Beyond a Darkened Shore(94)
Leif did not give a stirring speech to raise morale for the battle ahead. These were hardened warriors, raiders who needed very little encouragement to pick up an axe or sword. I could see eagerness in the tightness of their grips on their weapons, the subtle shifts of their bodies, waiting for the word to be given to charge.
So it was for my ears alone when Leif leaned over and said, “Remember, we work together. We’ll take them down one by one, and we’ll use each other’s strengths to destroy them.”
I wanted to tell him I loved him, that I was glad I had come north with him, but I swallowed the words. To speak them aloud was a promise I wasn’t ready to make. I wanted to blame it on the horrible truth I’d discovered about his father, but I knew it wasn’t his father’s sins that stayed my tongue, or the fact that he was my enemy. The truth was: I was afraid. Fear clutched at my heart when I thought of what Leif had traded for his power. How could I tell him I loved him only to have him forfeit his life at the end of this? Worse, it would seem like a good-bye, and I refused to believe we wouldn’t survive this or that his life would be taken so soon—not after we had survived so much.
“Together,” I agreed.
He reached across and touched my thigh, and I squeezed his hand.
Arn returned, only lightly out of breath from his sprint to the city. “Only two guards posted at this gate, but they aren’t alert. They don’t expect an attack. There are five scouting near the quay, and two more at the back gate.”
“Then I will take over one guard and have him kill the other,” I said. When Leif made as if to protest, I continued before he could argue. “This is a job for stealth, not raw power. If you want to preserve the element of surprise, then you must let me do this.”
Leif nodded.
I touched my heels lightly to Sleipnir’s sides and trotted down the hill. Twenty of my undead clansmen flowed behind me and before me. I’d called them without even realizing it.
Sleipnir’s powerful legs ate up the distance, and it wasn’t long before I saw the guards Arn had scouted. They stood on either side of the barred gateway into the village beyond. They were true giants, as enormous as the ones we’d fought what felt like a lifetime ago. But as one drew into the light of a torch, I let out a faint breath. He might have had colossal height, but his face appeared human—handsome, even.
There was a terrible moment where this made me hesitate, as though only those who looked the part of a monster deserved to die, but then I came to my senses and dismounted.
The ground was cold and rocky, but I sat anyway. My clansmen surrounded me without so much as a whispered command. I closed my eyes and pushed my spirit out as easily as exhaling.
Once free of my body, I could see the swirling darkness that made up the giants. A glowing red brightness in the center of the one closest to me drew my attention, but it wasn’t his heart I was interested in. As if sensing a shift in the air around him, the giant turned toward me.
In that instant, I streamed into his mind. Relief hit me powerfully when I found it as malleable as any mortal’s. The giant knew I had infiltrated him, but it was as if I’d imprisoned him within his own mind. He tried to threaten me, tried to intimidate me with thoughts of promised violence, but I immediately suppressed them. He watched helplessly as I took control.
I forced the giant to draw the broadsword sheathed at his side. Before the other giant could even realize he was under attack, the giant I controlled ran him through with his sword.
Your speed and strength will be useful to me, I told my captive, but he could only rage at me from behind the walls of his cage.
I used him to push open the two massive doors that barred access to the village beyond, and I heard the pounding of hooves and booted feet behind me. Leif and the others were coming.
As the giant’s long legs strode through the gate, he came to an unsteady halt while I took in the horrifying sight of the village.
Blood and gore, thick as mud, were smeared across the walls of houses and drying on the hard-packed earth. The massacre that the j?tnar had wrought on this village was plain to see in the firelight. The smell of rotting flesh was so strong I would have gagged had I been in my own body. The salty smell of the nearby sea wasn’t even enough to mask the scent. Pieces of people littered the ground—an arm here, a head, a torso. The villagers hadn’t stood a chance against them when the j?tnar came and claimed it as their own.
As the whole of our army made their way through the gates, the occupants slowly became alerted to the attack. Fires were lit around the village. I could feel the vibrations in the earth as giants raced toward us, but more disturbing were the mortal men who joined them. They boiled out of thatched huts like ants from a destroyed mound.
I hesitated even as they clashed with Leif’s army, swords and axes clattering together in the terrible din of war. Leif had said that long ago there were Northmen who had joined Fenris’s cause, but the idea was so foreign to me I hadn’t truly believed it until this moment.
Why would they join forces with monsters? I thought, and I directed my thought to the giant I kept imprisoned. He refused to answer me, his silence sullen.
I forced him to respond, commanding his thoughts as I commanded his body.
They tire of the failed promises of the gods, he said. They tire of sacrificing their animals, their friends and neighbors, even their own lives only to have those sacrifices and prayers go unanswered.