Sleipnir and Abrax trotted side by side as we followed the river east toward Skien, leading the army to what would be death for the vast majority of them, at least the ones who were still living. Rúna rode a little behind us; there was no fear on her face, only determination. She and the other Northmen were glad to have the chance to die in battle, and though I didn’t share this particular sentiment, I was willing to do anything to stop the jötnar.
The night sky was clear, the moon full, as though the heavens above had decided to lend us their aid. Our path was lit so well we did not need to light torches, and we marched onward, the landscape a blur of trees and hills and rocky ground.
We continued in silence, the horses’ hooves and the light clanking of weapons against chain mail the only distinguishable sounds. In the distance, light from fires in the city loomed. Unlike Leif’s village, this city was much larger—nearly the size of Dubhlinn—and was surrounded by a high wooden wall. Beyond it was the fjord, and I could only just make out the sails of numerous longships—perhaps thirty at the least. At the top of the next hill, Leif raised his arm, and the army came to a halt.
He waved one of his men forward—a tall and lanky man with a tattoo of a knotwork snake that slithered up from his neck to his ear. “Scout for us, Arn. I want to know the location of every guard.”
Arn sprinted down the hill, and the blood pounded in my ears. Anticipation was the hardest part of a battle. It always felt as though my body would burn up, the blood boiling inside me, every muscle taut. Once engaged in battle, though, all of those sensations would fall away. But more than anything, my body thrummed with the thrill of truly unleashing my power for the first time.
Leif did not give a stirring speech to raise morale for the battle ahead. These were hardened warriors, raiders who needed very little encouragement to pick up an axe or sword. I could see eagerness in the tightness of their grips on their weapons, the subtle shifts of their bodies, waiting for the word to be given to charge.
So it was for my ears alone when Leif leaned over and said, “Remember, we work together. We’ll take them down one by one, and we’ll use each other’s strengths to destroy them.”
I wanted to tell him I loved him, that I was glad I had come north with him, but I swallowed the words. To speak them aloud was a promise I wasn’t ready to make. I wanted to blame it on the horrible truth I’d discovered about his father, but I knew it wasn’t his father’s sins that stayed my tongue, or the fact that he was my enemy. The truth was: I was afraid. Fear clutched at my heart when I thought of what Leif had traded for his power. How could I tell him I loved him only to have him forfeit his life at the end of this? Worse, it would seem like a good-bye, and I refused to believe we wouldn’t survive this or that his life would be taken so soon—not after we had survived so much.
“Together,” I agreed.
He reached across and touched my thigh, and I squeezed his hand.
Arn returned, only lightly out of breath from his sprint to the city. “Only two guards posted at this gate, but they aren’t alert. They don’t expect an attack. There are five scouting near the quay, and two more at the back gate.”
“Then I will take over one guard and have him kill the other,” I said. When Leif made as if to protest, I continued before he could argue. “This is a job for stealth, not raw power. If you want to preserve the element of surprise, then you must let me do this.”
Leif nodded.
I touched my heels lightly to Sleipnir’s sides and trotted down the hill. Twenty of my undead clansmen flowed behind me and before me. I’d called them without even realizing it.
Sleipnir’s powerful legs ate up the distance, and it wasn’t long before I saw the guards Arn had scouted. They stood on either side of the barred gateway into the village beyond. They were true giants, as enormous as the ones we’d fought what felt like a lifetime ago. But as one drew into the light of a torch, I let out a faint breath. He might have had colossal height, but his face appeared human—handsome, even.
There was a terrible moment where this made me hesitate, as though only those who looked the part of a monster deserved to die, but then I came to my senses and dismounted.
The ground was cold and rocky, but I sat anyway. My clansmen surrounded me without so much as a whispered command. I closed my eyes and pushed my spirit out as easily as exhaling.
Once free of my body, I could see the swirling darkness that made up the giants. A glowing red brightness in the center of the one closest to me drew my attention, but it wasn’t his heart I was interested in. As if sensing a shift in the air around him, the giant turned toward me.
In that instant, I streamed into his mind. Relief hit me powerfully when I found it as malleable as any mortal’s. The giant knew I had infiltrated him, but it was as if I’d imprisoned him within his own mind. He tried to threaten me, tried to intimidate me with thoughts of promised violence, but I immediately suppressed them. He watched helplessly as I took control.
I forced the giant to draw the broadsword sheathed at his side. Before the other giant could even realize he was under attack, the giant I controlled ran him through with his sword.
Your speed and strength will be useful to me, I told my captive, but he could only rage at me from behind the walls of his cage.
I used him to push open the two massive doors that barred access to the village beyond, and I heard the pounding of hooves and booted feet behind me. Leif and the others were coming.
As the giant’s long legs strode through the gate, he came to an unsteady halt while I took in the horrifying sight of the village.
Blood and gore, thick as mud, were smeared across the walls of houses and drying on the hard-packed earth. The massacre that the jötnar had wrought on this village was plain to see in the firelight. The smell of rotting flesh was so strong I would have gagged had I been in my own body. The salty smell of the nearby sea wasn’t even enough to mask the scent. Pieces of people littered the ground—an arm here, a head, a torso. The villagers hadn’t stood a chance against them when the jötnar came and claimed it as their own.
As the whole of our army made their way through the gates, the occupants slowly became alerted to the attack. Fires were lit around the village. I could feel the vibrations in the earth as giants raced toward us, but more disturbing were the mortal men who joined them. They boiled out of thatched huts like ants from a destroyed mound.
I hesitated even as they clashed with Leif’s army, swords and axes clattering together in the terrible din of war. Leif had said that long ago there were Northmen who had joined Fenris’s cause, but the idea was so foreign to me I hadn’t truly believed it until this moment.
Why would they join forces with monsters? I thought, and I directed my thought to the giant I kept imprisoned. He refused to answer me, his silence sullen.
I forced him to respond, commanding his thoughts as I commanded his body.
They tire of the failed promises of the gods, he said. They tire of sacrificing their animals, their friends and neighbors, even their own lives only to have those sacrifices and prayers go unanswered.
Despite my qualms, Leif’s army and my undead clansmen—the ones who were not guarding my body—had no such hesitations. Their swords and axes flashed in the torchlight, taking down mortal and giant alike.
I threw the giant into the fight, swinging his sword with powerful blows. At some point, I grabbed a discarded shield and was able to use it both defensively and offensively. I kept Leif within my sight as I fought on, taking down as many of the jötnar as I could while I still had one to control. Leif’s every move was smoothly executed, the flash of his blade a mere blur of light. He wielded his shield as an offensive weapon as well as a defensive one, bashing the heads or noses of any mortal who battled him. My undead clansmen lent him aid as he fought one of the jötnar, and with a little jolt of recognition, I realized it was Fergus who partnered with Leif to bring them down.
Together they killed three, while stil
l others of my clansmen took down more, and hope bloomed in my chest.
But then the giant I controlled was met with another giant whose powerful blows my giant couldn’t block. This one brandished an axe with a blade half as long as Sleipnir. The one I controlled would have one chance to block with his shield, and then it would be reduced to splinters. I had to make it count.
The other giant took a swing, but my giant rolled out of the way, coming gracefully to his feet again. The blade of the other’s axe flashed again, this time much faster, and I raised my giant’s shield at the last moment. The shield shattered under his enemy’s powerful blow, but that gave my giant an extra second to dodge. I brought my sword down across the other’s back, feeling his spine give way beneath the blade.
He collided with the ground, and as my giant spun away in search of another enemy, I felt a sword bite into his flesh.
The other jötunn’s aim had been true, the blade slipping between his ribs to pierce his heart. But as my jötunn bled to death, his mind became like a yawning chasm, a dark nothingness that threatened to swallow me. I struggled against its hold, panicking as I tried to free my spirit from the dying body. It held on tenaciously, talons of darkness lodged in me. I’d never felt this sensation before. Desperately, I sought the door of light.
I moved as though underwater, the darkness pulling me back with every step. I fell through it, and mercifully came back to my true body in the next breath.
I leaned over and was sick. Tears ran down my cheeks. I shook violently as though with fever, and as I struggled to my feet, I swayed as weakly as a newborn kitten.
Never before had I reacted in such a way to my mental link being broken. Was it because I had connected to an immortal creature rather than a human?
I shuddered again as I worked to gain back my strength. My undead clansmen didn’t react, but Sleipnir took a step toward me until I was able to lean against him. I rested my forehead on his neck in gratitude for one shaky breath before I forced myself onto his back. I’d never before considered what might happen if my spirit was caught when the giant I controlled was killed, but I couldn’t let it stop me from taking control of another. We had yet to see Fenris, and if I could find him and kill him, all of this would end. He had united this terrible army, and without his leadership and power, they would fall.
Urgency nipped at my heels. I hurried Sleipnir on, but as we drew closer to the gates, Leif’s army was pushed back—out of the city and onto the rocky field beyond. At least forty-five of the jötnar still stood, and they loomed above Leif’s men and my undead clansmen. Most of the Northmen allied with the jötnar had fallen, easily felled by my undead army, but the losses on our side were significant as well.
The jötnar continued to thunder toward us, the ground shaking beneath them. Where they clashed with my undead clansmen, they were taken down, but even then it was taking many more men to stop them.
Rúna was still mounted, but she faced her own enemy—a giant continually hammered her with his axe. Her shield wouldn’t hold much longer. I had to do something or she’d be defeated. So, surrounded by my small band of undead clansmen, I threw myself from Sleipnir’s back, sat on the ground, and pushed my spirit free. As I watched, untethered, Rúna’s shield finally gave way, sending a shower of splinters to the ground.
I wrenched control of the giant she fought. I forced him away from the battle with Rúna and made him bring his axe down on a nearby giant instead. The giant’s suddenly strange behavior must have been enough of an indication to Rúna that it was I who controlled him now, for she quickly moved on to another battle.
I took down five of the jötnar with my controlled giant before his fellow giants realized he was now an enemy and turned on him. When two collided with my giant so powerfully the giant’s legs gave way, I prepared myself to leave his body the moment before he died. In the next instant, my giant’s thrust with his sword was deflected, and as I saw the other giant’s sword arcing down on him, I bailed myself out of his mind.
When I returned to my body, it was to a searing pain in my head and weakness so intense I could do nothing but lie where I’d collapsed.
The ground trembled around me, and I knew there must be more jötnar coming for me. I forced myself up, panting, blinking sweat from my eyes. The undead who guarded me swarmed over the threatening giants, and I tried desperately to push myself to stand. Above the ringing in my ears came the heavy thud of boots, and then Leif pulled me to my feet.
“Ciara, are you hurt?” he asked, his voice barely detectable amid the terrible buzzing in my ear. I could only lean heavily against him and shake my head.
The sounds of battle all around were deafening. Most of the men had already been killed, torn apart by the jötnar as though they were little more than children’s playthings. Perhaps fewer than fifty remained. Rúna still lived, and she used both the remains of her shield and axe to slice her way through.
Even my own army had suffered a loss; the jötnar had discovered that removing the undead’s head from his body would stop him, and perhaps fifty had fallen.
Then from the distance sounded a howl that tore through the night sky, the sound more frightening than even the sound of the hellhounds in the Faerie Tunnel. Everything seemed to freeze.
From the city strode a true giant, bigger even than the ones we fought now; the earth shuddered with each step he took. Unlike the others, whose leather armor seemed to stretch and grow as they did, this giant wore massive chain mail and two bears’ pelts as a mantle. By his side was a wolf, as big as Sleipnir and just as dark. The jötnar fell back at the sight of the giant, as though waiting for his command.
“Fenris,” Leif said in a snarl, though by then I had already figured it out for myself.
The giant beat his axe against his shield once, and then charged. With great, leaping bounds his wolf tore through the ranks of men, biting them in half. Our men scattered, screaming, but Fenris grabbed them and tore them apart. One he caught by the neck and squeezed so hard with his massive hands that the man’s head popped free of his body.
My body was very nearly at its limit, but I couldn’t stop now. I freed the Sword of the Fallen from its sheath and summoned every one of my undead clansmen to me.
Take him down, I commanded.
They sprinted forward in that way that appeared as though they weren’t even touching the ground. Half split toward Fenris, the other toward the wolf. The beast snarled when it met my army; it rolled and dodged like a snake, but my undead clansmen continued their assault. The wolf’s massive teeth could parry a sword, but I knew it would not be able to fend them all off.
I returned my attention to Fenris only to see his gigantic hand sweep toward my men and brush them aside as though they were nothing more than mice. They tried to swarm up his great tree trunks of legs, but he kept dislodging them before they could make purchase. This wasn’t working. I needed to do something more.
“Leif, will you guard my body?”
His arm tightened around me. “You don’t even have to ask.”
“You must get me closer to Fenris.”
He nodded tersely, reluctantly, but he didn’t argue. He knew what was at stake. After mounting Sleipnir, he pulled me astride, wrapping his strong arms around me.
From my vantage I could see the rest of the terrible battlefield. Emboldened by my army’s attack on Fenris, what was left of Leif’s allies gave their aid to bring down the terrible wolf. Blood continued to spray through the air as the beast found mortal flesh to be more giving than undead.
“Together we bring Fenris down,” I said with a glance at Leif. This was the moment we would change our fate. I would make it so.
“Together,” Leif agreed.
Sleipnir needed no encouragement. He raced as fast as wildfire toward the fallen giant, and with a terrible wrenching, I forced my spirit free from my flesh. Unconstrained, it flew above the carnage like a bird. I could see the darkness the giant was made of, so oily black I couldn’t mak
e out the glow of red that was his life source.
My eyes searched desperately for the telltale sign of red. Still the churning darkness within him hid the pulse of his life source. And then I saw my father climb the giant’s chest. My father’s eyes met mine—he could see me even in my spirit form. The point of his blade pressed against one spot in the giant’s chain mail, and then I saw it: the red, beating heart.
Focused on the giant’s one weak spot, we didn’t see Fenris raise his other hand until it was too late. He grabbed my father and squeezed so hard and fast that his body was crushed flat, an explosion of bones and dust falling to the ground. Silently, I screamed for the second death of him. I plunged both hands into the giant’s chest and pulled free his enormous, pulsing heart.
The giant froze, his mouth twisted in a terrible grimace as I clutched his heart. In this final moment, though, my strength was failing, and cold fear trickled through me at the thought that I might not be able to complete the mission. I thought of Leif, how I had need of him, and suddenly he was there, his expression grim and determined. I glanced back at Sleipnir and my body, and I saw it was safely on the ground, Sleipnir standing protectively over it. Leif drew the shining sword gifted to him by the Morrigan, held it by the hilt with both hands, and slammed the tip of the blade into the heart. Fenris shuddered once and was still. I nearly cried with relief. I returned to my body, and pain seared through me, the agony almost blinding—like forcing a joint out of its socket. Weak beyond measure, I fell to my knees.
But even though their leader had fallen, the other jötnar seemed to be in the grip of a blood frenzy and did not stop. Leif killed two himself with the aid of two of my undead clansmen, while Rúna and my army felled the rest. Finally, the gruesome battle came to an end, and the ground was littered with the giants’ massive, destroyed bodies.
Through my exhaustion, I smiled as I watched Sleipnir have his fill of the jötnar blood, glorying in the justice of consuming them just as they had consumed innocents. The relief I felt at their deaths was so sweet I felt joy burst through me. I closed my eyes. My sisters were finally safe; for the first time, I allowed myself to picture them: Deirdre’s shy smile, and Branna’s loud laugh. I’d been afraid before to think of them too much, afraid we’d fail and I’d lose them. But now I drank up the sight of them, if only in my mind. Though the cost had been great, we had brought an end to the threat against our lands. Still, there was a part of me that struggled to accept that it was really over; that we had won. My family and clansmen were safe; Éirinn was no longer fated to be reduced to ashes.
Beyond a Darkened Shore Page 29