She never had a chance to say what she would rather do. There was a great roar outside the tent, not an animal sound but much deeper, a roar of sea and earth.
Karin and Arane scrambled out into the cold night air to see beneath a moonlit sky the Hot-River Mountains quivering as though shaken by an unimaginably enormous hand. The ground beneath their feet began to tremble and sway. As they clutched at each other the moonlight glinted on a giant wave racing up the salt river. It swept across the pebbled beach where the warriors of the two kings were sleeping and spun around the longship that had been hauled up beside them. Splashing and yelling, the men bobbed to the surface as the wave passed by. The few horses they had with them began to scream, and the dogs barked wildly.
“The end has begun,” said Karin in a very small voice.
They were not far from the burial mound where Gizor and the others were laid, built well above the waterline. Karin heard Hadros’s and Kardan’s voices shouting over the din, trying to find out how many men they still had and bellowing orders to secure the ship again.
But she paid no attention, for her eyes were riveted on the burial mound. It moved, but not with the motion of earthquake. One of the horses-Roric’s stallion, she thought-had broken loose and was striking at the mound with his hooves. It shook as though something-or someone-was coming up beneath it.
The wave, having bounced off the cliffs at the eastern end of the salt river, came pouring back, lower now but sending the men and supplies anew into swirling confusion. The stallion screamed again. The men, snatching their equipment out of the water, scrambled for higher ground. A number pulled at the ship’s mooring lines. Both kings climbed to the top of the burial mound to shout orders. They had not seen the shaking she had seen.
It came again. A great clod of dirt flew from the side of the mound, then another. The dogs went abruptly silent. And someone, black with earth, stepped from within the mound.
That was when the moon went out.
3
Roric glared upward at the renegade king. The sky above was still pale, though everything around them was losing its color as dark came on.
“You’re definitely more trouble than you’re worth,” said Eirik with a sneer of his scarred lip. “If it hadn’t been for you, me and my men would still be living peacefully in what’s left of our kingdom, raiding and capturing those who didn’t know better than to come within a hundred miles.” He paused for a second, muttered, “Though that life’s been getting pretty thin lately,” then glared at Roric again. “First you show up with the princess, then it turns out that ship had come looking for you, you free the king’s son I was going to offer to the lords of death, and now between you and him I’ve lost half my men.”
“Where’s your fair lady Wigla?” said Roric mockingly. “Am I responsible for her disappearance as well?”
Eirik shook his head. “You fight like a berserker, like someone who doesn’t care if he lives or dies-only I, Eirik, am supposed to fight like that. And now you act like you want me to kill you in cold blood. Well, I wouldn’t let my men kill you, to let the princess make a great song to keep your spirit happy in Hel. And I’m not going to kill you quickly and cleanly now. You’re going to be the sacrifice.”
They dragged him up the cliff by the waterfall and back to where the bodies of those Valmar had slain were laid out. They added the men Roric had killed before they overpowered him.
Two of the king’s warriors had gone back into the cave by the pool but emerged in a moment with puzzled frowns. So Karin and Valmar were safely back home, Roric thought and grinned wolfishly.
The sounds of the fight between the Wanderers and the dragon had died away. Roric peered through the dimness but saw no sign of the lords of voima. “No use waiting for midnight,” said Eirik. “The day moves so slowly around here that it might be a week’s worth of waiting. We’ll make the sacrifices and get back to our own land with the booty.”
“How about Wigla?” asked one of his warriors, picking up Roric’s question.
Eirik growled and glared over his shoulder at Roric again. “She can do what she likes.” He turned back to his men. “Now, we don’t have any women so you two will have to do. And this spring will do instead of the boiling pool. Stand there with the bread and ale. I don’t have my lyre, but I should still be able to make a song.”
He considered a moment, arms crossed and forehead furrowed, then began to sing.
“Outlaws they called us, the men of the south,
“Renegade warriors to the Fifty Kings,
“But brothers in blood to the band of King Eirik,
“They fought, never shirking, till fate struck them down.
“Come death, take our brothers, to dark realms below!
“Take them now to the one realm that endures!
“In lands of immortals, as in human realms,
“Our swords serve the master whom no one evades.”
King Eirik snorted and shook his head. “Not one of my better songs. I really need the lyre. You, there! You have to do the calling.”
Roric noticed that neither Valmar nor he himself got any credit in the song for having killed Eirik’s men.
Two of the warriors stepped forward then while the rest went absolutely silent. They sprinkled the bodies with bits of bread and splashed them with ale. “We call on the lords of death,” piped up one in a shaking voice. “We call on those whose power is greater than all the lords of voima! Come, nameless ones of the night!”
“We call. We call,” went the murmur up and down the line of the living.
The water from the spring splashed softly. Roric rolled over to see if there was any change. So far there was none.
“We call on the lords of death to take our brothers!” continued the warrior in a high, frightened voice when Eirik elbowed him. “Eat and drink what is offered here. Strike down those who struck our brothers down!”
“And especially,” said Eirik grimly, “drink the blood of this man.” He advanced toward Roric with his knife out.
“You still don’t dare to face me in open battle,” said Roric loudly, deliberately breaking the tense stillness. “No wonder they made you an outlaw! Killing a bound man is no way to show your men your courage, Eirik. You’d lost all your honor yourself long before the All-Gemot took it from you!”
But then he went abruptly silent and Eirik whirled away from him, as the soft splashing of the stream changed its note. The water rose in a wave that fell back with a boom, a boom that seemed to say, “We come.”
“No man escapes you!” shouted Eirik gleefully, his face transformed. “Even in the lands of voima, we make offering to the lords of darkness!”
“Cut my bonds, Eirik,” growled Roric, “and you can be a sacrifice to death yourself.”
The earth abruptly shuddered, and a chasm opened directly under the bodies of the slain. The other men leaped backwards as the dead disappeared with a roar of falling earth and stone. Roric, trying to roll further from the edge, spat out the sourness in his throat, a sourness of long decay.
And out of the chasm rose a mist, darker than the darkening air and more solid. It grew increasingly dense, seeming to take on an almost human shape, a shape with two coals burning red where the eyes should have been. And the shape had a voice.
“This land is mine,” it said, so deep that the split earth vibrated. “Immortal lands are immortal no longer but belong to me. Everything comes eventually to me, and it comes now sooner than expected. All shall end now, and there shall never again be renewal or birth.”
Eirik’s men fled, racing wildly down the ridge, but the renegade king stood his ground. “I’ve served you all these years,” he said, nervously licking his scarred lip. “You should reward me for all the dead I’ve sent to you.”