The doom of odin, p.12
The Doom of Odin, page 12
“Mercy?” shrieked the priest from Messina. “There is no mercy for the betrayers of God! His angel—”
“I said shut your hole, hymn-singer!!” Grimnir drove Pandolfo’s longsword point-first into the soft loam at the marsh’s edge. “Is that what you think you’ve been doing? Nursing an angel of your precious lord? Bah! Open your eyes, swine! You’ve been gulled by a hate old as Time!” Two long strides brought the skrælingr to the mewling crossbowman, still alive despite the ruin of his face. Grimnir sucked his teeth.
Without preamble, he put one hobnailed boot on the man’s chest. The Sicilian clawed at Grimnir’s leg as he bent at the waist and wrenched his axe free. Blood burbled and spewed, a froth that masked his agonized scream. In the same motion, Grimnir struck him once more—this time, splitting the crossbowman’s skull across his brow. Death rattled in his chest as the Sicilian’s body went limp.
“Níðhöggr, it is called,” Grimnir said, looking askance at the priest. “The Malice-Striker! It drinks blood and breathes the fumes of Niflheimr, a black pestilence that already spreads among you piss-eyed beggars of Miðgarðr!” Grimnir sheathed his gory axe and took up the fallen arbalest. He had no need for the goat’s-foot mechanism on the dead crossbowman’s belt. He stuck his boot in the stirrup; then, gritting his teeth, he drew the arbalest’s cord back, his hands protected by thick ridges of callus. “The East burns with plague,” he said, grabbing a pair of bolts from the bag at the dead man’s waist and slotting one in the groove. “Messina is lost. Neapolis, Tarracina, the rest of the villages in your wake? They’re next. Call your angel forth, priest. We can end this now…”
“Liar!” the priest replied, striding forward. “The Blessed One was sent by the Lord God Almighty! Sent to judge us! Sent to bring us the good news: The Lord cometh! Evil shall pass away, and the Kingdom of Heaven shall arise! As for you and your kind, spawn of Hell, God will punish you! God will cast every last one of you into the Abyss! God—”
Grimnir shot him. The weapon thumped as it discharged, sending the bolt across the short interval and into the priest’s belly. The man gasped, suddenly at a loss for breath. Grimy hands clutched at his midriff. The bolt had pierced cloth, muscle, viscera, and bone to exit out his back. It struck the wood of the pageant wagon with an audible crack. Grimnir spat at him. “Your god is useless, you cack-handed kneeler.”
The priest staggered, unable to speak. He turned from Grimnir; turned toward the pale ribbon of stone marking the Via Appia. Wheezing and gurgling in agony, he shuffled into the night … following something only his dying gaze could see. Grimnir grunted; he drew back the bow and slotted his last bolt. He eyed the two soldiers who yet lived, looking for signs their courage had returned, but both men kept their gaze averted. They stared hard into the heart of their crackling fire. Sweat beaded their fevered brows.
Nodding, Grimnir crossed to the rear of the pageant wagon. To the place where he’d been skewered by the first crossbow bolt—Bah! How am I not dead? In a patch of sedge grass still sticky with black blood he found his long-seax, Hátr, with its hilt of bone carved to resemble a great Northern dragon. He snatched it up. Iron rasped as he slid it into its scabbard.
Grimnir stood to one side and levered the broken door to the pageant wagon open, crossbow at the ready. A voice, weak and thready, thick with mucus, greeted him: “Is … is it done? Did I k-kill it?”
The skrælingr peered in. By the thin firelight, he beheld a disease-ravaged Sicilian in a filthy gambeson, his haggard face a welter of pus-filled buboes and necrotic ulcers; the man lay among the baggage, unable to walk. A spent crossbow rested across his knees. “D-Did I…?”
“Takes more than the likes of you to kill me, you hymn-singing maggot,” Grimnir said, stepping into view. Fear shimmered in the man’s watery eyes. He clawed for the butt of the crossbow. His fingers, though, lacked the strength to grab on to it, just as his arms lacked the strength to reload it. He sagged back down. Grimnir nodded toward the front of the wagon. “Where is it, this so-called angel of yours, eh? Where does it hide?”
“It’s gone,” the fellow replied.
“Gone? Gone where? Up the road? Into the marsh? Speak up, you dunghill rat!”
“I … I do not know. Just … g-gone.”
“Faugh! What use are you, then?” The man started to speak, but Grimnir raised his crossbow and put a bolt through the dying Sicilian’s open mouth. He tossed the spent weapon aside as the dying man gurgled and kicked. Grimnir rummaged a moment through the bundles and bales of supplies, coming up with a squat, long-necked bottle of wine. He pried the cork out and took a long draught. Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he turned and glared at the two soldiers by the fire. They were trembling, feverish; wracked by chills and coughing, they huddled together, praying, lost in their own thoughts. The men started as Grimnir approached. He nudged one with the bottle.
“Drink up,” Grimnir said. “You need it worse than I do.” He crossed to the far side of the fire and squatted on his haunches.
“Will … Will you k-kill us, now?” the spearman asked, taking a drink of wine and passing it to his companion.
Grimnir scowled. “Why would I? Nár! I took care of the ones who had it coming, like that mouthy priest and his lapdog, Pandolfo! And those two louts with their blasted arbalests! The rest of you…” Grimnir chk’ed his teeth.
The torchbearer shivered and blinked. “There…” he began, glancing at his companion. “There’s a legend from down around Neapolis. The graybeards there talk of a beast called the huorco, which takes the shape of a man. Are you…?”
Grimnir laughed, a sound like rocks grating together. “Aye, you precious fool,” he replied. “I am that, and more besides. Where were you lot headed, eh? How’d you get tangled up in all this?”
The spearman took the bottle from the other and turned it up. “Messina,” he said, knuckling droplets from his lower lip. “We were bound for Messina.”
“Enrico…” the torchbearer said, a note of caution creeping into his voice.
“What of it, Ugo?” replied Enrico, gesturing with the half-empty bottle. Tears dampened his cheeks. “What does it matter? We are dead already, you and I.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Messina, like I said. We were coming back from Croton, where Pandolfo was on the duke’s business. We came across Fra Benvenuto—”
“The priest?”
“Aye, we came across him in the hills of Rhegium, and he needed our aid. At first, Pandolfo refused, but the priest revealed the Angel of the Lord to us and we were humbled.”
Grimnir made no attempt to hide his sneer of derision. “And the priest? Where was he headed?”
“Avignon,” Enrico replied. “By way of Rome. But he could not make it alone, for—as he put it—the Devil was in pursuit. Pandolfo volunteered our services, Duke Giovanni be damned. And then you started killing us.” Both men finally looked up and met his gaze. He saw anger, there, simmering amid the zealot’s gleam, and a thirst for vengeance.
“Aye,” Grimnir said, eyes narrowing. “I did. And so? Draw steel, if you seek a reckoning.”
Young Ugo coughed blood into his clenched fist, shivered, then looked away. Enrico glanced at him; as quickly as it appeared, the fire in his gaze vanished. He sighed, wiped his eyes again, and shook his head.
Grimnir snorted in contempt. “Where’s your angel, now, eh? Where has it slithered off to?”
Enrico shrugged. “It left us here at dusk, after the wheel broke on the wagon. Told us to follow it to Rome.”
“What happens, now?” Ugo’s voice cracked.
Grimnir rose. He tsk’ed a line of spittle between his teeth; it crackled among the embers of their fire. “Drink your wine, mutter your filthy prayers, and die. Slit your own miserable throats if it’s a quick death you crave. No skin off my teeth. Me—” He shrugged, turning. “—I have a wyrm to kill.” And with that Grimnir set off up the Appian Way, leaving the dead and dying to their own devices.
A dozen yards on he found the priest of Messina, Fra Benvenuto. The man had fallen to his knees and was crawling across a crumbling stone bridge, muttering the name of his God with each gasping breath. His life’s blood drooled from slack lips.
“As I was walking all alone,” Grimnir crooned, crouching by the priest, “I heard a sad little crow making a moan. Where’s your so-called angel, now, little crow? Where is your useless god, eh?” Fra Benvenuto tried to grasp Grimnir’s arm, to lever himself upright. The skrælingr, though, slapped the priest’s hand away. “Nár! Stay on your knees, you wretch! It’s where your kind belongs.”
“You … You cannot s-stop it,” the priest said. “The Angel of … of th-the Lord. It … b-brings the cleansing fire! G-God’s wrath! You … You c-cannot…”
Grimnir hissed. “I am the only one who can stop that blasted Níðhöggr, hymn-singer. And I will.” The skrælingr rose up; as he did so, he snagged Fra Benvenuto by the back of his filthy black cassock, forcing the priest off his knees. “I’ll bury that wyrm in your precious Rome. You, I’ll bury right here.” Grunting, Grimnir flung the priest of Messina off the cobbled bridge and into the Pontine Marshes. The man gabbled and flailed before he struck the reed-choked water. The splash echoed and died away. And then the priest of Messina was seen no more this side of Hell.
Grimnir hawked and spat. Dawn was not far off and Níðhöggr had a full night’s head start. Wiping his nose with the back of his hand, Grimnir set off. His stride grew long, a loping pace like that of a hunting wolf …
* * *
GRIMNIR HATED the sun. He hated it in the North, where by this time of year it was a watery disc, masked by a thick fleece of cloud. He hated it in the fog-shrouded West, where it hung like a forge-glede over autumnal woods and rocky shingles. He hated the sun in the mountainous East, where it was as sharp and bright as the icy wind and reflected the snow crusting the high passes. Here in the South, he hated it worst of all. In these lands surrounding the Jórsalahaf, the Jerusalem Sea, the sun burned in Ymir’s mist-wreathed skull like a brand, undimmed by the seasons.
Grimnir snarled up at it as he ran, sweat dripping from his lank hair.
From the edge of the marshes, the Appian Way ran across hill and hollow in an almost straight line, as though some dead god’s finger had sketched it into the crust of the earth. Its deep-set cobbles and weed-edged kerbs cut across farmlands gone fallow; orchards grew on its flanks, with forests of pine, cypress, and plane trees in between. Smaller lanes branched off, rutted tracks and goat trails that led to solitary farmsteads or small villages. And everywhere, no matter in which direction he turned, Grimnir saw signs of Rome’s ancient glories. Squinting in the glare, he beheld stone eidolons pitted by the elements, faceless statues atop age-worn plinths, tombs hung with ivy, and monuments bearing deeply incised runes that proclaimed the deeds of long-dead men.
And amid these ruins, Grimnir came across the spoor of Níðhöggr. Dead livestock, at first. A brace of oxen on their sides, torn open, flyblown and bloated; goats dismembered in bloodstained grass. Crouching by these grisly leftovers, Grimnir spied the marks of claws and teeth. The beast wasn’t trying to hide, not like it had at Caffa on the Black Sea, then at Miklagarðr, and again at Messina. It seemed desperate to make it to Rome. “Why?” Grimnir muttered, rising. He glared toward that ancient city, still not much more than a smear of gray smoke on the horizon. “What’s in Rome that has you all hot and bothered, you slithering maggot?”
He found his first dead man near noon. The bastard lay in the shadow of a gate, on a lane leading to some local grandee’s estate—a barefooted corpse clad in a linen nightshirt, headless and drained of blood. From nearby, Grimnir caught the scent of smoke, of burnt flesh, and the underlying reek of corruption. He heard no screams. Even the dogs were silent.
With each passing mile, signs of the wyrm’s depredations, of its voracious hunger, grew more obvious—a serf cut down in the field, bloodless and cloaked in flies; a pair of horsemen and their mounts torn asunder, gnawed to the bone; a woman’s head sitting in a tussock of grass, dark of hair and milky-eyed, her devoured body doubtless stewing in Malice-Striker’s belly. But where a man would see madness and horror, Grimnir merely chuckled.
That bastard, Níðhöggr, was making this hunt too easy.
The beast’s advance, however, did not go unnoticed. As the day waned, Grimnir was forced to slow his pace. Squadrons of mailed horsemen, clad in bright yellow-and-blue surcoats, emerged from a squat round fortress perched atop a low hill. Some rode between farmsteads and villas, drawn by the columns of smoke staining the afternoon sky; others took up positions at crossroads and bridges, watching for signs of an invader. Their presence forced Grimnir to abandon the road. He crept through a field of tall yellow grass to a copse of trees, where columns jutted like broken teeth; toppled walls formed an ancient boundary, a temple, perhaps. Marble pavers were tilted and dislodged by the roots, a sacred grove where once sacred stones existed.
A spring trickled from beneath the mossy stones. Here, Grimnir crouched in a well of shadow, his back to a low wall, and scooped handfuls of water. He spat dust, cursing under his breath … and then stopped. He cocked his head, listening.
There.
From the other side of the grove, he heard the thudding of hooves. He flattened himself against the wall and drew his seax. Horses nickered and whinnied, and men hailed one another barely a dozen yards from him.
“Signore! Signore Caetani!” one rider sang out, his youthful voice thick with excitement. “Cola di Rienzo calls for aid! The Colonna and the damnable Orsini have made a truce against him … and they mean to be rid of him tonight!”
Grimnir heard a weary sigh. The voice of a much older man answered: “So, it is true, Jacopo? I knew those dogs were up to no good.”
Grimnir heard the stamp of hooves and the jangle of curb chains as a third horseman pushed to the fore, younger even than the first. There was a tinge of fear to his words. “We have to warn someone, Father! Di Rienzo, Colonna, Orsini … it does not matter! They must be told what we’ve seen! This … This is something beyond any feud between nobles!”
“What does he mean, Signore?”
There was a sharp note of disapproval to the old man’s reply: “What my son means is there are fires all along the Via Appia. Farmsteads burned out, corpses left to rot. Where young Gianni, here, sees the hand of the Devil, I see the work of marauders. Likely, they’re making their way toward Rome.”
“You saw what I saw!” Gianni snapped.
Jacopo spoke before father and son could come to verbal blows: “Then we must make haste, Signore! It might be more of Colonna’s godless allies, seeking to divide our strength.”
“So I thought, as well,” replied old Signore Caetani. “Gather the men, Gianni!”
“God’s teeth! But—”
The old signore’s voice cracked like a whip: “The Pope is our patron, and the Pope—and perhaps God himself—wants Cola di Rienzo to remain in power! The Caetani will ride to his aid! Now, gather the men and keep your tongue between your teeth!”
There came a moment of strangled silence, then Grimnir heard the youthful Gianni turn his horse and canter back the way they’d come. The other two men walked their mounts to the other end of the grove, toward Rome.
“You have a boy of your own, do you not, Jacopo?” asked the old man, after a moment.
“I do, Signore, but he is young, still.”
Signore Caetani sighed, again, his voice fading: “No man should live long enough to become a villain to his son…”
Grimnir crouched, there, in the shadows alongside the ruined wall until the men had moved off, then made his way across the country like a wraith. He turned over old Caetani’s words in his mind. Strife in the streets meant fertile ground for the wyrm’s pickings. While no one was watching, while the lords of Rome fought one another, Níðhöggr would seek out the poorest, the meanest, the most desperate among them and twist their minds; it would make thralls of those no others would use … but this could work in Grimnir’s favor.
It meant he would find the wyrm among Rome’s dregs.
Near sunset, Grimnir crested a low ridge and got his first look at the Eternal City. Oh, he’d heard stories from old Gífr, who’d visited Rome in its heyday; tales of a sprawling labyrinth of limestone and marble spread across seven hills, home to a million whiteskins, their wives and offspring, and their slaves. A city of temples and monuments, spirits and gods, where piety and perversion lived cheek-by-jowl with civility and savagery. The old sot’s eyes would gleam like embers when he spoke of his time there.
That wasn’t the city Grimnir bore witness to. No, under a pall of smoke lit by the dying red-gold gleam of the sun he saw a mean and dispirited town; a town cowering like a whipped dog at the foot of a single hill, Mons Vaticanus, with the turgid brown waters of the Tiber River between them. He saw a riot of domes and towers, bright marble and old terra-cotta alongside age-pitted limestone and brick; he spied villas and town houses rising like new shoots amid old stones. And churches. Scores of them, like maggots worming through the dead flesh of an empire. A cavalcade of saints and martyrs danced on the bones of ancient gods, nameless and fey; baleful eyes watched the hymn-singers’ desecration from the shadows.
This was Rome: a midden fetched up against a stinking river, all of it protected by stone walls both ancient and formidable—battlements and ramparts, towers and fortified gates. Each point of entry was like a small village, with buildings of wood and scavenged stone going right up to the walls. Grimnir did not waste time speculating how a beast like Níðhöggr might have slipped into the city in broad daylight. He reckoned the snake must have crept west, into the Tiber, and swum upriver until he found a sewer opening or some-such. Fine for that scaly maggot, but Grimnir would not go into the drink and try to follow. No, he had something else in mind.
