Page 113 of Heart of Winter
Rune choked. He bent forward, retching, clawing at his own neck, fighting to take a breath, to keep from vomiting. His eyes filled with tears and his chest heaved, and black spots crowded his vision.
Hands gripped his shoulder, and pushed him upright and back, until he was flat against a section of wall. He tried to bat them away, but his movements were weak and ineffectual, and he was choking, choking, running out of air, bile pushing up his throat.
Through a sheen of tears, he saw Ormr’s ugly snarl. “You are nothing,” he hissed in Rune’s face. “Your family is nothing. You’ll all die choking on your own blood.”
Rune finally managed to drag in a breath. “What–”
And a sharp, white-hot bolt of pain in his abdomen robbed him of air again.
~*~
Oliver woke slowly, already wincing against the bright light in his face. He lay against something warm and solid, a heavy weight draped across his waist, and when he stretched, experimentally, he was sore in a way he hadn’t been in a while. Fresh, vivid memories tumbled through his sleepy mind, and he realized it was Erik he lay against, with a pleasant shiver, half-smiling, trying to crack his eyes open against the assaulting light.
Then an urgent voice said, “Erik,” and he startled completely awake, filled with immediate dread.
A few blinks revealed that the light came from a lantern – held over them in Bjorn’s hand. Bjorn, still fully-dressed, wore a distressed expression that left Oliver wanting to pull the blankets up over his head and hide. It was one thing to know someone was sleeping with the king, quite another to find them tangled and naked in the aftermath.
But Erik sat up with a groan, pushed his rumpled hair back, and rubbed the grit from his eyes with the heel of one hand. The other hand slipped through the blankets, found Oliver’s hand, and covered it.
Oliver stilled.
In a sleep-rough croak, Erik asked, “What is it?”
Bjorn said, “It’s Rune.”
~*~
It was the wee hours. The clouds had finally cleared, and the moon hung low in an indigo sky, its light the faintest brush across the snowy fields as they passed the windows in their flight down to Olaf’s surgery.
Oliver pulled the belt of his dressing gown tighter, and didn’t even feel the cold flags beneath his bare feet. Erik was likewise clothed ahead of him, walking with long, ground-eating strides that Oliver struggled to keep up with. Bjorn led the way, the lantern held before him now that the cressets on the wall had burned down so low. Magnus and Lars, faces drawn with worry and exhaustion, followed, still armored and uniformed.
Two more guards flanked the door to the surgery, in their helms, spears on their shoulders, but with dressing gowns pulled hastily on over night shirts.
“Everyone else is either on wall patrol,” Bjorn explained as he opened the door and stood aside to let Erik, and Oliver, enter first. “And I sent three to rouse Ragnar, wherever he’s gone off to.”
Erik only nodded and swept inside.
Oliver hurried to follow, pulse pounding in his throat.
Dozens of candles blazed through the lab, though they held none of the festive charm as those in the great hall earlier. Their light flickered over glass vials and bottles and beakers, illuminating liquids in all sorts of sinister colors. Oliver forced his gaze away from the specimens floating suspended in jars, made all the more horrifying by candlelight, amidst the buzz of panic.
A panic that had a smell: blood and fear sweat. The room’s only occupants were past the lab, in the surgery. Leif and Revna – Leif still in his feast clothes, Revna bundled in layers of dressing gowns and coats, her feet in fur slippers – stood at the head of the table, bracketing Rune’s pale, slack face. Revna stroked unsteady fingertips through his dark hair, while Olaf bustled about the table, instruments gleaming in his hands.
“Light,” the physician muttered. “I need more light.”
Without breaking stride, Erik gripped the stand of a large iron candelabra and carried it with him, candle flames streaming out behind. He set it down when he reached the operating table, and then gripped the wooden edge with both hands. “What happened?” he demanded.
Tears slid unchecked down Revna’s cheeks. She opened her mouth to respond, let out a shuddering breath instead, and wiped her face with quick, jerky movements. She looked equal parts furious and devastated, face nearly as drawn and pale as Rune’s.
“He was stabbed,” Leif said, his voice like iron. “He didn’t come in with the others, and he was drunk, so I went out to find him, and I saw the tail end of it.”
When Oliver drew up beside Erik, Leif lifted his head and met his uncle’s gaze, his own wrathful. “It was Ormr.”
Erik’s hands flexed and tightened on the table edge. His chest lifted as he inhaled sharply.
“Ormr? Who sparred with him?” Oliver asked. “Why?”
“Because the Úlfheðnar are fucking animals, that’s why,” Revna spat, her voice cracked and wavering.
