Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (56 page)

“Your father wants you,” the dark-haired young man told her. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, and she knew that, like most former thralls, he would not see himself as a true man until he had stood with the shield wall and proven himself worthy of a warrior’s regard. “He’s in his chambers.”

She followed Grenjar up the stairs that led to the room at the top of the tower that her father had claimed once the Red Prince and his retinue had arrived. Since the self-styled King of the Wolf Isles had neither servants nor court, he simply didn’t require the space that the southerners considered an absolute necessity. Pride might have demanded otherwise, but then, it was the Skullbreaker’s fondest hope that they would soon abandon what presently passed for his entire royal demense. She also knew that he liked being able to look out over the sea to the south, toward the lands that they would soon be forced to call their home.

Grenjar had nearly reached the final landing when the sounds of a struggle could be heard coming from one of the rooms above them.

The young man glanced back at her for a moment, confusion on his face. Then he turned and leaped up the remaining stairs two at a time.

Fjotra wrinkled her nose, smelling something unpleasant but vaguely familiar. Then horror struck her heart as she realized where she had smelled it before.

“I’m coming, my lord!” Grenjar shouted.

“Father!” Fjotra gathered up her shift on one hand and ran up the stairs after Grenjar, and she screamed again when she saw the creature that had her father pinned beneath its grey-furred bulk.

It was an aalvarg, though she couldn’t see how it could possibly have entered through either of the chamber’s two small windows, much less climbed more than one hundred feet up the walls that rose from the stony shores of the White Sea.

With a battle cry that might have done credit to a veteran berserker, Grenjar drew his dagger from his belt and leaped at the monster, stabbing it once in the back of the neck and again in its right shoulder.

The half-wolf, half-man roared, releasing the Skullbreaker’s shield arm from its bloody jaws, and twisted its torso, causing Grenjar to tumble from its muscled back.

Her father took the opportunity to roll out from beneath his attacker, but Fjotra could see that he couldn’t use his arm, and there was blood covering most of his naked upper body.

“The axe!” he shouted, pointing with his sword arm as the aalvarg swiped its long claws at Grenjar, raking him across the chest.

Fjotra whirled around and saw the weapon that had given her father his name suspended on four iron rods driven into the wall. She lifted the battleaxe off its supports—it was heavy, and she could barely hold it aloft over her head. When she turned, groaning under its weight, she saw that the aalvarg was back on top of her father, snapping madly at him and lunging for his throat.

She cried out as she staggered toward the embattled pair. Then gravity came to her aid, and she brought the axe blade crashing down squarely in the middle of the aalvarg’s back. A fountain of dark blood splattered in her face.

The beast threw its head back and shrieked, scrabbling madly at the giant blade that was now embedded deeply in its flesh.

Skuli managed to push it off him, and no sooner had he done so than Grenjar dove at the aalvarg, driving his knife into its throat, ripping it back and forth with murderously unrestrained violence, and sending the unnatural monster back to the Hell from whence it must originally have come.

Fjotra rushed to her father’s side and kneeled down beside him, heedless of the blood that was staining her white shift.

“Let me see, Father. Let me see you!” She gasped at the sight of his shield arm, which was badly mangled all around its circumference, torn from his wrist to his elbow by the long, wolfish fangs. A pair of claw marks ran from his left cheek down to his breast, and three more, much deeper wounds marked his side where the beast had very nearly slashed open his belly. “Grenjar, run and find one of the troldkvinde! Wait, first take the blankets from his bed there and throw them to me!”

The young man was bleeding from his face and favoring his left leg, which was slashed below the knee. But he quickly stripped the woolen bedding from the Skullbreaker’s bed and tossed it to her. Then he bent over, pulled his knife from the dead aalvarg’s throat where he had left it, and handed it to her.

“You’ll need this in case there are more of them about,” he said. “I’ll send some men up while I look for a witch woman.”

Fjotra nodded. It was a good thought. She wiped off the blade as he departed, then used it to cut long strips from the thinnest blanket. Her father had lost a good deal of blood, but judging by the astonishing number of scars on his body, from the long-healed and barely visible white lines to the newer ones that looked like fat pink worms, he had seen worse in the past.

“Tighter,” he hissed as she wrapped a makeshift bandage around his torso. “I think he may have broken a rib or two. It hurts when I breathe too deeply. Reminds me of the time Gunnlaug Sigurdsson caught me with the edge of his shield. Took me a month before I could breathe properly again and cost me a ship to ransom myself. He was a clever one. We could surely use that old bastard now.”

She dabbed lightly at the wounds on his cheek, which turned out to be little more than scratches, then carefully reached out and began to examine his arm. It was a horrific sight, and she didn’t really know where to begin bandaging it, so she decided to concentrate on getting the bleeding to stop, especially near his wrist.

“At least it wasn’t your sword arm,” she commented.

He nodded, his eyes tightly closed. His breathing was irregular and forceful in her ear. She had just finished bandaging his arm when she felt him push her away from him. “The Savoner prince,” he said. “Go and make sure he has guards in his chamber. If they found me here, they might have attacked him too.”

“I can’t leave you here alone! We don’t know how many of them there are inside the walls! And surely someone will alert the Savoners once Grenjar sounds the alarm.”

“None of them speak the bloody southern tongue, girl! I’ll be fine. You take the blade. I’ve got the axe in case I need it. Now go, he’s our guest and our liege lord—we have a duty to him.”

She looked dubiously from him lying in a pool of his enemy’s blood to the heavy axe that she had barely been able to lift with two good arms. How could he ever lift that with one arm, wounded as he was? But then, he was not only right, he was her father. And they did have a duty to the Red Prince.

“I’ll warn him and come right back,” she said, kissing him on the forehead and pushing herself to her feet. “Don’t die before then.”

“It will take more than one damned wolf to kill the Skullbreaker, my girl. Go, then, go!”

She ran from the room, reversing the knife in her hand as she did so. She knew she was on edge, and the last thing she wanted was to stab people instinctively if they startled her.

She was barely out of the room when she saw a group of half-dressed but fully armed Dalarn warriors with Steinthor Strongbow at their head charging up the stairs toward her. Relieved that her father would at least be safe from another attack, she quickly told Steinthor where she was headed. After ordering most of the men to go and assist the Skullbreaker, the captain insisted on accompanying her to the prince’s chambers, along with three of his men.

The Red Prince had been given the great chamber, which was in the central tower, so it took some time to descend the stairs of the South Tower, run through the courtyard, then ascend another set of stairs.

There were no signs of any alarm, however, which was a relief to Fjotra, since she was getting out of breath before they reached the landing upon which the prince’s room was located. But her relief quickly faded as they turned a corner in the corridor and saw an unfamiliar man staggering toward them holding a bloody shoulder.

“Dammit!” swore Steinthor, and he drew his sword, racing past the man into the room.

His men followed, but even as Fjotra tightened her grip on her knife and steeled herself for what they would find there, a familiar scent caught her attention. She frowned and sniffed the air to see where it was coming from, then turned around and realized that it was the wounded man, who was neither Dalarn nor Savoner, but what looked like a strange blend of the two peoples. It was the eyes that were the wrong color, they were black like some of the dark-eyed Savoners, but the skin and hair were fair.

“
Sigskifting!”
she screamed.

The false man growled and bared teeth that were much too long, thin, and curved to be human.

Terror filled her, but she didn’t hesitate to throw the knife in her hand. The aalvarg was only steps away, and at that range, she did not miss.

The man howled like the wolf he truly was as the blade sank hilt-deep into his left shoulder.

Fjotra ran toward the room into which Steinthor and his men had disappeared. She was almost to the door when a heavy weight struck her in the back and smashed her to the floor.

The force of it stunned her, leaving her more conscious of the beast growling and snarling on top of her than of any pain from its attack. And then, almost as soon as it had come, the heavy weight was gone.

A high-pitched shriek resounded throughout the stone corridor, and when she rolled over onto her side and looked behind her, she saw Steinthor Strongbow standing over the dying figure of the aalvarg, now shifted back into its terrible half-form, holding it up by the sword that ran all the way through its throat and out the back of its neck. Two of his men stood behind him, already sheathing their swords.

Twitching and thrashing, but unable to escape from the iron blade that held it as firmly as a kitchen spit, the dreadful beast finally slumped to the ground, apparently dead.

Steinthor lifted his hilt toward the ceiling, then placed his boot on the lupine face and withdrew his sword.

“These things are magic. We’d better burn it, just to make sure it’s true dead.”

He extended his shield hand to Fjotra and effortlessly pulled her to her feet.

“Thank you,” she said.

The Dalarn warrior only shook his head. “How did you know? I thought it was one of the Prince’s men.”

“Oh, by the gods, Prince Karl!” she cried, and she ran into his chamber.

It looked as if a cow had been slaughtered inside, perhaps two cows. Steinthor’s third man was standing over the body of a man that Fjotra recognized as one of the Red Prince’s servants. His throat was torn out, although it was impossible to tell if it had been the aalvarg’s teeth or claws that were responsible. Another servant was unconscious. He appeared unmarked, but he was clearly breathing, and the broken wooden chair lying in several large pieces around him made it obvious how he’d been attacked.

“He’s not here!” she cried, more relieved than she ever would have imagined. But then she heard a groan from someone lying out of sight on the other side of the chamber’s large bed. She leaped upon it and felt something wet and a little sticky under her hands, but she paid it no mind. For there, lying on the floor with his eyes closed and his face half-covered by a blanket, was the prince. His gold-hilted dagger lay by his side, and its blade was covered to the hilt with blood, but Fjotra couldn’t tell if it was his or if it explained the monster’s wounded shoulder.

“No, no, he’s here, behind the bed,” she shouted, throwing aside the blanket and pressing her hands frantically to his face, to his chest.

His face was scratched, but not badly, and his throat was unmarred. Then she saw his stomach, or rather, what was left of it, and her heart sank. A deep wound to the gut usually sufficed to kill a man, and she knew that no man could survive the terrible mauling that had left the prince’s insides torn into an obscene ruin. Fighting back tears and biting her lip to keep her horror from showing on her face, she gently pulled the blanket back over his torso.

“My reaver princess,” the Savoner prince said, but his smile turned into a grimace. “I fear I shall never be king over your isles.”

“I am sorry, your royal highness. They would think you well for their lord.”

“They would have, would they? Did you see it? The creature, the ulfin—it turned into a man!”

“Yes, my prince. It is dead now. The Strongbow killed it.”

Steinthor was standing at her side now. He nodded to the prince, his face grave, then glanced at Fjotra. His question was obvious. She shook her head by way of reply, and his eyes grew dark with impotent anger. He kneeled down and took the prince’s hand in his own.

“Tell him that the Dalarn will not forget him. Tell him that his name will be honored among us. Tell him that one day, he will be avenged, that we will cross the sea and grow strong again, and then we will come back and wipe out their accursed race. And tell him that if his gods do not want him, ours will be proud to host him in the Hirdhal.”

She told the prince as best she could manage in the southern tongue.

It made him cough with laughter, and smile at the grim-faced warrior. “Tell the man I am well-pleased. If the Immaculate will not have me, then perhaps we shall meet each other on the battlefields of your gods.” But when he coughed again, there was blood on his lips.

“My lady, tell your father to be loyal to mine, and all will be well. And tell my father that one day, your people must come back here and claim these lands for the realm. The comtesse…” His eyes closed, and his face suddenly turned even whiter than it already was. “God, it hurts. A priest, I need a priest!”

“He wants one of their spirit men,” she told the Strongbow.

“There is no time. He’ll be dead soon.”

“You tell me the words,” she suggested. “You say again to priest when he come.”

“Are you purified?” he asked, his voice growing weaker.

She didn’t understand his question at first, then she realized he was asking her if she worshiped his god.

“Oh, yes,” she lied without hesitation.

A faint expression of relief flickered across his face, then he began talking in a low voice, telling her of things he had done, of things that he had not done, and of things that had shamed him. Most of it went completely over her head, but one thing was very clear: The comtesse had, without question, been his mistress.