“Human… god… it makes no difference to the Jotunn,” he said. “I do not care who you are or why you are here. Continue on your journey. I will not stand in your way.”
With that, he stepped aside. With everything I’d heard about Jotunn behavior, I was surprised. Before I carried on, I did want to know what had happened. It might just turn out to be relevant for our own mission.
“What is your name, Jotunn? I gave you mine; it is only courteous to give me yours.”
“I am Mur,” he rumbled. “But my name does not matter. It will be forgotten, as will the names of all of my friends and comrades who lie dead in this field.”
“What happened here, Mur?”
“I lost. They left me alive to suffer, instead of killing me so that I could join my dead brothers in the War Halls of the Sky. This is my punishment: to live.”
“Who did this to you? And to your brothers?”
“King Engroth. He defeated my army. My rebellion was destroyed, and that tyrant will continue his corrupt reign. My brothers and I tried to restore justice to this land, but as you can see, we failed. And I must live the rest of my life in misery, as an outcast, alone. Now, if you don’t mind, I have no wish to speak further. Be on your way, god.”
As I stared out over the battlefield at the corpses of Jotunn warriors, an idea popped into my head. It was audacious, but it could really work to our advantage, and I might just convince Mur that it would work to his advantage too.
“What if I told you that you hadn’t actually lost everything, Mur?” I asked. “What if I told you that you could take the fight back to Engroth with a bigger, stronger army than ever?”
Mur chuckled sourly, his laughter booming like thunder across the snowy plain. “Are you trying to provoke me with your crazy talk, little god?” he rumbled, his chortles giving way to a stormy look of wrath. “Because if so, it’s working.”
“It’s not crazy talk at all, Jotunn. I’m the God of Death. Do you understand what that means? Look at the army behind me; most of them are undead. They were just like these dead Frost Giants lying all over this field—until I raised them from the dead. Death is final for everyone, everyone except me. For me, it’s a slight hurdle, a bump in the road. Your warriors are dead? No problem. If I use my Death magic on them, they won’t be dead any longer.”
Mur peered past me at the huge army of undead troops behind me. There was quite an astounding variety now, from undead war-spiders to undead barbarian zombies on undead direwolves to skeletons and Crusaders. He stared at them for a very long time. I could almost hear the mechanisms in his brain spinning.
“You can truly resurrect these dead warriors, my dead friends and brothers?” he eventually asked.
“I can resurrect them, and I can resurrect the dead warriors who fought for Engroth too. Look, they won’t be ‘alive,’ and they won’t remember you or really even have minds at all, but they’ll fight just as furiously as any living warrior. In fact, they’re more powerful than living warriors because they can’t feel pain or fear. This is what I’m trying to tell you, Mur: I can resurrect every dead warrior on this field, no matter whose side they fought on, and they’ll all fight for you. And they’ll fight better than any living troops could.”
Mur narrowed his eyes with suspicion as he stared down at me. He folded his arms, each as thick as the trunk of an old oak tree, across his enormous chest.
“And why would you do this for me?” he asked. “You have only just met me.”
“Well,” I answered, grinning up at him, “I would obviously have something to ask of you in exchange for this. I don’t hand out favors.”
“And what would you ask of me?”
“I need something Engroth has in his possession, the Cloak of Changing. Swear an oath to give me this cloak when we defeat Engroth. Promise to allow my army unhindered passage through the Land of the Frost Giants. Do these both, and I’ll give you a better army than you ever could have dreamed of, one to defeat Engroth. Hell, I’ll even fight alongside you, give you a little hand. Do remember that these undead troops I’ll resurrect will be mine after we help you win. They’ll be leaving these lands along with me after you achieve victory. But then, you won’t need them any more. You’ll have your own army of living Frost Giants once you’re King of the Jotunn.”
“If I win, I will indeed have my own army of living Jotunn.”
“Not if you win, Mur,” I said with a swift smile. “When you win. I guarantee it.”
He nodded. For the first time since he and I had started talking, a smile came over his face. He dropped onto his knees, pulled a dagger from his belt—a small dagger to him but a weapon that was the size of a greatsword to me—and opened a cut across his palm. He then curled his bleeding hand into a fist and squeezed it tight so that drops of red blood oozed out and dripped onto the snow between us.
“I swear an oath by my blood,” he said, “that if you help me to achieve victory against the corrupt King Engroth, I will give you everything you have asked of me.”
“Very well,” I said.
Getting Mur to agree to my terms required a big promise, and raising this many huge Jotunn was going to take it out of me. I’d felt Grave Oath buzzing hundreds, perhaps even thousands of times since we’d left Hothgrum. I had extra strength stored up from the fresh kills made in my name, but even so, this was the
