around the fire, backs against the wheels of the carriage, watching.
'He'll have you, Brynd,' Apium said. 'I can see your defences falling apart. Sen doesn't even need a sword.'
Brynd ignored the taunts.
'Go on, lad,' Apium continued. 'Aim low. Go for his cock – he's not got any use for it these days.'
Finally they sheathed their sabres and Brynd turned to the others. 'Time for a close-range scout. Sen'll stay here with the wing commander. The rest of you want to take a look around with me?'
Everyone groaned but they stood up.
Apium brushed himself down. 'Which way we heading, commander?'
'I think we'll follow a circle going east, nothing too far out, just a few hundred paces. I need to make sure there'll be no surprises tonight.' Brynd wasn't sure exactly how wary to be. This was Jokull, after all, and there hadn't been any serious fighting on the island for years – before Daluk Point. Before that incident, the idea of any threat on the home island was something not even considered.
The others followed him in a huddled group, taking a three-hundred-pace radius around their camp. The terrain was largely flat, and away from the forest, an open view for leagues. Underfoot was a mossy grass that concealed rocks and dips. Apium managed to fall over just twice.
The sky blackened further. The glow of the campfire stood out as an intense beacon, revealing the silhouette of the carriage. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled. Only one of the moons was showing – the larger one, Bohr – but it was now cresting the horizon just before leaving the landscape in utter darkness.
After a while, Brynd heard something strange in the distance. He had spent enough time in the wild to know that it was nothing natural.
He regarded the carriage.
Apium asked, 'What's up?'
Brynd gestured for him to be silent whilst he scanned the scene with the enhanced vision which the Night Guard benefited from, but it wasn't enough for a clear identification.
Shadows moved across the landscape.
Nelum and Lupus moved alongside, staring back to the campfire. Lupus said, 'I see something.'
'Strap your weapons and armour tight,' Brynd said. 'Let's get back quietly.'
The four soldiers jogged in stealth across the tundra, back to the carriage. Brynd began to slow, waved for the others to follow suit, then signalled for them to unsheathe their weapons. Lupus swiftly nocked an arrow, Apium and Nelum drew short axes, Brynd pulled out his sabre. As they approached the campfire they spread out.
Sen and the garuda were nowhere to be seen, the only noise coming from the crackle of the fire.
And something was wrong, an uncertainty hovering in the air, and once again the environment became to Brynd a matter of statistics, of distances, chances, arrows spent. He turned back to study the copse of trees. He concentrated, heightening his level of perception.
To the other side of the carriage: a strange lump on the ground. It was difficult to make out in the darkness despite his superior vision.
He went over and knelt down next to it.
Lurched back in disgust.
It was Sen's head, severed cleanly, blood draining away from it in a small trickle between Brynd's boots.
Brynd hailed the others in an urgent whisper, and they ran to his side. The sense of shock amongst them was palpable.
Brynd looked up. 'Stay calm. Stick together.' He analysed the scene as if the trees would produce instant answers. What the fuck is happening on this island of ours?
He noticed the trail of blood leading under the cover of the fagus trees. The rest of Sen's body must be there somewhere. The treetops fizzed under the night sky.
'Wait, commander,' Apium whispered. 'I don't think we should follow. Whatever did this to Sen is obviously skilled at picking people off quietly. Best we don't separate for the moment.'
'You might be right there, captain,' Brynd murmured, though uncertainly.
'What, we're just going to let Sen's death go without investigation?' Lupus said indignantly.
Brynd gestured for him to lower his voice. 'One of the most promising young soldiers in the Empire is dead. One of our garudas has gone missing. So you think we should pursue this right now, at night, in the dark in the woods? There're just four of us now. Already two down.' Maybe I should've brought more men along, but no one but me could've known we were taking this route.
'So we simply wait here,' Lupus protested, 'and get picked off one by one?'
A rustling from the trees.
Everyone looked towards the copse.
Three figures lurched forwards and Lupus brought an arrow to anchor point, aimed it.
'Not till I say.' Brynd held up a hand, but was reaching for his axe with the other.
The dark figures started running towards them.
Brynd signalled. Lupus released an arrow.
It whipped through the air, struck one of the intruders powerfully in the face. By then he was nocking another arrow, and soon another figure was falling to the ground. The final one stepped forward with sword raised.
Brynd hurled his axe though the intervening space.
It cleaved the attacker's face and he too slumped to the ground.
Then suddenly the unlikely happened: all three fallen bodies began struggling to push themselves upright, trying to pull out the arrows, with jerky, improbable movements.
Lupus fired repeatedly, pinning the bodies to the ground, twitching. And again they tried to stand with a jagged motion.
'Aim for their legs,' Brynd yelled, running to reach under the carriage for a crossbow. Then, returning to Lupus's side again, he began shooting at the heads and torsos.
They fired until finally the bodies lay still.
'Cover!' Brynd swept in towards the dead, seized one of the corpses back into the light of the campfire. Soon the others had done the same with the rest.
Brynd began tearing open the ragged clothing on each of the corpses. 'By Bohr, these men we've killed were already dead.'
'Are you sure?' Nelum questioned, and was rewarded with a glare of annoyance from his commander. Yes, I'm sure. These things are fucking dead, many times over.
'Look at this one. His skin is ice-cold – blue, even in this light. He isn't even bleeding, just the remains of some black gunk. He's been dead for several days at least.'
The soldiers remained silent.
'Draugr,' Nelum said eventually.
'Y'what?' Apium demanded.
'Draugr. Undead. A purportedly mythical creature. Well, that's what it looks like anyway. Give it a while longer and I suspect they'll be back to life, in some sort of manner. So we might want to make sure they're finished off properly, commander.'
Even as soon as he spoke, one of the bodies began twitching, the fingers moving gently and impossibly. With a sigh, Brynd stepped quickly to the carriage and pulled out one of the larger axes. Over the next few moments he hacked away at the reviving corpses with relentless brutality, grunting as he hauled the metal blade down on them again and again, releasing his frustration in the process, and Apium soon joined in the frenzy with another axe till the camp was carpeted with bone and smashed heads. They then gathered the individual fragments together away from camp, and Brynd fervently hoped there was no way that they could resurrect themselves from that destruction.
'Now,' Brynd demanded, with disgust on realizing he was covered in small chunks of flesh, 'could you tell me about these draugr, lieutenant. Please.'
Nelum had this scholarly way about him when he was explaining, always had done for the years Brynd had known him, and the act in itself was a comfort now, the return to business-as-usual. He began casually, pacing around in slow strides. 'A few volumes of collected folklore report sightings of undead, mainly on islands like Maour and Varltung. Ascribed to distant mythology, mainly. So you certainly wouldn't expect to encounter them in this day and age, or for many centuries past. From the accounts I've read in bestiaries of the Archipelago, they're last
