Joseph Lewis - Freya the Huntress

“It’s not all right,” Freya said. “He is a hero, and everyone will know soon enough. He has a cure for the plague, and it’s out there right now, moving through the city, and soon it will move out into the hills and the reavers will all just be folk again. But for right now, they need to keep their heads down. And I need to find Wren.”

Halfdan nodded. “Good luck to you. The little vala’s got quite a few hours’ lead on you. Any idea where she went?”

“Oh, that’s the easy part. What sort of huntress would I be if I couldn’t find a girl on a road in broad daylight? Just tell me where I can find Arfast.”

“He’s in the stable by the south gate,” Halfdan said. “No worries. I told the stabler that no one was to eat your elk.”

“Oh, good.” Freya reached up to scratch at her short hair, which felt uncomfortably twisted on top of her head.

“Freya?” Omar beckoned to her.

She knelt beside him. “What is it? Is Riuza all right?”

“Don’t you worry about us. We’ll be fine.” He reached across her shoulders and gently pulled her heavy leather hood up over her head. “You just stay warm out there. And when you see that handsome elk of yours in the stable, be sure to give him a second helping of barley for me, all right?” He winked.

She raised an eyebrow. “All right.”

Freya stood and gave Halfdan a curious look as she left, but the big man merely shrugged and stepped aside. She took up her steel spear from the cloak room, and set out. It was a long walk south through the winding roads of Rekavik, and several times she found herself in a lane that dead-ended in a ring of houses built into the same hillock.

It was in one of these dead-ends that she became annoyed with the edges of her hood blocking her vision, and she was about to shove it back off her head onto her shoulders when she remembered the strange little wink Omar had given her as he pulled the hood up. So as she walked, she gently pushed her hand back up under her hood, running her fingers through her hair over her head, wondering what he had meant about staying warm. When her fingers hit her ear, she didn’t know what to make of it. Her hand was in the wrong place, or her ear was. The sensation was dizzying, like being spun about on a high hill with her eyes closed.

My ear. It’s too high. It’s too… big? Pointed? Hairy?

She swallowed hard.

No, it can’t be. I was bitten by Omar’s bloodflies, they had the cure, not the plague. Unless.

She looked sharply in the direction of the castle.

He lied. Leif was right about him wanting revenge. Leif was right!

She gripped her spear and ground her teeth and for a half a moment she considered running back to plunge her spear through the southerner’s belly. But then she frowned.

If that were true, why would he want to hide my ears from Halfdan and everyone else? He was trying to protect me. If he wanted me dead, he could have killed me a hundred times over when we were alone on the moors, on the hunt.

Maybe the cure doesn’t work.

Or maybe…

Freya tugged at her sleeves and found her arms as smooth and pale as ever, marked only with Katja’s inked runes and animal icons. There was no fur there.

I’m not sweating like Katja and Erik and Wren were when they were infected. And Omar said I should keep warm. He was trying to tell me something. He was telling me that I’m not infected. Whatever is happening to me, it’s not the plague.

She hesitated a moment longer, then resumed striding down the road.

Either way, Erik and Wren need me.

With the looming south wall as her guide she eventually found the iron door they called the south gate and the stable nearby. Arfast stood in the first stall, passively watching the people of the city marching down to the water, or to the market, or to their friends’ homes. Freya threw her riding blanket over the elk’s back and was about to jump up on him when she noticed the two sacks of barley leaning up against each other in the next stall. A tiny buzz of wings whined in her ears.

What did Omar say? Give the elk a second helping of barley? Why did he say a second one?

She slipped into the other stall, glanced up to make sure the stabler wasn’t looking, and quickly searched the sacks. And there, tucked under the second bag of barley, was a familiar looking ball of mud. It had split open on one side and she saw that it was mostly empty, but there were two or three tiny bloodflies shaking their wings and skittering about inside the ball. She gently pressed the mud back together, sealing the insects inside, and she slipped the ball into her sleeve. Then she leapt onto Arfast’s back and rode him out through the narrow passage under the wall, and into the wide world again.

It didn’t take her long to find Wren’s boot prints on the road. They were fresh and sharp indentations in the frozen mud dusted with dry snow. So she turned east and followed them, knowing full well where they were leading her.

“Hya!”

Arfast dashed through the fields of dead grass, his huge antlers pounding up and down with the powerful strokes of his legs. Eventually she crested the last rise overlooking the icy stream and saw the water mill buried in the high bank beside the silvery water.

There was no sign of anyone outside.

“Erik? Wren?” She rode down the bank and across the water, and slid down off the shaggy elk’s back. She rested her spear against the wall of the mill and placed her hand on her sheathed knife. The carved bone felt cool against her palm. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

And from inside the mill, she heard the sharp scratching of claws on stone. Drawing her knife, she pulled back the curtain and stepped inside. The sudden transition from daylight to deep shadow made her pause, waiting for her vision to return. And to her surprise, her eyes quickly sharpened and easily picked out the shape of the figure on the far side of the room.

It was a reaver, long and crooked and furry, and when it moved it rattled the chains behind it. The creature sat up and stared at her, and she was glad it was too dark to see its face clearly. But it shifted its legs, turning its body toward the meager light, and she saw the tiny pink teats on its belly, and the rounded shape of its hairy sex between its hairy thighs.

Without taking her eyes from the reaver, she reached into her sleeve and brought out the mud ball, and gently broke it open, and sent the pieces rolling into the room. The unseen bloodflies whined into the air, and she slipped back out through the doorway, and drew the curtain shut behind her.

Freya stood outside, listening to the soft tinkling of the cold stream and watching the occasional bit of grass or pane of ice float past the spinning leather paddles of the mill.

I suppose that has to be Erik. He said he would use the chains. He…

She swallowed and looked up at the pale blue sky and the pale gray clouds streaming across it.

Wren. I should find Wren.

From inside the mill there came a sudden shuffling and snorting, and the thumping of a foot or hand on the stone floor, and the rattling of chains.

It’s going to hurt. And it’s not a cure, Omar said. It’s a vaccine. Who knows what it will do to a fully turned reaver?

She heard more scratching and thumping and rattling behind her, louder and faster than before. Tears burned in the rims of her eyes.

Wren needs me now. I should go.

Still she lingered, listening to the rushing water, and the buzzing flies, and her Erik.

And she sat down to wait.

Omar sat at the edge of the bed, gently petting Riuza’s hair. She had fallen asleep almost as soon as he had coaxed her into lying down properly, and now he guessed by the steady sound of her breathing that she was truly at ease, for the moment. He thought back to their time together, the three years between the ill-fated flight of their airship and the ill-fated construction of Ivar’s Drill.