Rurik's Arc

Chapter 9 of 22

The third watchbird cut north across the sky. Rurik watched it come and felt the ground close around him. His wyrm lay half-buried at the ridge, slow and out of the fight. Below, the enemy camp slept behind sparse cook-fires. If the bird's leg band screamed over those tents, every plan died here. He had killed two ravens in silence. He could not kill this one in time. "It's already turned," Brenna said. She rose from the packed dirt, shield on her arm. The dwarf shield maiden had read every fire in that camp to find the weak slope. Now she read the bird's line and her jaw set. "It saw the wyrm move. It knows something's wrong." Bjorn stood at the tree line. He had ridden here on Rurik's word and a knife given in trust, and he trusted nothing he could not see done. "Then we're finished," he said. He did not soften it. Thorin crouched by the muffled raven. The old dwarf had walked out of one betrayed pass alone. He weighed each plan like it might kill him. He looked at the dead bird under the dirt, then up at the live one closing in. "Same trick," he said. "Different hand." Rurik understood. The wyrm was spent. But the second raven was not fully buried. He dug it free with both hands, the leg band still warm and silent under packed earth. He pulled a coin from his belt pouch, one of the stamped Viking pieces meant to pay Bjorn's debt after the siege. He tied the coin to the dead bird's leg with a strip of leather. "They come to their own," he whispered. "Give it something to land on." He threw the dead raven high off the ridge. It spun out over the open slope, the coin catching moonlight like a live eye. The third watchbird broke its northward line and dropped toward the falling shape. It circled once, low, hunting the glint. "Now," Rurik said, and gave the low whistle. The wyrm tore free of the dirt. It rose in one hard beat and struck the circling bird from below. Feathers burst. The watchbird folded and dropped. Brenna was already running. She met it where it fell and drove her shield rim down on the leg band. The whine started, thin and blue. She ground it into the stone under her weight until it died. Silence held. No horn. No shout from the tents. Rurik stood over the two dead birds. The enemy had no more eyes in the air. The north slope lay open and blind. But he looked at the coin in the dirt, cut loose and dented flat, and knew the pouch that paid Bjorn was one piece lighter now. Bjorn saw it too. He said nothing. He only touched the empty sheath where his knife had been, and turned toward the dark camp below.