Page 14 of Storm of Fury
He turned just as Bryn darted toward him, with a bloodied knife in her hand.
“Through the rune stones!” she yelled at him, snatching his arm as she sprinted past.
Behind her lumbered a creature wielding a brass-bound club.
“Use your sword!” he yelled at her as he ran after her. Was she mad? A knife against one of the undead?
Bryn sprinted through the rune stones then whirled to face him. She glared at him, then set that glare upon the draugr. “I need some room to draw it.”
It wasn’t that bloody big. Tormund shook his head. “Stay behind me,” he said, then turned to face the creature alone. “Come on, you big, ugly bastard.”
He watched that club lift high, tensing his muscles.
Diving beneath the swing of the club, he swung his axe at its foot, but the creature danced and avoided the blow. Tormund threw himself aside, trying not to be crushed.
He hit a rock, his body wedged against it. The sole of an enormous boot blotted out the light, and he screamed as he threw his arms up and—
Someone yanked aside the curtains of gloom, letting the sun’s burnished rays smash down upon them. Heat washed over his clammy skin.
The draugr froze, its attention swinging toward the rune stones.
Toward Bryn.
And it was not the sun, but the sword in her hand.
Light seemed to be coming from within the metal, as if the fucking thing had been forged from the heart of a dying star. Standing within a molten halo, her red braids gleaming like the wings of a phoenix, she screamed something incomprehensible at the draugr.
Tormund sat up breathlessly as the draugr turned to face her.
Instead of ducking the club, she swung her sword up to meet it.
A cataclysmic shockwave of force and sound detonated out from the blow. The draugr was flung off its feet, landing several yards behind Tormund. But Bryn stood with her feet planted, every inch of her face carved with a motley of fierce shadows.
“Holy. Shit.” He tried to wave the lights away from his vision. “Where the hell did you find that sword?”
“Don’t look at it!” she screamed, her eyes settling on something directly behind him.
The ground beneath his boot shivered.
Tormund threw himself to the side, swinging under the blow of the club. The whistle of its passage whined past his ears, and then he was rolling to his feet, still blinking through his half-blindness. The stench of decay almost knocked him on his ass again.
But he was under its guard for a crucial half-second.
Lifting the axe high, he drove it into the draugr’s foot, cleaving it in half. “If we can’t kill them, then incapacitate them.”
It wasn’t as though they could grow extra limbs.
Could they?
“Behind you!” Bryn screamed.
He caught a glimpse of an enormous form blundering toward him.
Bryn sprinted toward him, her gaze locked on the creature over his shoulder. Tormund recognized her intent, and dropped to one knee, cupping his hands for her.
Her weight met his cupped palms, and then he was thrusting her high over his shoulder.
Grabbing for his axe, he rolled to the side, coming up in a fighting stance—only to realize he wasn’t needed.
