Ship of the Dead by James Jennewein

there were half a dozen lighted candles surrounding the bed. As Dane’s eyes adjusted to the candlelight, he saw that a body lay beneath the blanket, its head propped on a pillow. A bare twig of a man, it was a dwarf not much larger than the old she-dwarf. The candlelight glimmered off the dome of his round, bald head and lit the outline of his ginger-colored beard that grew like a bush long past his knees.
    â€œHave you come to watch me die?” said the diminutive figure, his voice deep and sonorous despite his obvious illness. For such a small man, he had a very big voice. Feeling more welcome now, they drew nearer to the bed. The sight of the smith’s centuries-old face nearly took Dane’s breath away. So shriveled and shrunken was he, his pale skin mottled with age spots and falling in folds from his face and arms, it seemed he was more a dried-up piece of fruit than a man. His head was large for his body, and tufts of white hair grew from his protruding ears. Beneath an unruly thatch of eyebrows were his deep-set eyes, one green and the other blue. Though their sparkle was near spent, they were the kindest eyes Dane had ever seen.
    â€œDéttmárr,” Lut softly said. “We have come to help save you.”
    â€œBig words, for one so young,” said Déttmárr.
    â€œWe have come from the village of Voldarstad to ask you a favor,” Lut said.
    Déttmárr waved his hand weakly in the air. “I’m six hundred and nineteen years old. Give or take. Too old to be doing any favors.”
    â€œBut it’s gravely important that you make us a weapon,” Dane said. He told him of Skuld and how they had been dispatched to kill the draugr Thidrek the Terrifying.
    â€œA draugr-killing blade, you say? Try another smith. I am but a wasted shell waiting to die.”
    The old dwarf gave a pained groan. He lay there motionless. For a moment Dane feared he might be dead. He shook him lightly by the shoulders. “Please! Skuld said you alone are the one to make our blade!”
    Déttmárr’s eyes snapped open. “Did you not hear me? I’m too old and tired!”
    â€œBut that’s why we’re here,” Lut said. “I, too, was ancient. Death was on my doorstep. But I ate a magic apple that restored me to—”
    Jarl broke in. “We don’t have time for this.”
    â€œ You don’t have time?” said the dwarf. “ I’m the one who’s dying.”
    â€œBut that’s what I’m trying to tell you—we have a remedy!”
    â€œHah! There is no remedy for old age. Potions! Lotions! Spells! Bewitchments! I’ve tried them all. I even fasted on nothing but berry juice and ox vomit for an entire month. Nothing works! Nothing stops the ravages of time—neither man nor dwarf nor gods above.”
    â€œListen, dwarf, if you don’t make the weapon and we don’t kill Thidrek,” Jarl explained, “then I’m doomed to die in bed like you. And that’s not going to happen. Give him the apple, Dane.”
    Jarl had a way of getting to the point. Dane held up what was left of the apple core, the last remnants of the partially blackened golden skin around the top and bottom gleaming in the candlelight. “An apple from the tree of Idunn. Or what’s left of it,” said Dane, glancing then at Lut.
    Déttmárr stared intently at the apple core, his eyes shining brighter. “It is told,” he whispered with new gravity, “that Idunn’s apple holds the power to restore life. And if a man were to eat one, he would be magically rejuvenated in mind and body, perhaps even made young again.”
    Lut said, “So what are you waiting for? Look at me! I went from a man over a century old to one of merely twenty!”
    â€œThat may be so,” said the dwarf, soberly absorbing Lut’s words. “But with so little of it left to eat, I doubt it would have much