Black Monastery (28 page)

Bitch.

Child. Innocent. Lover.

Closing his eyes and moaning in torment, he shook his head from side to side. Then he ripped open his shirt and beat
Heart-Ripper’s
pommel against his chest once, twice, three times, drawing blood and causing himself to stagger from the pain. But the throbbing cut through the torment in his soul and gave him clarity.

Then he heard a woman cry out in passion. They were just ahead, through the trees. Olaf had told the truth.

Panting, Asgrim let his fingers trail through the blood on his chest, leaving tracks. Was he surprised? Had he always known, or at least suspected? Perhaps. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to see it or to acknowledge it and thereby make it real, something that would need to be dealt with.

His rage throbbed and flared. Asgrim Wood-Nose, the ugly freak no woman could ever love—he wasn’t lucky. He was cursed. He pushed through the bushes, coming up on them from behind. They lay on a blanket, naked, with their backs to him. Sweaty and red, Freya sat atop Frodi, riding him. Frodi’s eyes were closed and his face was rapturous.

He had always liked the young man. More than just handsome, he was also polite and earnest. Why? Why was he doing this to Asgrim? Why were the two of them doing this to him? The world seemed to spin about him. Why had all women treated him like a monster?

And he knew the answer: because he
was
a monster.

At that moment, Freya, who had never made any noise other than a whimper when she had lain with Asgrim, cried out once again in ecstasy. Asgrim didn’t even remember making the decision to move; it just happened, as if he were standing separate from his own body and watching someone else—a stranger—step forward, pulling
Heart-Ripper
back.

With an agonized scream, Asgrim thrust the crucible steel forward through Freya’s naked spine, going all the way through her body and into the young man’s. They screamed in agony and thrashed about, but Asgrim leaned into the blade as he yanked it up to tear a gaping wound in their bodies. He pushed so hard that the blade went all the way through them and into the blanket and then the dirt beneath it, pinning them together. Asgrim released them and staggered back, crying out in rage and horror as he yanked
Heart-Ripper
from them. Panting, he stared stupidly at them. Had he really just done this thing, this monstrous thing? It seemed impossible.

The young lovers lay together, Freya still atop Frodi with her face in his neck; Frodi stared stupidly at Asgrim. Still somehow alive, his lips quivered, opened slightly, and then closed again. Then his eyes rolled up, exposing just the whites, and his death rattle slipped from his throat. Blood gushed from their bodies, soaking the blanket and mingling together in a rapidly spreading pool. So much blood had come all at once, so fast. Asgrim had killed them both almost instantly.

But then again, he was so very good at killing people.

He dropped to his knees at their feet, into the spreading pool of blood that soaked through his hose.
Heart-Ripper
dropped from his nerveless fingers.

“Damn you, damn you, damn you,” he cried out in a hoarse whisper as tears ran down his cheeks.

He closed his eyes, and the world spun about him. A vast, growling wind gripped him, lifted him into the air, and spun him about like a top.

And then he found himself somewhere else, sometime else, back on the same unnatural shoreline on which he had found himself before when the spirit of Frodi had spoken to him the first time, to tell him Freya awaited him. Once again, he was surrounded by fog and an uncanny silence.

The afterlife. The spirit world.

“Brother,” a familiar voice called out.

Bjorn stood in the water, his skin grey and his eyes pits of darkness. His brother was dead, a shadow of the man he had been.

“Bjorn,” whispered Asgrim. “Why are you here?”

“I cannot go on,” said Bjorn. “There is no Valhalla for me.”

“But you died in battle. How… how is that—”

“The
Marid’s
taint passes through worlds and into the lands of the dead,” Freya’s voice announced from behind him.

Spinning in place, Asgrim saw her standing near the edge of the water, her hands clasped in front of her. A spreading stain of blood soaked through the front of her gown. He closed his eyes, feeling the crushing weight of his crimes.

“Freya,” he mumbled, “I’m sorry for what I did. I’m so sorry.”

She cocked her head to the side, watching him with a puzzled gaze. “Perhaps,” she whispered. “But your sorrow changes nothing now.”

And she was right. He moaned and nodded, knowing some crimes could never be forgiven. He motioned toward Bjorn with his head. “What madness is this, then? Why isn’t my brother in Valhalla? How can an eastern spirit interfere with a warrior’s journey to Valhalla? The Valkyries—”

“Did not come for me, brother. I died when the
Marid
took my body, not when you cut it open. There is no Valhalla for me,” said Bjorn.

“No,” whispered Asgrim.

A surge of emotions rushed through him, making the world seem to spin and wobble, as his mind grappled with this information. He hadn’t killed his brother, then; he wasn’t a kinslayer. But his relief was almost immediately overwhelmed by the realization that his brother would never see the afterlife he deserved.

This couldn’t be.

“We are all lost now, Captain,” said Harald Skull-Splitter, stepping out of the fog, moving to stand beside Bjorn.

“Harald…” said Asgrim. “But…”

More figures stepped out of the fog. The remainder of his crew joined Bjorn and Harald. All were dead. They stood in a semicircle facing him, silently watching him through dead eyes.

“No,” whispered Asgrim. The weight of responsibility crushed down on him. “
All
of you?”

Freya sighed, her expression so sad. “The
Marid
knew it had to deal with the Saracens that would be coming for it. It knew that if it didn’t, they might recapture it someday, force it to serve them again. Now, that fear is gone, so it can concentrate on what it always wanted,
you and your ship
, to use the shells of your men. It is a demon of the sea and needed a way to raid along the coast. I told you it had to be stopped. Now, it will use your ship, killing everywhere it goes. And the spirits of those that it kills will never rest.”

“We shall never rest,” said Bjorn.

“Never,” said Harald.

“Never,” echoed the voices of his crew.

“No,” whispered Asgrim. “I’ve led you all to this horror?”

Dizziness overcame him, and the world seemed to spin about him. “What… what do I do?”

Freya stepped closer. “You must not let it leave. Only
you
remain to stop it now. Only you.”

“
How
? How does one man fight such a thing? It beat us all—even the Saracens. And they used magic,” said Asgrim.

“The Saracens sought to capture it, to use its power,” said Freya. “But the
Marid
cannot be held by men, not forever. It must be banished, sent back to its own realm.”

“But how?” asked Asgrim.

“I wish I could fight with you again, brother,” said Bjorn, stepping closer now, reaching out with his large arms and placing them on Asgrim’s shoulders, “just one last time. But I’m dead.
You
must find a way. It’s only you now.”

Asgrim shuddered at his cold touch.

“Only you,” said Bjorn. He turned away and walked into the ocean, disappearing into the fog.

“Only you, Captain,” said Harald Skull-Splitter as he, too, turned and vanished.

“Only you,” said his dead crew, disappearing.

“I can’t fight such a thing,” said Asgrim. “It’s not possible.”

Freya watched him. She wore no expression on her face. “You’ve led such a wicked life, Asgrim Wood-Nose, hurt so many. Yet you’re not truly evil, are you? Merely weak, so very weak.”

“I’m sorry,” said Asgrim. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you. If I could take it back…”

Freya considered him for a long moment, and then she shook her head, turned, and walked away into the mist, leaving him alone.

“I don’t know what to do,” Asgrim said. He dropped to his knees in the water. “I don’t know what to do.”

Then, as if from far away, he heard Freya’s voice one last time, almost a whisper. “It is a sea demon. It gains its strength from the ocean.”

As his world turned dark, he heard a woman call his name.

* * *

Alda cradled Asgrim’s head in her lap and begged him to stay alive and to stay with her. She knew she was acting overly emotional. He wasn’t wounded, merely exhausted, but she couldn’t help how she felt. She had been hiding alone in the woods for more than a week, terrified that the devil that had possessed the knight would find her and skin her, as it had the poor village woman who had come seeking her healing skills and had been caught in her place. Always sensitive to the otherworld, Alda had felt something evil coming for her that day. Horrified, she had fled into the woods, desperate to get away and to save herself. Much later, when her panic subsided, she crept back to her home and found the butchered remains of the woman hanging from a tree. Horror, grief, and shame overcame her, and she fled again, nearly mindless, into the woods.

Many days later, she saw the northmen again, moving toward the cursed monastery—and Asgrim was leading them. He was back with his own kind. To her surprise, feelings of intense happiness flooded through her when she saw him, tall and proud, as he led his men; and for the first time in days, she smiled. After they passed, she followed them, needing to be near him—even if he didn’t want her. She couldn’t help it.

When he had reappeared from the ruins of the monastery, pursued by those black-eyed soldiers, she had not hesitated to come to his aid.

Asgrim mumbled and stirred in his sleep. Alda smiled down upon him and smoothed his hair away from his forehead. Leaning over, she kissed him once upon the lips and softly whispered his name.

The world was indeed wondrous and strange when a Frankish woman fell in love with a Viking warrior.

* * *

Asgrim awakened to Alda’s touch, hearing her repeat his name. Bolting upright, he pulled her to him in a tight embrace, crushing her against his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left you. I thought you dead.”

She said something, pleading with him in rushed words. He didn’t understand, but he knew what she was asking just the same. She wanted to leave this place, to flee with him. He wanted that, as well. Together, they could find one of the stray Frank horses, wait for low tide, and then ride away from this island of horrors across the spit of land that reached to the mainland.

Who could blame him? No man could fight the dead.

He would have the love and companionship he’d always wanted, perhaps even a child, perhaps more than one. It was his chance finally, his time. What could stop him?

Fate.

Even now, the three spinners held their scissors over the thread that was his life, mocking him, offering him what he most desired, and then denying it to him.

No. Not fate, but duty and responsibility. Damn the crones.

He held her at arm’s length, staring into her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I want that, I want a life with you, but it’s not for me. I don’t deserve it. I owe the dead.”

Tears ran down her cheeks, and she buried her face in his neck, sobbing into his beard, somehow understanding what he was going to do.

What he had to do.

Twenty

The Black Monastery,

August 14, 799,

Evening

With Alda accompanying him, Asgrim returned to the black monastery one last time. This time, though, the
Marid
was no longer present; it had used the monastery to ambush the Danes and Saracens, then moved on—no doubt to Asgrim’s ship. The air within the monastery was still tainted with its evil; perhaps it always would be. In the crypt, he retrieved
Heart-Ripper
from among the dead, quickly grabbing it and turning away, stepping around the corpses.

The Saracens’ magic had not protected them, but Asgrim still wore the eastern talisman he had taken from Abid, thinking it couldn’t hurt. It was a simple enough piece of jewelry: a palm-sized, round piece of silver covered with Saracen markings and what appeared to be stars. Perhaps it wasn’t magic at all, but simply a family heirloom or a keepsake of Abid’s. He let it hang beside his Thor’s hammer.

On his way out, he paused at the bottom of the stairs and let his gaze rest on the bodies of his men, lying among the Saracens and Franks they had slain. Those had been good, brave men, and they deserved more than to be left here to rot in this evil place. But he could do nothing for them, and at least they had died fighting. He hadn’t seen Steiner’s spirit in his dream, or any of these men. Perhaps that meant they had been spared the horror the others had not and were already in Valhalla. He just didn’t know. Besides, he would probably join them soon enough. He climbed the stairs.

Once out of the crypt, he searched what was left of the monastery’s worksheds. The main complex was now only rubble and stone; however, some of the buildings that had stood separate from the monastery—the kitchen, smithy, stables, and workshops—still remained intact. In a storage shed, he found what he was looking for, a bundle of reed torches and a single clay jar half-filled with oil for the monks’ lanterns.

He would burn
Sea Eel
before allowing the
Marid
to take it.

Asgrim tried to send Alda away from him, but failed utterly. She refused to leave his side. He became angry, raising his voice and pointing toward the Frankish village, but she shook her head and took the jar of oil and bundle of torches from his hands. Then she waited for him, staring at him in challenge. He watched her stubborn face for long moments and then nodded.

She had her own fate, too. Who was he to refuse her?

In darkness, they set out for
Sea Eel
. How had it come to this? How could he be the last Dane? Once, men had believed him lucky. No more.