Page 1 of Vow of the Undead (The Bloodrune Saga #1)

I ce webbed through my eyelashes as wind needled every inch of exposed skin. I swung the scythe at another golden stalk and added the wheat to a bundle I’d collected on the ground. My shoulder throbbed, the muscle tightening from hours of cutting, gathering, and binding.

It didn’t help that the stupid scythe was kept dull.

Since Ragna’s oldest son used one against an executioner, the king’s council deemed scythes potential weapons, and like all other blades, swords and axes, they were either outlawed or required to maintain status as a tool. Which meant dull and nearly useless even when it came to harvesting.

I rolled my shoulders back and sucked in a breath of painfully cold air before swinging the scythe twice as fast. As twilight beckoned darkness, the chill would only hurt worse. That gave me ten minutes to cut this row down before night cut me down.

This late in the spring, Skaldir should only have slush on the ground in the mountains, but winter became longer and more brutal with each passing year.

Only five years ago, when I was eighteen and just out from under my father’s thumb enough to help harvest the fields, the fjords had melted by the time the summer sun had stretched across the sky.

Now, snow lasted for most of the year, so I spent every waking second on Ragna’s farm, or foraging in the forest with the other gatherers to stock up on food before snow hit again.

Thanks to the witches of Skaldir who were skilled with the magic of flora, we had an occasional stroke of luck with crops that would normally never survive, much less thrive, in the cold. But it hadn’t been enough for everyone to make it through last winter.

The faces of the seventeen we lost to starvation hovered in my mind as I cut fast, faster, faster until I caught a figure waving at me from the corner of my eye.

Ragna stood at the edge of the field and waved her muscular arms over her head to catch my attention. I could see her lips moving but the wind swept her voice away. Beyond her, a small stone house was one of many in Skaldir, the northernmost village on the continent of Vylheim.

Ragna dropped her arms and shook her head. I couldn’t hear her, but I had no doubt she was scolding me for staying out so late. She’d sworn my father, the Vyl and leader in Skaldir, would have her head if I froze to death.

Of course it wasn’t true, my father had no authority to take anyone’s heads. Any kind of violence was only allowed by the hands of the executioners, and only to kill those who’d dare to break Vylheim’s most important law; don’t shed a drop of blood.

The bloodshed law kept those of us who obeyed safe from another outbreak of war, and alive.

Unless we starved.

I hacked at the wheat again as Ragna shouted my name. I pointed at the row of golden stalks, but Ragna was not having it. She stormed toward me, marching into the field, and I knew she’d insist I give it up for the night.

“Silver!” Ragna barked as she came closer, picking through chopped stalks.

Years of working in the wind as a farmer left her pale skin cut with wrinkles that only deepened with the crease of her brow.

“You foolish, amazing, stupid, beautiful woman. It’s as cold as Rolf’s balls when he fell in the fjord and you’re still out here cutting away at the wheat like Odin himself will come down and kiss you on the damn lips. ”

I stopped cutting to smirk at her. Only Ragna was gutsy enough to mention a God’s name aloud and out in the open.

“And what if he does?” I said. “Will you be jealous that I’m his chosen witch?”

A shiver cut down my spine as I dared call myself a witch out loud.

I’d spent too much time around Ragna’s bold behavior.

Letting something like that slip from my lips proved I was as foolish as she said.

I didn’t have the wiry muscle or the resilient strength of the witch standing in front of me so, I rarely dared to admit what I was.

Ragna threw her head back and laughed. “Not even the Allfather himself will pry me from my precious Rolf’s arms. Now will you stop risking your life to get another bundle or two?”

“No,” I said as I gripped the scythe harder and readied to swing again despite my muscles protesting every movement. “I need another vision as much as we need food, and working myself weary will get me there. Just give me another hour.”

I continued hacking away while she placed her fists on her hips and shook her head.

Working like this was the perfect combination to solve both the lack of food and my lack of visions, so I wasn’t going to stop, even with Ragna glaring at me.

The line between harvesting and preparing for next winter was as thin as straw, and the harder I worked, the closer I came to pushing my body to the edge of collapse where I’d be granted a vision.

Ignoring Ragna’s angry rant, I swung the scythe back and forth over the stalks in a painful rhythm of strained muscles. I hoped for that collapse to come soon, before bitter night blanketed the fields. My black out would only last a few moments, but I didn’t want to wake to dark skies.

Between consciousness and collapse was the only place the Gods could reach me. Once I fainted from exhaustion, a vision would take over my senses. Being a seerborn witch often meant being inundated with confusing visions, but mine had been narrowed in on one single focus since my mother was exiled.

Ragna sighed. “I know you want to see your mother, Silver, but beating yourself into the ground every chance you get isn’t healthy for you.”

I wiped at the ice in my eyelashes and met her gaze.

“It’s not just her. I had a vision of the sagas last week.

” Only occasionally would my visions wander from focusing on my mother.

When they did, I received glimpses of sagas that recounted both our recent history and ancient events, back when witches were revered instead of in hiding.

As much as I wanted to see my mother and know that she was safe, sight of the sagas was worth more than gold.

“You’re not the savior of all witches, Sil, you’re my half frozen friend. Now—” she jerked her head to the side. “Let’s get you out of this chill. You can come back out here tomorrow when the sun is high and try for a vision then.”

I only shook my head.

If I could piece my visions of the sagas together, and then track down the original runestone on which the history was recorded, I could prove witches weren’t a threat to King Drakkar.

I would prove my mother wasn’t a threat, before the wasteland stripped away her life.

Ragna must have sensed the turmoil thrashing around inside of me because she finally stopped scolding me and grabbed the scythe from my hand.

She winked. “This is mine now,” she quipped. “Unless you want to fight for it. ”

Coming from her, this was as much a challenge to get it back as it was a distraction from the frayed nerves that so often plagued me. She knew a playful fight would rein in my nervous mind.

A smirk twitched at my lips. “Only if you’re ready to lose.”

I’d fought her plenty of times in the forbidden hall, or rather, the dugout beneath Ragna’s home.

There, those of us brave and stupid enough to practice self-defense trained against one another, because even if violence and fighting weren’t allowed, even if bloodshed was strictly forbidden for the safety of our society, some of us still believed in the monsters of old, the undead and the giants who slipped into our world from the other realms.

Of course, those beliefs were forbidden too.

But I didn’t need to merely believe in monsters, I saw their red eyes in the forests dozens of times. I had felt them watching me since I was a young girl.

Ragna waved the scythe back and forth to catch my attention. A glint of mischief flashed in her eyes and I knew she’d won this argument. I’d follow her to the dugout buried below the little stone house at the edge of the field.

I’d clash tools with her, wooden swords and branches, because even in secret, we didn’t risk hiding weapons. Sparring could grant me the collapse and vision I sought just as easily as toiling away in the fields, if Ragna didn’t go soft on me for being the Vyl’s daughter.

I trailed her, and within five minutes, I found myself in a huge hole in the ground beneath the floor of Ragna’s home.

Earthen walls smelled pungent of damp soil, teeming with wriggling larvae and other creatures whose species survived the ice of Vylheim’s worsening winters.

I blew out a breath and picked up the broken piece of a fence post, my weapon of choice.

I steeled my muscles, knowing Ragna was about to beat what little stamina I had left out of me .

Though exhaustion pulled at my bones, fighting her had the opposite effect that I’d wanted.

It energized me.

A swell of excitement and sense of safety pushed me to keep wrestling Ragna as a second wave of energy rippled through me. I slammed the cut of wood against her branch over and over until another sound overpowered our sparring.

Thundering hooves shook the ground above us, and a bolt of nerves flayed open within my veins. We froze mid-clash and locked eyes.

We had plenty of horses in Skaldir, but somehow, we both knew this was not a group of villagers riding back into town. Or maybe we were just scared enough not to risk being caught fighting.

If executioners found us training like this, they’d have our heads.

Even without a drop of blood, practicing at battle proved that the king and his council were right; the people of Vylheim were bent toward violence and must be controlled through the fear of execution in order to maintain civilized society.

I never could decide if they were right. I relished the feeling of power this training gave me, but maybe that was exactly the tendency toward violence that they were trying to suppress.

We were a danger to ourselves.