Another small figure sped around the room on parchment-thin wings: sharp-clawed Vesli, with Breca’s spear in her fist, stabbing it into faces as she flew.
Orka smiled and growled, looking for new people to kill.
Broken-nose came at her, shrugging his shoulders, hefting his long-axe, warriors parting to give him room. He swung a great looping blow at Orka, but she ducked beneath it and leaped close, stabbed her seax up under his chin and thrust with savage strength until the blade scraped on the bowl of his skull. He collapsed, twitching, dropping his long-axe. Orka left her seax lodged in his skull and caught the long-axe in both hands as it fell, felt its familiar and long-missed presence shudder through her body, like the touch of an old lover.
She kicked broken-nose’s body away and stood before the warriors crowded in the doorway, Spert and Vesli hovering over her.
A silence fell. All that could be heard was the crackle of flame, groans of the dying, heavy breaths of the living as a dozen warriors stared at her.
They turned and ran.
Orka swept after them, swinging the long-axe, chopping, explosions of blood. Bodies fell tumbling down the tower’s stairs, Orka still hacking at them, her axe rising and falling in a torrent of blows as she carved into them. When she blinked and looked up, shaking her head to clear the blood from her eyes, she found she was on the feast hall’s steps, staring out into the courtyard, not knowing how she got there, and she was standing over corpses, gore-drenched, panting, snarling, wanting only to kill.
More people were here: warriors, some running at her, more running from her, others leaping into the boats on the jetty, cutting frantically at mooring ropes. She glimpsed Skalk and Guevarr there.
A fresh pulse of rage and strength swept her as she glowered at them all, both the dead and the living. At these people who would keep her from her child.
Cut them, tear them, rend them, she thought.
She broke into a run, snarling, slavering, her long-axe rising.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
ELVAR
Elvar stood and stared. She distantly heard herself screaming; could not believe what she was seeing.
Biórr stood over Agnar’s body as he bled out into the ash and snow of Oskutree’s plain. Agnar’s feet twitched, a last spasm rippling through him, and then he was still.
Biórr stooped down beside Agnar, ripped the pouch from his belt and delved inside it, then stood and raised jangling keys.
“Ilmur, Kráka,” Biórr cried out, “you need be thralls no longer. Join us. Take your freedom.”
Elvar looked back and saw Ilmur burst from behind the ranks of the Battle-Grim, bounding forwards across the ash-plain. Behind him came Kráka. She was running too. Ilmur sped past Elvar and Grend, and reached Biórr, who placed the key in the lock of Ilmur’s thrall-collar and turned it, the collar opening with a click. Biórr took it from the Hundur-thrall, then held it out to Ilmur. He looked at it, grabbed it and hurled it away. Kráka reached them and Biórr did the same for her.
Elvar heard the clank of the collar hitting the ground.
“BETRAYER!” Elvar screamed.
Biórr looked at her.
“Join us,” he said, holding a hand out to her.
“Agnar,” Elvar cried.
“He got what he deserved,” Biórr snarled. “A slaver, dealing in others’ misery.”
“Why?” Elvar said.
Biórr spread his arms wide.
“Because I am Tainted, too,” he said. “Ilska protects us, gives us a home.” His face bubbled with rage and anguish, tears in his eyes. “We Tainted are human, too, are people of flesh and blood, can feel joy and happiness, pain and heartbreak. We are not animals to be hunted and sold.”
The blood of Rotta that V?rn sensed among us, Elvar thought. Rotta the rat. Rotta the betrayer, deceiver, trickster.
“You killed Thrud,” Elvar said, remembering Thrud’s wound in the back, Biórr lying unconscious on the tavern floor.
Biórr’s face twisted with shame and guilt. “I did not want to do that,” he said.
Elvar took a step towards him, hefted her spear and hurled it at him. It flew straight and fast. Biórr raised his shield and stepped to the side, unnaturally fast, the spear slicing through the space where he had just stood.
Elvar drew her sword and strode towards him.
Grend grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
“Look,” he said, pointing with his axe.
The Raven-Feeders behind Biórr were marching forwards, drawing into lines, their shields raised.
“Let them come to us,” Grend said.