Blood Codex

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Leather-armored men with bloodstained hands forced Aella to his knees, raised his arms wide and high, and tied his hands to posts of weathered wood. They used knives to strip away his remaining clothes, and left him shivering and naked, kneeling on the wet grass. Aella lifted his head to stare into the face of Ivar the Boneless as the huge, muscled son of Ragnar Lodbrok approached, and poured all his hate out through that steely blue gaze. Fear knotted Aella’s stomach, made his veins run with ice, but he would be damned before he would let Ivar see that terror.

“I am a king!” he roared.

Ivar bared his straight, white teeth and shook his head slowly. His long braid hissed against his leather armor with the movement, audible despite the crackling fires all around. “Not for much longer.”

The Northman’s breath steamed in the cold autumn air, the night sky a vault of glittering stars without a single cloud to mask them. Sparks and smoke spiraled up into the night, twisting in the frozen breeze, the fire-glow competing with silvery moonlight that bathed the grass all around.

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