Six – 07

The smile faded as he shucked off one of his gloves. It was time—time to stop waiting, time to face the thing that had come for him. One of his knuckles had split that morning while he’d been chopping wood. A little blood would do the trick, would end this waiting game.

If I’m right about what this thing is, anyway. He exhaled and walked out onto the ice.

“What are you doing?” Matt called after him.

“It’ll smell me,” Thordin said, crouching down. The ice near the shore was thick, but that was because the water had been shallow. He scraped his split knuckle against the ice’s surface, knowing that it wouldn’t take long for the scent to travel, even across the ice, through the ice. He straightened slowly, pulling his glove back on. “You two stay back.”

“We came here to help you, idiot,” Thom said.

“You don’t know what we’re dealing with,” Thordin fired back. “Stay where you are so you don’t get hurt. Marin wouldn’t forgive me if you two got hurt.” I wouldn’t forgive myself.

Damn. This must be what Phelan feels like every damned day of his life.

“This is insane,” Thom said.

“Insane was you following me,” Thordin fired back, adjusting his grip on his battleax. This wasn’t going to be clean or pretty, but these things never were. “You should have stayed in camp.”

“Wouldn’t happen,” Matt said.

“Just stay back,” Thordin growled, glaring over his shoulder at them, his heart starting to beat a little faster. He could feel something, something not quite right. It was coming; the worm was coming. It had caught his scent, just as he’d planned. “I can handle this.”

And if I can’t, then I trust you all to finish what I started.

The ice beneath his feet began to quake and he smiled grimly.

Ice cracked, sounding like a gunshot in the still, cold air.

Two dozen yards ahead, the lindworm erupted from the ice with a roar.

Thordin rushed headlong toward it, howling a battlecry unheard since the days of old.

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