Joseph Lewis - Freya the Huntress

And then it collapsed into the mud.

Freya slipped her knives free, wiped them in the dead grass, and put them away while Erik went to retrieve his spear. They both pierced the reaver’s hearts again just to be certain, and then trudged back to the tower, offering short waves to the girl on the tower roof, who waved and then climbed back down inside.

“Nice throw,” Freya said.

“Thanks,” Erik signed, grinning. “And you, a spear and two knives all at once?”

“I wanted to be sure.”

“Fair enough.”

A beast snarled, a girl screamed, and an elk snorted.

Freya bolted forward half a step ahead of Erik and she rounded the corner of the tower just in time to see a third reaver leaping down from the top of a cottage wall to land on Arfast’s shaggy back. Erik’s spear flew just as Arfast stumbled, and he missed his mark. Freya saw the claws shoved into her mount’s sides, the dark blood just beginning to trickle down through the elk’s dirty white hair.

She leveled her spear as she ran and thrust the blade up at the reaver, but the creature leapt clear, shoving Arfast down and the elk fell to the ground. The reaver hurled itself over Freya’s head and as she turned to look over her shoulder, she slipped in the mud, dropping to her knee.

The beast crashed down onto Erik, planting its feet on his thighs and slashing both clawed hands at his face. Erik raised his fists and blocked both claws as he staggered back under the reaver’s weight, and then he fell flat on the ground with the beast hunched on his chest. The monster’s head slammed down on the man’s throat.

“ERIK!” Freya felt her blood boiling and her skin burning as she scrambled to her feet and dashed back to his side. She hurled herself at the creature’s belly, planting both of her knives between its ribs and letting her own weight wrench the beast off of her husband and they all crashed down into the mud together. Freya rose up on her knees, her knife raised in her hand to cut the reaver’s throat.

And she saw a hand.

Erik’s hand, his red and white fingers straining at the beast’s neck, holding the fangs at bay as he crushed its windpipe. She leaned over the hairy, misshapen head and saw Erik grinning at her.

He winked and mouthed the words, “It’s over. Dead.”

The reaver’s claws were sunk deep into the man’s shoulders, but its foul maw was still some distance from his face. And when he took his hands away from its throat, the reaver’s head fell limp to one side. Freya gently pulled the claws from her husband’s flesh, wincing at the silent expressions of pain on his face. But after a moment, he sat up and heaved an easy breath and nodded.

“I’m all right,” he signed.

He’s all right.

She sat down on his lap, her calloused hands on his dirty cheeks, staring into his bright blue eyes. His lips parted and Freya kissed him, slipping her tongue deep into his mouth, feeling the soft wet warmth of his living body, tasting his breath and sweat and adrenaline and fear and joy. He gripped her waist tightly for a moment, and then let her go and they stood up together.

She looked at his bloody shoulders. “Can you climb back up?”

He grimaced and signed, “I’d rather not.”

So she sat with him on a broken stone wall and bandaged his wounds while Wren watched them from the open window. Arfast stood by the tower’s base, his eyes wide, his breathing swift and ragged. As Freya sat and listened to the tiny waves of the lake lapping at the black stones at the edge of the village, Wren disappeared from the window, but she stuck her head out a moment later and called down, “Freya! Come quick!”

Erik nodded and picked up his spear with only a slight grunt, so Freya jogged to the knotted rope and climbed back up to the tower window. Inside she squinted at the shadowy figures of the vala and her apprentice crouched by Katja’s head.

“What’s happening?” the huntress asked.

“Gudrun is trying to help your sister,” Wren said.

Freya knelt by the bed and saw that the crone had one shriveled hand resting on Katja’s forehead. On her frail middle finger, Gudrun wore a pale yellow ring. Freya inhaled sharply. It was only the second time she had ever seen rinegold in her life. Katja’s mistress had never owned such a relic, but she had told the children of Logarven more than a few stories about the powers of the strange metal. Legendary valas of Ysland had used the rinegold to save the injured and sick, to find long-lost treasures, to guide ships through the Sea of Ice, and to battle the hideous beasts that survived Woden’s war with the demons of Ysland. But most of all, they used the rinegold rings to speak to the souls of long-dead valas, to unlock the secrets of their ancient seidr-sisters.

And now a sliver of that rinegold was touching Katja’s sweaty brow.

Gudrun sat hunched and shrunken, folded in upon herself under a heavy wool blanket so that only her wrinkled face and desiccated fingers could be seen. The vala muttered, her dim and hazy eyes pointed across the room at the wall, seeing nothing. Her fingers closed, clutching Katja’s head, and Freya jerked forward but Wren held her back saying, “Wait.”

The crone’s head tilted back, the wool blanket slipping off her spotted head to her shoulders. Gudrun gasped, shivered, and convulsed forward. Wren grabbed the old woman’s chest and arm, trying to hold her upright, but the vala shoved off her apprentice. Gudrun wailed a horrid wordless cry, her head back, her jaw stretched wide, and her shriveled pink tongue flicking between her naked pink gums.

“Immortality!” The vala cackled, and then slammed her thin gums shut on the tip of her tongue. A tiny mote of pink flesh tumbled from between her pale lips, and a trickle of dark blood spilled over her chin.

Wren gasped. “No!”

Gudrun flashed a bloody grin at them and then smashed her head down onto Katja’s face. Wren shoved the old woman back and saw Gudrun’s head lolling on her limp neck, her face gray, her skin cold to the touch. Freya stared down at her sister’s face and watched as the smear of Gudrun’s dark blood crept across Freya’s skin and vanished into the rinegold ring on the vala’s finger.

Freya grabbed the crone’s arm and held up the crooked fingers to stare at the ring. “What the hell just happened? Is Gudrun dead? Did she just kill herself?”

With shaking hands, Wren took the dead vala’s arm from Freya and slipped the ring off Gudrun’s knobby finger and placed it on her own right hand. The apprentice’s face twisted and glared, and for a moment Freya thought the girl was going to vomit on the floor. But then she swallowed and sat up straight, and looked the huntress in the eye. “It’s all right.”

“What is?”

“Gudrun gave her soul to the ring, passing on her knowledge just all the valas of Denveller have done for generations.” Wren licked her pale lips. “It shouldn’t have happened until I was ready to take over. Not for years yet. I don’t know exactly what to do with it. It feels…”

Freya laid her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Worry about how it feels later. Did all that wailing and bleeding do anything to help my sister?”

Wren shook her head. “No. But I know why Gudrun did it.” She held up the ring. “I can hear her voice in my head. I can even see her face, just a little, over there in the corner of the room. She looks a bit dark and dim, like a reflection in the water. She says she killed herself like this because she knew she couldn’t leave this tower, and because she wants me to go with you.”

“To help Katja?”

Wren nodded. “To cure the reaver plague.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet.” Wren went to the body of her mistress and arranged the old vala in a more restful pose on the floor with her eyes closed and the blood on her chin wiped clean. “We have to find Skadi first. She has the rinegold ring of Hengavik, and she’ll probably know more about reavers than any other vala in Ysland.”