Blood of the Red

Chapter 11 - Sindri

Part 11 – Sindri After the Battle

Cold kisses brought Sindri to the waking world. He licked his lips and came to with a shudder. The sky filled his vision, leaden, pregnant with snow. Huge flakes descended leisurely, by the dozen and score, each intricate beyond the works of men, fleeting and fragile. A flake hit Sindri in the eye, leaving swiftly as a cold tear. The shock made him turn his head.

He lay on his back in a narrow gully, arched across a boulder. His sight was fogged, but he could make out his immediate surroundings. The gully sides were rocky, dusted with snow, old oaks marched along the edges. From behind and below the gurgle of a stream. No birds spoke, the forest stood deathly still. Sindri's body felt pleasantly numb, his limbs strangers to him. A deep peace enfolded him, muffling the small voice that asked how he came to be lying here.

A vision swept across his sight, unbidden. Greyheart torn neck to groin, swinging his axe as he fell. The image seemed to pass as swiftly as it came, but now the snow lay inches thick and Sindri shook it from his blond mane. Agony lanced his neck. The pain jabbed him from his snow dream, and with great effort he lifted a hand to his face. The fingers looked dead, white with the bite of frost. He patted his hair and wondered absently where his helm was. He'd been wearing a helm . . . A sudden violent memory shook him, a fist bigger than his head, filling his sight.

"The Snow Queen takes many lovers." It was Greyheart's voice! But Greyheart had died . . . "She lays them down with gentle words and cold kisses." The conversation reached Sindri from happier days, from the deck of a longship flying before a fair wind. "Never do they rise."

"Rise! Rise!"

Sindri lolled his head towards the harsh screech. A black raven watched him from the snowy branches. "Rawk! Rawk!"

A mountain of weariness sat upon him, but Sindri turned, fell from the boulder and clambered to his feet. Snow clung to him. It had cradled him in its fatal numbing grasp. The wounds gave no pain but Sindri could see he was a mess. He moved like an old man of fifteen summers, panting over each step as he struggled from the gully.

Sindri's axe jutted from an oak, at chest height, its head buried two inches deep in the living wood. No memory remained to suggest how it came there. He leaned against the haft and brushed the snow from it. Polished yew, Sarkasian runes inlaid with black iron to spell his family name in the oldest tongue.

"Out," he grunted.

There was no give in the axe. Sindri threw his weight against it. And again. When it came, it came suddenly. Sindri crashed into the snow - and then he felt his wounds. Blood welled through the torn ring-mail across his chest.

"Pain is life. Hold to it. Pain will lead you from the Snow Queen's embrace." Greyheart spoke again, whispering with the soft shuffle of snow from branches.

Sindri spat and levered himself upright with his axe. The head gleamed, wet with nothing but tree-sap. Did I not even strike a blow? He cursed and staggered on through the trees, following a trail of torn undergrowth. His eyes had grown dim, but the blind could follow this track.

The bodies lay amongst the snow. Its clean white cloak covered the red horror of the carnage. Sindri glimpsed it now in his mind's eye. Guts steaming on the leaf litter, blood dripping from twigs overhead, the white glistening of bone in a crimson welter of flesh.

Red Gregor hung now from the boughs of an elm, his hands empty. He had stood his ground and planted his great-axe in the Carthachin's shoulder as it charged. Melchem lay twisted at the base of the elm, one hand reaching for the sky, the angle of his arm all wrong. Pieces of his shield decorated the ground, their jagged edges muted by the snow.

Sindri could not bring himself to look at the ruin that was Greyheart.

The Carthachin sat with its back to the shattered stump of a tree. The rest of the tree lay behind it, felled by the impact. The monster's blunt features had set in a look of faint surprise. Its eyes, which had been beady black pits of malice when it charged the four of them, were now mild. Melchem's black sword stood from the side of the Carthachin's neck. At least a foot of the blade penetrated the stony hide but there was no sign of an exit wound.

Even seated the monster was as tall as Sindri. They had known it would take some killing. The bastard offspring of a troll and a giantess does not die easy. Even so . . . every man but me? Sindri shook his head slowly.

Hours had passed since Sindri drank of the Warriors' Cup. The poison should have slain him. Sindri had downed his portion with the other men. Greyheart would not have cheated him. Yet here he stood. He had drunk the Brew of the Brave, dedicated his life to the death of his foe. Within the hour the poison should have taken his sight, strangled the blood in his veins. He should have fallen blue-lipped, burning with fever, and died.

"The snow held back my fever. The poison stopped me bleeding," Sindri muttered the words to himself. The sound seemed sacrilege in the snow-clad silence of the forest. "The Brew was old and weak . . ."

"But still it kills you . . ." Greyheart's spoke in the cracking of icy branches.

Sindri knew it now. His eyes were failing, the fear-born strength leaking away. The antidote lay before him . . . if the old songs spoke true.

He swung his axe. Its bright blade bounced from the Carthachin's chest, hardly marking it. Sindri marveled that Red Gregor had sunk his axe so deeply, that Melchem's blade had bitten to the quick. Suddenly frantic, Sindri swung again, more directly at the sternum this time, as though he were splitting logs.

Malice sprang back into black eyes Sindri had thought dead! A hand, big as a chair, lifted for him, shedding snow. Sindri cast his axe aside and, with a despairing cry, threw himself over the huge arm. He caught the hilt of Melchem's sword in a double grip. With two feet braced against the beast's chest Sindri hauled back on the sword, throwing all his strength into the action. The keen edge of Melchem's blade slit the neck half across. A tide of dark blood flowed forth to steam in the cold air. The Carthachin shuddered and died.

Sindri resumed his grisly work. The Carthachin's tough flesh and iron bone gave slowly before his blows. Thick blood began to spray with each of his hacks, dark purple, filling the gory crater with a sluggish ooze. The dirty work sapped Sindri's strength, the poison worked more swiftly as he warmed to his labour. The race was on and still the ribs defied him.

Sindri found the heart by touch. He dug it from the chest cavity with his fingers, warm and pulsing. His eyes saw nothing as he chewed on the tough meat. The heart was bitter, foul where the poison had been fair, life in place of death. The taste made him gag. The meat seemed to boil in his stomach - but a strength flowed within him and the light returned.