Page 2 of Vow of the Undead
I would prove my mother wasn’t a threat, before the wasteland stripped away her life.
Ragna must have sensed the turmoil thrashing around inside of me because she finally stopped scolding me and grabbed the scythe from my hand.
She winked. “This is mine now,” she quipped. “Unless you want to fight for it.”
Coming from her, this was as much a challenge to get it back as it was a distraction from the frayed nerves that so often plagued me. She knew a playful fight would rein in my nervous mind.
A smirk twitched at my lips. “Only if you’re ready to lose.”
I’d fought her plenty of times in the forbidden hall, or rather, the dugout beneath Ragna’s home. There, those of us brave and stupid enough to practice self-defense trained against one another, because even if violence and fighting weren’t allowed, even if bloodshed was strictly forbidden for the safety of our society, some of us still believed in the monsters of old, the undead and the giants who slipped into our world from the other realms.
Of course, those beliefs were forbidden too.
But I didn’t need to merely believe in monsters, I saw their red eyes in the forests dozens of times. I had felt them watching me since I was a young girl.
Ragna waved the scythe back and forth to catch my attention. A glint of mischief flashed in her eyes and I knew she’d won this argument. I’d follow her to the dugout buried below the little stone house at the edge of the field.
I’d clash tools with her, wooden swords and branches, because even in secret, we didn’t risk hiding weapons. Sparring could grant me the collapse and vision I sought just as easily as toiling away in the fields, if Ragna didn’t go soft on me for being the Vyl’s daughter.
I trailed her, and within five minutes, I found myself in a huge hole in the ground beneath the floor of Ragna’s home. Earthen walls smelled pungent of damp soil, teeming with wriggling larvae and other creatures whose species survived the ice of Vylheim’s worsening winters. I blew out a breath and picked up the broken piece of a fence post, my weapon of choice. I steeled my muscles, knowing Ragna was about to beat what little stamina I had left out of me.
Though exhaustion pulled at my bones, fighting her had the opposite effect that I’d wanted.
It energized me.
A swell of excitement and sense of safety pushed me to keep wrestling Ragna as a second wave of energy rippled through me. I slammed the cut of wood against her branch over and over until another sound overpowered our sparring.
Thundering hooves shook the ground above us, and a bolt of nerves flayed open within my veins. We froze mid-clash and locked eyes.
We had plenty of horses in Skaldir, but somehow, we both knew this was not a group of villagers riding back into town. Or maybe we were just scared enough not to risk being caught fighting.
If executioners found us training like this, they’d have our heads. Even without a drop of blood, practicing at battle proved that the king and his council were right; the people of Vylheim were bent toward violence and must be controlled through the fear of execution in order to maintain civilized society.
I never could decide if they were right. I relished the feeling of power this training gave me, but maybe that was exactly the tendency toward violence that they were trying to suppress.
We were a danger to ourselves.
“Ragna!” Rolf’s voice echoed from the house above. “More Grimward are here. Get out here before they think you’re hiding.” He called the executioners by their collective name out of nervous respect, and the shrill edge of his voice hinted at his growing worry.
Ragna’s brow wrinkled, a sure sign that she didn’t hear Rolf’s warning clearly. Having suffered several infections in her ears, her senses weren’t as sharp as mine.
“We have to be out there, in plain sight,” I said, pointing to the ladder that led to our exit.
She nodded. As a witch like me, any little suspicion could blow her cover. Because even though violence was the executioner’s crime of focus, being a witch was just as illegal.
Arrivals like this—of more executioners than the ones who constantly patrolled our borders—were unpredictable so that they might catch more villagers in the act of shedding another’s blood. Somehow, the Grimward always appeared when two young men got into a scuffle, or when a lover’s quarrel turned violent, as if they could smell the blood of battle before it hit the ground.
We tossed the makeshift weapons aside, and I paused, grabbing the discarded scythe instead. Angling the scythe’s blade to catch the glow of candlelight, I checked on the enchantment that concealed my eyes.
The shimmering metal reflected my face back at me.
No black eyes.
I breathed easier. My enchantment had held up. Even if it only concealed the black with a watery film of magic blessed to me by the Gods so that I may slink through the world unknown as a witch.
Not that other witches even had this curse.
I was the only one, and when the black first spread, my mother spent every waking moment creating an enchantment to hide it. She’d placed it on me years ago, and now, as the enchantment slowly faded, it was proof her life was slipping away. The more the black seeped out from the center and spread across my eyes, the closer she was to death.
