Waves of Madness by Newton Webb

A Historical Cosmic Horror Short Story: When Viking raiders descend upon a remote monastery in Wales, they uncover a religion far older, and far more terrifying, than Christianity.

Contents:

1. Horror Compilations

2. Waves of Madness

Horror Story Compilations

Summer of Horror: 37 FREE horror stories, including: ‘Invasion of the Hipster Beards’ and ‘The Scream’.

Beneath the Shadow: 14 FREE horror stories, including: ‘The Braemoor Incident’, ‘Invasion of the Hipster Beards’, ‘Soulmates’, ‘Deus Vult’, and ‘The Scream’.

Terrifying Tales: 12 horror stories, including ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 2’, ‘Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 3,’ ‘Festival of the Damned’ and ‘The Morrígan’.

The Fiction Giveaway Extravaganza!: 82 FREE horror stories, including: ‘The Wild Hunt’ and ‘The Spinster’.

Waves of Madness

By Newton Webb

Chapter One

The mist clung to the longship like a grey shroud. Its oars slid into the waters with practised quiet. Vott’s tongue ran across his lips, tasting the crust of salt left by the sea. He scratched his beard, stiffened by the spray. The damp chill settled deeper into his bones than it used to, and his shoulder ached from an old wound.

A good day for a raid. No one will see us coming.

He pictured his daughter, Estrid, whose long hair was the colour of summer straw. The raiding was all for her. He had put away enough that he could almost afford a farmstead. With a few more raids, his family would be secure. He gripped the haft of his axe, then ran his thumb over the runic symbol of Thor on the head.

At the prow, his jarl, Kol, stood motionless, a veteran of dozens of raids. His great two-handed axe leaned against the deck, its long haft a third leg supporting his immense frame. Even in the gloom, Vott saw the tension in his shoulders. The raid into the kingdom of Gwynedd was a risk Kol had wrestled with for weeks. But the seer, Sveni, had foretold a wealth beyond dreams, and in these lean times Kol listened to such promises.

Kol raised a drinking horn, its silver rim catching what little light pierced the fog, and poured a stream of mead into the grey water. A libation to the Allfather. Vott saw his jarl’s lips move, offering a vow to the Allfather for blood and gold.

"The wind is with us," Kol’s voice was a low rumble, carrying easily across the deck without breaking the quiet.

"A gift from Odin," a voice came from near the mast. It was Sveni God-Eye, little more than a boy. His face was emaciated, his eyes too large for his sunken features. He had taken a head wound in a previous raid. Now the gods supposedly visited him with visions. Kol listened to him. Vott was not so sure. But Sveni’s visions had guided them to two rich prizes already, swelling their warband and quieting the grumbling stomachs back home. So Vott kept his doubts to himself.

Sveni pointed a trembling finger towards the shore, a smudge of darker grey in the gloom. "There. As I saw in the smoke. The stone tooth on the water."

Vott followed his gaze. A tall sea stack, sharp and jagged, rose from the waves just off the coast. It matched the boy’s descriptions. They guided the Whale’s Bane into a secluded cove, the hull scraping against the shingle. The familiar sound inflamed Vott’s blood.

No commands were needed.

Thirty warriors slipped over the side, their movements fluid and practised. Their mail and leather were oiled to a dull lustre.

The monastery perched on a low cliff overlooking the sea. It seemed a paltry thing, a cluster of stone huts and a squat, windowless chapel huddled behind a low wall. The path to its gate was flanked by ancient yew trees, their dark foliage swallowing the light. Their branches twisted together overhead, forming a grim, living tunnel carpeted with poisonous red berries.

Before the monastery’s wooden gate stood a circle of weathered standing stones, their surfaces coated in lichen.

Kol grunted. "The whelp was right. No fortifications."

Sveni, however, had stopped. His eyes were fixed on the stone circle. "They feel wrong."

"It’s a pile of rocks." Kol led them forward. "Leave fear to the Christians. We are wolves."

Vott felt it the moment he stepped across the unseen threshold. It was a pressure inside his skull, a slithering voice in a language he did not recognise. It made his mind itch.

He glanced at the man next to him, a broad-shouldered raider, and saw him flinch, his hand going to his temple. Across the circle, another warrior shook his head as if to dislodge a fly. They all felt it. Vott’s hand tightened on the grip of his axe. The familiar feel of the worn leather anchored him as he pressed on through them.

He forced a grin. "See, Sveni? Just rocks." But his bravado faltered. He glanced back at the stones.

The whispers receded. Around him, the other Vikings grinned.

Kol shot him a look. "Silence. Save your breath for the victory feast."

"I’ve plenty to spare," Vott shrugged, though his heart beat against his ribs. He scanned the monastery. He was a veteran. He knew the prelude to a raid. The frantic ringing of a church bell. Shouts of alarm. The panicked bleating of livestock. The first, thin screams. Here, he heard only the sighing of the wind through the yew trees and the distant cry of a gull. The place felt dead.

Something is wrong.

They reached the monastery gate. It was thick oak, bound with iron, but unbarred. Two men put their shoulders to it and it swung inward with a groan of protest, opening onto a small, empty courtyard. The stone buildings were dark. No torchlight flickered in the narrow windows. No smoke rose from the roofs.

They fled? They saw us coming and they fled?

But that did not feel right either. Where would they go? There was nowhere to run but the sea, and the Whale’s Bane had been the only ship on the water.

Kol gestured with his axe. Two teams broke off, kicking in the doors to the surrounding buildings. Vott joined the group heading for the main chapel. He slammed his boot into the door, expecting it to splinter, but it swung open easily, as if waiting for him. The air was cold and still, heavy with the scent of damp stone.

Where is the altar? The golden crosses?

The nave was empty, save for a gaping hole in the centre of the flagstone floor. A neat square opening, from which a set of steep stone stairs descended into blackness.

No. Not blackness.

From the depths, a faint, flickering orange light pulsed. Torches.

The men who had searched the other buildings returned, disappointed. "Nothing, Kol. Empty. No gold, no food, not even a piss pot to steal."

Kol strode into the chapel and stared down into the pit. His pragmatism was at war with his superstition, and Vott could see the conflict on his face.

"A trap," Ulf voiced the fear they all felt.

"Every raid is a trap of some kind," Kol grunted. "But we are wolves, not sheep. Gold is gold, be it in a king's hall or a draugr's cave."

The stone steps were slick with moisture as they descended. The air grew colder and heavier with each step. The tunnel was clearly man-made, the stone showing the marks of tools, but it felt ancient. The torchlight threw their shadows long and distorted against the walls as they marched deep into the guts of the earth.

A deep, resonant chant vibrated through Vott’s stomach.

At the bottom, the narrow staircase opened out. They emerged onto a wide ledge overlooking a vast, natural cavern. Vott swore at the sight of it. The ceiling was a hundred feet high, bristling with stalactites that wept slow, fat drops of water.

A massive, circular area of the floor, in the centre of the cavern, had been worn smooth and was surrounded with torches.

More than fifty figures knelt in concentric circles, all facing the centre. They were clad in robes of black, their heads bowed, their faces hidden in shadow. They swayed in unison, their deep, guttural chant the source of the humming that filled the cavern.

Christians.

Vott sneered.

In the very centre of the circle, upon a crude stone pedestal, sat the object of their devotion. A golden box. It pulsed with a soft inner light, casting a sickly crimson glow upon the bowed heads of the worshippers. Wooden chests surrounded it.

For a moment, the Vikings just stood there, stunned into silence by the sheer strangeness of it all.

Kol roared, his voice shattering the ritualistic hum. "For Odin!" He pointed his axe at the golden box. "Form a shield wall!"

The warband surged forward, their round shields locking into a wall of wood. Spears bristled from the gaps. Vott took his place on the right flank of the wall, his great axe held ready. "Come on, you black-robed bastards!" he bellowed.

He expected them to break, to scatter and die cowering.

They did not.

As one, the black-robed figures rose. The chanting immediately ceased. They turned. From the folds of their robes, each produced a long, wicked-looking knife. Then they charged. They made no war cry, their advance a terrifying, silent rush.

The two lines met with a sickening crunch of steel on bone. Vott’s first blow was a blur of motion, his axe cleaving through the shoulder and chest of the nearest monk. A thick, black ichor, oily and foul-smelling, gushed from the wound. It smelt like a butcher’s pit left to rot in the sun. As the monk died, a plume of crimson smoke escaped its unseen lips. Without hesitation, the monk behind him stepped over the corpse, lunging with his knife.

Vott swung again, and again. The monks fought with no skill, no training. They did not attempt to parry or defend. Instead, they surged forward, absorbing blows that would fell an armoured jarl, their knives stabbing through the gaps in the shield wall, seeking flesh. One of them grabbed the edge of Ulf’s shield and, with terrifying power, tore the shield from his arm. Ulf stared in disbelief for the instant it took another monk to drive a knife into his throat.

The Vikings’ disciplined shield wall buckled against this tide of mad, self-destructive force. The monks fought silently. Despite Vott’s efforts, the swarming monks surged around the flanks.

"Back to back!" Kol bellowed. His axe thudded into the tainted flesh as he, along with his brothers, was coated in the black filth.

The shield wall smoothly reformed into a tight circle, fighting for their lives against a sea of silent, black-robed figures. A man screamed as he was pulled down, vanishing under a swarm of bodies. Another clutched at his stomach, his mail shirt pierced by half a dozen wounds.

Vott’s arms burned. His lungs seared. The air was thick with the stench of ichor and the coppery tang of Viking blood. Despite it all, he was laughing. His blood was up, and he was surrounded by foes. It had been many raids since they had had a proper fight. The berserker fury erupted from within him, a red haze clouding his vision. He roared as his axe blurred, cleaving through his enemies.

Through the thinning ranks of the enemy, he saw Kol, his face a mask of grim fury, leading the formation. The warriors fought a path towards the pedestal. The jarl reached it, his free hand closing around the golden box.

The moment his fingers touched the metal, the monks shrieked.

It was the first sound any of them had made since the combat had begun. Vott staggered at the high-pitched sound. A dagger forced its way past his guard and burst through the links of his mail shirt, slicing a hot line across his ribs. The whispers from the stone circle returned to his mind, frantic and desperate.

The remaining monks threw themselves forward in a suicidal wave. They stabbed, spat, and bit, trying to reach Kol, to rip him away from the casket. They grasped at the edges of the shields, trying to break through.

Vott roared and swung his axe, severing a grasping arm at the elbow. He kicked another monk in the chest, feeling ribs snap beneath his boot.

It was too late for them. Kol had their prize. He held the golden box aloft and, even through the chaos, Vott could see that the soft crimson light within it now pulsed erratically.

A monk hurled himself at Vott, catching him in the side. He hit the ground hard, sliding through the ichor. His opponent snapped his teeth at Vott, who desperately held him back with the haft of his axe. Slamming his head forward, he felt the monk’s nose collapse beneath the impact. Rolling the stunned creature onto his back, Vott climbed to his knees and brought his axe down on the monk's face. The skull caved in under the blow.

With a furious war cry, he staggered upright, raising his axe. He looked around, wide-eyed with battle frenzy.

There was no one left to fight.

The only sounds were the ragged breaths of the survivors and the slow, steady drip of water from the stalactites.

Vott leaned on his axe. His body throbbed. Blood pooled beneath him. His armour was smeared with gore. He looked around, exhausted.

Of the thirty warriors who had descended into the cavern, only six remained standing. Kol. Sveni, huddled behind a shattered shield. Vott himself. And three other veterans. All wounded. All leaning on their weapons in exhausted disbelief.

The cavern was a charnel house. The polished floor was a slick, black mirror reflecting the carnage. A rancid scent, like curdled milk, rose from the monks' corpses. Kol stood by the pedestal, his chest heaving, cradling the golden casket. His knuckles were white where he gripped it.

They had won.

Vott looked at the silent, black-robed corpses. "So," he rasped, spitting a gob of bloody phlegm onto the floor, "some Christians do know how to fight."

Sveni, clutching his side, his face pale, shook his head. He drew the sign of Thor’s hammer with a trembling hand.

"This is no Christian shrine," he said. "And those were not men."

Chapter Two

The silence in the cavern was a living thing. It pressed in on Vott. He looked at the five other survivors. Their faces, illuminated by the guttering torches, were grim masks of exhaustion and shock. Blood, both red and black, caked their arms and chests.

Kol stood alone by the pedestal. He had not moved, his gaze fixed on the golden casket in his hands.

“Kol,” Vott’s voice was a rough croak. “What is that?”

Kol did not seem to hear him. He ran a thumb over the intricate carvings on the box’s surface. They were not any runes Vott could recognise. They were strange symbols that seemed to writhe in the torchlight.

“Let’s see the treasure we bled for,” Kol finally grunted. He set the casket down on the stone pedestal and fumbled with the latch. With a dull click, it came free.

He lifted the lid.

The soft crimson glow that had pulsed from the box died the moment it was opened. Within, nestled on a bed of faded black velvet, lay a horned skull. Its most hideous feature lay in the centre of its forehead. Where two eyes should have been, there was only one vast, empty socket.

Vott shuddered at the sight of it.

A collective gasp passed through the men. Sveni, the young seer, whimpered and stepped back, his face a mess of terror and awe.

Vott felt a strange pull. It was not greed. It was a morbid, terrifying curiosity, a need to touch it, to feel it in his hands. He wanted to trace the shape of the horn, to feel the rough texture of the bone.

He took a half-step forward before catching himself, his hand clenching on his axe haft so tightly his knuckles cracked.

“By the gods…” breathed one of the surviving warriors, a man named Hrolf. “What demon’s head is that?”

Sveni swallowed. “A one-horned skull.”

Einhorgr

Vott made the symbol of Thor’s hammer in the air.

Kol reluctantly closed the box. “This will fetch a king’s ransom.” Kol’s voice was thick with reverence. “It is a treasure worthy of the sagas. Take the chests. We will take everything we find. Burn the bodies of the monks separately. Collect our brothers, we honour them first.”

The climb back to the surface was a grim, silent procession. The men were too weary to make much conversation.

The air seemed to thin as they neared the surface. The familiar scent of salt and rotten seaweed was the most welcome thing he had ever smelled.

After burning the bodies of their comrades, and toasting their journey to Valhalla. Vott turned to Kol. “Why can’t we leave the monks’ bodies?”

“You saw them. I won’t sleep well until I know they are ashes. They do not belong here on Midgard.”

They dragged the monks’ bodies from the cavern and threw them onto a great pyre in the centre of the courtyard, piling them high with wood foraged from the monastery.

Vott worked with grim purpose, trying to sweat the unease from his bones. He heaved a corpse onto the pile, and its cowl fell back. He wished it had not. The face beneath was pale and waxy, with a slack-jawed expression of placid emptiness. The man’s, if that is what he was, eyes were open. They were solid milky white. No pupils. No irises. Just blank, staring orbs. He looked at the other bodies. They were all the same.

He turned away, his stomach churning, and saw Sveni watching him. The boy stood by the yew trees, his expression unreadable. His gaze flickered between the pyre and the casket that sat on the ground near Kol’s feet.

When the pyre was lit. The flames struggled, hissing as they touched the ichor-soaked robes. Then they caught, and a column of thick, greasy black smoke billowed into the grey sky, carrying with it the sweet, sickening stench of rotten meat.

The earlier mood of grim victory had curdled into an oppressive silence. The men moved with a somber purpose, not with their usual swagger. Hrolf had opened one of the chests, prying the lock with his dagger. Even finding it was packed to the brim with coins didn’t raise their mood.

Vott scooped up a handful of coins. The gold was a strange colour. When he held one to the sunlight, it glinted with a reddish hue. Each coin was stamped with a single, staring eye.

“Our biggest haul,” Hrolf murmured, his voice hollow. There was no joy in his words. It was a statement of fact, tainted by the blood they had waded through to get it. No one cheered.

The coins were colder than Vott had expected. He let the coins fall back into the chest with a dead clatter. He would be able to afford a farmstead when he got home, but its memory would forever be tainted by the horrendous losses from the raid.

Kol gave the order, his voice flat. “Burn the buildings. Leave nothing of this place but ash.”

They loaded their spoils onto the longship as the sky darkened. When they prepared to push off from the shingle beach, a black fog rolled in from the sea. It swallowed the light, plunging the cove into a deep twilight. It smothered the coastline, erasing the cliffs and the smoking ruin of the monastery from sight. Soon, the Whale’s Bane was an island in a sea of impenetrable black.

The men muttered nervously. They raised the sails and took to the oars, their strokes urgent, seeking the open sea.

Vott found his place on the bench. The empty seats around him were a reminder of the raid’s losses. The fog was cold, clinging to them as they moved out onto the tide.

Kol didn’t take his normal place. He sat on the prow staring at the box, his hand resting on its lid, his face a stony mask in the oppressive gloom. Six survivors remained from a crew of thirty. With Kol lost to his vigil, only Vott and four others were left to man the oars. They had no choice but to rely on the wind’s assistance.

That was when the buzzing started.

At first, Vott thought it was a fly, or maybe the hum of the wind in the rigging. It was a low, faint noise, right at the edge of his hearing. He shook his head, but it did not go away.

He tried to focus on the rhythm of the oars, on the grunts of the surrounding men, but the sound grew steadily louder. As he listened to it, he started to detect a complex, layered sound. It was a constant, grating noise that set his teeth on edge.

“Hrolf,” he said, his voice sounding distant and muffled to his own ears. “Do you hear that?”

Hrolf, rowing in front of him, turned. “Hear what?”

Vott strained to listen past the noise in his head. The buzzing was drowning everything else out. It swelled and pulsed, a maddening, ceaseless thrum.

He rowed on, his muscles burning, his mind screaming. The journey felt endless. Hours passed in the black fog. The gloom was so dense that Hrolf couldn’t even use his sunstone to find the sun. They were forced to navigate using his sea sense alone, as he manned the rudder. Vott had nothing to mark the passage of time. Just the dip and pull of the oars, the creak of the hull, and the relentless, invasive buzzing.

He watched the others. They were quiet now, their faces grim. The unnatural fog had sapped their spirits. But at least the others could talk to one another if they so chose. They could hear the sea. Vott was trapped in his own world of noise.

The buzzing had changed. It was no longer just a random sound. Within the static, he heard patterns, rhythms. It could almost be speech, a torrent of guttural, clicking consonants and long, drawn-out vowels. But if it was a language, it wasn’t one he had heard before.

He tried to sleep when his watch was over, but it was impossible. The moment he closed his eyes, the buzzing intensified, the phantom language becoming clearer.

It clawed at the edges of his sanity.

He sat up, his head in his hands, and looked across the deck. Most of the men were slumped in exhausted sleep. But Kol was still awake. He had not moved from the prow. He sat as still as a stone effigy, guarding his prize.

Vott felt a terrifying sense of isolation. He had always been first to the ale keg and first into battle, but now he was utterly alone, adrift on an unknown sea, blinded by a hostile fog, deafened by a language from a nightmare. He looked from his unmoving leader to the faces of his sleeping comrades.

Something here was very wrong, and had been since they had landed on that blighted shoreline.

Chapter Three

Vott had given up trying to sleep. The noise made it impossible. He sat with his back against the damp mast, his axe resting across his knees.

Then the laughter began.

The sound cut through the oppressive silence of the fog. It was Sveni. The boy was standing. He had stripped off his tunic, his thin frame stark against the gloom, his head was thrown back. Peals of high, unhinged hysteria poured from his throat, echoing across the waves.

“Sveni! Quiet yourself!” Hrolf growled, his voice rough with exhaustion and fear.

Vott looked at the boy. His eyes were wide, tears running down them.

Sveni did not hear him. He laughed, gasping for breath. Then the laughter died. His face crumpled, and he wept, his head in his hands.

His mind had cracked.

Fearing for his safety. Leif and Einarr, two of the remaining warriors, their faces set and grim, grabbed the boy. Sveni fought with a wiry, unnatural strength, but he was no match for them. They forced him to the mast, binding his wrists to the thick timber with a length of rope.

“Sea-fever,” Hrolf muttered, spitting over the side. “The damp and the fear have broken his wits.”

Vott knew it was not sea-fever. He watched Sveni, whose weeping had now subsided into a low, continuous muttering. The boy’s head was lolling on his chest, his eyes half-closed. The boy’s mutterings were horribly familiar. It was the same clicking, sibilant speech that buzzed inside Vott’s own skull.

He can hear it too. Vott realised with a jolt of cold terror.

Night and day bled into one another. The black fog was their only horizon. The ship was their entire world. Vott watched enviously as the other men slept. They twitched and moaned, their hands clenching. Hrolf, a man who had faced down Saxon berserkers without flinching, whimpered like a child.

When Hrolf jerked awake, his eyes were wild. Despite the chill, sweat dripped down his cheeks. Vott shuffled over to him. The buzzing in his head made conversation a struggle.
“What did you dream of, Hrolf?”

Hrolf stared at him, his eyes struggling to focus. “The water,” he rasped, his throat dry. “I was sinking. In black water. So deep. The pressure… it was crushing my bones. And there were things below.” He shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself. “Buildings. Towers that scraped a sky without stars. A whole city, drowned and sleeping.” He swallowed hard. “And the eye. Gods, Vott, the red eye. As big as this ship. It was just… watching me sink.”

Vott said nothing. He had seen the eye stamped on the cursed coins. He had seen the empty socket in the horned skull.

He gave up talking. It was easier to be silent, to retreat into the noisy prison of his own mind. Hrolf returned to sleep, leaving Vott to be the only one to see Einarr.

Einarr was a quiet man, a steady hand at the oar, a solid shield in a fight. He was sitting near the stern, gazing at his hands. He turned them over and over, examining the calluses, the scars, the dirt beneath the nails. The motion was calm and methodical.

For an hour, he did this. Just staring at his hands. Then, moving with a slow, deliberate grace, he rose and went to the small chest where they kept spare rope and tools. He took out a pair of iron manacles, the kind they used for thralls. He returned to his seat, and with no hurry, he locked one cuff around his left wrist. He secured the other around his right.

Vott looked at him suspiciously. He pushed himself to his feet, his limbs feeling heavy and unresponsive.

“Einarr?” he called out. “What are you doing?”

Einarr looked up. There was no recognition in his eyes, no sign that he had heard. His expression was one of serene purpose. He stood, the short length of chain between his wrists clinking softly in the silence. He walked to the side of the ship.

Stop him, a part of Vott’s brain screamed, but his body was slow, clumsy. The buzzing in his head swelled to a deafening roar, disorienting him, causing him to sway on the deck. He took a staggering step forward, his hand outstretched. “Einarr, no!”

Einarr did not look at him. He looked down into the black water, and a faint smile touched his lips. Then he stepped over the side.

There was a quiet splash. The black fog swallowed the sound almost instantly. There was no scream, no struggle. Just a small ripple that was quickly smoothed away by the ship’s slow drift. He was gone.

Vott stared at the spot where Einarr had been, his heart hammering against his ribs. The buzzing in his skull grew louder.

He turned his gaze forward, to the prow. Kol was still there. Their leader.

Kol sat through the damp chill, ignoring the fine spray that beaded on his hair and beard. The men had tried to offer him food, water. He had waved them away without a word, his eyes never leaving the golden box on his lap.

Vott walked over. “Kol, did you not hear? Einarr just jumped!”

Kol ignored Vott, watching the casket and muttering.

“Did nobody hear?”

As the others lay in nightmare-filled slumber, Vott moved over to talk to Kol. He couldn’t hear the words over the tormenting sound in his head, but he could see his leader’s lips moving. A constant, rhythmic whisper. He crept closer, straining to hear, needing to know what poison now infected his captain. He got within a few feet before the words became clear, slicing through the buzzing.

“Fomor… Fomor… Fomor…”

Kol repeated the word over and over as if it were a litany. It was a name Vott knew from old stories, from tales told by Irish thralls. A name for a race of sea-demons, monstrous invaders from beneath the waves.

Vott looked at his leader. The stoic, pragmatic man was gone. In his place sat this hollowed-out thing, this whispering shell.

Enough is enough.

Vott reached for the casket.

He barely saw Kol move. Instead, Kol was on his feet in a heatbeat, the point of his dagger suddenly at Vott’s throat. Vott saw a faint, red glow reflected in his eyes, like the last embers of a dying fire.

“Kol, what are you doing?” Vott felt a coldness that had nothing to do with the sea. The man he had followed for years, decades even, the man he had trusted with his life, remained silent, holding the dagger.

Stepping back, Vott help up his hands in surrender. As he withdrew, Kol lowered his dagger and resumed his vigil.

Chapter Four

The world had shrunk to the size of the ship. Time had lost all meaning in this endless, lightless fog. Vott felt the gnawing emptiness of hunger in his belly but had no desire to eat.

For a moment, a change. A faint stirring in the air. A thinning of the black veil above. A patch of fog shredded, revealing the sky. Vott looked up, a desperate, primal part of him crying out for a glimpse of the moon, for the familiar patterns of the stars.

The stars were there. But they were wrong.

He searched for the Great Bear, for the steady anchor of the North Star that had guided him across the whale-road a hundred times. They were gone. The night sky was a foreign sky, with an unfamiliar pattern. The fog closed in again. Vott did not miss the lying stars.

As the gloom deepened, a new horror came with it. Vott found Hrolf. He lay on the deck near the port side.

His tunic was torn open, exposing his chest. The flesh was a mess of blood and rent skin. With what must have been his own belt knife, which lay by his hand, Hrolf had ritualistically carved a symbol into his skin. It was a single, staring eye. The lines were deep, ragged, cut down to the bone in places. The deck beneath him was black with his lifeblood.

But that was not the worst of it. The worst of it was the expression on his dead face. His eyes were wide open, staring at the fog. His lips were pulled back from his teeth in a smile of rapturous bliss.

“He is smiling,” Leif whispered, standing behind Vott, his voice trembling. “By the gods, he is smiling.”

The quiet horror shattered. A new sound came from the mast. Laughter.

It was Sveni again.

“We are all going to die here.” He strained against his bonds, his eyes burning with a feverish light. The seer’s eyes found the still, silent form of Kol on the prow. “He knows.”

Vott looked from Hrolf’s ecstatic, mutilated corpse, to Sveni’s blazing, fanatical eyes, to Kol’s silent, obsessive vigil. He looked at the golden casket, the focus of it all, sitting impassively on Kol’s lap.

Through a momentary thinning of the fog, Vott saw it. A dark smudge separated the black water from the black sky.

Land.

A final, dreadful understanding clicked into place in his mind. The buzzing. The fog. The deaths. The casket must never make it to land. The thought of this thing, this skull, this curse, touching the soil where his clan, his family, his Estrid lived and played, was more terrifying than his own death in this black water.

He looked at Leif, the last of his comrades besides the mad seer and the possessed chieftain. Leif’s eyes were fixed on the shore, hope dawning on his face. He would never agree to cast this treasure away. Not after what they had lost. Words were useless. There was no time for persuasion. There was only one path.

Vott felt a cold knot tighten in his gut. He pushed himself to his feet. His legs were stiff and uncooperative. He stumbled towards the prow, his axe held loosely in his hand. Kol did not move. Sveni, tied to the mast, stirred, his head lifting.

“Kol,” Vott’s voice was a ragged whisper. “We have to throw it away. Now. Into the deep. Let the sea have it.”

Kol remained silent, a statue draped in mist.

The final, brittle strand of Vott’s reason snapped. With a speed that shocked his own weary limbs, he turned on Leif. The man’s eyes widened in surprise for the half-second it took for the haft of Vott’s axe to crash into his temple. He crumpled without a sound.

This ends here.

Vott hefted the iron anchor, his muscles straining as he shoved it over the side.

Kol stood up.

He rose with fluid grace, setting the golden casket carefully on the deck beside him. He turned to face Vott, the fog swirling around him. Vott saw his leader’s eyes clearly.

They glowed with a soft, steady red light.

The buzzing in Vott’s head intensified.

“Have you forsaken Asgard?” Vott spat. “Your family? Your clan?”

Kol bared his teeth. The red light in his eyes flared brighter.

Then he charged.

He moved with unnatural speed. His great axe swung in an arc. Vott threw his own axe up just in time. The clang of steel on steel was a thunderclap in the unnatural quiet. The impact shuddered up his arms, nearly tearing the weapon from his grasp.

Vott gave ground, his boots slipping in Hrolf’s blood. His blood flared, the berserker fury unleashed within him. Every parry sent jolts of agony through his bones. Kol’s red eyes burned with cold, ancient malice.

Vott blocked another savage blow. He spat blood and phlegm into Kol’s face.

It left an opening. As Kol swung his axe in a wide, decapitating blow, Vott dropped to one knee, letting the axe-head whistle over him. He dropped his axe and plunged his dagger upward with a roar.

The blade bit deep into Kol’s groin, thrusting under the mail shirt and into his flesh, erupting in a bloody spray.

The red light in Kol’s eyes flickered, then died. He staggered back, a look of horror on his face. For a fleeting instant, the inhuman mask crumbled. Vott saw the man he had followed looking out from behind the demon’s eyes. He saw confusion, pain, and then a dawning, terrible remorse as he looked at the dead Leif and the bound Sveni.

The opening was all Vott needed. He surged forward, pushing his leader back with a series of blows, until Kol’s back was against the mast. He raised his axe for the final blow. But before he could, his eyes fell on the casket. It sat on the deck, its golden surface gleaming dully.

He let Kol slide down the mast. The lifeblood pumped from Kol’s stomach in thick, dark spurts. Vott turned and lunged for the box. He would throw it into the sea, send it to the crushing depths where it belonged.

He lunged for the box, but his hand froze above the lid. His fingers would not obey. His arm was locked in place, rigid as iron, as if his own body had mutinied against him.

Behind him, there was a scraping sound. Kol, his life fading, was dragging himself across the deck. He was not crawling towards Vott. He was crawling towards the side of the ship, his great axe still clutched in his hand. He was the captain of the Whale's Bane again.

With the last of his strength. The last act of his own will, he lumbered to his feet and raised his axe. He swung, not at Vott, but at the timbers of the ship he had commanded for ten years.

The first blow was a sickening crunch. The second, a splintering thud. He swung a third time, then a fourth, hacking at the hull. Seawater, black and impossibly cold, surged in.

Kol collapsed. His axe fell from his lifeless hand, its purpose served. The ship groaned, a death rattle deep in its bones, and began to list heavily.

The deck tilted violently. Vott lost his footing, sliding across the slick boards. Sveni screamed as the rising water swirled around his bound ankles. Vott crashed against the railing. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs. The ship lurched again, and he was thrown over the side.

The shock of the freezing water forced him to gasp out the last of the air from his body. He was sinking. Down, down into the silent black.

As his lungs burned and the darkness closed in around him, he opened his eyes one last time. He was sinking past the foundering ship, into the bottomless gloom.

He was not alone.

From the abyssal depths below, a point of red light was rising to meet him. It grew larger. Closer. Resolving into an immense, malevolent eye.

THE END

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Welcome to the complete collected works of Newton Webb. Tales of the Macabre, Vol. 1-3 are intended for mature audiences.