Page 10 of The Last Valkyrie (Vikingrune Academy #4)

Chapter 10

Ravinica

I EXPECTED THE JOTUN to be huge. And this one was big, yet it was also slightly underwhelming compared to the grand tales and stories about them. As Thorvi had taught, jotnar came in different sizes. This giant was about twelve feet tall.

It struck a fierce, intimidating figure as it charged through the plains directly at our weak northern flank.

But it was the thing running beside the giant that scared me more than the jotun himself. It was some bull-type creature the size of a fucking elephant, with two massive horns jutting out from its lowered head, each one the size of a man. Thick tufts of black fur covered its body, and it snorted clouds of mist from flared nostrils I could have fit my legs into.

Dark red eyes bored down on us as it charged ahead of its owner. The creature was terrifying with its muscled legs and iron-looking hooves.

Just as a shield wall was forming from Gothi Sigmund’s Huscarl regiment, the stampeding creature tore into them before they could get fully situated. It gored three soldiers at once, raising its head and tossing them high into the air in a spray of blood and guts.

I gawked, frozen out of fear as the thing rampaged deeper into the Vikingrune army. Then I snapped to attention when I saw a large white blur barreling toward it on four legs, Grim shifting into his polar bear form on the run.

My heart sank as my mate let out a guttural roar and lunged into the fray to match ferocity with the giant bull.

Even you aren’t big enough to take that thing on, Grim!

My legs moved before my mind could make a plan. I was running toward the danger, toward my mate, desperate to help in any way I could.

As Grim got close, he went on his hind legs and tried to paw and hug the beast to stop it from rioting. The creature bucked like it was in a bullfighting competition and thrashed about with its devastating horns and hooves.

Soldiers were thrown aside, screaming as they went down. The thing absolutely destroyed us, stampeding over fallen bodies, crushing them beneath its massive weight, and easily killing ten people within a minute.

Grim swiped at its face and scored a line of claw marks down its cheek before the crimson eyes turned to him and the horns came down.

My mate barely toppled aside in time to avoid getting skewered. As the bull whipped its head in the other direction, faster than fuck, I watched in horror as the cadet I knew named Rolf Blisdan—the big man who had come from Arne’s village—ran in and got impaled by a vicious goring.

Rolf sputtered blood as he was hoisted up from the ground, the crude point of the horn punching out from his back. Dropping his spear and shield, his hands went to the sides of the horn to try and extricate himself. His eyes closed in pain and he died seconds later, his body going limp, sliding down the horn as the bull bucked its head.

“No, Rolf!” Arne cried out.

Magnus jumped at it, with Arne casting spells and throwing icicles at its thick hide, trying to penetrate the fur that clearly made this thing a magical creature rather than an oversized mammal.

The monster snapped vicious flat-ended teeth at Magnus, Grim, and Arne, keeping them skittering back.

Gothi Sigmund charged. I was next to him, witnessing the skilled chieftain duck beneath a gliding horn and then wrench his blade across its fur, setting a section on fire.

The creature let out a shrill roar and turned sideways toward us—exposing itself to fighters on the other side.

I stabbed at it, keeping my center of gravity low so I could toss myself left or right if it made a move for me. My spear against its fur was like stabbing into a brick wall. The bones in my arms rattled, as did my teeth.

Corym was on the other side, taking advantage of the beast’s vulnerable flank. With a yell, he threw himself across the air and landed on its side, digging his dagger and sword into it to create handholds like a mountain climber.

My brother Eirik was next in line, keeping the monster surrounded and confused. He moved fast, catching its attention as Corym tried to climb up its side to stand atop the beast and do something from above.

We had to keep our distance because its white horns were slick with Vikingruner blood. Bodies were piling up around us. I dodged left and right on my feet, avoiding its swishing tail, its dangerous hooves.

Behind us, draug continued to fight with the rest of our army. Only the bravest of our soldiers came to try and stop this monstrous beast, but luckily shield walls and the other Hersirs like Axel, Gudleif, and Thorvi were keeping the undead at bay so we could focus on toppling the beast.

The bull thrashed some more. Corym held on for dear life and was getting to the top. He reached a hand over its furry spine—

A burst of energy shot out from the north, a flat wave of charged air that slammed into me like a tornado. I was reminded of a similar burst of invisible force from tiny Elayina, but this one came from the huge jotun in the distance.

It roared in a language I couldn’t understand as every soldier within fifty feet of me was leveled to the ground on their backs. Corym was whipped off the back of the bull, cartwheeling through the air and arcing over my vision as I stared from my back up into the predawn sky.

My eyes followed Corym, breath held, and I watched him land at least twenty feet from the bull in a heap. “C-Corym!”

Fighting back a dull ache in my head, I sat up, palmed my noggin, found my spear on the ground, and grabbed it. I ran on unsteady legs toward the fallen elf.

The wave of energy sent all of us to our asses, but the bull remained upright due to its size. It started thrashing and bucking again, stomping into people.

I saw one woman’s chest get caved in, completely flattened as a hoof landed on her and went straight through her armor, pinning her to the ground. Others met similar fates, blood spraying through the battlefield, with those nasty hooves leaving trails of red in their wake.

Gothi Sigmund only narrowly avoided death by getting his wits quicker than the others and rolling out of the way as a hoof landed where he’d just been.

His commander, Canute, hoisted the chieftain onto wobbly feet then stepped in front of the Gothi with his gigantic tower shield. Only the Thane had managed to stay on his feet when the jotun rocked us with its energy wave.

Canute ran at the bull head-on like a fucking madman, staring eye-to-eye in silence at the enraged, spitting beast.

The bull zeroed in on its target and charged Canute, and the Huscarl commander planted his feet in the ground. The bottom point of his triangular shield hovered inches above the ground, and he bent his knees.

My eyes bulged, a grimace crossing my features as I kneeled beside Corym and watched the foolish event playing out like a trainwreck. Ordinary man against magical beast more than ten times his size, its shoulders coming up above his fucking head—and Canute was huge for a human!

Soldiers screamed and catapulted out of the way of the charging bull. It lowered its head, bloody horns ready—twenty feet away.

Canute slammed his shield into the ground and slanted his shoulder into it.

Ten feet away.

Canute pushed at the last second into his shield, squaring up to the bull’s rabid gallop, hiding his head behind the tower—

They crashed together in an earth-shattering clash of hide on steel. A huge plume of dust and grime billowd around them.

I jolted, recoiling from the explosive collision.

The dust settled. Somehow, Corym stood tall. His shield rested against the beast’s forehead, horns lancing through the air on either side of him but not skewering his body or heavy mail.

My jaw dropped. That fucking bull has to weigh at least three tons! How the hell did Canute not get tossed fifty feet back like a ragdoll, like all the others?!

Corym was dazed but getting to his feet beside me, cursing in Elvish. “ Ga’ten’thyl tur keefan’it. How in the spirits is he . . . doing that?”

I shook my head dumbly.

In a snapshot of picture-perfect clarity, the image of Canute withstanding the bull’s charge tattooed itself on my mind. All around them, madness and mayhem. Dust in a giant ring, a mushroom cloud of grime. Heavy silver armor defying all odds, shield staying true and upright with the Thane behind it.

Now I understood why Gothi Sigmund kept this one-eyed, surly bastard around. Because with him nearby, no one was getting through to the chieftain, human or elf or magical oversized cow.

The bull’s eyes went wild, its brain likely scrambled from the impact and its failure to stampede over Canute.

Soldiers rushed it. Gothi Sigmund came from behind with his ice-and-fire sword. I ran in with Corym. Magnus and Grim took the other side, with my bear shifter back in his human form and swinging an axe into it.

Faster than me or my elf was Sven and his kin, who took to their wolf forms and skittered into the clearing in sprinting gray shapes. The wolves got underneath the bull and ripped at its softer underbelly, clawing and biting and nipping at its bulging stomach.

The bull shrieked.

Then Sven bit the monster’s gigantic swinging bull-cock, which was as large as Sven in his wolf form, and the monster let out a shriek of a different timbre.

I felt savage and bloodthirsty as I joined my comrades and stuck the beast a million times from a million different directions. Blood sprayed as we finally got through its hard hide and into the skin and muscle below.

Beneath the combined weight of about fifteen Vikingruners, the bull wobbled on its powerful legs and then toppled forward with a pained moan.

The jotun to the north bellowed and charged.

“Fuck!” I yelled, looking over my shoulder at the incoming giant.

Two valiant soldiers ran up to try and stop him, and the jotun simply waved a hand and sent them careening through the air with some type of invisible magic. They landed against trees dotting the sides, embedding their bodies in broken piles of man and armor.

I gripped my spear with sweaty hands, realizing this foe could use magic on a whim and hadn’t even laid a finger on the cadets to send them flying to their doom.

Still, against my better judgment, I charged at it with a belly-roar—

But someone else got in front of me first.

It was Hersir Thorvi Kardeen, waving her hands, Shaping runes and casting a luminescent green shield of energy in front of her, thirty feet high. It was a wall of magical power the likes of which I’d never seen from the quaint, diminutive historian.

Thorvi was trying to buy everyone time to regroup, realign, and attack this monster. For the moment, it worked. The jotun bonked against the magical barrier and stumbled back a step, snarling at her through its translucent color that reminded me of an aurora borealis.

I saw the jotun closer then, with mountainous shoulders and a large head on a stubby neck. It had two long teeth—an overbite draping past its chin like a sabertooth tiger. A bald head, leathery-looking, and arms as sturdy and thick as my entire body. Its legs were powerful, it wore a loincloth that could have been used as a bedspread, and showed every inch of vascular, flexing muscle and vein in its unarmored state.

With a greenish, brownish hue to its skin, it looked like a troll or giant from a storybook, essentially humanoid but twice as tall and three times as wide and burly.

The jotun put a hand onto the shield, a blip of green zapping its fingers. Waving off the jolt with a flap of its palm, the jotun stared down at the defiant, valorous Hersir.

“Form ranks!” Thorvi screamed. “When I drop the barrier, charge the bastard!”

Her robes fluttered around her as her power continued.

The jotun pulled a giant club from its back, easily ten-feet tall with a bludgeoned, bulbous end.

“Ready yourselves!” Thorvi screeched without looking over her shoulder, keeping both hands raised to the heavens to keep the barrier intact.

The jotun made a movement with its free hand—vague and unintelligible, like it was giving some sort of sign-language signal.

Our shield wall advanced with a cry, twenty of us at once, closing the gap with two long strides—

And the giant swung its maul in a sideways arc to batter the shield.

“Now—” Thorvi began. “—Oh!”

The maul cracked through her emerald shield like it was a fence made of paper, ripping through the barrier before she could shut it down voluntarily when the soldiers got closer.

I watched with a horrified tilt to my features—

And Thovi Kardeen . . . disappeared.

One minute she was standing there, the next she was evaporated in a cloud of red mist and fleshy fragments.

“ Guh !” Gothi Sigmund screamed reflexively, stunned.

The jotun snarled at us, slapped its maul toward the ground off to its side, and flung the bloody remains of Hersir Thorvi Kardeen across the yellow plains.

I stuttered to a halt, our shield wall abruptly freezing, our charge losing its force and energy. We gasped in unison at the ease with which the jotun had ended one of our best fighters—our teacher, a frizzy-haired woman everyone at the academy knew and loved.

My heart sank, my stomach twisted in knots, my boots were lead weights.

As the shock and awe wore off, the giant took a step toward us. More rumbling hit the earth and startled us awake. In the distance, other jotnar emerged from the mist that had banked against the base of the Telvos Mountains.

At least five of them, easily as tall as this one, some even larger.

All eyes turned to Gothi Sigmund.

He was pale-faced, showing the first signs of fear, dismay, and hesitance I’d ever seen from the stern chieftain. The ice-and-fire magic dissipated from his sword.

Staring forward for a long moment at the incoming mass of power, Sigmund glanced over his shoulder to survey the field.

Our army was in tatters. The draug were basically extinguished but we’d lost countless lives. No one was lined up in their regiments any longer—the initiates mingled with cadets and Huscarls. The oversized bull creature had caused untold devastation.

Yet it was Thorvi Kardeen’s end that recalibrated the entire battle and put a pause on our arrogance. That thing was able to attack through a magical barrier from one of our strongest mages—easily!

The murderous jotun was coming in fast, lumbering toward us.

“G-Gothi!” I called out, my throat hitching and cracking, begging for a command.

The earth rumbled. Bellowing roars from the charging jotnar shook the heavens.

“Retreat, academy! To Delaveer Forest!” Gothi Sigmund thrust his arm.

Sounds of despair, moaning, and fear filled the battlefield from Vikingrune soldiers.

We turned tail and fled for our lives, no longer feeling the confidence and glory of battle that Sigmund had promised us before this horrible night.