They roared and grinned, and Satara’s heart clutched. This ferocity was unlike the first time she’d seen them chasing it; this was almost animal. The difference was, an animal didn’t hunt for glory.
Siggi stood by, watching, until the stag’s struggling died down. Its torso heaved with fear and exhaustion, eyes wide and terrified, as the hunter approached it and sat heavily on its chest like one might collapse into a chair after a long day’s work.
He looked down into the animal’s face and smiled. “Good work, my friend, but you can stop running now. I always get my kill.”
The beast honked as if to reply, and that strange mixture of boiling hot anger and cold, dull sorrow surged through Satara again, making her bones ache. To be so willing to crush something so beautiful, and to do it with such glee…
He was worse than an animal. He was a monster. A beast.
The thought struck her, and a moment later, the answer to her puzzle was revealed with surprising clarity.
Feed Odin’s dogs. That was her task, as the Riders had presented it; to provide meat for Geri and Freki, the Allfather’s insatiable war hounds. But Odin’s dogs didn’t eat venison, did they?
Satara, along with every other warrior, knew very well what Odin’s dogs ate.
The stag had never been her quarry.
Her head spun, thinking of how close she had come to killing it. She turned and looked at Vidarr, opening her mouth to say something—but there were no words. His fiery gaze was knowing. He simply crossed his arms.
“Edie,” she said softly, “the men. Kill the men.”
The necromancer stared at her. “I can’t say that’s not an idea I can get behind, but what about the stag?”
“Forget about the stag. Let it run.”
Satara turned back to the clearing, tightened her grip on her spear, and stalked forward. She was only about twenty feet from the hunting party when Siggi noticed her striding purposefully toward him.
He seemed unconcerned, knees spread on his grisly throne, one boot lodged in the stag’s ribs. Satara stopped her advance a couple feet in front of him, and he smiled. “I told you the best Norseman would win, did I not?”
“You did,” she said icily. “And I suppose your theory was that you had the advantage because I am neither Nordic nor a man.”
Siggi tutted. “Neither of which are your fault. How about a kiss for a job well done? It’s only fair now that I’ve beaten you.”
She ignored his request. “I may not be Nordic—or whatever euphemism you’d like to use—but I am more Norse than you or your friends will ever be.”
The men fell quiet. Even in their adrenaline-fueled boisterousness, they were speechless.
“And,” Satara continued, “how can you be so dismissive of females when it was a woman who birthed you, a woman who wove your fate, and a woman who will decide when you die?”
Siggi sputtered. Then his expression darkened. “You’re no valkyrie, bitch.”
“I don’t have to be.”
With a quick motion, she shifted her spear under her arm and thrust forward.
The spear pierced Siggi’s chest with a sickening pop and a squelch. Pain bloomed on his face for a moment before his expression went slack. He slumped to the side, his eyes glassy, and Satara yanked the spear from him.
A second later, the heretofore silent men sprang into action. Two nocked arrows, two pulled their spears out of the stag to face Satara, and the final hunter drew a dagger.
Her final test began.
“Archers,” Satara barked, stomping a foot and summoning a magical shield in front of them.
Edie replied swiftly, “On it!” as a globe of bone-chilling death magic shot past Satara, hitting one of the archers in the hip. The magic spidered across his form in an instant, withering the skin of his right side and turning it ashen. With a shuddering gasp, he collapsed to one knee, and his bow and arrow along with him.
His partner loosed an arrow in the same moment, aiming for Satara’s head, and she raised her wooden shield. Her shielding magic would only mitigate some of the momentum and damage, and frankly, she’d rather not have an arrow in her skull at all. She was barely able to block it, the shaft splitting against the edge.
As she threw her arm up, she was exposed, and the man with the dagger lunged forward, stabbing between the buckles of her breastplate. He was only able to tear the gambeson beneath, but pain radiated through her ribs and up and down her right arm and leg.
With a shout, she lashed out using her shield. It whiffed past the dagger-wielder, but she recovered quickly and jumped backward, putting distance between herself and the advancing spearmen.
Five trained men against one shieldmaiden and a hellerune just coming into her powers … it wasn’t an even fight. She wondered for a half second if Vidarr could intervene, but there was no time to plead with him either way. Another shout bolstered her magical shield, staggering the dagger-wielder and the spearmen.
In a haze of fluid smoke, Edie materialized within one of the spearmen’s shadows. Without hesitation, she jumped up, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. A mixture of death and shadow magic burst from her, and the spearman began to scream, swinging his weapon sightlessly as his body withered. After a few moments, he collapsed under her weight, and she jumped to the next spearman.
This one was ready for her, spinning as she appeared behind him. She was too close for him to stab, but he punched her hard in the chest, sending her sprawling across the blood-speckled grass. She hit it rolling. An instant later, the head of his spear sank into the dirt where she’d been lying.
Satara’s heart leapt at the sight, but Edie could get away, and she was holding the dagger-wielder at bay with her spear. It was the remaining archer she was more worried about.
In all the commotion, the stag had managed to struggle to its feet, bellowing. The weighted net still ensnared it, but it bucked wildly. Once it got free, it would stampede anything in its path—the men would scramble to get out of its way. The perfect time for a distracted archer.
Despite the pain, she raised her right arm. When the stag finally freed itself and shot for the horizon, her spear shot forward, too, arcing through the air.
She couldn’t be sure what part of the archer she hit, though she heard him howl in pain. She spun immediately to address the dagger-wielder trying to sneak up behind her, throwing her shield and cracking him across the jaw. He fell to the ground like a bag of sand.
His falling body revealed Vidarr, standing a few yards back, watching intently. Briefly, Satara was transfixed.
Grunts of pain pulled her out of her reverie—female grunts.
Edie. She spun again.
The remaining spearman had not fled far from the stag’s unpredictable stampede. He’d brought Edie to her knees, a fist clutched in her raven hair. In his other hand, he held his spear, poised to impale her.
Through heavy breaths, he managed, “Let me go and your friend lives.”
Satara shuddered, gaze locked with the man’s. These were her options? Let him go and fail her trial or watch Edie die, just as she had watched Astrid die?
Slowly, she spoke. “You have to know that, if you release her, there’s nothing stopping me from killing you after.”
“Your word.” He jerked his chin at her. “Or would you be an oathbreaker as well as a murderer?”
Her fists tightened at her side. Was this another test? Valkyir were supposed to choose who lived and who died in battle—was this some sort of sick play on that? But she had already determined that the hunters had to die. What did the Riders want from her? To let Edie die, too?
The necromancer was struggling in the hunter’s grasp, but he had bent her back at an awkward angle. It seemed like she was having a hard time keeping upright, let alone fighting. Even if she did, that spear was inches from her chest. One move and it was over. Her eyes glinted like polished stone, alight with fear.
Satara’s heart fractured. How could she let a friend
die in fear?
If that was what the Riders wanted her to do, it was too much to ask. Investiture be damned.
“Release her,” she said solemnly. “I swear I’ll let you go.”
The man stared at her for a beat. Then he pushed Edie onto all fours, turned on his heel, and started sprinting across the field.
But Satara felt little relief. In fact, all she felt was a strange, cold focus enter her body. Her vision narrowed, zeroing in on the man’s retreating form; everything else seemed to fade away. Every fiber of her being said to go after him. To kill him.
Hot metallic magic washed over her. She felt the chilled metal of her spear against one palm, the grip of her shield against the other … someone giving her her weapons. Her hands closed around them. A buzzing sensation at the base of her neck said go.
She spread her wings, beating the air until her feet left the ground. Wind seemed to jump under her wings readily, ferrying her across the field like an old friend.
Looking down, she was shocked when the terrain below her wasn’t the green, dew-covered glen she had seen at ground level. It was dark, the grass a muted blue under the heavy fog crawling across it. Eviscerated, dismembered bodies littered the landscape, their armor and weapons sticking haphazardly out of the mud, rusting.
Carrion birds circled and landed, their cries filling the air. She felt one with them; she, too, was a carrion bird.
How she was seeing this battlefield now, when all she had seen was a grassy field before, she had no idea. But in the center of it all, one running figure stood out, his soul outlined in blue and red. Her body and mind filled with certainty.
A cosmic dirge echoed through the glen as she descended, spear first, and thrust into that blue-and-red glow.
A moment later, the light flickered and died. She looked below her and found she was standing with one foot on the hunter’s head, her spear sticking from his torso. She took a step back, wrenching the spear from him. The fog began to creep over him like it was a hungry beast itself.
An eerie feeling beckoned her gaze upward, and she tore it away from the fog to look ahead. At first, she didn’t notice anything different. Then, she saw the tops of the pines swaying, the trees parting closer and closer. Something enormous was moving through the forest.
Soon, they emerged: two giant dogs, charcoal gray with blazing white eyes. They frothed and scented the air and watched from the treeline, waiting.
Suddenly, Satara felt an immense warmth behind her, and the smell of copper intensified. She glanced back as Vidarr wrapped an enormous hand around her upper arm.
«Quickly.» He struggled to sign with one hand. «Behead him.»
There was an edge of urgency to his movements. She got the feeling she shouldn’t keep Odin’s dogs waiting.
Dropping to one knee, she felt along the ground until she found an abandoned sword. It was rusted, but she didn’t have time to look for anything better. She gripped the hunter by the hair and drew the blade along his throat, hacking to sever the spine, until his head came loose in her hand.
It was a grisly sight … and yet it filled her with a sense of righteousness, and she knew she had chosen correctly.
Vidarr had released her arm, but as she rose, he motioned for her to follow him. They trotted back toward Edie and the other bodies, and Satara was surprised to find that the gruesome battlefield didn’t fade back to normal—and it wasn’t all in her head, if Edie’s gray complexion was any indication. Had she changed it somehow, or had it been the arrival of the wolves?
Speaking of the wolves, they had advanced into the battlefield, hunched over with their muzzles in the fog. Making a meal of the freshly dead hunter, Satara guessed. She turned quickly to the task at hand, kneeling and raising the rusty sword again.
“Here.” Edie fumbled at her hip for a moment before handing Satara the dagger of truth. “It’s sharp as hell; it’ll go faster.”
Satara hesitated a moment—it seemed disrespectful to use a holy artifact for something like this—but then swiftly set to her solemn work. By the time the heads of the other five men were severed, the dogs were prowling closer, their hulking shadows black in the low light.
“I need someone to help me carry these.” She held two in one fist, offering them out to Edie.
To her credit, the necromancer took them without hesitation. Once they were in her hands, though, she gagged and shuddered all over.
Vidarr grunted and cracked a smile beneath his mask—something Satara could already tell was a rare thing. «You will only have to hold them for a minute.»
“I’m fine,” Edie said. “This is just … a lot grosser than I thought it would be. And, uh, their hair is very, very unwashed,” she added more quietly.
Satara handed Edie a third, then rose with her own three and nodded to Vidarr. The dogs were less than a hundred yards from them now. “Let’s go.”
Vidarr turned, drew his dagger again, and carved their portal in the air.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Riders’ hall was almost exactly as they had left it, although Basile had switched sides so that he now stood next to Göndul. As Satara, Edie, and Vidarr emerged from the rift, all heads turned toward them. There was a long silence as they lined up side by side to face the Riders.
Then, the silence was broken with a whistle and a “Woo-hoo! Hell fuckin’ yeah, bro!” Distinctly Cal.
His cheer was followed by others; Elle first, then Adam joined in, then a triumphant Marius. Then, the benches on either side of them erupted into applause and shouts. Even Basile managed a genuine smile and a golf clap.
The praise filled Satara’s body with something like electricity. She could barely keep herself from shaking. It almost made her forget about the ache still radiating through her outstretched wings.
Göndul raised a hand to quiet the cheers. When all fell silent again, she spoke. “Satara, you completed your trial with determination and cleverness. You identified your goal by following your instincts and did not let your focus waver from what Fate had decreed—even when the alternative was perjury.”
“I beg forgiveness for breaking an oath,” Satara said softly, fists tightening in the hair of the heads she carried.
“Your oath, first and foremost, is to Fate, and to the Allfather and Mother Valkyrie.”
She relaxed slightly, raising the severed heads. Beside her, Edie followed suit. “Then I present you with these. Proof that I carried out Fate’s will.”
Göndul smiled. “And may they weight the Lady’s loom.”
“And may they.”
Göndul stepped forward, and the blue fire between the thrones and the rest of the hall blazed higher. Behind her, the other Riders rose from their seats.
“You have done well. Your battlemother would be proud.”
For the first time, Satara felt hot tears prick her eyes. She bowed her head.
“Satara Izem, it is time to complete the ritual. It is time to vest in you the power of the valkyir. Will you accept and become our sister?”
Satara tried to slow her heart, her breathing, the dizziness. “I accept. I will become a valkyrie.”
Göndul bowed her head and spread her palms, beginning to chant softly under her breath. The other Riders did the same, their voices slithering over Satara’s skin with an ancient, primordial power—a power she imagined one would feel in the deepest cavern, the loneliest forest, atop the highest mountain. Though the valkyir still whispered, their voices became louder somehow, until they were filling the entire hall.
Slowly, as they chanted, the blue fire in the pit spread outward, crawling into channels carved in the floor. Once in the channels, it spread more quickly, shooting up the walls and along the ceiling in spiraling patterns. Within only a few seconds, the ducts curving around her lit up.
She was surrounded by the spectral fire, and as it raged, so did her emotions. Fear, relief, apprehension, grief, acceptance, excitement—all mixed together in a nauseating slurry. She knew she could
do this. She had made it through; her wings had not killed her, in the end. But she had hoped she would be more ready for this when the time came.
The Riders had all closed their eyes. Göndul, in particular, had her face tipped up to the ceiling, her body swaying slightly as she chanted. Slowly, she opened her eyes and leveled her gaze at Satara. Her irises were blazing pale blue; magic seemed to cling to her ebony skin, shimmering like starlight.
“Cast your trophies into the fire. Tie the threads of Fate. Send the souls of your chosen dead to their destinies.”
Satara’s limbs felt weightless as she threw the heads into the fire and watched it jump higher. She took the other half from Edie and did it again. The flames ate at the hunters’ flesh, but she couldn’t look away; blue filled her vision, sickly-sweet copper filled her nose, and impossibly loud whispers filled her ears.
Then, without warning, darkness enveloped her.
Satara wasn’t certain how long it was before she regained consciousness. It could have been a minute or days. But she got the sense that that didn’t matter anymore; she was no longer bound by time.
At first, there was nothing but blackness—a void that felt endlessly deep despite there being no light to create depth. By all rights, she should have panicked. The threat of floating through infinite space, untethered, completely alone for longer than the universe would exist, should terrify her. It should cause her to go instantly mad. But to her bones, she felt nothing but calm, even restfulness.
She wasn’t alone. Slowly, as she floated through the cool darkness, she began to sense and then eventually see things. Things that felt like what she was now, somehow. Little points of light in the distance. Only a few at first, then more and more, until she realized she was passing them. She was moving through the void at an unimaginable speed, though she felt no wind or friction.
Unholy Spirit (The Necromancer's Daughter Book 3) Page 34