RuneWarriors (9 page)

It was no surprise to anyone when Jarl chose Vik and Rik the Vicious Brothers. Vik and Rik were like Jarl's own personal bodyguards. They followed him wherever he went and, as their names might suggest, were not known for being charming conversationalists. They were big and brutish and bearded and possessed the kind of irascible dispositions most often associated with bears disturbed during hibernation. Being twins, Vik and Rik looked a lot alike and so, to help others tell them apart, they each wore an earring, Vik in his left ear, Rik in his
right. And being simple guys with simple tastes, there were really only two things Vik and Rik the Vicious Brothers liked doing: drinking and fighting. It was all they knew how to do, and so they took great pride in drinking and fighting often and well, and usually both at the same time.

It was then that Blek the Boatman emerged from the outhut. Hearing what had been decided during his absence, he gave protest. After all, it was
his
daughter who'd been snatched, and he demanded that he be taken on the journey as well, if only to help read the stars for navigation. Badly cross-eyed and gimpy-legged as he was, Blek's volunteering didn't exactly raise cheers from the group. But Dane came to his aid, vouching for Blek's bravery and his badger-paw soup, and soon it was settled.

They also got an argument from Fulnir's father, Prasarr the Quarreler, who insisted that he too should go, if only to be an oarsman and help sing the sea chanteys. “Help guzzle the grog is more like it,” his wife barked in derision. And she took Prasarr by the ear and dragged him off, the two arguing all the way home.

Lut the Bent was also taken on board to act as spiritual advisor and runemaster. The final occupant onboard was Klint the raven. Ever since Dane had befriended him after the wolf fight and nursed him back to health, the two had been inseparable. Klint had proven very intelligent, helping Dane and his friends to locate prey while hunting out
in the wild and to find their way when lost in the darkest of forests. He had even learned to understand sixteen different verbal commands. This was five more than Drott had ever learned, and though Drott was Dane's closest friend, Klint was the creature Dane trusted most in moments when keen instinct was needed. When it came to brains, everyone knew Drott had drawn the severely short end of the stick; in fact, some thought he hadn't drawn a stick at all. It was common knowledge that even a drunken weasel had more sense than poor old Drott. But Drott's friends didn't love him any the less. For they knew there was no more loyal a pal nor more jocular a drinking companion than Drott the Dim, and when Dane set out that day on the voyage, he was happy to have his dear friend Drotty at his side.

 

So the prophecy has come to pass
, thought Lut. The boy had brought darkness to the village as his birth dream had long ago foretold. And now the wise one, their chieftain, was dead. So be it. What's done is done.
What the fates have writ, men shall not erase.
This bit of accepted wisdom came to him like a warm blanket on a cold night. For he'd been awash with guilt, feeling it his fault for not telling his chieftain sooner. And though benumbed by an unspeakable sadness, he found comfort in the ancient ways, and in some deep recess of his mind—or heart, he wasn't sure which—he was reassured to know that he'd been right. He hadn't lost his seer's touch; the old one still had it.

As he packed for the journey, his thoughts drifted away from the pain of recent events to that still place inside wherein each man finds tranquility. And once there, he began meditating on the idea of destiny.
What the fates have writ, men shall not erase….
How many time she had uttered those words. But what exactly did they mean? That one's fate was inalterably fixed? A man's entire life? Was there no chance for redemption? Though he had never revealed this to anyone, especially not the elders, he'd long entertained the notion that perhaps not
all
of a man's life was preordained. For, if so, what was the point of living? Perhaps, just perhaps, he dared to imagine, impediments were placed in our paths by the gods, and a man was judged by how well he
dealt
with these obstacles. Did he give up? Did he give in? Did he fight to change his circumstances? Was he weak? Strong? Indolent? Indomitable? Instead of a man being wholly defined by his fate, perhaps a man's very character was defined by his
response
to the fate that was spun for him. Couldn't it at least be possible? It certainly seemed—

Craaash!
His reverie broken, Lut looked down. His jar of ale lay on the floor. It had slipped from his hand while he'd been thinking. A sign if he'd ever seen one:
Stop dreaming, old man, and get aboard the ship! They're waiting for you!
He hurried to put his last few things into his rucksack, not forgetting his leather runebag, and shuffled out of the hut into the dusty light of morning.

He walked through the village, or what was left of it, past the mostly silent women and children at work rebuilding their homes. He patted the heads of the wee ones as he went, nodding at their good-byes. Bits of gray ash rose from the charred and blackened remains. There was an air of death about the place. It occurred to Lut that this might be the last time he ever laid eyes upon his home or his people. He was embarking on a journey with the same man the runes had warned him would bring trouble.

He saw the raised longship on shore, the younger men loading it for the journey ahead, its striped sailcloth billowing in the wind above its carved dragonhead prow. He saw Dane the redhead on the shoreline, hefting a cask of drinking water to his shoulder, and the old one watched him wade to the ship and lift it aboard. Lut heard a familiar
crawk!
and there flew the raven, looping high and lazy in a pale blue patch of sky,
skreek
ing every so often as if conversing with his master. And then, when Dane made answer, the bird, in instant obedience, flew down to alight on Dane's outstretched arm. Lut pondered the raven. He knew that, according to the lore of his forefathers, the ravens Hugin and Munin sat on Odin's shoulders, acting as his eyes and ears, spying on the doings of men below on earth. And he remembered the words of his own father, Lundrin the Wise, who'd taught him what the seers of yore, now long dead, had once written, “Men watch, but the raven sees….”

And then Lut knew: The raven would watch over them. He would be their sentinel. Their eyes and their ears. Comforted by this notion, the old one turned his back on the village and walked on toward the redhead, the bird, and the ship—and the adventure that lay ahead.

A
spray of seawater wet Dane's cheek as he crouched on the foredeck, anxiously poring over the maps laid out beneath him. Two hours at sea and already they were at each other's throats, he and Jarl, and Dane knew that he'd have a full-scale mutiny on his hands if he didn't soon settle on a course of action.

They'd found their wind, but now they were sorely lacking in wisdom.

Behind him, he heard the men grumbling, as seamen often do, about the quality of the food being served and the body odor of their oaring companions and general conditions on board ship. And though he knew the men well, had known them all since boyhood, Dane felt alone on the open water, without a friend in the world. Klint, his raven, gave a solicitous
crawk!
from the railing nearby. Dane peered down at his maps, pretending he
knew what he was doing.

It was as Dane had said. The low tide had left the warship he'd sunk partly exposed on the beach. It had taken some doing, but the men had managed to pull it out of the water, raise a new sail, and come morning launch it. Finding it seaworthy, in the space of an hour the men had loaded stores of salt fish and meat and casks of fresh water on board, as well as maps and medicinal herbs and all the weaponry the villagers could spare: axes, arrows, broadswords, halberds, long spears, and even a few knives for hand-to-hand combat. Lut brought the runes for further guidance and Drott his own personal keg of ale notched with his own mark—this so others, especially the Vicious Brothers, would know it to be his and not drink from it.

Jarl, of course, had brought two things he valued most: the silver-handled dagger he had named Dæmonklösa, or Demon Claw, which he kept on his person at all times, and his prized collection of grooming combs and brushes. By Dane's count, Jarl had already used the grooming kit three times on his healthy mane of hair, employing an all-too-familiar routine of rigorous combing and brushing to preen and prettify what he termed his “flaxen locks,” the third of his three most-prized possessions.

Soon after they'd set sail, an argument had broken out between Dane and Jarl about which direction they should go. They'd soon realized they had no idea which way Thidrek's ships had sailed or where, in the many hundred
fingerlet fjords along the coastline, he might be hiding with Astrid. It was thought that like the Berserkers he had employed, he would keep constantly on the move, attacking more villages haphazardly to expand his empire, for it was fairly apparent now that he was on the warpath and therefore would keep his enemies in the dark as to his whereabouts. So, save for a stroke of blind luck, it seemed they had little chance of finding him—or Astrid—anytime soon. The men began to grumble. Despair set in. Where were they to go? What were they to do?

“Isn't it customary for the captain to have
some
idea where to point the ship?” asked Blek the Boatman testily, casting dark looks at Jarl and Dane. “My daughter's in the clutches of a madman, and you both stand there dithering!”

All eyes went to Dane and Jarl, who hovered over their maps while the men waited for one of them to make a decision, to say or do something that showed they were capably in charge. Dane felt suddenly foolish, like a little boy who'd lured his friends out onto thin ice, swearing it wouldn't crack. Then he remembered the runes.

“We've reached the first of our three goals. The gods have given us wind,” he said, nodding to the wind-billowed sail. “Now we must seek wisdom.”

“Oh, great,” said Rik the Vicious. “So what you're saying is you've got no idea what to do! That's encouraging!”

“Hey, give him a chance, will you?” Drott said in Dane's defense. “So he doesn't know—he's doing his best.”

“But he's in charge,” chimed in Vik. “He's
supposed
to know.”

“Oh, right,” Drott said, his cheeks reddening, realizing he'd said something stupid again.

Yes
, Dane thought,
I'm supposed to know. But I don't. If I'd only listened more to the seafaring stories my father had told, maybe, just maybe—

“Wait! Look!” said Jarl, stabbing his map. “I think—yes! It's the Well of Knowledge! I've found it!” The men hurried over and gathered round Jarl, the fair one excitedly explaining that two of the ancient maps handed down by his great-great-grandfather had been stuck together, and when he'd pulled them apart, he'd spied a spot on the hand-drawn map underneath, an island marked
Visdomvatn,
meaning “wisdom water”! It had to be the lost oracle of legend! Jarl stood, lifting the vellum map for all to see, and throwing back his hair, he called out:

“Let no man doubt me! It is here we shall find the wisdom we seek!”

Vik and Rik instantly threw him their support, clapping Jarl on the back and saying of course it was the Well of Knowledge and wasn't Jarl clever for having found it. Hopes on the rise, other men chimed in, gathering round to look at the map, telling Jarl, “We knew you had it in you” and “We were behind you all the way!” Jarl beamed, drinking it in.

For the good of their cause, Dane ate his pride and congratulated Jarl for his seamanship, inwardly cursing
himself. Jarl took charge then, calling out orders. The men were all too pleased, it seemed to Dane, to be taking orders from his rival.

 

With their sails billowing in the wind and eight men at the oars, they soon reached the island Jarl had found on his map. There, within a sheltered fjordlet, they drew up beside a high, sheer cliff that rose like a wall straight up out of the sea.

“There,” Lut said, pointing to the mouth of a cave high above them halfway up the cliffs. “The entrance to the Well of Knowledge.”

“Way up there? Gee. Couldn't they have made it any easier to get to?” joked Jarl, feeling his oats, drawing guffaws from his shipmates.

“That's the whole point,” said Ulf the Whale. “If knowledge were too easily gained, we wouldn't value it as much. You have to work for it.” Many made the mistake of believing that if you were fat, you were oafishly stupid as well. As if the two things just naturally went together, like peas and carrots or hugs and kisses or weasels and weasel bites. But in Ulf's case, it wasn't true at all; he could cipher things called “numbers” and read in foreign languages. His father's brother Snorl the Blacksmith had taught him to do this using the many things called “books” he'd brought home from his years of raiding and pillaging. These volumes were handwritten in ink on vellum sheets of thinly stretched sheepskin. Ulf the Whale hungrily
absorbed these volumes, for he enjoyed reading almost as much as he enjoyed eating. Dane and his other friends could barely decipher inscriptions in their own runic alphabet.

“They say,” Lut rasped, “the Well of Knowledge holds many death traps and hidden dangers. They say that to reach the Well of Knowledge and return safely requires much of a man. They say that many venture in, but few ever—”

“O-
kay
, Lut! Lots of danger. Got it,” said Jarl with a nervous grin. “But
they
aren't
me
, now
are
they?” he added, regaining his bravado. “If I don't come back, you can draw lots for my things.” Jarl gave a cocky wink and turned to go. Dane stopped him.

“We both lead, we both bleed,” said Dane. “'Twas the oath we swore.”

Dane saw a quick smirk alight on Jarl's face, a look he'd seen enough times to know it usually meant that Jarl was wishing someone ill or imagining his own glory at their expense. It made Dane ill at ease, and he wondered: Was Jarl to be trusted? Could he be counted on to help if peril befell them? But then the smirk was just as quickly replaced by a warm grin, and Jarl gripped Dane's arm in solidarity. “May the Fates be on our side,” Jarl said, and slapped Dane on the back; and Dane put away his doubts, choosing to believe that Jarl was at last casting aside their differences and warming to the task at hand.

Lut gave them both a blessing, placing a palm atop each
of their foreheads and chanting an invocation for their protection. Dane felt especially comforted by the old one's prayer and the leathery feel of his hand upon his head. “May the eyes of your father guide you well,” said Lut.

“And may yours,” answered Dane, sharing a long look into the old one's eyes, hoping this wouldn't be their last farewell. Then, after bidding good-bye to the others, he and Jarl leaped into the sea, swam to the rocks, and began the long, arduous climb up the craggy cliff to the cave mouth. It was slow going in spots. The two had to pull each other up over a few escarpments, but at last, with aching muscles, they reached the safety of the precipice.

They stood at the mouth of the cave and stared in. A jumble of fallen rock lay near the entranceway. Beyond that, a narrow passageway disappeared into darkness. Just inside the cave, they noticed a small pile of torch sticks, each one tarred at the tip. And then, above it, chiseled in stone, they found the following runic inscriptions, which they slowly deciphered:

“They really know how to make you feel welcome, don't they,” said Dane. Then, using their flint and tinder, he and Jarl each lit a torch. They stood there, staring into the
cave, neither showing fear to the other, but each waiting for the other to take the first step. Then they drew their knives and, shoulder to shoulder, swords sheathed across their backs, they marched into the cave.

They moved slowly at first, raising the torches high so the light would be cast deep into the passageway. Soon, sunlight from the cave mouth behind was gone, and the flickering torchlight was all that they had.

Jarl halted.

“What is it?” asked Dane, stopping beside him.

“I heard something.” They waited, listening. They heard nothing.

“Probably just a mouse,” said Dane, and began to walk on when his flickering torchlight fell on the skeletal remains of a man sprawled before him in the passage. The rotted bones of the ribcage latticed with spiderwebs were sickening to see. Then the pointed head of a brown rat poked up through one of the eyeholes in the skull and scurried away.

“There's your sound,” said Dane. “Rats have picked him clean.” Dane waited for a response, but Jarl said nothing and Dane walked on past the bones into the darkness ahead.

Dane could feel his heart thumping as he crept down the passage, his senses sharpening. The path began to angle downward. He could see the ice-covered walls narrowing. A brisk chill came into the air and a sour smell filled his nostrils. He began to hear a faint rasping noise,
repeating itself, growing louder. Any moment, he feared, something wild and vicious might spring from the darkness. He held his knife at the ready, his heart pounding faster.

His torchlight fell on two more human skeletons, and he passed them without comment. Then he slipped on a patch of ice and fell forward. His torch rolled a few feet away, and its flame flickered out.

Dane lay in darkness, hearing the rasping sound echoing back at him, louder now. And in one panicked moment he realized that he was hearing his own
breathing
echoing off the walls.

Dane stood and relit his torch off Jarl's.

They saw they had reached a fork in the path, a place where the one tunnel split into two. They stood there a moment, absorbing this new development.

“Two paths,” said Dane. “We must part ways.” Fully expecting a frightened Jarl to insist they stay together, Dane was surprised when Jarl quickly agreed. “May the gods be with you,” Jarl said brightly, walking off into the tunnel on the right and calling over his shoulder as he disappeared into darkness. “Last one's a moldy cheese!”

Now having no choice, Dane moved down the tunnel on the left, stepping carefully to avoid any traps as he went, inching his way forward.

And then a gust of air blew out his torch. Blackness. He called out to Jarl but in response heard only the echoing emptiness of his own voice. Why couldn't Jarl hear him?
Was he in trouble too?

Dane instinctively fell on all fours and crawled forward down the ever-narrowing passageway. The ice grew slicker and colder. He heard a hammering in his ears. The rank odor again hit his nose, this time even fouler than before. He thought of his father's last words and the disappointment he'd seen in his eyes. He thought of Astrid and wondered whether he'd ever see her again.

He heard a sudden scraping noise, like the jangle of iron against ice. Perhaps Jarl had found something and was sending him a message! With his knife, Dane started stabbing the wall nearest to where he thought Jarl would be, moving down the narrow passage toward the sound. And just as suddenly the floor beneath him dropped away so steeply that Dane lost his footing and went sliding feet-first, shooting down a slick icy tube, with no time to react or stop himself.

Faster and faster he slid through the darkness, taking wild stabs with his knife at the wall to try to slow his descent. Louder and louder he screamed as he rushed down the slope to what a tiny primal voice inside warned was certain death until—
floosh!
—he shot out onto a flat sheet of watery ice and went tumbling tail over teacups. Then
wham!
He hit something hard and came to a sudden, dizzying stop facedown in a pool of muck.

A blinding pain shot through his head. There was a penetrating smell so overpowering, he thought it must be the stench of some horrific beast that lay panting
nearby. Time to face his fate. He rolled over and opened his eyes, expecting to be eaten alive. The next thing he knew, he was staring into the face of what he could only describe as a blood-starved demon.