With the word of the wolf, the Great Moot was nothing more than a formality after that and in due time a host of warriors marched north to the acropolis. It was slow going as we were harried by displaced packs of trolls and a handful of grendels. This did much to wet the appetite of we northmen. We fell upon the monsters with glee and with few casualties.

This was just as well, because our convoy had to drag the great bell from the first cathedral. The massive thing was lashed to sleds and dragged by a team of draft horses from the jarl’s own stables. When we asked the wizard, who accompanied us, what the purpose was he said it was to ring out our victory from the acropolis.

The skalds loved that answer, mostly because they didn’t have a hand in dragging the behemoth. It invigorated the warrior poets and each night was filled with broken, incomplete songs as they competed with one another about what the best way to immortalize our hunt would be. I found their excitement to be premature, but my brother was enthralled by it, even the bagpiper.

Nikolai was not a fighter. That isn’t to say that he wasn’t good at it. He and I sparred nearly every day and there was hardly a man in the north he wouldn’t have stood a chance against. What he was was a thinker and a romantic. He yearned for the likes of King Galain. Indeed, he believed that tale to be of true history, lost to the age of the gods. He was enraptured by the god of crafts, and I think vaguely jealous that my name has its etymological roots going back to that legend and not his own name. If we could have swapped names, I think it would have been for the best. A god who was eaten by another god never seemed like much of a god to me and neither of us fancied worshiping a dragon.

His passion for these tales dominated the urges of his youth and thus restrained him. He yearned for the fairest maiden, and the few times he met one he found himself shoved aside by some braggart or political union. He called it platonic and chivalrous, I thought it was a manifestation of his lack of experience.

Still, it would be years more before there was another man I would trust with my back in a fight, and both of us had our hearts set on the acropolis. We had both wept at the graves, but it was blood that needed to be shed so that we could have our sorrow.

The asked-for storm had begun to blow in when we reached the acropolis. The icy mist it whipped up obscured the grand temple such that our first knowledge of it came from a fall. One of the hunters crashed through an ice shelf into the ruins of an old home. Naught but the foundation had survived the centuries and the corners were stained by animal dens. Thus we discovered that all the hills and rocks surrounding us were the very city that once surrounded the holy site. We found bones too. Rat gnawed and ancient, they watched our march.

The skalds said we should inter them, after our victory. As it turned out, we barely had the will to flee, much less bury forgotten ancestors. Now, I believe every man in our party was prepared to die, but that was until we came to realize it was more than a troll we were hunting.

We had seen big trolls and little trolls. Brutal ones and cunning ones. We knew the sound of their nightly bugling and most had heard the crude language of grunts the beasts employed. There was no surprise as we fell upon troll families with little monsters still latched to the teats of their mothers that spawned them. But, we started to realize something was wrong by the sheer number of them.

Any troll hunter can tell you that the reason trolls bugle is the same reason wolves howl. It’s to tell the others to sod off from their territory because they have mouths to feed and don’t feel like sharing. They have a different sound when they’re coming of age in the spring and that brings together bull and cow so that in union they give the territorial call and all keep each other a few hours distance.

We were coming upon packs and herds practically one on top of the other like a great big army had gathered up. Had they been able to call for help, we would have been smashed to pieces and thrown in the heaps of carcasses that rotted throughout the city. For hours we fought, having to take it in shifts to stave off exhaustion. We ran out of siege bolts despite our attempts at recovery and death filled the stormy air.

Amurabi urged us on like a shepherd, driving us and the bell toward the acropolis. That was where the king resided, he said, and we soon believed him. The stone temple had bulwarks of ice all around it, the likes of which could only be crafted by the power of stigmata.

Many of our number bore the blessings of Luna, and many haad powers far more extravagant than the berserker marks upon Nikolai and I. They were boons to help us fight back, but apparently trolls could get them too. Their worship of fire proved to be more than bestial superstition, and the chief who had raided my home had been blessed.

This didn’t stop us, but while the warriors were wary, the skalds were ready to leap atop the walls. They almost fought one another in a rush to be the one to capture a living legend in their own saga. That didn’t change the problem that we had no ready way over the ice wall. Ladders and grappling hooks would have been required, as though we were raiding a castle.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

The wizard came to our rescue, for none of us were blessed with a power that would help. In retrospect, I think he thought only of the bell, but he raised his hands to the heavens. Dark clouds had blotted out the moon and crackled with lightning. The darting lances splashed light upon us with the brilliance of the sun, but it was lantern light that let us see the shifting of his fingers and the mumbling of his lips. At his command, a spear from the heavens crashed before us and shattered the ice.

“On! Onwards!” he commanded. “Earn your lives, men of the north.”

Nikolai and I were the first through the breach, our cheeks stinging from the clouds of steam as we charged into the acropolis. Lanterns were no longer needed. The temple was completely illuminated by dozens of braziers that roared with fire built up by the troll.

The guttural beast greeted us with curses and slurs in half a dozen languages, as though he had lived the life of a pirate. Spearmen rushed to encircle him as he leapt about with a profane club. The head of an ancient statue had been lashed to a haft of wood and marble shards flew through the air after every crash and swing. The troll lord towered thrice above my own head and a single blow would have broken me. Worse, his very presence cast ice upon the old stones. Many a man fell to the ground trying to escape the cleave of his hammer, but their blood warmed the ice and pushed it back.

We would have cut down his legs and brought his head low soon enough, our steel was sharp enough to rend his crusted hide, had he been alone.

But, there was another, and this giant of steel was the focus of the wizard’s attention. It was that thing which had brought him, not the troll. Every pack of beasts was nothing but an annoyance to his mind. The knight of the acropolis was his true foe, the thing that had brooked the wolf’s aid, and his aid we had for the storm still roared above our heads.

In the acropolis of ancient Skaldheim, we fought what would be a god.

Man or troll, it is one thing to fight a foe that is stronger than you, mightier than you, even when they wield powers beyond your comprehension. They still bleed.

The only thing the knight had in common with the troll was that it still had to touch us to kill us, but it didn’t bleed. I think there was nothing within the rime rimmed steel that could have bled. It was as though weapons of war had been given a will of their own, and the skill of a swordmaster too.

Standing upright, my head wouldn’t have reached its shoulders, and yet it flew throughout the battlefield, gliding over blood and ice to pursue us. When I saw it impale a man through the chest and hoist him like a flag–Podrick Redbeard of the third moon, a good fighter but bad gambler–I knew I had to break off from the troll. We had brought nearly a hundred warriors from across Skaldheim to hunt the troll lord and were prepared to do so, but none knew what to do against the knight.

I still remember how my bones shook when its blade fell upon mine. Even bracing my weapon like a shield, one hand on the blade, the inhuman might drove me to my knees, overpowering even my stigmata. The creature’s surprise was mild, but enough for Nikolai to thrust through the mail. Any living creature would have fallen from such a blow, but as he told me there was simply nothing inside. No bone, no joint, no flesh to cut or break.

Nikolai was struck by a backhanded blow, the pommel of the knight’s weapon smashing into his chest.

I truly believe we would have been cut down to a man that night, if not for the wizard. He was late to the fight, cajoling the injured to push the bell up the steps as we fought. If they had understood what was happening, they would have surely rushed in to help, but he kept them blind and ignorant to the deaths until the bell sat in the grand archway to the temple.

When at last it sat at the fray, he relieved the men. He goaded the knight, speaking ancient tongues. He played later that it was secret incantation, but I believe it was nothing more than base insults. Whatever the meaning, he captured the knight’s attention enough that I scored a number of blows across the heavy plates. I struck until my arms were numb, until my blade was chipped and its steel dented. That hampered its mobility, but was little means of destruction.

I thought what I had to do was sever the helm from the body, but had no means of striking it down. The wizard gave me those means as he called down lightning once more. He blasted the roof, shattering stone that had stood for ages. Great boulders fell about us and the knight flew away before one of the mighty blasts could strike it. Such chaos was merely clearly the way between us and the sky. It drove the troll to despondent wailing and spearmen rammed through its belly, but no harm came to the knight.

The wizard had a plan for this too. He made no effort to hunt it down, but rather forced it to come to him. One of the bolts struck the bell beside him and it glowed with heat. At the same time, a phantom hand pulled upon my body and my blade. Every warrior in the temple had to grapple with their own weapons, many flew from their grasps to strike the bell for he had transformed the metal into dragon rock.

The knight, a creature of steel entirely, could only dig its heels into the ice. Great sheets of the blood and slick shattered beneath it as the hulk was pulled to the entrance and smashed into the bell. Limbs splayed wide, it shook and rattled, struggling against the force, but unable to wrench itself free.

Those warriors with axes were best able to wield their weapons and they fell upon the troll lord. The spear tips within its belly were wrenching through its guts and spilling viscera upon the ground before they cleaved apart its skulls and broke its antlers.

Before it was even dead, the wizard bid me fetch the hammer. With the troll's own weapon, I approached the knight. It spoke the same ancient tongue as the wizard, staring at me. Ignorant to the words, be they a plea or a goad, I used my whole body to swing the great cudgel. The statue head flattened the knight’s helm and its resistance ended.

No cheers went up, for none of us knew if the fight was over. Then, the wizard clapped me on the back, told me I did a good job, and offered to hire me. From that day forward, I routinely encountered the unbelievable but nothing the wizard ever did could compare to the day I died, except perhaps that he brought me back.