“If this is good luck, I would hate to see what bad luck looks like,” he muttered.
“That,” R?kia said, pointing at the stripped corpses that lay along one side of the glade, their bodies pale, eyes sightless.
Glornir strode from the tunnel, his long-axe and shield both slung across his back. Svik walked at his right shoulder, talking to him, and Sulich at his left. The rest of the Bloodsworn that were not already in the glade walked at Glornir’s back. They were dressed in their battle-mail, bristling with weapons, shields upon their backs.
Glornir walked up to Varg and stopped, looked down at him. His eyes were red-rimmed, black pools around them, a vein pulsing at his temple.
“So, you know what we are,” Glornir said. “And what you are.”
“I do,” Varg breathed out.
“I, Glornir Shield-Breaker, lord of the Bloodsworn, invite you to join us, Varg No-Sense. To bend your back with us on the oar-bench, to stand with us in the shield wall, in the battle-storm, to drink with us in the mead hall. Will you take our oath?”
Varg stood and looked around at the Bloodsworn, Svik, R?kia, all of them, staring at him.
“I will,” Varg said.
A cheer rang out in the glade.
Glornir drew the sword at his hip, looked at the sharp-glint of steel, then took an arm ring from his bicep, twisted silver with bear’s heads at its terminals. He threaded the ring on to his sword blade and held it out to Varg.
“Take this and know that I am indebted to you. And that you are one of us.”
Varg stared at the sword and arm ring, then held his hand out. Glornir tilted his blade and the ring slid down it, into Varg’s palm. He threaded it around his left bicep and squeezed it closed.
Svik grinned his approval.
“The oath-words shall be spoken soon,” Glornir said, “but now there is no time. Now, we must go and get my wife back.”
There was another roar from the Bloodsworn, but this one filled with malice and threat. Varg joined his voice to theirs.
Skalk, the Bloodsworn are coming for you.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
ELVAR
Elvar looked up at the trees about her, an endless sea of elm and oak, the clouded sky beyond them a grey and sombre mantle, heavy with snow and flickering with the muted colours of the gueljós. The dark trees stood like sentinels, the woodland silent, no birdsong, no buzz or rasp of insects. Just a cold wind that hissed through branches, making them sway and creak.
Bodies hung from their boughs. Ancient, desiccated corpses with thick-knotted, half-frayed ropes around their necks. Each one had the ribs at their back hacked and torn outwards, looking like a bloody parody of wings.
“The blood-eagle,” Elvar whispered, staring. Hundreds of them hung all around, disappearing into the forest’s gloom, the creaking of their ropes sounding like a thousand skeletal corpses whispering and groaning.
“This is the Gallows Wood,” Uspa said.
“I had guessed that myself,” Sighvat muttered, looking up and turning in a slow circle, a hand going to the frost-spider’s claw hung about his neck, as if it were some good-luck talisman.
The Battle-Grim stood tight around their column, four carts with their harnessed ponies, forty warriors in mail. Instinctively they had drawn closer together as they’d passed through these new woods, spears held ready, eyes scouring the shadowed woodlands. That had been before they had even seen the first hanging corpse.
“The skálds call it the traitor-sea,” Kráka said. “Where Orna answered the betrayal of her sister, Lik-Rifa.”
Elvar knew the tale well. The skálds had sung of it in her father’s hall, and if the saga-tale was true then these corpses were dragon-born, children of Lik-Rifa, gathered and slain by Orna, their backs hacked and chopped open in answer to Lik-Rifa’s slaying of Orna and Ulfrir’s winged daughter, Valkyrie. Elvar’s mind flashed back to the oath stone where they had camped during the journey from Iskalt to Snakavik. She had seen an image of this carved into the stone and scoffed at it.
We are walking through the saga-tales, now, Elvar thought.
Agnar strode to the head of the column. He was dressed in his war gear, his iron and bronze-etched helm buckled upon his head. Again, no word had been said when they had risen and broken camp, but all had checked their weapons, donned their coats of mail if they had one, and buckled their helms on their heads.
“Onwards,” Agnar called out, his voice loud and harsh, but falling dead in the woods, hardly carrying. He hefted his spear and gestured to Uspa, who stood a little ahead of them.