The Shadow of the Gods （The Bloodsworn Saga, #1）
John Gwynne
For Caroline,
My love,
My heart,
My everything.
Always
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There comes the shadow-dark dragon flying,
The gleaming serpent, up from Dark-of-Moon Hills;
He flies over the plain, and in his pinions
he carries corpses.
The Voluspa
CHAPTER ONE
ORKA
The year 297 of Friear?ld, The Age of Peace
“Death is a part of life,” Orka whispered into her son’s ear.
Even though Breca’s arm was drawn back, the ash-spear gripped tight in his small, white-knuckled fist and the spearhead aimed at the reindeer in front of them, she could see the hesitation in his eyes, in the set of his jaw.
He is too gentle for this world of pain, Orka thought. She opened her mouth to scold him, but a hand touched her arm, a huge hand where Breca’s was small, rough-skinned where Breca’s was smooth.
“Wait,” Thorkel breathed through his braided beard, a cold-misting of breath. He stood to her left, solid and huge as a boulder.
Muscles bunched in Orka’s jaw, hard words already in her throat.
Hard words are needed for this hard world.
But she held her tongue.
Spring sunlight dappled the ground through soft-swaying branches, reflecting brightly from patches of rimed snow, winter’s last hoar-frost kiss on this high mountain woodland. A dozen reindeer stood grazing in a glade, a thick-antlered bull watching over the herd of cows and calves as they chewed and scratched moss and lichen from trunks and boulders.
A shift in Breca’s eyes, an indrawn breath that he held, followed by a burst of explosive movement; his hips twisting, his arm moving. The spear left his fist: a hiss as sharp iron sliced through air. A flush of pride in Orka’s chest. It was well thrown. As soon as the spear had left Breca’s grip she knew it would hit its mark.
In the same heartbeat that Breca loosed his spear, the reindeer he had chosen looked up from the trunk it had been scraping lichen from. Its ears twitched and it leaped forwards, the herd around it breaking into motion, bounding and swerving around trees. Breca’s spear slammed into the trunk, the shaft quivering. A moment later there was a crashing from the east, the sound of branches cracking, and a form burst from the undergrowth, huge, slate-furred and long-clawed, exploding into the glade. The reindeer fled in all directions as the beast loped among them, oblivious to all around it. Blood pulsed from a swarm of wounds across its body, long teeth slick, its red tongue lolling, and then it was gone, disappearing into the forest gloom.
“What… was that?” Breca hissed, looking up at his mother and father, wide eyes shifting from Orka to Thorkel.
“A fell-wolf,” Thorkel grunted as he broke into motion, the stealth of the hunt forgotten. He pushed through undergrowth into the glade, a thick-shafted spear in one fist, branches snapping, Orka and Breca following. Thorkel dropped to one knee, tugged a glove off with his teeth and touched his fingertips to droplets of the wolf’s blood, brushing them across the tip of his tongue. He spat, rose and followed the trail of wolf-blood to the edge of the glade, then stood there peering into the murk.
Breca walked up to his spear, the blade half-sunk into a pine tree, and tried to pull it free. His body strained, but the spear didn’t move. He looked up at Orka, grey-green eyes in a pale, muddied face, a straight nose and strong jaw framed with crow-black hair, so much like his father, and the opposite of her. Apart from his eyes. He had Orka’s eyes.
“I missed,” he said, his shoulders slumping.
Orka gripped the shaft in her gloved hand and tugged the spear free.
“Yes,” she said as she handed Breca his spear, half-an-arm shorter than hers and Thorkel’s.
“It was not your fault,” Thorkel said from the glade’s edge. He was still staring into the gloom, a thick braid of black, grey-streaked hair poking from beneath his woollen n?lbinding cap, his nose twitching. “The fell-wolf startled them.”
“Why didn’t it kill any of those reindeer?” Breca asked as he took his short spear back from Orka.
Thorkel lifted his hand, showing bloodied fingertips. “It was wounded, not thinking about its supper.”
“What did that to a fell-wolf?” Breca asked.
A silence.
Orka strode to the opposite end of the glade, her spear ready as she regarded the dark hole in the undergrowth from where the wolf had emerged. She paused, cocked her head. A faint sound, drifting through the woodland like mist.