5. Magnar

1000 YEARS AGO

Julius still hadn’t returned, and I was beginning to grow irritable. We’d been tracking a lead on the whereabouts of the Revenant, Miles, for the past three months, and now that we were finally getting close to a breakthrough, the trail had gone cold.

I huddled against the freezing rockface in my thick furs and tried not to shiver. I was unsuccessful.

My anger over losing the vampire who fancied himself a god was doubled by the fact that he had led us to the top of this goddamned mountain before he’d disappeared.

It didn’t make sense. We’d been right behind him. I’d seen him with my own two eyes when he’d fled, taking this trail while his disciples slowed us down. The climb was sheer and treacherous. There was no other way to the summit and no way he could have passed us to make it back down without falling from the cliffs and dashing his brains out on the jagged rocks below.

Immortality wasn’t enough to make him capable of surviving that fall uninjured. Even if he’d decided it was worth breaking his body to escape us, I was sure we would have seen signs that he’d taken that option.

I cursed him again as I waited for my brother. Night was drawing in and I was beginning to wonder if we were about to fall prey to some trap ourselves. Perhaps instead of fleeing, Miles was really lying in wait somewhere, hoping to ambush us on the way back down.

The savage in me hoped that was the case. It had been three days since I’d cut through the most recent of his immortal offspring, and Tempest hungered for more blood. I’d promised the blade a meal of Revenant souls, and my first target should have been within reach.

I shifted my gaze beyond the patch of scrub I was using for shelter and looked towards the horizon. The sea twinkled in the distance, cold as steel and twice as deadly. It called to me in a way that I couldn’t quite describe. A part of me hungered to travel the seas like our Viking cousins. I wished to see new worlds, fight new foes. Perhaps once I’d rid the world of the Revenant scum, I would.

I focused on the sea, almost convincing myself that I could hear the crash of great waves against the rocks. Yes, that noise called to me, but it was more than just a promise of adventure. It was a whisper of freedom. If I crossed the seas in the name of the gods, would they release me from my bond to Valentina?

I rubbed my hand over my chest, wishing I could remove the tattoo that sealed my betrothal bond to her. It was the one mark on my skin which I wasn’t proud of. Every other scar or tattoo meant something to me. But that mark just felt like a chain binding me to a fate I didn’t want.

I still hadn’t married her. Eighteen months was a long time to keep her waiting. But the prophet had only foreseen our betrothal, and until someone foresaw an actual wedding, I was keeping up my end of the bargain. Not that Valentina saw it that way. She tried to convince me to choose a date at every opportunity.

I didn’t for the life of me understand why she was so desperate to bind her soul to a man who didn’t desire her. The more she insisted she loved me, the more I bucked against the idea of tying myself to her. I knew it was pointless. In the end, the gods would expect me to fulfil the promise I’d made to her. But I’d seen true love in my parents. Every look they exchanged, every touch, even their disagreements were filled with passion. I knew what love looked like, and Valentina wasn’t it.

A branch snapped a little to my left and I pulled Tempest into my grasp. I recognised the breaking branch as Julius’s signal that he was approaching, but we could never be too careful. There was a Revenant on the loose, and despite it seeming as though he’d eluded us, I wasn’t about to count on it. Such a powerful being stood a good chance against two slayers, even if we were the youngest clansmen to ever take our vows.

Julius appeared and I relaxed a little.

“What took you so long?” I asked in frustration. “My limbs are ready to drop off.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want your infamous backside to freeze now, would we? Perhaps we should have brought Valentina with us to rub it better for you.”

I snorted a laugh. It wasn’t really fair of us to mock her as we did, but my wife-to-be had become the subject of many such jokes recently. I knew she was only keen to follow the directions of the gods, but I found it hard to respect someone who was so desperate for their approval that they would forgo their own opinion. She was so eager to believe we were fated to be together that I doubted she even cared about who I truly was. Nothing I did could diminish my image in her eyes, and it had become somewhat embarrassing.

“Did you find signs of the monster?” I asked, turning the subject back to our hunt.

“No. I’m beginning to think you were right; he found a way to escape us again. Perhaps he never truly took this path. He could have doubled back or maybe he jumped from the cliffs lower down? A few broken bones wouldn’t stop him for long.” Julius scrubbed a hand over his short hair and sighed.

“But why?” I asked, the question itching at me like a fresh wound. “He’s avoided us until now, but I had the distinct impression that he’d led us here to finish our quarrel with him. Why turn and flee at the final second? What made him blink?”

“I don’t know, brother,” Julius replied with a shrug.

He never questioned the vampires’ motivations the way that I did. He preferred to focus on hunting them down and killing whoever we found. Wondering what made them tick wasn’t high on his list of priorities. But it always infuriated me. If we could only know what they wanted or where they would strike next, then we could get ahead of them.

Instead, it always seemed that we ended up like this, following cold trails and staying one step behind them. It was infuriating. They almost seemed to know what we’d do before we knew ourselves.

“Something doesn’t feel right about this,” I grumbled as I began to lead the way back down off of the godsforsaken mountain. “I know he was going to face us. If he changed his plan, there has to be a reason for it. And the fact that we have no idea what that is makes me feel more uneasy than I can explain.”

“Have the gods spoken to you to make you so concerned?” Julius asked.

He always questioned me when I had gut feelings like this, but I was rarely wrong.

“No. As always, the gods remain silent in every aspect of my life besides my marriage,” I replied irritably.

Julius clapped a hand on my shoulder and led the way out of our hiding place so that we could start our descent.

The path was even harder to navigate on the way down, and loose rocks rolled beneath my feet at each step, threatening to send me tumbling to the foot of the mountain.

The daylight was fading fast, and our progress only slowed as it became more treacherous to choose where to place our feet. I was half tempted to call a halt to our journey and make camp until daylight. Not that we’d be able to get much sleep between huddling on a rock face and the howling wind tormenting us.

Ignoring my better judgment on the safety of our descent, we carried on. I wanted to put the damned mountain behind me and find somewhere warm to see out the night. There had been a tavern in the last town we passed through and, with a bit of luck, someone there might be persuaded to give us some information on where Miles could have headed. Tongues tended to loosen after a few drinks, and a bribe or threat might be all it took to track him down.

An icy wind buffeted us as though it was trying to fling us from the rocky outcrop we clung to. I frowned up at the dark sky as specks of snow began to fall.

“Curse this weather,” I swore. “I should have brought a storm-weaver with us.”

The members of the Clan of Storms weren’t strong enough to fully change the weather unless they worked together. But a strong enough clansman would have been able to provide us with a warm wind at the very least.

“Oh? And who would you have chosen to join us? I’m sure you wouldn’t have selected Valentina. Elvard creates more wind from his ass than he can conjure from the elements. And I’d sooner freeze my manhood off than spend weeks in the wilderness with Hoft,” Julius joked. “I’ll settle for a village girl to warm my bed tonight and accept the bastard storm while we’re stuck in it.”

“You have a point,” I conceded.

There was more than one reason that we had chosen to travel alone to take on Miles. Two warriors were quicker, less noticeable, and more likely to be underestimated by our enemy. If I’d brought a full host after him then he would have fled far sooner than this. Aside from that, I enjoyed my brother’s company above that of anyone else. If I was going to spend weeks alone with anyone, then it would always be him.

I’d hoped that Miles’s ego wouldn’t have let him run from the two of us. A mighty Revenant afraid to face two slayers in the wilderness? Surely that couldn’t be the case. But it would seem that I’d misjudged him again.