Page 87 of A Curse Carved in Bone
I thrashed and fought, cries of pain filling my ears as I took up my axe in my left hand, the blade cutting. The fire burning.
But there were too many, and with each gush of blood that poured from my shoulder, my strength lessened.
As they restrained me, regret pooled in my chest. I should have tried to escape earlier. Should have killed them all and found a way to sail by myself. Should have tried tofuckingswim back to her, because then at least there would have been a chance.
For now all chance was lost.
The Skalanders bound me with more rope, the rough fibers rubbing raw my burned arms, and then held me face down in the water pooled in the hull. Ylva bound the wound in my shoulder with strips of cloth while shouting at her warriors to hurry. “We can’t trade him if he’s dead!”
The world swam in and out of focus as the drakkar bumped against the dock.
“We’ve come to treat!” Ylva shouted. “To negotiate a trade with Harald. Bjorn for my son, Leif!”
“What makes you think that Leif is alive?” Skade answered, and Ylva gave a soft sob.
Skade laughed. “I jest. Your son is alive and well, Ylva.”
A heartbeat later, I heard the heavy thud of someone jumping into the ship near my head. “A trade, you say. That’s destined to be an interesting conversation, all things considered.”
Then hot breath brushed my ear as Skade whispered, “Your capacity to survive never ceases to amaze, Bjorn. But I think you will regret not dying on that island with the Hel-child.”
The gag kept me from any retort, but I turned my head to meetSkade’s gaze, and with it, I promised her death. She only smiled and straightened. “Leif is safe in the fortress. I will escort you to him, Ylva. The king is most eager to see you, of that I am certain.”
It’s a trick,I screamed around the gag, but everyone ignored me except Ragnar, who hauled me to my feet.
“Bring your full guard,” Skade said. “We are all friends here.”
What is goingon?
I stopped fighting Ragnar in favor of looking around Torne. The salty sea breeze carried the stink of fish and seaweed between the wooden huts with thatched roofs. Fishermen unloaded their catches while seagulls shrieked overhead, the gulls nearly drowned out by a strapping woman shouting at every person who walked by to look at the wares in her cart.
It felt profoundly unchanged, and though it was possible that the people cared not who they swore fealty to or paid tithes to, my hackles rose with the sense that something was very wrong.
On Skade’s orders, they wrapped chains around my hands to keep me from calling my axe, and then a wagon was brought over. Ragnar shoved me inside and then climbed in next to me, sword tip digging into my balls. “Try anything, traitor, and I’ll unman you.”
A dozen possible ways to indicate my indifference to his threat reared in my head, but the distance to Grindill was the last chance I had to convince him that this was folly before we reached the confines of the fortress.
The cart rocked from side to side as the horse started walking, accompanied by the heavy footfalls of the Skalanders flanking either side of the cart. Through the slats, Ylva was visible, her mouth drawn in a tight line, whereas Skade was smiling and gesturing as though she hadn’t a care in the world.
Ragnar shifted, the tip of his sword digging painfully into my balls, but when I turned my head it was to find him staring back at Torne, his brown skin creased from his heavy frown. He felt it too.
The wrongness.
The cart hit a bump and I groaned around the gag. Blood waspooling from the wounds Skade had given me, my wrists and forearms already blistering from the burns I’d inflicted upon myself. Survivable, yes, but surviving wasn’t enough. I had to get back to Freya.
Or someone else had to forme.
I rubbed my cheek against the wood of the cart and pulled down the strip of fabric holding my gag in place.
The sword dug deeper, but I spat the fabric out even as I met Ragnar’s gaze. “Something’s not right,” I said softly. “I know Snorri didn’t leave Grindill entirely unmanned, yet somehow Harald has managed to take both Torne and Grindill with no fight?”
Ragnar’s jaw worked back and forth beneath his silvered beard, warring with his dislike for me and his knowledge that I was right. “Might be they surrendered. Leif would have known they could not win in a fight.”
“Those who have surrendered have a way about them, Ragnar. You know that. Men and women who are waiting to see what the consequences of capitulation will be. Did the people in Torne look like that to you?”
Skade’s head turned to look at the wagon, frowning, and I fell silent.
We pressed closer to Grindill, the breathing of the men and women walking alongside the wagon growing heavier as they climbed the steepening slope.
