Sword of Doom (21 page)

The stunned chieftain roused himself and said, “He says he goes to Utgard to forge a peace between us.”

“Another lie!” the commander barked.

The chieftain ignored the outburst and said to Godrek, “The one known as Dane the Defiant says you have taken his mother.”

“True. She is to be my wife, and he does not approve. The boy is dangerously warped and uses the frost giant as his attack dog. They both must be stopped.” The Lord of the Trolls brooded on Godrek's words, unable to fathom how he had been so deceived by Dane the Defiant.

“It pains me,” said Godrek, “that my own kind has wrought such a foul deception upon you. Perhaps we can take revenge.”

“An alliance?” the commander said warily.

“We go to Utgard,” Godrek said, “and together we will kill many frost giants.”

 

In the troll forest near the village clearing, Ragnar sat trying to eat a bit of cheese and stale bread. His appetite had been meager of late, his stomach and mind tied in knots over what to do with Geldrun. She sat nearby, her back against a tree, refusing to eat the food that had been given her.

Through the trees he saw the troll soldiers marching around the village, chanting in unison, clearly preparing for war. Amazingly, Godrek's plan had worked.

He went to where Geldrun sat and said, “You must eat.”

Her defiant eyes met his for a moment and then looked away.

“Fine! Starve for all I care!” He stalked away a few steps and stopped, his anger and frustration building. He whirled on her and hissed, “Since I was foolish enough to help you the first time, my mind has been occupied with one thing: my death poem.”

“I'd like to hear it.”

“You will, if I aid you again.”

“Are you so afraid of Godrek?”

“With good reason, lady. If he caught us, my death would not go easy. I'd be tortured to set an example. And let me tell you, Godrek's
very
good at torture.”

“If we leave now, we'll slip past him,” she said quickly,
“and meet up with my son and the giant.”

“So that part about him torturing me didn't stick.”

“With the giant on our side, we'll be safe!”

Ragnar stood there, mind racing, guts achurn. Her horse was tied with his and the others, just a few yards away. He could take her and ride off. But then what? Every day of his life he'd fear Godrek's vengeance. He'd have to go far away. Retire from warrior work, change his name, get a little farm somewhere, and spend the rest of his days reading books and writing poetry. It didn't sound half bad, the more he thought of it.

“Ragnar! Now!” Shaken from his reverie, he hurried to her horse, untying it. He quickly led the mount to Geldrun and was about to lift her into the saddle, when Svein and Thorfinn came through the trees and saw them. For an instant Ragnar thought they had a chance to escape but realized the men were too close.

Ragnar gave a little grin to his mate Svein, hoping to deflect any suspicion. “We ready to move out?”

For a moment Ragnar thought he read a trace of unease in Svein's eyes, but it passed. “Godrek says bring the horses.” Ragnar boosted Geldrun onto her roan. He, Svein, and Thorfinn mounted up and led the rest of the horses toward the troll village.

 

Dane knew the mission into Utgard required stealth. They would have to enter under cover of night and, quiet
as mice, get in and out without attracting attention. The problem was Jarl, who usually attracted more attention than a rampaging bear in a packed mead hall. So consumed with desire to prove his courage, Jarl tended to rush thoughtlessly into dangerous situations screaming his head off. True, he was an expert bladesman, and when battling most foes Dane wanted no one else at his side. But in dealing with frost giants, Dane knew there was small margin for error. One mistake and you'd be crushed under a giant foot.

Dane announced the plan: He, Lut, Ulf, Drott, Fulnir, and Thrym would go inside. Jarl would bravely protect the rear and take command in case Dane and the others didn't make it back.

“Protect the
rear
?” Jarl said with scorn. “The only
rear
I'm concerned with are the big frosty ones I'm going to kick.” He gave a whoop and bumped chests with Rik and Vik, who also had no intention of staying back. Neither did Astrid or William. If Dane was going, they were to go, too.

“
Someone
has to stay back with Kára,” Dane insisted.

“What!” Kára exploded. “When will you learn I am
not
a dainty flower in need of protection?” She waved her axe, and everyone scattered for fear of injury. So Dane had to take them all, despite the fact that the more people came, the more things could go wrong, especially where Jarl was concerned.

They waited until long after sundown, when a deep violet
night shadow lay over the iced-over lake and the fortress itself was but a pearly silhouette. After Drott and Fulnir tied up their horses, concealing them among some ice-encrusted boulders, they all set out under cover of darkness, following Thrym on foot across the frozen lake toward the walls of Utgard. It occurred to Dane that if the gods were watching them, they were most probably roaring with laughter, for eleven puny humans and one as gentle-souled as Thrym did not stand a snowball's chance in summer against a fortress full of frost giants.

Remarkably, though, two things were in their favor.

Utgard was so secluded, it had not been attacked in centuries. Therefore, Thrym said, the giants had grown lackadaisical about guarding their stronghold and in all probability they would post no lookouts on the ramparts. Another stroke of good fortune, Thrym explained, was their arrival during a
freista
. All the giants would be gathered in their colossal arena within the fortress to witness and cheer the battle test, where Hrut the Horrible, the frost giants' warlord, took on all challengers in single combat.

The ice cracked and groaned as the party crept across the frozen lake. Just ahead of them a dark shape broke through the ice and rose to the height of a man. Everyone shrank away when they saw it was the head of a frost giant.

“Worry not,” said Thrym. “It's quite harmless.”

Indeed, Dane saw that the face of the giant was only half formed, as if a sculptor had left the details of its nose,
mouth, and eyes unfinished. The head sank back under the ice, disappearing, and Thrym explained that this was the legendary Lake of Tears, where all frost giants are born. The tears of the gods fell here, he said, creating the lake, and it was from these very tears that his race was formed. To Dane's right, a huge, unhewn hand broke through the ice, floating there for a moment, then sinking back under, as if it belonged to a baby moving fitfully in its womb.

“I pray I won't have to assist
this
birth,” Lut said.

“Right,” said Ulf. “Imagine having to burp that thing.”

With haste they continued toward the walls of Utgard, along the way glimpsing the embryonic giants beneath the ice that, Thrym explained, would not be complete for many years.

At last they made it off the shifting ice and onto the island in the center of the lake, where Utgard stood. The colossal edifice, cut from ancient glaciers, sparkled like an infinity of sky-blue diamonds. Dwarfed by the fortress, Dane craned his neck, gazing upward in amazement at the walls that went soaring into the mist. The others too stood frozen, staring upward, unable to move or speak, in awe of the massive structure and the cheering sounds coming from within it.

“Fulny, about our new nicknames…,” Drott said, his voice quaking with fear. “Are you still Fierce and am I still Dangerous?”

“What, you want to go back to our old names?”

“No, no, I was just checking.”

Thrym, their guide and protector, trudging onward, and everyone scurried to catch up.

They crept along the wall toward the fortress gate. Moving ever closer to the rune blade, with the sound of its seductive voices surging louder in his head, Dane fought harder against it. He blocked out the rune song as best he could, the cheering sounds of the frost giants helping to drown out the call of temptation. As Lut had advised, he thought only of those he loved. His father. His friends. Astrid. And, of course, his mother, held captive in the fiendish grip of a man who cared so little for love that he would trade it for treasure. Very well, Dane thought, he too would trade—treasure for love.

CRAAAACK!
The sound of ice breaking pierced the air, and Dane and his friends pressed back against the shadowed wall. The colossal front gates, three times higher than Thrym himself, opened with a groan, shattering the thin sheets of ice that had formed there. Two frost giants lumbered out, pulling a gigantic sled piled high with what looked to be smashed, dismembered frost giant body parts: heads, legs, arms, and torsos, some parts still moving with life. The giants picked up the pieces and threw them high in the air toward the lake. The smaller pieces smashed like glass on the ice; the heavy ones broke through, bobbed on the water for a few moments, and sank. One giant's head remained floating for a while, and Dane saw its eyes pop open and see
everyone hiding in the shadows. The head opened its mouth to shout an alarm, when another giant's torso crashed down on it and both torso and head disappeared beneath the ice. When the sled was empty and their disposal work done, the giants withdrew into the fortress, pulling the doors closed behind them.

“Those are the losers of the battle test,” Thrym whispered down to them, nodding to where his brethren were thrown. “Someday their parts will form into new giants.”

“Imagine if we were like that, melting to form new people,” marveled Drott, patting Ulf's huge stomach. “This alone would make a whole new village.”

Ulf rapped his knuckles against Drott's skull. “And this would make the new village idiot.”

Then came another roar from the crowd, and Dane looked to see that Thrym had found one of the doors ajar. “They'll be back,” he said. “Hrut never loses.” Quietly pulling open one of the doors, Thrym slipped inside. Moments later he stuck his hand out the door and, with a crooked finger, beckoned everyone inside.

As Dane passed through the arched gateway, the first thing he spied were two giants ready to attack them with enormous war axes. He and his friends stumbled backward in terror. All save for Jarl, that is. Jarl, being Jarl, drew his sword, gave a war cry, and charged the monsters. Thrym slammed his foot down in front of Jarl's path, stopping him.

“They're statues,” Thrym said.

Looking again, everyone saw that the giants were indeed stone statues made of blocks of hewn granite, erected as terrifying totems at the entrance to an immense courtyard. Shamed, Jarl sheathed his sword. Rik and Vik snickered as they casually sheathed the swords they had drawn.

“You all thought they were real,” Jarl fumed. “Admit it!” Dane feared Jarl might do something even
more
foolish to regain his honor. He pulled Jarl aside. “They looked real, Dane,” Jarl repeated. “You saw it—”

“I did, Jarl, and that was very brave of you,” Dane said solicitiously. “But think of Kára.”

“Kára?”

“Someone has to protect her. Bring her safely back to Skrellborg. Whoever returns the princess will no doubt get a big runestone erected in his honor
and
collect a handsome reward from King Eldred.” Dane saw the glimmer in Jarl's eyes as the idea took root. “So if you don't mind,” said Dane, “I'll take that assignment.”

Jarl furrowed his brow. “That's so like you, Dane,” he said. “Always trying to steal the credit. Not this time.
I'm
protecting the princess.” Dane pretended to argue, but Jarl adamantly insisted that he and he only be entrusted to guard Princess Kára. So Dane gave in, pleased that his ruse had worked. Now Dane hoped he'd be less inclined to go charging blindly into danger and get them all killed.

They followed Thrym past the fearsome statues, Dane
half expecting them to spring to life and crush them all. Now there were
real
giants to worry about, hundreds, if not thousands, of them. Dane heard their distant cheers swell in volume, as if the spectators had just witnessed another gruesome kill.

T
hrym tried to remember when he had last walked within the walls of Utgard. In human years perhaps hundreds, he thought, since giants marked time differently than men did, ice aging much slower than human flesh.

As Thrym led his human friends toward the arena, hugging the fringes of the courtyard, he recalled the day long, long ago when Bergelmir himself had stood on this very spot, displaying a wound he had received. The tip of the rune blade—the very one Dane and his friends now sought—was buried in his thigh, a wound he had received from a greed-maddened human who had invaded their realm in search of Draupnir.

The wise king had proclaimed to the nation of frost giants that their wars with the gods and the lesser beings
must end. A new age had begun, he said, an era of peace and harmony, of brotherhood and trust. But it didn't last. In time a warmonger arose in their midst, a monster named Hrut the Horrible. Craving power and glory, Hrut challenged the king in a
freista.
In single combat, Bergelmir was destroyed. Hrut declared himself king, and then all hope for peace had died too; the giants were made to cheer only for war and death.

Now Thrym had come to contest Hrut in battle, and he knew he faced his own death. Most likely he was leading the humans to theirs, too. He did not fully understand mankind. They lived such short and painful lives, seeming to go from birth to death in a blink of a frost giant's eye. Why did they spend their precious few years warring? If he were a human like Dane, he would take Astrid and go live where war and strife would never touch her.
Was
there such a place? Probably not, he thought. They had come to the very ends of the earth, and still there was war.

They stopped outside the arena, a massive bowl structure Hrut had built to stage his gladiatorial conquests. Thrym and the others took cover behind a towering statue of the warlord himself.

“I see why he's called ‘the horrible,'” Drott said, looking up at the statue's face.

As depicted on the statue, Hrut's face was hideously disfigured. Long ago, Thrym told them, Hrut's face had partially melted and then been flash-frozen in place, his
rearranged features making him look savagely monstrous. But oddly, Hrut actually
liked
his gruesome visage because it frightened and intimidated his opponents. Now, eyeing the statue, Thrym felt a cold panic rise within him. If he was this afraid of his statue, how would he feel when he faced the
real
Hrut on the arena floor?

It all seemed so impossible now. Why had he followed the raven in the first place? And why had he agreed to lead them to Utgard? He was a giant made of ice, and his iron will had been easily softened by Astrid's words of challenge. Astrid! He wanted to scoop her and everyone else up into his arms and flee. But it was too late. The avalanche had started careening downhill, and nothing could stop it.

 

Jarl groused that he had been handed the short stick yet again. While Dane went off with Thrym, Astrid, and Lut on the glorious task of finding the other half of the legendary rune sword, Jarl was stuck with the job of leading everyone else to rescue a bunch of stinking trolls.

“I did
not
promise to free the captives!” he complained to Rik and Vik. “It was Dane! So let
him
rescue the little rat-faced cretins!” But he was comforted by the thought that at least he would have the glory—and rich reward—of bringing Kára back to Skrellborg. Dane had tried to steal that task from him too!

Jarl led his rescue party through a dark warren of tunnels beneath the arena floor, the sounds of the crowd above
echoing through the passageways. Thrym had said that the captives would be found here because when Hrut was done fighting his own kind, he liked to top off the festivities by bringing trolls out to be tortured and killed.

He heard heavy footfalls approaching and motioned for everyone to take cover in an adjoining tunnel. Two frost giants lumbered by, pulling a cage full of the captured trolls. Some of the troll prisoners wailed and moaned, shaking the cage bars. Others, Jarl saw, sat quietly, looking hollow eyed and doomed. He noticed one she-troll in particular, a wrinkled old crone whose snow-white hair fell down over her cloak, nearly reaching the ground. Shaking a wooden staff in one gnarled hand and a necklace of bear's teeth in the other, she screeched and gyrated wildly, dancing and chanting strange-sounding incantations, clearly beseeching the gods for rescue. Even Jarl could not help being affected by this heartrending sight.
They may be filthy trolls, but nothing deserves to die like this,
he thought. The giants and the cage disappeared into the dim light of the tunnel ahead. Jarl signaled everyone forward, and they followed the wails of the captive trollfolk.

The tunnel abruptly ended, opening into a large chamber, and Jarl halted everyone behind him. He peered round the corner. Giants were taking the trolls from the cage and putting them into a cell. One daring young troll squirmed free and dashed toward the tunnel where Jarl and the others were hiding. A giant gave chase and caught the troll just
as he ran past the crouching humans. “Bad little troll,” the giant said, stroking the troll's head as if he were a pet. The crouching humans were mere footsteps away from the giant; if he turned his head, he would spy them all. Wouldn't it be—what was the word? Jarl asked himself. Laconic? Iconic?
Ironic
, that was it! Wouldn't it be ironic if he met his end because he was given away by one of the wart-faced imps he was trying to rescue?

Which is exactly what happened.

The little troll saw them hiding and screeched in fright. The giant turned his head, and Jarl and his friends all froze, stupidly thinking that staying still would make them invisible. It didn't. The giant roared, the icy blast from his breath blowing them all backward, knocking them off their feet. All except Kára, who went fleeing unseen back up the tunnel.

Now facing a real live frost giant, Jarl did the only thing he knew how to do: He drew his sword and charged. The first impulse of the others was to do the sensible thing—run. But unfortunately, when young Viking men see one of their own, no matter how foolishly, charging into battle, they tend to follow like sheep. So Rik, Vik, Drott, Fulnir, Ulf, and William attacked too. Seven humans against one mountain of ice was a mismatch, and soon they all were caged.

When the cage was lifted to be emptied, Jarl and all his friends went tumbling headfirst onto the stone floor of a dank cell. Dazed and battered from his scrap with the
frost giant, Jarl took a moment to clear his head. But when he did, he was not happy. He found himself surrounded by scores of trolls, and seeing him and his friends in their midst, they all began shrieking like lunatic crows, fearing the humans were there to kill them.

“Quiet, you raving hairballs!” cried Jarl, covering his ears.

But it did no good—the cacophony of troll shrieks grew only louder.

“By the gods, be silent!” yelled Vik. “We're on your
side
!”

Suddenly the she-troll, the wrinkled one with the long white hair, raised her staff, signaling for silence. Abruptly the trolls quieted, waiting for her to speak.

“Humans on
our
side?” the she-troll said warily. “Impossible!”

“We promised Chief Dvalin to rescue you,” Drott said.

“Dvalin?” the she-troll said, suddenly brightening. “Dvalin sent you?”

“It's true,” William said.

“Praise the humans!” the she-troll cried. “They're here to save us!” The joyous trolls started shrieking like lunatic crows again, which Jarl found unbearable. He waved his arms wildly to make them stop, and finally they did, all staring keenly at Jarl, expecting to hear the details of the escape plan.

“Next one makes that sound again,” Jarl said evenly, “I break his neck.”

 

Dane had to concentrate or he would lose his grip on sanity. He had to think about his mother and all those he loved. If he lost sight of them in his mind, even for a moment, the bewitching call of the rune blade would engulf him. In order to find the blade, Lut had surmised, all they needed was to follow the siren call to its source. But the nearer he drew to it, the louder it became and the harder it was to resist.

Following Thrym's lead he, Lut, and Astrid had found their way into the Hall of Relics. An aisle ran down the center of the massive hall, and on each side were the funeral crypts that held the fragments of the fallen giants, be it hand, leg, arm, or head.

“Here relics of the great giants are preserved for posterity,” Thrym said, “and the rest of their bodies returned to the Lake of Tears to form new citizens of Utgard.”

Decorating the ceiling and walls were magnificent friezes carved into the ice, depicting the ancient history of the giants. “The largest carving,” Thrym said, “portrays our creation. How the gods wept, forming the Lake of Tears, and how Ymir, the very first frost giant, rose fully formed from its waters.”

As Lut and Astrid stood marveling at the sight with
Thrym, Dane felt himself being pulled away down the hall, the call of the rune blade swelling inside him. As if he were a tiny boat atop an unstoppable sea tide, he was drawn to the end of the great hall. Obeying its call, he entered a crypt with a vaulted ceiling, and there on a bier was a part of a leg, all that was left of the dead King Bergelmir. Dane moved closer, and something within the ice glistened. His eyes fell upon a gleaming shaft of steel buried in the thigh, just as Thrym had described. And drawing closer, Dane saw it was the very blade of the broken rune sword protruding from the ancient ice. Spellbound by its glitter, he felt his willpower draining away as the voices told him what to do.

Obediently he raised his sword over his head and swung it downward into the thigh with all his might. The ice shattered and fell away, and there, lying in the ice shards, was the other half of the rune blade he sought. Such a feeling swept through him! Such possessive hunger! He picked it up and felt it oddly pulsating in his hand, as if it were alive. As if it had a heart. He brushed away the slivers of ice from the metal, caressing the blade. He saw his fingers begin to bleed from the slice the rune sword made, yet he felt no pain at all, nothing but the joy of holding it.
Mine,
he thought.
All mine
.

With the power of the blade surging through him, all fear and self-doubt vanished from his mind. He had never felt so alive, so sure of himself. So invincible.

Hearing a sound, he turned to see an old man, a blond girl in a furred vest holding an axe, and a frost giant, none
of whom he recognized. And he knew that if they tried to take away his blade, he would have to hurt them.

 

Astrid felt her throat tighten as she saw Dane looking at them with dead eyes, as if they were strangers.

“The rune blade has him spellbound,” Lut whispered. He stepped forward and thundered to Dane, “You must resist, boy! I command you to resist!”

She saw Dane's hand tighten round the broken blade. The edge cut into his flesh and his blood ran down the sword, dripping onto the floor. She spoke his name, but he seemed gripped in a dream, as if he were listening to another voice altogether. And it scared her to see she had no effect on him.

Lut slammed his fist hard into Dane's face. He went sprawling; the broken blade flew from his bloody grasp across the icy floor. For a moment Astrid and Thrym just gaped, startled by the power of the old man's sudden violence. Dane sat up, rubbing his jaw, bewildered. “Did someone just hit me?”

Lut shrugged. “Had to return you to your senses.”

Dane was alarmed to see blood oozing from his sliced-open hand. He asked what had happened. Astrid pulled a kerchief from her pocket and bent to wrap it tightly round Dane's wounded hand. “We lost you there for a moment,” she said, gesturing to the broken blade lying at their feet.

“Can you still hear its call?” Lut asked.

Dane nodded.

“I can smack you again if you'd like,” said Lut, raising his hand to strike him.

“No, no!” Dane quickly said, raising his arm to ward off the blow. “I can resist it, I know I can.”

“
How
do you know?” asked Lut.

“Because when I gave in to it, it was like you said. I lost all feeling for everyone I knew. You, Astrid, my mother. I even wanted to hurt you, Lut, and I'd rather die than feel that way again.”

Lut nodded, reassured that Dane was safe now from the blade's spell. Anxious to read its runic secrets, Lut knelt for a closer look at the sword that lay on the floor, the rune marks glowing like molten metal under the wet blood on the blade. Dane began to speak, but Lut shushed him, trying to decipher the markings before they faded altogether. Astrid reached out to touch it, but Lut slapped her hand away.

“Now I know,” said Lut, “why none of us but you, Dane, have fallen prey to the rune song. It's the blood. When the blood touches the blade, it unleashes the curse. The blade itself comes alive, raising the runic message and corrupting anyone who comes in contact with the sword. Only you and Godrek touched the blade when it had the blood upon it, therefore only you and Godrek are touched by the curse. And if the two parts are ever joined, I fear the rune song will be impossible to resist.”

It was then Dane's attention was drawn upward, to the
frieze above the bier platform. “There!” he gasped. “The serpent from my dreams!”

Carved into the ancient ice was a gigantic serpent with rows of spikes along its back and twin horns upon its hideous head. It was circled around what appeared to be a warrior's arm ring.

“It is Jörmungandr,” Lut said, unable to pry his eyes from the serpent's image.

“What?” Astrid said.

“Jörmungandr,” said Lut. “‘Jörm' for serpent, ‘gand' for magic wand. The ancients called it ‘ganding,' which meant to put a spell on someone. According to this carving—and the clues on the rune sword—Jörmungandr is a kind of gatekeeper, a guardian sent by the gods.”