Authors: William Stacey
Black Monastery (30 page)
The
Marid’s
black eyes stared at Asgrim through the flames that devoured its dead flesh. Its open mouth was a black hole, where teeth cracked from the heat.
“You want my ship,
draugr
?” snarled Asgrim. “Take it, then!”
Asgrim slammed
Heart-Ripper
through the
Marid’s
sternum, pinning it to the hull of the burning ship.
He staggered back, falling onto the sand. And all at once, his borrowed strength drained from him. The
Marid
screamed and thrashed, but could not pry itself free. Bright green flames sprouted from its body, covering it in an intense heat. Just before Asgrim had to cover his face and look away, he saw a flash of the spirit’s true form, its pebbled green skin covering a torso that looked more like an eel than a man. The monster’s head was overlarge and hairless, and its all-black eyes were the size of a man’s palm.
Hands grabbed him and pulled at him. Utterly spent, he was only vaguely aware that Alda was dragging him from the inferno that had been his ship. Around him, the dead Franks and Danes dropped to the sand, unmoving.
The green flames blazed out and were replaced by orange and red tongues of fire. The
Marid
was now an unmoving black cinder.
He heard Freya’s voice, so faint that it seemed to drift in the air.
“Asgrim Wood-Nose, she is proud of you.”
Sea Eel
burned to the water line.
The
Marid
was destroyed, banished.
* * *
Alda took him back to her hut to treat his injuries. There, in her small hut, she wrapped his burned hands in cloth and covered them in an ointment that relieved the worst of the pain. Then she stitched the long gash in his leg. He would recover, but he would probably walk with a limp for the rest of his life—a small enough price to pay for defeating a spirit as powerful as the
Marid
. With the help of his dead men and the guidance of Freya, they had survived. He was grateful, and, in truth, he had much to be grateful for. Alda had found a half-burned box in the charred remains of
Sea Eel
. Inside was a leather sack holding the five hundred silver pieces Abid had paid him, which was more than enough to pay his wergild and start a new life with Alda, a life free of violence and raiding.
He was done with his past. It was time to start over, to make a family, and to bring life into the world rather than take it. He prayed his brother and the others who had come back from the dead to help him had, this time, been taken by the Valkyries to Valhalla.
Later, when the tide was low, they rode a captured Frankish horse across the sandbar and toward the mainland.
“We’ll go somewhere else,” he said. “A new chance for both of us.”
She didn’t say anything, but he felt that she understood him. She leaned her cheek against his back, squeezed him tightly around the waist, and sighed. He felt her breath on his neck.
Despite his pain, he smiled and kicked the horse into a trot. Alda yelped and clung tighter to him.
What man could change his fate?
He could.
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