Resurgent Shadows (Successive Harmony Book 1) (29 page)

“I, Gamlin, son of Gamal, will arbitrate on behalf of the Chief of the Ragnar Clan.”

Roars of approval sounded from all the gathered dvergers as the two Arbiters pushed their way out of the throng and walked off a measured distance to discuss the terms of the Holmganga in private.

The crowd that gathered to witness the match grew considerably in an incredibly short amount of time. Hundreds of dvergers milled about near where Eric stood with Torsten, Olan, and the others, shouting boisterously amongst themselves over who they thought would be the victor and various other subjects. Money exchanged hands and bets were placed as if the contest was some sort of popular sport.

Eric turned to Torsten and signaled that he wanted to talk to the dverger alone. Torsten walked over to him with a small grin playing about his bearded lips.

“Why is Gamal doing this?” Eric asked quietly, feeling an odd mixture of irritation and excitement. “Isn’t slaying a dragon enough to satisfy you people that I can be trusted? What game is he playing?”

Torsten’s grin grew wider and he took a step closer to Eric, placing one hand on Valundnir’s head. As he did so, Eric felt a sudden, powerful surge of warmth leap from the weapon and into his body, suffusing him with such energy and strength that he felt he might burst with it. He started shaking slightly as he tried to contain it.

“He wants Valundnir,” Torsten whispered softly, his eye locked with Eric’s. “He is using the excuse that you dishonored him in the first War Council to try and win Valundnir from you. He has always been ambitious. He was jealous and angry when Valundnir chose its last master over him. He wants it now and if he has to kill you, then he will.”

Eric felt his anger well up within him. Fierce and searing, it tore through him and burned away thought and reason. Valundnir was his. The weapon had chosen him. He was not going to give it up—no matter the cost, especially not to an upstart clan chief who couldn’t swallow his own pride.

“He shall not get it,” Eric growled through gritted teeth, turning to face Gamal. His vision showed red around the edges, and he found himself with Valundnir somehow within his grasp.

“Easy, Guerreiro. You must wait for the official declaration to be made.”

Somehow Torsten’s words broke through the shield of anger within his mind and Eric stopped, glaring over impatiently at where Pedryn and Gamlin were discussing the Holmganga. He no longer heard the shouts of the dvergers gathered to watch the spectacle or the protests of his squad. He no longer saw anything except for Gamal and the two Arbiters. Somewhere in the back of his mind a small voice whispered at him to wait, holding him in place like an anchor against the storm as he burned with waves of energy and strength that crashed against the confines of his body and longed to be set free. The voice was familiar, though he could not place it in his anger.

He didn’t have long to wait as the two dvergers soon rejoined the throng. Their faces were grim, but they both turned and faced their respective participants and intoned in unison.

“The rules have been set, the Holmganga will soon begin!”

Pedryn walked towards Eric as Gamlin walked to his father. Pedryn opened his mouth to speak but stopped as his eyes fell upon Eric’s angry face. His bushy eyebrows came together in a worried frown, but, after a quick glance at Torsten, continued.

“Gamlin and I will mark the boundaries of the designated area. There will be no weapons. We agreed that in order to fully justify the level of honor being contested, we needed to follow the most traditional and basic rules. The victor takes everything the loser has—it is a bare-handed fight to the death.”

“So be it,” Eric growled, reaching behind him and dropping Valundnir into Torsten’s waiting hands. The small voice questioned the necessity of a death match, but the rage and anger within him welcomed the finality of it.

Pedryn looked over at Torsten again with confusion evident in his questioning gaze, but the cleric shook his head and gave a flat grin.

Gamal was quickly divesting himself of weapons and armor. The barrel-chested dverger stripped down to just his thick leather leggings and stepped past his son. His arms were thick and muscled, covered in a heavy layer of curly brown hair that extended down his torso and covered his front half.

Eric removed his shirt and tossed it to the ground. Laughter erupted from the crowd, though there was no humor in it. Though Eric was fit and well-muscled, standing taller than the dverger by nearly a foot, he looked scrawny when compared to Gamal’s sheer muscle and bulk.

Eric felt nothing through the sea of anger and mist of red that clouded his mind. His vision excluded all else from sight but the dverger who desired Valundnir for his own.

Pedryn stepped off to Eric’s left as Gamlin mirrored the action on Gamal’s right side, marking off the edges of the field of battle. There was a moment’s pause and then they both nodded, signaling the contest to begin.

Eric immediately exploded into action, surging forward in a burst of speed that cut the distance between him and Gamal in seconds. The dverger grunted and lowered his head into the charge. Eric slammed into him, bringing clenched fists down on Gamal’s shoulder near the collarbone before the ricocheting force from the collision knocked him backwards.

Gamal shrugged off the blow, reaching out with surprising agility, wrapping a powerful hand around Eric’s lower calf, and dragging him backward towards him as if he were a small child.

Eric kicked out with his other foot and felt it connect with Gamal’s wrist; the dverger’s grip slackened. Eric pulled free and swung his legs back around, driving his foot into the back of Gamal’s knee. The force of the blow would have felled any human, but the stolid dverger merely grunted and sent a kick in Eric’s direction. It connected with Eric’s side as he was getting to his feet, and Eric heard at least one of his ribs break as he was sent rolling through the dirt. He didn’t feel the pain of the injury through the waves of warmth and adrenaline that were coursing through his veins.

He continued the roll, then dove to the left as Gamal lumbered passed him, missing trampling Eric by mere inches. Eric leapt to his feet and took an open stance as the dverger turned about, neither as quick nor as agile as his human opponent.

Gamal grimaced and balled his fists, stepping forward with a roundhouse blow. Eric ducked backwards and then lashed out with two rapid punches to the dverger’s face. They opened a cut on the dverger’s lower lip which immediately began to bleed, but it may as well have been a nosebleed for all it affected Gamal.

The dverger roared and dove forward unexpectedly, wrapping Eric in a crushing embrace and bearing him to the ground underneath him. Eric struggled to get out from beneath the dverger’s suffocating weight as Gamal rained jarringly powerful blows down upon his face. Eric felt his nose break and his jaw dislodge from its socket as he fought to get away, tears automatically springing into his eyes at the pain that cut through his slowly darkening vision. Splotches of light shone like stars against the grayish-red corners of his sight, throbbing with each successive hit.

Eric roared in rage and brought his knee up, hitting a crushing blow between the dverger’s legs that sent Gamal toppling off of him. Eric scrambled to his feet drunkenly, almost falling from the suddenly rush of blood to his head and the effects of the damage done to his face.

The watching dvergers shouted angrily at the cowardly move, but Torsten silenced them with a shout.

Eric’s vision swam with a mixture of red and black mist and he staggered a little as he tried to blink away the confusion and tears. Adrenaline pumped through him along with a fresh wave of rage and energy and the cloudiness left his eyes, leaving only the red haze of his anger. His lungs heaved as he gasped for breath and Gamal got to his feet clutching his groin. Eric tasted blood and spat, sending a stream of saliva and blood onto the ground at Gamal’s feet.

The dverger bellowed in a rage of his own and charged, but Eric was not about to be taken to the ground again. Even through his rage, the small voice in his mind warned him that he would not survive another encounter with the dverger’s meaty fists. Eric spun to one side and dodged Gamal’s outstretched hands. Eric staggered as he turned, but managed to trip the dverger up as he passed, sending him sprawling into the dirt. Eric was on top of him in an instant, his knees pressed up against the dverger’s shoulders. One hand snaked out and cupped around the dverger’s bearded chin, the other crossing along the back of Gamal’s head to grasp him just behind the ear.

Instantly two opposing forces reared up in Eric’s mind, clamoring for control. The small voice yelled at him to stop, cutting through fires of anger and rage like a knife. The voice struggled against the irrationality of the situation. There was no need to kill the dverger. The question had been decided and Holmganga’s tenets honored. This was barbarism. It was murder!

Eric’s grip slackened and Gamal struggled to his feet with Eric on his back. The rage fought back and Torsten’s words echoed across his mind. Gamal would kill him to get Valundnir. Gamal would kill him out of jealousy and spite.

The two opposing forces teetered for a pregnant moment and then the rage burned away the small voice. Strength flowed through Eric’s body and, with a primordial roar of defiance, Eric planted his feet and jerked with all his strength. His hands flew in opposite directions and Gamal’s neck snapped with a sudden violent crack that seemed to echo in the stunned silence.

Eric’s lungs heaved as he let go of the dverger and Gamal’s body flopped forward onto the ground, his dead eyes staring upwards blankly. Eric threw his head back and flung his arms into the air, Valundnir appearing in his hands in a coalescence of shadow a light. He roared his triumph into the hazy sky then toppled face forward into the dirt, unconscious.

*              *              *              *

Eric became aware of himself suddenly, as if awakening from a dream. He was lying on something soft and lumpy. His eyes were closed, but light shone through the lids, giving them a reddish cast. The memory of the Holmganga came flooding back to him in a rush of images and sounds, giving him a splitting headache.

He reached up to feel his face, but a firm hand stopped him.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Torsten’s voice said. “There was more damage than I could repair. You’ve been out for almost a full day.”

Eric opened his eyes and saw Torsten’s face peering down at him. There was an indescribable, ancient sadness in his expression as he looked down at Eric—as if he bore a grief that was more than he could bear. There was bitterness in his eyes as well, deep and profound. Eric blinked and Torsten’s expression cleared, though Eric could still see a hint of the bitterness within the cleric’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” Eric asked his voice surprisingly strong.

“See for yourself I guess.” Torsten said resignedly. The dverger picked up a small mirror and handed it to Eric.

With some trepidation at the thought of what Natalie would think if he came back disfigured, Eric lifted the mirror up to eye level and looked into it. His face, perfectly smooth and fully healed, stared back at him.

Torsten roared with laughter, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I can’t heal ugly or stupid!” He snatched the mirror away before Eric could throw it.

Eric gave the cleric a sarcastic grin and sat up. He was in a small tent on a bed of small round cushions. The sounds of the dverger army making camp came from outside the tent door, which was fastened shut. Valundnir lay at the foot of the makeshift bed, lying innocently upon the ground. At the sight of the weapon, memories of his victory in the Holmganga flashed through his mind. Gamal’s unseeing eyes stared at him accusingly, awakening overwhelming feelings of guilt and remorse deep within him.

“What have I done?” he asked, shuddering. He sent a silent prayer heavenward, asking for strength and forgiveness.

Torsten looked at him, and Eric was again overcome by the weighty sadness and bitterness that crossed the dverger’s face. “You have done what was required of you by the laws of Holmganga. You preserved your own life by taking another’s.”

With a start, Eric recognized the small voice that had spoken within his mind during the contest. It had been Torsten holding the rage and fury in check. Eric didn’t know what to say to him, so he said nothing other than to silently agree with Torsten’s softly spoken words. Necessity had been the deciding factor when the choice still hung in the balance.

No,
a small voice whispered in the back of his mind,
it wasn’t necessary.
Eric reached up a hand and massaged his temples. He
could
have stopped it, there at the end, but the thrill of power, anger, and energy that had washed through him at the last, had burned away any final resistance. And, if Eric was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure he hadn’t
wanted
it to end that way. Valundnir was changing him. Logically, it wasn’t possible for a hammer, an inanimate object with no explainable will of its own, to influence Eric’s actions, but it was. It was only in moments like this, when the hammer was away from him, that he was able to escape the hammer’s siren call. But that power . . . 

Eric shuddered again and almost unconsciously reached for Valundnir. The weapon materialized in his hands with a shower of bronze sparks. A new strength surged through him and he was able to suppress the shame that threatened to subdue him. Instead, he grinned.