The Children of Urdis (Grimwold and Lethos Book 2) (10 page)

Grimwold remained dry and unconscious at the prow of the ship. None of the fishermen wanted to get close to him, and if they had to go into the prow they stepped around him as if he might burst into fire. Every one of them had a shark's tooth necklace that they touched whenever they looked at Grimwold in his stony repose. Lethos couldn't blame them. Grimwold seemed dead, though he drew shallow breaths. His chest remained exposed so Lethos could observe the arrow wound, or at least where the wound should have been. He felt a sympathetic pain in his chest where Grimwold showed a faint dark mark.

More than anything, the lack of connection to his friend vexed him. His head was so--quiet, empty, dull--he didn't know how to describe it. His spy masters had called him all those names before, but in a different context. Here, hauling water thoughtlessly over the sides of a raiding ship, he simply felt like a bit of himself had been pulled out of his head. The blustering, arrogant man who had occupied his head was also loyal, brave, and dedicated to his vision of justice. Lethos missed it.

"By the Great Shark's Fin, that's quite a storm on the horizon." The captain drew everyone's attention north, where a dark strip of land sat beneath even darker clouds. A thin line seemed to hang like a wagging tail. "And the wind is turning on us. We'll have to take in the sail."

The fishermen lost their carefree attitudes and set to work. Lethos continued to bail, pausing to let the others scurry about their work. The ship slowed and the wind began to buffet the ship off course. The sea grew choppy and full of whitecaps. He almost dropped his bucket, which would not have disappointed him, at least until the ship swamped.

Thunder grumbled in the distance and lightning flashed in the black clouds. Without asking, Lethos knew he was looking at Norddalr lost beneath a black cloud. A cold drip of ice began running along his back. Lethos whirled on the captain.

"You're to take us all the way in, no matter the storm."

The dark-faced captain's jaw hung open. The other fishermen paused, shooting dark glances. "The wind won't let us get close. You try holding this tiller."

"Give it to me, and you bail," Lethos said, thrusting out the bucket. "I'm stronger than all of you. I know what you're thinking, Captain. You're loyal to your war chief, but you've got a family. The others might agree with you and toss me and Grimwold overboard. You take the ship back and no one is the wiser. But that won't work. You can't kill us with drowning. Nothing you or your three men can do will hurt us. So take me ashore and then you're free."

He hadn't known where the words came from, but his power was tingling again. The captain's face had turned as red as a cooked lobster and his companions stared at him in shock. Lethos had guessed his intentions correctly. Men would kill each other for less than a leaking ship, so it should not have surprised Lethos. Still, he had begun to like this man. A pity he could not be trusted.

Lethos took the tiller and the captain averted his eyes. He led them into the strong winds, the four of the men now rowing against the tide. The captain shouted corrections, and once they had closed on the shore of Norddalr, he paused in his rowing to shield his eyes against the wind. He searched for a place to land. "We need to avoid rocks here. I'm not familiar with the waters. I'm guessing you aren't either. So give me the tiller."

The wind had grown to a massive howl that surged the waters beneath them. Lethos held onto the railing for balance and watched Grimwold's body slide with the sway of the ship. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed over the mountains deep in the interior where Lethos knew the stone fortress of Norddalr to stand. He could not see it from the shore.

The captain landed them where the old docks had once stood. Now they were sunken and shattered piers and the ships removed or drowned beneath the waves. It was still the safest landing and the captain handled it well. Lethos off-loaded his supplies and then scooped Grimwold into his arms. The captain gave him a silent nod, and the other three wished him well.

"We'll wait out the storm on land," the captain said. "But we're not following you. This storm's unnatural."

"You did all I asked." He turned and began to trudge up the steep roads that had once been filled with life. Now only icy wind and rolling debris greeted him.

Memories of the year before flooded back. He had seen these docks from the back of a giant eagle. Now where was Kafara? No way to contact her or Turo, and in desperate need of help, he cursed her disappearance. The signs of the war were still evident in scorched ground and broken wood rotting in mud. As he trudged up to where the original wood hall of Norddalr had been, he spotted white bones hiding in the grass or half-buried in dirt. The hall itself was a sunken mass of broken timbers, all the useful wood long since hauled off. Even a barbarian king, it seemed, insisted on leaving the grizzly mementos of war in place.

He did not know the route overland, having relied on Kafara to fly him wherever he had needed to go. Now he stood with Grimwold draped in his arms like a sagging bolt of cloth. His inhuman strength allowed him to carry Grimwold and his mail without any effort, but he was not nimble as he skirted the wreckage. He stumbled more than once and nearly dumped Grimwold into the pit where Norddalr had collapsed.

"If you fall in there, then you're staying until someone else pulls you out." He continued along a path that bored into the mountains. Along the way he found patches of grass that had been leeched of life. Unlike the normal grass that browned with the approach of winter, these patches were dry and withered. Salt filled the spots. Here is where trolls that had once been men dissolved under salt he and Kafara had dumped from the air.

The winds eventually died down and the sky cleared. Lethos assumed his fishermen were now abandoning him to whatever fate awaited him on Norddalr. It was late afternoon and the sun was already low on the horizon. It glowed like a yellow eye angered at having been hidden for so long. Mountains cast long shadows over the rocky path he found after a bumbling search. He was certain this led into the mountains where the fortress of the High King lay.

He wondered where the guards were. Perhaps the strong winds kept them off duty. Still, it troubled him that a raiding ship was able to land without so much as a fishing boat to intercept him. That was more unnatural than the storm. He passed between the rocky shoulders of walls carved into the mountains. He entertained himself along the way by searching for signs of the army that had passed this way last year. The rocky ground did not absorb much, and so discarded shields, lost helmets, bits of cloth and wood littered the path. Eldegris had been busy reconstructing his kingdom, but had apparently not ordered anyone to clean up his front doors.

He arrived at the first curtain wall, and he stood amazed. "This is not good at all," he said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lethos stood holding Grimwold and stared up at the stone fortress of Norddalr. The soaring wall and gate had been demolished. The ground in front of it had been torn up. The iron doors were twisted and blown open. The breaches in the wall showed fresh, bright rock where it had only recently been shattered. He stood at least five minutes gaping at the destruction. He called out to the tower that still had its lower levels intact. No answers came from the slitted windows overhead. He did not expect any. The place seemed abandoned.

A year ago trolls and angry barbarians had swarmed beneath this gate. In the fields surrounding it Grimwold had defeated his possessed sister, and atop it Eldegris had slain the blood sorcerer Amator who had cursed Lethos with his Minotaur shape. Now it was eerily quiet as he picked his way through the gap. Dust was still in the air, even though the wind had died to nothing.

Bearing Grimwold in his arms, he felt stupidly like an intruder. He should have been challenged or at least spotted. There were other towers. Why was he slipping into the fortress unopposed? The successive walls were intact, but the gates had all been blown open as if an invisible fist had slammed through them. The flanking towers squatted empty and dark. He continued through until he came to a large yard that surrounded the main fortress. He stood in the pool of shadows, surveying the damage.

An impractically high tower loomed over him as Lethos leaned back to look up. Its soaring height reminded him of Amator's tower from Raffheim. Debris and massive stones littered the yard. Barrels, carts of straw, and crates lined the walls. All signs of recent life. A sour note hung in the air and Lethos gagged when he recognized it.

It was blood. It was the same burnt, sweet blood he had scented when Amator had used his magic. The bull within him stirred at his stench, and he felt a sudden urge to roar.

He set Grimwold down, wishing he had worn his sword or at least strapped one to Grimwold. Now he had only a small dagger at his waist, and touching that did not make him feel safer. The doors to the fortress hung open, a yawning blackness waiting to swallow him whole.

"Over here!" The female voice was a desperate whisper, but he heard it. Lethos nearly jumped, whirling around to find the source. "In the hay cart."

He followed the woman's desperate voice, peering at the hay cart until he noticed two startling blue eyes staring at him from within the yellow straw. He approached her warily, checking the walls above for a trap. But he was soon taking her cold and trembling hand and hefting her out of the straw.

"You are the one who aided my father in the war of the trolls," she said as she brushed straw out of her full, golden hair.

"You are High King Eldegris's daughter," he said. She stood over him on the cart, looking down on him like the subject he was. He recognized her immediately, for she was as powerfully beautiful as her mother, Queen Siffred, and had the commanding aura and set jaw of her father. Though her green dress was stained and covered in straw, and her startlingly blue eyes were wide with terror, she still carried herself with dignity. Her hand rested on a dagger sheathed at her hip.

"Where is my father? What happened to the others?"

"I'm wondering the same, my lady." He didn't know how to address her, and thought it bad form to not remember her name. The High King had so many children, how could he be expected to remember them all. He had a son, that was about all the detail Lethos could muster.

The princess's eyes lingered over Grimwold's body, but Lethos saw her dismiss him as she continued to scan the grounds. "He was killed before my eyes, right there."

She leapt from the cart and strode with as much purpose as her form-fitting dress allowed. The bull spirit had him focus on her body when he needed to understand what she was saying. He shook his head.

"Stay down," he said through clenched teeth. The princess stopped and looked at him. He gave a weak smile. "What do you mean your father was killed?"

Giving him an appraising look universal to all nobility, barbaric or civilized, she raised a thin eyebrow at him. "It is as I say. My father and scores of his best men came from those doors to face the invaders. He was cut down right here."

"Yet there is not even a drop of blood here, my lady. Though the air smells of it."

She crouched down, touching the dirt with her hand. "The ground is disturbed here, and there are footprints all around."

Lethos opened his mouth to congratulate her on noticing the obvious and ask her to confirm if the sky was indeed blue. Yet he just smiled. She was royalty.

"They came out of Urdis's finger. It smashed the curtain wall and then dropped seven strange men into the courtyard. My father opposed them." She stood and stared defiantly at Lethos. He had no answer for the fire he saw in those eyes. This woman believed what she said. How could he deny her, having seen far stranger things. He could change into a Minotaur. Nothing was stranger than that.

She explained how she had fallen from the tower into the hay and the men did not see her. The leader was called Avulash, and he used a strange black mist to kill all her father's men. Lethos shuddered at that, remembering too clearly Amator's blood magic. She described her father's death, and though she breathed heavily she did not cry like the weak princess he expected her to be. She had apparently blacked out after her father's murder, for the next she remembered Lethos had carried Grimwold into the empty yard. At last she paused, her heart-shaped face flushed pink.

"My name is Valda, and you are Lethos?" He nodded. "Thank you for listening to this. I know it sounds unbelievable, but it is what I saw. And one more thing. I spotted a ghost ship on the water. It was as big as a castle, with five masts and three banks of massive oars."

Lethos's hands went numb. Ice began to trickle along his spine and he had an overwhelming urge to place Grimwold in hiding.

"We've got to get out of here," he said. "Quickly, into the fortress then go into the left corridor. Do not waste time."

She stared at him, but he was already scooping Grimwold into his arms. He flopped like a rag doll and his chain mail crunched as Lethos dropped him on the cart. As he shoved Grimwold under the hay, he noticed the black spot on his chest had darkened. The dull ache in his own chest, however, remained the same. Once satisfied Grimwold was hidden, he sprinted after Valda. The cold trickle of ice made him shiver. Inside the fortress his eyes were unadjusted to the dark, but he turned left on instinct.

Metal scraped and clanked as seven armored forms passed his hiding spot in the dark hallway. They seemed like men, but Lethos felt a wave of cold in their wake. Valda crouched next to him, her cool hands on his back. She patted him frantically as if to silently confirm these were the killers of her father.

Once they had passed, Lethos followed them out, keeping low so as to remain unseen. The men had assembled in the courtyard, their armor glaring in the light. One man approached Grimwold's hiding spot, and Lethos's heart jumped out of his neck. The strange man went to the cart that hid Grimwold and began to pull aside the hay.