Ilska and the others burst into motion, gathering up the carts that were still in one piece, turning them back on to their wheels, rounding up horses that had bolted in a flurry of motion. Other warriors searched the plain, gathering up the thrall-collared children and loading them upon the wagons. Elvar and Grend just lay there, numb and staring, as if the end of the world had come and there was nothing else they could do except observe its destruction.
Raven-Feeders passed close to them, but ignored them, just hurried on with their search for the children or rounding up horses. Here and there Elvar saw others of the Battle-Grim, lying in the ash, stunned, staring, pale-faced.
And then Ilska was shouting out commands and whips were cracking, the carts pulling away, warriors riding or marching around them.
And above them Lik-Rifa spiralled in the air. She opened her jaws and roared, shaking the sky, and then she beat her wings, flying south into the soft-glowing sky. Corpses hung from her wings.
Elvar watched the dragon shrink into the distance, Ilska and her Tainted warband following after her like a serpent slithering across the ground. She looked at Grend.
“Only blood and death and misery will come of this.” She remembered Uspa’s words to her, only a few nights ago. She had not believed the Seier-witch then, had thought her mad. She believed her now.
“What have we done?” she whispered.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
VARG
Varg ran through the pinewoods, his spear in his fist, the scent of needles and sap sharp in the air. Cold crackled in his chest as his breath misted in billowing clouds. Pain rippled down his ribs with each indrawn breath, a reminder of the dragon-born’s blow, but it was dull and manageable now, blending with the other hundred pains from the bruises and cuts he had acquired during the fight at Rotta’s chamber. Varg ran ahead of the Bloodsworn, some riding, others on foot. He could hear them behind him: Einar’s pounding feet, the drum of hooves. Ahead of him he saw the outline of Edel and her hounds as she flitted through dappled woods, running light-footed and soundless across the thick, spongy pine-needle litter.
I am Tainted. The thought spiralled through his thought-cage, the first thing there when he awoke each day, staying close throughout the course of the day until he lay his head upon his cloak and slept at night. I am Tainted. It was so clear to him, now. How he had been able to run faster and longer than anyone else on Kolskegg’s farm, the speed and savagery that had gripped him in the pugil-ring, but always controlled. He had been alone, set apart. A stranger in a hostile land.
Except for Fr?ya. My sister. She was Tainted too. Is that why I could feel her deep in my bones, in my veins, hear her death-scream in my head? He blinked and shook his head.
I am Tainted. When Svik and R?kia had first told him, he had felt cursed, and ashamed. Now, he no longer felt like that. He knew how the world viewed him: as less than human, as a commodity to be harnessed, enslaved and used. He was familiar with how that felt, had been a thrall all his life, so he understood why the Bloodsworn had not told him, had watched and waited until they trusted him.
Trust me. That felt… strange to him, gave him a lightness in his belly. To be trusted, to be called kin. Called brother. And as strange and shocking as it felt, it also made him feel… content. Like a smile locked away tight in his chest.
Edel slowed ahead of him and whistled, then stopped and waited, her two wolfhounds sitting beside her, their tongues lolling. Varg drew close to her and slowed, stopped and leaned on his spear. Other figures flitted through the woodland, to the left and right, Edel’s scouts moving towards them.
“Torvik told me you would make a fine scout,” Edel said to him as he rested a hand on his knee and breathed deeply. “He said you noticed other Bloodsworn scouts in the woods around Rotta’s chamber, before we attacked.”
The thought of Torvik was a knife in the gut, a sharp pain. Grief, anger. He missed his friend; had only realised Torvik was his friend now that he was gone.
Varg nodded.
“You have the makings of a fine scout, then, within the Bloodsworn,” she said. “Each of us finds our place.”
R?kia emerged from the trees, breathing heavily, sweat glistening and clouding in the cold. She had a spear in her fist, was running in her mail coat with her shield slung across her back, like Varg. She nodded a greeting when she saw him.
“You look fine in your new mail,” she said as she drew near.
He shrugged his shoulders, still getting used to the weight of his new-won brynja and his shield across his back. The belt around his waist helped to take some of the weight of mail from his shoulders, and once he had wriggled into it, which was easier said than done, it did not feel as heavy as it had in a rolled-up bundle. Even so, the mail, weapons and shield were all extra weight that he was unused to carrying.