Edge of Destiny Read Free

and shafts. Olin the jeweler and Soren the carpenter formed up with them as well. They were the crafters of the settlement, and Eir was their leader.
    “Some of these icebrood will seem to be norn,” she advised as they rushed down the lane toward the northern bridge, “but they’ll not be. They are newly turned, their minds stolen by the Dragonspawn. They’ll still have flesh and blood within their frozen husks, and killing them will be like killing our own kin.”
    Bjorn shook his head in anger. “We send our fools north, and the Dragonspawn sends its armies south.”
    “There are other, more deadly icebrood, too,” Eir reminded. “They’re mindless beasts of ice. There’s no reasoning with them. Only shattering them.”
    Beside her, Silas nodded. He was a thin norn in the twilight of his fighting days. “So, for the ones that look like norn, it’s arrows then, yes?” he asked, hoisting his short bow.
    “Yes. We must kill as many as possible on the tundra before they reach the forts, but if the horde is great, the battle will push past the forts and reach the bridges to the hunting hall.” She glanced at the rest of her militia. “Then there’ll be plenty of work for all of us.”
    There was no more time for words. The group ran onto a bridge that stretched from Hoelbrak out to the fields beyond. At the end of the bridge stood a wooden defense-work that already bristled with warriors, including Knut Whitebear and his handpicked warriors—the Wolfborn. More norn streamed in each moment.
    Eir led her group past the cluster of fighters to a thinly defended ridge and gazed out on the darkening northern fields. Mottled moss and torn lichen stretched to the misty distance, beneath towering mountains of ice.
    “I don’t see anything,” Silas said, squinting.
    “There,” Eir replied.
    Out of the mist emerged a brutal horde. A dozen appeared at first, no match for the hundred norn along the ridge. But more came with each moment. Soon the icebrood were as many as the defenders, and then twice their number.
    “Are they hardened yet or newly turned?” Silas asked. “My eyes are thick.”
    “Most look newly turned,” Eir said. Indeed, the enemy were covered with a thin crust of rime, though their eyes were dead things.
    “Arrows, then!” Silas said, hoisting his short bow and holding it somewhat shakily.
    “Yes, Silas,” replied Eir as she lifted two arrows and nocked them on her bow and drew back. “Wait until they reach the red lichen, so that you can see them and your bow can reach them.” With that, Eir let fly, and both shafts soared out above the ridge and climbed the sky, seeming to sail forever. They vanished in the darkling air, but a moment later, two of the distant figures fell, pinned to the ground. Even as they dropped, she loosed two more shafts, and as they skimmed the sky, she unleashed two more.
    Four down. Six. Eight. Then other archers began to fire. In their dozens, the icebrood were falling, but in their hundreds, the invaders bounded over the bodies and kept on coming. When they reached the red lichen, Silas shot his shaft, and it found its mark in the forehead of an ice-caked foe.
    “Not hardened yet!” Silas shouted. “Bring them down!”
    Now their foes were close enough to hear, and what a howling sound they made! They had been driven mad with the desire to serve their lord.
    Eir had already sent fivescore arrows, and she drew the last two from her quiver and buried them in a pair of icebrood. The rest crashed on the ridge like a tidal wave.
    “Wolf, guide my work,” Eir murmured. Her eyes glowed with battle and her hands glowed with axes. She swung them overhead in a storm of steel.
    An icebrood, newly turned, flung himself over the ridge and came down with a swinging axe. “Die!”
    Eir leaped back from the blade and brought her own around to split the creature from shoulder to hip.
    Another dead man leaped the ridge and bounded toward her.
    Her other axe fell and broke