Page 6 of The Last Valkyrie (Vikingrune Academy #4)

Chapter 6

Grim

“WHERE’S SVEN?!!”

The words came from Ravinica as we crept deeper into the woods. I vaguely recognized we were heading west, maybe a bit south, toward the Niflbog. The ground was turning from dirt to mud, swampier, harder to traverse.

At this point we were on a rescue mission to find as many Vikingruners as possible, so we could form a resistance against these sporadic draug attacks.

The questions were endless: Where had they come from? Not the ground, but from whom ? Why did they have such a hateful glint in their soulless, dead eyes, to kill living humans?

It was the consensus of the group that something or someone must have been controlling them. And now one of our group was missing. We hadn’t noticed amidst the turmoil.

Rav looked around, panicked.

I gripped my war-axe and came to her side. “He’ll know where to go, love. North, into the plains.” It was the designated escape route we’d discussed if we got separated.

“Was he with us when we mentioned that?” Fear made her eyes big.

“Whether he was or not, he’s the best tracker and survivalist in our pack.”

The others nodded agreement. We had no time to console Ravinica, though I knew we all felt a pang of loss at Sven’s absence.

There had been a terrible fight ten minutes ago, where the wooded field had filled with smoke and fire. Draug charging out of the darkness split us. That must have been when we got separated from Sven.

We dug deeper into the woods, pushing aside branches. The fire was less frequent this far west.

“We should be listening to our own advice and moving further north, not west,” Magnus said.

“We need to make sure there are survivors over here, between our regiment and the initiates,” Ravinica replied.

No one argued with her. She was clearly in command.

As we moved, we picked up a few straggling cadets along the way—watchmen who had been left to guard our western flanks, and a scout who had gone to exchange information with Hersirs Kardeen and Selken.

Then we found the bodies. Two of them were smoldering husks, wafting a smell of sickly death and the cloying sweetness of burnt meat before we reached them.

“Gods,” Arne breathed, shaking his head as we toed the dead bodies and continued moving past them. “Not a single part of our army was spared.”

“How did they know exactly where we’d be?” Rav mused.

I took a shot in the dark. “They didn’t. Which is why they’re coming out of the ground at random-seeming intervals. Whoever is controlling them must have known this was the best time to attack us, before we reached the plains.”

Corym said, “Do we have any idea where these corpses come from? I’ve noticed a few of them as . . . Huscarls.” He glanced pointedly at the three cadets—stragglers who didn’t know our situation with the Huscarls and how we had killed them out in these fields. He kept that part to himself.

“They must be bodies lost to time,” I said. “Buried for centuries, some of them, no doubt.”

“Vini,” Arne quipped, “did a community ever live in this forest, do you know? A town perhaps?”

She scoffed. “I never paid enough attention in Thorvi’s history lessons to know that. You’d be better off asking Dagny.”

She said her friend’s name with pained longing. We hadn’t found the cat shifter yet, and we seemed to be going in the wrong direction of where she might be. She had spent most of the night with us at our camp near Hersir Osfen’s command tent, before leaving to take her post nearby. When the battle began, she wasn’t at her post.

For another twenty minutes, we traveled slowly through the trees, inching forward with our shields and weapons out and ready. We picked up two more stragglers, found six more dead bodies.

Then Ravinica let out a hearty sigh. “Okay, you’re right, Mag. We need to be heading north. Enough of this. The fight sounds distant now.”

She wheeled us around—

As draug burst through the trees behind us.

With both hands on my huge axe, my shield resting on my back, I swung like a baseball bat and beheaded a draug before it could get within five feet of us.

The others were on us fast, scraping their claws and dirty swords at our shields.

One of them charged me. I showed it my back, the clank of its sword bouncing off my shield jarring my shoulders. I backed into the draug, off-balancing the mindless beast, and Magnus came around to cut his bloodblade into its side. I spun to the other side, swinging, and met Magnus’ blade halfway through its body with my axe. Our weapons met in the middle, separating its torso from its legs.

The legs dropped, the upper body crawled after us.

We quickly moved onto the next enemies.

Arne was pelting the things with ice, slowing their movements so the rest of us could plunge our weapons into their soft, dead flesh.

Ravinica moved swiftly, stabbing and keeping the draug at range, pushing them back but doing little to destroy them. It seemed that only separating their bones from their musculature was doing the trick.

With a twist of his wrist, Corym wrapped three draug up with vines from nearby trees, holding them back.

All of this was preventative, I noticed, and our swings were getting slow and clumsy. We were tiring, while these monsters never did.

“Behind!” shouted one of our recruited cadets. “More of ‘em, gang— lots more!”

My eyes snapped over my shoulder. I could hear their stampede and feel it trembling the earth. “Fuck,” I groaned, and gave Ravinica a small shake of my head.

The first signs of their skeletal bodies and rotted hands showed through the trees—at least twenty of the motherfuckers.

“North!” she shouted. “Break the wall and run!”

We careened out of our shield wall at her command, sprinting through the trees. I lumbered, growling, ready to shift on a moment’s notice if it came to it and we needed to move faster. Or if someone needed to stay behind.

You don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your friend . . . especially if your friend is the bear.

The draug pursued, their grisly, desiccated grunts echoing behind us. It was a chase scene out of a nightmare. Arne and Corym kept halting to try and slow their progress toward us, throwing up walls of ice and twisting vines and tree limbs.

Glancing right, I noticed more shadows—what I thought were draug coming in to swarm us from the fringes.

Then I noticed the gait shift, from a bipedal sprint to a loping, four-legged gallop as the group ran parallel to us.

“Sven!” I called out, pointing as I sprinted. “He’s over there, Rav!”

She nodded and we veered to the right, meeting with three wolves and Randi Ranttir alongside them. There was no time for pleasantries as more draug came in from the north, moving to sandwich us between their two masses.

“Shit!” Arne yelled.

The wolf shifters jumped into action, large gray blurs bouncing through the trees to tackle and rip at the sagging flesh of the incoming draug.

I swung my axe, then got jealous and shifted, roaring as I went on my hind legs and pawed great swipes at the creatures. My animal instinct took over, the scent of their corroded flesh sharp and disgusting.

They were coming from every direction now. I felt one of them bite into my white fur, splashing me with blood.

I roared, reeled back, and kicked the thing ten feet away.

When it vanished, three took its place.

Corym moved faster than anyone, but even the elf was being overwhelmed.

We were going to lose. My animal brain knew it in that moment. We had stopped to convene with Sven and his pack, and it had cost us dearly.

Smoke filled the space between the trees, making the fighting harder than ever. We had little room to work with. The smoke was making it difficult to tell friend from foe. The nearest inferno blazed nearby, engulfing countless trees.

Magnus pointed and shouted, “Arne, put that fucking fire out!”

“I’m trying!” the iceshaper yelled, but he was forced to keep his shield and sword up to keep draug from feasting on his flesh.

For every one of us, there were at least three of them. It seemed as night dragged on, nearing dawn in the gray sky, the draug only grew more desperate and trained. They fought in wild packs like they were controlled by a hive mind.

I had no doubt they were. We hadn’t located their necromancer, their puppetmaster, and until we did, I feared we were screwed.

The scent of burning flesh, sizzling pine, and sweat filled the theater. Metal clashed with flesh, wood with bone, and I felt myself tiring as I tried to summon my berserk state.

I shifted out of my bear form, realizing it was too clumsy and large to fight in these close quarters. Naked and riddled with nicks and cuts, I found my axe on the ground and snagged it, swinging it wide to keep three draug at bay.

A scream rent the night.

I spun to the sight of Ravinica about to be swarmed.

“Vini!” I bellowed.

Red filled my vision, hyper-focusing my gaze on my beloved. Rage and unbridled barbarism took over, sealing my thoughts away as I tipped over into my berserk trance.

The monsters felt the brunt of my axe—my churning swings and brutal efficiency. My mates had to back out of the way too. I couldn’t control my arms and legs as I got closer to Ravinica. The only incessant thought pounding through my head was the need to protect and kill in her name, until nothing else stood.

One of the cadets nearest me got too close as he fought a draug. I swept my arm out into him, shoving him far—

Face-first into a tree trunk, which he smashed into and slid down, leaving a circle of red blood in the bark.

I didn’t care if I’d killed him. My axe moved seconds later, exploding the draug he had been fighting.

“Grim, no!” Ravinica cried.

She was ten paces from me. I couldn’t calm myself—didn’t know how—until I had her wrapped in my arms. I was her ruthless sentinel and she was my charge. There was no way to blink away the madness swirling through my mind until she was safe.

I got closer. Another cadet fell. Arne toppled onto his back, Magnus stumbled with his bloodsword, one of Sven’s siblings went howling and skittering off to the side, the draug surrounded us.

The turmoil, the pressure, it was too much.

Ravinica screamed again, but not in pain.

In anguish.

Gold motes of light spun through the darkness as I got to her and lifted my axe to protect her.

But she didn’t need my protection.

As the draug throng closed in, great black wings circled our group and beat outward in a huge flurry. Ravinica beat her dragon wings again and sent the dozens of draug sprawling back, flying and careening away.

Her yellow eyes darkened to flames and she became lost in a destructive trance of her own. Energy crackled from her body. The cadets still living gawked at my dragonkin mate in all her glory as she summoned power from deep within her.

Jagged streaks of blue lightning shot out from her, uncontrollable, and nailed everyone around her. They stopped me cold, stealing my berserk state in an instant, before hopping bodies and striking another victim.

With her eyes turning from orange to blue-white, Ravinica struck the entire field with a blanket of sheer energy that put everyone on their asses.

She breathed heavily, murmuring, “Fuck,” as she realized she’d struck her allies just like her enemies.

The draug were worse off, getting the brunt of her elemental lightning strike. They were on the ground, twitching, momentarily unable to get up.

I grabbed Ravinica under her arms and wings. “Come on!”

Our pack and the surviving cadets joined us, getting their bearings before following us north as we escaped the deadly battlefield and made for a new one.

Faces emerged in the distance and we slid to a halt.

Damon and Eirik Halldan stared at us through the trees, surrounded by their gangs. A few of their number were missing, but with the addition of their six and our thirteen, we were starting to number a real fighting force now.

It was only then I realized they weren’t staring at us—they were gawking at their sister behind me.

At her dragon wings.

“Move with us and keep your mouths shut, or get out of our way,” I growled, only now recovered from my berserk state. “There’s an army of draug behind us and we’ve no time to waste.”

It wasn’t me who noticed the glint in Damon’s eyes at that moment—the naked opportunism. It was another of Ravinica’s mates.

Ravinica had summoned her wings to help us in a desperate moment. I couldn’t chastise her for that. But she had opened herself up to the exact thing Kelvar and Corym had warned her about before this fight: discovery from the dragonslayer Sigmund Calladan.

As Damon stepped forward to say something about his newly discovered dragonkin half-sister, a blade of coagulated blood and dripping red pushed against his chest.

“You heard the bear,” Magnus said, stopping Damon cold. He lifted his bloodsword higher, the splashy, slimy weapon going to Damon’s neck. His customary emotionless voice filled the crackling woods. “Speak a word of this to anyone, Damon Halldan, and I’ll end you. And unlike Sven or Grim, I won’t do it honorably with a fight. I’ll kill you in your fucking sleep and drain every drop of blood from your body, just like I did with Astrid Dahlmyrr.”