Grim raised his voice, calling for the hall’s attention. The men fell silent and the women stopped their work at the hearth. A sheep bleated into the silence.
“Aud has proclaimed me healed,” he announced, pointing to her. The hag winced at the attention. “I am deeply grateful to her service. As well as she tended my father in his illness, so she tended me. Let us all drink to Aud’s health!” He turned to the slave. “You, girl, fetch a cask and mugs.”
“You do me too much honor, Lord Grim,” Aud said, slouching as if to slink toward the shadows beneath the table. The shrew has a weakness after all, Grim thought. This is turning out to be an excellent plan.
“Nonsense!” he protested, knowing he was over-acting his part, but enjoying it still. “You must join us in a drink. Just one gulp, woman. I’ll get your cup.”
He leaped from the high table down to the floor. One woman rolled a small cask of ale to the hearth while another brought mugs, bowls, horns, anything that could hold the drink. The men were smiling and laughing; who would not enjoy starting the day with a round of drinks? Grim waded through the animals and grabbed a bowl. Placing it beneath the cask, he filled it with ale until it brimmed. “Hurry up, boys! Get here while I’m pouring!”
Eager for a taste of the lord’s reserve, the men crowded around and Grim pretended to enjoy serving them. But he got what he counted on. The women were handing out bowls and horns, the men were gathering around, the ewes bleated and wove in and out of the press. In the confusion, Grim dropped the poison into a bowl of ale. He jerked his head up to see Aud watching. Did she see? Did she hear? It was impossible to know what a witch might be able to do.
Grim pocketed the empty pouch and took up Aud’s bowl along with a horn for himself. The bowl splashed as he carried it to Aud, his hands cold and trembling. His heart was pounding, but Aud seemed to suspect nothing. He placed the bowl before her. She looked at it like she had never seen ale before.
“Everyone has a horn now? Good! Let us drink to honor the one who healed me.”
Grim raised his horn, and the men of the hall needed no more encouragement. Some praised Grim’s health; others praised Aud’s skill. Grim held his toast until the last. He could feel his arm shaking, as though he held a boulder over his head, and his voice quavered too, before he got command of it. “Thank you, Aud. Your healing magic is a great blessing for Grenner. To Aud!”
The others echoed him and stamped their feet on the wooden floor or banged the tables. Then Grim and his men guzzled their ale. Grim watched Aud down the side of his horn as he drank. She just stared at her ale, her ancient hands on either side of the bowl. Did she know?
“Come on, Aud,” he coaxed. “Just swallow it down fast. We’re waiting on you.”
She nodded, to the bowl rather than to him. At first, she seemed to pause, and Grim expected her to fling the bowl away. Then she snatched it up and gulped down the ale as he had insisted. It poured over the side and down her chin until she put the bowl down empty.
Nothing happened. Aud wiped her mouth with the back of her arm. Still nothing. Grim expected a poison so lethal that she would die immediately. He felt the heat return to his hands. Did I not use enough?
With a sudden jerk, Aud bolted upright and her eyes widened. She opened her mouth and made a gurgling sound as bloody tears sprang to her eyes. Grim watched in horror as she staggered from the high table to the floor beneath it, clawing at her throat.
He swung his head in the direction of the men, but they were more concerned with refilling their drinks than with Aud. Only the idiotic slave girl was watching, her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide with fear.
Aud vomited, shooting forth a pool of brown ale along with the rest of her stomach contents. She gasped. Ropes of spittle hung from her jaw and her hair straggled in the vomit. Then she howled.
Grim looked around again. The men were beginning to notice.
Turning back, he saw Aud sitting on her wide rump, staring at him with bloody eyes and wiping her spittle-flecked mouth. “You think that can kill me?” she screeched. “After my years spent handling poison you’d have to do better than that.”
“What happened?” Grim affected concern. “Why, you’ve fallen, have you? How unfortunate.” He had to get to her before the men crowded around to hear her. She had to die, even if he had to strangle her.
She stood much faster than Grim thought she could, and coughed up blood. Seeing her bloody face, the men gasped and recoiled and the women screamed.
“My own poison.” Aud spat. “You surprise me, Grim.”
Grim leaped towards her and reached out to clamp a hand over her mouth, but she was not as frail as she seemed. Knocking his hand away with one hand, she reached into the folds of her blanket with the other.
She screeched as a plume of black smoke puffed around her. Grim fell back, dissuaded by the horrid stench. The hall was in panic now, and most of its inhabitants were running for the door; only a few reached for their spears. Witchcraft was not something men could fight with weapons.
“You want to kill me, do you?” Aud appeared from the smoke. It had stained her face gray and formed muddy streaks where the blood and drool covered her face.
Grim toppled involuntarily at her approach. As her quivering fingers stretched for him, he kicked back across the cold earthen floor, his heart a fury and his breathing short.
Aud fell before him, and more blood gushed from her mouth. Facing him, her eyes level with his across the floor, she said in a wet croak, “You are cursed, Grim Ormsson. Your life is cursed.” She dropped her head and wheezed. “You will know no peace, no woman. You will have no children. Your brother will return to dance in your guts. You will die by his hands. I make this your doom.”
Grim backed away to the wall benches. A spear fell over his shoulder and he snatched it up. This has to end.By Odin’s one eye, this will end now. Finding his courage, he sprang to his feet and loomed over Aud, who crumpled in a puddle of bile and blood.
“You are doomed,” Aud whimpered into the dirt.
Grim slammed his spear down with such force that it impaled her to the floor. With a rattle of breath, the old hag was no more.
Releasing the spear, Grim skipped away from the expanding pool of black blood. His trembling hands reached for the silver hammer of Thor that hung about his neck and his knuckles turned white around the amulet as he clutched it. A curse. A curse of death made with the blood and ash of a dying witch. As the thought rolled through his mind, he staggered back to the benches that lined the wall.
Moments ago, men were toasting and smiling; now, they cowered at the far end of the hall. A ewe bleated as the stench of sulfur filled the room, turning every face to disgust.
Did they hear Aud’s final words? Did they understand what had happened?
Vandrad appeared from the room he occupied at the front of the hall, his hair wild and his furs haphazard as if he had just roused from sleep. He grimaced at the smell, fanning his face as he approached. Men and sheep parted for him, but when he saw Aud’s corpse, framed in the morning light from the windows, he stopped. “Thor preserve us.” He searched himself, finding his own silver amulet. “You killed the witch.”
Grim nodded, breathing as though he had run up a mountainside. And he kept nodding, unable to think of anything else to do. He wanted to scream, or to weep. The poison had failed. The curse had been laid. Now his doom was certain-and Ulfrik would bring it. Grim stopped nodding and dropped his head to his hands. Then he wept.