Thora woke to the cry and the trumpet.
She sprang up beside Sigrid, her heart already racing before she even understood why. The fear that had been growing since they left the walls seemed to find shape all at once. Her hands went damp. The air came in too short. Her legs threatened to give way.
She searched for something, looking around. Courage perhaps.
She saw spears in hands, soldiers moving forward, some servants too; whoever could fight, had to fight. They closed the gaps between the voroirs, who had taken their positions the instant the first call rang out, forming a line. But that did not calm her. It only made everything more real.
She did not want to be there.
She thought of running. The urge came whole, quick, and shameful. It would be enough to slip away from the group, vanish a little into the dark, draw less attention. The idea died as quickly as it came. Out there there was no shelter at all. The Star had set little more than an hour before. Nine still remained before it returned.
Too early for the night.
"It would be wise to draw your blades," a voice said beside her.
Thora almost made a sound when she turned. The tall man seemed to have been born from the darkness between one breath and the next.
"Y-yes," she answered, stumbling over her own tongue as she pulled the dagger from her belt.
"Hrafn," Sigrid said, startled at first, relieved a moment later.
Thora recognized him a little after. She had exchanged few words with him on the journey, and even fewer before it. He was the kind of man who passed through others without leaving noise. Quiet. Closed off. Easy to lose among too many people.
Hrafn grunted something she did not understand and made a short motion with his body, telling the two of them to fall back.
"Shouldn't we help?" Sigrid asked, her voice tight. There was fear in it. But something beyond fear too.
"No!" Thora cried, her voice coming out louder than she intended.
"That would not be a good idea," Hrafn weighed in, to her relief. "We don't even know what it is."
Sigrid nodded, a dangerous feeling in her eyes.
They retreated backward, slowly, without taking their eyes off the defensive line. They did not go far. There was nowhere to go. The camp, the wagons, the animals, the fire, everything suddenly seemed too small. Beyond the light there was only night.
Where is it?
Thora tightened her grip on the dagger. Her mouth was dry.
"Where is it?" she whispered to Sigrid.
"Maybe it was a mistake?" her friend asked, and for an instant that seemed possible, feeding her with a fragile hope.
The silence stretched.
Then the sound came.
A shriek too high, too thin, too long. It reminded her of glass shattering, except alive. Something that should not have a throat and yet screamed.
The impact came with it.
The thing struck the line all at once, heavy enough to shove spears, shields, and men. For a moment it seemed as though it would break through. It did not. The front held, and the creature's body was dragged into the firelight.
Thora saw it.
And the hope that it was only some day-beast strayed where it should not be died without resistance.
It was a fallen one.
It looked made from the wrong parts of familiar things. There was something of dog in it and something of bull, but the likeness ended there. It moved on four limbs too long, too rigid, ending in bony points that drove into the ground like stakes. Its body was broad, covered in dark fur over thick muscle. Spears pierced its flank and chest, but that still had not brought it down. The head resembled that of a dog, if a dog could be born with a square skull like an ox's and horns jutting from the sides. There were no eyes. Only a mouth far too wide, far too open.
Half a human body dangled from it, some wretch caught in the charge.
Thora's stomach lurched.
Before the creature could chew again, something cut through the air.
She barely saw the blow. Only the result.
The fallen one's head came loose from its body and rolled across the earth. The rest of it staggered, still on its feet for an instant, before crashing down heavily.
Beside the corpse, the hersir raised his blood-blackened axe.
"Hold the waves. Slaughter the sacrilege," he shouted. "The Salt opens the way!"
"The Hird remains!" the voroirs answered, their voices aligned, hard, trained.
The hersir waited no longer. He hurled himself into the darkness before the echo of the reply had died.
"Waves?" Thora repeated, feeling the chill of the word.
She received her answer almost at once.
Shrieks erupted from several points in the night. One, then another, then many. Then the bodies came.
The first rush struck the line. Several were the size of large wolves, long and fast, with the same stake-like legs and tails rigid as spears. Others were larger, close to the size of the first. It did not matter. Big or small, all of them came with the same blind hunger.
The smaller ones threw themselves at the men without any care for their own lives. They bit, slammed, tore. One of them lashed its tail against a voroir's triangular shield. In the instant before impact, the surface of the shield glowed a faint white, nearly invisible beneath the fire. The point punched through wood and metal only a little before losing force. Another voroir beside him stepped in without hesitation and cut the tail clean off. The fallen one writhed. The first man advanced and drove his short sword into the base of its neck.
The line did not give.
Thora saw the pattern after a few seconds. Pairs. Shield and blade. One received. The other killed. When one point slipped through, another pair closed the space. When one man staggered, someone hauled him back. There was no haste in them. There was practice.
But not all of them fought bound to the line.
A few voroirs moved with greater freedom, marked by richer colors in their garments and pieces of armor. There were fewer of them. They were harder to look at.
One advanced along the flank with his short sword held low. The blade began to glow a dark red, and the air around it seemed to tremble with heat. When he struck, it was not only flesh that opened. The cut left an incandescent trail across the fallen one's shoulder, as if the wound had been cauterized at the same instant it was born. The creature thrashed. The second strike went in through the mouth and out the back of the neck.
Another, heavier one, intercepted one of the large creatures from the side. The war hammer came down on its foreleg with a wet crack. The limb broke crooked, and the fallen one collapsed onto its chest, plowing earth. Without pausing, the man spun the hammer once and hurled it. The weapon turned short through the air and struck full in the head of one of the smaller things just as it was about to leap onto a fallen warrior. Bone gave way. The beast sank to the ground. The man was already running while the hammer still bounced. He caught a larger one by the horn, dragging it down before burying a short axe in its head.
Thora did not know where to look.
Everything seemed to happen too fast and, at the same time, slowly enough to be seen.
Then she saw a woman fall out of the formation.
The voroir dropped to her knees, one hand pressed to her belly. There was a dark hole there. For a moment Thora thought she was dead. The woman rose anyway.
Farther ahead, five had advanced farther than they should have-five ordinary warriors who now fought surrounded. The wounded woman looked at them, drew in air once, and lowered her spear.
At the first step, nothing.
At the second, her body seemed to lighten.
At the third, her hair began to lift.
Threads of blue light appeared here and there over her head, her shoulders, her arms, fine as hair lit from within. With each stride her speed increased. She was not running like a wounded woman. She was not running like any woman.
By the time she struck the fallen ones, she was moving as fast as a loose stallion.
The spear went through the first, broke in the second, and her momentum smashed into the others in a single brutal charge. The enemy line split. The trapped warriors did not waste the moment. They burst through the gap, stumbling, alive.
The woman with the spear still took two more steps after the impact.
Then she fell dead.
Thora did not realize she had been holding her breath until her chest hurt.
Beside her, Sigrid said nothing.
Nor did Hrafn.
No one needed to.
Thora gripped the dagger until her fingers hurt. The handle was slippery with sweat. That small weapon looked ridiculous in her hand. Almost insulting.
She had always known there were things in the night. She had grown up hearing that. She had seen gates shut, heard bells, watched adults measure the Star's light with the haste of those who knew the price of delay.
None of that resembled seeing.
None of that resembled the sound of those shrieks, the black blood, a man still half stuck in a fallen one's mouth.
None of that resembled men and women tearing their own bodies apart with too much power just to keep a line alive for one moment more.
None of that resembled seeing a voroir die.