Einar stood over them, put his boot on the dead skraeling and ripped his axe free.
“On your feet,” he said to Varg.
“Take my hand, brother,” Torvik said and pulled Varg up, both of them breathing hard, eyes wild and faces blood-spattered.
The din of battle was overwhelming. Varg saw Svik and the others were pressing forwards against a shield wall of warriors, six or seven strong, shields clashing, steel stabbing. Elsewhere Glornir was stood swinging his axe two-handed, a skraeling falling away in a spray of blood. R?kia was yelling a battle-cry and leading her band of Bloodsworn as they broke through another shield wall of mail-clad warriors, R?kia thrusting her spear into a man’s belly. Everywhere was death, the air thick with the iron tang of blood and faeces. And everywhere the Bloodsworn went, their enemies looked to be falling.
“Not the time for a rest,” Einar grunted at them as he strode towards Svik.
Varg shared a look with Torvik, who grinned at him, and then they were following Einar, Varg hefting his shield and drawing his seax, the two of them rejoining Svik’s line and pushing into the wall of shields. Varg locked his shield with Vali’s, Torvik moving to the far end of the line.
There were seven warriors facing them, men and women spitting and shoving, snarling and stabbing from behind their wall of shields. Varg dipped his shoulder and put his weight behind his shield and shoved, glimpsing a blond beard and the glint of a spearhead. He jerked his head to the side, felt the iron blade grate against his helmet, magnified and deafening inside the helm, and stabbed his seax low, under his shield rim, felt the blade bite, heard a grunt and the pressure on his shield lessened. He pulled his seax back, blood-slick, and shoved forwards, stabbed high and it grated across the riveted rings of a brynja.
A shouted command rang out and the warriors they were facing took a step back. Varg’s limbs heavy, muscles burning, sweat dripping in his eyes.
This shield work is harder than a bout of fists between the hazel rods.
“AT THEM,” Svik yelled and he took a step forward, closing the gap, the rest of the line following. Beside Varg, Vali hissed like an enraged serpent at their enemies, his face twisted in snarling fury. He had left his spear in the body of a skraeling and was wielding a bearded axe. Hooking the blade over the shield rim opposite him he tugged, the warrior holding the shield stumbling forwards a step. It was a man, dark-haired with a wrong-set broken nose and spitting insults at Vali. J?kul slammed his hammer on to the warrior’s helm, putting a fist-sized dent into it. The distinct sound of bone cracking could be heard and the man collapsed.
Svik stepped over the fallen man’s body, stabbing down with his spear, and pushed into the gap in their wall of shields, Vali, Halja and J?kul close behind and the enemy shield wall split apart like a cracked egg. One fought on, Einar making short work of him, and the others broke and ran.
Varg stood there, blinking, exhaustion and fury fighting within him, still feeling the anger pulsing through him like cold fire, like a distant drumbeat, his body twitching with the need to fight.
A bellowing, louder than a tree falling, echoed out from the tunnel entrance and filled the glade. Varg winced with the noise of it.
A shape lumbered from the tunnel, almost as tall and wide as the entrance: the troll they had seen at the waterfall. Varg had not realised how big it was. Tall as two men, wide as three, it thundered into the clearing, mud squelching and flying between its thick-clawed toes. It was naked and muscled as a bull, its hide scaled, patches of moss upon it, testicles swinging like two boulders between its legs. It gripped an iron-banded club in its fists. Yellowed tusks jutted from its lower jaw and small, pinprick eyes glared out from beneath thick-slabbed brows.
Figures moved behind it: a dozen warriors led by a grey-haired man in an oil-dark brynja. He wore an iron helm with a mail neck-guard, his grey beard bound into a thick braid and a dark cloak billowing out behind him like wings. Arm rings of silver and gold were thick upon him. He had no shield, but held in his hands a long, two-handed curved sword. Not a sword of iron or steel, it was yellowed with veins of grey, like old bone. And it seemed to shimmer in the man’s hands, waves of power rippling out from it like a heat haze. The tingling in Varg’s blood grew, louder and wilder, calling to him, giving him life and energy and at the same time suppressing and squeezing him, as if he had dived deep into a mountain pool and the weight of water above was crushing him.
The man strode to stand in front of the troll, a dozen warriors spread behind him, all mailed with sharp steel in their fists. He raised the bone sword over his head. Red eyes flickered like embers within the shadows of his helm as he glowered at the Bloodsworn.