The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1) (34 page)
Read The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1) Online
Authors: Tony Daniel
Tags: #Fables, #Legends, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Norse, #Fantasy & Magic, #General, #Myths
Chapter Forty-Four:
The Killers
Wulf held the bear short sword in front of himself. He looked for a spot to thrust in past a shield and cut into flesh and bone. For what seemed like a long time he just stood there. His own soldiers were beside him. The enemy was in front of him. And he couldn’t do a thing.
There was a solid wall of three shields in front of him. The soldiers beside him—he thought one was a bear and the other a wolf man—were hacking and poking at the shields with halberds. These splintered the wood but weren’t having any other effect. They kept the Sandhaveners out of the reach of Wulf’s sword.
Suddenly the fighters on either side pushed away. The Sandhaven shield wall parted.
Wulf charged through.
He took only a few steps. He found himself face-to-face with a man about his own height and size.
The other wore a helmet and a hauberk with a sleeveless tabard over it. On it was the gray goose on a russet field, the badge of a regular soldier. The man had a sword raised to strike. He chopped the sword down straight from a raised position and Wulf instinctively raised his buckler to stop it. He’d practiced this a thousand times in the castle yard.
And he knew an easy countermove.
With a backhand motion, he brought the edge of the buckler toward the face of the Sandhavener. The man turned away in time to take it on the side of his helmet. He staggered back from the impact. Even while Wulf was moving his buckler he felt the wise woman’s catgut stitches on his left arm breaking. The wound opened enough to make him grit his teeth at the sharp pain. He couldn’t think about that now.
Wulf stepped into his own buckler blow and got inside the man’s sword swing.
Another situation he knew from practice.
If your opponent didn’t have room to pull back for a thrust, it didn’t matter how sharp his sword was, he couldn’t hit you with it.
For a moment, Wulf and the man stared at each other. Sweat was dripping down the man’s face. He blinked to clear it from his eyes. He opened them up again, very wide.
He’s terrified, Wulf thought.
Of
me
.
Wulf had already pulled back his sword above his left shoulder as he moved in. With a grunt, he arched it down into the man’s neck. The blade sank in where the neck met the collarbone, just above the mail. Even in the din of the battle, Wulf heard the skin and muscles part with a meaty squelch.
He didn’t wait. He twisted and pulled the sword away. He took another swing at the man’s exposed legs. He was wearing leather wrappings on his calves, but no greaves. Wulf’s sword sliced in below the left knee in his calf muscle. It cut through the wrapping, and the blood swelled from under the leather.
The man collapsed. After he hit the ground, he had enough room to bring his sword up. He attempted a weak thrust at Wulf. Wulf knocked the sword aside with his gauntleted left hand. He pointed his own sword down and plunged it into the man’s chest.
Because he hadn’t drawn back, the tip didn’t penetrate the mail. It didn’t matter. With his weight on the sword, Wulf held the man down. A gush of blood pumped from the wound in the man’s neck. Wulf had hit the artery. The man shuddered, bled out, and died. The look of wide-eyed terror was still on his face when the light went out of his eyes.
“Aaaar!”
Wulf looked up to a see a huge Sandhavener barreling toward him. The man had a spear in his hands held at waist height. Wulf raised his buckler, knowing the little shield would be useless against that much momentum. There was no way to get his sword up in time.
But the two fights going on to either side of Wulf crunched back together. He was pushed back behind the bear man and the wolf man. The man with the spear turned his charge. He looked for another target and pushed his spear past the soldier the wolf man was fighting and into wolf man’s gut. Wulf watch in horror as it came out the wolf man’s back.
The wolf man gave out a howl of pain and stumbled to a knee. His opponent was thrown off balance and stumbled forward. Wulf was about to move to attack him but was shoved away again. Men moved in to take the fallen wolf man’s place. Soon Wulf couldn’t see the wolf man, the Sandhavener, or the spearman anymore.
He was behind the front line, and took a moment to catch his breath.
I killed a man, Wulf thought.
A frightened man who didn’t have much training, yes.
But he was trying to kill me.
And I killed him instead.
He’d killed three men now. That was a lot for a potential librarian. Maybe even for an apprentice ranger.
“Killing is joy,” said a voice in his ear. “Now you know.”
Nagel, who had been missing in the woods, had found him and landed without his being aware of it.
Others were shoving up behind him. He bounced down the front line, moving mostly to his left. Here and there he saw a place to get a sword thrust through, and he did it.
The second time, he connected with flesh. But he was instantly knocked back. If it hadn’t been for the scar on Wulf’s hand, he’d have lost his grip on the sword.
He bounced farther, looking for a place to strike. Then he came to what seemed like the end of the battle line. He stumbled into the clear.
Here was something Koterbaum had taught him about. A flanking move.
Could he work his way around the side of the line and attack? He looked for an exposed Sandhavener. He was so intent on finding his man, he almost didn’t hear the shout.
“Get down, get down, you cursed fool!”
Wulf spun around. A group of fox men were about a dozen paces away. It wasn’t a clump; it was an organized group. There were two straight lines of about twenty. What were they doing? Then Wulf saw the wooden and metal weapons in the hands of the front line.
Crossbows.
The flanking attack
had
begun. He was standing in front of it.
Wulf dove for the ground.
Grer tried to stand casually by the cathedral wall. He did not let himself look up. He figured he’d know if Rainer fell. Rainer would crash into the street below and break into a thousand pieces. If that was what you did. More likely he’d just turn to pulp inside.
Grer tried to think of other things. Ulla. The two swords he’d been working on before the invasion. He’d planned to give them to Wulf and Rainer as presents before they took rooms at the university next year.
Ulla.
It had been a bright day, but the sky had gotten cloudy. Rain was on the way. Another thing to worry about.
Suddenly a soldier rounded the staircase and came walking down the street toward Grer. Grer panicked for a moment. Then he remembered what Rainer had done here. He turned to the wall, jacked down his pants with a thumb and pretended to be taking a piss.
“Cold hell, man,” the soldier said as he passed Grer. He stopped walking. “It’s a cathedral. Show some respect.”
Grer sighed, hitched up his pants, and turned around.
“When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go,” he said with a shrug.
The soldier considered. “I guess.” He started to walk away when something seemed to occur to him. “Supposed to be a cathouse around here somewhere. Next to their own cursed cathedral, believe it or not. You know where I can find the place? It’s called the Red Door.”
Had he seen any red doors on the way here? If he had he couldn’t remember. Where would a cathouse be, anyway? The only ones he’d heard of were on the waterfront.
“Nah,” Grer said. “But they got plenty down by the river.”
“Yeah, I know about those, but so does everybody else in the stinking camp. There’s
lines
, even for the ugly girls.”
“Sorry about that.”
The soldier rubbed his chin, looked around. “Well, there’s got to be a few red doors around here. Think I’ll knock on every one of them until I find what I’m looking for. Even if it ain’t a cathouse, if you know what I mean.” He winked and walked away, finally turning down a side street. His footsteps faded.
Grer realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it slowly escape through his lips in a sigh.
“Hey you!” A hard tap on his shoulder. “You!”
Grer turned to face another soldier. This one looked much rougher than the one before. His face was pockmarked. There was a scar running from an eye across his nose to his lip.
Grer didn’t take time to think. He lunged forward and head-butted the man. The soldier staggered back, but Grer grabbed his tabard and pulled the man toward himself. He butted him and again and again, each time pulling him back.
Each time the man looked like he was going to make a sound, Grer head-butted him again.
After the fifth time, Grer raised his hands up and put them on either side of the man’s head. He twisted. Hard.
Many years of pounding with a heavy hammer and lifting glowing steel with tongs went into the twist. There was some resistance, and then the man’s neck popped. The soldier slumped to the ground.
Grer felt numb. He noticed something.
Those are fine boots he’s wearing. They look just right for me, too.
His own toes were crumpled up inside Rainer’s too-small hobnails.
Grer quickly tugged the boots off the dead man. He kicked Rainer’s off and pulled the others on. As he’d suspected, they were just the right size. Supple.
Good boots.
Now what was he going to do with the body?
He reached down and grabbed the man by the tabard and pulled him up. The man probably had a dead weight of fifteen stone, but Grer raised him easily. He held the man with one arm below the other’s limp arm. He let the body slump against his. That was it. He could appear to be helping a drunken buddy.
Right. That wasn’t going to fool anybody. The soldier’s head hung at a
very
unnatural angle, for one thing.
He looked around, but all he could see was the line of shrubbery next to the wall. As Rainer had found out, there was not room enough to slide the body between the branches or stash it next to the cathedral.
Grer looked with worry at the back of the cathedral stairs. There were no more soldiers coming…but he did see something. There, near the bottom of the back wall.
A grate?
He threw the body over his shoulder and walked toward it. Yes. It was an iron grating set in the cobblestones. He looked down into it. There was a long drop. It led into the drainage system under Allfather Square.
He set the man down and took hold of the grate. Yanked. Nothing.
It was firmly set. He tried again. The grate didn’t budge.
Grer stood back, then slapped a hand to his forehead.
Blood and bones! What am I thinking? I have tools.
He trotted back to get a pry bar from his bag. He worked it in between the grate and the cobblestones around it, using the leverage to push the grate back and forth. It moved. It loosened. He grabbed hold of it and pulled again. This time the grate came up.
The drain hole wasn’t very wide, but it would do.
He picked up the dead man by his two bare ankles. Straining, but not pushed to the limit, Grer dangled him headfirst over the drain opening. Grer worked the body through the opening. The shoulders were a bit tricky. After that it was easy. When the dead man was in to his knees, Grer dropped him.
In an eyeblink, there was a splash below. Grer wasted no time. He put away his pry bar and replaced the grate on the drain hole.
He walked back over to the cathedral wall and dared a glance up.
Rainer was a speck, far, far above.
The sky was even darker. A wind had whipped up. It blew against the shrubs, and they scratched against the sandstone of the cathedral walls.
“Storm’s coming,” Grer said to himself. “Hurry up, Rainer Stope.”
Chapter Forty-Five:
The Fox
A swarm of bolts shot over Wulf’s head. They thudded into the sides of the Sandhaveners he’d been about to try to cut down with a sword. The bolts were a lot more effective than he would have been. Their bodkin heads easily penetrated armor, even plate. A whole line of men seemed to shudder. They fell down in a staggered way, some clutching at the bolt in their side or arm or leg, and some slumping instantly, already dead.
Then the crossbowmen started to reload. The shortbow archers stepped forward. They sent another deadly cloud of arrows over Wulf’s head and into the Sandhaveners. These archers reached behind them to where they’d poked arrows into the ground headfirst, plucked one out, and shot again. They’d gotten off eight arrows before the fox crossbowmen were ready again. They stepped between the archers and fired their quarrels.
Wulf rolled out of their way. He stood up and looked wildly around, trying to find a way to get back in the fight, but a voice growled beside him. This time it wasn’t Nagel.
“Stupid man, what the cold hell are you doing?”
It was Smallwolf.
“You’ve bloodied your sword, boy,” Smallwolf yelled in his ear. “Now let the Tier do their job.”
The fox-man archers swarmed around them. Smallwolf whistled loudly. He cupped his hands around his muzzle and shouted, “He’s over here!”
The bear-man guards came bustling up. They’d found their escaped charge. Two stationed themselves on either side of him.
The other bear men moved between Wulf and the fighting and raised shields—just in time. A flight of arrows came over the front line from Sandhavener archers. They were returning fire. The arrows thwacked into their shields, some poking through. In front of them, several of the arrows caught fox men. Some fell with shafts coming out of their fur. Some screamed and tried to moved forward before they stumbled and died.
Keeping their shields up, the bear men slowly walked Wulf backward. He tried to resist, but they forced Wulf to go with them.
They walked down a small depression. Bodies lay all about. Some looked untouched. Some had their insides hanging out, and crows were beginning to feast. Most of the dead had not thoughtfully fallen on their fronts. They were facing up or on their sides with all the gore exposed and looks of agony on their faces.
Flies buzzed. Wulf looked down to see a group of them gathered around the open, glassy eye of a dead Sandhavener. Were the flies drinking the liquid of his tears?
Then the eye
blinked.
Wulf realized with a shudder that the man was not dead, but only terribly wounded. One of the bear-man guards also noticed, and called for a pair of buffalo-man stretcher-bearers to come and take up the man and let him die in the shade.
They came out of the body-filled depression and walked up a small rise. It was about three hundred paces from the edge of the woods. This was where Keiler had located his watch station. Tier came running or galloping in with reports. Keiler was busy sending out orders.
The sun was fully up in the sky. The clouds in the south looked threatening. A storm was coming.
Wulf stood and watched Keiler for a while. His vision was foggy and he realized he was incredibly thirsty. He’d seen carts to their south. These had big kegs of water tied to them. Runners were carrying canteens back and forth from the fight.
“To lose a battle because of thirst is about the stupidest mistake you can make,” Koterbaum had once said.
Wulf told his bear guards he was going to get a drink and would be back soon. The leader grunted assent but detailed two bear men to accompany Wulf. The rest of them were intent on watching the progress of the battle, since the hillock gave them a view of the left side of the battle line.
Wulf walked off the hillock toward the water carts. They were a hundred paces away, near a small stand of three cedar trees. The trees had grown up around a big rock that was too large to move, so the farmer had ploughed around it. Two lines of flattened clover marked the path the wagons had taken from the woods.
Wulf found a cart with a tapped keg. He searched around for a cup or a container to drink from. He couldn’t find one, so he leaned down and put his mouth under the keg spout and pulled up on the wood slide. He let the water stream out into his mouth. He took swallow after swallow, trying to gulp everything that came in.
The bear men saw another wagon with a tapped keg sitting on top of several others. A mixture of wounded was lined up there. The bear men didn’t have cups, either, and this keg was at a better height for them to drink under. They got in line.
Wulf drank deeply. Then he took a palm-full of water in his right hand. It formed a small, longish lake in the scar. Wulf smiled grimly and sipped the water from his hand.
As he stood up, an arrow hit the side of the wagon where he’d just been stooping. Wulf dropped the water. He reached for his sword in its scabbard.
Where had the arrow come from?
He spun to look behind him and saw an archer standing only a few paces away. The archer was standing in firing stance and had nocked another arrow. He was drawing back the string and sighting along its length.
The archer was Smallwolf.
Where had the fox man come from?
He must have followed me all the way from that line, Wulf thought.
He obviously meant to kill Wulf.
Wulf leaped to his right, but Smallwolf expertly followed and lead him. The arrow struck him in the middle of his back, and Wulf felt the thump. But there was no stabbing pain. He’d swung the buckler onto his back, and it had caught the arrow.
“Curse you to cold hell,” Smallwolf said. “What does it take to kill you, boy?”
Where were the bear men? Wulf glanced around frantically. The wagon was blocking the bear men from seeing him. It was just himself and Smallwolf.
Wulf turned back around. Smallwolf nocked yet another arrow. Wulf thought about pulling his buckler around, but there was no way he could do it in time.
“I’m not your enemy!” Wulf called out.
“You’re a man,” Smallwolf called back.
There was the whisper of an arrow in flight. Wulf thought for an eyeblink that Smallwolf had released. But the fox man’s fingers on the bowstring went slack. The nock slipped. The string hit the arrow, but on the side, spinning it a few paces away before it fell harmless to the ground.
Smallwolf let out a curse and stumbled forward.
There was an arrow in his back.
It had stuck in the fox man’s leather armor.
Smallwolf dropped the bow and sat down. His black nose twitched. He looked like he was sniffing the air. Then blood erupted from his nostrils.
The arrow had gone through the leather and pierced the fox man. Smallwolf slumped to the side, and blood flowed from his mouth down his furry neck and from the wound.
His eyes remained fixed on Wulf. Wulf thought the fox man was still glaring at him with hatred. He waited. When Smallwolf didn’t move, he realized the fox man was dead.
Wulf looked toward the woods where the arrow must have come from. It was at least a hundred paces distant. A near impossible shot. Who was back there?
The baggage train was hidden among the trees.
He saw someone on the edge of the woods holding a bow. He couldn’t make out the face. Then there was a gust of wind. A red cape swirled around the form.
Ursel.
She let fly another arrow, and this one missed the fox man by a hand’s breath. It buried itself in the ground. That didn’t matter. The first had found its mark. Smallwolf was already dead.
That was the most spectacular shot I’ve ever seen, Wulf thought. Keiler had claimed his adopted daughter was an amazing huntress. He had spoken the truth.
Wulf walked over to the dead fox man. He looked down at him for a moment, then put a toe under his body and kicked him onto his stomach. He stepped on Smallwolf’s back and pulled out the arrow. It was a bodkin. No wonder it had punched through the leather. Ursel had not only made the shot, she’d picked the right arrow for the job.
He held the arrow up and waved it back to her.
The bear men charged up, but saw that they were too late to do any good. They growled anyway—at nothing.
Wulf looked down at Smallwolf. Was the fox-man leader one of many? Was it his own hatred that had made him try to kill Wulf? Wulf hoped it was only him. But there had been a lot of voices calling out their agreement with Smallwolf at the law-speak.
Wulf climbed back up the hill. He still had the bolt in his hand. He saw Keiler talking with one of his runners, and waited for the earl to finish. Then he walked up to the bear man.
“Your daughter just saved my life,” he said.
He showed Keiler the arrow. When he saw the blood on it, the bear man’s graying muzzle broke into a smile. He flashed sharp teeth.
“How far?” Keiler asked.
“At least a hundred paces.”
“Ursel’s had a bow in her hands since she could walk,” Keiler said. “Who did she kill?”
“Smallwolf,” Wulf replied. “He was trying to shoot me.”
“The idiot,” Keiler grunted. He nodded toward the arrow. “Save that. Maybe it will keep you warm at night when you realize she’s not in your bed and you could have had her.”
Wulf was silent for a moment.
Keiler’s not wrong, he thought.
“I will,” Wulf finally said. “And I’ll never forget.”
He’d had it easy so far, even though he hadn’t known it. The last section of the belltower was impossible. Rainer was beneath an overhang. The cupola was on a platform that gracefully flared out so that anyone climbing it would have to hang upside down.
Charge it. Go at it with complete commitment. Forget about falling.
I can do this—
But wouldn’t it disappoint the cold hell out of Wulf if I
did
peel?
He’ll know this wasn’t that hard of a climb. At least until the end. He won’t say anything bad while they’re burning me at the funeral. He’ll think I made a stupid move, though.
What would Wulf do here?
He’d brood for a while.
He’d think about all the ancient words of the skalds, then pull some quote from a saga out of nowhere. Not because he was trying to impress anybody, but because he knew the cursed things like he knew how to breathe.
And this would be his way of thinking things through.
Wulf would think this through.
Then so will I.
Rainer took a long breath.
There was no way to muscle this whole way. You had to rest or you would peel. You had to find an eyeblink here, an eyeblink there, when the strain was off one set of muscles or another.
First, he needed to rest.
Rainer changed his grip to rest one arm, then the next. His muscles hurt less.
Now or never.
It began to rain.
“No,” Rainer said to the sky. Then he shouted, “No!”
The sky responded with a roll of thunder. Wind whipped droplets in Rainer’s face. Soon his clothes were soaked. Grer’s boots were wet. His hands were slick with water.
Now it
couldn’t
be a matter of just holding on tight. It was impossible to hold tight to wet stones. He would use jams or he would fall.
The rain showed no sign of letting up. It was time to go.
Carefully, joint by joint, Rainer worked his way across the bottom of the cupola. He had to let each set of muscles relax slightly, one set at a time, or all of his muscles would freeze, lose tension, and he would fall. But he could do it. He knew how to do it now.
The flare of the belltower cupola began to shield him from the worst of the rain. The wind still sprayed him with droplets, but he wasn’t being hit from above.
Then he was out from under the balcony’s shelter. Rain pelted him again.
This was the final move. He had to get over the balustrade. He found a grip, and it was a good one, but the angle was wrong and his feet came loose from below. For a moment he was hanging by one hand from the cupola siding. The rain was like a river pouring down.
Then he swung his other hand around and pushed his fist into a keyhole shape cut through the balustrade stones. He twisted it sideways. Jammed.
He had his grip.
He hung, jammed in, swinging back and forth until his feet came up against something to push against, and he was back on the tower. Hand over hand, he pulled himself up the siding. It proved to be a parapet wall with designs cut through the rock.
He rolled off the top of the balustrade and onto the top floor of the belltower.
Under the cupola roof was the Elder Bell. Ropes dangled from the bell wheel down through a hole in the center of the platform.
He caught a glimpse of the clapper sticking out a fingerbreadth below the bell. It seemed to have a flat head from what he could see. It
could
be some kind of hammer.
The Elder Bell moved.
The Elder Bell began to ring.
Someone was yanking on the bell rope. It was attached to a big wheel that was itself attached to a yoke that held the bell. The rope got yanked. The big wheel spun. The bell rang.
Rainer covered his ears. The sound rattled his teeth. It hurt.
What time was it? It was too early for Nickerchen bell, wasn’t it? What was the ringing about?