Chapter 9
“May I reclaim for all time my rightful inheritance, the Iron Crown of kingship.”
Malvar Bloodaxe leaned a hand on slabbed stonework as he whispered his prayer. The man-made hill rose starkly from the plain, a tribute to the defiant will of its ancient makers and in honor of the gods of the Orkney Islands.
“May Gormson’s arm be strengthened, and may all my ally’s plans succeed.”
Power tingled through Malvar’s palm and up his arm. There were places in the world where the primeval forces still thrived, where gods even older than the pantheon of the North yet walked unseen. This remote mound of earth on the largest island in the Orkney chain was one of them.
“May my prisoner’s tongue be loosened and the path to victory made plain.”
Malvar closed his eyes, letting the spirits of the place speak to him in half-heard sibilance, whispers from the disembodied souls of woad-painted warriors and fallen heroes.
They reached out to him from the tall, waving grass, from the red sandstone bones of the island beneath its thin skin of dirt, from the artfully worked slabs that were used to build this sacred place in the deep past.
This is our land, they cried. Our water and earth and sky. Our blood sacrifices and feasts. Let not the Carpenter God push us from it.
Malvar opened his eyes, anger hazing his vision red.
Not a handful of winters ago, the self-styled Norwegian king, Olav Tryggvason, had landed on the islands and forced the inhabitants to convert to Christianity at sword point.
The Norse deities of the islands, Odin and Thor and that lot, were too weak to help the people resist then.
But there were Others hovering about the island. Forgotten Ones, whose time was both long past and yet to come. They waited with the patient stillness of a spider for their chance.
Once the Norse king left, Malvar heard their bloodless voices in the night. Hisses of hate woke him from a sound sleep and drenched him in a cold sweat. Then the more he listened, the more he understood.
Might was the only truth, blood the only currency that mattered.
Shoved underground, belief in the Old Ones was growing stronger now. Men who craved violence and bloodshed as much as the ancient gods did were drawn to worship them.
In Orkney, the Hebrides, in deceptively quiet fjords along the Norse coast and barrier islands, Malvar Bloodaxe was amassing allies.
He appealed to those who had a score to settle.
They were second sons who didn’t stand to inherit their fathers’ lands, men who longed for a return to the way of the warrior.
They wanted to resume the Viking raids, when a man might increase his wealth with a sword stroke instead of by trade or tilling.
The Old Ones would see it done. Those ancient spirits delighted in mayhem and murder and atrocities that turned men’s bowels to water. With the army Malvar was gathering, the Old Ways would return.
There’s not a farmer or a merchant in the lot, Malvar thought with a contented smile.
Satisfied the spirits had heard his prayer and supported his intent, Bloodaxe stooped to enter the cairn. He was forced to crawl along the passageway burrowing into the heart of the man-made hill.
Even the most powerful leader must be humble before the specters of Old Ones, he supposed.
For he was born to be a powerful leader. His grandsire had been Eric Bloodaxe, exiled king of Norway, the man who’d earned the chilling name Malvar was proud to bear. Which meant Olav Tryggvason was a pretender, and Malvar Bloodaxe was the rightful Norse king.
With the men whose allegiance he’d claimed and the power of the Old Ones behind him, he’d take back his grandfather’s crown.
But first, he needed the right information, the right fjord to target for his initial incursion. Once he’d subjugated an entire fjord, he’d be able to move on to the next. As terror of his might heralded his approach, the subsequent fjords would fall into his hand like ripe plums.
Dragonships would sail the Northern seas once more, bringing death on the wind.
Malvar reached the end of the tunnel and stood upright in the open chamber where the ceiling vaulted to twice a man’s height.
Torches blackened the walls, and the place was ripe with the stench of burning pitch.
A thin ribbon of smoke found its way out the shaft at the apex of the vault, but the air was still unwholesome if one had no relief from it for extended periods of time.
Especially when the air currents sent a whiff of human feces and misery wafting along the subterranean corridors to mingle with the smoke.
The guard at the interior opening of the tunnel snapped to attention when he recognized his leader, both spiritual and temporal.
“How is our prisoner this day?” Malvar Bloodaxe asked.
“Not very talkative.”
“Well, that is something we shall have to remedy, isn’t it?” Malvar said as he strolled over to survey the available whips and knives laid out on a table. “Has his back healed?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. We’ll concentrate on the front then,” Bloodaxe said, picking up a cat-o’-nine-tails and cracking it.
The sound echoed through the subterranean vaults, and a muffled wail came in response from one of the other tunnels leading off the main chamber.
Anticipation of pain was almost as effective as pain itself. “We’ll start with this. Bring him.”
The guard disappeared down one of the short corridors and came back, half-dragging his charge.
The prisoner was naked, his beard and hair so matted with filth only shearing him like a sheep would render him human once more.
His ribs stood out in stark relief. He stooped as he shuffled along, because he was unable to stretch out to his full height in the tiny cell in which he was kept.
“Greetings, Ulf, Jarl of Jondal,” Bloodaxe said courteously as the guard bound the prisoner’s unresisting hands spread eagle between two posts.
It was a stroke of luck the man’s vessel foundered off the Orkney coast and he’d been reported lost with the rest of his crew. As far as anyone else knew, Ulf Skallagrimsson was freezing in Hel. No one would ever think to look for him in the bowels of the earth.
“I trust you’re enjoying your stay with us,” Malvar said with a laugh.
The man peered from under his shock of rapidly graying hair, the mad glint in his eyes the only evidence of a living soul in the soon-to-be-broken body. Ulf worked his mouth for a moment and then spat a gob of phlegm on the packed dirt at Bloodaxe’s feet.
Malvar smiled. Naked loathing was such a deliciously powerful emotion. It shimmered in the foul air, and Malvar’s arms strengthened with the force of his captive’s hate. He’d send his own venom right back to the jarl.
The cat flicked over Ulf’s chest, leaving an artful cluster of red weals. The man gritted his teeth to keep his agony silent, but Malvar knew that restraint wouldn’t last long.
“Now, then what shall we talk about?” Malvar sent the whip singing again. This time it drew bright beads of blood and a grunt of pain. “How about…the defenses of Hardanger Fjord?”