. Tor kicked and slashed. Clearing the early arrivals felt good. Like taking the first chinks out of a log the breadth of a door. Some draugar tried to draw themselves up into their human forms before getting within blade shot but were drowned underneath the next wave of vines swimming through.
Tor scraped frozen sweat from his forehead. Fog from his breath clouded his vision. He figured they had less than a minute before being swept off their feet and drowned in a torrent of vines as they were carried over the icy falls. There were so many that every swing was a reaction, a second more he could stay on his feet.
“You’ve got to trust me!” Tor heard the dwarf yell.
It was way too late for that.
Fully-formed draugar had made themselves flat so they could walk through the cage of pillars lining either side of the river. Tor aimed for their souls. Gold- and silver-coated rings pinged off the sword when his stroke hit its mark.
Tor considered cutting Slegge down for blowing Kiara’s only chance of escape. He turned just in time to see the dwarf bury his hammer deep into the ice.
The Fall
Kiara kicked and stomped at any vine sinking its talons into her ankles, relieved when she sent any of them sliding over the edge of the frozen falls. She did what she could, but she was unarmed except for the troll’s head. Svikar, also unarmed, was not worthless—his biting and snarling knocking many an unsteady draugr off their slippery, slithery feet.
Tor was a true Viking warrior, slashing every draugr that slithered anywhere close by. He parted the river of vines like Moses parting the Red Sea.
Slegge just had time to take them to the path. Kiara could see the spot, a small break in the columns just at the precipice of the waterfall. There was no way Tor would’ve gone that close to the edge without Slegge hitting him on the head with his hammer first. Kiara could see in the dwarf’s angry eyes that, for whatever reason, he wasn’t leaving Tor behind. That was good, because Kiara couldn’t le
ave him, either.
The dwarf grabbed Kiara by the arm and opened his mouth wide, took in a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. His eyes were desperate.
He wanted her to hold her breath.
“You’ve got to trust me,” he shouted. He grabbed a vine by the throat, bit through its neck, and spit its soul onto the ice. He raised his fingers one at a time, and on three he took another deep breath. When he saw Kiara do the same, he raised his hammer with both hands and slammed it down hard.
The ice shattered underfoot.
Kiara tried to hold on to the side, but the current of water and slush pulled at her legs until it dragged her under the icy floor. The shock of cold wrung the air out of her contracted lungs. Her feet kicked wildly, and her arms flailed for anything she could grab to pull herself out, but there was nothing there—just a slippery ceiling of ice. She watched in horror as the glowing hole the hammer had made drifted out of sight.
Blue bioluminescent light pulsed from draugar that had also fallen in. With each spark of light, she could see Tor, covered in draugr, slamming the tip of Hella’s sword into the ice to break his way out. The blade came dangerously close to hitting Svikar, who was still strapped tight to Kiara’s belly. The last thing she saw was Tor dragging the sword against the ceiling in a panic.
Then she fell.
Welcome Home
Kiara crawled to shore, coughing and gagging and wheezing until she finally filled her lungs with air. That first breath was deep and dank and delicious. Then she retched, and a steady stream of fluid poured out onto the stones. The spasms didn’t end until the water had been wrung out of her like a dishrag. The coughing and wheezing kept on until her lungs were filled with only air again.
The air was fresher but fouled with fish. Kiara looked up and saw three dwarf children with fishing poles, staring at her as if she was a mermaid. Her mind was so foggy she checked to see if she had fins. Nope.
“Tor?” She rolled over, then saw him face down on the worn, stony shore. She crawled to him, her body too weak to stand, and pulled him over to his side. It took everything she had. She was shivering, and her fingers were numb, but she warmed when she felt his shallow breaths against her pale, blue skin.
A tear soaked into his shirt, then another. She was exhausted and crying. They were alive.
The children stared on.
“Help!” Kiara heard Svikar’s gravelly voice. “Don’t let it—”
Before the blue vine could slither into Svikar’s nose, Slegge’s hammer pinned its soul hard against the ground.
“How ‘bout letting me borrow a knife, boys.”
Three knives nearly stuck his boots as they skipped by. He shook his head as he fished the knives from the water, and cut the draugr off from its soul. The vine stopped wriggling. Slegge tossed the knives and half the vine up onto the shore for the three boys. Then he picked the hammer off what was left, examined the draugr’s ring, and put it in his pocket.
“All right then, show’s over little dwarfs. How’s about helping a helpless head over to dry land before another draugr comes swimming this way again?” Svikar asked.
The children, oddly more comfortable with the head of a troll than with Kiara, used their fishing sticks to roll the head high up on the bank, as if they’d been doing that sort of thing their entire lives.
Maybe it was the warmth of the stone. Maybe it was the sight of three children fishing as if nothing could be wrong in the world. But suddenly, Kiara’s eyes burned with tears and fatigue.
“I’m going to get a cart.” Slegge was coiling the other half of the vine into a loop. “Now kids, this lot is with Slegge if anyone’s asking. Keep ‘em safe. And cut the rings offa every draugr you catch swimming outta them falls, ya hear? The rings are mine.” He picked up one of their sacks, poured its contents on the ground, and with some muffled cursing, wrangled Svikar’s head inside. He looked a little guilty. “If you forget you ever saw that head and you do what I asked, then I’ll split the blood weed with you, fifty-fifty.” He looked at the vine, bit off a piece, and spit it in the bag. He bit off another piece for himself and begrudgingly threw the rest to the kids.
Slegge walked off with Svikar in the sack, threatening and occasionally cracking him with his hammer’s handle until the troll finally shut his mouth.
Kiara’s eyes were heavy, and she drifted off, dreaming of rubies twinkling in the sky.
To Wounds That Never Heal
Tor sat up straight and gasped. To his surprise, his lungs inhaled sultry, smoke-filled air. So hot. He ripped open his shirt. What was he wearing? His stomach was wet with sweat, and the cut across his chest had been dressed in bandages.
His left hand ached, and he held it up. Also bandaged. His right held firm to Hella’s sword. His fingers cracked when he loosed his grip. His palm was still wet from his icy bath in the falls.
The last thing he remembered was the glint of Slegge’s hammer and being swept under the ice—just one more nightmare to add to the list of things that would haunt him for the rest of his life.
He was lying on a thin mat in the corner of a dark, musty-smelling room. Waves of heat rose from a glowing forge that put out too much warmth and not enough light. The space wasn’t small, just cramped, with tables covered with all different sizes of hammers and vises and stones—it was a workshop.
The crowded shelves were filled with fabrications made of iron, copper, and bronze. And there were finer things, collected things—silver and gold, meticulously crafted. There was a scale with arms as long as Tor’s, one side piled high with what looked like rubies, opposite a smaller pile of circularly carved stones.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, Viking.” Slegge walked to a stone door, pushed it open, whispered something to someone on the other side, and let it close, nearly silent, on its stone hinges.
Slegge had a hammer in his hand. He made his way back to the forge and pulled something glowing from the fire. Snarling, he pushed it back in and laid his hammer on the table.
Slegge handed Tor a drinking horn—its bronzed tip stamped with a goat chewing on a vine. Then he filled it with a sour-smelling mead from a matching bronze pitcher. Tor looked at the dwarf suspiciously. Was this horn from one of his goats? For all he knew, he was the most prodigious producer of runaway goats in all the nine worlds. Maybe they left because they didn’t like the snow.
“Where’s Kiara?”
“She’s in better shape than you, I’d say.” Slegge took a slow draught of mead.
Tor did not join him.
“My sister Ruby’s taking care of the girl. She requested a hot bath. I believe you could use one yourself.”
“What about the troll?”
“Shhhh,” Slegge whispered as he put a calloused finger in front of his bearded face. “Ruby’s cleaning that filthy bugger up, too. It’s against the law to harbor his kind in Svartalfheim. They’re trouble. Gotta try to keep him hidden or things are going to get a lot worse for us all.”
“You promised we’d be safe.” Tor stood up, and immediately pulled his robe tight. He was wearing something like a yellow bedsheet that covered him to just above the knee.
“You’re safe, she’s safe.” He lowered his voice again. “And the head’s safe, too.” Slegge looked over his shoulder at the closed door, then whispered on. “You and the girl were seen, but I’m not sure about Svik. His kind have always been forbidden. The only time I’ve ever even seen a troll in the Red Fields was after the war, when Pyrrhus sent his ambassador to establish his government here. That elf had one in his retinue.” Slegge furrowed his brow. “There seem to be a lot of them in the government these days.”
Slegge cleared his throat and raised his horn. “To getting home.” Tor clacked his horn to Slegge’s. Getting home was something he could drink to.
The ale poured like fire. “Str-uhm-strong,” Tor coughed. “What is it?” His face cooled as the fire flowed through his veins down to his fingers, and all the way to his toes.
> “Firewater,” said Slegge.
“This isn’t firewater.” Tor’s eyes shut and his shoulders fell. Feelings he didn’t know he had burned away. All the fear and disappointment and anger that’d been brewing inside him since the Vikings arrived melted away like a spring snow. He hadn’t felt that way since his raiding days—worry free, uncaring, and invincible. His eyes opened to the sound of his own knuckles cracking from squeezing the hilt of Hella’s sword. He forced himself to ease his grip.
“Dwarfs work hard,” said Slegge. “We leave more of the fire in it. Any you’ve ever tried was likely brewed by a witch and weaker than goblin piss.” He smiled. “You know, when Rotinn was a boy...” The joy left his face, and he silently stared into the fire.
“Thanks for not leaving me behind back there.” Tor dried the sweat from his cheeks. “Years ago, Runa and I lost our little girl. Before, in the caves, she actually thought she saw her. She was talking to her, same as I’m talking to you now.” The fire glowed orange and hot, and the smoke drifted silently out a hole in the corner of the ceiling. “It was terrible what Hella did to your son.”
Slegge’s lip started to quiver. “Life would be so much simpler if it were only our enemies that could cause us pain.”
Tor always found it best to drown the awkwardness of sentimentality with a drink. “To wounds that never heal.”
The dwarf answered by wiping his eyes with his sleeves and emptying his horn.
“Time you get cleaned up, Viking. We’ve got to honor our dead.”
Dwarf Funeral
