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He re tail of hair tu all the way to his heels The male warjarls thrust up their chins and bare their throats in subnar’s father The others stare at the length of his valor tail Even Unshorn is a boy to this man
Volsung looks to Sefi, black eyes glittering from eyeholes of the tattooed skull of a Stained
“Have I so changed beyond the sun, child? Or are you now just a liar like your mother?” He tosses his helmet to the floor It ma
kes a seismic thump “Look upon this face, and say you know it not”
Sefi is shocked dumb
The father of Ragnar would be over eighty Yet this man covered with the blood spatter of her Valkyrie looks barely fifty, and ladiator of the Hyperion Prehtmare I saw in the darkness of the ice His throat o The front third is ray His arms are bare and obscenely er-sharp fingernails that look like they extend on sliders A horrible scar claie rejuvenation therapy web the sides of his skull—the first I’ve ever seen on an Obsidian Even Julii would flinch at the cost
“My father is dead,” Sefi repeats like a mantra
Volsung reaches under his vest to produce a broken ariffin
“You will reht you to hunt” He throws it at her “Your mother broke it in half the day I was taken back to the stars To be whole again when I returned Fifty years it took Fifty years to hear there was no sky burial for the h st ancient kin Only a lonely cairn of shattered stone, with half of me lost beneath it”
“You desecrated our Sky Temple You slew Freihild You spit on the Alle playing tug-of-ith her confusion “Why?”
“To free you from your chains,” he says “Alia was desecrated Why? Because in your hearts you hold the truth What good is a ood is a ood is arot of a dead seal”
His voice is clever and evocative, and he mutates its tone like an ath He’s trained in elocution Far better trained than I nize the triple-beat pivot of the Palatine’s politico school This is the Fear Knight’s asset, his super weapon
“Under the Allmother, ere slaves, brothers…” He smiles “…sisters Under the rule of women, our men were sent to the stars to die, while queens sat on thrones and knew the joy of the hunt on the ice” He wheels around, speaking to the honor guard as much as the female-do practices, ridden down by horseback or gravBoot for sport In their ga pits ere forced to kill our brothers, but never our sisters” He thrusts his huge hands into the air “These hands have slain seas” He looks down “Seas of brothers Seas of kin”
Sefi has lost control Volsung conducts like a master
He slowly opens his vest to reveal a body of muscles and scars and metal plates A thick pattern of identical scars on his back and chest stand out from the rest Their shape is unmistakably the slave brand of House Grier at Sefi “What do you know, girl?” He smiles “Only how to be quiet, it seems”