Swords & Heroes Story #14

Shadow in the Eye by Erik Waag

Nov 26, 2024

As we barrel toward Thanksgiving (here in the US), I present another ‘no-nonsense slayer’ story (as one commenter described our hero from our last adventure, ‘Lawbringer’ by H. H. Crom). This week, Erik Waag’s Northman barbarian - named Skarde - is the wild and woolly protagonist of the Wandering Sword series. I’ve read both these short novels by Erik and enjoyed them very much. That’s why I’m super pleased to highlight a new Skarde tale here at Swords & Heroes eZine. + Ed.

Shadow in the Eye by Erik Waag

Men drank and sang and bragged in the flickering light of the round stone fireplace at the center of the tavern. The smoke of greasy meat from the kitchen and exotic herbs puffed from long twisting hookahs painted the air with an ever-changing variety of scents. The music of a goblet drum and a short-necked lute played by two grey-haired men set a raucous tone. Here, men laughed carelessly. But their eyes they kept wary. And when the giant foreigner stepped through their door, the music came to a halt.

Everyone who came through that door caught a dozen stealthy glances. Outside was The Eye, the worst quarter of the rich but wicked city of Damyra, where every cloak hid a dagger, and cries of violence were never investigated by the authorities. Here, the unguarded eye was unlikely to see the dawn. Ruffians were expected in this place, but this man was exceptional. His bare shoulders filled the frame of the door, and his wild mane, long and pale as straw, tumbled over his face. He seemed to take little notice of the attention he drew, and he marched through the tavern, a mountain on legs, his hand resting on the pommel of a heavy broadsword in a tooled leather scabbard.

He sat himself at the rear of the tavern out of the firelight, his back to a wall, and gazed out of a nearby window. His blue eyes flickered over the watchful crowd. They turned their faces away, took up their chatter, their laughter, and their drink. The pluck of strings and the tum-thrum of the drum returned, and the giant was seemingly forgotten.

A young woman danced through the crowd, avoiding brazen hands, and chattering with patrons. She looked over the man with interest. He had eyed several of the dancing girls that plied their trade in her father’s tavern but had made no call to them.

“Lord,” she said to him, “you look a rough one, but the wantons would be eager for play with you, no doubt.”

“I’ve come only for meat and ale, lass,” he said in a barbaric accent.

She shrugged and soon came back with his victuals. “You’re a Northerner, that’s certain. Far from home? You must be a mercenary. If you need coin, my father can find work…for a cut of course.”

“Sometimes a man just wants to sit in peace and enjoy the fruits of his labour.”

The woman laughed. “You’re in the wrong streets for peace, lord. ‘The night has a thousand eyes,’ as the poets sing.”

Peace or no, he took no time to reflect on his long and dusty journey. He tore at his leg of lamb with his bare teeth and washed both his throat and his beard with hearty swigs of ale. The drink was thin, the meat tough, and the doxies tattered. Still, he eyed them, and as he wolfed the last of his dinner, one ventured to come close, catch his eye, and roll her hips.

“I was warned about this place,” said the traveller. He drained his cup and coughed at the stale brew. “But at least the rent is cheap.”

She shot him a sour look and stomped away, leaving him as he wished—with a moment of peace. He ordered more swill, for just one would never do. Before he could quaff it down, a shadow passed over the arched window beside him. He leaned closer and gazed out. Something had moved in that squalid alley beyond, but what?

Tankard followed tankard, and he sat listening to music foreign to his foreign ears along with snippets of conversation in a foreign tongue. His eye was drawn by movement in the alley once again, but upon scrutiny nothing was there. The night grew long, and moonlight cast dim shadows outside. The dancing strings and the beating drum had long ceased, and even the hardiest locals had left to enjoy their bruised fruits or stagger to what safety they could find.

At that late hour his eye caught again a shadow where he imagined he had seen one before. His back stiffened and his eyes grew wide in astonishment. Where before he swore there was naught but some cast off rags of the town’s sorriest residents, he now saw the hint of a pale feminine form beneath a black cloak. She slowly lifted herself on shaking limbs before crumpling back to the flagstones.

The barbarian fished coin from his purse—enough to pay for both his provisions and his rudeness—and slapped them clanking on the table as he stood. With a determined gait that gave no hint of fatigue or insobriety, he strode through the tavern. Around the dimly lit room reddened eyes flared and some jumped back in their seats, laying their hands on their weapons at the sudden movement from the giant man. He paid them no apparent heed.

Battering the door open he tore outside. Cool air braced his skin as he looked from side to side for a route to the back. He spotted a gap between buildings nearby and dashed for it. Through a passage only just broad enough for his massive shoulders he came to the moonlit alley. There lay the woman, unmoving. Skarde swept his eyes over the scene, lingering on each shadowy nook and blackened passage before he rushed to her side. Though he had never been to this stinking city before, he guessed, correctly, that ambushes were common. He bent and reached for her, but as he did, she let out a gasp and shrank back from his touch.

“No, touch me not!” she said, her voice both sad and musical.

He only glimpsed her feminine jawline and full lips under her cowl as she spoke. “Girl, I mean you no harm. How came you here?”

“I came to die! Oh, cruelty. The men of this world care not. You won’t help,” she cried.

“Cease blubbering and tell me straight, girl. What has happened, and I will decide.”

At the frank command the woman swallowed a cry and composed herself. She gracefully picked herself up from the ground and her eyes flitted over his muscular form, mere glowing pinpricks in the gleam of the moon.

“I saw you in the tavern but dared not enter a den teeming with scoundrels. You are strong and the smell of corruption is not in your blood. No other could help me as you. I am Saruka. What are you called?”

“I am Skarde. A Northman,” he said.

“I beg you, Skarde. Evil men have beset the house of my father. The law is corrupt and cares not. O, mercy! I promise you will be rewarded with gold, and…anything else you desire.”

At this her cloak fluttered unnaturally in a feeble breeze revealing the supple curve of her pearl white, nearly naked body beneath. She clutched at the front edge and held the fabric about her as she shrank back. He regarded her with probing eyes and held his tongue. She stifled a sob and shuffled back on her bare feet.

“My hope was folly,” she said. She turned and fled down the alley, her shapely legs hardly touching the ground as she disappeared into one of the many black gaps.

Skarde laughed grimly at her folly, and then at his own as he found himself following. “Why am I interested?” he muttered, imagining her half-covered beauty. “Ha! It’s no wonder.”

Still, he entered the darksome lane as if he were walking into the jaws of a wolf. She dashed about a far corner and he looked side to side, his hand on Morsfangsel, the grey-metal sword forged in the heart of a volcano. The spirit of Mor the giant dwelled inside it, silent and sulky of late, whispering in his mind.

Ha, you fool. Ever you chase your lusts. When will I be rid of you, mortal?

Quiet, ghost! Skarde answered with a thought. Why do you chatter now?

Ghost? Ha! I speak only to jeer at you, for it is no child of man you chase.

“What do you mean?” Skarde whispered aloud, but the sword made no reply.

She had dashed ahead and now stood at the peak of a hill in the middle of the street. She waited for him a moment but scampered away as he neared. Ever alert for dangers, he glanced this way and that. In a dark nook between two barrels outside a tumbledown building lay a man. His face was not visible, and Skarde could not discern if he was dead or merely drunk. Far in the distance, the din of a scuffle arose. She went on unconcerned.

“How you made it this far in this place, girl, is a wonder,” Skarde called ahead.

Saruka turned briefly to address him. “There are worse places than this, warrior.”

They sped along for a mile, and no matter how swiftly he moved on his long legs she always seemed to keep ahead of him. At last, she turned into a lane of buildings so ramshackle he guessed they had been long abandoned. Skarde swore under his breath seeing that she had flown up another hill and beyond the crumbling fence of a bleak manor house. He raced up the canted path, and an icy tendril crept up his spine as he passed the broken gates.

“Halt,” he called out as her bewitching form slunk through the door. “Nine Hells. Little chance to look about secretly now. If men set upon me, they will get scant few coins for their blood.” He drew his heavy broadsword, and the strange grey metal from which it was forged glinted little in the moon light.

Wary as a hunting cat he crept inside, his teeth grinding as the hinges groaned. The guts of the manor were as bleak as a forgotten graveyard. The door clacked shut and he stood still and listened for any creak, cough, or curse that might betray the presence of a gang of thugs. He listened—nay, hoped—for a sign of ambush, for the troubling feeling came over him that worse things awaited him. In the rotten blackness he could hardly see a thing, but some blanch of the moonlight caught his eye. Now he could see the bones of the house as if they were the bare branches of a haunted forest on a winter’s night.

I’d best scout the walls outside before I go further, he thought. Turning, he found the door handle, but the portal was now shut fast. He pulled until his thick muscles shook, but the door was locked so tightly it did not even squeak. Throwing his shoulder at the door resulted in nothing but a dull thud.

“Luwydi’s curses,” he swore.

He stalked across the floor toward the morbid glow. He approached a great staircase at the side of the entrance hall. There at the first landing stood the young woman. She was turned away from him, and whatever cast the pallid light was in her hands and limned her hair with a ghoulish outline.

“Girl,” he said in a strained whisper, “come down before you attract the attention of these evil men.”

“They are long past hearing, adventurer, but you are needed still.” She turned, and her cloak hung carelessly open. Beneath, her modesty was hardly kept by the tattered remains of diaphanous silks and once fine golden chains. In her outstretched hands was a sack of withered leather which shone like a lantern on the side facing away from him.

“See, Father, this one is a prize and being an outlander, he will not be missed.”

“Show him to me,” came a voice that was little more than a wind through dry reeds.

She smiled and a chill cold as the mountain wind of his homeland crawled down his spine at the sight of her teeth. They were like the needles of a pine, but as colorless as the rest of her. She turned the sack around, and two beams of frigid light swept about the decaying room.

Skarde’s eyes flared in horror. Too late he saw that it was no bag she held but the shrivelled head of a man. Skarde stared into the icy glare of those eyes and his limbs locked as if he were bound on a rack. Some thing shuffled up behind him and thin but powerful arms wrapped around his body. With teeth clenched in rictus, he forced his eyes downward. There, two grey, corpse-like hands locked about each other.

“Indeed,” the head spoke, the eyes burning like blue coals, “his vigor is great.”

Skarde’s assailant lifted his massive frame with shocking strength and staggered herky-jerky toward the stairs. Try as he might he could not resist the hold or even twitch a limb. As it ambled precariously up the creaking flight, he caught sight of a long knife in Saruka’s hand. They mean to cut me up on the spot! His mind reeled at the horror. He feared death less than the thought of death in so helpless a state. Would Valhalla’s gates open for a man carved up like roast at a feast? He let out a bitter animal growl, and then finally a berserker’s prayer.

“Thunir, give me strength for one last fight!” he cried in his native tongue.

As he was carted before the knife wielding witch, he lifted his legs. His muscles screamed in agony as though his limbs were chained, and he labored as if to rip the whole manor from its moorings to raise them. As her knife flashed high, he suddenly kicked with every fiber of his body and soul. She shrieked and fell back with a thud as the head fell forward and tumbled down the stairs.

Skarde struggled against the grip of the man holding him, but his lean arms were like iron straps. He kicked against a banister post which cracked, but it was enough to send them both plummeting down the steps. The wretched man made no sound as Skarde’s great frame crushed him. When they had come to rest on the floor beneath, he was freed. Bruised but unharmed, Skarde leapt to his feet. His assailant was also on his feet in a heartbeat.

Skarde spun about and brandished his sword. He made no strike as his mind was gripped in cold terror once again, for the figure he faced was headless.

“Quick, I want his head!” rattled the grizzly parched skull, which lay nearby.

“And I want his heart!” the witch-girl said as she crawled to the edge of the landing.

The headless corpse lurched toward him, hands grasping like grey death. By his savage will to live alone Skarde shook off the paralysis of supernatural fear and swung his sword. Forged of metal far stronger than steel and sharp as a razor, it cut into the wight but had little effect. It might as well have been made of hardwood.

Cold arms grasped for him, and Skarde rolled beneath them. Escape was his only thought, but the gloom about him shrouded any route. The cadaver came at him again. Skarde stabbed it, and the strike would have easily felled a living man. Not so, this thing of the undead, which pressed forward heedless of the blade in its frenzy to grapple living flesh. Skarde kicked its chest with all the might of his thick-banded legs. and it flew back, tumbling to the ground. The witch on the stairs screamed some curse in frustration, even as the corpse scuffled to its feet again.

By another desperate instinct, Skarde rushed to the head and picked it up by the thin hair adorning its crown. His skin crawled and his face contorted in revulsion, but he had to see to move quickly. Taking care to not look into the beams emanating from its eyes, he ran from wight and witch…whatever in the Nine Hells they might be. The head howled gibberish in rage as he flew through one derelict room after another. He slammed his shoulder into a boarded window, but it threw him back as if he had rammed a brick wall.

The head laughed. “You can not escape, fool. I see where you go! The living may never leave the house of Sayyar while it stands.”

“I’ll take no advice from a man who’s lost his head,” Skarde said.

Behind him Skarde heard the shuddering footsteps of the thing’s body. He found another staircase and flew up it, but waiting at the top was Saruka, her eyes blazing with hunger. He reversed course, only to be met by the body again. Leaping over the handrail, he retraced his steps. He raced into a filthy kitchen where a trap door lay. He threw it open to see what hid underneath. It led to a dark hole that stank of mildew. Thinking he might hold off, even for a moment, the assault of the cursed family, Skarde descended the crumbling steps, shutting the hatch behind him.

Cold stone walls surrounded him, and dusty supplies of all sorts lay stashed about. Skarde set the head, which still hurled curses at him, on the dirt floor, and he frantically searched for something of use. He found it in the form of a hempen rope. He leapt back up the stairs and affixed the rope to a heavy iron handle. Hardly had he tied it to the stairs when the hatch shuddered angrily.

“Let me in, let me in!” the head shouted. “You only delay your fate!”

“You know not men of the North, Sayyar. I shall fight on hopeless ’til the very fires of Hell burns the last strips from my bones!”

“No,” the head screamed. “We need that flesh!”

The trap door shuddered violently. The witch, now also above, bawled in frustration. Skarde wondered if the hatch would hold. Putting his wonder aside, he flew about the room, looking for an exit or anything useful. Only one slit in the stone appeared to lead outside, but it was large enough only for a hand. The head of the last man of house Sayyar continued to laugh as he rifled through the large barrels of long soured wine, straw, and heaps of other household items.

“Almost through, almost through!” the head boasted.

Then a thought struck Skarde. “I’ll likely die…” he said to himself.

“Oh, you shall!” the head agreed.

At that, Skarde scooped up armfuls of straw and ran several loads to the top of the cellar stairs. He found a large wine-barrel and gripped the top. Pulling ’til his thick muscles bulged, he ripped the top off and right away tipped it over. The long-soured wine gushed forth, and the reeking puddle seeped about the head.

“Such petty revenge,” Sayyar said. “This does not trouble me.”

“It’s not for you. It’s for me,” Skarde replied.

He ran to shelves filled with household supplies, and searched frantically, throwing to the floor with a clatter anything not to his use. At last, he cried out in triumph. He ran back to the steps and pulled out his dagger.

The head, having been turned about so that his eyes provided a light source but would not put Skarde in danger of enchantment as he worked, heard only a scraping sound. “What are you doing?”

“Do you not recognise the sound? I suppose you haven’t been in a camp for a long while. This is the sound of flint and steel, head.”

“You mean to start a fire?” Lord Sayyar said, incredulous.

“Aye,” said Skarde, as he struck sparks again. “Since, as you say, I can’t pass the walls, I shall bring the walls down.”

“No! I command you to stop! This is my ancestral manor. There is a library of histories and philosophies on the top floor. You will destroy all that, you stupid barbarian. How I long to look at them with fresh eyes!”

“Alas, head. I have other plans for my eyes. Ah…the fire has caught.”

“You’ll burn too!” the head growled.

The flamed crackled higher, illuminating the crypt-like place with the first warm light it had seen in long years. Skarde ran to the barrel and pulled it to a dry spot. He sat and lifted the empty barrel over him.

“Maybe so. Goodbye, head,” he said as he lowered it.

The head of Sayyar howled curses in rage. The fire roared and crackled outside Skarde’s impromptu shell, and soon he heard the muffled screams of the terrified witch.

“Hodan,” Skarde said, “have any warriors been brought to your hall in a barrel? If not, I pray that I live.”

Skarde sat on the cold earth, in a sore squat, breathing fumes that choked him. He dared not lift the rim for a peek lest smoke or fire end him. A tremendous crash shook the ground beside him, and he swore he could hear stones crack. Timbers crumpled. Pain tore at his eyes and the smoke abraded his throat. The heat soared, near unbearable. He could take no more.

Throwing the barrel off, he was showered in stinging ash. The floor above had half collapsed, and fires burned about the skeleton of the house. At least the light of the morning shone through the foul vapour, a beacon of hope. The stairs were gone, but he climbed the stones with ease, despite his exhaustion. He used his sword’s pommel to smash through blackened boards and, after crawling through wreckage, he found himself on the grounds outside.

After a violent fit of coughing, he gasped at the fresh air. Remembering the horrors that were after him, he looked about but saw no sign of them. Neither did he see townsmen as he expected, who would usually flock to the fire which might threaten them all.

Satisfied, he sheathed Morsfangsel and strode back down the hill.

Shadow in the Eye © 2024 by Erik Waag (3650 words) All rights reserved. You may restack this story via Substack but please do not republish elsewhere. Banner and sword illustrations by Gilead, used by permission.

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