Winterfire

Chapter Five

Lucan

As in the last race, Cormack and I reached the stern at the same time. As Cormack turned his face to reverse direction, I stood and grabbed his arm.

“Tyrfing!” I yelled, pointing at Wirt. I had never discussed the sword with anyone, but somehow, Cormack had known it was there.

“Tyrfing!” he shouted as he sprinted across the oars back toward the bow. The Danes reacted immediately; they didn’t ask questions or scratch their heads, wondering. They turned and crowded around Wirt as quickly as they could.

“Don’t unsheathe it!” yelled Ingmar. He had been standing in the stern, but he leaped onto the oars and ran toward the bow. “Light must not touch it!”

Wirt neither looked at the others nor paused in his actions. He drew the sword from the sheath and brandished it. Every man backed up. Ingmar broke through the crowd and stood before Wirt with raised hands. The hilt of the sword glowed with a golden light. The blade flashed blue. It seemed to quiver in Wirt’s hand as though straining to leap forth of its own will.

“Too long have I labored under your command, old man!” Wirt snarled at Ingmar. “You took me from my home and forced me to work like a dog! But no more. Never again will I do your bidding.”

“Wirt, cover the sword,” said Ingmar calmly. “That is not ordinary sword. It is Tyrfing. It is cursed.”

“I don’t believe in curses, old man,” said Wirt.

“What you believe matters not,” said Ingmar. “Tyrfing must draw lethal blood every time the light of the sun or the moon touches it. And it will kill the man who wields it.”

“Oh, it will draw blood, all right,” said Wirt. “I need no cursed sword to kill a man. Any sword will do.” His eyes searched the crowd of sailors, settling on each of his fellow captives. “My men! To me!” he said. No one moved. He continued scanning the faces, but none of the captives would meet his eyes, save one: I stared at him. Wirt raised Tyrfing and pointed it at me.  

“You,” he said. “You have been my bane since we boarded this ship. You shall be the first to die!” He lunged at me, thrusting Tyrfing. I stepped quickly aside and jumped on Wirt’s back as he stumbled by. He was bigger and heavier than I was; I could not bring him down. I wrapped my arms around Wirt’s neck and began to squeeze. The other sailors, who had stepped back as Wirt lunged forward, now joined in the attempt to subdue him.

The sunlight glinted off Tyrfing. The sword would have blood. As Wirt began to fall forward with the weight of me on his back and the rough hands of the Danes shoving him down, he slashed out wildly with the sword and sliced Gilbert’s stomach wide open. Gilbert’s mouth opened in a silent scream, and his hands clutched to hold his spilling entrails. Cormack caught his brother as Gilbert fell forward and crumpled to the deck. Cormack whispered to Gilbert and folded his brother’s hand around the hilt of the knife he’d drawn from the sheath on his leg. Then he gently closed the dead man’s eyes with a pass of his hand. A whirlwind of thousands of tiny white feathers descended upon Gilbert and spun around him for several seconds. Then the feathers rose in a column and disappeared into the sky. All of the men stared at the cloud of feathers until they were gone. Ingmar nodded at Cormack. “The Valkyries have taken him,” he said.

The men were silent. Wirt lay pinned beneath Lucan and several of the Danes, but he did not squirm. He had fallen on Tyrfing. He was dead.