Ship of the Dead by James Jennewein Page B

realizing that he had reached a new low in his career as bootlicking lackey. Once he had been one of the top practitioners of his profession, serving as brownnosing yes-man to the rich and powerful. Now look at me! he despaired. Toady to a rotting corpse, the stinking undead, a cursed draugr. He was a disgrace to the Loyal Order of Sycophants. Was there even such an order, he wondered? If not, he made a mental note that he would have to start one.
    â€œHow long must we walk?” asked the draugr Thidrek, riding piggyback atop Grelf. “I thought you said the falls were but a mile or two inland.”
    â€œI’m sure that dull roar we hear are the falls, my lord,” Grelf replied, short of breath. “They must be just around the next turn in the river.”
    A local villager had told Grelf how best to reach the falls. They were to journey along the coastline until they came to a spot where three small islands lay immediately offshore. There they would find a river that flowed through a narrow gap in the mountains and emptied into the sea. Once they had found the river, Grelf and Thidrek left their horses on the beach and set off on foot—rather, on Grelf’s two feet—with Grelf carrying a torch to light their way. “Do you suppose we might stop and rest?” Grelf implored.
    â€œWhen we’re so close?” Thidrek said. “Push on—a little faster if you will.”
    â€œOf course, my lord,” Grelf mewled, plodding along the muddy riverbank through swarms of mosquitoes. He was the only source of blood in the immediate vicinity, so the insects greedily bit him about the face and hands, not even landing on Thidrek, whose veins were as dry as dust. Grelf started to feel faint from the exertion and blood loss. “Is it possible, my lord, that you could walk on your own for a while?”
    â€œAnd foul my boots in the mud?”
    â€œRight, sire, what was I thinking?”
    â€œYou’d just have to lick them clean anyway,” joked Thidrek.
    â€œOf course, sir,” Grelf said with a forced chuckle, “you’re so kind to spare me that.”
    Back when Thidrek lived his princely life, one of Grelf’s many duties in his castle had been to be sure his master’s wardrobe was smart and spotless. “A tyrant must look stylish while terrorizing the populace,” Prince Thidrek would say. “One smudge of dirt and my image of invincibility is ruined.”
    Now that Thidrek was undead, keeping up appearances was proving even more difficult. The main problem was masking the aroma of his slowly rotting body—a stench that even Thidrek could not endure for long. Grelf, being practiced in the alchemic arts—learned while concocting poisons to eliminate Thidrek’s rivals—had turned his skills to perfumery. After several tries, he’d hit upon a concoction of conifer resin oil, myrtle, and crushed flowers that was powerful enough to offset the smell of rotting tissue, at least for a while.
    â€œThere it is!” Thidrek cried. Ahead in the moonlight Grelf saw a magnificent cascade of water, perhaps a hundred feet high, that thundered down over a mountain cleft into a deep, wide pool. He felt a swat on the back of his head. “Hurry, Grelf!”
    Hurry? It wasn’t like the dead were going anywhere, Grelf wanted to tell him. But he hastened onward, struggling along the riverbank, and soon, gasping for air, arrived alongside the falls at the base of the mountain. Thidrek climbed down from his back and Grelf fell to his knees, exhausted. “What’s wrong, Grelf? A little hard work too much for you?”
    â€œJust a moment—to catch my breath—my lord.”
    â€œNow, now, I won’t have you slacking—not with us on the brink of success.”
    They had been “on the brink of success” many times before, trying to find Hel’s Ship of the Dead. For a whole week now they had been trudging