Days of Broken Oaths Read online

  Instead, Hervor put her hands on the table. “We’d need a hefty payment for this. Three times Starkad’s weight in gold. Plus we keep the runeblade.”

  Win blanched, looked to his father.

  The king closed his eyes, groaned. “So be it.”

  Starkad clapped Hervor on the shoulder. “Good, then. I’ll need to put together my own crew.”

  “You can choose who you like,” Win said. “But I’m going. And Tveggi goes where I go.” Win inclined his head to an aging warrior lingering by the entrance. A thegn? A bodyguard?

  Starkad frowned. “This is hardly going to be safe, prince. Perhaps you had best remain here where—”

  “I am no craven. With Odin’s blessing, we will find glory. And if I fall, valkyries will carry me to Valhalla.”

  Sounded a small comfort to Hervor, but Win seemed so sincere she had to bite her tongue.

  “Well,” Höfund said, “reckon I’m going too. Can’t rightly let aught happen to the pair of you nor the prince neither.”

  “I’ll go too,” the shieldmaiden beside Hervor said.

  Hervor had almost forgotten her in the rush of events. “Who are you?”

  “Vebiorg.”

  Hervor looked to Starkad, who frowned. “Hervor and I will meet with any willing to go in the morn. We need keep our numbers small if we hope to pass ourselves off as mere travelers. Just enough warriors that we can handle opposition when we face it.”

  Rollaugr cleared his throat. “It’s decided then.” He turned to a slave. “Arrange chambers for our guests.” Now he looked back to her. “I am still interested to look upon the runeblade.”

  Hervor grimaced. There really was naught to do save tell the truth. “These blades have a will of their own. It is unwise to draw them unless you intend to use them.”

  Rollaugr pursed his lips. Did he recognize her description of Tyrfing’s curse? Did he know of that specific runeblade? He shrugged then, and shook his head. “Pity. Well then, perhaps some more mead before we retire?”

  Hervor could go for that indeed.

  Part II

  Eleventh Moon

  Year 31, Age of the Aesir

  15

  T he tunnels beneath the city seemed to stretch on endlessly. Parts of them criss-crossed the sewers, but other regions—such as those corridors Arete now led Starkad and his crew through—remained mostly dry, if still grimy.

  Nikolaos had vanished into the darkness, but the female vampire had stuck by Starkad’s side, guiding them to Nikolaos’s palace. The sun would be up any moment, she had explained, and the vampires preferred not to go out in daylight, much like draugar.

  He had a crude bandage wrapped around his wrist where she’d bit him, holding a torch with his other hand.

  “You fear the light?” he asked.

  “I … fear naught … mortal.”

  “You hesitate.”

  “And you,” she whispered, her voice so low the others behind probably couldn’t catch it—save Vebiorg. “You are not quite mortal, are you?”

  He tried to stifle his surprise at her words, but there was no denying his pulse quickened at hearing them. Odin had extended his life. When Arete had bitten him—back when she was interrogating him—she’d reacted strangely, as if shocked by the taste. Maybe whatever Odin had done had changed him more than Starkad realized. He was fortified. If not so much as he would’ve been with an apple of Yggdrasil, still heartier than an ordinary man.

  “I’ve had a long, complex life,” he finally answered.

  “Oh? Most of my kind can say the same.” She led him around another bend, beyond which lay stone steps rising up. She climbed them with uncanny grace, seeming almost to glide to the top, where she inserted a key into a trapdoor in the ceiling. After turning it, she threw the hatch open, and continued up.

  Starkad followed her up into a cellar that, compared to the tunnels below, was shockingly clean and free of dust and grime. As he stood, he noticed a circle painted around the trapdoor in what looked like semi-fresh blood. Around its perimeter, runes ran. Sorcery? He grimaced.

  “A ward against intruders,” Arete answered his unspoken question.

  The others joined him up in the cellar, each looking around. Höfund examined the circle with obvious distaste, and Hervor blanched when she noticed it.

  Arete led them out of the cellar and into a corridor, this one flanked by a half dozen guards.

  So. The vampires used the tunnels to get around in daylight. Knowing this, Nikolaos used special protections to ward the potential weak point in his palace. Just what did those wards do?

  Beyond the corridor, they went up yet more steps, into corridors painted white and decorated with golden trim. Tapestries and paintings lined the walls, even before the passage opened up into a wide hall with a high ceiling. An upper level looked down on this hall, supported by columns engraved to look like nude men and women in the throes of various acts of passion.

  The sheer decadence of the palace, from the marble columns to the lush tapestries to the gold trim on the rails—all of it—fair reeked of hubris. As if Nikolaos needed to flaunt his god-like wealth despite the squalor and filth so much of the city lived in. Pompous, consciously so, in fact.

  And there were no windows.

  “You will wish to rest from your travels and … ordeals,” Arete said. “We will not strike in daylight, in any event.”

  “Wouldn’t Tanna be weaker then?”

  “Yes. But he will also be in hiding and not even we know where to seek him out. No, unfortunately, you must draw out the Patriarch before you can engage him. In the meantime, I’ll show you each to your chambers.”

  The others settled in, Arete led Starkad to a room on the upper levels. “You’re their leader.”

  “Yes.”

  “So was it your idea to come here, so far from your own lands?”

  He shrugged. He’d been farther than this from the North Realms. Much farther, if he counted the sojourn Ogn had taken his soul on through the Otherworlds. “I was hired for it.”

  “Oh. A mercenary.” She opened the door to a room decorated with half again more luxury than he needed. A plush bed, a dresser the color of olives. A wash basin of solid bronze. A man-sized cupboard for who knew what.

  “Mercenary. Wanderer. Whatever you want to call me. ”

  Arete shut the door with the both of them inside.

  Starkad turned to her. She was running her tongue over her teeth, lingering it over those fangs. Hard to deny it sent his pulse quickening, which no doubt was her intent.

  “What do you want?”

  She edged closer. Close enough he could feel just a hint of warmth to her. Strange, draugar were cold as the grave. Why wasn’t she? “I can feel your heartbeat. Thrumming … throbbing …” She craned her neck on the last word, a hairsbreadth from his cheek. Meaning he couldn’t even see her because of his dead eye.

  The thought of Hervor in the next room sent him falling back several steps. “Didn’t you suggest I rest?”

  “By all means … use the bed.” She flicked her tongue out over her lower lip.

  He frowned. Doubly so at the mental image of taking her that leapt unbidden to his mind. “I’m bound to Hervor.”

  Arete snickered. “If that’s the life you want. Bound to a single human woman when we both know something more than that lies deep in your blood. Something dark and succulent and powerful, waiting to come out. Do you truly wish to spend the rest of your days wandering Midgard?”

  “I … That’s my curse.” Why was he even telling her this?

  “Is that what you tell yourself? A half-truth to hide from the bitter reality that, as yet, you have found naught in this world capable of satisfying you.” She traced a finger down her jawline, and over one breast. Pursed her lips. “Nor will you, among the world of ordinary men. Ordinary … women. How would someone blessed with such gifts as I taste in you be sated with the cold blandness found out there?”

  He was already shaki
ng his head. No. It wasn’t true. He wandered because he was cursed to do so. He couldn’t have contentment. Couldn’t have a place in the world to himself. That was the price of his long life and extraordinary constitution. And that was all there was to it.

  What Arete suggested … that somewhere … that here might offer him something he’d been missing … No. He refused to accept that. He wandered because that was his urd, decided the moment he’d killed Vikar, if not before.

  Made certain when he’d failed Ogn.

  “You should go,” he said.

  Arete frowned, ever so slightly. “Consider this. I have walked over much of this world. When I was young, I remember refugees fleeing the collapse of what you call the Old Kingdoms. They came through our lands, burning and pillaging, taking who and what they desired. They burned my home and killed my family, and I wandered, too. Whoring myself to survive. Until I came here. On the streets I might’ve died, had not Nikolaos found me. And brought me a new life.” She shook her head. “I was not so very different from you, long centuries ago.”

  “You’re saying you’re eight hundred winters old?”

  She snickered, gliding to the door. “Maybe I’m twenty-five winters. Maybe I’ll be twenty-five winters old from now until the end of time.” She had a hand on the handle. “The point is, my wanderings ended here. Yours could as well, should you so desire it.”

  Without another word, she slipped out of the room and left him alone.

  16

  H ervor was leaning on the rail, looking down on the grand hall below, when that vampire bitch slipped out of Starkad’s room. Arete caught her looking and smiled smugly.

  Odin’s treacherous stones, no. No, that wasn’t going to happen. Hervor pushed off the rail and stormed over to the bitch. “What in Hel’s icy trench are you about now?”

  Arete smiled, the expression not reaching her cold eyes. “You speak to me as if you think I am like you. Somehow, you dare to forget that, on a whim, I could put my little finger through your windpipe before you knew I was moving.”

  Hervor couldn’t help but grimace at that mental image. Over her shoulder, Tyrfing begged her to draw it. To let the pale flames engulf this undead abomination. From what she’d seen on Thule, one cut didn’t poison a draug like it did a man. But the blade managed to kill draugar as if they were men. So if she hacked out Arete’s bowels, would the vampire bleed out?

  “Do not test me,” the vampire warned. Reading her face ?

  Hervor forced a confident smirk to her face. “I was going to say the same.”

  Starkad had made a blood oath to Nikolaos. Maybe he’d had no choice. Either way, she couldn’t see how they could possibly trust these monstrous things. A vampire had slaughtered Fjolvor and Tveggi like they were pigs. These creatures fed off people. They were every bit as loathsome as the worst vaettir.

  That they could pass for human almost made them more abhorrent. Like, once she knew of their nature, she couldn’t help but notice a subtle wrongness about Arete. Though Hervor could not point to any one thing, just looking at the creature filled her with unease.

  “Hmm. You think you have claim on him. You think you, a mere mortal woman, can hold on to a man whose blood is suffused with dark power. But you fool yourself and—for now—you fool him. But these delusions cannot last nor end well. You build your imagined future on spider strands of lies that must inevitably snap beneath their own weight.”

  Hervor glared at her. “I do have claim on him. Our oaths bind us together.”

  “Mortal oaths are but fragile things. Given time, they all break.”

  “Not ours.” She could barely stop her twitching fingers from reaching for Tyrfing. Oh, how she wanted to end this bitch.

  “We shall see.” Arete brushed past Hervor then.

  As the vampire passed, Hervor reached up for the runeblade. One chance. Draw and strike in a single swift movement. She might just be fast enough …

  And then Arete was too far away, sauntering along the balcony without bothering to cast another glance behind her. As if Hervor was beneath further notice .

  Hervor ground her teeth.

  Below, on the lower level, footfalls echoed off the marble floor. Hervor returned to the balcony to see Höfund down there, gaping at the columns.

  Maybe Hervor ought to check in on Starkad. Find out what Arete had really said to him. But … part of her feared to even hear it. Everything with him was so hard these days.

  That they loved each other ought to have been enough.

  Maybe … Maybe when this was done, they could finally settle down. Maybe he could get a handle on his curse, take control. She had to believe that. For now, perhaps giving him time was the best thing. Or the easiest, at least.

  So she tromped down a winding staircase to the lower floor.

  Höfund looked up at her approach. “Reminds me a bit of jotunn kingdoms.”

  The decor didn’t look aught like Godmund’s palace to her. “How so?”

  Höfund folded his arms. “Bit overmuch, all this. Wealth gathered from all around the domain. Some of it tribute, some of it stolen, taken by force and what have you.” He wandered over to a tapestry depicting a battle in which both sides sat mounted on numerous horses. “Different in the specifics, ’course. I mean to say, just similar in being too … too …”

  “Pompous?”

  “Reckon so, assuming that word means what I reckon it means.”

  Hervor nodded. “Why serve Rollaugr, Höfund? You could’ve gone anywhere, done aught you wished in Midgard? Why take up with a doomed king in a faltering kingdom?”

  “Huh. Can’t say as I looked at it much from that direction. More like I saw a half-decent man—decent as the world lets a man be, leastwise—and saw him hard-pressed by my own kin. And I reckoned maybe I could do somewhat about that and make my fortune all at one go.”

  Make his fortune. She shook her head and sighed. She’d spent a good many years trying to do the same. Leading raids, playing pirate. Never amounted to overmuch, really. Sure, she’d taken her share of plunder, but it never lasted long. There was always more on the horizon. At least until Thule …

  Or until after that. Until she and Starkad had gotten all twined up in each other. And by then, she was so sick of the life … of seeing everyone around her die awful deaths. Almost hard to imagine the kind of woman she’d been before. A murderous bitch who killed for the sport of it, who took whatever she wanted. Who hardly noticed when her crew raped or slaughtered along the way.

  But even if she wanted to leave it behind, even if this job somehow did give her the wealth to buy back her grandfather’s fortunes, still something remained to keep her from peace. Something that had followed her into this very godsdamned city.

  Hervor glanced around the hall to make sure no one was about. Not behind the columns, not on the balcony. A couple of slaves passed by overhead, not dawdling in the least nor even looking in her direction. “There’s something I need your help with.”

  The big man blew out a heaving breath. “Reckon I’d help with just about aught. Ain’t got that many friends and I aim to keep those I have.”

  Well, she couldn’t help but smile at that. Maybe she should be honest with him, first. Tell him she’d never marry him. But breaking all his hopes was like to send him into melancholy. Besides interfering with her request, that might well get the half-jotunn killed given what Starkad had agreed to. Tonight, they’d be fighting a godsdamned vampire lord, after all.

  No, she couldn’t tell him that. Not now, not here. “I, uh … I killed a man.”

  Höfund shrugged. “Ain’t we all?”

  “This one deserved it.” She looked around again. “He did, but still I wish I hadn’t done it. Because he was known to … some of the others. They wouldn’t take it well and I don’t want them to know it.”

  Höfund sniffed. “I ain’t a fool, me. You can come out and say it's Eightarms you’re fretting over.”

  “Right. The thing is … this man
, he … He came back.”

  Now Höfund screwed up his face in an expression that might’ve set his enemies shitting their trousers. “You didn’t burn the corpse? A boy barely off his mother’s teat knows you don’t leave a body in the mist.”

  She flinched. Yes, she should’ve known. “I was a little preoccupied with an army of draugar trying to kill me and my crew.”

  “Sure. And now that army’s got one more in their number, that it?”

  “That’s the gist. He’s been harrying my steps ever since. Hurting those I care about. I tried to fight him but …”

  The half-jotunn shook his head. “Right then. Reckon I’ve done my share of damn fool deeds now and again, so I can’t hardly hold that against you. So you’re wanting my help sending the draug back to the grave, permanent this time. And wanting it without anyone else finding out the lout even exists.”

  “Pretty much.”

  Höfund shrugged. “Well, like I said. I’d help with just about aught you needed, Hervor. When we make it back to the North Realms, once this is done, I’ll help you hunt the draug.”

  “Uh … he’s here.”

  “Huh. Makes things a bit more troublesome, don’t it?”

  Hervor nodded.

  He let a meaty hand fall on her shoulder. “I see any draugar, I’ll chop ’em clean in half. Work for you?”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “You’re a good friend.”

  “Huh. Reckon so.”

  17

  Two Moons Ago

  A throng of warriors, men and women both, had gathered in Rollaugr’s hall. The king himself was not here, though, and Win sat on his throne instead, seeming fair lost in thought. Tveggi stood beside him, glowering at the crowd as if any one of them might suddenly lunge at the prince.