“Press in that direction!” he ordered.
“He’ll be well protected,” Bryn warned. “Do not underestimate him. We’ll never reach him if we can’t clear the field.”
She was right. First, before they could have Gunnar, they had to cross a sea of steel and blood.
For every inch of ground they gained, it seemed Gunnar moved further out of reach, and for every man they cut down, two more took his place. Sigurd ignored the ache in his arms, driven by adrenaline and sheer determination. To his left, Sten took a blow to the face that would have knocked a lesser fellow out, but the sturdy man spit blood and charged forward, taking down his attacker with a series of furious blows.
To his left, a catapulted javelin penetrated a shield maiden, piercing both her shield and her armored breast. Cries went up from their surviving forces as the weapon’s power carried her for several yards, taking down all in the dead woman’s path.
That could have been him, slain on impact.
“The siege weapons are deployed!” Sigurd roared. “Take caution!”
To his right, two men fell beneath enemy blades. Blood splashed across the battlefield, and the coppery taste of it was in his mouth. They had lost far too many warriors, and yet the enemy horde continued to surge toward them in astronomical numbers.
No wonder they faced such limited opposition on the road. Gunnar had retained the bulk of his forces to protect the castle, and by extension, himself.
We can still win this. He may have the numbers, but we have the gods on our side.
Far above them, opposite the curtain wall, men loaded more of their deadly siege weapons. Another javelin took out a wide swath of their warriors. A third reduced their numbers even more, until panic thundered within Sigurd’s ribs. No matter the number of soldiers they slew, more stood in the way.
He swung his sword in a great arc, cleaving into two men at once. He fought harder, remembering his battle against the basilisk and the hopelessness he felt. The taste of crushing defeat had been there, bearing down on him, and he’d somehow ripped victory from the monster’s jaws.
Sigurd would do it again.
Hot oil rained down from the sky, scalding three dozen warriors at once, including Gunnar’s own soldiers. At first, he stared, caught by surprise at the sheer carelessness, that they risked the lives of their own men in friendly fire. The oil pot launched by the catapult shattered against a nearby building and the entire structure exploded, pelting the surrounding area with broken stone and fire. Sigurd smelled the acrid odor of Liangese black powder.
Another man fell to his blade. Elsewhere, he caught a glimpse of his wife mowing through the opposition. With her shield she toppled a dozen men at once, the might of her ivory wings bursting from her in a radiant display of power.
Men fell back from the sight of her, awestruck.
That was his wife. His warrior goddess. His Valkyrie. He’d never loved her more. Battle was in her blood, and he’d known it the moment she took to the field in the quarry. He’d hated her when she defeated him in combat, even seeming to play with him in the end, but seeing her now made it plainly apparent he’d had no chance of besting her, and he never would.
They may have been grossly outnumbered, but Brynhildr was worth a dozen of Gunnar’s men, each of her shield maidens at least three.
“Hope is not lost!” Sigurd shouted to the men who remained under his command. “Forward! Do not yield one inch!”
The exposure of Bryn’s wings had a trifold effect. Sigurd didn’t think he was imagining that her power was amplified. She became a one-woman army, storming through their defenses and cutting a swath straight toward Gunnar. In addition to that, several warriors on the enemy side had fallen back from her in confusion and outright terror, quitting the fight. Then there were the shield maidens following behind her. Bolstered by their Valkyrie queen, the women roared battle cries.
Then the next catapult launched its payload, an enormous boulder that should have squashed Bryn and her warriors flat.
It met her shield instead with a tremendous crash, as if it were composed of rubber, as if it weighed no more than a child’s ball. Some of it exploded into pebbles and smaller rocks, but the bulk of it was repelled back into the enemy lines. Men shrieked as they were bowled out of the way, as they were crushed by the Valkyrie-powered projectiles, each chip of the original boulder flying with the force of a comet crashing to earth.
“Yes!”
They raced forward in Bryn’s wake as she led the charge. Archers took aim from the curtain wall and shield maidens dispersed into the crowd of warriors and deflected those arrows with precision when it became apparent Gunnar’s archers were aiming for Bryn’s generals. With ease, Sigurd repeated a skill he’d learned while facing Steinnvik’s militia—cutting one arrowhead from the arrow when it whistled toward him. He did the same with another, slashing it down before it reached him.
They may as well have flown toward him at half-speed, each seeming slower than the last in exquisite clarity. He moved toward the front of his ranks.
Then he heard the shout.
“Thane Sigurd! Watch out!”
Sigurd jerked toward Sten’s voice, but he was not fast enough, distracted by the assault at the front that meant he hadn’t seen the men closing in from the side. As he did, a crossbow bolt struck him in the side and punched through his armor as if it were paper. It may as well have been a spear, loaded in a weapon so huge three, maybe four men were required to load it.
Elsewhere, another general for Brynhildr fell, dead from the same weapon.
“Cam!” Cara shrieked.
Dizzy from the pain blooming in his back, he stumbled and fell to a knee, dimly aware of Sten and his brother above him fighting.
“Fuck!” Arne shouted.
They fought for him, viciously, savage strokes of a sword, swings of a hammer bashing through men. Arne hurled his warhammer toward Sigurd’s attacker. Through the haze of impending death, Sigurd heard the thud of the weapon striking home.
“Cam!”
Cara was coming. Bryn’s advance had halted, and she screamed his name.
“Duck,” he wheezed to Arne and Sten. “Duck.”
They did. Just as the flames tore over their heads and a brilliant wall of white-blue blaze streaked toward the forces flanking them, immolating dozens.
Then his wife and sister were there, but the pain was already fading. Sigurd wondered if this was how all warriors experienced death.
If the gods spared the dying their pain just before they reached Valhalla.
“No, no, no,” Bryn cried as she dropped to her knees at his side. “No, not now.”
“I can try to heal him,” Cara said, a sob in her voice. “I can—what?”
“What is this,” Bryn demanded, wrenching the projectile free from his armor—from his body.
“This can’t…I saw it,” Sten said.
“I know what I saw as well,” Arne agreed.
“What?” Sigurd asked, bewildered. There was war raging around them, shield maidens forming a protective circle around their group, yet he gazed up into four thunderstruck faces.
“You are unbroken, Sigurd. Your skin—it did not pierce you.” Bryn touched his back with her fingers then showed him a dry glove.
“That should have skewered him,” Cara said. “What manner of magic is this?”