Valkyrie's Shadow

Winter's Crown: Act 2, Chapter 22

Winter's Crown: Act 2, Chapter 22

Chapter 22

“Thegn.”

“Your bird was pestering me – what’s going on?”

Perched on its mistress’ shoulder, the Giant Eagle ruffled its feathers in affront and glared at him. An insolent grin appeared on Sigurd’s face over the bird’s reaction to his words.

“I sent him to fetch you,” the Huntress’ hand reached up to scratch the bird affectionately. “If it was possible, I would’ve had him carry you here like a tree branch. You took your sweet time.”

“And why not?” Sigurd shrugged. “It’s not as if anything worthwhile is going on. Why did you send for me?”

The Huntress turned to face the passes below before replying, motioning towards the distant figures following the mountain road. Since it was first noted weeks ago, the Jarls had issued a missive to the tribal leaders: ordering them to send Huntress to observe the Dwarven migration.

“Something’s changed,” she said. “They’ve posted sentries on the route. Undead sentries.”

“Undead?” He chuckled, “Don’t tell me they’ve set up those horse things pulling the sleds as guards, too. Horsecarls? Hah!”

Sigurd’s mirth boomed over their surroundings, sending ice and snow tumbling off the nearby trees and cliffs. The Huntress scowled, raising a finger to her lips.

“Hsst! You’re making enough noise to start an avalanche, and your joke was terrible. It’s a different sort of Undead this time. They have the look of warriors, about twice as tall as a Dwarf.”

Sigurd squinted down at the road, his interest in the long weeks of boring movement renewed. He was not an experienced Hunter, however, so he could make little beyond the vague procession of dots over the snowy landscape.

“I can’t see shit from this far,” he started scaling down the escarpment. “Let’s take a closer look.”

His blood stirred at the thought of these new, unknown beings. While younger warriors might have been interested in attacking the Dwarves and their cargo in order to gain wealth and rise through the ranks with proof of their mettle, Sigurd was long past those days: he was already an acclaimed warrior of his clan, and little could increase his standing. Leather creaked as his grip tightened over his greataxe – hopefully they were strong, and worthy of his attention. The Huntress did not miss his shift in attitude.

“Wait,” her voice called out in warning after they reached the bottom and walked a short ways, “we shouldn’t get any closer than this.”

“The last time I was here, you were all much closer,” he replied. “If you were pushed back by these new Undead warriors, then that’s all the more reason for me to have a look at them.”

Sigurd continued down the slope, through the silent stands of conifers crowned in snow. The Huntress followed after him with silent steps.

“We lost one of ours a day after you came by,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t one of those Undead though – they came later – it was a Dragon.”

“Oho…I thought the reports said that the Frost Dragons were in league with the Dwarves now? Whatever happened, they’ve become little more than livestock.”

Sigurd spat into the mat of needles underfoot with a sour expression marring his face. The sudden change over their ancient rivals was both incomprehensible and disgusting. That they had seemingly capitulated to nothing was a stain on the honour of those who had long contested their power and considered them worthy adversaries.

“That’s what we thought,” the Huntress admitted. “Then we found one of our own at the bottom of a gulley. The corpse was fresh – there wasn’t a single scavenger there yet. The marks on her body were almost certainly caused by a Dragon and, by the looks of it, the Huntress couldn’t even put up a fight.”

“Hmm…how experienced was this Huntress?” He asked.

“She’s been ranging for my tribe for nearly a decade,” she answered. “Not exactly new, but she never really distinguished herself in any way.”

“Still, if it was so one-sided, it must have been Olasird’arc, or one of his consorts.”

“If it was one of them, there’d be pieces strewn all over the mountainside."

She had a point: clashes with the older Dragons in the White Dragon Lord’s following were few and far between. Whenever they did happen, it was done in as showy a manner as possible in an overt attempt to demonstrate who truly dominated the area.

“None in their broodlings are strong enough to pull that off,” he noted.

“There is one,” the Huntress said. “It was just her style too.”

Sigurd snorted dismissively.

“She’s real!” The Huntress protested, “I’ve seen her handiwork before – all us out here have.”

“I don’t deny that she exists,” Sigurd looked over his shoulder at her. “I just don’t believe that she’s all that these brats have made her out to be. That nickname they gave her just makes things even more ludicrous – like some story to scare beardless boys with.”

He turned his gaze forward again. Every new generation had their tales and rumours; Sigurd’s was no different. When he was a young, unproven warrior, the threat of the day was Olasird’arc’s move into the old Dwarven capital. The most ardent of his age insisted that, from within their new stronghold, the Dragons would breed out of control and the mountains would be swarming with them in no time.

That never happened, however. Dragons being Dragons, they took a long time to grow and the young were eventually dealt with when they left their new lair to hunt. The handful that reached maturity…well, that was what he was there for – or any other decently strong member of his kind, for that matter. Those inexperienced fools who believed that Dragons could actually grow to become a threat by simply outbreeding their rivals were jumping at the shadows of an already absurd notion.

There was a good reason why that, by the time that the Demon Gods had appeared, only a few Frost Dragons remained. In the span that it took for a generation of Frost Dragons to survive to adulthood, an entire generation of Frost Giants would become veteran warriors, with another generation well on the way. It took centuries for a Frost Dragon to truly become a threat to a small tribe – centuries where they would inevitably expose themselves to risks and commit fatal errors that would bring their lives to an end. He anticipated a day when Olasird’arc himself would stick his neck out too far, and then Sigurd’s blade would finally taste the flesh of an Ancient Dragon.

Frost Giants were simply more populous, grew faster and were far more organized than the Frost Dragons who were possessed of a solitary and prideful nature. Even after forming their enclave, every Frost Dragon still essentially saw to their own individual needs: hunting alone, flying alone and dying alone. Without the benefit of the experience and knowledge that came with age, these younger Dragons were doomed to repeat those very same errors. The advent of the Demon Gods and the devastation that they wrought over the range was merely a temporary respite for the Dragons, and the undisputed rule of the Frost Giants over the Azerlisia Mountains simply a matter of time. A fate carved in stone by their very nature.

The sun was abruptly shaded over and Sigurd heard the Huntress steps falter behind him, scraping over the rocks. He looked up, only to find that a cloud had drifted in overhead. Even a veteran warrior like her was jumping at the idea of this other Dragon. Still, he supposed that this particular one seemed to be far more aware of her people’s predicament than the others.

This Dragon, unlike others of her kind, did not seek the strong to assert her dominance, nor did she hunt for treasure or slaves. Ever since she made herself known to them, she constantly oppressed and terrorized the weak, young and inexperienced. Proof of strength was not her objective – she was simply picking off whoever she could with minimal risk.

Like herd animals being slowly culled by a predator, many grew wary of her ghostly movements. Over time, her prospective list of victims expanded as she gained in strength, adding to her reputation amongst the Frost Giants.

“If she’s truly active in the area,” Sigurd told the Huntress, “then it’s a good time to finally be rid of her. We’ll see how well her skinny neck fares against the bite of my Frostreaver.”

“If only it was that simple,” the Huntress huffed. “We’d have successfully set an ambush for her long ago, but she is as cunning and observant as she is ruthless, and acts in ways that are beyond the other Dragons of her generation…it’s as if a champion has risen from their number – albeit a cowardly one.”

Sigurd laughed out loud at the idea. A champion of Dragonkind? If only such a thing were real.

“Dragons are prideful, arrogant and selfish,” he told her. “Frost Dragons are petty, cowardly and feral on top of that. If the Frost Dragons ever gave rise to a ‘champion’, that champion would only champion themselves – any benefit they gain as a whole, simply a coincidence. Because of their natural strength, they are slaves to their nature. They’ll never break free of those chains because when the strength that they depend on finally fails them, their deaths come immediately after.”

“I can hardly gainsay you, Thegn,” the Huntress said. “You’re the dragonslayer here. Hold on – up this way.”

Sigurd turned to see the Huntress scaling up the slope, through the dense forest they had entered upon reaching the lower elevations nearer to the Dwarven road. She stopped at the bottom of a rocky chute and released her pet through a gap in the trees. After several minutes, the bird returned and the Huntress nodded.

“Looks clear,” she motioned upwards. “Let’s go.”

The Huntress went ahead first, navigating a stable route up the powdered ascent. After making their way to the top, they headed to a nearby ridge that overlooked a large bend in the road. From their vantage, only a few hundred metres away, Sigurd was able to make out the new sentries that had been reported.

As was mentioned, they stood roughly as tall as two Dwarves – probably a bit shorter. Sleek black armour adorned in wicked spikes sheathed their forms from head to toe, and they stood in pairs at regular intervals along the route. What looked to be large shields were held before them. He could not see what they were armed with.

“How do you know they’re Undead?” He asked.

The Huntress gave him an annoyed look, and he smirked and turned back to watching the road. The perception of a Hunter became ever sharper as they grew in power; there was little chance that she haphazardly came to her conclusion. She was from a different clan, so he did not know her too well, but, in order to lead a scouting party, one would have had to prove themselves unquestionably worthy of that position.

An empty sled drawn by one of the Undead horses crossed under them, coming from the direction of the ancient Dwarf capital. It went swiftly by, passing between one of the pairs of sentires along the route every few minutes. The goings-on below showed no sign of being aware of the Frost Giants nearby: they were either oblivious, or just didn’t care.

“When did they arrive?”

“A few days ago,” the Huntress replied. “All at once. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen – a whole column of them marching up the road, pairs peeling off where you see them now. They haven’t moved since: snow or shine; day or night.”

“Did any of yours try testing them?”

“Those sentries aren’t the only thing that has changed,” she said. “A day before they arrived, the patterns of travel…shifted. A pair of Dragons now passes overhead every fifteen minutes. The caravans are down to three sleds each, but no stretch of the road isn’t traversed by one for more than five minutes. The Dwarves don’t travel on foot any more. It’s as if a single will precisely reorganized things to present no long spans of time in which a raid might be mounted. A warband might have been able to pull something off before, but not any more.”

Sigurd peered down at another sled – this time travelling in the opposite direction – filled with Dwarves and their cargo. Rather than concentrate their forces to defend against attacks, whoever was coordinating this effort had decided to continually guard the whole route instead. It was an extravagant show of force: deterrence through constant threat to any who would attempt an assault. Spreading them out this way made it difficult to drop the mountain on them all at once, as well.

“Just where in the world did all this come from?” He mused, “Did one of the lowland nations fall to some power from beyond?”

“They posted sentries starting from the Empire side,” the Huntress replied, “and we’ve seen no signs of conquest in that direction. It’s a nation of weakling smallfolk – we used to raid their merchants from time to time on the way towards Feoh Jura. They’re nothing like…whatever these are.”

“Do you have any sense of how strong these sentries are?”

“Roughly? About as strong as I am. That says nothing of their prowess or capabilities, though. The Hunters under me are clearly no match and, considering how they came in, I don’t doubt these sentries will all come running at once if any point along the route is attacked.”

Sigurd’s voice rumbled from under his pale beard as he pondered the developments. Hundreds of Undead horses, reported to be nearly as powerful as Elder Dragons, drawing sleds like beasts of burden. Hundreds more of these sentries, with the strength of renowned veteran warriors. Their numbers diminished to a small enclave, the Frost Dragons would have been presented with annihilation, so it was no wonder that they had submitted with no discernable resistance.

He imagined such a force arrayed for war, and excitement coursed through him over the thought of a field full of worthy challenges and the storied battles that would ensue. To Sigurd, the existence of such adversaries was nothing short of a gift – the promise that even after the last of the Frost Dragons was no more, endless opportunities for death and glory awaited him.

“Being a Thegn is not suited to you.”

The Huntress’ voice drew him out of his thoughts, and he turned to see her slowly appraising him with a pointed gaze.

“Tell that to my wife,” he snorted. “She’s been trying to get me to settle down and take a position deserving of my renown.”

“Yet here you are with us, looking for something new to fight. You don’t seem ready to settle down to me.”

“It’s the best I can do,” he said noncommittally, “the Jarl and his herd of stuffy old Nuks don’t like leaving their comfortable chairs, and I’m more than happy for the excuse to stay away.”

The Huntress shifted closer, bumping up against him.

“In that case,” she said, “why don’t you stay out here with me a bit longer and make this damnably boring watch a bit more interesting?”

“Hmph,” Sigurd grunted and rubbed his jaw. “The last time I came home with the scent of another woman, Gudrun gave me this scar.”

“The last time you came around,” the Huntress purred, “you said that while pointing out a different scar…so what’s one more?”