Journeys Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Troll Hunt (Julia Knight)

  The Road to Hadrumal (Juliet E McKenna)

  The Witness (Steven Poore)

  The World Wound (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

  Fool’s Quest (Juliana Spink Mills)

  Tomas and the Virgin (Anna Dickinson)

  The Broken City (Davis Ashura)

  A Warm Heart (Dan Jones)

  Black Sails (Thaddeus White)

  The Last Mile (Gail Z Martin)

  The Black-Handed Mage (Charlie Pulsipher)

  Quests and Answers (Samanda R Primeau)

  The Vanishing (Jacob Cooper)

  The Sundering (John Gwynne)

  Heart Blade

  Explorations: First Contact

  Journeys

  Journeys

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the proper written permission of the appropriate copyright holders listed below.

  The stories in this book are fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved

  ‘Journeys’ copyright © 2017 Nathan Hystad and Woodbridge Press

  ‘The Troll Hunt’ by Julia Knight copyright © 2017 Julia Knight. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘The Road to Hadrumal’ by Juliet E McKenna copyright © 2017 Juliet E McKenna. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘The Witness’ by Steven Poore copyright © 2017 Steven Poore. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘The World Wound’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky copyright © 2017 Adrian Tchaikovsky. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘Fool’s Quest by Juliana Spink Mills copyright © 2017 Juliana Spink Mills. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘Tomas and the Virgin’ by Anna Dickinson copyright © 2017 Anna Dickinson. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘The Broken City’ by Davis Ashura copyright © 2017 Davis Ashura. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘A Warm Heart’ by Dan Jones copyright © 2017 Dan Jones. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘Black Sails’ by Thaddeus White © 2017 Thaddeus White. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘The Last Mile’ by Gail Z. Martin copyright © 2017 Gail Z. Martin. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘The Vanishing’ by Jacob Cooper copyright © 2017 Jacob Cooper. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘Quests and Answers’ by Samanda R Primeau copyright © 2017 Samanda R Primeau. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘The Black-Handed Mage’ by Charlie Pulsipher copyright © 2017 Charlie Pulsipher. Used by permission of the author.

  ‘The Sundering’ by John Gwynne copyright © 2017 John Gwynne. Used by permission of the author.

  All other text copyright © Nathan Hystad 2017

  Edited by Teresa Edgerton

  Copy-Edited by Samanda R Primeau

  Proofread by Scarlett Algee

  Cover Art by Illustration © Tom Edwards TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Cover Back Layout by Deb Kunellis

  Scroll Drawings Caleb Hystad

  A Nathan Hystad Anthology

  The first snow of winter shivered the coming night, made dancing patterns across the black and oily waters of the fjord and curled in webs and weaves around Hrolf as he made his way over the little bridge.

  Light spilled from the jarl-house, tumbled over the rocks underneath, and made stars of snowflakes that now fell thicker and softer as though trying to still the sound. Hrolf and his brothers passed over the carved threshold. Inside, the room was red with fires, with reflected gold.

  Trestles groaned under the weight of roasted pork, mutton and beef, platters of bread and pitchers of ale. Jarl Einar sat in his high chair, red-faced and grinning at something his brother was saying before they both burst into laughter that rattled the walls and made his daughter, Soma, startle at his left hand. Groups of men and women, youths and maidens, came together and parted, mingled and drifted in a glorious net of sound and noise. Patterns rose and fell, warp and weft, as alive as the people were.

  The Norns do not weave their webs so plainly.

  At last, when the night grew old and frail and smoke hazed the roof, she came.

  Hrolf felt it as a quietening of the blood, a thickening of the smoke. Dogs whined under the tables. Women grew quiet and men went pale, and then there she was, striding out of the smoke. The hall dropped from raucous to silent, except for the thud of her metal-shod staff on the floor, the rattle of the beads and bones along its length. Smoke from the fire turned as black as ravens and curled in a Norn weave about her.

  Hrolf had never seen the spae-wife so close, and now he wished he was in his bed, listening to the rustle of the cows. She seemed old, old as hills, old as gods, grey and shriveled. Then she turned her face and she was no older than his mother, a regal-faced queen who held all in her iced grey gaze, a frosted halo of hair piled on her head. Another turn and she was no older than he, with bright gold hair that fell free down her back, fresh cheeks, and a smile in her eyes.

  She stopped in front of the jarl’s chair, and the staff came down again with a thud that seemed to shake the hall to its roots.

  Jarl Einar sat, no longer drunk, but sober as a newborn and whiter than the snow that still fell in swaths outside. He stared at the smoke that curled about her legs, crawled up and over her in weaves and nets that defied the eye.

  “Time,” she said, and the hall let out a collective breath.

  Einar didn’t answer for a spell, his glance going to his several sons with a crease of worry between his brows. Finally he gathered himself, as though he didn’t know why she was here, that she hadn’t last come the night he’d been made jarl, the night he’d married Alva. “Time for what?”

  The spae-wife cocked her head and laughed under her breath. “A troll is here. Time to hunt.”

  The silence broke into a hundred shards, into spears of sound so that Hrolf could barely think. A chance to gain a by-name of true renown, as Einar had twenty years before. A chance to become jarl of the whole fjord when Einar was spent. His heartbeat throbbed in his eyes at the thought, but he kept quiet and still. Wait and see, his father always said. Watch and bide your time, then strike at the weakest part of your foe.

  Einar pulled himself to his feet, his hand gripping the arm of his chair as though he would fall without its support. There were long words that should be spoken, of bravery and renown, of finding the luck and blessing of the gods. Einar should have spoken of the spae, of magic, of reverence for her, as one who could see the weave of the world. Einar said none of them.

  He shut his eyes and said, “Choose, then. I can’t stop you.”

  A slow smile crossed the spae-wife’s face, that flickered from one age to the next.

  “Steini I name, in payment for his father’s life I saved from the bear trap. Arnhall for a sister that bore a son safely.”

  Hrolf held his breath, shut his eyes so as to concentrate on the words, the names, and the wish that his might be among them. A chance for valor, for a great name, when there was precious little else to get that for him yet. This was a chance of fair fame, for him who earned it.

  She named Ragni, the blacksmith’s daughter. Hope began to fade in him that his name would come. He cracked open an eye, and found the spae-wife looking at him with a twist of a smil
e on her lips.

  “Hrolf I name, for the debt his father owes to me, and Soma likewise.”

  The swell of pride in Hrolf was cut off with one look at Einar’s face, that hung in suddenly grey folds of fear for his only daughter.

  “Not Soma,” he said. “Take one of my sons, strong lads all. Men and near-men who might have a chance—”

  “And Soma has none?” The spae-wife’s eyebrow arched. “Or is there some other reason you’d not repay your debt as I ask? That she’s the image of her mother at that age, and you have no other way to recall that face?”

  Einar swayed as though he’d been struck, but said nothing.

  “All of you so named,” the spae-wife said, when it was clear Einar would say no more, “come with me.”

  Hrolf rose up. His father grasped at his arm as he went past, but he barely saw the face, only a golden nimbus around a mouth shaping unheard words.

  The spell, if that’s what it was, ended not as they walked out into the snow but when his feet found him by the howe. Snow-covered turf ran upward from him, blocked out what little light there was until only blackness, snow and the nearness of the dead under it were left.

  “You spend the night here,” the spae-wife said in a cracked voice. “In the morning, you follow the tracks.”

  “What tracks?” Steini said, his quick glances everywhere betraying his inquisitive nature — he was small for his age, but made up for it by knowing everything he could find out. A fox, Hrolf’s father laughingly called him, not as strong as a wolf but more cunning.

  “Do we get weapons?” Arnhall — Arni — said. He was big and bluff, with the wide shoulders of a full-grown man, not a youth, and the swagger of one who’d already raided.

  “We’ll freeze to death before any of that,” Ragni muttered under her breath, sweeping one hand through hair darker than was usual. Her eyes were still darker and now fixed on the spae-wife.

  The spae-wife only smiled a cryptic smile and said, “You’ll get what you need, when you need it. But first, the howe. A night with the dead will help you see what I see.”

  Hrolf turned to ask her something, but she was gone in the swirl of snow.

  “Odin’s arsehole.” Arni spat. “Sod this, I’m going to find a warm bed and—”

  “You’ll defy her?” golden-haired Soma, pride of the village, said with a tremor in her voice. “You will? You’re a brave man, then, to do that. Anyone else thinking about it?”

  The answer seemed to be no. Any one of them might have questioned their fathers, their jarl even. But not the spae-wife.

  The howe was bare of anything except its scarves of snow, the wind scouring those into shapes that the dark made into monsters. Hrolf hunkered down, ready to wait out the dregs of the night in cold-soaked misery. Steini dropped next to him, and they shared a shoulder for warmth, Ragni on his other side.

  “What did she mean, do you think?” Arni said, pacing like a pent-up bull. “That we’ll see what she sees?”

  Hrolf shrugged — the spae-wife wasn’t of this world, his father said. She came, sometimes, to show men for who they were, to weave their wyrd into subtle nets. Those who came back from the troll hunt were never the same.

  “She probably means we’ll all see you for the arse that you are, Arni,” Steini said, but his teasing tone faltered at the last.

  They fell to silence, sat in a huddled circle against the cold. Snow layered them in white before it was whipped away by the wind. The howe under Hrolf was cold as death, and he fell to thinking about the man buried underneath, the first of the Troll Hunters. Olaf Trollsbane, who’d been the one of only two survivors of that first hunt — the other being Hella, who’d become his wife — who’d dragged the troll’s head back to the village and stuck it on the jarl’s house for everyone to see.

  “What do you think happens on a hunt?” he asked at last. Arni glared at him, Ragni shivered, and swift Steini let out a bitter laugh, because no one knew exactly, except those who had been there.

  “Soma? Did your father ever say?”

  She sat a little apart from the rest, chin in the air, and Hrolf had taken it that she thought she was better than them, because she was the only daughter of the last Troll Hunter.

  Now she looked at him and he saw something else there, in the quiver of a hand.

  “No. Not my father, though we’ve all heard the tale — he only says that the tale isn’t the half of it. My mother did, once. She was on that hunt too.”

  The others craned forward to hear her soft voice. “What did she say?” Arni asked.

  Soma smiled and looked out into the falling snow. “That she’d never spend another night on this howe, not if you paid her all in cattle and gold.”

  “Thor’s foreskin,” Arni said, and looked over his shoulder as though he expected the shade of Olaf to be there. Whatever it was he saw, he blanched and leaped to his feet.

  The rest of them weren’t far behind, though Hrolf could see nothing except snow and the faint light of the jarl’s hall down the valley. “What?”

  “There, there, can’t you see it?” Arni’s voice dropped to a whisper. He dragged out his small knife — all any of them had — and the tip hissed uncertainly through the falling snow.

  “See what?” Soma said. “I see someone being a—”

  A muffled scream came from behind, and they whipped around. Ragni sat sprawled on the side of the howe. Steini was gone, except for a small splash of blood by Ragni’s feet, and a set of tracks.

  The first light of dawn crept over the east side of the howe as Soma grabbed Ragni up. Hrolf bent to look at the tracks, and Arni stood, licking his lips and staring up at the dark mountain that loomed, outlined in the growing light.

  Soma crouched next to Hrolf. “Well?”

  He didn’t spare her a glance but, like Arni, stared up at the mountain, pale with snow, dark with firs, with shadows that ran under the trees like shades. A glance the other way, to the fjord where the waters flowed sleek and black and cold, and onward to the village where his father would be sitting. Wait and see, lad. Wait and see.

  “Like no tracks I ever saw before,” he said at last.

  The prints were etched into the crust of snow. Like a man without shoes, only bigger, far bigger even than Eigil who was big enough he had to bend almost double to get into the jarl’s house. And a man without shoes, out in this snow….

  “She said we’d find tracks,” Ragni murmured.

  “She said we’d have weapons as well.” Suddenly Arni didn’t look like the brave and swaggering youth of last night.

  “Then we will,” Ragni said firmly. “We have to find out what happened to Steini, even if she didn’t say to follow the tracks.”

  “I thought you were the big, brave warrior, Arni?” Soma said, and maybe she was teasing and maybe not. “You told me you killed a wolf with that knife.”

  “A wolf, yes. A troll?”

  “We’ll have weapons,” Hrolf said, standing up and brushing snow from his legs. “Do you doubt the spae-wife?”

  Arni snorted and bulled his way close, shoving Hrolf with one massive shoulder, reminding him of all the times he’d had Hrolf on his backside when they wrestled, all the sneers and boasts. Arni lowered his head to a level with Hrolf, but for once didn’t cause him to back away.

  “Do you have Thor in you?” Hrolf whispered, palms slick with sudden sweat.

  A fist had Hrolf in the snow before he could blink, shaking it from his eyes as Arni stomped off along the tracks, muttering, knife held in front like a talisman.

  Soma and Ragni looked down at where he lay. “Maybe he doesn’t, maybe he does, but you’ve got Loki in you,” Soma said. Then she smiled and held out a hand to help him up. He took it with a shame-faced smile of his own and they headed out, following the two sets of tracks, Arni’s and the troll’s, as they blurred together in the new snow.

  ~

  The short day was heading toward dark when they found a wind-scoured ridge.

&
nbsp; The way up had been as silent as the trees. Ragni never spoke much, as timid as her father was strong, and Hrolf was too much in awe of Soma to get more than a few words out. So they followed the tracks, all lost in their own thoughts, up the mountain.

  Hrolf had climbed this mountain many times before — his family had a high summer pasture up here for the cows. In winter they came hunting, wolves and bears and foxes for fur, hares for meat. In spring, as children, they’d raided the cliffs for birds’ eggs. The mountain and its ridges, its dark hollows and false trails, were as familiar to Hrolf as his father’s face. Yet today the tracks led him to places he’d never seen, behind ridges he’d never known, each darker than the last as the light bled down the mountainside, and it was silent as he’d never known it before. No foxes tracked this snow, no wolves padded the darkness under the towering firs, no hares scurried away as the three of them came on. No ravens mocked him from overhead.

  Soma stopped in front, pulling Hrolf up short. Ragni was a small ghost beside him in the looming dark.

  “Do you see that?” Soma asked.

  A massive tree stump lay in a small clearing in front of them, lit by a last shaft of sunlight that faltered even as he looked. Hrolf held his breath. Weapons, Arni had said, they’d need weapons.

  The three of them stepped forward as one, reaching for the stump, for the bow. Soma got there first, but her hand passed through, grabbed something else and pulled away. Ragni’s hand, too, acted as though the bow didn’t exist, yet it was solid enough under Hrolf’s hand. A good bow, too, made of smooth yew that had been carved with runes that seemed to squirm under his hand. A quiver of arrows sat next to it.

  He looked at the others, a grin ready to spring from his lips, until he saw what they’d pulled from the stump. Soma held a spear taller than she was, and stared up at the tip with eyes red-tinted from that last gasp of sun. Ragni held a magnificent hammer. It looked almost the same size as she was, though she hefted it well enough despite her stunned face. From the shadows under the trees came the sound of laughter, and the jangle of bones and beads.