“It is perfection. Trust me.” He pushed me toward the opening we’d just climbed through. “Keep that blocked.”
Spitting every curse I knew, I invoked Hlin and then pressed the shield to the opening. There was space above and below it. More than enough for hands to reach through. Hands with weapons in them. I muttered, “It’s amazing you’ve lived this long,” turning my head so as to look at Bjorn while berating him, only to have my tongue freeze and my skin turn to ice.
For coming down the tunnel toward us was a sickly green glow. The stink of decay rolled ahead on an icy breeze, filling the small chamber and making me gag, and I had to clench my teeth to keep from vomiting on the floor. The first of the draug appeared carrying rotting shields, which they interlaced in a wall to face Bjorn, more filing in behind to fill the space at their backs. The glow stretched down the tunnel behind them, dozens upon dozens.
How could there be so many?
Then I remembered…it wasn’t only the jarl’s men who’d stolen the gods’ offerings at Fjalltindr who were cursed to this place; it was all who’d come into these tunnels since, intending to take the treasure but instead succumbing to the draug.
A reminder that if Bjorn and I died, we wouldn’t join the gods but be condemned to haunt this place for eternity.
There was no time to dwell on such a fate, for beyond my shield, something scratched. Then a hand reached through the gap between stone and shield. Not long dead; flesh still clung to the draug’s bones as the arm bent upward, trying to lock onto my wrist. I swatted at it, my stomach roiling as bits of flesh caught on my fingers.
“Bitch-child of Hlin,” the draug hissed, apparently still possessed of its tongue. “Your flesh will fill my belly soon enough.”
In answer, I caught hold of its forearm and twisted until the elbow dislocated, relishing its cry of pain despite knowing the draug might well have the last word.
Behind me, Bjorn’s voice echoed through the chamber. “I see my reputation has reached even the bowels of this shithole.”
“You are no one to us, child of Tyr,” one of the draug rasped out, a black and rotten tongue flapping in its mouth. It tried to ease past Bjorn, keeping to the sides of the chamber, its eyes fixed on me. But Bjorn stretched out his arm, blazing axe blocking the creature’s path.
“If I am no one,” he said, “then why have so many of you gathered to fight me? I am but one man who stands alone.”
If I hadn’t been busy wrestling with a rotten arm, I’d have pointed out to him that he did not stand alone. But the first draug was clawing my shoes while another tried to stab me with a blade shoved over the top of my shield.
“It seems to me that you are either liars or that you are,” Bjorn paused, and I could imagine the smirk on his face, “cowards.”
The draug snarled at the insult, several of them releasing chilling battle cries, but none surged to attack.
Because they were afraid.
No weapon of this world could end the terrible existence that they clung to, but the axe that burned in Bjorn’s hand was not of this world. It was the fire of a god and thus capable of turning them to ash. If I were condemned to this fate, I would welcome an end, yet they flinched as the axe disappeared from Bjorn’s right hand, only to materialize in his left, blocking another creature attempting to reach me.
“Most cowardly of all is your leader,” Bjorn continued, his voice dripping with mockery. “He condemned you to this fate and yet has failed to show himself. Where is your jarl? Does he cower behind the lines, afraid to face the fire of the gods who cursed you to this place?”
I didn’t understand what Bjorn could gain from taunting them besides a last bit of satisfaction before he died, for there was no hope of us killing so many. And given that once dead, we’d likely join their ranks, I couldn’t help but think there’d be consequences for provoking them.
My thoughts on the shortsightedness of Bjorn’s plan vanished as the fetid air swirled, the shield wall parting to reveal an enormous hulking creature.
Skeletal as the rest, it wore a full coat of mail that rattled as it moved, its skull concealed by a helmet, and several weapons belted at its waist. In a voice like howling wind, it demanded, “Who are you to call me coward, Bjorn Firehand?”
“So you have heard of me.” Bjorn rocked on his heels, clearly amused, though how he wasn’t pissing himself from fear was beyond me.
“I have heard many tales in the intervening hours since you stepped into my domain,” the creature hissed. “And told many of my own.”