Hrafn watched it all without being able to decide what impressed him more: the fallen ones or the voroirs.
What unfolded before him lasted less than a minute. Less than a minute, and he was already breathless as though he had run the length of the camp. Not from effort. Only from seeing.
The fallen ones came in disorderly waves, as though the night were vomiting them up by the handful.
The voroirs received them with shields, spears, short swords, hammers, and a discipline that seemed to have existed before they were ever born. There was a kind of brutal order in it. Not the clean order of the Hird's halls, nor of the processions. Another kind. The order of men and women trained not to yield when the world tried to open them with its teeth.
If Hrafn had not been so close to death, perhaps he would have been more captivated.
But he knew full well what would happen the instant the formation broke. As soon as the fallen ones pushed through in sufficient number, there would no longer be any difference between watching and taking part. All that would remain would be clinging to life however one could.
And that did not seem far away.
More and more shapes emerged from the darkness. Several stumbled when they crossed the ring of pink salt cast around the camp. When they stepped within the circle, they shuddered as though they had stepped on coals. Some even recoiled.
When they advanced farther, close to the road, they seemed to lose part of their force. The steel-salt there had an effect. Their movements grew less certain. Their hunger, less whole. They still came. They still killed. But they came worse.
The advantage of fighting on prepared ground, however little prepared, was clear.
The voroirs made that advantage count long enough to kill dozens.
But not long enough to keep everything whole.
Hrafn saw movement on the left flank of the formation. One of the smaller ones had already slipped through. It came low, fast, almost crawling between two shields, and hurled itself at the servants and selected behind the line. Cries exploded all at once.
Soon others found their own paths. Here a breach. There a gap between tired men.
The cacophony worsened.
Before, there had been battle cries, roars, orders. Now there were pleas for help too, weeping, blind shoving, people trying to flee without knowing where to. Some ran right. Others left. One man nearly knocked over a child before someone yanked it back. There was no safe place. Only places the creatures had not yet reached.
Hrafn understood that at once.
That was why he stayed where he was.
To run in panic would be to die in panic. It took only one stumble, only turning your back. In the night, a single mistake was enough.
He tightened his grip on the heavy sword.
He did not have to wait long.
The part of the formation near him gave way in a short jolt. One of the little devils of the night wriggled free of the voroirs like a rabid dog escaping a chain. It hit the ground, rolled in the dirt, and rose again facing the rear.
Facing him.
The creature paused for an instant, head cocked. It had no eyes. Even so, Hrafn felt seen.
This is not good.
Dark saliva dripped from its wide mouth. The body came low, tense, quick, ready to spring. Hrafn wanted to run. Wanted to scream. Wanted to raise the sword as though he knew what to do with it. Wanted anything that was not standing there, rooted, while the creature decided how it would tear him open.
He was hard. He had always thought himself hard. Maybe even brave, when no one was looking too closely.
In that instant, he was neither.
His body felt badly fitted to itself. As if his legs, arms, and hands belonged to someone else and had been stitched onto him in haste. If he tried to run, he would fall. If he tried to strike, he would miss. If he tried to shout, perhaps no sound would come at all.
Salvation came so close to the last instant that he could already smell the thing.
Something slammed into the fallen one's flank and ripped it off its course. The beast skidded across the earth, missed Hrafn by a hand's breadth, and turned with an irritated screech.
Sigrid was responsible.
Small sparks ran along her arms and along the shaft of her spear.
The creature lunged at her once. Then again. Then once more. Sigrid evaded every time, always by little. There was no grace in her movements. Only speed. A crooked step to the side, half a body dragged back, a short brutal twist before the bone-spikes or the mouth reached her. She was too quick, but she did not seem in control. She only seemed to be managing to stay alive.
Courage, Hrafn. Do not die of fear.
Sigrid kept moving. Too well for it to last.
He knew. Not against something that size, that fast. Not if she had to keep dodging without pause and protect him at the same time.
He had to do something.
He waited for the next leap. The creature sprang forward, and Sigrid slipped out of its path at exactly the right instant, making the bony limbs rake the ground where she had been a heartbeat before. Hrafn circled behind, sword held low, trying to stay outside the beast's strange field of perception.
He did not trust his own body. Much less his own speed.
The two of them in front of him moved too fast. If he stepped in without thinking, he might strike Sigrid before he ever touched the fallen one. Or hit air.
She saw him out of the corner of her eye.
Even while focused on the enemy, she understood what he was trying to do. She extended her arm to the left, a small, imperfect gesture, almost without strength enough to finish. It did not matter. It was enough.
Hrafn understood.
He shifted in the direction she indicated, following her turn. When the fallen one leapt again and missed by little, it needed a moment to find its balance.
That moment was enough.
Hrafn lunged and delivered the strongest blow he could, aiming for the rigid tail. The heavy sword did not cut it clear through, but bit deep enough to leave the limb hanging at a grotesque angle.
"Looks like it suits you better that way," Hrafn mocked, before thinking better of it.
The creature screamed.
The satisfaction lasted less than the sentence.
He had heard that sound from a distance. But to hear that lament so close was another thing entirely. The scream went in through the ears and seemed to descend his spine.
All the courage he had just found turned to dust.
Even so, Sigrid did not falter.
She held firm while the fallen one writhed in fury, still more concerned with her than with Hrafn. To be fair, that already put her above most. Several of the selected youths were dead, hiding, or reduced to noise. Even many of the sons of the lesser nobility, raised on talk of elevation and service, were no more than useless weight in the middle of the chaos.
A few, however, had their uses.
Hrafn caught sight of one from the side: the same one who had had a revelation that very afternoon. Briorn. He remembered the name belatedly.
The boy carried no weapon at all. Even so, he came running straight for them. There was something fanatical in his eyes, as though the weight of that day had broken him somewhere.
"Wait!" Hrafn warned, the call falling on deaf ears.
For an instant he thought the unarmed fool would be split open from chin to belly.
That was not what happened.
When Briorn crashed his shoulder into the creature's flank, the impact came out wrong. Stronger than it should have been, heavier than he looked. The earth beneath his feet seemed to bear the charge with him. The fallen one was hurled toward Hrafn as if struck by a man twice his size.
Him too?
The thought barely had time to form.
Hrafn recoiled by reflex and drove the sword into the beast's hindquarters as it passed too close. It was a bad blow, poorly placed, dragged more from fear than skill. Even so, it went in. The fallen one spun around violently.
The creature lunged backward, balancing in an unnatural way on only three limbs, trying to impale him with the remaining rear stake. Its wide mouth snapped and clacked at the front. Keeping Briorn and Sigrid at bay. It was frantic.
Hrafn rolled in the dirt, one way then the other, with no grace at all, only trying to remain whole. With each dodge, something inside him seemed to tighten further.
He was beginning to understand what awakened in others.
Something within him, dormant until then, was starting to move. It was not the mystical feeling one might expect. Nothing of the sort. It was closer to the sensation of an arm beginning to respond again after lying still too long. Discomfort first. Then strangeness. Then movement.
His perception widened all at once.
The world did not stop. But it slowed enough to seem to.
The fallen one's pointed leg seemed to come through thick water. The crackle of sparks on Sigrid, Briorn's heavy breathing, the cry of someone dying farther back-everything came with too much clarity and too little speed. It was like receiving too little and too much information at the same time.
He could understand all of it.
That was the problem.
Even the movement of his own eyes in their sockets felt too slow, torturous almost.
And with that new perception came another certainty, much less pleasant.
The bony stake descending toward his chest would keep descending.
Slowly, yes.
But it would keep descending.
He understood the angle. The distance. The position of his own body, arm, sword, the foot badly planted in the mud, and the broken wagon behind him. He understood that, as he was, any response would be too late or too poor.
He was going to be impaled, whatever he did.
Ah. Wonderful.