44. Grudges

“Message has sent been that Great Chief Tuku wishes for me to join him in his new court, to advise him and to serve as his Great Shaman.

Though I felt some pride, and was gladdened to know that Tuku still lived, I was surprised that Magar had not been invited at all.

When the younger shaman asked, the scrawny goblin who delivered the message informed him he was to remain in the small village indefinitely. And even went so far as to warn him not to leave.

Magar, for his part, simply shrugged, and returned to his spawning cavern. I am not sure whether Tuku still harbors hopes of vengeance for his dead twin, or whether he places great import on Magar’s work instead.

To my mind, Magar and Zalak’s plans have been met with failure after failure. Even if the huge sack hatches, I do not see how a giant goblin who can barely fit through must tunnels is going to restore a now shattered empire.”

Gudmund prodded at the cold flesh of his own heart, as if expecting it to beat. He seemed to look at nothing yet see everything with his one glistening eye. He stepped forward, testing his brother’s sword in the air, always testing the sword, while he searched the shadowed estate for more unmade corpses.

He had slew men, more than he knew to remember.

He had come here in search of an enemy he had not yet found. In search of allies he had not seen either. He trod blood through furnished kitchens and wide halls, staring at the stone visages of all the gods he had sworn to destroy.

Gudmund raised his brother’s sword, meaning to test the weight once more, and then he heard shouting. He lowered the blade and followed the sounds.

“Announce yourself!”

Gudmund was in a shadowed corridor. A man with a sword waited behind him.

“Gods, you are wounded,” the man whispered. “Lower your sword and I will take you to a healer.”

Gudmund shook his head. He turned back to where he was going. He saw light, heard fighting, footsteps, and then a blade punctured into his back and out of his stomach.

He rounded on the attacker, anger in his sword hand, and watched a head and body topple out of rhythm.

***

A pair of lanterns, one atop a barrel, the other hanging from a stretching rack, lit a narrow room of stone walls, small cages, and grim contraptions.

Arfast stood, armoured shoulder to boots, ahead of three chained women that struggled to break their bonds with a dagger and a helmet.

He shielded them from the gathered guards that had tried time and time again to break him. He had killed two men, wounded others, and they had been content to swap in more swordsmen, but now they had brought bows and the old guard would need to break forward or else those he strove to protect would die here.

He knew it was a risk, a misstep, a glory chaser’s error. He had faith in his own immortality though, even as a sword slammed into his shoulder, even as a spear pierced his hip. He had hacked two men down when a reckless arrow grazed his neck. He hewed through the bow and into the young man that held it.

Arfast wrenched the blade free before he was forced to his knees. Bone jarred into stone and shook his fading senses. He thrust into the groin of the last archer, tried to glance back at Sybille, but all he saw was expressionless metal, sharpened blades and unyielding armour. He thought that death had finally claimed him when the ravaged ghost of Gudmund appeared in the doorway, belly sliced open, arms hacked and slashed, one eye punctured by a blade, lacerated flesh covered in blood both fresh and frozen.

The grim apparition swung a sword as if in mockery. The man it hit screamed. Arfast’s heart sank. He was watching another man, a corpse, who had not yet yielded to death.

“Muradoon spare us!” a man shouted.

“Kill the thing!” Atsurr ordered. “Kill—”

He blocked the first strike, but was staggered by a kick, and then split from shoulders to hip. He seemed to want to speak but Gudmund stamped on his own sword to force the blade all the way through.

Arfast was surprised at how quickly his thoughts shifted from hatred to pity. Those guards that stayed to fight soon died. A pair managed to flee into the shadowed corridors, whispering prayers or yelling for help. Arfast could see the horrified eyes behind visors, could see the pallid faces of the archers. He was laying among the dead, but would never find their equal shares of horror and peace. He struggled up to one knee.

“Father…?”

“Gudmund!” Anna’s scream was beyond sorrowed. “What they done to you?”

The women were still bonded. They could not rise or flee when the draugr stalked forward with his bloodied sword.

Gudmund broke the bonds with his blade though, hacking and hacking, unresponsive to their pleas and protest. He had freed them, but the very sight of him had shackled them with a greater grief.

“Gudmund.” Arfast had managed to stand with aid of his sword. “I ward this place in name of the Spirit Talker. Son of Geirulf, your ancestors weep for your passing, but you are no longer welcome here.”

Gudmund turned slowly, one eye closed and one eye open. He stepped closer, until the two men were close enough to strike. He glanced at Arfast’s sword then at his own.

“I will fight you if need be.”

Gudmund sucked in a shivering breath that made him tremble with raw agony. “Draugr,” he croaked.

Arfast flinched but the dead man only grasped his shoulder. Gudmund nodded, and staggered off down the corridor. The old guard moved to dismember him, to put his spirit to rest, but the corpse disappeared into thin air just as soon as he passed the precipice.

***

“Where is Atsurr?” Jarl Thrand rasped, his eyes barely focused on the hooded healer above him. “How long will this take…? I need to rise. I have things—”

“Hold him still,” the healer instructed a nearby guard. “The wound is cleaned, my Jarl, but it still needs to be properly sewn. I would not have you bleeding in your sleep. I will send a man to fetch Atsurr.”

The healer stepped back, washing his hands in a bowl of red water that glimmered with candlelight. Modest beds had been crowded into a corner to make room for the large and blanketed table where the old Jarl laid.

The healer had opened his oak chest and the air was filled with a mix of pungent herbs and unguents. Lifting a bone needle, he used nimble fingers to work in the thread.

The healer frowned towards the door, where a broad guard remained unmoved. “Why haven’t you left?”

“A man has already been sent,” he said quietly. “He has yet to return.”

The healer noticed that the men with him had diminished to three. “And the others?”

“They have not returned either.” The guard’s weathered face grew hard. “That is why we have stayed.”

“I see.” The healer paused. “Bar the door, then. If Atsurr’s comes, you can clear it.” He turned back to the old man on the table. The Jarl had turned deathly pale, save for the cut itself that seemed shaped as a red crescent moon.

The guard holding the Jarl lessened his grip. “Is he going to die?”

“He is,” a man croaked.

The healer was torn between cold dread and hot rage at the grim presumption. He lost all anger when he saw the ravaged corpse amid the room. He turned to the closed door where the guard stood alive and well, as did the man by the stairs.

The draugr remained unmoving. Gudmund of Horvorr’s vengeful corpse stared at the healer with one glazed eye.

“Open the door,” the healer whispered. “Open the door! We are leaving.”

Gudmund of Horvorr nodded, drew his sword, and turned to the old man shivering on the blanketed table.

The guards departed, whispering prayers to Muradoon, and closed the door behind them.

Gudmund poked at his heart once more, still unmoving, and bent down to press the old Jarl’s wrinkled chest.

“What—” Jarl Thrand’s murmur stopped. He froze, eyes wide, stricken by terror. He opened his mouth as if to call out but he seized and grimaced instead.

Gudmund reached for a nearby knife, and used it to saw through the flesh of his own chest. He paid no mind to wordless pleas of the wounded man. He held Thrand down when he tried to roll, baring his teeth in a macabre smile. Blood dripped from grip now Gudmund tore his own heart out and pressed it against the old Jarl’s breast.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

He held it there, grasping his brother’s sword, and drove the blade into the table.

Steel tore through flesh, struck stone, scraped, and snapped.

Gudmund witnessed the desperate death throes of a withered man who had reached the end of a long life. He glanced at the ragged edge of his brother’s sword.

“Son of Geirulf.”

Gudmund turned his dead gaze towards the door.

A large man in a purple robe blocked the welcoming darkness.

“I thought that it would come to this,” said the robed man. “I almost killed you when we met in the Sanctuary, but then I didn’t. I had, in truth, ample time to save these people, but then I often warned them about making their own likeness of my god. I hope now that the lesson will be well learned.” The Spirit Seeker laughed. “By looking at you, I can almost guess that they deserved it.” He paused. “You hold your own will, yes? Or else why spare so many?”

Gudmund upturned his bloodied hands. He readied his broken sword.

“There is no need to fight, Gudmund,” assured the Spirit Seeker. “Your daughter has left this place, along with two other women, in safety. You were betrayed, and you have avenged. Your family awaits you beyond the divide.”

Gudmund stepped forward.

“Each moment twists your very spirit,” warned the Spirit Seeker. “Go further in your quest for revenge and you will never come back. You will never see your family again. Not those dead nor those soon to die.”

Gudmund glanced back at the dead Jarl on the table, at his own skewered heart. His lungs rattled as he drew in a long breath.

Time passed in a long silence, broken only by the soft patter of blood.

The dead warrior then knelt, nodded, and bowed his head.

The Spirit Seeker stepped forward. He drew a bone-hilted sword from his purple robe. “This is a first for me, Gudmund. I will inform your daughter, and remember you as a wronged spirit that willingly surrendered.” He straightened, taking a slow breath, and raised his blade. “May the Spirit Talker take your soul.”

***

Alrik had carried Engli to the nearest place that was open, which happened to be a tall structure, standing near the city’s southern wall, named the Toothless Grin.

The owners had done away with the bare furnishings of most places and carpeted the floor with rugs and furs, which seemed to each have their fair share of stains.

Etched plates of metal and colourful tapestries had been hammered into the walls, along with hunter’s trophies—teeth, skulls, and claws—and sets of heavy curtains that shimmered in candlelight as if coated in dust.

The air tickled Alrik’s lungs and made him more nausea than he would’ve been. He could smell sweat and sex and sick and piss. Old food and spilled drinks.

He could smell a poor man’s brothel. He could smell his troubled childhood.

Engli was done for a night or two, slumped sideways across a pair of chairs, sleeping. He and Alrik were two of five folk in the main room, which housed two circular tables, a long counter for serving drinks, and pair of benches that faced a waning fire. The other three comprised a heavy man with a club by the door, a chubby drunk staring into the flames, and an old woman, her lined face covered with powders, that tended the bar.

Alrik sat straighter in his chair when an old guard walked in, armour glistening with blood. He looked both badly wounded and unconcerned. He searched the place, eyes scouring each corner, and then spoke out the doorway.

Alrik smiled in good humour as three working women crept into the place, thinking it odd that two of them could stand in as twins for Sybille and Ruby. He noticed their wounds though, and their fear, and his mirth soon faded.

“Ruby?” he shouted and they turned to look at him through the smoky haze.

“No shouting,” the heavy man at the door warned. “No fighting, either.”

The old guard kept his hand on his sword. The blond woman crossed the room, staring in confusion. “Engli…?”

“Engli?” Sybille echoed.

“He’s fine.” Alrik realised it was Gudmund’s daughter in earnest. “He had a fistfight with a man is all.”

“Who are you?” the blond woman snapped.

“Alrik of the Black Hands,” Ruby answered, her voice strained. “I should kill you where you sit.”

“Be quiet,” Sybille’s venom tone brooked no argument. She smiled exhaustedly at Alrik. “Tell me what has happened.”

Alrik let go of his knife when Ruby did. He nodded, but felt crowded by the people looking down at him. “Could you all take a seat? I don’t want you standing over me. And you all look ripe for falling over.”

He waited for them to grab chairs. Ruby hadn’t moved but she sat, almost relieved, when one was brought.

Alrik wanted to ask after Gudmund, but he could tell by the young woman’s pretense of strength and the blond woman’s plain sorrow that he was dead, and he had no wish to reopen fresh wounds by confirming that fact. “There’s a woman in the Black Hands named Sifa. She wanted to lead, so she, along with a dozen other men, tried to kill Engli and me on behalf of the Crooked Teeth. Or at least she claimed that they offered to pay.”

Arfast struggled up from his chair. “I’ll fetch drinks.”

“And…?” Ruby asked. “You’ve not a scratch on you.”

“They’re all dead.” Alrik shrugged. “But I didn’t kill a one. Engli fought with a man in the streets and the rest were killed by Smiler. He spared Sifa and her daughter and slaughtered the rest. Never seen anything like it.”

“Smiler?” the blond woman asked. Half of her hair had been stained red by blood.

Alrik now remembered her from the night when they had been captured. Anna, Engli’s mother. “The one that talked most on the night they took us. He didn’t offer a reason… just showed up, killed them, and wished me good luck.” He paused. “The best luck, even.” He glanced at Ruby. “You do know she’s working for Jarl Thrand?”

“Jarl Thrand is dead,” Sybille’s voice was cold. “He butchered my father and my father rose from death and brought vengeance to his household. Atsurr is dead, as are most of the guards. A Spirit Seeker entered as we were leaving, so I can only hope that he has been laid to rest. My father, I mean. Obviously I hope those that served Thrand, or help Thrand, end their days in shadows.”

Alrik nodded at the sentiment. “Jarl Thrand is dead?”

“Yes,” Ruby answered. “And now this city will suffer.”

“You are a tiresome idiot, Ruby,” Sybille replied. “Be gone. Go and find company better suited to your particular brand of cowardice. I am but a moment from beating you senseless.”

Ruby answered with a laugh. “I would like to see you try.”

Sybille rose from her chair. “If you insist.”

“Hjorvarth would not approve,” Alrik said, meaning to stay Ruby, but both women paused. “He serves Gudmund’s daughter and if he ever returns from the mines he will hunt you down with a blind vengeance. He will rip the Gem Cutters and their foundations out of the earth.”

Ruby paused, and begrudgingly nodded. “This is no time for violence. I cannot prevent what is already done. You have my sympathies—”

“And you near the end of my patience,” Sybille cut in. “Your opinion, thoughts, and sympathies are meaningless to me. You tried to save the life of Jarl Thrand. For that you are destined to suffer.”

Ruby rose up to her feet, startling when she saw Arfast. The old guard stepped past and settled half a dozen huddled mugs on the table. She glanced back at the haggard gathering then walked towards the door, her heart almost stopping when a young man walked in, smiling, his face a mask of soot and blood.

“Ruby of the Gem Cutters,” Smiler enthused. “Hands off your blades or I’ll cut off your hands.” He sighed. “The Crooked Teeth are no more and so I need not slay you. Go on in peace, with the knowledge that this city is ceded to the Gem Cutters. Go on in fear, with the knowledge that the Low King rides in force to arrive at dawn.”

Ruby wanted to kill the man, wanted to end his madness, but she wanted to live more. She held tight to her knives as she stepped past him, and then she walked out into the dark streets, intent on finding Ragni.

Smiler searched the place, smirking at the man at the door, frowning at the sleeping drunkard by the fire, grinning at the tired woman behind the bar. Though she looked energetic compared to the five folk gathered around a crooked table. “Crooked,” Smiler voiced as he approached. “Good evening, night, morning.”

They looked at him, one and all, looked at him, with no warmth or enthusiasm and friendliness. They almost seemed to want to kill him but sat frozen as if afraid to act.

Only the old man, bald and ready, showed no fear at all.

“Has a cat been in here?” Smiler roared. “Has he stolen all your tongues?” He laughed a mad laugh. “That was a jest. I am a funny man. I always was, I always am, I always will be.” He paused, and turned to the youngest and prettiest among them. “Oh. Sybille, Jarl of Horvorr, I come to inform you that I have failed in the tasks I set myself. Namely, to protect your father and to murder the old man known as Jarl Thrand. It would seem that your father was equally distressed and chose to finish the work for me.” He smiled. “I am, of course, very grateful.”

He waited for someone to speak.

He shook his head in warning when they reached for weapons.

“Because of my failure,” Smiler said, “I have disbanded the Crooked Teeth. Hapless amateurs, and I have it on authority that they have been murdered.” He started prodding at his own skull. “Yet… yet, yet, yet. I am… deeply, deeply troubled. I am taskless. I have nothing to do. I have no honour. It eludes and escapes me like a rabid cat. So I have come here, in all humbleness and with all apologies, to ask if I can make amends.” He paused. “To be more specific… is there anyone that you would want me to murder?”

Sybille regarded him without sympathy. “Yourself?”

“Hm.” Smiler frowned. “And then you will consider us settled? Will that give me back my honour?”

“I will consider us settled.”

Smiler bobbed his head in deliberation, shook his sleeve, then drove a blade towards his own skull. He paused just short, pricking skin, and blood trickled down his furrowed brow. “But, why? What did I ever do to you?”

“You murdered Ralf.”

“That’s not true at all. I even slew his murderers.”

“You set my father upon a path to his own death.”

“That’s not true, either.” Smiler paused while she scowled. “I was betrayed. I stabbed the betrayers. I only ever really wanted to stab Jarl Thrand.”

“You have killed scores of people,” Alrik said.

“Yes.” Smiler happily nodded. “Thus I suggested repaying my debt with a task in which I am most proficient. Killing other people,” he clarified. “It doesn’t take any sort of skill to kill one’s self. Only a certain sort of madness.”

“So you refuse me?” Sybille asked.

“No.” Smiler shook his head. “I simply wanted to ensure satisfaction. I was on my way to slay the Low King, as Gudmund would have wanted, but then I thought you might not want that so I came here to check.”

Anna looked up at him. “You should slay the Low King.”

“Hah!” Smiler seized. “An endorsement from Gudmund’s lover! I always knew that, that was the right choice. I never should have doubted myself. I will find you all again once my task is complete!”

They all watched him stroll out of the Toothless Grin as if he were an ordinary person about normal business.

“A troubled man,” Arfast muttered. He regarded Anna. “Gudmund’s lover, is it?”

He frowned when his wry joke was met with anguish and tears.

Alrik had no words to console her. He felt a quiet sorrow now he studied his odd company. Engli murmured awake to the sound of his mother crying and tried, drunken and tired, to console her, while Sybille, pale and crestfallen, stared off at nothing.

Arfast sighed, sat down, and took up a stone mug.

Alrik rubbed at his aching eyes then did the same.