The Dragon Hammer (Wulf's Saga Book 1) by Tony Daniel

something else. It was shaking.
    Rainer was scared.
    Before Wulf could ask, his friend jerked Wulf around to face the south end of the square.
    Across the square stood…something. Someone. It had the shape of a person. But its shape was barely visible in the night. Its skin wasn’t just dark, but black .
    Coal black.
    The only reason it was visible at all was because it was rimmed by the half moon’s faint light.
    And then the smell reached them. The stench. It smelled like a dead thing. Wulf shuddered. He felt like he wanted to vomit. He glanced over and saw that Rainer was holding a hand to his nose and mouth. The smell was awful.
    This was no man. It had no nose or mouth. Instead its face was pushed outward into a hooked beak. It cocked its head like a bird did and gazed at them with…they were eyes, but eyes with no whites in them. They were as inky black as the rest of it, just more liquid looking.
    Blood and bones, what was it? Was it Tier, maybe some kind of vulture man?
    Was there…there was a mention in the sagas. But he couldn’t think of it, not now. He was too terrified.
    The vulture-thing had something in its hands, which it let drop and swung back behind itself on a strap.
    “Crossbow,” Rainer said in a tense whisper. “Almost got you.”
    Then the thing spoke, if you could call it speaking. It was more like the screech of a rusty iron door opening, and it made Wulf cringe listening to it. But it was loud enough to hear from across the square.
    “The hammer,” the thing hissed. “Where?”
    The thing reached to its side and drew a curved sword that was as black as the rest of the thing. Wulf recognized its design. It was a Roman falcata.
    The blade glinted darkly in the moonlight.
    The black thing walked toward them.

Chapter Seven:
The Draugar

    Wulf spun around and grabbed at his dagger where it stuck in the tree. Tugged. No good.
    Blood and bones, he thought. The dragon-vision is gone. Can’t pull it out.
    Maybe that wasn’t true. He didn’t know for sure. He gave the dagger the hardest tug he could.
    It didn’t budge.
    Yep, it was stuck there.
    He turned back around. Rainer had drawn his blade and had moved between Wulf and the dark being. Rainer was trembling.
    “What are you?” Wulf called to it. His own voice was shaking.
    The dark being did not reply. It didn’t break its steady stride. And there was something in the way it quivered as it moved, like it didn’t have bones.
    Rainer got into a fighting stance with his dagger. It wasn’t a sword posture, but more like a ready position for boxing. Made sense. Rainer studied fighting the way Wulf studied the sagas.
    He couldn’t let Rainer face this thing alone. Wulf started to move up beside Rainer, but Rainer glanced back, saw what Wulf was up to, and shook his head.
    “You’ve got no blade,” he growled.
    “I’ve got my hands,” Wulf said. “And, blood and bones, I have my teeth if I have to use them.” He went to stand beside Rainer.
    At the sight of the two boys standing side by side, the thing stopped. It was five long paces away. It was as tall as a very tall man. The smell it put out was incredibly intense.
    In the country, Wulf had once passed a dead horse that had been crawling with maggots. This smell was way, way worse.
    The thing looked at Rainer and then to Wulf with its half-vulture, half-man head.
    The grinding whisper-voice came out of it again. This close, it was a sound that made you cringe, like the sound of fingernails on slate.
    “Where is Tjark’s hammer?” it screeched. “Thou know’st.”
    Suddenly Wulf wanted badly to answer. He felt compelled. The black thing had the right because it had the power. Who was he to keep it from what it wanted?
    He was nobody. He was filled with the complete certainty that if he didn’t tell, the thing would tear him apart.
    The only trouble was that he didn’t know. He didn’t know if any of that part of the dragon vision was real or what it meant.
    Wulf shook his