02 - Wulfrik Read online

  “You’re going to leave marks,” she scolded Wulfrik. Rubbing her arms as he released her, she fretted over the stains his fingers had left on her gown. “You might have stopped to wash before coming here. I don’t even want to know what kind of things you’ve been touching while you were gone.”

  “Only some ice-giants,” Wulfrik told her. “I killed their king. Cut all five of his heads clean off.” A sharp look from Hjordis made Wulfrik think better of continuing the tale.

  The princess rubbed at the stain Wulfrik’s fingers had left. “This is never going to come off. I’ll have to get a new one before my father sees and asks indelicate questions.” A sly smile spread across her face as she glanced at the hero. “You should help me pick one out,” she suggested.

  “And what about Viglundr?” Wulfrik asked.

  “He’ll be busy all night trying to apologise to the Aeslings,” Hjordis said. “I think we could pick out a dress by then.”

  “Maybe not,” Wulfrik warned her. “I’ve been at sea for two months.”

  Hjordis laughed and led the champion by the hand down the corridor. “Where is your caution now? This could all be a trick to leave you so weak and tired that Sveinbjorn will only need a dozen warriors to overcome you.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Wulfrik assured her, kissing the back of her neck.

  Chapter Three

  The feeble light of the Norscan sun was just starting to peek beneath the heavy furs shrouding the tower windows. Hjordis awoke slowly, stretching her body and sighing contentedly. She smiled as the warmth of the bed tried to lull her back to sleep. She rolled onto her side, half-tempted to submit to the enticing lure. As she moved, her arm fell into the warm emptiness beside her.

  Hjordis blinked her eyes in confusion, then heard once more the sound which had awakened her. She sat upright, letting the bearskin blanket tumble from her body. Her eyes stared into the darkness. Only faintly could she pick out the figure standing at the foot of the bed, buckling armour about his brawny frame.

  “You rise early,” the princess said, her words not quite spoken before a terrific yawn overcame her.

  “There’s much to be done,” was Wulfrik’s gruff response.

  The content smile she was wearing faded. Hjordis crawled across the length of the bed, pressing herself against the hero’s armoured back. The cold mail sent a shiver through her naked flesh, but it wasn’t so cold as the fear that trembled in her heart.

  “Another of your dreams?” she forced herself to ask.

  Wulfrik abandoned the vambrace he had been tying about his arm, tossing the piece of armour across the room. He sank back into the embrace of the princess. “Always the dreams,” he told her. “Always the dreams. When will the gods stop sending me these visions? When will they relent? How much do they expect a man to suffer before it is enough to appease them?”

  Hjordis leaned over Wulfrik, pressing his head against her bosom. She ran her fingers through the wild tangle of his hair. “You must have hope.”

  “I saw a town,” Wulfrik continued. “Some southling place. The walls were of stone and a river ran through its gates. Buildings were burning, the dead strewn like seed in the streets. The wailing of children filled the air and there was an ugly light in the sky. A great voice spoke, crying out: ‘For the Lord of the Winds, the last breath is given!’ Then the earth shook with the laughter of vultures and I saw myself among the dead.”

  A shiver of absolute terror ran through Hjordis as she heard Wulfrik relate the apocalyptic dream. It was easier for them to discuss the things as though they were only dreams, of no more substance than any other nightmare. But they both knew better. Wulfrik’s dreams were not his own. They were visions sent by the gods, a portent of things that would come to pass. They were a part of his curse, guiding him to the offerings the gods demanded of him.

  Never before, though, had Wulfrik seen himself in one of these visions, much less seen his own corpse. It sent a wave of horror pulsing through Hjordis’ veins. In their cruelty, perhaps the gods had answered all of the hero’s questions.

  “What will you do?” Hjordis asked, her voice little more than a feeble croak.

  Wulfrik pulled away from her so he could stare into her eyes. “I’ll see Agnarr and ask him to interpret the dream,” he said, making it sound almost inconsequential. “Then I’ll supervise the choosing of new men for the crew. If Sigvatr hasn’t finished outfitting the ship, I’ll have to help him rumble some of the traders. Then it’ll just be the small matter of dragging my men out of the mead halls and whore-huts. I hope I don’t have to kill any of them this time.”

  The champion looked hard at Hjordis. His forced joviality hadn’t fooled her; there was still a troubled expression in her eyes. He ran his thumb against her cheek, trying to tug her face into a smile. After a few tries, the smile became genuine.

  “Tchar take all of them!” Wulfrik exclaimed, pushing Hjordis onto her back. “They can do without me for a few hours yet!”

  The seer Agnarr lived in a strange little shack crouched between a smithy and a storehouse for salted fish. Unlike its neighbours, the shack hadn’t been built from timber and stone, but was made entirely from whale bone, the splintered ribs of a dozen beasts lashed together with stout cords to form a weird, ramshackle shelter. For the entirety of their length, each bone was richly carved with scenes drawn from the sagas. Wulfrik had heard that if a man studied the carvings for too long they would change, and that some of the carvings depicted things not yet chronicled in the sagas. He wasn’t sure he believed such stories. There were always tales being told about the strangeness of seers. Even so, he made it a point never to look too closely at the engravings.

  The interior of the seer’s home never failed to evoke a sense of uneasiness in Wulfrik. The air was always colder than outside, whatever the season. There was a crude sort of ceiling stretched overhead to keep out the rain, but even in all his travels, Wulfrik could put no name to whatever scaly beast had once worn such a craggy skin. Oddments of every shape hung from hooks set into the scaly hide so that moving anywhere inside the shack required an effort not unlike that of an explorer forcing his way through a jungle. Dried bats, the desiccated shells of mammoth spiders, stagnant weeds that smelled like blood and looked not unlike severed fingers, the mummified husks of crocodiles, such were the arcane bric-a-brac of the seer.

  Wulfrik pushed his way past a string of goblin bones and a rope made from the intestine of a manticore, manoeuvring into the heart of the dwelling. An eerie blue flame smouldered in a circle of skulls, beckoning the warrior forwards. He found it unsettling that the flame should burn so brightly yet do nothing to ease the chill of the place. He glanced at the floor around the fire, then sat down upon a pile of wolf pelts some distance from the flame. As he sat down, an insane gibberish accosted his ears, the idiot babble of a tiny batrachian daemon locked inside a silver cage. The thing eyed him with malicious, multi-faceted eyes and licked its long talons with too many tongues.

  The hero threw a stone at the noxious creature, smiling when he heard it growl its displeasure. Wulfrik hoped Agnarr wouldn’t keep him waiting long. From past experience, he knew the daemon’s gibberish would start to make his head swim after a time. If he had to suffer from a headache, he’d prefer to induce it on his own with a few barrels of mead.

  The idea turned sour almost as soon as it occurred to him. A few barrels of mead had been the cause of all his troubles. After the Battle of a Thousand Skulls, with King Torgald’s head tucked under his arm, Wulfrik had celebrated the victory. Along with the arms and armour of the Aeslings and their allies, Wulfrik’s army had captured their supplies. Whatever his other vices, Torgald had not scrimped in maintaining his troops and Wulfrik’s warriors enjoyed a victory feast worthy of the sagas.

  How hollow that celebration felt now, for it had brought doom upon Wulfrik and tainted his glory. The hero had feasted with his men. No man had fought more fiercely than he in the battle, now he vowed no man wou
ld outdrink him in victory. Using the skull of King Torgald for his cup, Wulfrik had matched his words with deeds. It had taken four entire barrels of mead to put him under the table, a feat that impressed even the ogres.

  Before the mead overwhelmed him entirely, however, the drunken Wulfrik had started to boast of his exploits. Before he was done, he’d killed every monster in the Wastes twice and personally boxed the ears of three southling emperors. It was his final proud boast that had doomed him. He claimed that he was the equal of any warrior in the mortal world or in the realm beyond flesh.

  The gods enjoy punishing hubris.

  That night he’d had the first of his visions. A dark shape stole upon him in his dreams, a shadow blacker than night. It was an emissary of the gods, it told him. The gods were displeased with his proud words. However, it amused them to allow Wulfrik the opportunity to prove his arrogant boast. In his dream, he saw fantastic worlds, places he could recognise only from the dimmest legends. He saw cities built from bones and the soaring towers of the elf-folk. He saw the vast underground warrens of the ratkin and the jungle temples of the dragon-folk, the ramshackle fortresses of orc kings and the gilded halls of the dwarf lords. The putrid palace of the Plague Lord rose from the muck of his nightmare, its walls crafted from the wailing bodies of the damned. The dead halls of Nagashizzar, silent with the dust of centuries, made his soul cringe in terror.

  Such would be Wulfrik’s hunting grounds. He would wander the world, seeking battle to prove himself the equal of any warrior, mortal or spirit, living or undead. He would make offerings to the gods he had offended, offerings the gods themselves would choose. When he failed—and the dark emissary left no question he would fail—the gods would take great delight in torturing his soul through eternity.

  Wulfrik might have believed the vision nothing but a drunken nightmare had it not been for the changes that had been visited upon his body. He bore the brand of the gods in his flesh, marked not by one, but by all the Great Powers. His tongue had become an inhuman thing, sharp and fluted like that of a bird and he found he could speak any language, however strange to him. The Gift of Tongues, the Kurgan shaman had called this strange power.

  The first offering he was to make came to him in a dream. He was to kill the tomb lord Khareops and sacrifice its shrivelled entrails to Wormking Nurgle. The dream even told him where he would find Khareops. The creature’s tomb was far to the south, in the wastes beyond Araby: a voyage only the boldest northmen ever attempted. It was a voyage that would take even a fast ship many months to make.

  And this was only the first of the tasks the gods would have of him.

  Wulfrik would have despaired then but for his old friend Sigvatr. The grizzled warrior remembered hearing about a “sky-ship” crafted by the Skaeling witch Baga Yar, a ship that could sail anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye. It was the kind of extravagant legend Wulfrik had always discredited, but it was the only hope he had of beating the curse.

  It took all of the treasure he’d won from Torgald and all the gold Viglundr paid him for defeating the Aeslings to bribe the warriors he’d needed to assail the fortress of Baga Yar. In the end, the witch had been consumed in her own cauldron after Wulfrik’s sword removed her arms. Two hundred warriors had died fighting the crone and her daemons, but victory had been his. The other treasures in the witch’s fortress he left to his followers; the only thing Wulfrik wanted was her magic ship.

  Seafang he had named the vessel and quickly he learned how easily fables can lie. It was not flight that allowed the ship to speed its way across the seas. Instead the Seafang would fade from the mortal world to sail upon phantom tides in that realm known only to gods and daemons. Such was the horror of the ship he had taken for his own.

  “A man may forge his own doom.”

  The voice was like the croak of a raven, at once thin and guttural. Wulfrik turned around to find the seer Agnarr limping through the menagerie of oddments. He was old, so old that even the elders of Ormskaro could not remember him as ever being young. His head was hairless and wrinkled, like a turtle’s egg, his face like dried parchment across the bones of his skull. Eyes frosty with blindness stared vacantly from Agnarr’s colourless face. The seer wore a heavy sealskin robe, the bisected head of one of the creatures framing his shoulders. He leaned heavily upon a staff carved from troll bone and behind him he dragged the twisted abortion of his left foot. It was more a shapeless mass of flesh than anything else, though there was some affinity to the webbed foot of an albatross about it.

  “I have tried,” Wulfrik answered the seer gruffly. There was no need to introduce himself. Agnarr did not need sight to know things. Whenever he visited the seer, he had the impression that Agnarr knew everything he was going to say before he said it.

  “Perhaps you have already succeeded,” Agnarr said. The seer turned and shook his staff at the imprisoned daemon until it was quiet. Then he unerringly picked his way to a mouldy pillow with tattered bits of lace clinging to it—some gift he’d received from another seafaring reaver long ago.

  “Who could have called upon you the eye of the gods, if it was not you yourself?” the seer continued.

  “That isn’t the life I want!” Wulfrik snarled.

  Agnarr fixed his sightless eyes upon Wulfrik. “It is the life you have made for yourself. Few men would be resourceful enough to outwit the gods. Few would have been strong enough to survive their challenges. The name of Wulfrik has spread to all the steads of Norsca, his fame has been recorded in the sagas.”

  “To hell with fame and glory!” Wulfrik smashed his fist against the floor. “I want my life back!”

  “Why?” Agnarr asked, genuine bewilderment in his voice. “You have achieved what mighty lords squander armies and slaughter nations to win for themselves. The gods gaze down upon you! Your flesh bears the mark of their favour! You have been gifted to serve them as few mortals may ever hope!”

  Wulfrik bared his fangs at the blind man. “The last prophet who told me this curse was a gift spent a long time dying,” he warned.

  “And how long will you take to die?” Agnarr’s question lashed out at the hero. “How long will you fight against the will of the gods, and to what end? To marry some wench, sire a clutch of offspring.” The seer chuckled darkly. “Perhaps steal her father’s throne? Bah! What are women and offspring and thrones? Dust and less than dust!” He wagged one of his withered fingers at Wulfrik. “The gifts of the gods, these are the rewards a man keeps forever. The rewards of love and greed and ambition, these rot with a man in his grave.”

  “I want them just the same,” Wulfrik growled. “I did not seek this curse…”

  Agnarr nodded his head. “Yet it found you just the same. Sometimes the feet walk a path the head does not know.”

  Wulfrik rose from the pile of wolf-skins. “I did not come here to be told to accept my doom.”

  Agnarr waved his hands at the champion, motioning for him to sit down. “You came so that I might interpret your vision.”

  “Seldom has one come upon me so soon after a voyage,” Wulfrik said. He made no effort to hide the anxiety he felt. “Is… is this… how they are… to be… now?” The thought was horrible to him, that he would sail the world for the rest of his days, moving from one hunt to another, without rest or respite.

  “I cannot say,” the seer admitted with a shake of his head. “I can only try to discern the will of the gods from your vision.”

  “I saw myself among the dead,” Wulfrik shuddered. It was not the idea of death that frightened him, but the awful fate that would await him in the world beyond.

  “Through our lives, we are all of us many men,” Agnarr told him. “Sometimes the gods conspire to destroy one of these selves without killing the body. When that happens, a new self arises to command the flesh.” The seer tapped his bony chest. “Sometimes it is in a man’s power to destroy his self on his own.

  “For the rest of your vision, I can say little,” the seer said. “
The signs are clear enough. The offering the gods have chosen is to be offered to Great Tchar, the Raven God. That you will find the sacrifice in the lands of the southlings is obvious too.”

  “But who?” Wulfrik demanded. “Where? The Empire of the southlings is a vast land to stalk nameless prey.”

  Agnarr lifted his hands to his eyes, rubbing at the corners of their sockets. “I do not know. There is something wrong. Before your visions have been as clear to me as if I had had them myself. This time is different. It is like trying to peer through a thick fog. Shapes and shadows are there, but more I cannot see. But a place once seen, why must it have a name to be found?”

  Wulfrik scowled at the seer’s inability to tell him more. Irritably, he snapped a gold band from around his arm and tossed it onto the floor beside Agnarr’s feet. “I always come here looking for answers, but I always leave with more questions than I came with.”

  “That is because you do not like the answers you are given,” Agnarr scolded him. “The gods answer every prayer, but few are wise enough to understand when the answer is ‘no’. You might ponder that.”

  “I’d rather find a barrel of mead and a plateful of roast horse,” the champion confessed.

  “Then I wish you good appetite,” Agnarr said. “Remember your dream, and listen to it. Otherwise I fear we shall not speak again.”

  Wulfrik had been shoving aside the tangles of dried eels and withered herbs on his way from the seer’s hut. Now he froze, a chill running down his spine. He spun about, tearing his way through the maze of oddments. “What did you say, ghost-caller? What do you mean?”

  “More questions when you’ve been given answers,” Agnarr’s croaking voice laughed.

  Wulfrik fought his way towards the voice, anger swelling up inside him. Savagely he tore strings of sea shells and eagle eyes from the ceiling. Then the hair rose on his arms as his hand connected with the bony curve of the shack’s outer wall. He was certain he had retraced his path exactly, yet he’d reached the far side of the shack without passing through the opening at the centre. He turned about, still able to see the blue light of the fire.