Conditions were not ideal for raising a draug. Moonless nights and thunderstorms were the best. And the time—so close to Joulu when ghosts, disir, and draugar walked anyway—gave them far too much liberty. But Bakrauf did not have the latitude to choose her times. She needed to find Signy and her companions, and find them now. So she had raised him up, hoping that the cold had kept good people indoors.
The troll-wife looked at the draug with vast distaste. It was not only that burial in the bog had not been kind to King Olaf. She could endure the sight of his peat-stained visage with equanimity, if not pleasure. He'd held out against her spells far longer than any mortal ought to. It was what he had said that had angered her. The constrained dead do not lie. Some may take a positive pleasure in telling the truth. They could, she knew, be selective about which truths they told.
"She can hold draupnir without pain. It is her birthright. She can set its bounds."
"You didn't tell me that," said Bakrauf, accusingly.
King Olaf's chest gurgled swamp water. "You didn't ask. She is of my blood. He," the draug gestured at the hulking monster that was her son, "is not. I know that now. You could fool me when I was alive. Not anymore. She will avenge me, Bakrauf. She will cleanse your filth off our clan's land. She will undo the shame I have brought on my house with that." He pointed to her son.
Too late she raised a hand to try to stop her son hitting the draug. His claws tore into its face and throat.
That was what it had wanted. That would give the dead king a way to deny her the information she needed. Curse it. And curse his stupidity! It was a corpse, and could feel no pain. But now he had seen to it that it could not speak either. It would take much tedious sewing to have it fit to use again. And she did not have the time.
Instead, she must muster her forces around the arm-ring. They only needed a little more time and the oaths sworn on it would be gone like last night's dinner.
She got to her feet. As for its prophecies: draugar could only know what the earth they lay in knew, and what the dead knew. They did not know the future. At Joulu the truce-oath would be gone. Each of the surviving Christian knights could be sacrificed. The blood-eagles would be pleasing to Odin.
"Come," she said. "We still hold the key. They must come to us, and then we can deal with her."
"And the thrall," said her son grimly.
She ground her big square teeth. "Definitely. Especially the thrall that did so much damage to my castle. I want him maimed, like the smith Völund. His dying must be a long, slow, and shameful thing."
"If I catch him it will be so, indeed," said the great white monster.