In the distance Orka heard a child scream.
“Is that my son?” she snarled. Her blood was bubbling in her veins, a red mist beginning to filter through her thought-cage.
Guevarr stood and stared, taking all in the room in. His eyes settled on Mord and Lif and he smiled as he strode towards them, drawing his sword.
“Wait!” Skalk shouted, but Guevarr was already in motion, drawing his arm back and stabbing his sword into Mord’s belly: deep, punching out of Mord’s back in a spray of blood. He twisted the blade. Mord screamed and writhed.
Lif screamed in horror, spraying chips of ice.
Guevarr grabbed a fistful of Mord’s hair and lifted his head to stare into his eyes.
“A weasel-turd nieing, am I?” he said as he twisted his sword again, Mord’s screaming rising in pitch.
Lif yelled and thrashed in his bonds as Guevarr ripped his sword from Mord, releasing a tide of blood, Mord slumping, whimpering and mewling.
Another child’s wail drifted up from the courtyard.
Something shifted, deep inside Orka, her consciousness and clarity sharpening between one heartbeat and the next. She felt her blood storming through her veins, the heat of anger changing, abruptly cold, primal, sweeping her body, fire and ice mingled. A flush of strength flooded her muscles, her vision sharper, senses keener. She lunged up and bit into the knotted rope that bound her wrists, her teeth suddenly sharp, ripping and tearing. The rope fell away.
All were staring at Guevarr and Mord. Orka moved towards her weapons belt on the table.
Haga with the limp saw her first, dropped her bucket, reached for her spear propped against a wall and opened her mouth to shout a warning.
Orka let out a howl as she swept up her weapons belt and drew her seax and axe, leaped at Haga, kicked the spear shaft and stabbed her seax up into the woman’s belly, blood sluicing over Orka’s fist, then shoved her away and rose in a storm of iron, bellowing, a rush of rage and power consuming her.
All around her warriors were yelling, drawing weapons. Guevarr was shouting, stumbling away from Mord and Lif, towards the open doorway where more warriors crowded. Orka buried her axe in the skull of the bald man and wrenched it free as he fell back into the brazier, flaming embers scattering, fire erupting. Warriors came at Orka and she ploughed into them, laughing and howling as they screamed and died, then she found herself close to Lif and sliced the rope binding his wrists.
He reached for a fallen weapon.
“No,” Orka growled. “Stay behind me,” she snarled at him, a warning, and then she was moving again, throwing herself into the warriors that crowded the room, though they hesitated now.
“Eldur logar bj?rt,” a voice cried out. It was the Galdurman, Skalk, and flames crackled into life on his staff. Orka hurled her axe at him, the blade spinning and slamming into his shoulder, sending him falling back into the warriors in the doorway, losing his grip on his staff.
Warriors lined up against Orka, sword, axe, spears, all pointing at her. Seven, eight men and women in the room, more in the doorway and corridor beyond. She paused, set her feet, even the wolf in her blood knowing that there was no defeating these odds.
She smiled at them, a blood-flecked leer.
A sound came from above: a ripping, tearing, cracking sound. Shouts and yells erupted from the warriors in the room, looking up.
Daylight flooded in as a portion of the roof disappeared, ripped away in the talons of a huge raven, wings beating, a storm of wind in the room, fanning the scattered flames. Beams erupted in fire, crackling, smoke billowing.
“FAVOUR FOR A FAVOUR,” the raven squawked, and then a second raven swooped down, ripped more of the roof free and grabbed a warrior running at Orka in its talons, lifted him high and threw him, spinning and screaming, from the tower.
“FOUND YOUR FRIENDS LOOKING FOR YOU,” the first raven cawed as it rose higher on beating wings, and two small shapes swept close, buzzing into the room in a blur of wings.
One landed upon a woman’s shoulder, a chitinous, segmented body and a too-human face, bulbous eyes under grey-sagging skin, and a mouth full of too many sharp-spiked teeth. A tail curled up over its back, tapering to a needle-thin sting, which whipped forwards and stabbed the woman in the cheek.
“Finally, Spert found you, mistress,” Spert said as the woman staggered and choked and dropped her sword, hands grasping for her face. Her veins were turning black, spreading from the sting in her cheek across her face like a diseased spiderweb, down her neck. She tried to speak, to scream, but her tongue was already black and swelling. She collapsed and Spert’s wings buzzed, hovering and darting after his next victim.