Chapter 41
41
Lyra
Upper corridors and stairwells were protected by Stav Guard. Two kingdoms faced danger in Stonegate tonight, and they took no risks. It was a stroke of good fortune there were Stav Guard aplenty, so I could fade into the chaos without being seen.
Word of me in the halls would reach King Damir and he’d chain me to the walls.
Sweat gathered around my palm the tighter I held the dagger. I fought for Stonegate tonight, when once my heart yearned to watch it fall.
No. I fought for a man I was forbidden to love. I fought for a brother who was not my blood. I fought for Emi, a friend I never expected. I fought for a prince with a good heart who might one day change this wretched fortress into something worthy of protection.
I slipped out of the front gates. Walls were stacked in Stav Guard, their dark tunics like stalks of scorched wheat all in a row, all willing to join the gods in Salur. Another horn blared in the night. I pressed my back to the wall when a heavy gate cranked free. From inside the bowels of a dark tower, rows of new Stav Guard marched forward.
My mouth went dry. These warriors bore crests of crossed seax blades, not the head of a wolf. Their hair was braided alike, no matter the thickness or shade—a ridge down the center of the skull with the sides shorn close to the scalp.
Their shoulders were too thick, too bulky. Some had jaws so square it appeared they had an extra set of teeth.
Berserkirs. These men—no less than a hundred—had been melded over and over, crafting soul bones to their bodies like bulky armor beneath the skin.
Their eyes were soulless, blackened. Tassels of colorful leather pinned to their tunics were symbols of their brutality, of how many lives they’d sent to Salur. They were far enough away I could not make out the numbers in full, but many of the Berserkir Stav wore their kill marks like a cloak across their shoulders.
Their heavy steps trampled across the bridges and cobbled roads until they reached the gates. I sprinted to the end of one bridge, leaning over the edge.
Along the outer gates, lines and lines of warriors—Myrdan and Jorvan alike—crashed swords and daggers against the bronze edges of a sea of invaders.
Ravagers. The crimson paint across their faces looked like they’d bathed in blood. Fara wolves howled and snapped at the ankles of the Stav, their tapered ears flicking to the whistles and commands from their masters.
A gate near the southern wall hung crooked on the hinges. Wood beams were tossed aside. Four Stav Guard were sprawled across the grass near the opening, dead.
That was their entry point.
From this vantage, I could make out the vibrant tunics and cloaks of Myrdan fighters tangled with Stav Guard. My head felt like it spun in delirium. So many angles, so much blood that the air was hot with the tang of it. I wanted to be everywhere, yet I could not move my feet.
“Lyra, what in the gods’ names are you doing here?” Kael’s sharp tone broke my stupor.
His hair was pasted to his brow from sweat and mud, and all along the edge of his Stav blade were bits of cloth and thick blood. He wasn’t alone. Mikkal Jakobson stood at his side, breathless and dirty much the same.
“Get back in the palace.” Kael gripped my arm. “Did Ashwood let you out?”
I shook him off. “I made my own choice. I could not sit there and do nothing. I helped in the battle of the wall.”
Kael looked ready to argue, then his gaze widened. “The hidden archers?”
“Thane will tell you.”
“Gods.” Kael looked over his shoulder at Mikkal. His younger half brother let his sword sink to his side for a moment. “We don’t know how the ravagers breached the walls, but they despise you most of all. Skilled as you are, you bring more risk to us here than in the palace.”
It was a blow to the chest, but not a lie. Should any of the ravagers catch sight of the silver scars, they would force the Stav to move and drift from positions to keep me safe.
“I can’t sit and do nothing.” I held Kael’s stare. “Skul Drek faced me. He knows of me and Roark…he went after him.”
Kael cupped the back of my head. “And do you think Ashwood can focus on surviving if he sees you rushing into blades with a single dagger, Lyra? Think. Do not risk your life or his tonight. The palace—”
“Is warded,” Mikkal interrupted, using the pommel on his sword to gesture at the clank of the portcullises falling into place on every gate.
“Dammit.” Kael looked about, puzzling through a next move, then spun on me. “Listen to me, Ly. The ravagers will be hunting you out there, but you can protect lives here in the township. Mikkal is wounded. Edvin’s new house is near the satin shop. Go there. Most of the inner homes are guarded well enough, but with their children, I doubt Freydis and Edvin will refuse a few extra blades. They can tend to his wound before the fool gets infected or worse—wakes in Salur.”
Kael glared at the brother he was not given a chance to know. Mikkal Jakobson had been schooled by Henrik to be the future jarl after Kael was disowned, but he was not a hateful soul. Part of me believed he still viewed Kael as his elder brother, a leader.
“Go.” Kael shoved me into Mikkal’s chest.
“Kael Darkwin.” I fought the tremble to my chin. Kael paused long enough to look back at us. “Don’t you dare die.”
One corner of his weary face curved. “Same, Ly.”
Roads were clear through the market. Doors were sealed. Lights were doused.
By the time we reached the new household of the Skalfirth crafters, Mikkal stumbled a bit, his breath more like a ragged wheeze.
“Sit there.” I urged him to take a place on the stoop, his back to the cool clay-and-wood wall.
“Súlka Bien,” Mikkal said, voice rough. “If I meet Salur—”
“Hush, Mikkal.”
“If I meet Salur,” he barreled on, “tell him…tell my brother, I never stopped caring. He did not deserve what was done.”
I closed my eyes and rapped on a window with my knuckles. “He didn’t.” I pounded again and called out to Edvin in a hushed voice.
“Tell him, won’t you?”
“No. You’re not going to Salur, you fool. Edvin, open the damn door!”
Mikkal let his head fall back. A weak smile spread over his mouth. He looked a bit like Kael. The same eyes, the same strong jaw and full lips. Mikkal’s hair was icy and straight while Kael’s was golden and messy.
I hated Jarl Jakobson more for denying his sons a life together.
The door cracked. We were met with the gleam of an ax blade for a few heartbeats before Gisli pulled it back. “Lyra.”
“Help me. Mikkal Jakobson is badly wounded.”
Hilda’s husband was a soft-spoken man, but strong as stone. Woodwork and hauling logs had built him into a warrior without the blade.
I hardly did anything to help drag Mikkal into the longhouse other than ease his ankles atop the table in the center room once Gisli had him sprawled on his back.
Hilda emerged from a rear room, Freydis at her back.
“Ly.” Hilda gingerly touched Mikkal’s shoulder. “Gods, what is happening out there?”
“Ravagers broke through the gates.”
“They’re growing stronger, then.” Hilda’s face paled. “The walls haven’t been breached in decades.”
I waved the truth away, unable to confess my belief the horrid tether chaining me to Skul Drek brought this attack. Mikkal would die if the wound wasn’t dealt with soon. “Hilda, can you craft a bone tonic for Mikkal?”
Without soul bones, the touch of a crafter to crushed marrow could amplify strength and health against specific ailments. I prayed to the gods—who seemed to have turned their faces from us—a tonic would be enough to seal Mikkal’s wound.
Hilda’s brow furrowed. “Chicken bones will need to do.”
She fled from the room, leaving a back door open.
Whimpers overhead drew my gaze to the loft. I forced a smile at the curious, tear-filled eyes of Edvin’s children.
“All right, loves.” I went to the ladder, one hand on a rung. “Try to sleep and perhaps your fylgja guide will visit your dreams and give you a peek at what good fortune awaits you.”
Freydis gave me a gentle smile and set about peeling back Mikkal’s tunic.
“Edvin left,” she murmured, avoiding my gaze. “Went to help again.”
“He survived the last, he’ll do so again.” I schooled my face into something flat. Edvin would see it as a dishonor if he did not protect his family, but he’d only just won them back. Now it was all at risk again.
Should anything happen to him I would meld a dozen bones until I faced Skul Drek. I’d find a way to do to the assassin what I did to Tomas.
Hilda returned with thin, bloody bones in her palms.
It took little time for her craft to crush the bones, manipulating them into small bits of powder and narrow pieces. A wince contorted her features from the ache of using bone craft, but Hilda didn’t stop, shouting for a few herbs and oils to be gathered and added to the bone dust.
Gisli and Freydis did as she asked and held Mikkal down when the burn of the bone tonic hissed and crackled along the gash carved deep into his ribs.
“Never said it was comfortable.” Hilda wiped a drop of sweat off her brow, fingers battered and red from crafting too fiercely.
A tug on my hand drew me to a little face at my side. Edvin’s youngest hugged a linen rag doll and peered at me with crystalline eyes from behind a mess of red hair. “Kris left.”
“What?” I lowered to a crouch.
The girl pointed to the open back door. “Kris went to find Papa.”
Gods. No. Krisjan, the eldest of the three, wanted nothing more than to be like his father.
I took hold of Roark’s dagger, told the girl to stay put, and rushed outside to confused shouts from the others at my back.
“Krisjan!” I screamed his name, racing down the cobbled streets.
Cries of battle drew too near. My lungs burned, my body ached, and when I rounded a corner near the opened gates, I let out a sob of relief. There, crouched behind a wooden cask, a boy too small for the seax he carried was crouched, watching the destruction near the border walls.
I ducked behind his cask. “Krisjan. You cannot be here.” Big, wet eyes lifted, filled with fright. I wrapped an arm around his small shoulders. “Come. We must go back.”
The boy didn’t protest. He hardly uttered a sound when I pried his little fingers off the hilt and took hold of the seax. I clung to his small hand, pausing to look over my shoulder to the gates, searching, fearing.
Kael was out there. Edvin. I did not find them, but an unseen hook, an undeniable draw, pulled me to Roark at once.
He was impossible to avoid, a predator.
Blood clung to Roark’s cheeks, his lips, the blaze of his eyes spun with a bit of madness. One hand gripped a seax, the other his dark battle-ax. From hilt to point, both blades were soaked in blood.
Ravagers made their attempts to strike at the Sentry. He crouched, then landed the second blade in necks, hearts, bellies.
Roark moved with mesmerizing violence. A bloody dance where one partner was left standing and the other in pieces.
I swallowed down the need to run to him and turned to the boy. “Hurry now. We need to get inside.”
Together, we rushed toward the longhouse, but when we rounded the bend, my heart stopped.
A bulky warrior blocked our path. His skull was misshapen, a look of rounded points like horns. The Stav Guard who’d been there the day I was brought before King Damir. What was he doing?
The guard’s eyes were wild, like a flame caught up by the wind. He rolled a short blade in his hand, teeth bared. There was a hunger in the way he looked at Krisjan, like the boy was nothing more than a beating heart to slash open.
I’d never wondered how bloodlust might appear until now. It was feral and wretched, a wicked trance the Berserkir couldn’t escape.
This was the untamed violence of the berserksgangur poison taking hold.
No mistake, the Berserkir’s mind was overtaken by the ferocity of the many soul bones. Impenetrable, unbreakable. He craved battle, and would not let a moment of shedding blood go to waste.
Only now his desire for slaughter was placed on the head of a child.
The Berserkir roared a cry, one laden in a twisted glee, like death thrilled him to the bone.
I slid in front of Krisjan, my arms encircled around his trembling body, nothing more than a fleshy shield. I clenched my eyes, waiting for the killing blow.
It never came.
With my arms still cradling Krisjan’s head, I glimpsed over my shoulder.
My heart stuttered.
From the shadows of the arcades and crevices, billows of darkness draped over broad shoulders. Skul Drek materialized at the Berserkir’s side. Red, wild eyes met the dull emptiness of the warrior’s.
With a guttural cry, the warrior crashed his blade toward Skul Drek.
The assassin drifted to one side, like stepping from one shadow to another. Ropes of inky darkness wrapped around the Berserkir’s arms, ankles. Skeins rammed through the warrior’s nose, blotting out the whites of his eyes.
The warrior slashed and jabbed, cutting through the murky shadows like slicing through cobwebs on the rafters.
Rage burned through the deadened stare of Damir’s manipulated Stav. Whatever brutality burned through his soul from the bones of his armor now contorted his features into something frightening, like the sneer of evil.
Skul Drek rolled his shoulders, readying to strike. The way he fought wasn’t natural. There wasn’t a clash of steel against steel. When Skul Drek struck, it was more like he attacked something else, something beneath the flesh of the Berserkir.
The Berserkir snarled when the assassin slashed another ribbon of darkness across his body, forcing the warrior to a halt. A rabid bear in a trap.
Skul Drek whirled around and waved one hand. He didn’t shout. There was no scrape of his raspy, heavy voice in my head.
I blinked and spun toward the boy. “Run, Krisjan.” I could see the rooftop of his longhouse. “Go! Do not look back.”
He obeyed. Head down, the boy darted down the street, never once looking at the phantom who’d become a defender.
I took the bone dagger from my chamber in hand and watched as shadows clashed with a Stav blade. The Berserkirs were unstoppable. Iron and steel from blades could wound them, but rarely kill. But the lashes from Skul Drek’s mesmerizing darkness landed the warrior on his knees, yet I could not see a drop of blood.
Coils of dark tethers strangled the warrior’s thick neck. Positioned behind the Berserkir, Skul Drek moved his fiery eyes to find me.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t tell me to run. Heat flushed through my blood, and my heart quickened.
“Are you speaking to me?”
His skin was cold slate, but when his lips curled his sharp teeth gleamed against the darkness surrounding his head.
All at once, my body careened forward. Frosted wind pummeled my cheeks the same as in my bedchamber. Salt and smoke filled my lungs with each breath. Longhouses, sod rooftops, and cobbled roads were mirrored in dripping darkness.
Once again, he’d pulled me—perhaps my soul—into the mirrored space.
“Leave.” Skul Drek’s strained voice shattered my stun.
His darkness remained, but was now wrapped around a collision of different shades of gold. Here, the Berserkir’s glowing body was made of different shapes and angles. I could plainly see every different shade of each soul bone.
He was a thick slab of armor. From the bulging shards across his skull, the ridges of his cheeks, his jaw, to a manipulated breastplate that shielded his heart and ribs. The warrior was hardly himself at all.
“He has locked on the boy and on me. The lust for blood will hunt us.”
“I will keep him,” Skul Drek snapped.
“But you…you cannot kill him, can you?” I could make out the lashes across the bones, doubtless made by the shadows. They acted like knives against the trapped souls in the bones. But none reached the Berserkir’s heart, his lungs, or his true skull.
I held my palms in front of me. The roar of the magic burned in my chest, the taste of ice and salt and smoke settled on my tongue.
“There is no time,” Skul Drek warned, as though he already knew what I was considering.
I ignored him and pressed both palms against a thick, jagged shard of a soul bone melded to the Berserkir’s ribs.
Through Tomas’s unwarranted mercy, I knew to unravel melded bone ached and burned on my own body. Dozens of stinging jabs prickled along my skin until the bone shifted under the Berserkir’s skin.
Narrow threads that had been fastened in place over the soul bones were still there, stitched by another melder’s craft. Like a hem on a skirt, I tugged on the threads, unstitching each one.
Skul Drek grunted when the Berserkir’s bright form shifted. He was fighting back.
“I can make him vulnerable.”
The assassin snapped his teeth again. “You wish for pain.”
“I know it is painful, but he is lost to the violence of corrupt bones. They are so armored we cannot even take his head. Tell me another way to kill him, or do you plan to battle him until the gods intervene?”
Skul Drek looked behind him into the nothingness. “Make haste.”
I returned my palms to the gilded stitches across a soul bone shielding the Berserkir’s neck. One by one, I unlaced the old melding. The bone snapped free and the warrior’s form jerked. Skul Drek tightened his shadows, holding the man in place.
I cried out, doubling over when the agony of unbreaking craft burned in my stomach.
“ Melder .” Skul Drek shifted, almost like he was torn on how to act—keep the Berserkir in his grasp? Or step beside me?
I held up a hand, bile on my tongue. “I’m fine. A little more.”
The warrior thrashed. I didn’t hear him scream, not in the mirror.
Chips and pieces of rune-marked bone flickered and fell away until the gold bone faded to the glowing ashes and drifted away on the icy wind.
Teeth clenched, I found a final piece that would open enough of a gap to sink a blade inside to his heart. Pain in my own body felt like falling into a bed of hot coals.
I cried out and stumbled.
A cold hand reached out, catching me under the arm. Skul Drek did not release me until the final thread snapped.
I bent over and heaved, retching from the pain.
“Go.” Skul Drek spoke in more of a growl than a voice. “Do not be seen here.”
“Pull back the ravagers,” I said weakly. “They follow you. Pull them back.”
He hesitated. “As you say.”
His blazing eyes looked between us. The rope was as thick as the one that once held him bound to the distant shadows. There was nothing at his back, no chain fading into the mists. Now it seemed to have altered course and bound the assassin to me. I didn’t understand it, but there was little time to fret over it.
Skul Drek took a step closer. “You brighten the night, and I will fight to keep it.”
A gust of cold chased away the inky shadows of the mirror. I fell onto my side on the damp cobblestones.
The clatter of steel over the stones drew my attention. With the same stance as in the mirror, Skul Drek held the Berserkir in his inky tethers, only now the warrior was bloodied and misshapen. His skin was shredded like claws scraped over his skin.
All gods. I’d torn him apart. What appeared as unraveling gilded threads in the mirror was slaughter in reality.
Blood bubbled over the Stav’s lips. “P-please.” His foggy eyes looked at the blade in my hand.
I clutched the dagger against my heart, holding the Berserkir’s gaze. “Dine in Salur tonight.”
On the next heartbeat, I thrust the point through his heart.
The feeling of carving through flesh, bone, the shudder of his body, the wet gasps as he fell, all of it was sickening. It was merciful. It was a death I caused.
The dagger caught in his chest and took me forward when the Berserkir toppled to the side. Cold, harsh hands caught me again.
I looked to Skul Drek, pulse frenzied. He said nothing for a drawn-out moment, then all at once shoved me in the same direction Krisjan had fled. One foot caught on a raised cobblestone, flinging me forward onto my knees.
I whirled around, but by the time I looked back, Skul Drek was already gone.