Page 104 of A Curse Carved in Bone
“I had hoped it would be Skade who brought the message,” Geir growled. “That one deserves death for what she did to Mother.”
“Skade is too clever for that.” I paced back and forth, wearing a track in the dirt. “She knows we’re here and won’t race into a trap. Not when she is equally certain that I will walk into theirs.”
“Time runs short.” Geir watched me pace, rotting thumbs hooked on his belt. “What do you wish to do, Freya?”
Noise from inside the fortress reached my ears. Shouts of celebration and calls for blood, hundreds of Skalanders lifting their cups to Snorri. To his renewed friendship with Harald. Toasted to peace between Nordeland and Skaland. Toasted to the imminent execution of a traitor.
It turned my stomach sour. “How quickly Harald has become the hero. How quickly our people forget the long years he raided Skaland’s coast, plundering and killing.”
“He’s painted himself as a victim,” Geir replied. “A victim of the monstrous Hel-child and her hapless lover. It was not visions of Harald or Nordelander warriors that Steinunn’s song showed dragging their loved ones beneath the waves, Freya. It was you, with Bjorn at your side.”
“Nothing is more powerful than the truth.” I wished desperately to see a path through this. A path to defeating Harald that wouldn’t make truth out of his fabricated vision of me as a plague upon both nations with scores of innocent dead left in my wake. “But the truth refuses to be our weapon. There is no choice. We must go over the walls and take control of the fortress to rescue Bjorn and kill Harald.”
The draug shook their heads restlessly, and Geir watched them, some form of silent communication passing between my brother andthe dead Skalanders. “No, Freya,” he finally said. “It would be one thing if doing so yielded victory, but we know that Harald will only shift forms and escape. We might save Bjorn, but it would come at the cost of the lives of those we call friends and family, for they all believe that we are the enemy. That we are ruled by a traitor. They will fight us, and none here wish to harm our people.”
Whether it was my oath or just my frustration, I didn’t know, only that emotion rose in my chest, wild and furious.
“You promised me!” The words tore from my lips as a wild shriek. “You swore to fight for me!”
“To fight for Skaland!” my brother shouted back. “To fight to defeat the trickster whose plots put us all in Helheim. To fight for a chance at Valhalla. But what you suggest has no honor—to kill those we love for the sake of the oneyoulove.”
A ragged sob tore from my lips, because he was right. I couldn’t ask them for this. All I could do now was choose between fighting this battle myself or surrendering on the hope Harald would hold to his word and allow Bjorn to go free. Hooking my shield over my shoulder, I started walking toward Grindill.
“Freya,” Geir called before I’d gone more than a few paces. “Wait! The wolves have returned!”
Turning my head, I found Skoll and Hati sitting in the trees, watching me. Their presence changed nothing, yet I stopped walking and waited as they made their way in my direction. It was not lost on me that both creatures were larger than I was. More than capable of ripping out my throat. Yet I felt no threat as they neared, not even when they sniffed my hands, massive teeth clearly visible.
Sniffed with their large noses. Theirkeennoses.
I went still, watching the wolves lick my hands. “Harald changes shape,” I murmured. “But does he change smell?”
Geir and the others exchanged looks but then shrugged.
It was a long shot, but desperation drove me to take it. “Get me a stick of charcoal.” When one was brought to me, I dropped to my kneesbefore the wolves, a cold fall wind tugging and pulling at my hair. “Will you trust me to wash away the magic when we are through? I have no desire to bind you to my will, only to offer you the chance for revenge against the one who kept you bound for so long. And for that, I need you to be able to understand me.”
They only sat with lolling tongues, showing no resistance as I replicated the runes that Harald had once used to bind them. Immediately, their eyes sharpened with intelligence. “Can you smell Harald no matter his shape?” I asked them.
Hati gave a soft whine.
Geir frowned. “Is that a yes?”
I nodded, understanding them as easily as they understood me. “Will you help us?”
Both animals circled me with wagging tails, and resting my hands on their heads, I looked at Grindill with a different light.
“We flush everyone in the fortress out with smoke,” I said. “Force them through two gates as choke points. Harald doesn’t know we have Skoll and Hati, so he’ll not hesitate to try to slip through. But they will know it is him no matter what face he wears.”
“He’ll know it’s a ploy,” Geir argued.
“Every part of Harald’s strategy here has been predicated on his belief that he knows how I will act. On his certainty that I will not voluntarily attack my own people. On his certainty that I’ll risk myself for Bjorn’s sake. That I’ll die for him.” I swallowed hard, wishing I could tell Geir about my oath, although in truth, even without it, I’d have made the same choices. “Harald was right in his assessment of my character. But I also knowhim.He has consistently fooled everyone by taking on another’s form and it will not occur to him that his magic will fail him. When it seems as though he has erred in his judgment of me, that we are attacking the fortress in truth, he will change form and try to run. It is his nature.”
“And once he’s caught? Then what?”
Every part of me wanted to force Harald to reveal the truth of hisnature. For all to know who and what he was. But that might well be a dream out of reach for me, so I said, “I’ll kill him.”
Geir rubbed at his beard. “We need to think of a way to fill the fortress with smoke without setting it ablaze so quickly that no one has time to flee.”
“We need to get the smoke to the center of Grindill,” I said. “The gates we wish them to escape through must be kept clear of flame. And we have only a matter of hours to figure out how to do it.”
