Then she saw them.
Night-wyrms. Thin and pale, each one as thick as a thumb, as long as a seax, but there were hundreds of them, no, thousands. Between her and Grend Elvar glimpsed them squirming and wriggling from the ground like a bucket of slime-covered maggots; beyond Grend more of the Battle-Grim were struggling, Kráka and the prisoners, too.
Elvar resisted the urge to scream: knew if she opened her mouth they would be swarming into her throat, choking her. She felt their slimy segmented bodies wriggling across her face, bristles scratching.
Grend wrenched his head to stare at Elvar, a wordless scream behind his wide eyes. One of the night-wyrms was prising its way into his clamped-shut mouth, another one squirming up his nose. One of Grend’s hands moved, a snarl of wyrms slithering, their bodies still locked in the earth, pinning him.
With a muffled roar, Berak surged up from the ground, his chain rattling, veins bulging in his neck as he tore himself free of the wyrms, their bodies flung through the air. Berak stood there, rage flexing across his face, shuddering through his body, then he was reaching down and tearing wyrms from his wife and son, dragging them to their feet.
A scream: fat Sighvat bellowing, terror-filled, but Elvar saw him moving, ripping his arms free of the earth, night-wyrms flung through the air and then his huge bulk was rolling, squashing wyrms beneath him. Elvar heard their skins popping, could see hundreds of tiny explosions of fluid, and then Sighvat was on his feet, axe and seax in his fists and he was swiping at the creatures snaring Agnar.
A wyrm touched Elvar’s nose, paused in its writhing, then began to squirm up her left nostril. She whimpered, screamed inside; bucked and flailed as she felt the segmented creature pushing into her.
A figure loomed over her: Agnar, stamping and chopping. She heard Grend’s voice, shouting, roaring, the sound of iron hissing through air and then her right hand and leg were free. She rolled, ripping at the wyrms that were wrapped around her left wrist, tore them from the ground, segmented bodies stretching, ripping, and then she was on her hands and knees, gasping, Grend dragging her to her feet. She snatched at the wyrm that was burrowing into her nose, caught its tail end and pulled, resisting the urge to wrench it free, knowing that would likely leave half of the creature inside her face. With a sucking sound the wyrm came free, slipping from Elvar’s nose and dangling in her fist. It wriggled and twisted and she flung it to the ground and stamped on it. She gagged and vomited bile.
“Are you all right?” Grend asked her, still stamping on the creatures that were wriggling on the ground, trying to wrap around his ankles and drag him back to the ground.
“Fine,” Elvar spat, drawing her seax and slashing furiously at wyrms slithering around her boots.
Everywhere the Battle-Grim were on their feet, though Elvar saw one figure half-buried in the shifting ground, dead eyes staring, the warrior’s throat shifting with wyrms wriggling inside him.
Biórr had thrust a kindling branch into the embers of the fire and was now burning the night-wyrms away. They hissed and sizzled and popped. Others kindled branches into flame and joined Biórr, and the wyrms wriggled away, squirming back into the ground.
And then they were gone, leaving Elvar and the others standing there, staring, panting. She looked up at the oath stone, saw its glow was fading but still there, pulsing in the dark.
Did the oath stone call to them, somehow? Draw them here? Never have I seen them in such numbers…
Agnar coughed and spat, glaring at the dead wyrms strewn about the glade.
“I’m never sleeping again,” Sighvat said.
“Back to the Wave-Jarl,” Agnar ordered.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ORKA
Orka shook the black pan sitting on an iron grill over her hearth fire. Flames flared as slices of smoked ham and chopped onions crackled and smoke drifted up to the high beams of their steading, searching for the smoke hole.
Orka saw small fingers reach into the pan and slapped them with her wooden spoon.
“Wait until it’s ready,” she said.
“But my belly’s growling like a new-woken bear, Mama,” Breca said.
“And mine,” Thorkel muttered, sitting in a chair and sewing a patch in his n?lbinding cap.
“Smells good,” Vesli the tennúr squeaked beside Breca.
Orka frowned at the tennúr, who had followed Breca’s every step from the moment he passed through their steading’s gates. The vaesen’s wounds seemed to be healing well.
“I hope Mord and Lif are all right,” Breca said.
“As long as they do nothing stupid, they will survive,” Orka said, thinking of how she and Thorkel had restrained Mord from snatching up his father’s axe and hurling himself at Guevarr and Jarl Sigrún’s thrall.