Days of Broken Oaths Read online

  The girl wriggled, arms flailing uselessly against the draug. Her cheeks had begun to take on a slight bluish tinge. Starkad almost pitied her. But letting her go was a far cry from doing aught to save her.

  Orvar actually grinned. Unlike a vampire, a draug had pronounced canines on the top and bottom of his mouth. Almost made a bite from the creature seem worse. “I admit—I am shocked to see you survive Tyrfing’s venom. I would’ve thought it impossible even for you. And able to speak again? Never.”

  “I didn’t survive.”

  “No, I suppose you didn’t. Neither of us did. Ironic, I suppose. That bitch shieldmaiden killed us both, led us both to this wretched unlife, and with the very same weapon.”

  Starkad nodded. “I have no quarrel with you. We were friends for long years.”

  Orvar snickered, squeezed his hand tighter until even the faintest of thrashing went out of Afrid. Then he tossed her corpse aside. “While you lived, I hated you with blinding passion, as I hated all my former crew. All life. Dead, I find you almost tolerable. Why is that?”

  “We have no quarrel, you and I,” Starkad repeated.

  “Oh, perhaps not. But the other shieldmaiden yet lives, and your death will hurt her worse than aught else. Unfortunately, I see no alternative but to put an end to your suffering.” Orvar drew a sword from over his shoulder.

  Starkad shook his head and drew Mistilteinn. “I don’t wish to fight you. Believe me when I tell you, you do not wish to fight me. You are maimed, and I carry a sword that can slay even ghosts such as us.”

  Orvar stalked forward, shaking his head. “You’re right. I don’t truly wish to fight you. But I have no choice. I have to end this. My very nature compels it. In the end, we have few choices in our lives, if any. Even fewer in death.”

  The choking grasp of urd. Orvar clearly felt it too, crushing him. And the draug was obviously in no state to be denied.

  Starkad bared his teeth. And he charged in, runeblade gleaming in the torchlight.

  31

  T he main door to Tanna’s tower had been cleaved through and kicked in. Beyond, the carnage started in earnest. Bodies cleft in twain, so many severed limbs and heads Hervor couldn’t even judge how many men and women had fallen here. The halls stank of blood and shit, the odor so powerful it churned her gut.

  Everywhere she looked, people and vampires were eviscerated and hewed to pieces. If Starkad had done this alone, he had reached a new level of destructive capability. It looked more like a whirlwind of blades had swept through the tower, passing up and down the stairs and leaving naught but viscera strewn in its wake.

  Hand to her mouth at the overpowering reek—to say naught of the awful sight—Hervor stalked back down the first flight of stairs. Where was everyone?

  A pair of barely clad women ran shrieking from the tower’s basement, glanced at Hervor and the chaos, and bolted for the main door. So he’d gone below, then.

  Hervor charged down those stairs, allowing a few other naked whores to escape around her only because she couldn’t otherwise get past them. The screams echoed from beyond a satin curtain. She threw this back and came into a recently abandoned chamber thick with reeking smoke and oil fumes. The fleeing women had overturned tables and cushions, leaving broken ceramics littering the floor, no doubt from one of those strange pipes the smoke billowed out of.

  What in Odin’s stones was this? Who would possibly suck smoke into their lungs on purpose?

  The clang of metal on metal rang out from behind the next curtain, so Hervor charged through that as well and out into a larger chamber, this one strewn with small pools and pillow-lined alcoves. The room where the naked women had been?

  Orvar was there, slashing at Starkad, who parried attack after attack, offering his own offense only weakly and on rare occasions. Starkad still didn’t want to kill him, but Orvar seemed to have no problem slaying Hervor’s former lover.

  Which wasn’t going to happen. She jerked Tyrfing free and charged in, growling.

  Orvar spun, keeping both of them in view. “Finally. I was beginning to think she wasn’t coming. I could hardly begin the last verse of this warped tale without all the players.”

  “Just shut up!” Hervor roared. She swiped Tyrfing at him.

  Orvar knocked her blade aside with ease, danced around her, grinning with those hateful fangs of his. “Would you begrudge me the end you yourself have wrought? All of your lies and betrayals, your very own actions guiding us ever toward this culmination of urd? ”

  “I don’t want to kill you …” Starkad said.

  Orvar chuckled, even the sound making Hervor cringe. “Nor can we stay locked in eternal combat as though this were some poorly conceived tale of gods and heroes. For we are none of us either of those things, are we?”

  “If you can’t do it, Starkad,” Hervor said, “then I will.”

  Growling, shaking his head, Starkad did fall back a step.

  Orvar snickered again, bringing his sword up. The loss of half an arm seemed to bother him little, though his savaged leg did give him a slight limp. Nevertheless, he whipped his sword around in masterful arcs that forced Hervor to give ground.

  Maybe Tyrfing would’ve made up for him being more skilled than her—especially considering she had to fight left-handed—but naught accounted for him being stronger, faster, and having unending stamina.

  Still, she’d told Starkad she’d do this herself. And she had one thing going for her. One area she could finally match Orvar.

  Rage .

  Shrieking, Hervor slammed Tyrfing against Orvar’s blade, whipped it back at his face. The runeblade tore through the putrid remains of the draug’s cheek, and he turned his head aside for an instant. Hervor spun her blade around to thrust, but Orvar knocked Tyrfing aside and brought his knee up into her gut.

  The blow sent her staggering back only to crash into one of the pools. The water might’ve been waist-deep, but on her arse, it rushed up over her head. She scrambled for the surface, barely held on to Tyrfing, and brought the blade up, expecting to get her head cleaved in two in the process.

  But the draug had backed away, toward the entrance to this chamber, chuckling. Drawing it out. Actually enjoying all this?

  Fuck it. If he wanted to enjoy his vengeance, then so would she. Soaked, she trudged out of the pool and stomped over toward the draug, Tyrfing clasped in both hands. “I will end you this night.”

  Another mind-grating chuckle. “Perhaps. But you two shall accompany me through the gates of Hel.”

  Starkad groaned, but Hervor couldn’t well spare the time to look at him.

  Instead, she charged Orvar once more, whipping Tyrfing around in a savage arc.

  Orvar dodged behind a column, and her runeblade cleaved through a torch sconce wedged into the stone column and held fast. Oh, Odin’s hairy stones! Hervor placed a foot on the column and heaved, knowing Orvar might come around the column any moment. But without the runeblade, she was already fucking dead, so what did it matter?

  Except the draug hadn’t closed in on her. Indeed, he’d stooped to snatch up the fallen torch, holding it awkwardly in the same hand as his sword. “It struck me some time ago that you might come here in the end. And after what happened in that ruined temple, well, I imagined a most fitting end to our saga.”

  “You truly talk too much,” Hervor said. Tyrfing lurched free and she stumbled backward several steps.

  “Oh … but you’ll want to hear this. And while I did not imagine Starkad would live, it does seem fitting he too should join us here at the end. Urd bound the three of us together. If any tell our tale, they will say how we lived and died, close as lovers. ”

  “What are you on about?” Starkad said, his voice coming from Hervor’s left. Orvar’s strange words must’ve drawn him in.

  “Your whore has surprised me with her tenacity. Her ability to survive and overcome one perilous challenge after the next. I would’ve been a fool to think she could not have made it here.” Orvar
shrugged. “Besides, if I did kill her, what would I have to make my wretched existence worthwhile? Servitude to a vampire Patriarch?” He sneered. “Not so appealing.” He flung the torch not at Hervor, but at the curtain separating this room from the smoking chamber.

  The fabric ignited as if it were fresh kindling and Hervor stumbled away from the sudden inferno. “You soaked the curtains in oil?”

  The draug chuckled again.

  The blaze brushed against the walls, and even the stone caught fire, a line of flame shooting around the perimeter of the room and igniting alcove after alcove. Pillows ignited into blazes, the satin drapery becoming a conflagration.

  “Oil?” Orvar said. “They call it liquid fire.”

  An explosion rocked the smoking room—the only godsdamned exit—with enough force Hervor pitched over onto her arse. The scorching wind tore the curtain to pieces, those flaming fragments landing on the ground. Streams of fire shot along the chamber in winding arcs, as if Orvar had poured this foulness almost at random.

  Hervor scrambled away from the spreading blaze, regained her feet, and found flames had leapt up between her and Orvar. No sign of Starkad.

  “You see, the Patriarchs have barrels and barrels of this stuff stored to fight off Serklander invasions,” Orvar said. “They fling it at ships from great contraptions you wouldn’t believe. Smells like oil, but then, the stench of hookah smoke rather covers that up.”

  Heat washed over Hervor’s face as the blaze continued to leap around the room, spreading in all directions. Everywhere she turned, the flames rose up. How the fuck did stone burn?

  “So,” Orvar said, deftly stalked around a curving line of flame, sword in hand as he closed in on her. “I don’t really have to kill you now. Just stop you from getting out. Shouldn’t be overly difficult considering the way out is on fire. On the other hand … running you through might offer some satisfaction.”

  The draug lunged at her. Hervor fell back. Fire singed her arse, forcing her forward, and she barely got Tyrfing up to parry Orvar’s overhand chop. He rained down another blow, and another, driving back, almost into the flames.

  Orvar bellowed a feral war cry, swinging down again. Hervor’s arm—already numb—gave out and she pitched over sideways. Her left hand landed in the flames and squelched in the oil-like jelly. Fire leapt up her arm. Red agony nigh blinded her. She was only dimly aware of her own screams. She stumbled from the flames, shrieking, toppled into the pool and splashed under water.

  It took her a heartbeat, face under the now warm water, to realize the fire was still burning her. Underwater. Hervor screamed again, sucking down a lungful of water, burst through the surface to be struck by the sound of Orvar’s maddening cackles ringing out through the chamber.

  She knew she was wailing but couldn’t stop. The fire just kept burning her. It brushed from her arm up her neck, scorching her left cheek.

  Splashing through the pool, shrieking in pain and horror, she scrambled as far from the flames as she could. That meant away from the exit.

  Because Orvar was right. He didn’t need to kill her. The growing smoke and endless flames would do that. And she had no way out, even if she could get past the draug.

  His cackles reached her even over the sound of her own agonized screaming.

  32

  C louds of black smoke filled the room and obscured Starkad’s vision, bringing back sickening memories of his visions of Muspelheim. The smoke here was rising toward the high ceiling, but the longer the fires raged, the more of it came toward ground level. And those fires showed no signs of slowing.

  Lines of it divided him from Orvar as well as from the pool where Hervor was shrieking. He could get to neither of them. After the way the oil from the fire had clung to Hervor’s hand, he dare not try to dash through it either.

  The draug just kept laughing, twirling his sword in front of the exit as the whole room blazed around him.

  Starkad spun, taking in every possible option. Flames had sectioned off the room, though, and he saw no way past unless he could fly.

  Fly …

  Arete had walked on walls. And Starkad had clung to the ceiling for an instant when fighting Tanna. Sections of the walls were aflame too, but it seemed Orvar had been even more haphazard in coating the walls with the liquid fire than he had on the floor.

  Starkad raced to the nearest wall and put a foot on it. Naught happened. Damn it. He needed an edge. Something to get him past this. He needed to be on the fucking wall. All of a sudden, he felt the world around him lurch, as if down suddenly became the vertical surface. He stumbled up, his other foot no longer having purchase on the ground.

  Orvar had stopped laughing. The draug stared at him, fangs bared.

  Starkad raced up the wall, arm raised against the thickening smoke. He couldn’t see much. It took him a moment to remember he didn’t actually need to breathe, though. He charged through the darkness, then shifted onto the ceiling and raced in the general direction he’d seen Orvar.

  As far as he knew, no part of the ceiling was actually on fire. If it was, he was in for an unfortunate surprise. Trying to stay as silent as possible under the circumstances, he ran until he was fair certain Orvar was beneath him.

  Then he leapt straight up toward the ground and imagined it as down. He spun around in midair and landed in a crouch a few feet in front of Orvar.

  The draug scrambled back, sword raised and shaking his head. “Well … I suppose as long as Hervor and I are dead, it matters less if you survive.”

  “I didn’t want to kill you.”

  “You and I are both already dead.” Orvar sneered. “Nor does peace lie before either of us when our bodies perish. We are ghosts now, and losing our corpses is but losing our hosts so that we must wander, lost and damned through the shadows. Eternal torment is our legacy.”

  Starkad grimaced, shook his head. “Why? Why did you have to bring us to this? ”

  “Ask that bitch you spent so many years fucking.” Orvar lunged at him, maybe even faster than he’d been in life.

  Not fast enough. Starkad batted the draug’s sword away with Mistilteinn. He could’ve probably run Orvar through then and there. But his blade wouldn’t quite move. Damn it.

  Damn Orvar. Damn Hervor. Damn fucking Odin for bringing Starkad to this life.

  Damn … urd itself.

  He roared, slashing at Orvar’s head. The draug ducked, his kick sending Starkad stumbling back, close enough that flames singed his arse.

  Orvar grinned. “Oh. That is wonderful. You cannot do it. You cannot bring yourself to kill me. And that being the case, I’m going to kill you. The sheer, beautiful irony of it is … delicious. I will savor your death almost as much as hers.”

  “No.” Starkad brought Mistilteinn up once more, waving it before him. “No. You are going to end here. This cannot go on. Not after all you have wrought.”

  The draug came in swinging low, forcing Starkad into an awkward parry. Orvar spun around, whipping his sword toward Starkad’s neck.

  In a single motion, Starkad ducked, lunged forward, and thrust Mistilteinn up. The runeblade bit through Orvar’s heart and punched out his back, stealing all strength from the draug’s intended blow. His sword clattered uselessly from his hand and he stared down at the runeblade embedded in his chest. The draug grunted, teeth bared.

  Strange to think the creature’s heart did not even beat, and yet, somehow, this sword through it had affected Orvar the same as if he’d been alive. Starkad’s old friend wrapped a hand around Mistilteinn’s blade, heedless of how it cut his palm .

  He stared at Starkad. And slowly, the red gleam went out of his eyes.

  So it was done.

  He ought to have felt more. Despite the raging flames all around him, Starkad just felt cold. He’d killed one more person he’d claimed to love. In life, those murders had haunted him, chasing him down through the years. Literally, in Ogn’s case, but the others real, just the same. This one, though, it only felt …
hollow.

  Urd had brought him here and left him with no choices at all. He jerked Mistilteinn free from his friend’s rotten, disfigured corpse. The real Orvar-Oddr had died years ago in Thule. As long as Starkad kept telling himself that, maybe Orvar would never become another shade haunting his dreams.

  Hervor’s groans of pain tore through Starkad’s reverie. The shieldmaiden had crawled from the pool, Tyrfing clutched in her right hand. The other hand had become a charred, blackened mess. Deep, blistering burns oozing blood had spread up her arm, her neck, and onto her cheek, marring her exotic beauty.

  A wall of fire separated them, but she was staring at him now, arm clutched tight to her chest, face a mask of pain. Staring at him, as if begging him for something.

  But Starkad had naught left. Naught for Hervor, naught even for himself. Maybe it would be better if he just stayed here and burned, alongside Hervor and Orvar-Oddr’s corpse. Let everything vanish in the flames, just as the tormented draug had intended. A fitting end to a sick tale and a wretched life lived too long.

  Except Starkad had been willing to take Arete’s offer for another moment of life. For immortality so long denied him. And having sacrificed so very much along the way for it, he could hardly cast it aside.

  Hervor had not moved, was still watching his face. Maybe knowing he was going to leave her here to burn. It was the urd she had wrought for herself, well-earned.

  Hel, Hervor herself must know that. She didn’t plead, didn’t make a sound save her grunts of pain. Even if she got out of here, she might well die of burns like that.

  Let her burn … Let her become one more ghost in the long stream of those he’d left behind.

  Fitting.

  Starkad turned, made his way to the wall and climbed up it. He would leave all Miklagard behind. Arete might try to stop him, might even come looking for him. The vampire woman seemed to think she had some claim on him for having made him immortal. Starkad felt otherwise.