Resurgent Shadows (Successive Harmony Book 1) (30 page)

“So I won?” Eric asked, getting to his feet and realizing that he was ravenously hungry.

Torsten nodded and pulled a platter of meat and hardtack from behind him as if reading Eric’s mind, which Eric suspected he could actually do.

“You have won, though more, I think, than what you realize. There has been a lot of political scrambling and posturing going on. The clans nearly split at one point during the debate, and Enclave Law had to be declared to stop the entire Ragnar Clan from attempting to challenge you to Holmganga one by one until one of them killed you. By rights you are now the clan chief of the Ragnar Clan.”

Eric stopped chewing halfway through a mouthful of meat and looked up at Torsten to see if he was serious.

“I recommend you denounce the title,” Torsten said seriously. “There is too much at stake. Most of the clans support you, but Ragnar and the other smaller clans have banded together under Gamlin’s leadership. We can’t afford a division amongst the clans on the eve of battle.”

Eric didn’t care about the politics. He was his own master now, and that was all he cared about. He reached out for another piece of meat and was surprised to find the platter empty.

“Whatever you think is best,” Eric said, resting one hand on Valundnir’s haft.

“Dverger honor has changed much in these past years,” Torsten said softly, almost to himself as he left the tent. “It was never meant to be thus. Chaos is taking hold in the hearts of Úndin’s children and their creations.”

Eric stared off into the distance, his chin resting on top of Valundnir’s head. The weapon thrummed in his hands. The clouds and gloomy haze of ash were a perfect backdrop to his dejected spirit and brooding mind. The dverger army had been camped at the mouth of the valley for several days and Eric had grown restless. He had become boorish and easily irritable and had escaped to think in seclusion.

His eyes drifted northwards, taking in the barren landscape around him. Images of Natalie played across his mind. He wondered what she was doing and how she was coping with being pregnant. Part of him was glad he was missing out on all the moodiness and morning sickness, but then again, he also wished for nothing more than to be there with her now.

Eric heard a dverger approaching.

“Tell me of Atelho, Torsten,” he said.

With a laugh, the cleric walked into view and took a seat at Eric’s side. There was a note of satisfaction in his voice when he finally chose to speak, as if he had expected Eric to eventually ask. For just a moment, the cleric reminded Eric of the missionaries that had so often come knocking at his door before the world had changed forever.

“Atelho is the father of the dvergers. He created them and toiled with them until they were ready to care for themselves. Some who were closest to him became his clerics, tasked with teaching the people his tenets. They were granted power to protect and defend the people and to help guide them to do his will.”

“What are his tenets?”

“The first is the most powerful. It speaks of honor and dverger duty. You already know it. ‘Even in the more impenetrable darkness, a single solitary flame can banish the night.’

“The second speaks to our nature. ‘Like the rock of the earth from whence you came, you are weathered and worn, but never broken.’

“And the third speaks of life. ‘The best gems are found in the deepest, darkest caves—furthest from the light—but to enjoy them, they must be brought back into it.’”

Eric turned to look over at Torsten with an eyebrow raised.

“Those sound awfully poetic to be the tenets of such a violent race.”

Torsten’s brow furrowed and he looked, for a moment, as if he were about to snap off an angry retort, but then he sighed and looked down at his booted feet. He produced a pipe from somewhere and lit it from a small flame that appeared over his thumb. He puffed in silence for a few minutes, blowing the smoke out in flowing gray streams that were lost within the amorphous ash.

“We were not always this way. Dvergers are craftsmen, not warriors, though they have become such. Over time, honoring the will of Atelho has become just an excuse for pride. Immovability from the ways of Atelho has become stubbornness. Faith and duty has become self-righteousness. Even Holmganga has turned from a friendly test of skill and strength to a brutal violent show of posturing and politics. None of us are who we once were. Atelho grieves for the loss of his children.”

“Then why doesn’t he do anything about it?”

“He is, Eric,” Torsten said with a small smile, “and so am I. But dvergers are like the stone. The first root that makes its way into the rock is not what changes it, but the last—the is one that finally pushes it to become something else.”

“Broken rock is just sand, you know,” Eric said.

“And sand, over time, becomes rock once more. Under the right conditions anyway.”

“You have a lot of faith in him, don’t you?”

Eric caught Torsten’s gaze and held it. For a moment, a faint glimmer of power radiated from the dverger’s blue eyes.

“I do, and from this faith I have gained true power. I can feel it, others can see it. But I had to believe first. As do you. You make a good show of believing, with your prayers each morning and night here, but I’m not sure you really believe.”

“It’s not that simple.” Eric turned away and gazed northward again. Valundnir thrummed softly in his hands, but faded swiftly.

“It’s not that complicated either. It’s a choice. You either believe or you don’t.”

“I do believe, Torsten. Really, I do. It’s just that I’m here on my own and no one has to look up to me. No one is looking to me for leadership. I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to do. In the compound, with Natalie and Dan and the others, I knew what to do. I was the leader. So I did what they needed. I acted how they expected me to act. But now they’re gone. I’m alone. All I have left is my faith to comfort me. It’s the one great constant in my life.”

Surprise and anger crossed Eric’s face when Torsten laughed. Valundnir flared in his grip and it was all Eric could do to contain the sudden desire to strike at the dverger.

“Don’t look like that, Eric. You think you’re not a leader now? Do you think you weren’t alone when you were with your own kind? Open your eyes. You are the first human Guerreiro ever. You represent humanity in the eyes of the dverger people. You are leading them, even if they don’t know it. There is never one so alone as is a leader. No friends, no counselors. When decisions are made, it all rests on your shoulders. You learn to live with the weight or it breaks you. That’s what makes your faith,
any
faith, so important.”

Valundnir slipped from Eric’s slacked grip. It sunk a few inches into the ash and lay still.

“The question becomes, are you really a leader or are you content to follow and let others take up the burden that was supposed to be yours?”

“I don’t know if I can do it alone,” Eric said.

“You’ve been doing it already. You do what you must—loneliness is a part of leadership. Atelho keeps me strong, but that is a test of faith. You need to strengthen the faith you have within yourself, Eric. Nurture it. Let it grow. And if you must, let Valundnir give you strength.”

Eric sighed and shook his head.

“I’ll do what I can, Torsten. I’ll do what I can.”

“No, you will do what you must.” Gone was the lighthearted tone and the glimmer of mischief in Torsten’s eye. He spoke with intensity and bluntness now. “You must hold onto your faith. Whether it be in Atelho or in your own God, you cannot let it go. Soon there may come a time when the fates of lives rest on your shoulders and you must take it upon you. “

“What do you mean?”

Torsten’s smile suddenly returned and he slipped his pipe back into his mouth and puffed at it. “Nothing at all,” he said around the stem of his pipe. “And everything. It’s a failing of mine, I admit. I just worry about what will happen to the people when I’m no longer here.”

“You’re still young. Well, as far as I know. It’s hard to tell ages behind all those beards.”

Torsten chuckled and blew a ring of smoke into the air. “I’m a lot older than you might think. Anyway, we should get back with the squad. Pedryn was beside himself when he saw that you’d slipped out of your tent. He almost Stonewalked just to find you despite being so close to the Browns.”

“Well we can’t have that,” Eric said. “When all this is over, you’ll have to come back with me and meet Natalie for real. I think she’d like you.”

Torsten smiled. “I’d like that.”

Eric returned the smile and then bent down to retrieve Valundnir from the ash.

Torsten got up as well and dusted the ash and dirt from his white robes. He stowed his pipe somewhere within its folds.

“I’d best go see if Olan has managed to keep things afloat while I’ve been away,” Torsten finally said with another grin. He gave Eric a slight bow and turned away, disappearing around the bend of the hill with a little skip.

Eric smiled and shook his head.

*              *              *              *

Eric came awake suddenly, an internal instinct warning him of danger. It was dark inside the tent, but he rolled out of bed in an instant as something flashed and plunged into the cot where his chest had been only moments before. He leapt to his feet, Valundnir appearing in his hands with a burst of light. Bleary-eyed from sleep, he swung automatically at the shadowy outline of the assassin above the bed, but the figure dodged, entangling the war hammer in the bedclothes. Eric stumbled with the momentum of his swing and let go of Valundnir, which clattered to the ground as a thick cord was slipped over Eric’s neck from behind. Powerful hands pulled the cord taunt with a steady downward heave. Eric spluttered as his windpipe was crushed and he was pulled both down and back, almost sinking to his knees. His fingers scrambled on the cord trying to find a grip to pull back with, but the noose was pulled too tightly.

His lungs screamed for air and he felt himself weakening as he strained against the garrote. Out of the corner of his eye he saw another attacker leaping towards him, blade raised and gleaming. Eric kicked out, knocking the cot tumbling into the figure and sending them both into a heap of cloth, wood, and body. He felt a thick knobby knee press into the small of his back for leverage and he started to see stars.

Eric felt his anger rise and saw red in the corners of his eyes. He jerked his upper body backwards sharply, throwing his whole weight into the desperate move. The back of his skull connected with something soft that shattered under the heavy blow. There was no outcry of pain, but the grip on the cord slackened slightly, enough for Eric to reverse his momentum and half fall, half throw himself forward. His assailant was pulled up and over him to land spread-eagle on top of the other silent assassin, who was still struggling to untangle himself from the remnants of the broken cot.

Eric gasped for breath even as he gestured and Valundnir materialized in his outstretched hand. He heard people rushing around outside as if removed from it, an echo upon his mind that he didn’t fully register. He swung downward and then up, using his entire body to drive the hammer head through the shattered cot and into one of his assailants with a sickening crunch. There was a mild explosion of white and gold light as Valundnir made contact, propelling both of Eric’s attackers backwards with enough force to tear through the wall of the tent and land in a tangled heap of flesh and debris on the ground outside.

Pedryn, Varin, and the others burst into the tent, armed and clearly agitated, but upon seeing the state of the inside of the tent and Eric clearly unharmed they relaxed. Eric ignored them, pushing through the tear in the fabric wall and moving closer to the broken bundle of bed and body. Night had fallen and in the darkness the identity of his attackers remained hidden.

“Someone bring me a torch!” he ordered. Someone ran off and came back bearing a smoldering brand.

Pedryn and the dvergers under his command gathered close and Eric took the torch and tore back the blankets and cloth. Eric’s eyes widened as he looked down on the faces of two dvergers, though they were unlike any dverger he had ever seen. Though their bodies were only recently dead, the dvergers’ skin already had a bluish cast, as if deprived of oxygen. The eyes were clouded over in death, but the irises were also as black as coals. They were garbed in black and their bodies, though stockier by nature than men, were strangely disproportional. If Eric himself had not been the instrument of their demise he would have thought them dead a week or more.

“Dverger?” Varin said aghast. “Why would dverger attack you?”

Eric remembered Varin angrily claiming that humans were the only ones barbaric enough to try to murder him in his sleep. He chose not to bring it up.

“What clan are they from?” Waelin demanded, pushing past Varin and Pedryn to kneel next to one of the bodies, his face contorted in such anger that even Eric took a step back. The young dverger’s expression was reflected in the faces of all the dvergers present, quickly overcoming their shock.

Waelin reached out to grasp one of the bodies by the tunic and heave him up when the body reached out with a clearly broken arm and grabbed Waelin’s extended wrist. Both bodies twitched and started to rise, the broken bones mending before the eyes of the horror-struck dvergers. Eric swung Valundnir with one hand, catching the arm of the dead creature at the elbow and smashing the joint to a bloody mass. Waelin tore free and ripped his axe from his belt, cutting into the undead creature before him.

The other corpse had made it to its feet, its lips splitting into a wide toothy grin. Pedryn was the closest and brought his heavy mace crashing down onto the creature’s skull. The bone collapsed inward with an audible, sickening crunch. The force of the blow obliterated the top of the creature’s skull, but its arms still reached upwards and its thick powerful fingers wrapped around Pedryn’s arms and started to squeeze.

Pedryn grunted, the only sign he gave of the pain he was feeling as the creature’s nails dug into his flesh and he bled freely.

Eric lashed out with the torch and the creature reacted to the flaming brand, cringing away and slackening its grip on Pedryn’s arm enough for the dverger to pull free, leaving bits of flesh behind on the creature’s nails.

Horns blared throughout the camp and shouting broke out around them as they fought.

“Bring more torches!” Eric ordered, angrily thrusting the torch he held at the creature before him.

Some dvergers ran to comply as more threw themselves onto the two undead monsters. Eric heard a pitiful scream of pain from Waelin’s direction, but couldn’t spare a moment to look. He and Pedryn fought the undead creature before them, watching in growing terror as the caved in skull forced itself slowly back outward, bone and flesh mending into a seamless surface in moments. Eric kept the creature at bay with the burning brand while Pedryn barreled in to attack knees and arms. One particularly powerful blow leveled the creature, sending it to the ground. A half a dozen dvergers piled on top of it and Eric shoved the torch into its face.