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◈ Prince of Rage ◈
Chapter 76
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The Volsung clan had never spared anyone who earned its enmity. It was an old saying, a legend and a myth, a fact proven across generations.
When a father died at an enemy’s hands, his son would come and avenge him in the end.
Yet those sons were posthumous children who had never even seen their fathers. Vengeance was conceived while they were still in their mothers’ wombs.
Thus, another saying had been passed down: the men of the Volsung clan were forged by women.
Sigmund the Avenger, the founding king, was a slightly different case. His father, Sigurd the Dragonslayer, had been murdered by the vile Seven Kings of Astria when Sigmund was twelve.
In other words, he had at least been raised somewhat by his father.
What mattered was that the Norsemen had risen up to help the young boy and begun their war of conquest.
The Norsemen were swept up in the sacred excitement of joining that holy campaign of vengeance. It became an idea shared by all Norsemen, a sense of community.
For the first time in the age of tribes divided into hundreds and thousands, a unified consciousness took root.
The seven kings of the Seven Kingdoms of Astria were all captured and subjected to the punishment called the blood eagle.
Their back skin was flayed, their ribs severed, and their lungs pulled out. The founding king himself carried out all seven executions before he had even turned fifteen.
Thus, the holy vengeance joined by every Norseman was fulfilled, and a kingdom was founded.
Time passed, and the first war of succession was fought. There was no vengeance left now. Yet the final victor, the king who killed all his brothers and nephews before ascending the throne, was Helgi the Berserker Slayer.
And now, his sons were growing up. Vengeance with nowhere to go wandered the world.
Let anyone get caught in its path. I’ll slaughter them and tear them apart.
Perhaps vengeance had shed its wrapping, leaving only rage behind. Like a rabid dog.
At least, the Duke of Nearcaster was not an enemy or object of Valerie’s rage. Sending a few assassins was not enough to be worth earning Valerie’s hatred.
He was simply someone who needed to be dealt with.
“I don’t intend to cause much trouble before I go to Valden. So I’m just going to get some money out of him. A prince’s life should be expensive, right? He’ll hold a grudge, but he won’t dare direct it at me. He’ll direct it at the Lokir Merchant Company instead, since I stayed here for so long.”
Valerie’s group had gathered in Lucas’s office. Brynhildr and Randgríðr were there as well, listening to him.
“Wait. What did you say?”
Lucas had been carefully listening, but his brow creased slightly. One word had caught his attention.
Prince.
“I don’t go around announcing it because it could complicate things. I wasn’t trying to deceive you.”
“...”
Lucas stayed silent, looking somewhat serious. Knut watched him and spoke.
“You’re not very surprised.”
“My first thought was, ‘Of course.’”
After recalling Valerie’s past accomplishments, Lucas did not feel shocked that he was a prince. It simply made sense now. Of course he was. Otherwise, none of it made sense.
“Anyway, back to the point. Lucas, you might become the Duke’s political enemy.”
Valerie warned him calmly. It was not meant to frighten him. He was simply informing Lucas of the threats and risks ahead.
“Hmm...”
“There are two ways to respond. First, after I get the money, I leave this place. Then you can claim that I was only a guest retainer and that you had no connection to me. The second is to give up on taking the money. So the real issue here isn’t whether I collect the money. I just don’t want to cause you trouble.”
Getting the money itself would not be difficult. Valerie was thinking about what came afterward. Lucas had shown him kindness, and Valerie did not want to burden him.
“The Duke, huh... His house was originally a merchant company like ours. My father supported several princes, but they fully backed His Majesty when he was still a prince. My father chose not to make enemies of any prince, while the Duke’s house made a gamble.”
Lucas briefly spoke of the past, of the first war of succession. Then he looked at Valerie and continued.
“Becoming the Duke’s political enemy isn’t a major problem. The major problem is the war of succession to come. I want to hear what you think, Valerie.”
Lucas had acted strangely around Valerie at times, but he was no ordinary man. He had run this enormous merchant company without trouble when his father took to his sickbed, which showed considerable ability.
He had identified the heart of the matter. Anyone running a merchant company had to be deeply familiar with power structures and political conflict.
Valerie looked at Lucas. His eyes no longer seemed to chase illusions, but to seek what lay beneath them. Seeing that gaze, Valerie smiled without meaning to.
“I see beyond being king. I don’t live for power. I’m sorry if that disappoints you.”
Valerie focused on the source of the wounds within him, on deprivation and the bonds of fate. He had no interest in worldly things such as money or power.
He would use them actively if they could serve as tools, but they were not goals in themselves.
His words could have sounded vague, but Lucas understood them intuitively now. Now that his sister and father were dead, and he understood what truly mattered.
“What did you lose that you’ve been looking at such things from the beginning?”
“Well, people can feel loss over something they never had. Sometimes, it may feel even greater.”
That was how it was with the absence of parents. Unlike Yorick, I could have had them. I wanted to grow up under good parents like Harald had. That kind of lingering knot.
From the loss of something he had never possessed, immense rage had been born.
Now that he understood it, deprivation and wounds remained, but he was no longer consumed by them.
“Hmm, good. Then, since things have come to this, I’ll support you more actively. Whatever happens, I’m on your side. Tell me whatever you need. I’ll provide it all. And I’m not afraid of the Duke of Nearcaster, of all people.”
Valerie nodded.
“Thank you.”
Lucas stood, came around the desk, and offered his hand. Valerie gladly shook it.
It was not quite a military operation, but in order to handle matters as quietly as possible, Valerie’s group decided to visit the Duke that night.
Brynhildr and Randgríðr went back first, intending to assist from within the hill district should anything happen. They could open the gates, for example.
Valerie and his friends left the Lokir Merchant Company residence around sunset. They arrived just as the outer gates of Nearcaster were closing.
Knut and Yorick carried the assassins’ heads in a salt box. They intended to present them to the Duke as a half-threat.
In truth, it was hardly even a threat. He had sent assassins first, so the Duke was not without responsibility.
Valerie’s group had stayed in the city for the jousting tournament before, so they knew the roads reasonably well. Passing the tournament grounds, they found it sparsely populated despite it only being evening.
Had they stopped holding tournaments after that banquet? Valerie did not know, so they kept moving. As they walked along the paved road, horse hooves went clop, clop.
City streets were dangerous at night, so everyone had returned home and tightly barred their windows and doors.
Valerie’s group headed straight for the hill district. There was a gate here as well, and it was tightly shut.
Brynhildr was supposed to respond from inside, so they whistled, but there was no response. Something was wrong.
“There aren’t even any gate guards.”
“There aren’t any lights on either.”
There should have been people standing watch atop the walls beside blazing bonfires. Yet there was not a soul in sight.
After thinking for a moment, Valerie went to the inn where they had stayed before and left their horses at its makeshift stable. It belonged to the Lokir Merchant Company, so it could be trusted.
After returning, they examined the gate again. Yorick let out another loud, distinct whistle, but there was no response.
Valerie considered what to do, then recalled that the gate and walls had been built long ago and were not perfect for defense. He walked along the wall and found a fairly low section.
Valerie leaped up in a flash and lightly climbed the wall. He received the box of heads from above, then Knut sprang up as silently as a squirrel.
Yorick was pulled up by the two of them, and Knut nearly fell below. Valerie practically held both of them up as Yorick climbed over.
“You should lose some weight.”
Knut unnecessarily glared at Yorick, who scratched his head.
“Wait.”
Valerie’s tone was grave. By now, the bonfires should have been lit, yet there was not a single light.
“Something is definitely strange. That woman was supposed to assist us from inside, but she hasn’t responded either.”
Knut had noticed something was wrong as well.
Valerie started up the gentle slope he had taken when he attended the banquet. The other two followed.
When they reached the castle where the Duke stayed, they saw the first corpse. There were no other wounds. The throat had been cut with exactly enough force to kill. It was the work of someone immensely skilled.
Yorick’s body hair rose all at once. It was not the corpse that frightened him most, but the fact that this had happened in the Duke’s castle, and the deathly silence that remained despite it.
“What the...”
“You stay here.”
“No. Stay beside me.”
Knut told Yorick to remain behind, but Valerie refused. He judged that Yorick would be safer at his side.
They crossed the courtyard toward the inner castle. From a certain point onward, blood streaked across the ground toward an open entrance, black as a mouth without a single point of light.
Then Valerie sensed someone at the entrance. Before his mind could even register it, he drew his sword like lightning.
Clang!
The metallic crash broke the silence. Valerie immediately turned around just as the ambusher landed.
The person was slender, with short hair. At first, Valerie could not tell whether the person was a woman or a pretty man, but the voice that followed was female.
“Huh?”
She held a jamadhar in each hand. When she gripped their handles, short, broad blades projected beyond each fist.
But one of the blades was broken, and she stared at it in shock.
She immediately discarded the broken weapon and drew a dagger. Just as Valerie was about to attack her, he sensed another presence at the entrance.
This time, it was an enormous square shield, large enough to conceal anyone standing behind it. It charged at him like a bull, and Valerie hurriedly braced against it with his shoulder.
“Knut!”
Thud!
Valerie’s feet scraped backward across the ground. He slid back about a meter before barely stopping. Then a deep, surprised voice came from beyond the shield.
“Huh?”
The woman wielding the dagger and jamadhar tried to attack Valerie from behind, but Knut swiftly struck at her from the side. Yet she was far faster than Knut.
She skillfully twisted away and knocked aside Knut’s dagger with the remaining jamadhar. Its blade broke.
Clang!
Startled by that, her movements faltered, and she leaped backward through the air as though performing acrobatics. Then she spoke.
“What is going on?”
At that moment, Valerie aimed his sword forward and thrust it into the shield. It might have been different with another weapon, but this was a dwarf steel sword. It pierced straight through the thick shield.
Then he felt it pierce an arm beyond it and slice into a side.
“Argh!”
Valerie pulled out his sword at once, gathered his strength, and kicked the shield hard.
Bang!
Only then did its wielder tumble backward, revealing himself. He was not short, but his body was extraordinarily broad.
Valerie warily glanced once at the woman who had retreated far away, then moved quickly to finish the shield bearer. But another presence stirred from the black entrance, and he hurriedly stepped back.
“What is going on?”
The person walking out of the darkness was more ordinarily armed than the first two, with only a sword at his waist.
“Karlek, I’m hurt.”
“What?”
“Look. It went through the bone.”
The one who had charged behind the shield raised his arm. Blood streamed from his arm and side, yet he did not seem especially disturbed despite such injuries.
The newcomer was a man with a middle part and a somewhat scholarly appearance. He looked to be in his late twenties.
He looked at Valerie, then turned to his distant companion.
“My two claws are broken. Those are no ordinary weapons. I think they’re dwarf steel. Be careful of that kid’s sword and dagger.”
The scholarly-looking man looked back at Valerie. He seemed to examine him from head to toe, then spoke in an even tone.
“So you are the newly appointed Einheri.”
“What?”
The shield bearer asked in surprise. The one standing farther away was equally shocked.
“Rita, heal Ronnie first.”
The woman appeared to be Rita, while the one collapsed with the shield seemed to be Ronnie.
“I’m Karlek. We’re all Einheri. We seem to have made a mistake during an operation, so forgive us. I apologize.”
Karlek apologized far more readily than expected, and Valerie’s rising fighting spirit subsided. He gave the three of them a cold once-over, then sheathed his sword.
Yorick was standing near the gate with wide eyes, while Knut rolled his wrist, apparently hurt from the clash of weapons.
Neither was injured, but if Knut’s dagger had not been dwarf steel, it would have been close. At the very least, his arm would have been cut off.
“What operation?”
Valerie asked.
“Before that, do you have a token?”
Valerie slightly pulled back his cloak to show the golden Valknutr on his belt, the symbol of an Einheri. Its gold and workmanship made it easy to distinguish the real thing from a fake.
Seeing the Einheri token, Karlek nodded and answered Valerie’s question.
“The Duke crossed the line. Even though House Staling gave him money for the Valkyrie’s dignity maintenance, he used the royal family’s authority to commit all sorts of strange acts. After a brief investigation, if it was found that he had damaged the royal family’s authority, we had orders to kill everyone in this castle by tonight. We also came to retrieve the King’s horse and bring someone called Randgríðr.”
“You killed the entire ducal house?”
“He was given a title precisely because he was easy to replace. He should have known his place.”
Nearcaster was valuable land. It was too burdensome to entrust it to someone highly capable, but it could not be given to someone completely incompetent either, so a mere merchant house had been granted the ducal title.
The title had not been bestowed as a reward for supporting the current king during the war of succession. That was merely a pretense.
In a way, it was a terribly hollow and frightening reality.
“What happened to Brynhildr?”
“Brynhildr? Who? Ah, the Valkyrie? You know her?”
“...”
“We kept her briefly to confront her with the Duke. Why would she be hurt? She’s a Valkyrie. Whether she sells herself or dies is irrelevant, but we left her a warning. If she steals the King’s horse again or offends His Majesty, she will be expelled from the clan.”
The fact that Karlek did not even properly know Brynhildr’s name made it seem as though he truly had no interest in her.
Valerie could especially tell that this had supposedly been a brief investigation, but they had intended to kill everyone from the beginning. The confrontation had merely been a formality.
“My turn to ask. What house are you from?”
Most Einheri learned secret arts passed down within their houses, and the most exceptional among them became Einheri.
There could be other Einheri, but unless war broke out and they were like an awl piercing through a pocket, they were difficult to discover.
That was why Karlek asked which house Valerie, a newly appointed Einheri, belonged to.
Valerie looked at him with a calm but somehow chilling gaze.
“Volsung.”
“...”
Karlek looked slightly flustered at Valerie’s answer, then examined him closely once more. The two receiving and giving treatment in a corner also turned toward Valerie with wide eyes.
Karlek briefly studied Knut and Yorick as well.
“Oh dear...”
“I’ll tell you in advance. I only answered because you asked. Do not go spreading it around. If you do, I will kill you.”
The bitterness of having crossed weapons had not completely faded from Valerie. More than anything, the thought that Knut could have been hurt made him quietly angry. He was ready to explode if provoked.
Karlek fell silent for a moment at the murderous warning, then smiled faintly.
“Have you chosen to grow strong yourself rather than gather a force? That is unusual. Still, there’ll be nothing you can do when an army comes for you. Even Einheri are ultimately human. We get pushed around and suffer in all sorts of ways too. Remember this. It is better to relax your shoulders. That will help you survive, rookie.”
Though he knew Valerie was a prince, Karlek was only somewhat surprised. He did not seem intimidated.
“You remember this as well. No one who has earned the enmity of a Volsung man has ever survived.”
“Who doesn’t know that? Why not worry about the other princes rather than me? Anyway, we’re leaving. Nice meeting you. Hey, if you’ve finished the rough treatment, let’s go.”
Karlek turned toward his two fellow Einheri. Ronnie, who had poured troll potion liberally over his wounds and drunk it for emergency treatment, and Rita rose.
Karlek passed within Valerie’s reach, provoking him without quite provoking him.
“Sorry. I didn’t know who I was attacking, handsome prince.”
Rita apologized as she passed, but she did not look apologetic at all. She winked and flirted with him.
“Me too. I couldn’t see you behind the shield.”
“Would it have mattered if you could?”
“Not really, but...”
There was not the slightest tension in the three Einheri, especially compared with the horrific massacre that had occurred at the ducal house.
Shortly after they left the castle, Brynhildr and Randgríðr came out from inside. Brynhildr did not look frightened or anxious, but her face was blank, as though half-dead. It was helplessness.
Randgríðr looked distressed and sorrowful. She spoke to Valerie.
“The head of my house has summoned me, so I must go. Please take care of Hild, Your Highness.”
Randgríðr seemed unable to bring herself to leave, but now she truly had to go. As an Einheri, she was more valuable than a Valkyrie.
She had followed Brynhildr on her own because of personal affection. The King had not assigned her to Brynhildr as an escort.
Randgríðr stroked Brynhildr’s shoulder one last time and held her hand before walking away. In the end, she left the castle without looking back.
A heavy silence settled over them. It was a deathly silence. Aside from the distant noises of the city at night and the calls of scops owls, no sound came from the castle.
Only after a long while did Brynhildr finally speak. Her rigid expression loosened, and she gave an awkward smile, trying to make it seem as though it were nothing.
“My mother used to say it sometimes. That someone like me, who wasn’t a prince, should never have been born. That I made her unhappy. Then she would suddenly treat me well. But I still don’t understand why, when my breasts grew, she didn’t buy me underwear. I was a Valkyrie, but I couldn’t even get money to buy underwear. Funny, right? Hehe...”
Rune-mages took princes away as soon as they were born, so their mothers could not know which person was their son. But they could know that they had given birth to a prince.
Then their house could receive various posts and honors, and if fortunate, even land. In other words, a house’s fortunes could change overnight.
Valkyries were said to receive ample support, but when one looked at the reality, many lived miserably.
The royal family did provide child-rearing money and other support, but there were more than one or two Valkyries, and the King himself had no interest in them, so much of the money was siphoned off along the way. This led to all kinds of intrigue over the funds.
It was fortunate if their maternal house had power, but the rich were even greedier, taking much money they did not truly need.
In other words, even Valkyries sometimes lived like beggars if their maternal house was poor.
Brynhildr was among the worst cases. Her mother had been a prostitute.
“When I somehow caught the King’s attention, Mother treated me much better than usual. But I didn’t think I could defeat men with a sword like Randy, so I endlessly practiced for jousting tournaments. You can borrow a good horse and charge forward with the hope that someone will just kill you. But Mother never received the King’s attention. She resented that so much that she would work herself into a rage and hit me. ‘Do you think you’re something special?’ ‘Don’t get so full of yourself.’ But I had never acted proud. Strange, right? What was I supposed to do? Was I supposed to gain the King’s attention or not? She beat me in every possible way, but what I remember most was being stripped naked and thrown out in the dead of winter. I crouched outside the door for hours. Then one day, she suddenly died. Brown liquid was coming from her nose. It wasn’t blood or mucus. I don’t know what it was, but she was still my mother. I was afraid of being alone, so I wiped down her body for hours. ‘Mother, wake up. Please.’ I kept saying that. Well, she didn’t wake up in the end. Then, not long after, I stole the King’s horse and ran away. Funny, right? I think I really am stupid, like you said. Sorry...”
Brynhildr was sixteen, two years older than Valerie.
She kept trying to smile. She lowered her head to hide her face with her hair, then forced herself to raise it to meet Valerie’s eyes, then lowered it again. She repeated this several times.
At last, she wept with her head bowed. Even then, she clenched her teeth, trying not to make a sound.
Valerie merely watched her quietly for a long time before asking,
“Do you want to kill them?”
“...Yes.”
“Who?”
“All of them. The King, my mother, the sisters who laughed at me. All of them.”
Though her mother was already dead, Brynhildr still wanted to kill her. Yet she also longed for the affection she could never obtain.
Brynhildr struggled between those opposing feelings, pretending to be cheerful before others.
Valerie saw his former self, before regression, overlapping with Brynhildr. He found her pitiful because he understood how she felt.
In some ways, though, her circumstances were worse. Valerie himself had not been abused. Someone he had believed was his father had merely tried to kill him.
That betrayal, along with his suppressed jealousy of Harald and the loss of things he had never possessed, had exploded into rage.
But he could not encourage her vengeance now, nor could he stoke that rage. It pained him deeply.
So there was only one thing he could do for her now.
“Stay by my side. I’ll protect you, Sister.”
Valerie embraced his older sister. She soaked her younger brother’s chest with tears.
At first, she sobbed. Later, she wailed. As if casting out the knot within her, she struck Valerie’s chest as well. Valerie accepted all of it with his broad, solid chest.
He still did not truly understand what family was, but even a younger brother could not abandon his older sister. Or perhaps, as Priest Eirik had said, Valerie was not truly a cold person.
Whatever the case, those living in an age that had lost vengeance had to endure the tragedies that came upon them with their whole bodies.
Whether they grew as Lucas had, looked beyond fate as Valerie did, or struggled as Brynhildr did.
Lucas had been saved by the deaths of his sister and father, and Valerie by the death of Priest Eirik, but Brynhildr seemed not to have buried her mother yet.
A funeral at the proper time was essential for the living to go on living.
Chapter 17: A Funeral for the Living. End.
Footnotes:
The blood eagle is a famously brutal execution described in Norse literary tradition.
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