The Wolves rose from their graves first. Then it was the people of Avald. 

Featherless watched as the deceased warriors began to rise from the battlefield, pulling out her bow to shoot them before they could stand. The clan hadn’t had a chance to clear the bodies yet, the snow hadn’t melted away their blood, but the corpses stood again. 

Aelif had already rushed to finish off the corpses that she could at the pyres, while Featherless had gone the opposite direction, aiming to kill the ones that were left behind on the battlefield, not yet brought to be burned. Be careful, the wolf-girl had said to her. What a funny woman. She couldn’t remember the last time someone other than Gilly had said that to her.

Their hope was to kill as many as they could before the necromancer’s spell settled and the draugar were at their full strength. But Featherless was running out of arrows, and Svari could only bring back so many at a time. Eventually, she would be overrun by the rising corpses, and she’d have to retreat.

Pulling back her bowstring, she shot a draug slowly rising from the ground, the tip of the arrow entering through his eye and sticking out the back of his skull. Putting her boot on his face, she wrenched the arrow free—her last.

“Fuck.” She watched the undead rise around her, piles of snow sliding off their corpses. This will have to do.

To her left, she used her one arrow to shoot a draug in the forehead, rolling underneath his falling corpse as she grabbed the arrow from his skull, turning to stab it into another’s neck. She heard a rush of footfall behind her as she used the dead corpse as a backboard, jumping back and pulling the arrow free from his neck. With lightning speed, she spun and quickly shot the arrow at the one rushing behind her, pulling it out again to shoot another still standing. But there were too many, ten at least, maybe more. One arrow, even in her hands, would not kill this many.

“Svari! Fox!” she called out, her raven swooping from the treeline to her shoulder, a chitter from her fox to her right.

“We retreat for the pyres.”

~~~

Aelif grunted, wrenching her blade from the skull of a fallen draug.

That should be the last of them. 

The pyres still burned around her, and black smoke hung thick in the air. The smell of charred flesh combined with the metallic stench of blood made for a repulsive combination. 

A spine-chilling screech came from her side. One of bodies that had recently been set on the pyre, sat up. Flames licked at the draug’s face, its eyes melted into a puddle. It leapt from the mound and ran at her. 

With a quick horizontal slash, she separated its head from its shoulders, sending it toppling to the ground. The draugar, the ones that hadn’t turned to ash yet, awakened soon after, scrambling from their fiery resting places to chase after her like rabid dogs. 

Aelif knocked one away with the flat side of her greatsword, then swung in a wide arc to slice through three others, leaving them as nothing more than blackened chunks of flesh. She lunged at the one she had knocked back earlier, impaling it on the edge of her blade. The runes on her arm shone, then she forced her sword upward, cleaving through its bone and exiting out the top of its head, bits of gore flying out.

She felt the heat on her skin as another flaming draug approached her. Aelif turned, but she was too close to hit it with her blade, so she grabbed the draug by its face and slammed it into the ground, her fingers getting scorched in the process. She shook her hand quickly to quell the burn, then stomped down hard with her boot, as if putting out a grass-fire, scattering the draug’s brain matter across the dirt.

Ripping off a piece of cloth from a dead draug’s tunic, she wrapped her burnt hand tight. She headed farther into the village, hoping to finish off the rest of the draugar, but none were to be found. When she rounded the corner, she saw a group of undead retreating into the forest, ignoring the warriors along the way.

Had the Seidha called off the attack? 

An uneasy feeling began brewing in the pit of her stomach, and she ran to the dungeon’s entrance. The guards outside lay dead, throats slit. 

Aelif darted down the steps, heading right for the Seidha’s cell, only to find it empty, the gate ajar and Erik slumped against the wall, barely breathing. The two guards who had been watching the cell had also been killed. 

She shook him awake—she’d carry him to the healer’s room afterward. 

“Where is the Seidha? Erik!” She kept shaking him until he pieced together a response. “Where is the necromancer?”

“He’s... gone,” Erik mumbled, a bit of blood dripping down his chin. 

His answer only confirmed what she’d already known. The dead Wolves had only been raised to buy time for her father’s killer to escape—and she had no idea where he, nor his allies, were headed. 

She examined his cell. The iron chains that had been used to tie him up were completely melted. But, the seer had said...?

A grim realization dawned over her, panic clutching within her chest. She stormed out of the dungeon and into the stifling darkness of the night, Thorn following closely at her side. She hopped on his back and off they rode—to the seer’s hut.

“Alma!” she called out as they rode up the mountain, anger echoing inside her throat. As Thorn’s paws pummeled against the frozen ground, they clawed their way up the hill together. There, in view, was the seer’s hut. 

But more than that: It was ablaze.

A tall column of smoke filled the air, the tendrils taunting her. How could you be so stupid? Who had told Joryck the prophecy all those years ago? Who had started this war to begin with?

Alma. 

And now her hut was ablaze, and she was nowhere to be found.