Page 84 of A Curse Carved in Bone
“Perhaps I will eat you after all,” he hissed. “Consume the flesh and keep the soul.”
Maneuvering my shield beneath me, I called Hlin’s magic and then drew my sword, Gyda’s runes glowing on the blade. Nidhogg spat, his venom burning through the roots of the tree and raining back down upon him. Peering around my shield, I found his eyes closed to protect them from the black rain.
Which meant he didn’t see me as I dropped.
I fell through the ruin of roots toward his massive head, holding my breath to keep from screaming.
And with a meatythunk,my sword, strengthened by Gyda’s magic, plunged through his eyelid and into his skull.
Nidhogg shrieked in agony, flinging his head from side to side and sending me flying. I screamed, starting to fall, but hands caught me under my arms.
“I’ve got you,” Geir shouted. “Climb!”
I desperately obeyed, my magic illuminating where the tree roots reached the earth of the mortal realm. Geir clawed his way into the earth and disappeared. But for me, it was not so easy. My fingers dug into the moist earth, rocks and debris falling around me as I climbed, digging higher.
There was no air.
I was buried alive, digging my way out of a grave, but my strength was failing. I clawed at dirt and rock and sand, trying to reach higher. Trying to find the surface and the mortal world.
My chest was in agony, eclipsing the pain of my venom-burned legs, and if I’d had the air in my lungs I would have screamed. Screamed and screamed in frustration at having gotten so close only to die in a grave of my own making.
Then skeletal fingers closed over my wrist and heaved.
My head exploded through wet sand, seaweed clinging to my hair and face, and I had a heartbeat to look upon Saga’s burned face before she disappeared, leaving only embers and ash on the wind.
Rolling on my back, I spat out sand and gasped in breath after breath, staring at the sun overhead. Vaguely I was aware of cold seawater lapping at my fingers, which meant I was free of Ylva’s prison, but my legs still burned from the venom.
As I pushed up onto one elbow, dismay stole away my elation at being alive, because I was still on the samefuckingisland.
Still trapped.
Still alone.
I rolled into the water so that the venom would be washed away, wincing as the salt water stung my wounds. I snatched up handfuls of sand and hurled them at the waves, screaming in rage that nearly eclipsed my pain.
I’d accomplished nothing.
Changed nothing.
Then a drumbeat reached my ears.
My head snapped up so hard my neck clicked, and I stared out over the strait, searching. Ships were sailing toward me, three large drakkarwith oars plunging in and out of the waves to the beat of the drum, and their sails were green and black.
I took a step back, certain that Ylva was on one of those ships. That she’d sensed I’d escaped her wards and had returned to finish me off.
Retrieving my shield, I called my magic to it and drew my sand-crusted sword. I wouldn’t go down without a fight.
Yet as the ships drew closer, I spotted motion in the waves ahead of them. Something in the water, though I could not see what through the foam and churning sand.
Then heads emerged from the water. Some helmeted, some not, seaweed clinging to armor and shields and weapons as they marched out of the sea toward me. They bore the marks of death, all a ghastly greenish-gray, many missing pieces either from the violence of war or the scavengers of the deep, but I still knew them. Recognized their faces as the souls I’d liberated from Hel, risen to reclaim their bodies to fight for one last chance at Valhalla.
They strode toward me, the drakkar closing fast manned by more of the dead, their faces grim. And their eyes glowing the virulent green of…
Draug.
“Shit,” I whispered, knowing exactly what the undead consumed, and I was the only living human for miles around.
The Skalander draug encircled me, the men in the ships leaping out and securing their vessels before joining the masses of the dead surrounding me. Hundreds of men, most dead because of my magic, because of my curse, and fear turned my heartbeat staccato.
