by Jess E. Owen
But the wyrm in Shard’s memory was dead now. Shard and Stigr had tricked it into flying head-first into the ground.
Clearly, he recalled the awful cracking of bones and thunderous quaking as the wyrm smashed into the mud. He formed the memory for her, in all its wretched detail. Then he showed her Stigr, cut down in the mud. The wyrm and Stigr, fallen.
He tried desperately to impart pain, loss, the wrongness of it all.
She went still.
Great, rank breath heaved from her nostrils and her open jaws as Shard showed her this wyrm. Alive, flying fast, a hulking picture of might and death. Then, dead. Unmoving in the red mud.
A low noise reverberated within her armored chest.
Was he your mate? Your son? He died in battle.
Did you grieve?
Did you feel anything at all?
Stigr’s voice resounded in his head. Be careful how you put things to her. She might not understand.
A gurgling sound grated in her cavernous chest and roiled, building itself into a rolling, metallic shriek that threatened to shatter Shard’s skull.
With horror, Shard realized that she understood well enough—but rather than understand that he was trying to show her his own sense of fear and loss, he felt fresh rage licking up in her heart. She thought he was threatening her, or gloating, or—he didn’t even know what she thought.
Blood and jagged stone and hatred flung itself around Shard, seizing his spirit and drowning his will, trapping him in the darkest corner of Rhydda’s heart.
In the fury of her wrath, his name slipped from him, his heart, his purpose, and all he could smell and see was the walls and pits of her endless, mindless hatred. And there he stayed, shrieking, locked in a raging, Voiceless nightmare.
~46~
Queen of the Vanir
THROUGH THE POCKED BIRCH trunks and their bare, whispering branches, Ragna heard the grating and rumbling of the wyrms. The river rolled at her side as she and nearly fifty of the Vanir, young and old, crept through the forest. The underbrush remained naked and spindly from winter, thin and offering little cover.
Still, the wind brushed their scent upstream, away from the wyrms, though that was all the help Tyr seemed able to offer them. The sun glanced down, mottling their feathers in the undergrowth. Mud and dirt from their crawl through the tight wolf tunnel helped disguise their scent and the sight of them in the woods.
Ketil stalked on one side of her, Istren on the other. Tocho had led them to the second entrance, where they’d had to dig out the remainder of brush the wolves had used to stuff the hole, sealing it off after the wolves’ attack on the Sun Isle last summer.
Even Ragna had barely fit through the tunnel, and she was glad no Aesir or half-bloods had attempted it. They would’ve been stuck fast.
Ragna’s feet seemed to prickle. She fancied she could feel Kjorn and his army beneath them, wrapping torches in sinew and sap, preparing to surprise the wyrms with fire in their ugly faces.
The squirming, massive bodies of wyrms caught her eye beyond the next stand of trees. Great chunks of earth flew up and dirt scattered the ground. Broken trees formed dangerous splintered spears, thrusting from the ground.
They would have to leap forward into the clearing near the water, then straight into the air, lest the wyrms catch them too quickly.
“On my mark,” Ragna breathed.
Her quiet command passed down the line.
She crouched, and in near-silence, the Vanir followed suit.
Hulking wyrms of dusty green and gray tore at the earth and the giant rocks that marked the main entrance to the river tunnel.
With a flash of relief, and worry, Ragna realized she didn’t see the great she-wyrm, the one Shard called Rhydda. Perhaps he was speaking with her. Perhaps, even now he was communicating with her . . .
“We wait on your mark,” Ketil reminded her softly, her voice tight with determination and fear.
Ragna loosed a breath. They could not wait on Shard. She had waited too long for everything. Even if Shard reached Rhydda, the prides were under attack now. They had to stop that, at least.
Ragna flicked up her tail and fanned the white feathers in the briefest signal, then plunged forward with a ringing, bellowing roar.
“By Tor! For the Vanir! For the Silver Isles!”
Vanir streamed after her, shouting a dozen battle cries.
“Tor is the thunder!” shouted Frar, with surprising vigor.
“For the Vanir!” cried Maja.
“For the queen!”
“For Rashard, Rashard the true king!”
Wings filled her vision as they rushed to the sky. Wings, talons, hard, flashing eyes. Istren and Istra, Ketil and Keta side-by-side with Ilse, Maja, and Toskil. Old Frar, leading four older, seasoned Vanir. Ragna’s blood seized for a moment to see them, to see her Vanir home. Home, and fighting hard for it. For her. For Shard.
She prayed bright Tor would see them all through the battle, and knew that would not be so.
The wyrms scrambled back from their digging in wailing, gnashing surprise. Seven of them, she counted, only seven. Surely they could drive them off. They only had to harry them until Kjorn arrived with his fire.
“Form up!” shouted a clear, ringing voice. Vidar. He winged up beside Ragna, and strength flowed into her, hope. She fell into formation with Vidar and Toskil, forming an arrow that drove at the largest, gray wyrm. The beast reared up, slashing with both forefeet. Dirt flew from its massive claws.
Ragna and Toskil split, darting around its great, horned head, while Vidar plunged under the swinging claws, forcing the monster to lumber around, seeking him. Ragna tilted her wings to stay tight with Toskil, and they banked for another pass.
Vidar swooped out from under the wyrm and rejoined them, higher, but the wyrm remained planted on the ground near the broken trees.
Meanwhile, Ketil, Ilse, and Keta formed another triad, and with Frar and two other elders, they harried a smaller green wyrm from the tunnel entrance. All around them, darting wedges of Vanir swooped, banked, and circled the wyrms.
Wildly trying to keep an eye on every single Vanir, Ragna knew she would die trying to keep watch over them all. She stuck close to Vidar, who didn’t leave her side, and Toskil, who seemed determined to protect her in Shard’s absence.
They re-formed their triad and drove forward as the gray wyrm at last shoved from the ground to the sky, his deadly tail driving a furrow through the forest floor.
Frar’s group shot upward to aid Ragna’s triad, but the wyrm spun in a circle with shocking speed, flinging his massive wings open to knock the surprised gryfons away. One elder female careened into the splintered tree trunks, and Ragna, diving fast under the wyrm’s wings, saw Frar plummet down to her side.
Four smaller, green beasts leaped at the fallen with gleeful, ear-shattering shrieks and massive slashing claws.
The formations that were still flying broke apart, disintegrating into chaos and fear.
“Get clear!” Vidar shouted at Ragna.
Flying higher, Ragna saw Maja on the ground, mantled protectively over Keta, who nursed a twisted foot. Frar and Istren scrambled toward them, even as two green wyrms lumbered after.
“Get up!” Ragna cried. “Fly!”
“Fly, Vanir!” Vidar was there beside her again. His voice boomed with unexpected depth and a thrill shivered through Ragna. “Get up!”
Maja and Frar shouldered Keta up, and pushed her into the air. They followed, springing from the earth just as a green wyrm smashed its talons to ground where they’d stood. Its tail flashed toward Maja’s head, but Istren knocked her aside. The flat of the wyrm’s tail smacked into him and sent him sprawling to the ground amidst the broken, jagged trees.
Their simple distraction was already costing lives. Ragna forced herself to remember Thyra, Astri, Kenna, and all the other pregnant females, the fledges, the gryfons down in the caverns relying on them.
“Rise!” she shouted. “Fly
! Don’t try to fight!”
The scent of wood smoke filtered to her.
Not long. Not long now.
The great, gray wyrm swooped about above it all, screaming, but the others didn’t heed it the way Ragna had seen them heed Rhydda. They flung themselves into the air haphazardly, snapping at darting, nimble Vanir.
The wind rose, cold and bracing, bringing the scent of the river and of the sea and earth.
For one breath, Ragna felt she breathed in the spirit of every Vanir to walk the Isles, even Baldr, her beloved Baldr, and that strength might be enough to see them through.
“For the Silver Isles!” she cried once more.
“The Vanir never die!” crowed Vidar, and those still flying re-formed their attacks, and plummeted at the wyrms from all sides.
Dizzying acrobatics filled the air over the river. Ragna grimly counted three gryfons on the ground, unmoving, but didn’t dare name them to herself yet. Vidar and Toskil stuck fast to her side like burrs.
Smoke poured from the mauled entrance to the cavern.
Thank Tor.
“Vanir to me!” Ragna called.
“Vanir!” Vidar echoed. “Fly high!”
Swooping and diving to avoid the lashing wyrms, the Vanir began to cluster higher, drawing the wyrms higher, far away from the tunnel.
Shrieking and roars thundered across the Sun Isle. The birch trees quivered from the wind and from fierceness of the battle. The wyrms began to close on the ranks of flying Vanir.
Then, with a cry like Tyr himself, golden Kjorn shoved from the tunnel and took to the sky. Behind him poured the fresh, rested warriors of the Winderost, seeming huge and impossibly strong in the sunlight.
Brynja, Dagny, and others followed, bearing torches.
“Drive them up!” Kjorn bellowed. “Drive them away!”
The wyrms fell back from the clustered flock of Vanir, taking in the new threat with surprised snarls. Not too dull to realize they were outnumbered, they scattered and lashed out at the fresh arrivals with the ferocity of cornered beasts.
But they did not flee.
Warriors from the river tunnel sprinted to open ground or shoved straight up from the forest floor. Wings sliced the air, talons slashing as they formed into groups and sought targets.
“My queen,” Vidar said to Ragna over the wind. They had soared off twenty leaps from the main fighting, and Toskil had left them to join Keta and Ilse, who had flown out with the rest of the Aesir. “I beg you go to safety now. We’ve already lost too many, and we don’t know if more wyrms will come.”
Flapping hard, Ragna let her gaze slash the battle. Her Vanir had peeled off from her, still fighting, falling in with the Aesir, and heeding Kjorn’s orders now.
She looked to Vidar. “Send the elders and the young back into the tunnels. And be sure we fetch the dead.”
“I’ll see it done,” Vidar said. His eyes locked on hers, and in them she saw loss the loss of Einarr, again.
Before she could thank him, another sound broke through the chaos. A musical, hard, grating roar.
Hikaru.
Ragna spied the young dragon as he soared fast over the forest several leagues downriver, flashing silver like a serpent in the sky. At first her heart lifted at the sight of him, but behind him flew two more large gray wyrms, fangs open and claws grasping for the kill. Undulating toward the gryfons with impossible, whipping speed, he dove to join the fray.
The new gray wyrms clashed with the ranks of Aesir, and shrieks and battle cries shattered the air.
Vidar gasped at the sight, then snarled. “Please, Ragna, go. For us, and for Shard.”
Ragna saw he was right. With Kjorn there, they had a leader. Her presence would only distract and worry the Vanir, and if she fled, it would give others leave to as well—the injured, old, and young.
With a final, grateful look, Ragna left Vidar. She angled wide around the battle and back the way she’d come, to the smaller tunnel entrance farther upstream, so as not to block the last of Kjorn’s warriors from joining the battle.
She flew, and by the sound the fighting, thought Kjorn meant to drive the wyrms all the way back to Pebble’s Throw.
She didn’t realize at first, as she crawled through the narrow, muddy tunnel, that no other gryfons followed.
The caves were eerily quiet and smoky.
Ragna rushed to the tunnels where the pregnant gryfesses had sheltered, trying to put the battle from her mind. She passed others who exclaimed in relief to see her and found Sigrun, who was huddled with Thyra.
Gryfesses with warrior spirits like Thyra, like Kenna, were furious.
“I can’t believe Halvden flew again, with me like this!” Kenna snapped at Sigrun, pacing restlessly. “I’ll whelp his kit and join him!”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Sigrun said, her voice low and steady. “Keep walking. It will help the cramps.”
“I’ve felt worse,” Kenna said, and flicked her tail dismissively before rounding a bend out of their sight.
Astri bemoaned the loss of Dagr at her side, and one of Sigrun’s apprentices comforted her and didn’t move from her side, assuring her the copper gryfon would return after the battle.
Ragna wished she could make such promises. She and Sigrun switched attention to Thyra.
“My lady,” Ragna said. “How fare you?”
“It will be any time,” she said tightly, her gaze trained on the entryway to her little niche. Sigrun didn’t look at Ragna, but fussed around her daughter, pressing gentle talons to her belly. “Any time now.”
Struck, Ragna sat down near the entryway, watching the younger gryfess, and watching Sigrun. “Sigrun, how can I help you?”
The healer barely looked her way. “You can call them all back from this fool’s errand. I can’t believe you let them go. I can’t believe you joined them.”
“Let them? What was I to do, stand in the exit tunnel and block the way of dozens of healthy Vanir and half-bloods and Aesir warriors hungry to fight?”
“Yes,” Sigrun said shortly. “Maybe you could have stricken some sense into them. But instead, you go off to war. I have only two apprentices, with a dozen gryfesses about to whelp and all their wingsisters and mates off to battle. This shall be the merriest, bloodiest Halflight of our time. The kits will be battle-born, ill-fated, cursed to war again all their lives.”
“Sigrun,” Ragna said sharply, wondering how many of the pregnant gryfesses could hear her. She knew the healer was not actually angry with her, but with the situation. “I don’t believe that. And you know there was nothing else we could have done. The wyrms were digging in. What were we all to do?”
Sigrun’s pale-brown eyes seared her, then, as if Sigrun realized the true target of her own anger, softened. She only shook her head once, and turned back to examining Thyra, who tolerated it because she seemed to know Sigrun needed to keep busy. “I know. But I wish this hadn’t happened. And where is Shard?”
Where indeed? Ragna thought, afraid for him, frustrated with herself for always feeling afraid. He was so like Baldr, she saw it clearly. Off in his own dreams, seeing things no one else saw, drawing together purposes no one else perceived. She could not follow him on those winds, but she trusted that he had to fly them.
For the next long, stretch of time, Ragna remained with her wingsister, helping to tend the gryfesses. For a time, they heard the riotous clash of battle outside, muffled by distance and stone, but near enough to send chills down their backs.
Then it fell quieter, but no gryfons returned. Ragna wondered if Kjorn had truly continued the push, pursuing the wyrms to Pebble’s Throw. She distracted herself with Sigrun. She fetched herbs, moss soaked with water for the thirsty. She told any gryfess who would listen the tale of her own whelping, and assured them their kits would be born healthy, fat and strong.
Marks of the sun stretched on, in the dark, and foreboding closed cold wings on her heart.
Kjorn and his warriors should have returned. T
he Vanir should have returned.
“He’s pursued them,” Sigrun muttered darkly, coming up on Ragna’s side as she stood, staring toward the tunnel entrance. “He didn’t just want to drive them off, he wanted to fight them. I guarantee you, he’s taken every willing warrior and flown to Pebble’s Throw to fight them.”
“I should be with them,” Ragna whispered. “I shouldn’t have left them.”
Sigrun touched a wing to hers. “Ragna. My friend. I don’t doubt your skill in battle, but this is an enemy like no other. What good would it do the Vanir if you’d been slain?”
With that, she left quietly as the howl of a whelping gryfess cut the cool, smoky air. Ragna stood locked, wanting to stay and help, wanting to rejoin her warriors.
“My lady.” Caj’s voice relieved Ragna of staring into the dark. She turned to him as he approached down one of the tunnels.
“If you will,” Caj said quietly, “he asked to see you. He’s where we left him, in the cavern.”
She didn’t have to ask who he was. She drew a bracing breath, and nodding, walking past Caj, along the tunnels, through the great cavern where she and Kjorn had rallied the prides. Passing down another tunnel, at last she found him.
To all appearances, Sverin had not moved from the spot where he’d held his conversation with Kjorn. Through all the preparations, gryfons coming and going to make sturdy, sap torches, rallying whatever gryfons would fight the wyrms, the hours of battle, Sverin had remained in the small cavern, on his belly on the ground.
He looked up when Ragna entered. “You didn’t go to the battle.”
“I did,” she said. “And returned. The Vanir were only to harry the wyrms away from the entrance to give room for Kjorn to attack. Now, they have followed your son on to further glorious war.”
Some of Sigrun’s bitterness crept into her voice. She didn’t know if this battle was what Shard wanted. She didn’t think so, but she didn’t know if she should care anymore. For so long she had waited for him.
She had waited, waited.
“I see.” His gaze was too keen.