Europa (11 page)

In the instant that it left her hand, the spear was swallowed up by the hideous shadow of a cloud passing across the face of the moon.

My throw was perfect.

Freya waited.

When the cloud retreated, the moonlight spilled down over the valley, painting the world in silver and gray. The beast lay flat on the ground with her spear standing tall in the center of its back. She dashed toward the body. Her hand went to her belt in search of her bone knives, only to find her belt wasn’t there. It was still lying by the fire at the top of the hill, along with the rest of her clothes.

Freya swept her hand across the ground and caught up a jagged stone. As she circled the body, she saw her spear lean slowly to the left, and then lean back to the right. With a grimace, she lifted her stone above the beast’s head.

A claw snapped out, wrapped around her ankle, and ripped her leg out from under her. Freya crashed to the earth, the air blasted from her lungs as her chest hit the ground. The beast lurched forward, dragging its stinking body over her legs, digging its claws into her calves and thighs. She stared into its amber eyes, choking on its fetid breath. Its jaws gaped a little wider, its yellow fangs dripping with thick, syrupy mucus. The beast growled.

A spearhead erupted from its temple and impaled itself in the dirt, right next to her head. The beast sagged, its eyes suddenly unfocused and dull. One last exhalation reeking of blood and rotten meat washed over her, just as Freya managed to take a full breath again with her aching lungs.

Erik’s footfalls thumped through the dead grass and a moment later Freya felt the corpse being lifted off her body. She sat up and blinked at her husband. “Thank you.”

He lifted her to her feet and signed, “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. “What about Katja? Is she all right?”

Erik shook his head, just a tiny shake of his chin. He signed, “It looks bad.”

Freya dashed across the heather along the edge of the lake, leaving Erik to gather their precious steel spears and to do whatever he might do with the body of the beast. She flew through the sultry night air, breathing in the soft steam curling off the warm waters even as the ice glistened on the slopes above her. Arfast stood by the cottage, his huge brown eyes watching her bolt up the hillside and vanish inside.

She paused just inside the doorway to let her night vision fade and refocus in the bright yellow light of the rekindled fire. Theirs was a small house, just the one common room carpeted in old leathers and young furs. A handful of little stools stood long the right wall, each one a short tripod of bone with a sturdy leather seat bound across the legs. Hemp lines and leather nets and woolen sheets hung across the ceiling holding clay pots, bone spoons, spare coats, and what few other odds and ends they owned.

The two curtains on the left hid the bedchambers, little more than closets just large enough for the thick mattresses and blankets that she shared with Erik, and the smaller one that her sister slept in alone.

Katja was lying in front of the fireplace at the far end of the common room.

Freya rushed to her sister’s side. Katja was sweating and shaking, her breath whistling through her clenched teeth. Freya searched her body and quickly found the wound on Katja’s leg that Erik had bound in cotton cloth, now stained with blood. Under the bandage, Freya found a ragged bite mark with half a dozen deep punctures from the beast’s fangs. The skin around each wound looked green, veined with black.

“Oh gods. Katja?” Freya touched her sister’s cheek. “Katja, it looks bad. It’s going to need medicine. You need to tell me what to do. Katja? Katja?”

The injured woman moaned and shivered.

“Katja? Come on now, I would take you to the vala if I could, but you’re the vala, so there’s nowhere else to go.” Freya tried to smile. “Come on now, you can do it. It’s an infected bite, from a bear, or a wolf, I think. What do I do? Bleed it? Burn it? Wash it? Tell me what to do and I’ll take care of everything. Just tell me what to do.”

She was reaching down toward the wound again when a bony hand grabbed her wrist.

Katja stared up at her, white-faced and sweating. Her lip trembled. “Don’t touch it,” she whispered. “Keep it covered. It’s poisoned.”

Freya wrapped the bloody bandage back around her sister’s leg. “Poison? What sort? What do I do?”

Katja shook her head. “It wasn’t a wolf.”

“I know, I know, it was bigger and different, somehow. Look, it doesn’t matter now.” Freya shook her head. “Just tell me what to do. You’ve fixed up worse bites than this before. Remember when old Burli got his hand bit off by his own goat? Huh? Remember that? And you fixed that no problem. Well, more or less. The point being he’s still alive. So this bite here is nothing, nothing at all. How do I fix it?”

“You can’t.” Katja shook, her limp brown hair plastered to her face with sweat. “There’s no cure for this. It’s not a wolf. Remember the stories?”

Freya frowned. “What stories?”

“The old sagas. War stories. The gods and the demons.”

“Kat, this is no time for stories. We need some herbs or a powder or something. You’ve got lots of them here. Just tell me which one you need,” Freya said, glancing up at the long line of earthen pots and jars along the wall.

Katja gasped. “Ulfsark.”

“An ulfsark?” Freya leaned over her sister, wiping her brow. “No, no, no. That’s just an old story from the wars. That was just men wearing wolf-skins into battle. Berserkers and ulfsarks were just men, not beasts. And that thing out there was definitely not human.”

The young vala shook her head, and then rolled her face to stare at the doorway. Freya turned to see Erik standing there with the beast’s head swinging from his fist. The man tugged on his left ear, and then pointed to the creature’s ear as he came forward.

Freya stared. Two silver earrings hung from the beast’s tall hairy ear. She exhaled slowly. “Oh.” She turned back to her sister. “All right, just for a moment, let’s say it is an ulfsark. A real one. A real beast-man-thing. So what do we do for your leg? There must be something we can do, and don’t you dare say I have to cut it off.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Katja shivered. “Maybe Gudrun knows what to do.”

Freya nodded. “Gudrun, right, we can ask Gudrun. She’ll know. She’s old. All right, come on, let’s get you up onto Arfast. It’s a long ride to Denveller.”

When dawn broke, the sun was still hidden beyond the mountains and while the sky glowed with the pale morning light the land slumbered on in the shadows. Freya strode up the ancient road with a bone-weary ache in her back and legs, but she ignored the pain. Erik marched tirelessly at her side with his spear on his shoulder, and Arfast trotted along behind them with Katja sleeping on his shaggy back.

They’d made good time from Logarven, hiking across country through the snow around the southern edge of Gerya Ridge through the long, dark night with the stars racing overhead and the aurora waves of green light lapping at the northern sky, and the thick mists drifting across the ground. And now, as the sky grew lighter and the breeze grew warmer, Freya looked out over the hills of dead and frozen grass and she saw the waves of Denveller Lake rippling with faint glimmers of the reflected sky.

“We’re almost there.” Freya glanced at Erik, but his hands said nothing in reply. She fell back a few paces and put her hand on her sister’s cheek. Katja’s skin was hot. Very hot.

At the north end of the lake they found the decaying ruins of a tiny village of three dozen stone cottages. The roofs stood open to the sky and the doorways gaped dark and empty like toothless mouths. One of the houses close to the water had partially collapsed, tumbling and sinking into the warm mud at the lake’s edge.

But one structure still remained in good repair. A small tower stood in the center of the desolate village. It rose three times the height of the cottages, a squared-off block of crooked black stones, its cracks and gaps filled with rotting brown grime that dripped and trickled down the dark faces of the building.

Freya pulled Arfast to a halt well back from the tower and frowned up at the ugly pile of stone.

Erik stopped next to her, his pale blue eyes sweeping the lifeless remains of the village. “Be careful,” he signed. “There are a lot of strange tracks around here.”

She glanced down at the churned up mud in the lanes. It looked as though a troop of men had run through the village.

Or a pack of beasts.

Looking up at the tower, she called out, “Gudrun of Denveller! I’m Freya Nordasdottir, and this is my husband, Erik. We’ve come from Logarven to speak with you.”

Her words echoed through the empty lanes and across the open waters. A raven screamed and hopped across the ragged grass roof of the tower and peered down at the intruders and their white elk.

“Maybe she’s gone,” Erik signed. “Or dead. I’ll go take a look around.”

“No, wait.” Freya pointed up at the tower. “Someone’s there, watching us.” She called out again, “Mistress Gudrun! We come in peace to ask your wisdom and help. My sister is ill.”

“You say you’re from Logarven?” a very young woman’s voice called down from the tower.

“We are,” Freya answered.

“There used to be a vala in Logarven. Couldn’t she help you? Or is she dead?” the voice asked.

“She’s not dead, she’s right here,” Freya said. “Our vala is my sister, Katja. She said to bring her here to see Gudrun. Are you Gudrun?”

“What’s wrong with her?”

Freya frowned. She had no time for games. There could be anyone at all hiding in that tower, and the voice was not that of a wise old woman. “She’s sick, and if you’re a healer we need your help, and if you’re not a healer then I’m going to come in there and put my spear through your belly for wasting my time!” She slammed her steel spear’s butt down on a stone and the impact echoed through the empty village. She rested her other hand on one of her bone knives strapped across her belly, and waited.

There was a muffled banging and shuffling inside the tower, and then a bundle of woven grasses flopped up from the roof and a figure emerged, silhouetted against the pale gray sky. The wind whipped up the girl’s hair, a long curling nest of dark red locks. She stepped up onto the roof and peered down at her visitors. The slender leather strap of a sling hung from her hand. “What’s wrong with your sister?”

“She was bitten by something. Is Gudrun here or not, little girl?”

“Little?” The girl smiled. “Well, I suppose I am little compared to some, but not compared to all. The good lord Woden never minded walking the earth as a fellow of modest size.”

“Woden also lost an eye, as I recall.” Freya shook her spear. “If you’re looking to be more like the Allfather, I’d be happy to help.”

The girl laughed. “Oh, thank you, but I am merely a humble apprentice and not worthy of such a holy offer.”

“Apprentice? To Gudrun? So she is here?”

“Of course she’s here,” the girl said cheerily. “Where else would she be? The good lord Woden has seen fit to unburden my mistress of the use of her legs, so she’s less inclined to wander the moors of late.”

Freya frowned and glanced at Erik, who merely shrugged. She said, “Can we speak to Gudrun now?”

“Of course you can, although I wouldn’t expect her to hear you very well, what with you being all the way down there and she being all the way up here, and asleep.”

“Then wake her!” Freya snapped. “My sister is dying!”

“Is she now?” The girl’s good cheer faded from her rosy cheeks and bright eyes. “What bit her?”

“A beast.”

“Like a fox?” the girl asked. “A fox as big as a man?”

Freya hesitated. The general idea was right enough so she said, “Yes.”

“Then I’m sorry. I’ll be sure to pray to the Allfather for your sister’s safe passage to the next world. But you need to turn around and take her away from here, right now. And when the sickness takes her over, you must be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“To kill her.” The girl sniffed and glanced warily to her left and right, staring out at the distant hills before looking down at them again. “Go on now. Quickly.”

“I’m not leaving until I’ve seen Gudrun.” Freya left Arfast in the road and she strode up to the tower’s curtained doorway, which was nearly hidden under layers of mud and clay and gravel plastered over the face of the building. She reached out and clawed a small handful of filth from the edge of the door, and threw the muck down in the road. A small stone shrieked out of the sky and smashed her hand, leaving a thin red tear down the side of her thumb. Freya flattened herself against the cold tower and wrapped her fingers around one of her bone knives. Out in the street, Erik grabbed Arfast and pulled the white elk back behind a crumbling stone wall of an old cottage.

“I’m sorry that I have to ask you to leave,” the girl called down. “Woden has little love for a poor hostess, and I really would love to share some stories with you over some dandelion wine and roasted lamb, if you’ve brought any of either, but I won’t let you bring the plague into my home. I’m sorry about that, but there it is. And if you don’t believe that I’m sorry, then please believe that I have a lot of stones up here, and I’m pretty good with this sling.”

Freya glanced at the blood tricking down her thumb and then up at the lip of the tower’s roof shielding her from her attacker. “Maybe, but you can’t hit what you can’t see, and I won’t be coming out from under here until I get this door open!”

A second stone whistled down, ricocheted off a nearby cottage wall with a sharp crack, and struck Freya in the shoulder. She swore and darted to her left along the grimy black wall.

Above, the girl muttered to herself. “Well, I’m sorry, lord, but I tried being nice to them and you can see where that’s gotten me. You might have intervened, you know. A bolt of lightning or a valkyrie or two. I understand that you’re quite busy, lord, with the frost giants and so on, so I don’t fault you for leaving this business in my hands. It’s a wonderful show of faith on your part, I realize. Just don’t fault me for this when you’re measuring out my soul, if you could, Allfather. It’d be mighty decent of you.”