5
" I am blood. I am death, I am vengeance,” she said, her voice flat, empty.
Then she wiped the seax clean and slipped it into her belt, finally placing timber
and stone on to the barrow, sealing Thorkel inside. She stooped, lifted her sack
and picked up her spear, then strode out through the gateway.
With a hiss of wings Vesli flew around her, hovered over her.
“Vesli come with you, help mistress get Breca back,” the tennúr said.
“No,” Orka said. “Death is my only companion. Stay and help Spert.”
Vesli looked at the two seaxes that had slain Thorkel, thrust inside Orka’s
belt.
“What are you going to do with them, mistress?” the tennúr asked.
Orka looked out, over the sloping hills and down to Fellur village, a smear far
below.
“I’m going to find the owner of these blades, and give them back to him,”
Orka snarled. "
― John Gwynne , The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)
6
" My children,” Lik-Rifa growled, her voice like a mountain slide, like a
summer storm fractured with lightning, rumbling into the distance. A tremor
passed through her, from snout to tail, and then her shape was shimmering,
twisting and coiling like mist, shifting and changing, contracting, shrinking, until
a woman stood before Ilska and her kin. She was tall, taller than any man, at
least as big as the bull troll Elvar had slain on Iskalt Island. Her body was lean
and striated, skin pale and raw and scabbed, weeping pus. Blood oozed from
wounds. She was clothed in a tunic of grey, red-woven at the neck and hem, a
belt studded with gold about her waist and a dark cloak billowing about her like
wings. Her hair, black as jet, streaked with silver, was pulled back tightly, braids
woven into it. She had a sharply beautiful face. Red coals glowed in her eyes.
“What has become of my world, my children, my warbands?” she said, her
voice hard as the north wind, a tremor shivering through it. She looked around at
the battle-plain, the shapes of the long-dead become part of the landscape. Her
red eyes flickered to Ilska. "
― John Gwynne , The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)
7
" There were more dead in the courtyard, piled deeper around the steps to the
hall, bodies twisted together, hacked and mutilated. And on the steps in the midst
of it all sat a woman. She was gore-drenched, red with blood from her head to
her boots, a long-axe lying across her lap. An ugly creature was perched upon
her shoulder, with a nasty-looking sting on its tail, and another vaesen sat on the
steps before the woman. It was small, with sharp claws and a half-spear in its
tiny, slim-fingered hand. A tennúr. It had a mound of what looked like bloodcovered nuts piled at its feet and was crunching on one of them as it looked at
Varg. A shiver of revulsion passed through Varg as he realised they weren’t
nuts: they were human teeth. And he didn’t like the way the tennúr’s gaze fixed
for a long moment upon his own mouth. The two vaesen regarded Glornir and
the Bloodsworn with suspicious, violent eyes.
Sitting around the woman’s legs were children, maybe twelve or fifteen of
them. They were the only things in the area not spattered in blood. They didn’t
seem to be scared of the woman, which Varg found strange, as his blood was
tingling, and he felt the ripples of fear and danger pulsing off her. If he had
hackles like Edel’s wolfhounds, they would have been standing stiff and straight.
Ahead of him Varg heard Glornir gasp a breath.
The woman looked up at them as they approached, her eyes fixing on
Glornir. Varg saw recognition dawn in them.
“He’s not here,” the woman said, shaking her head, “he’s not here.” The pain
in her voice was palpable. Tears had streaked clean lines through the blood and
gore and fragments of bone that were thick on her cheeks.
Glornir reined in his horse and slipped from his saddle, then walked a few
steps towards her and stopped.
“Orka Skullsplitter,” he whispered.
The woman stood.
“My brother?” Glornir asked.
“They killed him and took my son,” she said, fresh tears rolling down her
cheeks.
Glornir walked up to her and spread his arms wide, pulling her into an
embrace. "
― John Gwynne , The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)
13
" FAVOUR FOR A FAVOUR,” the raven squawked, and then a second raven
swooped down, ripped more of the roof free and grabbed a warrior running at
Orka in its talons, lifted him high and threw him, spinning and screaming, from
the tower.
“FOUND YOUR FRIENDS LOOKING FOR YOU,” the first raven cawed
as it rose higher on beating wings, and two small shapes swept close, buzzing
into the room in a blur of wings.
One landed upon a woman’s shoulder, a chitinous, segmented body and a
too-human face, bulbous eyes under grey-sagging skin, and a mouth full of too
many sharp-spiked teeth. A tail curled up over its back, tapering to a needle-thin
sting, which whipped forwards and stabbed the woman in the cheek.
“Finally, Spert found you, mistress,” Spert said as the woman staggered and
choked and dropped her sword, hands grasping for her face. Her veins were
turning black, spreading from the sting in her cheek across her face like a
diseased spiderweb, down her neck. She tried to speak, to scream, but her tongue
was already black and swelling. She collapsed and Spert’s wings buzzed,
hovering and darting after his next victim.
Another small figure sped around the room on parchment-thin wings: sharpclawed Vesli, with Breca’s spear in her fist, stabbing it into faces as she flew.
Orka smiled and growled, looking for new people to kill. "
― John Gwynne , The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)
16
" Killing doesn’t come easy to most people,” Orka said. “Even if they tell you
it does. Oh, the ones that brag about it, like Guðvarr, they can kill easy enough,
if someone is holding their enemy down for them. But in a fight…” She
shrugged. “When it comes to it, most people care more about staying alive. They
hesitate.”
“And you don’t?” Mord asked.
“Killing’s always come easy to me,” Orka said. She sniffed. “Not something
I’m proud of, but there it is. And I don’t hesitate. "
― John Gwynne , The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #1)
