“Are you okay?’
Katrín frowned. “I think my arm is broken,” she said in a slightly slurred voice.
“Keep behind me. Is your gun loaded?’ Katrín nodded. “Good. Only shoot if they are close enough that you don’t have to aim.”
Garún started reloading her pistols with hands that, despite everything, moved quickly and calmly.
The courtyard was completely wrecked. Shards of glass and pieces of rock covered the ground. A huge fissure had opened in the earth and a pale yellow gas burst from it in great torrents. The crack went right across the courtyard and crawled up the building, which seemed to be on the verge of collapse. There was not a trace to be seen of the seiðskratti. Garún was glad she had the gas mask on, unsure if the fumes were toxic or not. Through the goggles she saw seiðmagn moving in angry tatters, like distorted black smoke in the wake of an explosion. The noisefiend emitted nothing but a long, relentless screech. She frowned and tore off the headphones.
They moved together towards the hole the seiðskratti had blasted in the wall. There was no movement visible. Styrhildur and Hraki appeared in a doorway on the other side. They seemed relatively unharmed. She signalled to them, nodding towards the dumpster.
She moved outside quickly and kept tight to the wall. There was no cover in the courtyard except for the dumpster, but the thick fumes would lower their visibility and give her some cover as long as she kept down. Hraki and Styrhildur moved towards the dumpster, their guns readied.
Styrhildur signalled Hraki to move on the left side of the dumpster. She moved to the right. Garún tried to get into a better position for visibility, but had a hard time due to the gas and smoke in the air. Styrhildur moved rapidly towards the dumpster. A soldier, covered in blood and grey with dust, leaped forward and charged Styrhildur with his skorriffle in the air.
Garún froze. She didn’t dare take a shot – she could accidentally hit Styrhildur instead. Styrhildur fired her gun, but the soldier dodged and the shot missed. With a savage scream he stabbed her with his bayonet. The soldier jerked the gun rapidly to the sides, right – left, right – left, so Styrhildur’s entire body shook with the movement.
This couldn’t be happening. She heard Hraki scream. She felt everything sink and fade away. Just a moment earlier she had thought she had things under control. The plan was working. She ran towards Styrhildur without thinking. She fired, the soldier fell and she shot him again with her other pistol. Blood gushed out of his wounds and a red growth sprouted from his chest, like frozen lightning. The barbed weed bloomed with leaves in thaumaturgical colours, the delýsíð bullet a seed deep in the flesh.
Styrhildur slowly fell to her knees. Her entrails slithered out of the open wound, slipping through her fingers. Hraki ran to Styrhildur, tore off his jacket and tried to press it against the wound, to keep her intestines in. Garún threw away the pistols and pulled out her knife. There was one soldier remaining. If it came to it, she would use the blue jawbone tucked away in her belt, but not until she had no other choice. Trampe was hiding behind the dumpster, crouching in the foetal position, covered in blood like the soldier next to him, or what remained of him. The ground was covered in body parts, fragments of bone and guts glued to the wall. The other soldier had clearly exploded alongside the seiðskratti from the rampant seiðmagn saturating the air.
Hraki kneeled next to Styrhildur, his jacket drenched in blood. She was pale as a sheet, her chin shaking like a whimpering child’s. He was crying but Styrhildur’s face was completely blank. She tried to say something, but nothing except blood came out of her.
“It’s going to be all right, it’s going to be all right,” Hraki kept repeating, and he held her close.
Katrín came running, despite her limp.
“Keep an eye on him, behind the dumpster,” Garún told her.
Katrín hesitated and looked from Garún to Hraki in confusion. He paid her no attention, still speaking to Styrhildur in his futile effort to keep her alive.
“Now! Or it was all for nothing!’
Katrín jumped and went to stand guard over the stiftamtmaður.
Garún kneeled next to Hraki. He held Styrhildur close against himself and was silently crying.
“Hraki.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “She won’t make it.”
Air raid sirens sounded in the distance. Explosions burst out in random staccato. Sounds of war. Hraki didn’t make himself likely to move. Styrhildur’s breathing was shallow. Slimy entrails were leaking out from under Hraki’s jacket.
“We have to go.”
He acted as if he hadn’t heard her, still mumbling something to Styrhildur.
“Hraki!’ She pushed him, perhaps too hard. He fell back and was so startled that he dropped Styrhildur from his arms. “Before it’s too late! Then she will have died for nothing!’
Suddenly Hraki jumped up with his fists clenched white and punched her right in the face. He made ready to attack her again, but hesitated when he saw that her knife was ready in her hand.
“She’s not fucking dead yet, Garún! We’re not leaving her! If we bring her to Sálnanes, then she can make it!’
There was no time for arguing. They had to get the hell out of there. She had known that this could have happened, that they all could have died, but perhaps she hadn’t really believed it. She felt the deep pain of sorrow come pouring over her. The feeling was so overwhelming that she almost broke completely into tears.
No. She buried the feeling. Not now. She couldn’t face this. It was simply too much, too difficult. She buried her grief beneath her rage.
“All right,” she said. “But Katrín’s injured and we have a hostage. So you’re carrying her.”
He seemed to accept that.
Garún went behind
