A Hero's Throne (An Ancient Earth) (7 page)

“Daniel.” She hesitated. “Both of you—there’s something I
need to tell you. You aren’t going to think . . . You’re not going to be too thrilled.”

“Well? What is it?”

“Daniel . . . Gád’s not dead. When you killed that . . . thing, he didn’t die.”

Daniel frowned in confusion. “What? No . . . What—what do you mean?”

“He’s not dead—you didn’t kill him. Daniel, you failed; we all did. Gád’s alive.”

Daniel’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly.

“Why didn’t you speak of this before?” Vivienne said in a grave voice.

“Because—I’m not sure I disagree with him. He said things that made a lot of sense.”

“But he killed Swiðgar, Freya,” Daniel said, staring at her in disbelief.

“I know, but . . . well, Swiðgar attacked him. We all did. What right did we have to go out and try to kill him?”

“Are you working with Gád? Is that it?” Daniel asked.

“No, of course not. Of course I’m not saying that. It’s just—I think we should reevaluate what we think we’re doing down here and why.”

Daniel goggled at her.
“Reevaluate?”

Frithfroth stood there, motionless except for very small swaying movements. If he had been following their conversation, if anything that Freya had revealed had made any impact on him at all, he did not give any sign.

“Freya, why didn’t you bring this up before?” Vivienne sighed, putting a hand to her temple. “Ecgbryt and Alex have just charged off completely unprepared! You’ve endangered their lives by sending them off without adequate knowledge or preparation.”

“‘I . . . I . . .”

Flushed and furious, Daniel glared angrily at Freya. He suddenly rushed at her, drawing his sword.

“Daniel! No!” Vivienne threw herself forward, knocking into Daniel and holding him back. Daniel struggled, and either his heart was not in it, or Vivienne was stronger than she looked.

“What are you going to do?
Kill me?
” Freya shouted. “You psychopath!”

“You’re a traitor!”

“A traitor to what?” Freya said, spreading her arms. “Look around. To this? A moldy old building? An old man who
trapped
and
manipulated
us?”

“Yeah, that seems to happen a lot to you. You keep harping on about it, but what makes Ealdstan any worse than Gád or Professor Stowe?”

“Honestly? Neither of them asked me to
kill
anyone.”

Daniel sneered at her.

Freya raised a finger accusingly. “Do you really hate me now or what? What is this anger? Where does it come from? It’s not just good and bad out there, Daniel—as much as you’d like it to be! This is real life, and it’s
messy.
”

“Then why are you the one who’s least willing to get dirty?” He relaxed and Vivienne released him. Daniel turned away.

“Freya,” Vivienne said in a low voice. “This is catastrophic. Gád makes everything worse. If we’d known he was still running around—there’s no telling what he could be up to. He’s had eight years. Running amok. Plotting. Planning.”

“Better him than Ealdstan,” Freya said hotly. It was all starting to pour out now. “This city . . . this city is an occupying force—stockpiling warriors, against what? What’s it all for? All the lies, using us—Daniel and me—to kill
an old man.
That’s not the side I want to be on.”

“But Swiðgar and Ecgbryt. What about them? Modwyn? Your friends?”

“They’re not my friends. I don’t trust them, I don’t know them; they don’t know me.”

“What about
me
?” Daniel asked.

“You? You who just pulled a
sword
on me?”

“Quiet, both of you, quiet!” Vivienne said. “Let’s think about this.”

Freya and Daniel silently retreated to opposite sides of the room.

“It actually changes nothing,” she said.

“What?” Daniel said as Freya turned back to Vivienne.

“It changes nothing,” Vivienne repeated.

“It changes
everything
,” Daniel said.

“We carry on as before. Same plan. It’s just—the stakes are higher now. The potential danger greater. But our goals are the same.”

“Right,” Daniel said. “Which makes it all the more important that I kill Kelm. Or Gád, if I can find him.”

“No, don’t do that.”

“What? Vivienne . . .”

“Daniel, we don’t have a strategy for that. Be reasonable. Our first priority is to investigate this tower, try to see if there’s anything in Ealdstan’s writings that would indicate where he’s gone or if he’s prepared any fail-safes for such a situation. Then we’re to look into finding the Carnyx—to see if it will summon the knights. Then we should find Godmund and Modwyn—they will no doubt have information vital to tactics and the lay of the land.”

“Sounds fascinating. I tell you what . . . you two can do that, I’ll do my thing. And don’t worry, I won’t just charge off. I’ll study the yfelgópes here in the city. I’ll observe them from the windows, get their movements and rhythms, all with a view to taking down
Kelm and his boss as soon as possible.” He turned his open gaze from Freya to Vivienne.

“Why don’t you go looking for the Carnyx?” Vivienne asked.

“We’ll have plenty of time for scavenger hunts if we can deal with the single greatest threat to our safety and that of the overworld—namely Gád and Kelm. Come on, you know it makes sense!”

“Well . . . look into it, but come see me first if you decide on leaving the Langtorr,” Vivienne said haltingly.

Daniel hesitated for just the briefest of moments. “Of course. Of course I will.”

“If any of you do leave the threshold of the tower forecourt . . .” Frithfroth said abruptly, making them all start. “I would not risk coming back. All who pass the threshold die.”

“Except for you,” Daniel said. “I’m going up. Don’t bother me.” With another long look back at Freya, he resettled his backpack on his shoulders and started trudging up the stairs.

Vivienne turned to Freya. “We’ll talk more about this later,” she said. “For now, let’s hear Frithfroth out on what happened here.”

^{_____________________}
IV
^{_____________________}

Ecgbryt and Alex stood over the corpses of six black bears. That was good. Alex was worried that the bodies would turn back into men when they died—which would have been more troublesome for them. People would want to find them very quickly in order to ask some very urgent questions if six people were found dead. But as it was, half a dozen slaughtered bears were more of a strange puzzle than an act of mass murder.

They were shaking as they took stock. Neither of them had so much as a scratch, although there were some bruises. When Alex ran out of bullets, he had dropped the gun and drawn his sword, which was strapped to his back. Alloyed steel and custom craftsmanship
made it sharp and deadly. Even if he wasn’t as practised with it as Ecgbryt was with his axe, he was still very capable.

They retreated past the standing stones and toward the trees, their backs almost edging up along the black metal rail fence that surrounded the Rollright Stones. Getting backed into a corner was not ideal in most circumstances, but in this instance it was preferable to being surrounded.

Alex’s arms ached; swinging that sword through fur, muscle, and bone was hard work. He was buzzing from adrenaline, panting, his arms and shoulders on fire; it was a good feeling.

Ecgbryt cleaned his blade and was sliding it back into the holster he wore on his back, underneath his coat.

“Shall we try to hide them?” Alex asked. “Half a dozen fivehundred-pound bears are quite the handful.”

Ecgbryt considered and then shook his head. “Leave them here. We should be away.”

“The RSPCA will be hot, no doubt. Do you think they’ll turn human again when daylight hits?”

“We’re not going to be around to see it if they do. Come. The survival of young Daniel and Freya depends on our swift movements hereafter. I do not wish to storm the city, only to be greeted by their lifeless corpses hanging off the main gates.”

CHAPTER THREE

Assassin

^{_____________________}
I
^{_____________________}

“The boy is very impatient,” Frithfroth said.

“You’re not wrong there,” Vivienne assented.

“His blood runs hot—too hot. It boils and rises to his eyes in a mist. When it leaves, it leaves him empty, so empty. I have seen men chase after such heat. I hope it will not be his ruin.”

“Tell us what happened, Frithfroth. How Niðergeard fell, if they could not take the Langtorr.”

As an answer, Frithfroth crossed over to one of the tapestries hanging at an angle. He pushed up a corner to show a dark archway. He slipped through it and the tapestry fell back to its skewed position. Freya and Vivienne traded apprehensive looks, and then Vivienne crossed over and pulled back the thick woven cloth.

Swallowing hard, Freya ducked under the faded cloth, which smelled of rot and mold. Descending a curved stairway, the two women gradually lowered themselves into the thick, sharp smell
of death that seemed to rise up in a cloud around them. They blocked their noses, but it crept into every breath they were forced to take. It stung their eyes and made their skin crawl. It was like a slap in the face.

“This was our last defense,” Frithfroth said, apparently oblivious or immune to the stench. “After finding Ealdstan departed, Godmund grew desperate. He spouted betrayal, deceit, perversion.” The staircase wound down and then opened into a wide, semi-spherical room. It was aglow with hundreds of silver lamps arranged along walls and pillars. The light that shone from them fell upon four concentric circles, each with a low stone slab cut to contain a man, but rising only a couple inches in height off the ground.

There were one hundred and five sleeping spaces arranged in four concentric circles—seven in the inner ring, twice that in the next, and doubling again and again in the next two rings. A circular dais was raised in the centre, and on it, a stone throne.

“This is the
Slæpereshus
—the Chamber of the Sleepers,” Frithfroth said. “These are the elite of all of the sleepers in this isle. Their deeds are celebrated in myth and legend. Over fifty from the fields of Agincourt. Nearly thirty from the first crusade. One dozen and two from Horsa’s men, and seven knights of the table. All of them surrounding the hero who wore a dragon’s helm. Sleeping all not just for the nation’s greatest need, but for Niðergeard’s.”

However glorious it sounded and once may have looked, it was a slaughterhouse now. The biers were covered with the mangled remnants of the bodies they once held in state. The skin and flesh were beyond decay—black and leathery in some instances, or already decomposed. Bones could be seen, but not the clean, white bones in movies and on TV—these bones were brown and corrupted, with leathery flesh still hanging on to them. Forms could really only be made out by the clothing and armour that the
bodies once occupied. Some heads appeared to be absent. Some biers only bore a shattered weapon or a broken shield.

Horrifically, perversely, the ground was moving. Maggots, insects, and some reptiles could be glimpsed in Frithfroth’s lantern light and the large flashlights that Freya and Vivienne carried. The dead bodies had apparently presented enough nourishment to produce a macabre ecosystem, a carrion food chain in the Langtorr’s cellar.

Freya gasped when she saw all the crawling nasties that swarmed the floor and raised an arm to prevent Vivienne from walking past her. Vivienne tensed and they stood there, a few stairs up, where nothing, they hoped, could crawl up to them, as Frithfroth unheedingly navigated the large room. He wove in and out of the biers, uncaring of the creatures that scuttled across his feet or clung briefly to his cloak. He went to the far wall where an iron hook was mounted, on which was hanging a horn. He raised an arm to it, as if he were reaching out and touching it with his missing hand.

“He blew this horn to wake them. When the knights awake, they are not like the city’s guards—they are mortal, and thus able to vanquish the yfelgópes permanently.

“Yes, he blew the horn, and it will never sound again, for there will not be any to hear it. They rose and went forth to battle, striking at the heart of the enemy, beyond the once-high walls of this city. It should have been a charge to victory, to a glorious routing of the enemy, but the unimaginable happened—the greatest war band ever seen in these isles was withstood.

“They fought for days without a one of them falling. The bodies of their slain enemies mounted higher and higher, and became their fortress. They fought along its walls and built them higher, bulwarked with more of their foes.

“And then one of our own fell. He was brought back here
and laid to his final rest, arising again only when his body is made whole in the final judgement. But his absence in the line of defenders gave a hold to the relentless storm to wear away at those on either side of him. And more fell, over time, and more. They, too, were brought back. Those that remained standing—standing and fighting for almost a year now with no rest—renewed their resolve and fought harder and more cunningly than any in history. But no man is perfect—all falter. I myself watched from this very tower as the last three valiant knights fought in a whirlpool of enemies, each taking many blows that would have laid a mortal man senseless. Then they, too, were taken.

“All that remained was the hero of the dragon’s helm. They disarmed him, cut him so that no muscle moved any bone, and then divided him up amongst themselves so that each could have a talisman to show their defeat of the greatest hero in the western kingdoms. Two had his jawbone, many had his teeth, the fingers of his hands, so, too, the bones of his shins . . .”

Frithfroth started back toward the stairs, through the bodies and writhing shapes on the floor.

“Those left in Niðergeard could only watch in dread. Godmund had armed the citizenry and given them all instruction, but when the army of the enemy marched upon us, they did not last an hour.

“Kelm himself claimed the dragonhelm. And once he had, he threw it over the Langtorr wall just to spite. I recovered it and moved it here.” He indicated a silver helmet traced with gold that lay on the throne in the centre of the dais. It had a winged dragon mounted on it, its arms and legs clutching at the sides, its wings joining around the back.