The air swirled, and I shot Bjorn a glare as he lifted me over another broken stretch. “Perhaps provoking them isn’t the best course.”
“Why not?” He started down the tunnel, still gripping my hand. “Thieving bastards plan to attack anyway.” Louder, he added, “Why not do it like men instead of lying in wait, you cowardly pricks!”
“Bjorn!” I hissed, hot air gusting around me. “Shut. Up.”
“They’re planning an ambush,” he muttered. “Might as well pick our ground.”
While there was logic to the thought, I was also of the opinion that we could at least try to quietly get to the top without another fight.
Whereas Bjorn was obviously itching for one.
Spotting a pile of treasure, he kicked the lot of it, sending it scattering over the tunnel floor. “Come out and fight like your balls didn’t rot off decades ago!”
The mountain exhaled, and then in the distance, the drumming renewed. Loud thundering beats that made my head throb. “You have maggots for brains,” I snarled. “Stupid, idiotic fool of a man!”
Bjorn unhooked my shield from my back and handed it to me. “It hurts my feelings when you call me names, Freya. Besides, you should have more faith—I’ve got a plan.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s a good plan.” My voice was shrill, my fear latching onto the scrape of skeletal feet racing in our direction. There were more than before. Far more.
“It is perfection. Trust me.” He pushed me toward the opening we’d just climbed through. “Keep that blocked.”
Spitting every curse I knew, I invoked Hlin and then pressed the shield to the opening. There was space above and below it. More than enough for hands to reach through. Hands with weapons in them. I muttered, “It’s amazing you’ve lived this long,” turning my head so as to look at Bjorn while berating him, only to have my tongue freeze and my skin turn to ice.
For coming down the tunnel toward us was a sickly green glow. The stink of decay rolled ahead on an icy breeze, filling the small chamber and making me gag, and I had to clench my teeth to keep from vomiting on the floor. The first of the draug appeared carrying rotting shields, which they interlaced in a wall to face Bjorn, more filing in behind to fill the space at their backs. The glow stretched down the tunnel behind them, dozens upon dozens.
How could there be so many?
Then I remembered…it wasn’t only the jarl’s men who’d stolen the gods’ offerings at Fjalltindr who were cursed to this place; it was all who’d come into these tunnels since, intending to take the treasure but instead succumbing to the draug.
A reminder that if Bjorn and I died, we wouldn’t join the gods but be condemned to haunt this place for eternity.
There was no time to dwell on such a fate, for beyond my shield, something scratched. Then a hand reached through the gap between stone and shield. Not long dead; flesh still clung to the draug’s bones as the arm bent upward, trying to lock onto my wrist. I swatted at it, my stomach roiling as bits of flesh caught on my fingers.
“Bitch-child of Hlin,” the draug hissed, apparently still possessed of its tongue. “Your flesh will fill my belly soon enough.”
In answer, I caught hold of its forearm and twisted until the elbow dislocated, relishing its cry of pain despite knowing the draug might well have the last word.
Behind me, Bjorn’s voice echoed through the chamber. “I see my reputation has reached even the bowels of this shithole.”
“You are no one to us, child of Tyr,” one of the draug rasped out, a black and rotten tongue flapping in its mouth. It tried to ease past Bjorn, keeping to the sides of the chamber, its eyes fixed on me. But Bjorn stretched out his arm, blazing axe blocking the creature’s path.
“If I am no one,” he said, “then why have so many of you gathered to fight me? I am but one man who stands alone.”
If I hadn’t been busy wrestling with a rotten arm, I’d have pointed out to him that he did not stand alone. But the first draug was clawing my shoes while another tried to stab me with a blade shoved over the top of my shield.
“It seems to me that you are either liars or that you are,” Bjorn paused, and I could imagine the smirk on his face, “cowards.”
The draug snarled at the insult, several of them releasing chilling battle cries, but none surged to attack.
Because they were afraid.
No weapon of this world could end the terrible existence that they clung to, but the axe that burned in Bjorn’s hand was not of this world. It was the fire of a god and thus capable of turning them to ash. If I were condemned to this fate, I would welcome an end, yet they flinched as the axe disappeared from Bjorn’s right hand, only to materialize in his left, blocking another creature attempting to reach me.
“Most cowardly of all is your leader,” Bjorn continued, his voice dripping with mockery. “He condemned you to this fate and yet has failed to show himself. Where is your jarl? Does he cower behind the lines, afraid to face the fire of the gods who cursed you to this place?”
I didn’t understand what Bjorn could gain from taunting them besides a last bit of satisfaction before he died, for there was no hope of us killing so many. And given that once dead, we’d likely join their ranks, I couldn’t help but think there’d be consequences for provoking them.
My thoughts on the shortsightedness of Bjorn’s plan vanished as the fetid air swirled, the shield wall parting to reveal an enormous hulking creature.
Skeletal as the rest, it wore a full coat of mail that rattled as it moved, its skull concealed by a helmet, and several weapons belted at its waist. In a voice like howling wind, it demanded, “Who are you to call me coward, Bjorn Firehand?”
“So you have heard of me.” Bjorn rocked on his heels, clearly amused, though how he wasn’t pissing himself from fear was beyond me.
“I have heard many tales in the intervening hours since you stepped into my domain,” the creature hissed. “And told many of my own.”
“I’ve only heard the one about you being a common thief, but by all means, if there is more to tell, I am happy to listen.”
The draug jarl opened its jaw and let out a scream of wrath, the noise like knives to my eardrums.
Bjorn didn’t so much as flinch, only waited for the echoes to silence. “It explains why none recall your name, Jarl. You have no battle fame.”
“I shall win great fame and honor for your death, Firehand,” the creature hissed. “A song sung by skalds for generations to come.”
“Seems unlikely, given none shall hear of it.”
How he could be so brazen, I did not know, for my chest felt bound and my tongue dry as sand.
“It will be sung,” the draug repeated, teeth baring in a grin.
Bjorn shrugged. “Then I suppose we ought to make it a song worth hearing. I challenge you to single combat. I win, you let us pass. I lose, well…I’ll have to spend an eternity listening to songs of your prowess.”
My breath caught. Perhaps his plan wasn’t as idiotic as I’d first believed.
The draug tilted its skull, seeming to consider Bjorn’s proposal, though there wasn’t a warrior present, living or dead, who didn’t know what he’d have to say. To decline would only prove Bjorn’s accusation that he was a coward. He’d lose the respect of all those who followed him, and if his cares were the same in death as they were in life, the loss of reputation would matter to him.
“So be it.” The jarl’s answer blew over me, strands of hair whipping around my face. Yet I swore he smiled as he added, “As long as it be on the terms of the living. Which means, Bjorn Firehand, you must fight using a mortal weapon.”
My stomach dropped. Was that true?
I had my answer when Bjorn went deathly still. “You cannot be killed by steel.”
The jarl’s laugh was echoed by his followers. “That is true, Bjorn Firehand. So now your choice is whether to die with honor. Or without. Either way, you will join my ranks.”