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  THE SONS OF YMIR

  THIEF OF MIDGARD – BOOK 3

  ALARIC LONGWARD

  THE SONS OF YMIR © 2018 Alaric Longward

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  THE SONS OF YMIR

  A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  MAP OF NORTHERN MIDGARD

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK 1: HILLHOLD

  BOOK 2: THE ROBBER AND THE KING

  BOOK 3: THE UGLY BROTHER

  BOOK 4: THE SERPENT SPIRE

  BOOK 5: THE SERPENT SKULL

  MAP OF NORTHERN MIDGARD

  PROLOGUE

  The realms of the north were shaking with the devious assault of Hel, and her draugr forces. The goddess of the dead, Hel, forever resentful for being a pawn in the game the Aesir and the Vanir gods played with Lok, the tricky god, the half-god, half-jotun father of monsters, and her father, had set her sights once more on the Nine Worlds. There was no reasoning with Hel. She was mad. Lok’s crimes had led Odin to punish Lok’s most beautiful child, and that punishment turned beauty in to half deformed horror, wisdom to resentment, kindness into cruelty. Lok couldn’t help her. Lok’s murder of Odin’s son, Baldr, doomed Lok himself into imprisonment under the stone and root, until the time of Ragnarök.

  ​ But then, Hel was wronged again, and she sent legions of her minions to war.

  ​ The Nine Worlds were ill-prepared for Hel’s War.

  ​ It had been fought many thousand years past over her stolen eye, and it had torn the Nine Worlds apart. The Gjallarhorn, the Horn of Heimdall, had been stolen by an elven lord, Cerunnos Timmerion, and he used it to close all the gates, in every world, thus dooming the worlds to fend for themselves, and the gods into losing their precious jewels, the Nine Worlds.

  ​ While Hel lost the war, and the gods, the gates, and godly quarrels were forgotten for long years, Hel’s yearning for her vision of justice lived on. The ground grew fertile for new schemes. The elves grew greedy, the men proud, the jotuns still thought themselves gods, and the Aesir and the Vanir became legends many didn’t believe in.

  ​ Then, in Aldheim, in the Jewel of the Nine, the evil gorgon Euryale had found a group of special humans, and amongst them, the one truly special human, and their adventure is a trail of bravery and suffering.

  ​ What took place in Aldheim, at the hands of Shannon, Dana, and Euryale would also touch Midgard, as some of these humans had found their ways to Midgard, using goddess Nött’s thief wells. With them, they brought back the Gjallarhorn, the Horn, and hope for the gods to return, for they were seeking a lost Aesir, Baduhanna, the one who could blow the Horn and reopen the gates for Odin and his family.

  With them, also came Hel.

  A war and terror followed, and the humans allied with Morag, a jotun king hiding amongst humans with his clan. They saved Midgard, but only for a moment. Evil remained and worked its grip around Midgard’s throat.

  The enemy were numerous. The heroes, few.

  The High King Balic, a seed of the great evil the King of the Draugr, reached out to bring down those who would threaten Hel’s plans. He wanted Morag’s gauntlet, the Black Grip, for it was a key to a secret Hel had tried to unlock since Hel’s War, hidden deep in Mara’s Hold, far in Falgrin.

  Mir, the self-proclaimed Queen of the Draugr, had aided him, though she also aided herself, in the eternal struggle for power between the dead. It had been her mission to destroy Baduhanna, and the Aesir, almost the last hope for Midgard, was slain in the aftermath of a battle, a result of a long plan of the evil.

  The Verdant Lands, the south, believed in the One Man, in Balic, and his long-battled armies invaded the Red Midgard.

  Most of Red Midgard’s legions were usurped by Crec Helstrom, a draugr, who took them away to Falgrin and left the land nearly undefended.

  What stood against them was a motley crew of war-torn people of the north—a draugr raised jotun-king Maskan of Red Midgard, a renegade princess Quiss of Aten, the disgruntled nobility, thousands of refugees—and they had too many issues to solve.

  With enemy armies crawling across the land, Maskan would have to find in himself the king who could save Red Midgard’s people, who could lead the north to war, and victory, while dealing with the threat of Hel in the far north. He would have to find out what Hel seeks, and a way to stop it.

  He would try. Standing in the ruins of battle, his people refugees, his soldiers mostly militia, the winter threatening all with starvation, it seemed unlikely he could succeed.

  He would be a king of Red Midgard, a jotun-king of men, and the heir to his father’s legacy.

  Or, perhaps, he should be something else.

  Listen.

  BOOK 1: HILLHOLD

  “You did something odd there. It was unexpected. I guess the jotun part of Maskan is finally taking over. It was there all the time, wasn’t it?”

  Sand to Maskan

  CHAPTER 1

  Hillhold held the end of Graywing Pass in its wintry grip, and the Hammer Legion on duty watched our miserable camp from its ramparts. The enemy was huddling over cauldrons, but archers and soldiers looked steadily on, prepared for anything.

  They knew my tricks.

  The enemy had plenty of its own.

  Thrum stood with me, the short dverg lord apparently bored. He spat. “You have a bag of fancy rings, fit for a whore, or for a king. You think you might want to try them out and see if one gives the fort a good shake?”

&nb
sp; I shook my head. I had indeed many of Balan Blacktower’s odd creations, and one had saved us previously, but I had also seen the dverg Narag testing them, and dying as a result, and I had no wish to renew the experiment.

  “We could have one of the damned prisoners play with them and see what happens?” he suggested.

  “Yes, an excellent idea,” I said, groaning. A jotun heals fast, but nobody heals fully from the punishment I had gone through. My face was in burned blisters, and I had wounds and nicks all over my body. My armor was a shamble, and I looked like a beggar knight. “Let’s see if one of them makes the prisoner immortal, and all-powerful. He would likely give it back, eh?”

  “He can be a she as well,” he murmured. “There are some truly foul-mouthed ones in the ranks of the prisoners. But, I grant you, it might not be the best idea. Still, we have no real options. What about the Larkgrin, or Grinlark, or whatever it was your father called the filthy thing. We killed a lot of draugr with it.”

  My hand went to the brooch set under my armor. It was Blacktower insignia, and if you tapped it the certain way, the Grinlark would open a portal. It was limited in range, and in how many could travel, but it was a possibility.

  “Let me see,” I murmured. “A part of Aten’s legion is in there. Six Spears, what is left. White Lions of Vittar and some of the Gold Guard, the Malingborg’s draugr. Milas Illir, with the Griffon and the Hammer legion, squats in that hell-hole, Palan’s Bears, what still breathes, and possibly some of Palan’s Bulls. What else?”

  Thrum squinted at the high walls. “Ontar’s Ax and Minotaurs of Kellior Naur. The prisoners said Palan is split in three, and Vittar has one legion, her son leads the Bears, and the husband, Bulls. Palan’s a split land.”

  “How many?” I asked him. “I don’t care which way or form they are split into.”

  “They are skeletons of legions only, you nervous wreck of a jotun,” he growled. “Some have perhaps three thousand men, and many, less than a thousand. We have as many men as they do.”

  “They have the keep,” I said simply.

  He opened his mouth, unhappy to be wrong, but shut it eventually. A man, one of the lords of the highest houses of Red Midgard, agreed with me. He was Cil Noor, an old man with a heavy chin and large brow. “They have a large siege train as well. I am surprised they are not shooting down on us, just to keep warm.”

  “They don’t want us to keep warm. Running around, dodging their bolts would be keeping one warm enough,” Thrum said.

  I nodded, smiling and still horrified by the terrible situation.

  I was a king. I had been ousted from the position by Baduhanna, when she had promised Hilan Helstrom the title of Regent; she had warned me to be patient and to earn the crown. I had eventually found her to be right, and had rejected the kingship.

  Now, the army had made me one.

  It should have made me happy. Instead, it felt … unimportant?

  No, that was not it. It felt wrong. Father had ruled men. He had been happy, and had made his people happy.

  Looking around, I didn’t feel happy. I felt anxious. What would my house even be? Unlike it had been with Morag, I was a jotun even in the eyes of the people. There was no hiding. They would always challenge me, doubt me.

  There was no Danegell House. My mother’s House, the Tenginells, had been usurped by jotuns as well. I was an Ymirtoe and still, oddly, a Danegell, and I knew the men of Red Midgard, the women, all the citizens had made a huge sacrifice to accept me.

  They would one day reject me again. Just because I was a jotun.

  And what was a jotun? I didn’t know. I had no idea what we were. I had seen glimpses of the great past when I had held the Black Grip. I had seen kingdoms in ice, chaos of war, spells invented by the mightiest of beings.

  And now?

  I looked back to the camps.

  Shit, snow, and I a king of shit-digging, mud-shaping folk who would hate me, eventually.

  And still, I went on.

  I cast a critical eye on the camps.

  There, the noble men-at-arms were digging a horrible fort. A muddy moat and root-plagued earthen walls were coming up around the noble camp, where the men of Dagnar and Fiirant were staring at the work, and not doing the same. There, too, was Hal Ranthor and Roger Kinter, the surviving lords of their Houses, and they had supported Hilan against me. I saw them watching me, and both were unhappy sots, likely dreaming of the crown themselves. They drank too much, feasted in their tents in the evenings with other nobles and decorated soldiers, and were slow to obey.

  I saw Quiss speaking to those men of Aten who had joined her during the battle. She was speaking to them kindly, then, looking to some men of Dagnar, she gave them orders the men turned to obey.

  Hal and Roger looked sour as they observed her.

  They didn’t like her, they hated the fact she was my ally, that everyone seemed to love Quiss, and so they found her presence disturbing.

  They didn’t think Quiss, or I, knew our business.

  They could be right.

  I took a ragged breath and turned and looked up to the walls. “We have some four to five thousand Dagnar and Fiirant militia. We have four thousand noble men-at-arms and five hundred of the bastards themselves, though only a thousand horses. We have a bit over two thousand dverg. There are nine hundred Aten legionnaires.”

  “The militia is unruly,” Cil Noor said stiffly. “They cannot piss straight, and many will go home when the winter sets in. They say there might be a storm coming.”

  That was another issue. The winter.

  If the winter brought a blizzard, or even a day or two of heavy snowfall, the army would die. I raised my hand and stopped Cil from going on.

  I spoke harshly. “We lack food, bandages, tents, and experience, but still, we must get through Hillhold. We must get past the enemy and go north to stop Crec, who has Hawk’s Talon, the Gray Brothers, and the Heart Breakers under his banner. They will go for Mara’s Brow, and Falgrin, our ally, is going to be tricked. Balic has sent legions there as well. Three, four of them. They will release an ancient, trapped enemy, and we must stop it. They have my gauntlet, the key to unlocking a prison, and my blood…my father, mother. Both draugr. We cannot waste time.”

  Thrum Fellson sighed. It was an odd sound from the dour dverg, but he did. “Maskan. King. Maskan. Even if we take Hillhold, even if Fiirant has been saved from Balic for now, and even if the Stone Watchers finally march here from the east, we have no siege. None. If we take the fort anyway, perhaps if they forgot to lock the gate up, or we just stand on each other’s shoulders and climb like ants, or gods fart and the walls break, Alantia is still mostly under Balic’s thumb. We cannot march north, free like a young widow, because Balic will make sure we are stopped. We would need ships, but they control the coast. Do you see? Hillhold matters little. We cannot defeat it, and we cannot retake Alantia. Nött knows how many legions Balic is summoning to replace his losses.”

  I gave him a quick look. “You were in Mara’s Brow long ago. Are you saying Balic should be allowed to release this Hand of Hel? There is a reason why they are trying.”

  He gave Cil a quick look, but the man had no interest in the past, only on the walls of Hillhold. Thrum cursed. “I only know Hel’s army fell apart back then. I know your father likely sealed the Hand in a chamber below. We didn’t see. We saw your father, and Medusa, the gorgon general come up one day after we came to Mara’s Brow, and she was thrilled. They found what she was looking for, and Hel. I saw Medusa leaving in rage. She had been insulted in some way. Then Baduhanna came with the human army. The battle was terrible, and she, the Hand of Hel was raising dead to aid us. She left suddenly, and your father followed her. He came back, alone, and we fled. I cannot tell you, if there is an undead elf, or something else they seek. I have no idea what happened. There was no real fort there, then, just a fortified hill, with a gate to Nifleheim. We held it. To be honest, Maskan, it might very well be just a disappointment to Balic.
We should keep Alantia, and only when ready, we—”

  “No.”

  “You mule-headed pig-eater,” he rumbled.

  “Let me think.”

  “Never saw a jotun who tried that before,” he muttered. “Will get people killed, no doubt. Dverger too.”

  I gave him a furious glance, and he rolled his eyes.

  They were quiet. I turned to look at my tent, a large, hide-built, muddy thing with a bedroll, a desk, and a chair, all looted from the enemy supply train. There was no Rose Throne, nor dignity. The chair I had in that filthy tent was the chair of a war-king, simple and with no glory.

  Quiss had a tent next to mine, as bedraggled as mine.

  That I was alive was a miracle. I healed fast, thanks to my heritage, but no jotun should survive what I had faced. How would I survive a war in Alantia? How would those who served me? They all looked up to me. They all trusted me. I had been lucky, I had skills to fascinate my allies and to kill my foes with, but we were far outnumbered and maneuvered. We were trying to catch up, and Thrum was right. We knew nothing. We didn’t even know what father had hidden in the north. It could be nothing.

  I looked back at my tent and hoped I would have time to read poor Illastria’s book soon. The Book of the Past could answer some of the questions.

  “Can you, lord, get inside and simply open the gate?” Cil asked, his voice cracking with hope.

  I could.

  I was a jotun, and gods themselves couldn’t shapeshift as well as I could. I had sneaked into Dansar’s Grave and many other places in my recent past, and I would in the future.

  “They’ll be ready for such mischief,” Thrum said, crushing Cil’s hopes.

  Cil nodded and looked behind him. He wasn’t looking at his compatriots in the noble camp, and he didn’t get along with Hal, or Roger, at all, but was looking beyond them, to the pass.

  Baduhanna had fallen there, and a cairn and a mound had been raised over her. An Aesir, a demi-goddess, it was easy to see why a jotun would not measure up with her.