The Hunger of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga, #2)

by John Gwynne

Here everything seemed to slow, the noise of the world, the anger and terror that raged through her, all stilled for a moment, frozen and languid in this mountain’s heartwater.

Her chest began to burn, aching for a breath, pressure building in her head, and still she waited, grateful for this respite from the world above.

Finally, when her burning lungs could not take any more, she pushed hard against the riverbed, shooting towards the light and brea...

grief and awe carved into his face like runes in an oath stone, and she felt the sting of her shame, and the whisper of her old life, like a ghost-fech in her ear.

My life is becoming chained and weighted with oath upon oath.

“Swords are overrated.”

It felt like Elvar was in a dream, hovering ephemeral and ethereal above her own body, watching all that happened as if she were just an observer.

This is the only way. That oath is like a parasite in my blood, a spy lurking in my veins. One that knows my very thoughts, and can kill me. I need it gone. The oath must be fulfilled.

She was unsure how long they had toiled here beneath the earth, half a day, longer, time had lost all meaning in this stifling, flame-filled subterranean world.

“Slaying a dragon sounds like a fine saga-tale to us,” she said. “We are with you.”

“Something about blood and life, and Snaka the maker,” Elvar said.

“Ach, but I am getting a bad feeling about all of this,”

looked around to see that Lik-Rifa was stirring behind her guards. She had slept like the dead since she had returned with the dead bear. The dragon-god jerked and shifted on her makeshift bed. She snapped awake and scrambled to her feet, eyes flashing red.

wolf howl still echoed through her, reverberating in her head, so real that her eyes were searching the glade.

“We are none of us born warriors,” Orka muttered. “It is the world that makes us so.”

“The beast in your blood must be made to serve you,” Svik said. “There is a wolf in your veins, and it is vicious. Do not be its slave.”

“Think of the beast in your blood as a river that has been sealed with a beaver’s dam,” Røkia said. “You must let it flow out steady, like a stream, not burst out like a floodwater.”

The beast in your blood must be made to serve you. You must let it flow out like a stream, not a floodwater.

sluggish, intangible mist.

Are they all capable of becoming like her? Of wreaking such terrible, savage butchery? That thought made his belly constrict and his skin crawl.

“She is our new master,” Skuld said, glowering at Elvar.

“Tiredness is the father of mistakes,” he breathed.

The hiss of steam and great clouds of mist boiled on either side of the chasm, pouring out from each black rock. The two clouds bubbled and hissed, expanding, Elvar thinking she saw the likeness of a great wolf on her side of the pit, and a winged dragon on the other.

Tell you of that moon-touched, axe-wielding lunatic.

walked away from the Bloodsworn, turned my back on you,” Orka said, the words thick in her throat, sticking. “I do not deserve…” the words dried and turned to ash in her mouth.

Vengeance, I understand that well enough.

“You are the Skullsplitter,”

Staying alive is the issue.

will not weep. This is a test; it must be. He will stop in a moment. Any moment now. Show your courage.

I have become accustomed to living in a saga, she thought. Accustomed to travelling in the company of gods.

“You need a god to slay a god,”

have walked into a saga-tale.

“Try to keep your teeth in your head, then you will not spill half of what is in your mouth on to the ground with every meal.”

“You deserve her head, deserve your revenge,”

am sorry for all that you have suffered, merely because you had the misfortune to be born from my bloodline,” Rotta said, patting Biórr’s shoulder, his many arm rings jangling. “But I am here now and will do what I can to make it right.”

And not just any god. Ulfrir, the wolf-god. The sire of my bloodline.

“I am Orka, not mistress,” Orka said.

No matter how hard I try to get away from this place, every path seems to lead me back here.

A bubbling of anger in her veins, and the distant growl of a wolf as she thought on that.

To grieve is to be trapped in a world of loneliness.

Life is a knife’s edge, and all can change with the thrust of a blade.”

“What in the name of the dead gods is going on here?”

“This is more moon-touched than some dreams I have.”

The gods had made the world their Battle-Plain, you see, fighting and dying throughout all of Iskidan, just as they had done in the north. The people of Iskidan were divided, split into many petty realms and clans, all mistrusting each other and jostling for power.”

“Who is the Shadow-Walker?”

Ambition is overrated,

What in the name of the dead gods possessed me to volunteer to do this?

What memories do they have? Each one a saga-song. But memories are no good to us, now. We must make a new saga-song, or die in the trying.

“We are here,” he said. “I have always valued your powers of observation,” she snapped. “As I have always valued your kind-hearted tongue,” he replied. “Since the first day I met you.”

knew then that you were a deep-cunning thinker; that you would find the right path needed for each task, whatever it is.”