Page 101 of A Curse Carved in Bone
“We need to get Bjorn!” I hissed after I shut Steinunn’s door. “She’ll tell Harald that I was here. He might kill him before tomorrow.”
“He won’t,” Geir snapped. “Bjorn is bait for you, Freya. He won’t kill him until he’s caught you.”
Logically, I knew that. But there was a lot of pain that could be inflicted before death, and leaving Bjorn to suffer while I escaped wasn’t a thought I was willing to entertain. Especially with all my plans to rescue him in shambles.
Geir gripped my shoulders. “We can’t help him if you’re dead. We didn’t bring enough warriors to get him out by force and it’s Skalanders we’ll have to fight. It was you who said you didn’t wish innocents to die because they had the misfortune of being deceived.”
I swayed on my feet, warring with myself. Knowing what Bjorn would want me to do, if given the choice. “We run. But I’m not letting him die, Geir. If I have to kill them all to save him, I’ll do it.”
Geir drew his sword. “We’ll come up with another plan.”
I drew my own blade, fighting tears, because I had been so certain this would work. So certain that I could outwit the trickster, but my plan had failed spectacularly. More screams of terror echoed up from below, boots pounding this way and that, Grindill waking up in the commotion.
We raced down the stairs only for a crying thrall to run by. “The dead are walking!” Her eyes landed on Geir, and she screamed, then bolted into the main hall.
It was a chaos of people running all different directions, warriors staggering out of beds, most still heavy with drink. Geir latched his hand onto my wrist, dragging me through the hall to the drains. He shoved me in the opening, and I landed with a splash in the water before swiftly staggering out of his way.
The rest of the draug followed, their laughs clawing the insides of my ears and made all the worse because I took no humor from the chaos. Our one opportunity to sneak inside Grindill had been spent and it had been for nothing.
And Bjorn would be the one to pay the price.
It was hard to tell the passage of time in the darkness beneath Grindill. Minutes felt like hours. Hours like days. Days, I had no doubt, would feel like years despite them being very much numbered.
I’d told Kaja all that I could about Harald’s duplicity, and while I had no doubt she’d relay it back to Guthrum, what he’d chosen to do with the revelation was unknown to me. I’d pleaded that he liberate Freya from her island prison, but it was not lost on me how much time had passed. That Freya would not only have had to endure cold and hunger, but that Skade might well have already reached her. How long could she defend herself in such a state against Skade’s arrow?
Sleep was the only release I had from the sickening sense of helplessness I felt, though it was sleep plagued by fitful dreams. It was from one such dream that I was dragged awake by shouts of alarm coming from the fortress above.
Tora rose from where she sat guard near my cell, then went a few paces down the hall. My heart thundered with anticipation that something was happening to our benefit. That Harald’s schemes had beendiscovered, and that even now, everyone was turning against him. Hopes that faded along with the commotion.
“Must have just been drunks.” Tora came back to my cell and leaned against it. “They were feasting tonight in the great hall. I’d go up to check, but I have to keep you in my sights.”
She sat down again, head resting against the bars, and the thought of escape rose to the forefront of my mind. Except to do so would require killing Tora. Would require killing the woman who was more family to me than my own blood for the sake of saving Freya. It would be one thing if Tora was like Skade and had chosen to support Harald’s deception, but she was as much a prisoner in this situation as I was.
“Just do it,” Tora whispered, seeming to sense my thoughts. “I’ll fight to stop you, but I know you can kill me, Bjorn. You’ve always been the better warrior.”
Rage and hate burned sour in my stomach, because there was a reason Harald had set her to this role rather than his Nameless. He had known that it would come to this and that freedom would demand a piece of my soul. This was all a game to him—an amusement to discover how far I’d go to save Freya.
You’re out of time.
There is no other choice.
My hands were encased with chains that kept them compressed into fists, so I wasn’t even sure I could call my axe. Wasn’t sure whether it would force its way into my palm and crush my fingers against the steel chains. Whether I could endure the pain long enough to melt through the metal. And even if I could stomach the agony, how well would I be able to fight with my hands broken and burned?
Do it,I snarled at myself.Don’t be a fucking coward.
I drew in a breath to whisper Tyr’s name, but the soft pat of shoes filled the air, and the moment was lost.
Steinunn approached, and though Tora eyed the skald she said nothing as Steinunn stopped before the bars of my cell.
“Why are you here, skald? Don’t you know that I’ve no interest ingiving fuel for your caterwauling?” Spitting on the floor between us, I added, “Your duty is to create stories of truth to spread through the generations, but you only give truths that benefit you and, in doing so, spin lies. You’re a traitor to your birthright.”
Steinunn ignored my taunts and rested her hands against the bars. “Freya was here tonight. That was the cause of the commotion. She has raised all the Skalander warriors she cursed to Helheim as undead, including her own brother.”
I straightened, shock driving my anger. “Freya is alive? She’s free?”
“Yes.” Steinunn wrapped her red cloak more tightly around her body, and I noticed that she was shaking. “Which was already known. Skade saw Freya and her army when she hunted down Ragnar.”
My teeth clenched, a flash of guilt filling me that Ragnar had fallen to Skade’s arrow. “Where is she now?”
