The Red Swords of War

The ships rode high waves on a sea that hungered for blood. The warships of the giants crested the iron tide and their rams split the waters apart as they came toward the shadow of land. Men and Azora both pulled their oars, chanting as they fought the seas that strove to hold them back, and then cries of warning came from the watchful at the dragon prows.

The waters ahead grew dark with a shadow, and then that shadow became a fleet of ships. Wind bellied their black sails, and the waves drove them onward. A dark power in the sea lashed them to battle, and the sky above them was dark like the cutting edge of a storm. Violet lightning cut down from the blackening sky and scourged the waters, and men who looked to the deeps thought they saw something vast stir in the black waves. A power gathered, and it rushed upon them, intent on crushing the fire from their veins.

The giants held to the oars, for only their strength could battle against the heavy seas, while the warriors of Vathran surged to the rails of the longships. They were men and women both, each hardened by years of war, by privation and despair and cruelty. Now they came to grips with their enemy, and they armed themselves with steel. They clad themselves in mail and tall helms, girded on swords and axes, and they took the spears bundled beneath the ship rails and lifted them high. Stormfire glinted green on the spearpoints as they took the shields from the rails and beat them against one another in the clangor of war.

Ruana stood at the prow of her ship, and she held up her own spear – the spear that had become more than simply wood and bronze, empowered by the blood of gods. She drove the spike into the oaken deck and gripped the haft upright, and the wide brazen blade flamed like gold in the stormlight. Thunder echoed and cracked in the sky, and a power emanated from the golden sign of the spear, driving back the hard winds and the savage waves.

The drummers pounded their cadence, and the giants pulled hard, sending the ships scything through the dark waters. Ahead, Ruana saw the ships hung with black sails, the rails and rams crusted with razor barnacles and skittering sea-growths. The rails were crewed by men with pale faces and black armor, spears dark as from a fire. They beat spear-hafts and sword blades against their shield-rims and shouted for death and slaughter. Green fire seemed to crawl across the spars and hulls, though it gave back when the light of her spear fell upon them.

Ruana took her shield on her arm, and she cast back her hair so it streamed like a banner in the wind. The people who followed her gave a great shout, and they stomped their feet and clashed their shields together with the eagerness to come to blows. War trembled between them, so long awaited, and so eagerly, and then the sea seemed to heave and hurl the lines of ships against one another.

There was the shattering sound of a hundred rams shearing through oar and hull and flesh. Wood splintered and shards flew like daggers and pierced men through. Ruana gripped her spear like an anchor as her ship rose up and then crushed in the dragon prow of a black vessel. The sea lashed around them, and she tore the golden spear free and hurled herself down upon the enemy deck like a war-goddess of old, armored in blazing light.

She leaped into a sea of steel-clad foes, and she struck around her like a lunging heron, piercing men through and leaving them to bleed fire upon the deck-planks. Their blows glanced from her shield and from her helm, and the light of her was such that none could look directly upon her.

Then a wave of her men came behind her, and she was swept forward on a tide of iron. The deck became a killing ground swept by the sea. Water lashed around their feet as men and women fought and killed and died. Blood stained the salt spray, and the fallen were dragged overboard and vanished into the black waves. At the center, Ruana flamed like the sun itself, and no power could stand against her. She had broken armies, slain gods and tasted their blood. In her was the power of the Speargod, and all who saw her believed it. No mere man could prevent her, and she killed the enemies who dared to face her until she broke them, and they flung themselves into the sea to escape her wrath.

The deck was awash, and she knew the ship would sink. She led her men back to her own craft, escaping just as the black ship broke apart and slipped into the deeps. The sea had become a nightmare of ships locked in battle, lashed one to another, filled with warring shapes, washed with blood and the bodies of the dead.

She cried out to her rowers and they bent their backs, turned her deadly warcraft and then drove the brazen ram into another enemy, shearing off oars in a fountain of shattered wood, then ripping the hull open so the sea could rush in and drag it down. They did not even board it, only hurled flaming jars of oil down upon the deck so that fire exploded and consumed the followers of Hror as they tried to escape.

He was the one she sought. Somewhere in this fleet of black ships and slave warriors was the usurper, the author of all this misery and death. Her spear hungered for him. Once, already she had faced him and drawn his blood; this time she would not allow him to escape. He was no longer only a man, as she was no longer only mortal. He was a stain upon the world, and only his destruction could make it clean again. She was the Spear Queen, come to wash away all the dead gods, all the dark gods. She was come to cleanse the earth and make it green again. But to clean the earth, she first must make clean the sea.

Her ship scythed through the waves, cleaving the bloody sea thick with the dead, and she sent the ramming prow crushing through two more of the enemy craft, left them foundering and burning in her wake. Her warriors thronged the prow and hurled spears down on the decks of the black ships. Faceless behind their shields and iron helms, they howled for the war of vengeance they had been denied for too long.

Behind her, the ships of the giants came on in a wedge, like the blade of an axe, and they split the enemy line apart and left broken wood and drowning men in their wake. The sky roiled and thundered, and the lightning lashed down and set ships afire with the touch of storm. Ruana thrust her spear to the heavens and cried out, and a bolt of green fire cut down and blazed upon the spearhead, throwing back a blaze of white fire and the golden glow of what had been bronze, but was now legend.

“Hror!” she bellowed into the teeth of the wind. “Come and face me!”

The sea heaved beneath them, and then something massive all but surfaced beneath the ship and tossed it sideways until it lay abeam in the heavy waves. The rowers fought against it, and then something coiled dark in the waters and snapped the oars apart like twigs. Ruana felt the blow beneath, and she cried out aloud in fury, for she knew the power that moved and savaged in the cold seas.

She put her foot upon the rail and watched as the worm coiled beneath the waters. She saw the shadow of it rise up within the body of a dread wave, and she saw the lambent eyes blaze there in darkness. It mocked her, and she felt that cold hate that burned within it – the detestation of mortal life and mortal frailty.

It dove deep, and her ship was battered by the wave that it left behind. The sea washed across the decks and swept men into the sea to be drowned by the weight of iron. Ruana heard cries and she looked to her left, saw the coils of the worm rise up and close around a sister ship. The black-scaled power tightened upon the oaken beams, and the ship was crushed. She saw the wood splinter and buckle, saw men slide helpless into the sea, and then the water rushed in and the great war-craft was dragged down.

She seemed to hear a bellow from deep down in the cold black, and she knew the dark one mocked her. He would drag down her ships until there were none left, and without an army she would be forced to give way. Hror would have time to gather new strength, the winter would come, and the war would drag on and on, feeding blood to the Undergods. That was the will of the Dark Worm, the Devourer in the Sea. Sceatha, the Voice of Darkness.

She saw him slither beneath her ship, and she knew he would not come to face her, would not give her the chance to strike at him, coward that he was. She had spilled his blood before, and would again if she came within reach. If he would not face her, she must go to him.

Before anyone could try to prevent her, she cast down her heavy shield, and then her burnished helm rang beside it. With both hands on the blazing spear, she pushed up onto the rail, and then she dove swiftly for the roiling waves.

o0o

Her spear cut through the water, and she plunged into the darkness, caught within the churning crush of the sea. Her mail dragged her down, and she fought to right herself. The scaled body of Sceatha was rushing past her, and she drew back her arms, and then struck full and deep with the golden point. Black blood came rushing out from the wound in a cloud, and the swift motion of the worm dragged her after him.

She tried to wrench the spear free, but it was embedded within the cold flesh. She felt the worm convulse, and then he dove swift for the lightless deeps. She felt the cold around her, the dark closing like fist, and the weight of the sea pressed in upon her from all sides. The air was squeezed from her lungs, and she knew she would die in a moment.

She gasped in a breath of the cold, and she felt it go into her and burn inside her chest, but she did not die. She wrenched the spear free and floated loose there in the darkness, and the light blazed forth and shone around her, revealing the unseen kingdoms at the bottom of the sea. Arches of stone stood all around her, and pillars that seemed to be fashioned by human hand in some lost age. She saw the rotting wreckage of ships, their hulls thick with weeds, and here the dead stood sentinel in eternal night, gnawed down to bones and blackened slime.

Ruana’s armor dragged her down until she stood on the deck of a sunken ship, the boards overgrown with black seaweed, bones and rusted iron scattered like a hoard in the fitful light that flamed from her spear. She looked up, and at the edge of the dark she saw the motion of the worm. Sceatha circled the flame of her fire, and he gathered himself to strike. Ruana did not know how she could dwell here in the depths, did not know how she might prevail. All she could do was trust in the spear, and commit herself to battle.

Sceatha came for her in a tumult of thrashing black water, and she saw his eyes blazing there in the deeps, the water burning with his ichor, and then she thrust at his jaws, drawing fresh blood as he recoiled and then rushed past her. The barnacles clinging to his scales rasped at her armor, but she struck at him again, and then again, wounding him each time.

He turned, and she saw his coils darkening the seas around her, and then he sought to catch and crush her in them. His strength bore down upon the ancient ship, and it caved in beneath the onslaught. Ruana smote him with the blazing spear-blade once more, and his blood made a black cloud in the deeps.

She fell among the broken flinders of sea-rotted wood, and then she planted her feet in the heaped gold lost at the bottom of the sea, cast down with the wreck of warships and the vessels of ancient kings. The light of the spear flamed around her, and her dark hair floated like a crown around her face.

Sceatha came then, his jaws wide, and he lunged as though nothing would turn him aside, as if he had no more fear of her. She saw his black jaws coming, wide as the vault of the sky buried here beneath the waters, his dagger-teeth crawling with luminescent sea-life. Through the water she felt his roar shaking down to her iron bones.

She gripped her spear and leaped to meet him, and for a moment she was as a star in the dark, lost in his blackness, and then she rammed the weapon deep into his flesh and felt the jar of impact as she pierced bone. His teeth closed and she rammed her armored legs against his lower jaw, held it away with straining force as he tried to bite down and finish her.

He rushed through the deeps and she felt the water coursing past her, drawing her down his throat. She twisted her spear with both hands and felt the shudder of agony through him as she pressed the deadly point deeper. She braced her back against the roof of his mouth, her boots against his lower jaw, and she fought with all the power in her body to keep his teeth apart. He lashed side to side, battering against rocks and ancient ruins, shattering the wrecks of ages, trying to jar her loose. Ruana gave a last convulsion of effort and drove forward, the point of her spear bursting forth from his neck.

Blood filled the water, and she was blinded, feeling his teeth dig through her mail, through the leather of her boot-soles, against her back and legs. Her own blood stained the sea, and she tore her weapon free even as he spat her forth, and she was unbound in the deeps.

She could not see him, could not even tell up from down as she tumbled. She felt him move near her, though she saw nothing. She turned and felt a rock wall close to her, braced herself against it, and then his vast head moved near her, searching, and she struck. The point of her blazing spear pierced the scales behind his eye and drove deep into his skull. She felt the edge bite flesh, and then the bone crushed beneath her blow.

Even as she ripped the blade free, Sceatha was convulsing in his death-agonies. She saw the light in his eyes go dark as blood began to pour from them. The Worm of Darkness was, at last, made to weep as his life ebbed away. He thrashed and hammered his great body against the cliff and broke it with his ruin. Great slabs of rock slid down, and Ruana was tumbled among them. She fought free and pushed upward, chasing the bubbles that roiled up from the collapse, swimming against the drag of armor around her body.

Sceatha writhed in the abyss beneath her, and she felt the shudder of his roar in the churning waves. He coiled and fought against the end that came for him, but he was buried beneath the collapsing stone, and only trails of black blood followed her as she rose toward the light.

o0o

She broke the surface, the spear shining like a dawn star, and she was in the sea of battle again. The waves were calming, rolling cold and gray beneath the low sky. All around her the water was heavy with the dead and the dying, blood staining the deeps.

One of her ships sighted her, and she heard a great cry go up. Oars clawed at the waves, and then there was a rope and hands to heave her from the sea and lift her to the deck. Blooded and battered men clustered around her as she fell upon the planks and vomited up the cold waters, spit the taste of the dying god from her mouth. She was soaked to the bones and her armor was rent and torn. Her own blood dripped down and mixed with the salt water, ran across the oak beneath her.

At last she could stand, used the spear like a walking-cane and got to her feet, and a great cry went up. She looked and saw her warriors gathered around on the ship, other ships riding the swells close abeam. Spears and shields clashed to sound their victory.

“The worm is dead,” she said, and men and women howled for blood and joy, beat their spear-hafts upon the deck. She held up the shining spear, and all saw the black blood that stained the haft of it. “I have undone the worm, Sceatha, even as I slew Marrow, the White Maiden. The time of the Undergods is ended.” She looked to them. “What of the battle? How does it go?”

“We broke them,” a man said, blood upon his graying beard. “We sent a dozen ships to the bottom, and when the sea turned against them, they broke and fled. We were scattered apart, and by the time we came together, they were over the horizon.” He pointed with his notched axe. “That way, southward.”

“He flees to Hadrad,” Ruana said. “There he will make another stand, a last stand. He cannot hold. The power that raised him up has been cast down. I have slain the beast, now I will slay his son.” She gripped the haft of her spear and nodded, as to herself. “Yes, Hror is the son of the Worm. He has become that, and is a blight upon the earth. We will harry him to the end of the world, and I will spill whatever blood still flow in his dark veins.” She looked to the sky as the storm passed. “I will end this war.”

The ships rode the fallow waves as they gathered in the wounded, as they tended hurts upon the ships and worked to repair the warcraft that had been damaged. It was late in the day when the drums again began to beat the cadence for the oarsmen, as the fleet began to move southward, toward the last refuge of the usurper upon the earth. The sun blazed down beneath the clouds and cast a last light across the sea; it lit the waves with gold, and the steel of sword and spear where they glittered was turned to red.