Epilogue

The moon hung high in the sky, fat and heavy, smothered by the bone colored clouds of an ashen night. The whispering wind sent soft ripples dancing over the circular blackness of Horvorr’s Great Lake, which shimmered faintly with the struggling silver light.

The figure waiting by the shore, his red hair almost black in the gloom, his shoulders straight and proud, stood so close to the edge that spirited water lapped up against his fine boots. His first thoughts, filtering through a harrowed mind, were of confusion.

“Waiting for someone to drown…?” a woman’s voice asked from behind.

Gudmund blinked. He eventually turned, seeing a beautiful blond woman, her long hair tumbling down to her white dress, standing ahead of the creaking fisher shacks. “What…” He frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Swift witted as always.”

The man’s heart started to thunder in his chest. “Where is Sybille?”

“She’s fine. Alive and well. They all are. You… won.”

“I died.”

Anna regretfully smiled. “True, as well.”

“Is this the Lady’s Shadow…?”

“Don’t you recognize your own town, Gudmund?”

Gudmund searched around the huddled houses, and the huts, and the shacks. The looming ruined structures of Grettir’s home and Brolli’s place. His own Hall standing defiant. “Why am I… are we… here?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I felt a pull to leave, but I thought—well, I knew, that you were soon to follow. Didn’t put much hope in you living long without my help.”

“Shouldn’t I be seeing my wife, or my boys?”

Anna met the question with a scowl. “Well now I regret waiting.”

The long and longing note of a great pair of doors creaking open sounded out in the distance, and golden light spilled forth from Gudmund’s Hall, cutting a great swathe through the shadowed streets of Horvorr.

The silhouette of a huge and and handsome man stepped forward, slowly making his way to the embankments where the man and woman waited in curious silence.

“Hm,” said Anna when the heroic looking warrior drew close. “I’d almost forgotten how handsome you used to be, Grettir. You as well, in fairness, Gudmund.”

“This isn’t real,” Gudmund realized, his words stumbling and sorrowed. “This is just one last dream before I’m off down Ouro’s Gullet.”

Grettir chuckled, rubbing one hand against itself, despite having both his arms. His bear brown hair was close cropped and his thick beard was well kept. “Even a one-armed, no-eyed cripple could see that isn’t true, Gudmund.”

Gudmund’s closed his eyes, and swallowed, as if hearing his own words greatly pained him. “I didn’t—”

“You did,” Grettir assured in his gruff voice. “But I forgive you.”

When Gudmund opened his eyes, his old friend stood before him with a ready grin. But he wasn’t old anymore. He was young again. The Bear of Vendrick himself, who had fought off a score of men on his own to save the daughter of a Jarl and who had won duel after duel against all manner of fearsome goblins. “How could you? It was my fault… all of this. You were the only one trying to hold it all together. And I,” he began, trailing. “And I…”

“‘A man is who he is,’” reminded Grettir.

“Hjorvarth…” Gudmund muttered.

“Those were your words first,” Grettir said. “Spoken often in defense of…”

“Brolli.”

“Don’t say his name,” Grettir warned. “Come with me to the Hall. You too, Anna.”

“Glad to be included,” Anna gently mocked. “Come on, then, Gudmund. You can go back to blaming yourself when we’re warm by the fire.”

‘Warm by the fire,’ an old man’s voice echoed on the whispering wind.

The patter of what sounded like raindrops began.

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Grettir’s face twisted into a scowl, and he reached for the sword at his belt.

Following his angry gaze, Gudmund turned to the sodden, swollen figure of Brolli. Clad in black from head to toe, water trickling from brow to boots. “Brother.”

Brolli’s answering smile was broad and earnest. It made his hard face almost unrecognizable to those gathered. “Brother. You took your time with Thrand.”

“Managed it quicker than you,” countered Gudmund.

“We need to leave,” warned Grettir. “It will be safe in the Hall.”

“Don’t listen to him, brother,” Brolli dismissed. “I’ve found us a new war to fight.”

Grettir drew his sword, stepping forward. Brolli’s mirth gave way to a dark anger, and he turned with his own blade leading.

“Uncles,” came a cold, otherworldly voice. “Father.”

They each turned to an armoured figure, covered head to toe in metal plates.

Brolli’s chuckle was unnerved. “Look at this, Gudmund. Not a soul wanted you in life, and now we’re all clamoring for you in death.”

“He has earned his rest,” declared Grettir to Brolli and Geirmund both.

“Uncles,” said the armoured figure again in the proud voice of a young man. “A deal was made. A debt is owed. Do not force my master’s hand.”

Gudmund remembered that frightful dream he’d had before the war in Horvorr, where Sybille was at risk of harm, and his son’s pleaded with him to bargain away his soul. “Not a dream,” he begrudgingly thought. “Not then. Not now. No peace for me even in death.”

Geirmund stepped forward, steel scraping against his scabbard, as he drew a runic sword that required two gauntleted hands to wield.

Brolli and Grettir shared a look, an old knowing glance from their war days, that Gudmund readily saw. “No,” he warned them. “My son is right. As he often was.”

The unlikely allies stepped forth all the same, closing in on the armoured man.

“No,” Brolli echoed in a vicious tone. “Stay with Grettir, if you like. But I’m not—”

“I love you,” Gudmund cut in.

Brolli blinked.

“I love you, little brother. No matter what you have done or said. I do, and always have loved you. Bad as Grim was, I would want for no other brothers so long as I had you. And I am so very—terribly—sorry for how I treated you. And I should have told you sooner.”

Brolli’s jaw tightened. His dark eyes were wide.

“Brolli,” Grettir urged. “Do—”

“And you, Grettir,” Gudmund went on. “Would that you had been our brother by blood. What a fearsome family we would have made. And how glad I am that my sons took so much from you and so little from me. You are the father I never could be. And I owe my whole life in Horvorr—sons and daughters to be proud of—to you.”

Anna stood watching as the great warriors, Brolli and Grettir, were brought down not by swords or violence but by words of kindness. They both looked as if they might speak but then Gudmund turned to her with a regretful smirk.

Then he, and Geirmund, were gone.

“Hm,” she murmured. “I’m not sure if that was worth the wait.”

“Well I’ve been waiting long enough.”

Anna turned to see a stocky, well muscled man with blond hair and a hesitant smile. She felt both happy, and conflicted. “Linden, I need to—”

“Gudmund?” Linden knowingly asked. He dismissively shrugged. “I was dead.”

“Oh.”

“Come on, then,” he said, offering his arm. “Let’s leave those two to fight.”

Anna took his hand in hers. “So how come you’re all living in the Hall…?”

“Not entirely sure,” Linden admitted, as they headed towards the golden light flooding from open doors. “I don’t think we have to stay, but not sure if there’s anywhere better to go. Plenty of time to worry about all of that. Let’s get you something to drink.”

The cold water dripping from Brolli’s skin had slowed to a dribble.

Grettir scratched at his bear brown beard. “We still fighting…?”

“No.” Brolli sniffed, sheathing his sword. “Gudmund was acting odd.”

“He was,” Grettir muttered. “You want to come in for a drink…?”

Brolli’s answering laugh was more of a snort. “Let’s not act like Gudmund, Grettir. We’ll have our fight another day… wait for the boy to come back. Least then we’ll have something worth fighting over.”

Grettir met the words with a noncommittal grunt. “You do know you’re on the wrong side of all this?”

“I’m always on the wrong side of things, Grettir. Can’t be any worse than the last war.”

“True,” said Grettir with a grave nod. “Wonder where Gahr’rul went—”

“Let’s leave the past in the past,” said Brolli, and a quiet fleeting thought passed through his mind which left him feeling cold, and sick, and, oddest of all, suffering great guilt. “Did he… do you ever think he looked familiar?”

“Gahr’rul…? What happened to leaving the past—”

“Fine. Piss off, then. Leave me—”

Grettir started walking away, his brows forming into a scowl, scratching his beard once more. The Chief of Chiefs had been familiar in a strange, unsettling sort of way. “Leave the past in the past,” he grumbled to himself. “May the dead stay dead.”

Long after the doors to Gudmund’s Hall had groaned to a thunderous close, silencing the warm welcome for Anna’s arrival, Horvorr lay wreathed in stillness and darkness.

Brolli stood on the embankment’s of the Great Lake, staring off at the black expanse. “I love you too, brother,” he said quietly, his smirk almost serene. “I love you, too.”

THE END