Kinslayer

It was midsummer in the black islands, where the steel waves washed stony beaches like the clash of spears. The sky was low and hazy in the evening, and the hidden sun blazed across the jagged rocks and the ship that lay beached upon the long grass dunes. The longship had been weeks out of the water, or longer, and the reeds had begun to grow up along the hull. Heavy timbers braced it up so it lay level, and sails were stretched across the deck to make a shelter from rain and storms.

Daganhurre lay in the shade of the canopy, braced upon a bed made from spear-staves and draped with furs and blankets. The air was heavy and warm, but he was cold. A fire smoldered in a brazier beside him, and he breathed the smoke deeply, hoping it would season his traitorous lungs like oak beams.

Summer had not been kind to the one men named Kin-Killer. Wounds had weakened him, and as the summer warmed he took a sickness in his lungs. Some of his men deserted him, believing him cursed, and now he had only this single ship. A fever had stripped him pale and set him to seeing visions, and so he could no longer endure the motion of the sea. He caused this last ship to be set ashore with the dozen men who still followed him, and he would remain until he was stronger, or dead.

He tried to sit up as the sun lowered, feeling an unease creep through him. His breath wheezed, and he felt now the heavy pain that stabbed into his side whenever he breathed too deep. The sea-giants on the cursed island had broken his bones inside, and they had not healed properly. He felt the pain inside him when storms gathered or the winds were wild in the night. The breeze off the fallow sea was a harbinger, he felt it.

“Hathal,” he said, his voice so much less than it had been. “Bring me my sword.”

Hathal was the most loyal of those who remained. He was a houseless man with one blank eye. He spoke little, but he had no fear of death. He always waited close, and now he came from the shadows and brought Daganhurre his sword. His axe and shield had been lost, but this sword remained. He gripped the cold hilt and lay the blade against his body.

Daganhurre had slain his brothers with this sword, and he had caused their names to be chiseled upon the steel so that he might remember the price of shed blood. He was a man who has seen those dearest to him slaughtered, and so no other life mattered to him now, not even his own. Yet he clung to it, as much from bitter spite as from any desire to live.

“How long have I slept?” he said, and Hathal only shrugged. He did not often speak unless he must. Daganhurre found him a good companion in that. He squinted at the light. Had it been a day? He was hungry, so it must have been nearly that. “I am hungry,” he said. He thought of allowing his men to bring him food and spat out the idea of weakness. If he would die, he would not die in bed, cowering from pain.

He forced himself up, feeling sallow and weak. His body felt heavy, as did his sword. He climbed down from the ship to the shore where the men had built their fire, and he was glad of the clean heat that radiated from it. He leaned on his blade like an old man, but he held himself rigid and would not allow his legs to tremble. He was not so weak as that. He was Daganhurre, the gold-seeker, the blood-hunter. He was a giant among men. He would not stumble like a dotard.

There was fish roasting in the fire, and he ate. The men looked at him, some with hope, some with wavering despair. They had remained with him, and now there was no easy escape if they wished to leave. There was only a single longship, and upon this bleak island there was no way out. They had to remain here until they all decided to leave. He knew some of them likely wished he would die and leave them free. If he could not be the iron captain who led them, then they would have him gone.

“We will put to sea tomorrow,” he said, not thinking before he spoke. The wind gusted from the dark sea and tasted of salt and death. He did not want to remain any longer. He thought of the night ahead and it gave him no rest. “We will leave this place.” He saw relief on their faces and knew he had chosen the best course. The heaving of the waves would be terrible, but he would not simply lie here and wait to die. He would do what he had done his whole life. He would fight.

“There’s work for mercenaries,” one of the men said. “The war’s been dragging on all summer, but no one wants to risk their own hearthmen, not after the battle. It’s just been sea-raids and ambushes. We could make good gold there.” There was general grunting and nodding.

“Then let us go and seize it,” Daganhurre said. “I will not wait for death any longer. I will not lie in a bed and wonder which breath will be last.” He uprooted his sword and stood on his own legs, feeling them shiver unseen. “Let us go forth again. Let us take the sea road. If the Spearfather calls to me, I will hear him no matter where I lie.” He looked inland to where the ship stood like a shadow, the hills beyond dark with trees. This was an old place, and men had never dwelled upon this island. He wondered if somewhere, beneath rock and root, lay hidden places for their bones.

o0o

He dreamed of rolling darkness, like waves marching over the land. He saw lines of dead men coming up from the deep, striding out of the water with spears gleaming and keen, helms draped with weeds and their flesh white as unearthed roots. He woke and found a storm had come, and he heard the winds battering at the hull of the ship, the rain driven against the oaken beams and deck-planks. Thunder tolled like the roaring of giants that wandered the night. Here below the decks of the ship, men huddled against the cold winds.

There was only a single lantern, and by it he saw some of the bunks were empty that should not have been. He reached across and caught Hathal by the shoulder and shook him awake. “Rise,” he said. “Where are the men?”

Hathal sat up, blinking, seen as only a white eye that reflected the single light. He rose, and Daganhurre followed him, gripping the sides of the ship for balance, to keep himself on his weakened legs. He watched as the other man lit a fat candle from the lantern and searched the other bunks. Of a dozen men, four were missing.

Daganhurre shook another man awake. “Where are the others? Did they go above?” Speaking the thought aloud made it foolish. What man would go out on a night like this? They did not even stand a watch in this desolate place – there was nothing to watch against.

The wind heaved against the ship, and they all watched the flames gutter and lash in answer. The air was cold and wet, and their breath steamed like wounds. Daganhurre took up his sword and used it as a walking cane, digging the point into the hard deck as he struggled up the narrow stair. He unhooked the sailcloth tarp and it was whipped from his hand by the wind, a squall of rain blasting into his face. He snarled and leaned into it, fought his way up onto the deck.

It was pitch dark, the rain in his face, flowing over his eyes. He wiped at them and tried to see. The deck was empty, the tarp tied over it loose and whipping in the gale, snapping and billowing like a war banner. There were no men, only the ranks of shields in their places along the rail, and the dragon’s head prow rearing up with its mouth gaping, as though it roared hatred into the night.

Lightning flared, and Daganhurre fought his way to the prow, leaned upon the wood and looked out to sea. Something moved there, huge and heavy, and he thought it could be a whale cast ashore by the storm. Thunder roared above him, and then the slash of lightning illuminated the whole shore in a blinding flare of silver, and he saw a shadow move against the curtain of night.

It towered above the wavecrests, a giant that waded in the shoals and looked down from a height greater than any mast. Daganhurre heard his men cry out in terror, and he knew they had seen it as well. The lightning lasted only a moment, but when it was gone a phantom glow haunted the dark figure, and he saw it turn and look down at them, and he saw the glow of witchfire eyes.

The thunder crawled like the sound of grinding stones, and it was almost like laughter from a stone throat. Daganhurre bellowed and held up his sword, stabbing it to the sky, and green stormfire crawled along the blade. Another blaze of lightning and the shape was receding, walking deeper into the sea, and he saw it sink down, plunging into the deeps, leaving behind only the churned surface of the tormented sea.

o0o

With dawn the world was cold and gray, the wind still and the sea lying slack and unending. They ventured out into the mist, and there they found what remained of their companions. They lay scattered upon the stony shore in pieces, arms rent from them, the bones broken as if by great teeth. They had been torn apart, and gnawed. They found two of their heads rolling in the surf, blank-eyed and gray.

“A giant,” one of the men said. “One of the black giants of Azor.”

“No,” Daganhurre said, leaning hard upon his blade. “I have seen them, and none are even half so large as what we saw in the night. This was something more fell than those primitives.”

“Thurr,” one of them men muttered, and another man turned and struck him with his fist, drove the man to earth with blood on his face.

“Do not speak the name!” came the cry, and the men were suddenly shoving and bellowing, boiling over with anger.

“Enough!” Daganhurre snarled, but they did not obey him as they once had, instead they turned on him.

“You!” the man called Sren shouted, hand gripping his sword hilt though he did not quite dare to draw it. “We followed you, and you have led us here to this forsaken place! You have cursed us, as you are cursed!”

Daganhurre drew himself up, and he summoned all the strength he still commanded. He lifted his blade from the stony earth, and Sren drew his own sword in a sudden flash. He rushed forward with a howl of rage and controlled fear, eyes wide and desperate.

Daganhurre stood unmoving, and then he stepped away from the clumsy slash and struck back with terrible force, the edge of his heavy blade crushing through meat and bone, shearing through Sren’s shoulder and rooting itself in his breastbone. Blood poured out, running over the blade, and Daganhurre wrenched it free, let the body crumple to the earth. Red poured out in a tide, seeping into the sands and staining the waves as they touched it.

He held himself rigid, refusing to show the weakness that washed over him and sought to drag him down. He held up his red-dyed blade and looked his men in the eyes. “Do not think I am too weak to kill all of you,” he snarled. He felt the sharp pain in his side and ground his teeth. “Wounds and sickness may have left their marks on me, but I am still Daganhurre the Kin-Killer. You think I would spare you? Any of you? Rush upon me and try your fortunes, but do not think you will survive.”

He saw them watch him, and judge him, and then their hands moved away from their swords and knives. They had known him long, and even weakened they feared to cross steel with the Kin-Killer. He lowered his sword and flicked blood from the steel. “Let us begone from this shore,” he said. “This is an evil place, and if we remain, we shall be accursed. We will drag the ship down into the water, and sail away as best we can.”

“We are not enough to row,” Hathal said. “Not just the eight of us.”

“Whatever we have must be enough,” Daganhurre said, leaning again upon his sword as pain clawed at him. “What strength we have must suffice to make our way.”

“And if it is not?” another man said.

Daganhurre shrugged his heavy shoulders. “We die.”

o0o

They set ropes upon the ship and knocked away the beams that braced her up. Daganhurre was weak from fevers and from pain, yet he drove himself on, laboring beside his men as well as he could. His great strength remained, even if his endurance was worn away. He let the pain goad him on, and would not rest while his men bent their backs.

The ship’s hull grated upon the stony shore as they dragged it down to the water’s edge. The tide was rising, and so they met the waves sooner than they would have at the ebb. Once they were afloat they all pulled themselves onto the ship and took to the oars. They had to fight against the waves of the tide coming in, pulling as hard as they could to get away from the land. The wind came up and they unfurled the sail, watched as it bellied against the cold sky.

Daganhurre held hard to the tiller and tried to steer them as they fought away from that evil shore. The wind came up and helped them, and they slowly drew away, fighting for every painful length. He remembered the giant shape in the dark, and when he looked back toward the island he almost expected to see it looming there above the mist, watching them. There was only shadows among the clouds, and fog that rose up from the shore. Nothing watched them, and yet he felt the gaze of something as they fled. The men did not speak the name, but they all knew it. Thurr, the Flesh-Eater, the Storm-Father. He was one of the Undergods, like Sceatha and Vraid – the Old Gods of darkness and blood who had ruled before the coming of the Speargod.

All day they fought through the waves as the wind grew harsher, and Daganhurre felt the kiss of winter’s teeth gnawing at the edge of summer’s end. The sea rose and heaved beneath them, and the wind backed around the ship, pointing one way, then another. The men exhausted themselves at the oars but there were only seven of them toiling at the benches, and the ship was simply too large.

By the time night fell, they lay gasping as the ship was battered and spun around, rising up the face of one wave and then sliding down the next. Daganhurre ground his teeth and tried to fight the tiller, but there was not enough speed for steerage, and no more strength to drive them on. He felt the bones grind in his chest and the pain was terrible.

The dark closed in under the low sky, and they were lost in the night. The men clung hard to lines and benches and held on as the ship pitched and heaved. Lightning flickered to the north, and Daganhurre wrenched the tiller to steer away from it. There were a great many islands and rocks in these waters, it was only a matter of time before they struck something. They were awash in darkness, lost upon the surface of the sea.

Daganhurre all but lost himself in the rhythms of the sea, clinging to the tiller as the ship heaved up and plunged down. The salt spray wet everything and the men shivered as they were soaked to the skin and groaned with calls upon the gods to spare them. Something moved in the darkness, disturbing the flow of the waters, and then something struck the ship a terrible blow.

It shuddered through the hull, and the men all cried out as the bow rose up from the water, lifted by some unseen power. The black sea seemed to boil, and then a green light rose up out of the deeps. Daganhurre drove his sword into the deck-planks and held onto it as the ship rose, and something else rose beneath it. The waves clawed at the hull, hurling it against the dark shape, and then eyes opened in the night.

Men screamed as the shape of a giant emerged from the sea, limned by a flickering green light like ghost fire. A hand reached down and broke off the mast, ropes snapping loose as they were torn away with it. One man was caught in a loop of line and shrieked as he was pulled overboard and vanished into the dark.

A hand swept the deck, huge and dark, clawed with talons like iron thorns, and it plucked up two men and carried them up into the night. Rain splattered the ship, and Daganhurre felt it on his face, and then he tasted it and knew it for blood.

He looked up into the black face of the giant, saw the glowing eyes of blue-green phosphor, and he knew it was Thurr in his ancient flesh. The giant that walked the rim of the world, seeking men to devour. The old god who had eaten his brothers. The one who the hungry called on in the winter deeps, who taught them to eat the flesh of other men. The Cannibal God, the Hunger God.

The ship heaved again, and he heard the deck-planks crack and shiver. They were being torn apart by a god from dark ages, and he knew they could neither escape, nor prevail. All that remained was to die like men.

That great hand clawed at the deck again, talons ripping through the boards and showering splinters like a rain of arrows. It tore up the rower’s benches and snapped the oars. It dragged two more men howling up into the sky and Daganhurre saw them lifted high into the air, and then the claws opened and the men fell screaming into the dark mouth that yawned with ebon teeth. The feasting god shook his head and blood fell again like rain. It fell on Daganhurre’s eyes and he snarled and wiped them clear. Then he tore his sword free from the deck and gripped it in his hands.

He saw Hathal and the last man clinging to the splintered rail, and he warded them back with his sword like a talisman, caught with ghostly fire so it glowed. “Into the sea!” he roared. “Swim for your lives! I will die with sword in hand!”

He thought no more on them, then. He struggled across the heaving deck, clawing his way up the slope of the ship, using the broken benches for handholds. The great hand came down again, and he braced himself with his feet wide and both hands on the hilt of his sword. He saw the seawater and blood pouring from the iron claws, and he struck with all the strength that remained to him.

The hard steel edge of his blade bit into the otherworldly flesh and he saw black blood pour forth, crawling with skeins of the green foxfire. A bellow shook the world, splintering the wood and driving him to his knees, then the hand came down again as a fist and it crushed through the deck and broke the ship in two.

Daganhurre felt the deck pitch beneath him, and he knew there were only moments before he would be in the sea. He rushed ahead, clawing his way, until he caught the dragon prow and climbed to stand beside it. There was nothing above him but darkness, and then he saw the eyes of the Devouring God close to him as it bent down, jaws wide to engulf him.

Lightning flashed like the bolts of the Speargod, and Daganhurre laughed. He spat in the face of the dark god and held his sword up to the sky. White lightning struck down and coursed through the blade, driving through him like a spear, burning his hands. The dragon prow exploded in sudden flame, and with an unending battle howl the Kin-Killer struck.

He felt the blade find flesh, and he saw the white-hot steel cut clean and then shatter apart. The peal of thunder was like a blow and it hurled him back. He struck the water and the cold of it shocked him. He felt his hands sizzling from their own heat, and then he was sinking into the churning deeps.

The black hand plunged in like a sea-beast and he saw it there for one moment, a stump where one finger had been sheared away, black blood boiling, and then it closed around him and he knew nothing.

o0o

He woke on the edge of the land, draped across stones while the water flowed over his legs. He stirred and felt a stiffness all over, as though he had been battered, or had fallen. He remembered the dark, the sea, and the shadow. He brought his hands to his face and looked at them, saw the weals across them from the burning was faded, as though it had been many years ago. He touched his face and his beard had not grown long. He had not slumbered like an accursed king, he had healed.

It was cold, and he sat up. His clothes were wet and ragged, and he had nothing but his dagger sheathed at his belt. When he rose, there was no pain in him, as there had been for so many months. He felt weak, as a man who has been ill, but he did not feel death close to him like a lover.

He looked inland, saw hills rising up forested over with green, hard stone mountainsides beyond them. He did not know where he was, but he saw smoke rising nearby, and so there were people close. This was not some remote and abandoned shore. The sea lay quiet beneath a low sky covered over with tattered clouds. He did not understand what had happened. There was no sign of his ship, no sign of his men, and no sign of what he had seen. Had it been a fever dream, conjured up by weakness and a roaring sea?

Daganhurre began to walk toward the signs of men, not leaning, not limping, feeling only small pains. He touched his tongue to his teeth, and it seemed they felt sharp to him, keener than they had been. He hoped to find a longhouse, or a village. Perhaps there would be children. He smelled meat, and he was hungry. He was so hungry.