Which would have meant nothing more than a bloodied nose and an insult, except that he had held it from the back side by the shaft of one of the arrows still stuck into and partway through the bark’s skin. The broadhead tip raked a deep furrow down the side of the Vanir’s face. Cutting him from the outside edge of his left eye down toward the jaw, laying his cheek open until catching against his teeth.
Then Lodur shoved.
The arrow broke through the bark, broadhead tip slicing through cheek and tongue and into the soft flesh at the back of the Vanir’s throat. He rammed it deeper, twisted and shoved again. Thrust the arrow through the other man’s neck.
The Vanir gurgled, suddenly drowning in his own blood. Clawing at the Ymirish’s arm, at the swatch of bark nailed to his face, at the arrow shaft. Falling back into the fire, still trying to scream, and sending a burst of angry sparks into the ice-scourged winds, which quickly whipped them around and away.
“Where are the bodies?” Lodur shouted again, as the scent of scorched hair and burning leather reeked out of the shattered fire pit.
The flames caught hold in the dying man’s hair, and into the ram-pelt cloak he had worn over his shoulders.
A trio among the Vanir reacted faster than most, including the one female, clawing for their blades. But Lodur had given himself over to the warming rage before ever ramming the arrow through the raider’s throat and so had already drawn his own bastard sword before another blade cleared its sheath. A head taller than most of the raiders, seven hands across the chest and strapped with brawny muscle, there were few who could stand against him. His wide-flanged blade struck out once, twice, and a head rolled from the shoulders of the next-nearest warrior.
His rage lent him strength, and a preternatural sense of where the next threat would be. The woman, thrusting out with an arming sword at his neck. He batted her blow aside, then sliced her open like a gutted calf to spill her entrails across her feet and over the ground.
Thunder crashed, and the ground shook. He spun. Blade flashing in the rising firelight. The weighted end tore through the wrist of the third warrior, taking the man’s hand and his sword and leaving him collapsed on the ground holding a stump jetting dark blood.
Behind him!
Lodur had no time to spin about bodily. Barely enough to glance back over one shoulder, his eyes filled with the fury and fire of the Ymirish. Another violet flash of lightning lit up the hillside, and the ruins of Venarium, freezing the panicked gaze that twisted a fourth man’s face as he leaped forward with a dagger for Lodur’s back. The Ymirish’s heartbeat pounded in his ears. His yell was primal and hoarse, like the thunder itself. His face twisted with a feral snarl.
And somewhere deep inside, where the touch of winter never left him, that small, frozen spark suddenly flared to brilliant life.
Ymir’s Call.
His muscles spasmed, and Lodur nearly dropped his sword. All time hung suspended for a moment, with the wind caught between gasps of life and the sky alive with lightning. A gout of unnatural fire rose from the pit where the first body had fallen, consuming and crackling with power.
A violet-tinged arc of lightning flashed down from the purple sky, slamming into the Vanir’s chest, bursting through leather cuirass, flesh, and bone.
Blasting the raider back into a broken pile.
Violet sheets of lightning crashed over Venarium in a cascade of unnatural energies, washing over the hillside and the tableau of warriors. Freezing the Vanir, who stared forward in a mixture of fear and awe. The biting winds whipped with renewed frenzy, tugging at braids and long, twisted locks, whipping longer hair across faces.
Lodur turned slowly in place, Grimnir’s newest sorcerer staring them back in the eye. Sweating freely as his inner core burned hot and bright as the leaping bonfire that had sprung out of the smoldering remains of not long before. The acrid scents of burned flesh and hair filled his nose, and the crash of thunder—or perhaps his own heart—echoed in his ears.
Warmth . . . This was it. Not the blind heat of rage or the false sweat raised beside a blazing fire, but an all-consuming heat that settled into his muscles and bones.
Lodur felt sorry for his lesser brethren who had not yet felt Ymir’s Call.
He felt nothing for those who had failed Grimnir, and himself.
Revulsion twisted his face into a dark glower. Several of the nearby Vanir regained presence of mind enough to take a step back, but none of them took to flight. Where would they go that he could not find them?
Gathering his darkest thoughts, his pain and hatreds, he gave them form. Lodur felt the power swell, knew without looking the dark, oily mist, which congealed behind him, like smoke come alive. Then tendrils of dark power whipped out, slashing across the faces of nearby warriors. Several clawed at their eyes, dropping to the ground in convulsions. More backed away in horror, eyes wide and frightened.