“AGNAR!” Elvar screeched. “BATTLE-GRIM!” She heard the cry swept up around her and the battle-joy filled her, a wild strength in her limbs, a hot rage in her thought-cage, driving her on. More faces loomed before her: men, women, they appeared snarling and fell away screaming, her seax and Grend’s axe reaping bloody ruin. The battle-storm raged around her, sounds merging, a deafening, roaring, muted din that echoed inside her helm as steel clashed, shields splintered and warriors screamed. All was blood and death. Slowly the strength leeched from her, pain pulsing from a score of cuts and bruises, her limbs heavy, shield arm numb, battered, muscles burning. She gasped ragged breaths, continued to stab and shove and stand. Beside her Grend was roaring, eyes bulging, spittle spraying from his mouth as he hacked and chopped and killed.
Something slammed into Elvar’s shoulder: it felt like a punch, making her stagger. She saw a man diagonally across from her spitting curses, an ash-spear in his fist. She tried to stab back at him, but her seax would not rise, her arm not obeying. Looked down and saw his spear blade had torn through her brynja and stabbed into the meat of her shoulder. She shoved hard with her shield, pushed the warrior in front of her back a half-pace and the spearman pulled his weapon back for the killing thrust.
Elvar spat at him, knowing there was nothing she could do.
Then Grend’s axe smashed into his face, carving through nose and mouth. He ripped it free in a spray of blood and cartilage and teeth, the spearman falling away, a gurgled scream through his ruined mouth.
Elvar swayed and took a step back, her legs buckling, and then an arm was wrapping around her, dragging her back, the line behind her parting, a warrior stepping forward to take her place in the wall.
“Let go,” Elvar grunted at Grend, who was pulling her free of the shield wall, half-carrying her back into the open ground behind. She tried to lift her seax, saw she still gripped it in her blood-slick fist, but her arm wasn’t doing what her thought-cage was telling it to do.
Grend pushed her down so that she fell on her backside and sat in the ash and mud, looking up at him. It was strangely quiet here, a dozen paces behind the wall, where battle was still raging. Elvar saw the Battle-Grim were holding. Here and there was a prone body, boots poking through, or a corpse lying still, dragged out of the way by the second row, but she could see the Battle-Grim were gaining ground. Step by battered half-step they were pushing the Raven-Feeders back. Agnar had chosen his battleground well, the Ulfrir-wolf mound protecting the left flank, the carts arrayed to protect the right.
Grend kneeled beside her and gave her his water bottle.
“Drink,” he grunted and she realised her mouth was dry and sticky with ash and blood. She drank, swilled her mouth out and spat, then drank some more. Grend took a swig from the water bottle, then poured the rest over Elvar’s wound, leaning close.
“Cut the muscle,” he muttered. “You’ll have to fight with your left hand.”
Elvar nodded. Grend had trained her since she was a bairn, drilled her in the weapon court at Snakavik until she could use both left and right with little difference. But she could not hold a shield as well.
“Find a spear and kill them from the second row,” Grend said.
A high-pitched screeching erupted behind them and Elvar twisted, looking back.
V?rn stood beside Uspa, both of them side by side, barring the approach to the remains of Oskutree. Uspa stood with her hands raised, a rune of fire glowing in the air before her, and a handful of warriors lay on the ground before Uspa and V?rn, some blackened and charred with flame, others looking like they had been torn to pieces, their wrists, ankles and necks wrapped with thick vine. Others stood impaled and slumped on branches that appeared to have just sprouted from the earth. Ilska and the surviving warriors were stood with her in a line facing them, all with bloodied fists. They were chanting, and runes of flame were igniting in the air before them, melding and glowing, flames leaping to the ground and spreading, speeding in a crackling line towards V?rn. They swept past Sighvat, who was still bound by vines to the ground, the fat warrior squirming and shouting.
“Greinar vernda mig,” V?rn cried out, the ground before her shifting and bubbling, and vines punched free of the earth, knitted together like a wattle-fence in the fire’s path, but the flames crackled and hissed and engulfed them, a wave of flame surging through the vines and on, snatching at V?rn’s legs like hungry beggars.
There was a hiss and crackle and V?rn screamed as her feet ignited. Flames rippled up her legs, gouts of black smoke billowing, the stench drifting across the plain. V?rn batted at the flames, but they only spread, catching in her fingers and hair, her screams rising in pitch, and she gasped for air, mouth contorted. She swayed and fell, crashed to the ground, flames devouring her.