The Wolf Hammer, page 6
part #1 of Odin's Bastard Series
The hammer changed you. Terribly. Inexorably. It made you less human and more a weapon.
But it also tried to kill you.
Borin shook his head. “Will you keep your word, then? Will you make us rich, eh? The Black Tales, you said? Will we find it?”
“Will you give us a future?” Ajax asked. “Land? Perhaps our own?”
I swiveled my gaze to Shian.
Shian hesitated as the others watched her. She walked to Fang’s body. She lifted a helmet from the man’s belt, a black mask of terror, smooth and terrifying, and shook it free of gore and bits of burning meat and bone.
She tossed it to me. “I have my own desires and wishes. Food. Hope. You are right; the cause is yours, and you keep fighting for what you gave an oath for, and surely you are right to say Odin didn’t want this. It smacks of treason. I will follow you for coin and for the future, both. I will tell you later what I want on top. There is something, indeed. I doubt I shall get it.”
I nodded. “All I want are their heads. And my wife. My nephew.”
“I will help. You will find me an invaluable ally,” she told me soothingly. “I will smooth your road.”
Ajax grunted. “We all shall. So. What now?”
I rubbed my eyes and spoke, voicing my oath. “I will kill Reignhelm and all those who murdered my mother. I shall restore our land. I will fight for Odin against these usurpers. You will get your heart’s fill. All of you. I make the oath. What you ask for, you get, if you just stay faithful in rain and pain. And the book is worth it. It can give you treasures worth more than Malignborg’s Eye Keep.”
They looked at me silently. Greed was burning in their eyes.
I got up and studied my smoking hand. “I’ll need a gauntlet. Not sure it will help.”
“Is it supposed to do that?” Shian asked, worried. “Flame you?”
I shook my head.
“They say it can feel evil itself,” she said. “Did you—”
I nodded.
I had. Sort of. All over, all around me
“On us?” she pressed with a gentle smile.
It seemed impossible she would be evil.
And yet, I wasn’t sure what I had felt. “I shall,” I said, “find answers. I cannot remember much of the recent past, but I will punish everyone involved in our losses.”
“You cannot remember?” Shian asked. “But you do? Something?”
“Somethings, and it all feels…distant,” I told her.
“And you are planning on killing or capturing Graymoor?” Ajax pressed.
Borin and Shian looked uncomfortable at the question.
“He is a traitor. I’ll do what I need to do. All of them will pay before we rebuild here with my wife.”
Ajax bowed and still looked nervous. “It is a noble quest. Not sure how a few thousand men will do it, but we fear little, if the prize is as high as you claim. But…”
He hesitated.
“Spit it out,” Borin growled. “Useless cock.”
“Will you,” he asked softly, “hate Odin like your father did?”
I frowned.
Ajax looked bothered but spoke. “We will not take that oath. If it comes to light that he let this happen, we will not march for him.”
I agreed. “I shall fulfill my father’s oaths. I shall find out all I can of what happened and why Reignhelm took to war with us, betrayed our honor and humiliated Father, why my mother had been strangled, and people scattered, and I will kill the lot. I will also recover my wife. After?” I shrugged. “I will serve Odin as we always have, or I shall hate him alone. If it is the latter, be gone fast.”
They understood Odin might come searching for us if it was indeed his will to wipe our family out.
It was not, I was sure of it.
They nodded. “How much gold is involved?” Ajax wondered.
“Father said enough to make gods look like beggars,” I told them. “He also said it is cursed, evil gold.”
Borin laughed, and Ajax grinned.
Both saluted.
They were brave. We would have to kill the Exiles at some point.
I looked at Shian. “You do not seem afraid. How would you start the quest?”
Find someone in the enemy camp, I thought, and Shian echoed me.
She shook her head. “It seems we have a lot of killing to do. I think we need to find someone who can help us. We will be mercenaries, but we need a friend. It will have to be someone weak, someone with potential. We’ll mold that someone like wet clay and gain position and opportunity. I will keep my eyes open. First, answers. We have to find someone like that, and then they’ll tell us all we need to know. Then, action.”
“Do you think you can find one like that?” I wondered. “One with answers, before we find a way to kill the lot?”
Shian smiled. “Darling, they are nobles of the highest houses. Nothing defines them better than ambitions and conflict. I can find one with answers, and we will be friends. Yes.”
“You do it, and we’ll milk him for all his uses,” I said. “Well, brothers and sister. We start the quest.”
Borin grinned. “What will you be, though? Ajax and I command the two companies. Right and Left.” He eyed me critically. “They know you,” Borin told me.
Shian smiled. “Put Fang’s helmet on and keep it on always when you out there. The hair has got to go.”
Borin flicked his dagger.
I agreed, reluctantly. My hair was long, thick, and dark as raven’s wings. That’s how men knew us, and from the brass bracers. We had been born under Odin’s Dark Eye, as men said.
They looked at that bracer.
I shook my head. “I’ll cover it with a bandage. Can’t take it off, and the limb stays.”
“I’ll make sure the men won’t be asking too many questions,” Borin rumbled. “And they hated Fang. I’ll make you bald, so some might think he is still alive.”
“What of the hammer?” asked Ajax. “It has to be kept covered. Can you use it?”
I watched the hammer and found the bag. I toed the hammer, felt its power through my boot and then the agony. I gathered my bravery, and I pushed it into the bag with my foot, wincing. I had again felt the power and the sickening evil, and the burning pain. The flames burned on their own along the head for a moment. The bag was scorched, and my boot blackened. The oily taste of evil made me smack my lips.
“Is it supposed to do that?” asked Shian. “It looks like it is not suited for men. Did your father actually wield it?”
Ajax shook his head. “He did. It is odd.”
I had no answer to her. I had no idea what was going on with the weapon.
I didn’t need the hammer. I’d only use it if I needed to.
I kneeled and lifted the bag.
I felt the power, very faintly. If I would put my hand on it?
It might kill me one day.
Then, I had no more time to worry about the weapon.
I had a quest.
I needed answers, desperately. The curtain that separated me from those answers?
I had to tear it down.
I felt I was missing many essential things.
I touched my forehead and cursed.
My wife, revenge, answers.
I needed them, and I knew I could not rest before I had all three.
They were looking at me, as I strapped the bag on my back, and pulled on the gory helmet, covering my head, save for the mouth.
“We are Grudge Breakers,” I said. “And we shall find the prince of Aten, Yggra, and we shall offer him our services. We shall take him as our ring-giver. And I shall make plans with Shian here. We shall do our best, and we shall be patient.”
Shian smiled. “I shall help you, and the two dolts will be your captains. We’ll find someone to help us, and everyone is happy.”
“I do love coin,” Borin said, and then Borin showed me the dagger. “By the bones, I do. We still need to shear you, adeling. Bald? Or something left on the top?”
I pulled off the helmet for a moment.
***
The near two thousand men, those who would fight, marched up to the piers.
I watched them and tried to remember what it had been like leading men like them, likely some of the very men below me now.
The men and women had listened to Ajax, who had proclaimed I, their elected captain, would lead men to a life of mercenaries, and whoever wished to risk their lives by staying, could do so. If they stayed, he has said, none of them would be allowed to speak to, or of, me.
Hundreds had left, taking their weapons and slipping to the night of Hati’s Valley, braving Vittar raider squads that were patrolling our land, now lit with fires as towns were burning, sometimes set alight by those who were abandoning the land.
They would be outlaws and hunted mercilessly by Graymoor.
Nearly two thousand men, many tired and wounded, had stayed with us, and formed into ranks around the Dark Swan company, filling in Right and Left companies with nearly a thousand men each. They had chosen captain, standard-bearers, and supply officers with an enviable stoicism.
They marched to their new life, but their eyes kept going to the land that was burning, to their former homes, many of them leaving behind wives and family, for my father’s lost war.
It was my quest to restore them.
It was Odin’s test.
“You will be back,” I whispered to the citizens, the hundred thousand people my father had ruled who were marching away to the other eastern nations, and to the men who had fought, who were either mercenary or outlaws. I saw men in the Hard Hall now, on top of a hill, and fires began licking the roof from inside, the keep torched.
I gnashed my teeth together, for Tarl Vittar’s men were still busy avenging their capital by burning, murdering, and raping in the city I had once loved, though I remembered little more than flashes of the life in it.
Tarl Vittar.
One of the men who had been there to kill Father.
One of those who would be punished.
I saw the man, and I saw his daughters, Rikas and Gilad, near the harbor’s entrance, sitting on their horses, proud and victorious. They were in a cheerful mood. You could see that, even from afar.
Shian leaned close. “None of them are unguarded. Never. High King demands they even sleep with guards in the room. They will be hard to catch alone. Some have elves with them, and you don’t want to alert them.”
I nodded and turned on the deck of the old galley, leaving Ajax in charge of hollering orders at the bedraggled survivors of my father’s army.
“Move to the ships, take your bones off the cursed shore! We go make riches off the backs of the bastards!” he called out, and men below chanted.
I watched our would-be masters.
Yggra and Eglin, there on the deck, were waiting to deal with me, with fifty men around them.
To kill the lot, I would need to be patient.
I would need for them to be all in the same place, in the same war, in the same camp, and I would need more.
I would need a tool.
Shian was right.
Shian was near me, staring at the adelings of Aten.
The older one was haughty and strong-looking and had very little neck. He was sitting beside a desk on the deck of the black trireme, the Wave of Palator, and at his side, his thin, tall brother Elgin stood uneasily, looking above me, as if he saw tiny spirits dancing on the top of my head, avoiding my eyes.
He was terrified of the helmet.
He was also terrified of his brother, who kept casting him irascible looks and growling comments very softly, apparently unhappy about something the lad had not done.
“It was your job,” he hissed.
“Yes, brother,” Elgin answered. “The Vittar found those mansions first. I didn’t have a guide.”
“Excuses,” he said softly. “Riches lost. Father will know. When he dies, and I am the king, brother, you will be the Master of Pigsty, if that.”
Elgin looked struck like lightning but bravely bit his lip. His eyes were on Shian, suddenly.
The older one, Yggra, turned to look at me and grinned. “You the head of the flea-ridden bandits?”
I said nothing but walked to stand before him. His guards stiffened.
He had seen my mother die?
Possibly.
He crinkled his bulbous nose and sniffled. “You make sure you stay far from my gear when we march. You do look like the fleas love you.”
I had found and wore a dark fur coat, which made me look like a wet, dead bear, and it made Elgin cringe, for it stank of blood and sweat.
The chainmail I wore was tarred and dirty, and the helmet made me look so demonic, even our own men would avoid me.
That was the idea.
“We are arguing,” said Yggra, though Elgin had not really argued, “about the loot in the city. You know any hidden estates of your greater families? The Vittar has taken most everything they can find, and we are sadly behind. Even when I give instructions for those with time to spare to take care of it, we really find very little to loot.”
He gave Elgin a scathing look.
There was evil joy lurking behind the eyes of Yggra, pettiness not supported by cleverness, I decided, and somehow knew Shian felt the same.
I shook my head.
There was an awkward silence for a moment.
He cleared his throat. “The gear? The men need what?”
The men wore gear of my father’s. Chain, gray and black, and ragged black cloaks. Many didn’t have boots.
“Boots,” said Elgin softly.
“I can see that!” Yggra said. “Silent, brother.”
The men were limping past. They did have a purpose. Survival.
Perhaps one day, revenge.
Boots were needed, but the men had endured worse. Many watched us as they passed, and I wondered how many guessed how the power had changed in the mercenary company.
I wondered how many knew about me.
They knew Ajax, at least. They were saluting the man, for Ajax had a red crest on his helmet, and they knew Borin, smiling as he eyed the men below. Shian was leaning on an empty flagpole, her thigh immodestly displayed, as she stared at the two.
“You know the lot?” Yggra asked. “The men? You were a captain?”
I couldn’t remember much about the troops I had commanded previously, or of the people who lived in our land.
I nodded anyway.
“Good,” Yggra rumbled. “We need them to fight well.” He leaned over a stained paper, where details of our contract were spelled.
“You are Fang?”
I nodded.
He frowned. “You won’t show your face?”
I shook my head.
“Wound?”
“Shy,” I said darkly, and he actually smiled.
“I like men who are arrogant and desperate,” he said. “As for the desperation, the pay is the next issue.”
“We need pay,” I said, bored. “Obviously we need to be paid. And we need gear.”
I watched Elgin, who was mumbling comments under his breath. He didn’t like his brother, but he apparently had a hard time staying in the place his brother had chosen for him— backstage.
“And now he speaks,” Yggra said softly. “When coin is mentioned. We have a week of rest in Verdant Lands,” Yggra said. “You may find boots when we get there. You will buy them, of course. Will be deducted from pay. I assume you rather not die here?” He looked at me and frowned. “You are sick, captain?”
I was weak, sweaty, and tired, and my head ached terribly, but I wanted to snap his neck. “Never mind my health.”
He smirked. “Very well. I’d never buy a sick horse, but I guess I’ve never bought an eastern herd of goats, so sick or not, you will do. The pay,” he said, “is not substantial. We are raising mercenaries left and right, and Vittar is paying far too much for their Red Swords and Owl Lovers. We won’t make the same mistake.”
“Owl what?” Borin asked with a hoot. “Lovers?”
Yggra gave him a sour look and nodded. “I don’t know why they call themselves that. I imagine it might be a whore house they frequent, or they like to have abominable love affairs in the woods. I don’t care. But the pay—”
“The Red Swords,” Borin murmured, interrupting the adeling, “sound like children playing at war. Do they whoop when they charge?”
“I told you to be quiet. Didn’t I?” Yggra asked, and a dozen guards around him shifted on their feet, swords rattling.
“Can’t recall,” Borin murmured.
Every man on the deck wanted to kill Borin. It was evident in their eyes.
The Atenguard was not taking chances with their recent foes.
There were many thousands of their men nearby in the harbor, looking at us. That was unlikely to change.
“We’ll take what we can, then,” I said with a silky voice. “You know this. We’ll take what you pay, and loot what we must, and you’ll complain, and it is how it is. We’ll loot the boots, and to Hel with them.”
He gave me a long look. “Aye. It is not Aten where we are landing, is it? You will use these ships,” he said, and nodded at the fleet around the long pier, made up of old galleys and traders, “as we might be moving your men by the sea in the Verdant Lands. There, I shall command you when Tarl Vittar decides on a strategy.”
Tarl commanded him, he meant to say.
He went on. “Your gear stays here when we march. The rowers are paid from our coffers, and you get your pay every month, last day. We’ll pay you, you pay your men, and they buy or steal their food. Gear is not paid by us. You will note my father, Gar Atenguard, will not want to lose these galleys and boats. The captains order them about, and pilots guide them, and you simply sleep here and rest before some butchery. Then we shall see if you are up to heroics, or simply looters.”
I nodded.
“My father is with the High King in the south of Verdant Lands, and we shall push White Tower raiders back home, and there, we shall siege.”
“Fine,” I told him and leaned closer. “Tell me, where were you in the battle in Lorin? Did you fight, or just loot?”
