Pain thumped rhythmically inside his head, and his left side felt numb.
Where the bone sword hit me.
More faces over him: Svik, R?kia, Einar.
“Where…” Varg mumbled. He shifted, felt straw stabbing into his back.
“We are underground, in a catacomb,” Torvik said. “This place is a marvel. It is filled with treasures. Relics, silver. The bones of a god!”
Varg turned his head, which was a mistake, a flare of pain shooting through him. He saw he was lying on a stone floor, straw beneath him, a figure beside him: J?kul, unconscious, a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his head. Beyond J?kul were other figures laid out on the floor, two of them wrapped from head to boots in linen. Halja kneeled beside one of them. Tears streaked channels through the blood and grime on her cheeks.
Varg looked away, her grief etched so raw that he felt wrong to watch her.
R?kia appeared over him.
“You managed to take the cover from your spear, and buckle your helm on,” she said. “I am very proud of you.” Varg was not sure if he was really awake or just dreaming, because she smiled at him.
Svik pushed R?kia out of the way.
“Back with us, then, scrapper,” Svik said with a grin and twirled one of his moustaches. He did not look like he’d just fought in the shield wall, against skraelings and a troll the size of a barn. Einar’s big head loomed behind him, grinning more broadly than he had done to Svik’s fireside tales.
He heard the sound of a door opening, a voice behind Svik and the others, commanding.
“You did good,” Svik whispered, smiled at Varg and patted his cheek. Then Svik was being yanked out of the way, a new face appearing. It was Vol, looking down at him. Her face was grey and drawn, black pools around her eyes.
“How do you feel?” she asked him.
“I hurt,” Varg grunted. He moved and realised that most of the pain came from his left side, focused around his ribs.
“You are fortunate to feel at all. Orna’s talon has left its mark upon you.” She smiled at him, a cool hand resting on his forehead. “You have a courageous heart, Varg No-Sense.”
He did not feel courageous. He had just been trying to stay alive. Until the red mist had swept him up in its violent currents.
He tried to speak but she shook her head.
“Sleep is your healer. Rest, now, and ask your questions when you wake.”
He shook his head, wanting to ask his questions now. There were so many of them.
“Sofaeu gr?eandi svefninn,” Vol whispered as she stroked his forehead and his eyes fluttered, his thought-cage sinking into a soft and swirling river.
Varg jerked awake. Blinked. He had been dreaming. Of blood and combat, of trolls and other creatures, of wild, ferocious bears and pale-eyed serpents. Of wolves.
“It’s all right, brother,” a voice said, a hand patting his shoulder, and he looked to see Torvik sitting beside him, his back leaning against the rough-carved rock of the chamber they were in. Varg sucked in a deep breath and realised that he could feel his left side now. The pain made him grimace. He tried to sit up.
“Don’t rush it,” Torvik said to him. “You have been struck with the bone of a dead god; it is going to hurt for a while.” He grinned and shook his head. “You fought a dragon-born wielding the talon of dead Orna, the eagle-god, and you slew him.” He whistled. “That is a saga-tale, and no denying. Better than Svik’s troll-tales for sure. One to rival even the tales about old Skullsplitter.”
“Where are we?” Varg croaked.
“A catacomb,” Torvik said. “Full of ancient wonders. They have been digging here a long while, have unearthed an ancient place. Vol thinks it is Rotta’s chamber.”
The name was familiar to Varg from fireside saga-tales. Rotta was one of the dead gods, the rat, who had played his siblings Orna and Lik-Rifa off against each other, fanning the hatred between the eagle and dragon that had exploded on the day of the gods-fall. In the end Rotta had betrayed Orna too many times and fled from her wrath. She had hunted him down and found him, confined him to eternal punishment in the chambers beneath Frang’s Falls, where he was chained to a rock and bewitched serpents were made to crawl across him for eternity, their poison dripping upon him, burning and searing his flesh.
“And you know what else the saga-tales say was supposed to be kept in these chambers?” Torvik whispered, leaning closer.
“What?” Varg breathed.
“The Raudskinna, Rotta’s Galdrabok, rune-carved on the bloodied skin of Orna’s daughter.”