The Sword of Surtur Page 21

  Bjorn stamped his foot on the ground and shook his fist at the departing giant. “Then what do we do?”

  “We go after her,” Tyr said. “Just the three of us.” He saw the incredulity on their faces. “Three of us are no great threat to Sindr, or so she’ll believe.”

  “She’d be right,” Lorelei said. “Perhaps if Sindr didn’t have Twilight we’d have a chance–”

  “We’ve got to try.” Tyr cut her off, his voice firm. “Each of us is responsible. We’ve got to set things right.” He noted their hesitation. “Then I’ll try to stop her by myself.” He started to walk away, but Bjorn held him back.

  “Many a hunt and many a battle we’ve shared,” Bjorn told him. “If this is to be the last, then I’d share it with you. At least she’ll know she’s been in a fight before we’re through.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Lorelei spoke up, rising to her feet. “You may rely upon my magic. I think by now you’ve seen I’m not quite the novice I wanted you to think I was. My spells can help you.” She gave Tyr a pained look. “I ask that you take back what you said of me. I’m not so callous that there aren’t people I care about. Nor am I so obsessed with my own ambition that I would betray the whole of Asgard to Surtur. Whatever I can do, you have but to ask it.” She reached into the satchel she carried, showing her companions that she’d retained the Wayfarer’s Mirror. “This was enough to escape Muspelheim. Its power can send Sindr back if we can set its light against her. There would be a certain irony in that, don’t you think?”

  Tyr smiled at her. At this moment, he could almost forgive Lorelei her intrigues. Perhaps she even spoke the truth when she said why she’d left him in Muspelheim. Whatever the case, she was willing to pit herself against impossible odds for the sake of Asgard.

  “For now,” Tyr said, pointing with his sword at the smoldering footprints across the plain, “the work falls to Bjorn and myself. We’ll have to follow Sindr’s trail.”

  Bjorn laughed at the statement. “Following a giant’s tracks isn’t much a test of woodcraft.”

  “At the moment,” Tyr told him. “But I think before long Sindr will prove much harder to pursue. She didn’t make the journey to Asgard only to make herself a target for the entire realm. She’ll take a more subtle form soon, and then our skills will be tested to the utmost.”

  Tyr gestured again at the giant’s blazing figure as she strode across the plain. “Just remember, whatever guise she adopts when we catch her, that is the reality lurking beneath.”

  The great smoldering prints left behind by Sindr were so obvious that a child could follow them. The longer they traveled, the more Tyr’s suspicions were aroused. He knew Sindr was arrogant and filled with pride, but he didn’t think even she would be so brazen when crossing an enemy country.

  “She knows someone will eventually find Lorelei’s castle,” Bjorn suggested when Tyr broached the subject. “Sindr leaves an obvious trail away, showing anyone who finds it that a monster is responsible for all that destruction.” He waved his hand at Lorelei. “Anyone who saw that scene would think Amora visited you and conjured up some creature she couldn’t control.”

  “No one would immediately suspect an invader from Muspelheim,” Lorelei said, ignoring the reference to her sister. “The barriers preventing that from happening are too strong.”

  Tyr looked across the plain. Sindr had drawn far enough ahead that she was no longer visible, though the smoke rising from her tracks left no question as to her route of travel. He considered the sameness of the terrain. “She’s looking for a place where such a creature might go to ground. A place where those who follow her trail from the ruins would expect her to be. A cavern or a ravine, some place a huge monster could hide.”

  “And when she finds such a place, she changes her shape and backtracks.” Bjorn nodded in appreciation of their foe’s cleverness.

  “Only she didn’t reckon on two old wolfhunters taking up her trail.” Tyr frowned when a new thought came to him. “Unless Sindr can change herself into a bird, as some giants can.”

  Lorelei thought upon the matter for a moment. “I think if that were possible, she’d have abandoned the two of you in the cell,” she said, referring to what they’d told her of their escape from the dungeon. “Her power must be restricted, perhaps only to a mantle similar enough to her own. Dwarf, troll, even human, but not something like a vole or a sparrow. Be grateful she doesn’t have the facility of your brother Loki when it comes to shifting her shape, or we might never catch her.”

  The hunters pressed on across the Plain of Ida, always straying northward. The only time their course wavered was when an arm of the sea stretched inland. Then the course veered westward for a time. “She keeps away from the water,” Tyr observed. “One might expect that of the fire giant’s daughter. The elements are ever in opposition.”

  “I think it more likely Sindr is trying to avoid places that are inhabited,” Lorelei said. “If her boasts are to be believed, she has ventured to Niffleheim and fought Nidhogg. What has a creature that has endured the ice of Niffleheim to fear from the waters of Marmora? They will not be enough to quench her flame.”

  Lorelei’s words were proven within the hour when Tyr came upon the smoking ruins of what had been a farm. The steading had been burned to the ground, its inhabitants annihilated down to the last hog and chicken. Sindr was leaving no survivors to tell of what they’d seen. It was easy enough to find her tracks where she’d chased down a bondsman trying to get away.

  “Murdering monster!” Bjorn cursed the giant. He dropped his sword and took up an axe he found in the charred ruins. “I shall avenge you,” he promised the dead Asgardians.

  Tyr looked across the destruction with a cold fury. All of this was his fault. He’d let himself be tricked by Sindr and brought her through the barriers into Asgard. This carnage was his responsibility. As God of War, he’d seen such scenes played out many times across many lands, from Midgard to Jotunheim. This was the true face of war, not the glory and celebration of heroes, but the suffering of the innocents caught in the path of armies and battles. He fought down the anger that was kindled by the slaughter he saw around him. The first one who let emotion control them in a conflict was often the one who made the first mistake. He had to think of Sindr not as a marauding killer, but as the vanguard of an invading army. In that context it was easier to understand what she’d done and evaluate it from a tactical aspect.

  Doing so made Tyr appreciate the advantage the giant-hunters had been given. “Sindr was delayed here some time by the bondsmen.” He looked away from the ruins and considered the closeness of the smoking trail they’d been following. Perhaps it would be just beyond the next knoll or hillock that they’d get a glimpse not merely of her tracks, but find themselves near enough to see the giant herself. He tapped Bjorn with his arm. “No time to mourn the dead. If you would fulfill your vow of vengeance, then we must make haste.” He turned to Lorelei, frowning when he saw her lingering over the bodies. “There’s no time to give them proper rites,” he apologized.

  Lorelei pointed to the axe Bjorn had scavenged. “To fight Sindr, we need what weapons we can take. He has his, I have mine.” Briefly she opened her hand and Tyr saw that the sorceress hadn’t been tending the bodies for burial, but instead had been collecting their tongues.

  “Necromancy.” Tyr spat the word. Of all the arcane arts, there was none more repugnant. Even the feared Enchanters Three of Ringsfjord shunned the practice.

  Lorelei paled when Tyr spoke, but she held her head high with defiance in her eyes. “Only in the practice of charms would I consider myself unsurpassed, but I’ve learned something about most sorts of magic.” She stowed the morbid collection in her bag. “If we’re to stop Sindr, we can’t be too proud to use any weapon… no matter how distasteful. It might be that you’ll be grateful I enticed a necromancer into teaching me a few of his secrets. The spirits of t
he dead can make for potent allies in a crisis.”

  “Please to the All-Father it doesn’t come to that.” Tyr turned from her and started off on the giant’s trail again. “If we must resort to necromancy, it will be because there’s no other weapon left in our arsenal.”

  They came upon two more steadings, each demolished in the same manner as the first. Then the trail led away towards a tall hill, its summit dotted with ancient barrows. From their approach, Tyr could see no evidence that the smoldering tracks left the vicinity. “Either Sindr’s trail continues on the other side, or else she’s lingered here,” Bjorn said.

  “Or she’s changed her shape,” Tyr advised. “It may be that these tombs suit her purpose and she’s discarded the role of ravening monster to take on a more subtle strategy.”

  The slopes of the hills were veiled in tall grass. It was apparent that the farmers in the region didn’t allow their flocks to graze near the old graves and the vegetation had been left unchecked. The result was a treacherous climb, where the contours of the terrain were hidden beneath the foliage. It was easier to walk in the tracks left by the giant, despite the unpleasant heat that continued to emanate from them. Tyr thought they must be very close to their quarry now, for some of these prints were so new that embers yet glowed around their edges.

  “Stay on your guard,” Tyr reminded his companions. “Don’t underestimate Sindr’s craftiness.”

  Thirty-Three

  The top of the hill had been flattened long ago to make space for the half-dozen funeral mounds that now clustered together in a rough circle around its crest. The grass grew thick over the barrows, but the stone doors remained visible, crudely worked slabs covered in runes.

  “I see no sign of smoke below,” Bjorn said as he ascended the side of one mound and gazed across the terrain beyond.

  “Either she’s changed her shape or she’s still here,” Lorelei declared. At the last farm they’d passed through, she’d availed herself of a doeskin tunic and boots that had escaped the consuming flames, a costume more suited to the rigors of the hunt than the gown she’d been wearing. Her hand reached into the bag she carried, extracting what looked like a bit of horn. The object had a sinister appearance, reminding Tyr of the serpents that haunted the Sea of Fear.

  Tyr focused on the smoldering tracks before him. He could see that they angled towards one of the barrows. Drawing nearer he saw that the door had been smashed in. It was here that the giant’s trail ended. “Take a closer look at her tracks,” he told Bjorn. He advanced to a few paces from the mound’s yawning entrance, Tyrsfang clenched in his fist. “I’ll keep watch.”

  Bjorn studied the tracks for a moment, peering closely at them. “There are footprints inside the footprints.” He waved his axe at the marks, following them from track to track. “She did change her shape. No longer a giant, but something much closer to a human in size. She’s had to jump to match her old stride.” The wolfhunter turned from the smoldering trail and indicated another one. He followed for only a few steps, then turned back to Tyr, a smile on his face. “You were right to call her crafty. She both changed her shape and stayed here.” He pointed at the tracks. “I don’t know how far she laid a false trail for us to follow, but I can tell you she backtracked. She didn’t quite manage to keep in her own footsteps, and they overlap here.”

  “If Sindr did come back, then she knew she was being followed,” Lorelei said. She peered into the darkness of the open barrow. “She might be just inside watching us right now.”

  Tyr took a few steps forward. The musty, decayed smell of the tomb reached out to him, but there was no hint of Sindr’s brimstone scent. That didn’t reassure him overmuch. She’d been careful enough to mask the smell when she posed as Nilfli. “If she stayed, then it’s because she knew she was already being trailed, otherwise she’d put as much distance between this place and herself as she could. There’s no use laying a false path for your enemies if you linger behind at the end.”

  “She might have seen us when she reached the top of the hill. Sindr would recognize you even at a distance,” Lorelei told Tyr.

  “And if she did, she’d lie here in wait for us,” Tyr agreed. He frowned at the sea serpent horn in Lorelei’s hand. “Right now, we need some sort of spell to light our way.”

  “We’re going in?” Bjorn asked, uneasy at the prospect. “We know where she’s gone. Let’s just seal the tomb up again and leave her trapped until we can get help.”

  “She’d easily break out,” Lorelei chided the huntsman. She grimaced as she added, “You saw what the monster did to my castle.”

  “Nor can we send someone to pass along a warning,” Tyr sighed. “That would further diminish our strength and might be just the advantage Sindr is waiting for. After all she’s done to get this far, she won’t take any risk she doesn’t have to.”

  Bjorn scratched his beard. “So we go in,” he said, waving his axe at the desecrated barrow.

  “We go in.” Lorelei retained hold of the horn in her right hand, but there was now a polished stone in her left. She closed her eyes, and the stone began to shine with light.

  “Keep close and watch for the least trace of her,” Tyr said as he led the way into the sepulchral blackness. His boots crunched on old bones, and by Lorelei’s light he could see that the floor within was littered with skeletal fragments. He noted the skulls of dogs and horses. Whoever the ancient thane had been, he must have been wealthy to have so many of his animals entombed with him when he died. Tyr dreaded to see human remains mixed among the bones. He knew in Midgard some of the people buried slaves with their dead kings. Fortunately, that tradition had never been widely practiced in even the most barbarous regions of Asgard.

  The walls of the tomb were fashioned from unworked stone and a clumpy gray mortar. Tyr noted the urns and jars that rested against the walls. He smiled at drinking horns and the withered residue of what must have been a lavish meal. An old custom, to bury the royal dead with the viands to hold a mighty feast. The whole of this antechamber was made so that the entombed thane could fete ancestral ghosts and impress them with the luxury of his grave.

  A flight of steps at the back of the antechamber descended deeper into the hill. By the magic light Tyr could see marks in the dust. Human footprints that trailed away down the stairs. He motioned his companions to keep silent and pointed at the marks. They both nodded their understanding. It was impossible to keep their advance hidden from Sindr, but there was no reason to tell her anything more than that. Let her guess what they knew and didn’t know.

  The decayed reek only became worse as Tyr went down the steps. Lorelei’s light threw its rays about twenty feet ahead of him. For many minutes, the only thing to be seen was the rough slabs winding deeper into the hill. Then he saw that the stairs came to an end, an opening that led into some kind of chamber. He made a warning gesture with his arm.

  Lorelei kept close behind Tyr as they entered the chamber. The light revealed rotten chests on the floor, coins and jewelry spilling from their ruptured sides. A stand of armor rested against the wall, and arrayed around it was an assortment of swords, axes, and shields. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust.

  In the middle of the tomb was a block of stone etched with runes. Resting upon its surface was a skeleton, its hands folded across the chest and holding a sword. The empty sockets of the skull seemed to stare at Tyr with the enmity of the dead towards the living. He saw threads of gold strewn about the body, all that had lingered from what must have been a robe of incredible richness. A massive ring cast into the semblance of a wolf circled one of the fingers. Tyr recognized that emblem as the mark of the Ulfhednar, the fierce warrior cult that had worshiped Fenris as a god when the Great Wolf roamed Asgard unfettered. This thane, then, was an enemy of old, for, after binding Fenris, the Ulfhednar had sought to avenge their chained god, battling Tyr until their cult was exterminated.

 
At the moment Tyr had to focus upon the enemies of today rather than those of yesterday. He peered about the chamber, searching for any sign of Sindr. He started when he caught a flash of motion from the corner of his eye. Something had moved near the thane’s stone bed. For an instant he thought the ancient chieftain had risen from his grave, but then he saw that the figure was one of flesh and blood, not bones and dust.

  Cringing against the side of the stone slab was a young bondswoman. Her face was grimy from soot, her clothes and hair were singed, the hands that clutched at the stone were cut and bleeding. She fixed eyes wild with terror on Tyr and at his least motion she recoiled from him like a whipped dog.

  “She must have escaped from that last farm,” Lorelei said, her voice filled with sympathy for the refugee. Bjorn shrugged off his wolfskin, intending to give the bondswoman something better than her scorched rags to cover her.

  Tyr waved him back. He kept his eyes on the bondswoman. “A nice try, but we found only one trail leading to the hill.” He wasn’t as certain as he sounded, for it was barely possible that Sindr had carried this woman here for some reason.

  The giant, however, was taken in by his feigned confidence. The fear vanished from the bondswoman’s face in the blink of an eye, replaced by a look of amusement. “Of course, you would notice that.” Her hand came out from behind her and revealed the sword that had been hidden between her and the side of the table. As her fingers tightened around it, a line of flame crackled down the length of Twilight.

  “You noticed that, but you came here anyway,” Sindr smiled. The bondswoman’s eyes became pits of fire. “Like flies leaping into the spider’s web.”

  Thirty-Four

  Tyr lunged at the transformed giant, thinking to strike her before she could defend herself. One slash from Tyrsfang could have been enough to bring Sindr down, end the fight before it truly began. It was their best chance to finish the menace that now threatened all Asgard.