Page 10 of Storm of Fury
“Enjoying yourself?” he muttered, as he shoved past his cousin, his shoulder slamming into Haakon’s “accidentally.”
Haakon caught himself on a tree. “Immensely. How’s destiny treating you?”
“Coldly. Very, very coldly.”
“Perhaps you should use that endless charm that has never failed before.” Haakon could no longer contain his laughter.
“Do you remember when the lovely Árdís had such doubts about you? And I reminded her that you were worth fighting for?” Tormund shook his head. “I was wrong. I hope one of the draugar eats you.”
Three
Three enormous burialmounds guarded the entrance to the valley. Mist clung to the sweeping slopes, and a pair of enormous lintel stones were carved with ancient runes.
“Looks welcoming,” Tormund muttered under his breath as he drew his axe.
“They’re warnings.” Bryn’s eyes roved the shadows ahead. Gone was any sign of flippancy. Now she moved with the prowling grace of a wolf. “Enter here at your own risk. May the gods be with you.”
“I thought völva practiced natural magics?” Tormund eyed the burial mounds. Sweat dripped down his spine. He’d fought many monsters—dragons, kraken, and wyrms—but draugar were in a category of their own.
“This one foretold a future once that the local villagers did not like. She lives apart from the world, and many men have tried to ruin her. They say she is nearly two hundred years old.”
“Not human then?”
“Human once, perhaps. Though they say she turned her face from blessed Freyja to grim Hel and made a dark bargain in order to preserve her life.”
“You know a great deal about the workings of these people,” Haakon commented, and Tormund knew his cousin’s instincts were roused.
Bryn shrugged as she strode between the rune stones. “I make it my business to know, Dragonsbane. There is good coin in it. And you’re less likely to earn an unexpected knife in the back. Come. Follow my footsteps exactly. And don’t listen to the voices.”
Voices. Jesus.
Tormund watched her walk between the burial mounds with seemingly no care.
“Do you want me to hold your hand?” Haakon muttered.
“My good Christian mother warned me not to get involved with this madness when I was a boy. And I didn’t listen. I told her you would not lead me astray. I promised her I would die a good, natural death, surrounded by my grandchildren and languishing in my bed.”
“It’s all right,” Haakon said in a soothing voice. “We all have fears. I promise I won’t let a big, bad draugr eat you.”
Tormund shuddered. The thought of dying in battle wasn’t something that bothered him; but being eaten alive by something that had crawled out of the grave….
“I hate you. I just want you to know that,” he shot back, before he strode after Bryn. “Can you kill the draugar, Sirius? From a nice, safe distance?”
The Blackfrost could freeze the heart in a man’s—ordreki’s—chest with a single thought, and could rouse a storm to icy, chilling lethality.
“They’re undead,” thedrekireplied tersely. “I can freeze them and slow them down, but I can’t explode their hearts with my magic. Or I can, but it won’t affect them. They’re not alive.”
Damn it. “A pity you can’t breathe fire like your cousin Rurik.”
Sirius bared his teeth. “True. All the better to roast you alive.”
“Is that why he’s king? I never did work out how youdrekiproclaim such things.”
Sirius hissed under his breath. “Rurik is king because I do not want to sit on his throne.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Haakon grumbled, “Can’t the two of you be quiet for once? I feel like I’m dealing with children.”
“What is the plan? What are we facing here?” Tormund knew little about draugr, except for the fact they were undead, difficult to kill, and best avoided.
