Kjell's Arc

Chapter 1 of 27

Kjell had killed trolls, wolves, and a lindworm that took his ear and four ribs. He had never killed a thing that would not stay dead. The trail led him to the ancestral burial mound, and the draugr lord who had risen from it had already emptied three settlements. Kjell knelt in the mud outside the brewing hall and studied the corpse he had cut down an hour before. He had split its skull with his rune-axe. Now its fingers twitched in the dirt. It was rising again. He drove a silver knife through its neck. The body slowed, then kept moving. Steel did not end it. He knew now his blades were not enough. He needed a way to keep the dead down, and he did not have one. He hauled the corpse inside, where two dwarves waited near a cold hearth. Thorin sat with his father's rune-axe across his knees, iron rings braided into his gray beard. He hunted a jarl who had betrayed his clan, and he trusted no stranger. "That's a draugr," he said. "You brought it into a room with us." "I brought it because you know things I don't," Kjell said. "Runes for the dead. My axe carves beasts. Not this." Beside the dead forge stood Gunnar, a blacksmith whose fire had gone cold since his brother stole their father's hearthstone. He crouched over the corpse without flinching. "Skull won't hold them," he said. "Iron won't either. They rise until you unmake the body." "How?" "Fire. And the right marks cut deep, not scratched." Gunnar pried a rune-stamped coin from the corpse's fist and turned it in the light. Old symbols crossed its worn face. "The mound-folk buried these with their dead. Binding runes. Your dead man carries his own leash." Thorin leaned close. "Cut that mark into the body. Bone, not skin. Then burn it." Kjell drew his axe and studied the coin's runes against the ones he knew. The old man in the mountains had taught him in silence. Now Kjell traced the binding shape into the corpse's chest, blade grinding through the breastbone. The twitching stopped. He struck flint. The body caught, and the draugr did not rise. He watched it burn to ash and felt the shape of the whole hunt change. The draugr lord had emptied three settlements alone. If the fallen villagers rose as this one had, the lord commanded an army of them. "You mean to hunt the one who raised him," Thorin said. Not a question. "To the mound," Kjell said. Gunnar pressed the coin into Kjell's palm. "Take it. You'll need to read more of these where you're going." Kjell closed his fist around the cold metal. He could unmake one corpse now. But somewhere the draugr lord waited, and every villager it had killed could stand again before Kjell reached the mound.