The Shadow of the Gods (Bloodsworn Saga, #1)

by John Gwynne

This is a world of blood. Of tooth and claw and sharp iron. Of short lives and painful deaths.

“They call this the age of peace, because the ancient war is over and the gods are dead, but if this is peace…” She looked to the skies, clouds low and heavy, snow falling in sheets now, and back at the blood-soaked corpses. “This is the age of storm and murder…”

And walked on.

And as the start of a sentence...

Bloodsworn were famed throughout the whole of Vigrið, and most likely beyond. A band of mercenary warriors who hired themselves

out to the highest bidder, they hunted down vaesen-monsters, searched out god-relics for wealthy jarls, fought in border disputes, guarded the wealthy and powerful. Tales were sung about them by skálds around hearth fires.

“Jarl Sigrún was summoned…” He coughed. “I mean invited, to Queen Helka’s court in Darl. She has been gone more than two months.”

“I don’t need to be a Seiðr-witch to know a sword wound to the heart when I see one,” Orka said. “Vaesen hunt with tooth and claw, not swords of iron.”

And now she is dead, and I don’t know how to avenge her.

She drew her sword a handspan to check it hadn’t snared, then let it drop back down: a habit she had learned from Grend since the first day she had laid her hands around the hilt of a sword.

“Lik-Rifa chafes at her chains,” Grend muttered.

“She tears at the souls of warriors as they pass through her chamber on the soul road,” Grend said, “all know this. This is why we must die with a weapon in our fists, to fight her as we pass through Vergelmir, her dark chamber. It is the warriors’ last test.”

“No, I have come to tell you that the world is changing, and we must change with it,”

“This is a holmganga,” she said. “A ritual duel used to settle disputes. It is done this way, so that it is fair, and so that the kin of the losing party cannot claim weregild or blood feud.”

“Fight well. Don’t die.”

“I fear I may die,” Varg muttered, finding it hard to even control the movements of his jaw. “We are all born to die,” Svik called back over his shoulder.

filling the long tables with food and drink: bowls of creamy skyr yoghurt and curds, pots of honey. Boards were full of dried and smoked sliced mutton, trenchers of rabbit and beef, slabs of whale meat and barrels of horsemeat floating in whey. Fresh-baked bread, still hot from the ovens. Dried cod, pungent and salty. Herring fermented in brine, blood pudding, cauldrons of stew glistening with fat and bobbing with carrots, parsnips and onion, and horns of warm mead spiced with juniper to wash it all down.

This Battle-Plain, This land of ash, This land of ruin.

Images of a pale dragon caged and raging, locked within a chamber among the roots of a great tree.

“What?” Orka said. “A question is better out than in.”

“Fear is no bad thing,” Orka said. “How can you be brave if you do not feel fear?”

“Courage is being scared of a task and doing it anyway.”

“But this is our home. We have built it with our hands, our blood and sweat.” “No, this is my home,” Orka said, placing her palm over Thorkel’s chest. “You and Breca are my home. Wherever we are together, that is home to me.”