Page 5 of The Last Valkyrie (Vikingrune Academy #4)

Chapter 5

Sven

SOMEHOW, I GOT SEPARATED from my pack. My family.

One minute, Arne was beside me. Or was it Grim?

The next, I rolled out of the way of an object flying through the sky, coming up alongside a tree—smoke and flames all around.

Our camp had turned into sheer chaos. I squinted through the smoke, crouched, trying to get my bearings.

The way I had come was engulfed, impassable.

How in Hel did this happen? I didn’t mean the separation from Ravinica and the others. I meant the ambush in general, throwing our camp into mayhem. Reducing us to bees without a queen.

I had no time to think on the answer because a nightmarish draug came screaming out of the trees at me. It was one of the faster ones—the newer wights with weapons and armor and fresher flesh.

My sword moved before my mind did, cutting it off as it barreled at me with a sword raised high. My blade dug into its side, caving in the rotted flesh and age-old armor on its buckles. The thing spit blackness at me, stuck to my blade. I growled back at it, ready to unleash all my fury.

But I couldn’t get my fucking sword out of its side.

So I sawed deeper, keeping my shield up, bringing my body closer to the thing. When it kept snapping its teeth at me, slamming its sword uselessly against my shield over my head, I moved my hand from the sword handle, Shaped a rune, and blasted a ball of fire into its face.

It ignited, screeching in a loud, wet tone. My shield dropped as the draug struck a vicious hit on it, ringing up my forearm.

Both hands went to my sword handle, still in its side. Gritting my teeth, I ripped through its cartilage and bone—

Until I snapped through the creature’s spine and it crumpled to the ground, its body made useless.

It kept trying to attack me. Before long the fire was spreading, turning it into a smoldering pile of embers.

Taking a step back, I surveyed my handiwork with wide eyes. The thing’s wheezing cries turned into croaks. Take out the spine, stop its movement. Light it up like a Yule log and watch it burn to ash. That is how we kill these things.

Why hadn’t it worked when they were beheaded? The spine was attached there, too.

Fucking Hel. There has to be something controlling these things! The spot where its spine goes down its back to power its legs must be a point of significance.

I needed to tell Ravinica and the others. Even if it wasn’t an exact science, I had figured a way to stop them dead in their tracks, no pun intended.

As I scooped up my shield and kicked my singed blade out from beneath the creature’s ashen skeleton, my eyes moved like turrets to take in my surroundings. It was eerily quiet of rustling, with only the crackling of flames around me. The shouts and clangs of battle were far off, muffled deeper in the woods.

I picked up my sword and continued the way I thought Ravinica had gone. I second-guessed myself as I stared into the smoky air. Flaring my nostrils in frustration, I stopped, looked another direction—

And caught sight of cadets in trouble. A gaggle of draug was overwhelming them about thirty paces away in a small glade. My eyes moved from them to the direction of Ravinica, and back to them. I was torn.

The moon hit a face just right, dappling through the thin forest canopy. I recognized the gait, the fluid movements of the broad woman fighting for her life.

Edda. My sister.

My other family. The one that had betrayed me.

The wrench in my heart grew larger, ripping me in two different directions. I clenched my sword hard, heart hammering in my chest.

Edda, Olaf, and Ulf were fighting alongside Randi Ranttir, and they were being swarmed.

I could have left them to their fate. They probably deserved it.

. . . But they’re still family . . . right? A lone wolf is no wolf at all.

“Fuck!” I yelled, and then ran.

I barreled into the clearing moments later with a battle-cry, drawing the attention of the draug force. At least half a dozen, all different sizes, shapes, and states of existence. One of them was missing an arm, another had no head.

As I careened through a small gap of trees, Randi was closest to me. The girl fought quickly—too quickly, and had no view on her right side, perpendicular to me. A draug was closing in fast on her flank—too fast for me to warn her—with a nasty spear leveled at the girl.

I did the only thing I could think and shoved Randi in the back, sending her sprawling forward on her hands and knees.

The spearhead dug into my shoulder and I grunted, dropping my sword and catching it by the handle with my free hand.

I spun my blade up then down, hacking the spearhead off at the haft, leaving it lodged in my shoulder. My next swing took the draug across the throat, spraying grungy blood.

I moved in a flurry then, experience gauging my every maneuver, flying about like that pretty elf Corym or one of his Ljosalfar ilk.

The draug paused as I took its throat out. Randi gained her feet. I rolled forward, grabbed a discarded shield off the ground, and spun it like a Frisbee through the air toward my sister.

The shield connected with a draug and knocked it off its path—and then I torched it with a quick fire rune, making it hiss and scream.

Edda’s eyes spun to me, wide and suspicious.

It was the first time I’d ever seen my older sister scared. Not because of seeing me, but because of the vision of madness and nightmares before us, which we’d be traumatized by if we lived through this.

Finishing my roll and toss, I slashed a creature’s legs out from under it, forcing it to the ground. More undead stumbled over each other to get at us from the darkness.

I kicked as hard as I could, punting the fallen draug’s head from its weak, paper-flesh neck, and sent it flying into the side of another creature. It was only enough to catch its attention away from Olaf.

Randi joined Ulf and they fought side-by-side, strength and speed complementing each other. My broad-shouldered younger brother and his sprightly companion.

I’d had spats with my family. They had betrayed me on our father’s orders. This was different. This was survival, and I wasn’t going to let my own kin die by anyone else’s hands but mine, if I felt the need in the future.

Today was not the day the Torfen pack ceased to exist from Vikingrune Academy.

The thought of rage and vengeance carried me on, and I started weaving runes I never thought I’d be capable of—twisting two, three Shapes at once, throwing ice and fire into the enemy.

One draug got through it all and came at Edda headlong.

I Shaped wind at the nearest branch separating Edda and a draug and managed to tilt the tree limb enough to swing it into the path of the monster. It was enough to give my sister time to bury her axe into the thing’s chest—once, twice, thrice—pushing it back.

I spun in, twirling on my heels and severing the draug’s spine near its tailbone, exploding the creature in a gout of black blood and bone fragments.

For a matter of seconds, we had freedom.

My kin looked to me. Not as an enemy or a curse on their name, but as a brother and leader. The leader I had meant to be when we came to Vikingrune Academy as the first in our bloodline to place in each four of the term years.

Edda, Olaf, Sven, Ulf. From fourth-year to initiate.

“Let’s go!” I yelled at their shocked faces. “We need to get to a bigger mass of cadets to have any chance at survival.”

Nods all around. A few hard swallows as Edda and Olaf glanced at each other.

“A lone wolf is—”

“No wolf at all, brother.” Edda clenched her jaw.

We took off running out of the glade. Hope filled my veins, churned my legs, bringing me closer to the fires ahead.

“We make for the plains!” I yelled behind me, thinking of our options. It was a direction I could gauge: north. “Open fields so these bastards can’t come at us out of the shadows!”

“Lead the way,” Ulf said beside me.

Our legs carried us.

A grunt behind made me pause.

“S-Sven!”

My feet kicked up dirt as I stopped on a dime and spun—

To find Olaf on his knees, staring down at his chest—

Where a spearhead jutted out, dripping blood.

“NO!” I screamed. “Brother!”

My older brother’s eyes screwed up, confusion settling on his pained features, blood pouring down his chin. His gaze turned glassy within seconds.

He reached out vaguely toward us—a final cry for help.

An abrupt memory ran through me, when Olaf had come to our village on a Wraith longship, to recruit me as the newest initiate into Vikingrune Academy. How I had smiled when he showed me his academy sword, and how he’d said, “Soon you’ll have one of these too, little brother.”

I dashed back to grab his hand. I could see the thrown spear jutting out from his back, impaling him. Yet still I ran, just as he began to topple forward.

A group of draug stalked behind him, closing in fast.

“Sven, no!” Edda cried out, her voice choked.

My hands latched onto Olaf’s cold fingers.

I pulled him toward us, gritting my teeth. Draug yanked at his legs trying to drag him into the darkness in the opposite direction.

A flash of silver came down, startling me. Flesh ripped and bone snapped, and it was a sound I’d never forget.

The resistance went out of me. Momentum threw me backward onto my back.

I came up holding my brother’s severed arm.

I wailed as I dropped the limb, crab-walking back.

The draug dragged the rest of Olaf’s corpse away, teeth digging into his body.

Edda lifted me up by the armpits as I stared aghast, mortified. “It’s too late, brother! He’s gone.”

I’d never know what happened in that chaotic moment in the dark, though I’d think about it often. Was it the draug who ripped him apart from me, literally separating his bones . . . or did Edda come down and cut his arm off to keep me away from them?

We escaped into the woods as the monsters feasted on my brother. Guilt and shame and sadness filled my soul as I ran on in a daze.

Once we were clear of the wreckage, our sprinting slowed. Edda stood in front of me, tears in her eyes. She looked away, unable to meet my furious gaze.

Ulf said, “T-Thank you, brother,” a hand to my shoulder. When I looked at him blankly, he added, “You saved us. We—after what we did, we—”

“Keep it to yourself, cub,” I barked at my oafish brother. My voice lowered and I shook my head in shame. “I didn’t save all of us. Gods- dammit , Olaf. Why couldn’t you be faster?”

I was trying to fight off the pain and failing.

Edda said, “You did everything you could, Sven. We will mourn our brother when there’s time.”

Around us, fire raged and smoke billowed, turning the forest into a candelabra.

Randi rushed me from behind, hugging her cheek to my shoulder. “Thank you, angry wolfman.”

I gritted my teeth, trying to fend myself against the warmth and thanks in her voice. “You would have done the same thing for me,” I sputtered, my voice fighting over a lump in my throat.

“No,” Edda said. Her face spoke of sorrow, guilt, regret. “We wouldn’t have, Sven. And that . . . it isn’t right. It’ll never happen again.” She saluted above her chest, pounding hard. “I swear it, brother.”

“Father won’t turn us against you,” Ulf said. “Not anymore. We . . . can you forgive us?”

I opened my mouth to speak—to give them another bite of nonsense. The words wouldn’t come. I blinked incessantly, fighting back the mangled pain and grief threatening to swallow me whole.

Instead, I gave my brother and sister a small nod.

My words returned. “Once a Torfen, always a Torfen, kin.” A lone wolf is no wolf at all. “Let’s find the others and make sense of this madness.”