Beyond a Darkened Shore(65)
I wheeled Sleipnir toward the closest group of my army. I needed them to focus their efforts on the j?tunn. With hand on sword, I pointed with the blade toward the horse-faced j?tunn. “Bring him down,” I said to my army.
Eleven of them responded immediately, surging down the hillside like a shadowy fog.
But before I could follow them, two of Sigtrygg’s men rushed me. While I brought my sword down upon one, Sleipnir attacked the other with such ferocity, my breath caught in my throat. With his ears pinned down and teeth bared, he seemed more wolf than horse. Even the shape of his teeth had changed: no longer broad and flat for clipping blades of grass, but with long, pointed canines. He sank his teeth into the other man’s arm, tearing the flesh down to the bone. The man’s screams were terrible, and I swung my sword in an arc, slicing his throat just to end his suffering.
When I searched for the j?tunn again, I was awestruck to find him on the ground. The giant rolled and writhed in an effort to dislodge my undead clansmen who crawled all over him, stabbing him repeatedly with their swords.
I thought of how the monster had once held both Leif and me in his hands, how I’d truly thought in that moment that we would die, and then I glanced down at my phantom horse. What had he endured after we’d left? They’d killed him and ripped apart his corpse. As if reading my thoughts, Sleipnir charged toward the fallen giant.
But before I could vault down and end the monster, Leif appeared.
His face twisted in fury, he plunged his sword straight through the j?tunn’s heart. The giant writhed one last time and then was still. With arm muscles bulging, Leif yanked his sword free again. He met my gaze from across the field, chest heaving. But that look said so much: his men who were slaughtered had been avenged.
My undead clansmen immediately moved on to the remaining human soldiers, and I followed.
“Sigtrygg!” Leif shouted, and I followed his line of sight to Sigtrygg astride a dark gray charger. In contrast to his plainly armored soldiers, the king wore robes trimmed in fox fur, a small circlet of gold upon his head. Rage boiled up in me at the sight of him, and Sleipnir threw back his head and trumpeted a warning.
Before Leif could charge after him, more of Sigtrygg’s men attacked, dividing Leif’s attention. I was on my own.
I didn’t even need to touch my heels to Sleipnir’s sides—he galloped toward the king without prompting, his ears flat against his head. Sigtrygg was pale—he knew what I was capable of—but he raised his sword to meet mine.
Our blades rang out across the field. Sleipnir took a chunk of flesh from the gray charger’s neck, and its screams added to the brutal cacophony.
Despite my training with Leif, the king was still the superior fighter, and he would have knocked me from Sleipnir’s back had he not met my gaze with his. I reached out with my mind and latched on to his, forcing him back.
“How are you alive?” he demanded through gritted teeth, even as his mind struggled against mine. “They found no trace of you. Mide should be mine!”
But he thought of much more than Mide. I saw designs on the rest of éirinn, on the Northman lands beyond, and farther. All of this, because of an alliance with the j?tnar.
Shock and disgust warred within me as memories flitted through the king’s head: the j?tnar coming to him, offering him the chance to take over the known world with them. Offering him the chance to be the king of so much more than Dubhlinn.
“You brought one j?tunn with you, but what of the others? What of the ones that have been free to roam éirinn?”
He refused to answer, so I ripped into his mind until he was screaming for mercy.
“Where are they?” I demanded again.
This time, he didn’t dare refuse me. “Their leader called them north. He is preparing to move his army as one.”
“You have betrayed us all by joining forces with creatures who will burn éirinn to ashes. You will never be king of Mide.”
He struggled pitifully against my hold, and I smiled grimly.
“I will defeat you in battle, and then I will take your crown for myself, pagan. It’s time a Celt ruled Dubhlinn again.”
The king surprised me by laughing. “We are alike, you and I. You should admit the truth: you want my kingdom for yourself.”
Vengeance had been my primary motivation, but there was something that stirred within me at the mention of his kingdom, a burning ambition I’d never known I had.
“You called me pagan, but you are no better—what is this spell you have cast over me if not dark magic?”
His point seemed to reverberate through my mind. With my undead army around me, and as the daughter of the Morrigan, how could I sneer at those considered pagan when I was no better? With an angry shove, I released his mind.
He landed on his back, his sword thrown a few feet away. I dismounted in a rush and stalked toward him. Sigtrygg struggled to stand, no doubt dazed from his hard fall.
I kicked his sword toward him. “Pick it up,” I said in a growl. This was a duel, and I wouldn’t cheat by using my mind control on him. He would die fairly—by my blade alone.
As soon as he picked up his sword, I attacked. He would have been skilled had he not been greatly weakened already by my mental attack, and my thirst for vengeance made my sword swing true. He parried two of my swings, even kicked me back with a boot to my abdomen. But on the third, my sword sliced open his chest. Even with blood spilling out of the wound, he continued to come at me.