Freya the Huntress (Europa #2: A Dark Fantasy) (7 page)

An hour passed and Freya came to realize that there were no more than a dozen faces among the ghosts, but because they kept wandering in circles, appearing and disappearing suddenly and randomly, it seemed that there were more.

The aether at her feet began to thin, revealing patches of the road, and the ghosts appeared less and less often around her, staring into empty houses and asking each other if they had seen this little girl or that old man. Freya watched them with an anxious gnawing in her belly, wondering how they died, and when, and why. And why were they wandering the empty lanes of Hengavik at all, instead of sleeping in the cold earth? Ghosts were common enough in Ysland, but never so many in one place, and never wandering for hour upon hour.

Leaving her spear leaning against the wall, Freya stepped out into the street into the path of a shadowy woman, her features drawn in wisps of aether that fluttered in ragged lines in the weak breeze.

“My name is Freya,” the huntress said.

The ghost paused and glanced away. “I’m Dalla,” she whispered.

“What happened here? What happened to this town? Where are the people?”

“Dead.” The ghost lowered her gaze to her feet. “All dead.”

“How did they die? War? Famine? Or was it the reavers?” Freya resisted the urge to reach out and take hold of the dead woman, to force her to look her in the eye.

“The fox plague…” The ghost of Dalla wrapped her arms around herself and shivered as the breeze stiffened and threatened to tear apart her fragile form of mist. “The fox plague took some away, and left others dead.”

Freya nodded. “When?”

Dalla shook her head. “I don’t know. A day, a year? I can’t tell one night from the next.”

“Oh.” Freya pushed her hair back over her head. “Can you tell me about the giant? The creature with the metal bones on the south side of town. Was it a frost giant? Or a whale from the sea?”

“It was like a whale.” Dalla looked up sharply, a wide-eyed look of wonder splashed across her face. “Yes, like a whale. It fell from the sky in the night, streaming fire across the heavens. It came from the southeast, plummeting like a wingless bird. I stood in the lane and watched it grow larger and larger, bigger than anything I had ever seen before. The beast smashed down into the ground, crushing the houses. Its skin was on fire, sweeping from nose to tail, shredding its flesh to the bones.” The ghost’s mouth hung open, moving slightly as though she had more to say but couldn’t find the words.

Freya squinted through the gloom in the direction of the skeleton. “Was that before or after the reavers came?”

“Before.” Dalla nodded. “I was alive then. I saw it fall. The reavers came later, and then I wasn’t alive anymore.”

The huntress winced and nodded and stepped back into the doorway of her shelter. “Thank you. Farewell, Dalla.”

“And to you.” The dead woman took two steps and vanished, leaving Freya alone with her spear and her thoughts, though neither gave her much comfort.

Chapter 6. Family

Freya woke to the sound of Wren waking Erik beside her. Night had faded into day once more, and a weak light fell through the doorway to illuminate the cold stones and earth of their beds. The aether had drifted away, taking the shapes and faces of the ghosts with it, leaving only the empty homes behind.

They ate nothing because they had nothing to eat, so they wrestled Arfast out into the street and stood staring at the distant hill crests as their breath steamed in the morning air.

“What now?” Wren nodded at Katja. “She’s getting worse. Gudrun tells me that your sister will be waking up soon, crazed and feral, mad with hunger. When that happens…”

Freya looked at her poor beautiful sister and saw limbs stretched too long and thin, fingernails stained yellow and narrowing into claws, and everywhere her skin wore more and more hair in blood-red and snow-white that hid the pinks of her cheeks and neck and chest. Katja’s ears were taller and sharper, and the bottom of her nose had grown black and rough to the touch.

“Should we go back east?” Erik signed. “If the reavers have killed everyone in the west, then maybe we can still find another vala somewhere to the east of Logarven where the reavers haven’t been yet.”

“No.” Freya banged the butt of her spear on the gravel of the road to feel the steel hum and shiver in her hand. “In the east, the reavers are still just stories from the old wars. No. The plague came from the west. If there are any answers to find, if there’s any cure for Katja, it’s in the west.” She rested her spear on her shoulder and nudged Arfast to follow her. “Let’s go.”

Erik set out just a step behind, but Wren did not move.

Freya called back over her shoulder, “You don’t have to come with us.”

“If the good lord Woden wants me to die by the claws of the reavers, then far be it from me to second guess his wisdom,” the girl said. “But he hasn’t mentioned any such plans to me yet.”

“Then go home, with our thanks.”

“Alone?” Wren began shuffling after them. “Back to that empty tower?”

“If you want.” Freya cracked her knuckles against the haft of her spear. “On the other hand, you’re more than welcome to come along with us.”

Wren grunted and glanced up at the sky. “Certain death behind me and certain death ahead. That’s quite the riddle, lord. I suppose I should have made it more clear in my prayers that I’m not as fond of riddles as you are.” The vala apprentice quickened her pace to catch up to Erik. “But I’ll do my best to unravel this one. Just don’t let me die before I do.”

Freya and Erik exchanged a silent smile.

They left Hengavik and its grassy fields and followed the old ridge road up west. The smoking peak of Mount Esja glowered down at them from the distant north, its lower slopes gleaming snow-white and blue against the pale sky. They were less than an hour on the road before Erik said he could smell the salty sea air. Freya smelled the change in the air as well, but whether it was the sea she could not tell. Something else, something foul, lingered in the hills.

Dark clouds gathered in the west, shrouding the sky and rumbling with the first angry hints of the storm to come. Freya minded the road, scanning for fresh tracks of men, or mules, or sheep. But the only tracks she could identify were fox prints, and they were all far too large. Erik moved on ahead, a hundred paces or more, always cresting the next hill long before the women and Arfast did, and each time he would wave the all-clear sign.

It was nearing noon, with the sun shining weakly on the shrubby hills patched with ice, when Erik reached the top of a hill, dropped to one knee, and raised his fist. Freya pulled the white elk to a halt and told Wren to stay put, and then the huntress jogged up the road to her husband’s side. He pointed to the northwest.

A bright warble of cold water ran down from the skirts of Mount Esja and raced in its narrow channel down through the hills, and not far from their hilltop Freya could see a small water mill standing beside the swift stream. The mill sat half-buried in the bank beside the water, roofed in turf that would hide the building from any travelers on its northern side, but to the south it presented a crooked stone face with a crooked, curtained doorway. Its three water wheels spun steadily in the water, each one a cleverly lashed arrangement of ribs and femurs with oiled leather sheets stretched tightly over the paddles to catch the water.

“It’s still working? Why the hell would anyone need a mill where all the farmers are dead?” Freya asked.

“Look again,” Erik signed. “Most of the paddles have rotted away. The bones are just spinning loose. And there used to be more than three, but the others are gone.”

Freya nodded, trusting her husband’s keen eyes over her own. He’d always had stronger vision and sharper ears, even before his injury, before he was excluded from the world of conversation and found himself simply listening and watching, year after year, until Freya and Katja had helped him learn to speak with his hands.

“It’s not far,” Freya said. “We should take a look inside. There might be food.”

“Really?” Erik raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe in a cellar buried along the bank, something forgotten when the people left, or ignored when the reavers came.”

They followed the road a bit farther and then struck out along an overgrown footpath down a gentle slope through tall grasses and crunching snow to the edge of the stream across from the mill. Thin plates of ice clung to the banks, floating on the silver ripples of the stream. The water wheels were indeed broken and rotting, still turning in the water but no longer able to turn anything inside the mill.

Freya leapt across the water and quietly dashed to the roof of the mill where she searched for tracks and signs. The ground above and behind the mill was wild and unmarked, but at the edge of the stream where the earth was softer, she saw the footprints leading to the door of the mill. She pointed at them and Erik nodded. They were boot prints. And they were fresh.

“Hello?” Freya circled around the mound of the buried mill and approached the muddy bank where the door faced the water and the broken wheels spun in the stream. “Is there anyone here? We’re travelers from Logarven. We mean you no harm. We’re just looking for some food.”

A dry scrape echoed from inside the mill, the sound of a boot on earth or stone. Freya rested her hand on her favorite knife. A gift from Erik, it had a serrated edge and a sculpted handle that fit her thin fingers perfectly. Holding it tightly reminded her of home.

There were a few more soft scuffling sounds inside the mill, and Freya began to wonder if she had been mistaken, if there was no man inside at all but some lost sheep or goat. Erik lowered his spear and nodded at the doorway, and Freya pulled back the leather curtain.

Inside it was pitch black, save for the rectangle of light from the doorway that revealed nothing except for a smooth earthen floor. The scuffling sound came again, louder and faster, as though some animal was struggling to stand or to run, but couldn’t.

Wren screamed and Freya spun around, crashed across the freezing stream, and scrambled up the steep bank toward the sound. She reached the top of the slope with Erik half a step behind her. Just a stone’s throw away there stood a man in a filthy wool cloak with one arm wrapped around Wren to pin her arms down, and his other arm wrapped around her neck with a steel knife in his hand. He had a scraggly blonde beard and his grimace revealed several missing teeth between his cracked lips.

“Who are you?” His voice broke and shook, choked with phlegm. He spat in the grass.

“Let her go. Now!” Freya pointed her long spear at the man.

He tightened his grip on Wren, and the girl thrashed about, kicking at his legs and trying to smack her skull back into his face. He lifted her up off the ground and gave her a hard shake, and she fell limp, her eyes blinking and head lolling as she gasped for breath.

The man shifted his arm around her neck to press the edge of his knife to the girl’s throat. “What do you want? Where’d you come from?”

“We saw the mill and thought there might be food.” Freya edged forward as Erik moved sideways to flank the man. “Now let her go. We don’t want to hurt you, but I’ll kill you before I let you kill her.”

“Food?” The man jerked his head at the mound of white fluff on the ground beside him. “I got food. I’ll trade you the sheep for the girl.”

“No deals until you let her go.” Freya took another step closer, tilting up her spear toward the man’s face above Wren’s shoulder.

The man’s eyes darted over to Arfast, who stood serenely a short distance away. “What about that girl there, the sleeping one?”

“We don’t deal in folk. No one deals in folk, not since the old days, and even then never for Yslanders.”

The man spat in the grass again. “Yeah, well, times change.”

“Last chance! Let the girl go!” Freya moved closer still and placed one hand on the butt of her spear, readying for a side-arm thrust.

It will have to be perfect, over Wren’s shoulder and straight through his eye.

She’d have preferred Erik to do it, but Erik was standing in the wrong place. From his position he could keep the man from running, and he could keep the man turned toward Freya, but he couldn’t run him through without hitting Wren. A pity. He’d always been better with the spear, and she with the knife. Nothing to be done about that now.

A queer look came over the man’s eyes as he stared at Katja’s motionless figure on the back of the elk. “She’s bitten, isn’t she?”

“That’s right,” Freya said.

Instantly the man let Wren go, shoving the girl hard so she stumbled several steps away before she caught her balance. The man stared at them one by one. “What in the nine hells are you doing with her? Why’d you bring her here? Are you crazy? They’ll smell her. They’ll come for her, they could be coming now.” He spun about, his wild eyes scanning the horizon. He grabbed up his dead sheep and started toward the mill. “Get away from here! Get away from me! Go, now!”

Freya lowered her spear, watching the man stumble through the tall grass as fast as he could. And she was still watching him when Wren let loose a stone from her sling and caught the man in the back of the head. He went down hard, dropping the sheep and falling down the bank to the stream’s icy edge.

Wren slowly wrapped her sling around her wrist and glanced at Freya. “What? Gudrun told me to do it.”

Freya shook her head and went to the edge of the embankment to look down at the man, who was crawling out of the water and rubbing his head. She was about to turn away and suggest that they keep moving, perhaps in search of a sheep of their own, when a mournful whine cried out from the mill.

It was a pained sound, a frightened sound, a hungry sound.

It was not a human sound.

The man by the stream froze, Freya and Erik dashed to the edge of the slope with their spears at the ready, and Wren grabbed Arfast before the shying elk could bolt.

“No, no, no!” The man waved his empty hands at them. “Stay back! It’s all right!”

“Nine hells, you idiot!” Freya shouted. “There’s a reaver in there!”