Page 25 of Vow of the Undead
The second executioner pushed the witch’s head down, holding her there with the nodules of her spine protruding at the back of her neck. Her entire body convulsed, either with anger or fear—likely both. The first executioner in the bear’s mask listed her crime one final time before unhooking the weapon at his waist.
Sickness swirled in my gut as he tested his grip on the axe.
When my gaze sliced to Ragna, I recognized the cool relief that’d been washing through me. Sickening. How could I feel good right now? Since she hadn’t drawn the king’s blood, it wasn’t her neck beneath the blade. They wouldn’t waste her life, though how could she contribute to our society when she was bound for the wasteland?
Another one of the mysteries my father had brushed off as something we simply couldn’t fully understand from the remote village of Skaldir. We weren’t part of the southern kingdom, and we didn’t border the wasteland, which meant we didn’t have the experience to speculate on it.
The offending witch cried out as sobs wracked her body, and still, I was thankful it wasn’t Ragna on her knees.
You selfish wicked fool.
After Bear finished announcing her crimes, a hush fell over the crowd so heavy that the only sound was the rush of wind through the trees. The world gifted this witch with a sound like the fjords in spring for her final moments.
Everybody watched and waited except for the king.
King Drakkar stayed turned away from us as he removed his cloak and stripped off his shirt. I blinked at the dozens of tattoos covering the muscles of his back. Crouching now, he tore the fabric of the shirt into strips. Three guards each individually attempted to help him, but he sent them away.
Eagle kicked my hip and I snapped my attention forward.
I was taught from a young age not to close my eyes whenthey brought the axe down, so I stared forward, unblinking like the corpses I’d left in the forest. Just like the executioners, I was a killer, but it wasn’t sanctioned by law. The violence I’d caused came from within, the sickest and most wicked part of me.
With practiced ease and the entire force of his body, Bear cut into her flesh, through her spine, and split her head from her shoulders.
Bile stained my tongue in the familiar seconds that followed.
The spray of blood. The dull thud. The chilling echo of hundreds of breaths released at once.
It was over.
Until mine.
And still, my head was clear. Perhaps hours of being consumed by circling thoughts and the dizzying weakness that came with it had prepared me for the worst.
Every day I found myself shaky, scared, spinning out of control over a small reminder, a single thought like: what if the corrupt side of me emerged again and I couldn’t stop it from damning another innocent person?
Now, with pain cutting through my bones and muscles, and death looming, I breathed easily.
Perhaps the Norns threaded the constant and consuming fear into my life’s thread so that it would prime me for this end. Perhaps I needed to stay calm as Hel claimed me for the underworld.
Or had my fight to save Ragna been enough for the Valkyries to choose me for an afterlife in Valhalla?
No, because my effort wasn’t honorable, it was selfish.
I did it because I couldn’t bear to watch her give her life, not because I was a hero like the warriors from the sagas who fought giants and the monsters from other realms.
Eagle gathered my collar in her fist again and forced me to my feet. I stumbled into her when my knees gave out.
Ragna looked up at me between the trickles of blood splitting into two streams around her right eye. I’d never seen her cry, not when her sisters had to cut her son out of her stomach, not when she lost those same sisters to a bear’s attack, not when three of her pregnancies ended in still, blue babies. Ragna released her pain through screaming, not tears.
So today she must not have felt pain, but regret. Or perhaps fear for the unknown she’d face in the wasteland, and now without one of the other witches to keep her company.
She swallowed and her voice came out smaller than I’d ever heard from her. “It should be me.”
Hissing came from beneath the eagle’s mask as the executioner shoved me forward.
My feet couldn’t keep up with her pace, so she half-dragged me across the path. Eagle shouted something I didn’t understand to the Grimward—the collective group of executioners. The one holding the axe dripping with the witch’s blood nodded before turning back to the crowd.
Eagle threw me to the ground beside the witch’s body.
