Page 78 of Edge of the Wild

“Get up,” he shouted at Dagr’s man, as he passed. “Get up or be killed.”

Two Beserkirs turned to meet his next approach, one with a rough-hewn stone axe, the other with a spear. Erik parried the spear thrust with his sword, dodged the swing of the axe, and whirled low, catching the spearman in the gut. Erik heard the air go out of his lungs; saw him drop his spear to clutch at his abdomen, where red was already seeping through the fur of his tunic.

The axe lifted, prepared to drop – and then Leif was there, driving the man back, slicing cleanly through fur, skin, sinew, leaving the man howling, bleeding, and disarmed.

Erik searched for Dagr, and found him amongst the fallen, feet twitching, but only with death throes.

“Edda!” He spotted Ingvar’s son standing with his sword and face bloodied, breath steaming, expression glazed-over. “Edda, gather Dagr’s men and fall back toward the keep!”

Edda roused himself, and nodded. Called the men to him – those still standing. The ground was littered with arrows and bodies: Beserkir and Aeretollean both. And there were more Beserkirs coming, Erik saw, as a fresh wave of them poured out of the far tree line, screaming like demons.

The beast overhead was screaming, too. Erik cast another glance toward it, saw the pearl flash of its scaled belly.A dragon. A bloody dragon in the flesh.

Where the devil is Ragnar?

Then a cowled man stinking of dead bear ran at him, and Erik lifted his sword again.

And with a shudder, the dragon landed.

~*~

Oliver couldn’t remember the last time he’d run so fast. He pelted down from the parapet, along galleries, through the hall – “Oliver, where are you–” Birger called out to him, as he raced past – and finally out the door and into the stable yard, which teemed with activity: guards barking orders and preparing to mount as grooms led tacked-up horses from the stable. The gig was up: with the element of surprise gone, and the enemy engaged, a cavalry unit was preparing to ride out and give aid.

Oliver had no faith that any amount of cavalry could stand up to a dragon.

He gripped a passing guard’s sleeve. “I need a horse.”

The man pulled up, already scowling as he turned to him – and then blinked when he recognized Oliver. “Your – your lordship?”

It was his first time going from Annoyance to Your Lordship in the eyes of a household servant, and it momentarily threw his focus. He shook himself and repeated. “I need a horse. Quickly,” he added, when the guard only stared at him. “I have to get out there in the field. It’s imperative.”

“Your lordship.” The man frowned, gaze tracking over him. “I have orders that you aren’t to leave the keep.”

Oliver said, “Yes, very well, but that doesn’t matter now. I have to get out there.”

“Your lordship–”

Since explaining about dragons and Drakes and ice and visions would be about as successful as convincing Erik of the same, Oliver dodged around the man, snatched a set of reins from the nearest groom – “Your lordship!” – and scrambled up into the courser’s saddle. He heeled it sharply as the guard moved to take his reins.

“Sorry!” Oliver called, leaning low over the startled horse’s neck as it broke into a canter. “I’ll be sure to tell them you tried your best!”

~*~

Erik braced a foot on the body below him and pulled his sword free of a ribcage with a hard yank and a sickening squelch.

Magnus pushed past him to clash with the next bear-shirt. Behind him, Leif grunted with effort, and the snow crunched beneath the weight of a fallen corpse.

Askr shouted, “Erik! Erik, look out!”

He was looking. Having trouble believing, wondering what in the hell he was going to do – but definitely looking.

The dragon was as tall at the shoulder as the great, hairy yaks of the Waste, made taller by its slender, serpentine neck, and far longer by its tapered, spiked tail, whipping slowly back and forth behind it like the tail of a hungry cat as it stalked toward them, head low, blue eyes burning. Its great wings were folded, and angled back, so that your attention kept arrowing to its face: to its low, sinister horned head, and all its many, many teeth.

“By the Val-Father’s beard!” Askr shouted. “A cold-drake, as I live and breathe.”

“You won’t be breathing for long if you don’t fall back,” Erik snapped. “Move your men. Edda! Retreat! This way.”

The Beserkirs were falling back as well, melting away into the trees from whence they’d first appeared, just as awed and frightened as the Aeretolleans in the face of the drake’s advance.

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