Chapter 26 The Battle of the Misty Sea #2
Njord had a teasing reply on the tip of his tongue, but before he could utter it, he felt the seier hiding the approaching fleet being ripped apart by the ancient wards surrounding Nóatún.
After the raid and Jokull’s death, Njord had repaired and improved them painstakingly, and even as he turned to look, a horn started blaring from a watchtower, its deep wailing sound shattering the morning air.
“They’ve come,” Njord said.
Thori leaned haphazardly over the railing to spot their foes.
“Careful.”
Njord put a hand on his shoulder to stabilize him, but Thori only rolled his eyes and kept staring down at the quiet waters.
Sveinn’s longships peeled out of the fog like beasts born from a nightmare.
First one. Then another. Then dozens. Their figureheads showed distorted creatures instead of proud dragons or snarling wolves.
There were leering giants and snarling draugar, their eyes glowing in the murky greenish shade of Svanhild’s seier.
The fleet sailed towards Nóatún in eerie silence, no war cries or clang of weapons, just the deadly quiet befitting the creatures of the march.
“Svanhild,” Thori breathed. “She really has come to raise her mistress from her sleep.”
“She has. But she won’t succeed.”
Skalmold joined them on the battlements, Andora in tow. Both women wore armor and were carrying bows and arrows.
“Where’s Gylfa?” Thori asked, a hint of concern in his voice.
Was he getting attached not only to Andora but also to the rest of Njord’s household?
“She’s down at the harbor, leading the warriors there,” Skalmold said.
“May the Norns bless her sword,” Thori mumbled.
He sent a pulse of his golden power her way, invisible but clearly noticeable.
A warrior god’s blessing. Njord reinforced it with a nudge of his own power, understanding passing between them.
Their lie. Their little family of warriors, if only for the time of battle, and they both were going to defend them with their lives.
“What is Svanhild waiting for?” Andora asked.
“She’s preparing her rotten seier,” Skalmold said, watching the fleet.
Njord could feel it building too, and so could Thori, judging by the paleness of his face. Hurriedly, Thori breathed a blessing against Andora’s brow too, and Njord allowed him to tap into his power, strengthening his gift. Skalmold grinned at them knowingly.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
A low chanting rose from the enemy ships, the sounds mourning and eerie as if the dead were singing and not the living. The voices of dozens of volur, weaving a powerful seier. Svanhild had brought every last sorceress under her command.
“Look,” Thori said. “The water.”
Njord followed his gaze, and indeed the sea was churning. Boiling. He reached out to calm the disturbance and almost recoiled as he sensed the rotten seier festering in his very domain.
The gray waves turned murky and brown, something huge and wrong moving in their depths.
“What is she doing?”
Andora sounded scared.
Njord didn’t have an answer for her. He gathered the power of the waves and pushed back. For a second, the water cleared, but then the chanting intensified, and Njord staggered as Svanhild’s seier hit him like a physical blow.
An arrow hissed as it passed him. It shouldn’t have been able to reach the ships, Sveinn’s fleet lurking just out of shooting range, but Skalmold chanted, and the arrow lit up a clear icy green. It found one of the ship’s grotesque prows and set it aflame.
“Again!” Skalmold shouted, and Njord realized that Thori was shooting.
He should’ve kept his focus on the ships below, on Svanhild and her seier, but he couldn’t resist sparing a few breaths on watching Thori handle his bow and arrow with graceful strength.
Because Thori was a vision. As usual. Skalmold set each of his arrows on fire with a spell Njord had only ever seen sorceresses such as Ahti and Perhonen use. She was indeed a powerful vala.
But even as several longships were engulfed in green flames, something moved in the water beneath them. Did a pod of whales lose their path to end up in the fray of battle?
“Do you see that movement underwater?” Skalmold shouted. “Aim there!”
Njord tried to get a grasp on the enemy’s seier, but as much as he tried to push it back, Svanhild and her volur were stronger, and he couldn’t even fathom what they were trying to do.
Until the giant rose from the sea.
The creature stood up from the waves, taller than Nóatún’s walls, its body the color of old blood and black earth. And despite its hideous shape, born from mud and peat and corrupted seier, Njord recognized the face.
“Norns,” Thori breathed. “It’s Egil the merchant. They rose the man you drowned from his wet grave and turned him into a fucking giant.”
Skalmold tilted her head, eyes narrowed and calculating.
“A giant of mud and peat wearing Egil’s face? She must’ve combined a spell of the Bog Mother with one to raise the dead, not unlike the seier I used to talk to Hrothgar. Impressive.”
One of Thori’s arrows pierced the giant’s shoulder, but Skalmold’s fire extinguished on the wet, leathery skin.
“Are you saying Egil’s corpse is somewhere inside the giant’s body, fueling the monster’s wrath?” Njord asked.
“I think that’s the only way to pull off a spell like this. And to stop the giant, we must shatter what’s left of Egil’s body.”
“Whales and waves.”
He was too old for this madness.
The creature was moving swiftly, despite its size, and Sveinn’s longships attacked in its wake.
“Archers!” he heard Gylfa’s command from the lower battlements. “Shoot!”
Hundreds of arrows flew toward the giant. They struck its body and simply disappeared into the mud, swallowed without effect. The creature didn’t even slow.
“Flaming arrows!” Gylfa shouted.
The flaming shafts had more effect, hissing and steaming where they hit, but it didn’t take long for the flames to die, and the giant just kept coming.
It closed its hands around the top of the outer wall, and the ancient stone groaned under its grip.
Warriors scrambled away as the giant pulled itself forward, its weight leaving cracks in the foundation of the battlements, and the whole fortress seemed to shake.
“Njord?”
Thori had lowered the bow and offered his hand, lightning already dancing at his fingertips.
“Are you still willing to do this?”
“Would you allow me to change my mind?” Thori sounded exasperated. “Now? In the midst of battle?”
And although Njord knew the foolishness of it, he didn’t have to think twice about his answer.
“Always.”
“You’re too honorable for your own good,” Thori said, but his voice had turned all soft. He snatched Njord’s hand, and Njord could feel his untamed power thrumming through their connection. “If I kill the giant, can you sink their fleet?”
“I… Well, truth be told—”
Thori smirked.
“Let’s do it then.”
Turning toward the giant, Thori let storm clouds gather above them, dark and threatening, and Njord made up his mind.
He pulled Thori back against his chest, one arm curling around his waist, one hand resting against his throat, covering the collar, and Thori leaned into him with a deep sigh. His thunder was right there, offered on a silver platter for Njord to take, and yet he hesitated.
“You wield it,” he whispered against Thori’s ear.
“What?”
“I’m right here. I’m going to help you channel your power. But you wield it.”
He gave Thori a little push, amplifying his power with his own storm, and he could feel the exact moment Thori let go.
The clouds above them went from gray to black in a heartbeat, swirling madly. The wind picked up, and the sound of the waves below them increased.
Lightning jumped from the boiling clouds into Thori’s waiting palm, and he threw the first bolt at the giant, catching him in the shoulder.
Steam hissed where it made contact, and a chunk of mud sloughed away, but the creature kept trying to scrabble at the battlements, pulling parts of the wall outward.
“Again!” Njord commanded.
Thunder crashed, a deafening sound, and another bolt of lightning carved through the giant’s torso, leaving a smoking crater, and still it moved forward, uncoordinated yet unstoppable.
The defenders on the lower walls hastily retreated as the giant pulled itself higher, its upper body already leaning across the wall.
Thori’s breathing quickened, his power unleashed now that Njord allowed him free rein.
The feeling of Thori in his arms, trusting and powerful, was intoxicating.
Bolt after bolt of silvery lightning struck the giant and the longships beyond.
Magnificent. But not enough. The giant was too massive, the seier fueling its cursed existence too powerful.
Every strike carved away chunks of its body, but more mud flowed upward to fill the gaps.
“The corpse,” Skalmold shouted. “You have to destroy Egil’s body inside!”
Thori twisted to smirk up at Njord. No. He’d been so scared by Egil’s death, he couldn’t seriously—
“Don’t even think—” Njord started.
But Thori was already moving, slipping from Njord’s grasp, and Njord was too stunned to hold him back. And then Thori was running, vaulting onto the battlements, his lightning crackling around him like a pack of wolves coming to hunt with him.
“Thori, no!”
He jumped.
For a heartbeat, he seemed to float, suspended in empty air, Njord’s anguished shout echoing behind him.
Then the lightning wrapped around him, fueled by Njord’s power, and Njord had to keep himself from pulling Thori back into his arms. Going against his every instinct, he supported Thori’s descent instead, lending him power, keeping him from falling.
Thori landed, running on the lower wall next to Gylfa, gathering speed and lunging directly at the giant.