Gateway to Nifleheim (2 page)

“We hold here.”

“But my magics may yet save them,” said Talbon. “If you would but give me leave,” he said, a surprised look on his face. “You must.”

“I will not,” said Eotrus, his voice resolute, but tinged with sadness and regret. “They’re too far away. We can't advance fast enough in this mist and you can't turn it all. It will be over, one way or another, long before we could get there. Stern's fate is in Odin's hands now. As is ours.” The old knight looked from side to side and took in as much of the landscape as the mist allowed. “This is good ground. Moreover, it's our ground. Eotrus ground. We will make our stand here. Let them come to us. Let them taste honest steel and rue the day they dared venture on our lands.”

Talbon’s eyes narrowed. “You know what’s out there,” he said. “You know what’s making those sounds, don’t you?” His hands moved to his belt pouches where were stored the mystical tokens of his wizardry. “It's not like you to hold back, Aradon. What's going on here? I must know what you know to prepare the proper sorcery.”

Eotrus didn’t hear Talbon’s words. His eyes and concentration were fixed on the night sky, though the stars were only partly visible through the thick mist. “My worst fears come to pass,” he whispered, though no one heard his words.

“Trolls,” said Brother Donnelin, a tall, broad man of rumpled clothing, sallow skin, and lined face. His left arm ended just below the elbow. To the stump was strapped a metal and wooden contraption to which various attachments could be affixed. With practiced ease, he fitted it with a long dagger’s blade pulled from its slot on his crowded belt where were hung myriad tools, gadgets, and weapons. His brow furrowed as he looked back and forth from his liege to the mist that lurked before them. “It must be trolls, down from the high mountains. First time in generations that we’ve seen them, but it has to be them. Nothing else wails like that.”

“I should’ve heeded my instincts,” said Eotrus, though he seemed to be speaking to himself; his voice, quiet; his eyes still upraised to the midnight sky. “I should never have ridden out here, not with so few, not at night. What a fool I am, and now we’ll all suffer for it.”

The distant wailing grew ever louder and more frantic.

“I don’t know what’s out there,” said Talbon as he stared into the mist. “But it’s not trolls, of that I'm certain. I’ve heard their calls a time or two, and they are nothing like this. Nothing I've ever heard is like this.”

“Gabriel would know what’s out there,” said Donnelin. “Ob probably would too.”

“Well, they’re not here,” said Talbon. “Gabe is probably off polishing his medals, and Ob is dead drunk by this hour, leaving us to sort out this mess, as is usual.”

“If not trolls, then what?” said Donnelin, a sharpness to his voice.

Lord Eotrus turned back toward his men. “Nothing of Midgaard, my good priest,” he said in an even tone. “Nothing born of this world.”

A hiss passed through Talbon’s lips.

“What say you?” said Donnelin to Eotrus. “I miss your meaning.”

“The icy cold, the lightheadedness and nausea that afflicts us since came the mist,” said Talbon. “It’s no coincidence that the wailing began soon after that started. This business stinks of sorcery, dark and deep. If my head wasn’t spinning, and my stomach not churning, I would have seen it from the first. Maybe I did see it, and didn’t want to believe it, but now I do. Aradon speaks the truth. It's chaos magic—the stuff of Nifleheim. A maelstrom of it, and we’ve stumbled into its maw.”

“No,” said Donnelin as he sharply shook his head. “I won’t believe that. That’s rubbish. This is just swamp gas, and out there are a band of trolls, or an animal pack down from the North, that’s all. Who knows what lurks up in those mountains, way back deep, farther than we ever go. There could be anything in there. Lions, panthers, or who knows what. It’s nothing more than that. It doesn't need to be something—unnatural. It can’t be. Not again, for Odin’s sake,” he said, glancing down at his stump. “What you're spouting is nothing but rubbish.”

“Then make ready your basket and broom,” said Talbon, “for it sounds as if rubbish is headed this way.”

Lord Eotrus's gaze drifted up again and lingered on the midnight sky until he let out an anguished sigh. When next he spoke, his voice was somber, his eyes clear and sound. “More than forty campaigns we've weathered together and never once tasted defeat, but this, my friends, be the last. This night marks the end of our long road. Ironic that after all our adventures, we meet our end on our own lands. But such, it seems, be our fate. Valhalla beckons. Our path is clear.”

“What are you saying?” said Donnelin, surprise and worry filling his face. “We haven’t even seen them yet, and you have us dead? We’re not that old, you know. There is some fight yet left in us and swords aplenty to back us,” he said, gesturing toward the troops.

“Do not lose heart, Aradon,” said Talbon, “or in peril, we’ll truly be. We will see this through, just as we always have. Chaos magic or not, I will send them screaming back down whatever hole they crawled up from.”

“Not this time,” said Eotrus. “Can't you see what is above us?” he said as he gestured toward the sky.

The priest and the wizard gazed upward. “I see naught but the heavens,” said Donnelin, his hands tightly gripped around the holy symbol that hung about his neck, his knuckles white. “And barely that through the mist.”

“An apt choice of words,” said Eotrus, “for above us, the sword maidens gather. Our time on Midgaard has reached its end, old friend. Soon they will carry us home. We will drink tonight in Valhalla amongst the honored dead.”

“Valkyries?” said Donnelin, a shocked expression on his face. “Is that of what you speak?”

“Aye.”

“What madness has taken you, Aradon?” said Donnelin. “There are no Valkyries. They are but stories and legend. Nothing more.”

“The pious priest to the end,” said Talbon.

“I thought I would have more time,” said Eotrus quietly. “Thank Odin the boys aren't here. Gabriel and Ob should be with us, here at the end, but perhaps it’s best that they’re not. My boys will be alone in the world now—except for them. The walls of the Dor are high and strong. They’ve never been breached. Our folk may yet have time to mount a defense. That will give my sons a chance. By Odin, they must have that chance; I must give them that at least. All may not yet be lost if the breach be small and if few make it through. Gabriel would know better what to do. He should have told me more; I pray that he told me enough. We must stem the tide and close the gap, though it cost us all our lives. What nobler purpose could any man aspire to? We will do our fathers proud before we breathe our last.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” said Donnelin. “You’re not making any sense, but Valhalla can wait. I say we stop them here, whatever they are, and drink tonight in Dor Eotrus as is our place.”

“If this enemy be as deadly as you imply,” said Talbon. “Let us flee while we yet can. They’re still a ways off. We can make it back to the Dor and prepare the defenses. As you said, the walls are strong.”

“We can’t run fast enough,” said Eotrus. “Not from what's coming.”

“Not even on horse?” said Talbon.

“Not even.”

The blood drained from Talbon’s face and he stood motionless for several moments, staring ahead.

“Prepare yourselves, men,” said Eotrus, loud enough for all his troops to hear, his voice strong and bold again. His eyes on the mist, Aradon Eotrus drew his ancestral longsword from its ornate scabbard and raised the finely wrought steel blade to his face—a salute from olden times—then lowered it again, though he kept it at the ready. He turned to Talbon and his apprentices and his voice quickened. “Make ready to dispel the mist and unleash your most powerful sorceries. Hold nothing back, nothing at all. Do you understand me?”

“Aye,” said the men, nodding.

Talbon turned toward his apprentices. Unlike the soldiers in the party, these men were young; two were just boys, though each had labored years in their training. The identical arcane tokens that hung from silver chains about their necks glinted in the light of Midgaard’s two moons. Talbon whispered to them. They dismounted and formed a line, Talbon at the center. “I still can't see them,” said Talbon. “But by Thor’s blood, I swear, whatever fronts us now will writhe in hellfire. I will blast them to naught but ash and dust.” He raised his staff before him; his men did the same as whispered words of some forgotten tongue passed their lips.

Eotrus looked over his shoulder at his troops and spoke in his loudest voice. “Tonight we face an enemy unlike any that we’ve seen before. There will be no parley or retreat, only battle and blood, victory or death. And if it be death, we will go steeped in glory and honor and the blood of our enemies. No matter what comes out of that mist, let not your resolve or courage falter.”

Shock and uncertainty filled the men's faces. Archers readied their arrows—their bowstrings pulled taut by numb fingers. The soldiers and knights pulled their swords and readied their lances as a deep rumbling sound began, quickly intensified, and eclipsed the wailing. Soon, the very ground began to shake and shudder.

“Talbon,” shouted Eotrus. “Dispel the mist. Now!”

At his liege's command, the sorcerer uttered forgotten words of eldritch power, secret words lost to all but the chosen few. The ancient sorcery he called up crushed the unnatural mist back against the night, though the darkness lingered beyond the limits of the soldiers' torchlight.

“For glory and honor,” shouted Lord Eotrus. “For Odin. For Lomion.”

“For Lomion,” shouted the men.

“Ready now, men,” said Brother Donnelin. “Hold the line. Here they come.”

Lord Eotrus's face grew ashen and his eyes wide as the abominable horror that thundered down on them came into view.

“Dead gods,” said Donnelin, the confidence gone from his face as the group’s horses reared, screamed, and stomped.

Before any could act, fearful words of terrible power spewed from Talbon’s lips and those of his apprentices: words of the old tongue of the
Magus Mysterious
, incomprehensible and unpronounceable, except by learned adepts of their esoteric sorcery. Talbon had rarely spoken those words in anger. His apprentices had only whispered them in secret training. They had never spoken them in unison, for in so doing, the strength of the spell they unleashed was amplified tenfold. The power they called up from the grand weave of magic made the wizards’ outstretched hands violently shake. A searing pain gripped them and coursed through their bodies. Their hands glowed for a moment before beams of blue fire erupted from their fingertips. The wild strands of energy shot this way and that before they combined with the magic of their fellows into a raging torrent, an undulating wave of coruscating blue magic and crackling death. That arcane fire lit up the night, roared forward, crashed into their foes, and exploded with awesome power beyond the ken of common men.

Donnelin fell as the world upended about him. A blast of searing wind thrashed and spun him. Shrapnel pelted him, foot to face. He landed on his side, dazed, but conscious. He groaned and scrambled to a sitting position, his ears ringing, surprised his muscles still worked, and shocked that he bore no mortal wound. Acrid smoke hung heavy around him and limited his vision even more so than had the mist.

The groans, cries, and stirrings of men and horses sounded from behind him, but in front, through the smoke, he saw nothing but death. There laid the remains of Talbon’s apprentices—one on his knees, the others prone. Most were reduced to little more than ash, somehow bound together in blackened shapes that were caricatures of the men they had been. The one on the end, the most powerful of them, writhed about in the dirt, though no sound escaped his throat. Mercifully, he lived for but a few moments, aflame from head to toe, before he went still and death took him. He and his brethren were consumed from within by their own mystic fires that raged uncontrolled when they unleashed their sorcery. “Magic is a powerful tool,” goes an old Lomerian saying, “but comes with a weighty price.” Even as Donnelin looked on, the wizards’ remains crumbled to dust and a strong breeze from up ahead scattered them.

Donnelin turned his face and closed his eyes and mouth to stave off the ash, but cringed as he felt and heard it blowing against him, soiling his cloak and pants.

The breeze carried an overwhelming scent of burned flesh, but it wasn’t the flesh of the wizards. It was an acrid, putrid, nauseating foulness beyond words. A smell of death: the death of their enemies, laid waste before them by magics of greater power than Donnelin had ever seen. The wizards had put them down with one great blast of magic and saved the day, though it cost them their very lives.

The priest struggled to his feet, coughing and gasping. He spat grit from his mouth that he hoped wasn’t the remains of the wizards, and lifted his shirt over his nose and mouth to dampen the foul odor. To his right, he saw Talbon. He wasn’t burned like the others, but he lay still, his eyes closed, his horse dead atop him, smoking and charred.

Donnelin swayed where he stood, unsteady on his feet. He prayed that he was trapped in a fevered nightmare—some figment of his imagination, or even the onset of madness. Anything that made it not real. He started and nearly fell over when Lord Eotrus shouted, “Get up!”

Donnelin turned and saw the old lord pull himself to his feet. Eotrus nearly dragged his stunned horse up with him. “Get up,” he roared, “they’re not done with us yet, nor we with them. Make ready, men.”

Dazed as he was, those words pulled Donnelin back to reality. He knew where he was. He knew it was real, there was no escaping that, but he didn't grasp the meaning of Eotrus’s words until he noted the sound. The wailing. It was still there. It had been all along, though somehow Donnelin hadn’t noticed it. It was distant, as it had been minutes before, but with each passing moment, it grew louder, and they grew closer. Those things. Those things from the mist. “Dead gods,” he said. “What in the nine worlds were they? There can't be more of them. There can't be.”