Yet they had numbers.
My grip tightened on my sword, fury rising hot and fast inside me, drowning my fear. Fury that these shells of men would be the end of us despite all we’d done. Despite how hard we’d fought. Snorri and the others said that I was favored by the gods, but was this how they showed their favor? The draug were bound here by the will of the gods and the will of the gods alone, which meant it was the gods’ will that we face them.
“I curse you,” I hissed, not certain if I meant the draug or the gods or both. “I curse you to Helheim, you shades of men. May Hel rule you until the end of days, for you do not deserve the honor of Valhalla!”
The air in the tunnel abruptly turned to ice, and beneath my feet the ground quivered with such violence that I’d have fallen if Bjorn hadn’t caught my arm.
The draug shrieked and tried to flee, but before any went more than a step, what looked like blackened tree roots reached up through the tunnel floor. They wrapped around each of the draug, the creatures screaming as they tried to claw their way free.
I recoiled against Bjorn, shock stealing my breath when, as one, the roots descended and disappeared.
Leaving only scattered bone and scraps of clothing in their wake.
They were gone. All the draug were gone.
“Good to see the gods finally being helpful to our cause,” Bjorn said, but his voice was stilted, devoid of its usual humor.
I swallowed because the alternative was to vomit. “I suppose we needed to pass their test.”
“Not we,” Bjorn said. “You. Though you took your time doing it.”
“I believe the words you are looking for are thank you for saving my arse, Freya.”
The quip stole the last of my bravado. My legs buckled and I fell on my bottom, resting my forehead against my knees to stop the spinning.
Bjorn sat next to me, holding out a waterskin, from which I took a long drink. “It was my idea.”
“Your idea?” I tried to glare at him, which was hard, given that I was on the verge of fainting. Or puking. Or both. “How could you have possibly known that would work?”
“I couldn’t.” All the humor vanished from Bjorn’s face as he clasped my forearms. “But I knew that you’d do what needed to be done.”
“Your confidence is misplaced.” I remembered how I’d hesitated. How afraid I’d been.
Bjorn tilted his head, his expression considering. “I have a great many doubts,” he finally said. “But the courage of Freya Born-in-Fire is not one of them.”
My chest tightened even as a flood of warmth filled my body, because no one had ever given me such a compliment, about something that mattered so much. It meant even more coming from him. I searched for the words to tell him so, but instead found myself arguing. “I’m not courageous. I was terrified to pick it up. Terrified that it would burn through my magic. It was shameful that it took me so long to overcome my cowardice.”
Bjorn let out a laugh that sounded oddly strangled. “If we are having a moment of honesty, in those last few seconds before you killed the jarl, I had some concerns I might shit myself out of pure terror.”
I snorted out a laugh, knowing full well that he was trying to make me feel better. “Bjorn, the only thing you shit is bluster and foolery.”
“It was a valid fear.” He reached down to pull me to my feet, drawing me up the tunnel and away from the remains of the draug. “If you’d made it out alive, it would only have been a matter of time until your tongue was loosened by wine and you told everyone what truly happened. Then not only would I be cursed for eternity to these tunnels as a draug, I’d forever be known to mortals as Bjorn Shitshimself.”
My shoulders shook, I was laughing so hard. “I would never tell.”
“Women always talk.” He led me up a section of stairs, my legs wobbling with each step. “Especially to one another. There is no secret sacred enough to your kind to silence your tongue when you gather. Especially when there is wine.”
I smiled even though I barely had the strength to keep moving. “You speak as though from experience. Tell me, what grave secret of yours was aired by a woman? What did she know that you were so desperate to keep from mocking ears?”
“I have no secrets.” He winked as he looked down at me, arm moving from my shoulders to around my waist, supporting me. “Only large truths that I hope women will not share lest they bring envy into the hearts of their fellow women, which, in turn, will bring their men to my doorstep in a jealous rage spurred by a sense of inadequacy.”
“Ah.” My cheeks flushed, because I suspected what he alluded to was the truth. Bjorn was a large man, so it only made sense that he had a large—“So your demands for discretion are entirely altruistic?”
“I’m glad you understand my self-sacrifice in the name of the greater good.”
I snorted. “I’d sooner believe you’re hung like Thor himself than that you’d sacrifice a drop of piss to protect the vanity of other men.”
Bjorn lifted me over some rubble. “This is why I like you, Freya. You’ve got a brain between your ears and a saucy tongue to voice the thoughts within it.”
Heat flooded me. “Trying to distract me with compliments? You’re losing your edge, Bjorn. Next you’ll tell me that I’m pretty and I’ll lose all respect for your wit.”
“It is hard to keep one’s wits when faced with a woman as beautiful as the sight of shore to a man who has been lost at sea.”
My heart skipped, then sped. Because that was an entirely different sort of compliment, meaningful in an entirely different kind of way. I’d spent so much time thinking about how I felt about him, but this was the first time I truly considered how he felt about me. “Bjorn—”
My legs chose that moment to give out from exhaustion, and only his grip on my waist kept me from crashing to the ground.
“My feet hurt,” he declared, lowering me so that my back rested against the tunnel wall. Setting his axe on the ground, he sat next to me. “And I’m hungry. Fighting makes me hungry.”
“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I don’t know why I’m so tired.”
Bjorn dug around his pack, extracting some dried meat, which he handed to me. “Because you’ve barely slept in days. Because you just climbed halfway up a mountain. Because you just battled an army of draug. Because—”
“You made your point.” Biting off a piece of the meat, I chewed, my eyes blindly staring at the crimson flames of his axe. I was exhausted, but my mind kept skipping from thought to thought, too overwhelmed to focus but unable to relax.
A scuff of noise followed by the sound of scattering pebbles caught my attention and I tensed, staring back the way we came. Bjorn went still as well, but then he shook his head. “The draug are vanquished, Freya. They are a threat no longer.”
I knew that. Had seen it with my own eyes, but I still stared into the blackness for a long time until my heart settled, my breathing slowing enough for me to take a bite of the meat I held.
We ate and drank in silence, the only sound the draft of wind through the tunnels and the crackle of Bjorn’s axe, which had turned the stone it rested upon black. With the distance we’d climbed, long gone were the gusts of fetid steam, and the cold seeped into my bones, the draft coming from above frigid. Shivering, I held my hands out to the heat of the flame, my right knuckles seeping blood from punching the draug. My fingers ached with stiffness, my skin painfully tight, a constant reminder of the moment my life had changed.
“Where is Liv’s salve?” Bjorn asked. “You’re to use it every day.”
The thought of digging it out felt exhausting. “I don’t need it.”
“You do.”