The Codex Lacrimae (47 page)

Blinking, he blearily recognized the shadowed limbs of branches above him, and heard the moans of dead men and women shambling nearby.

He stared, disoriented. Everything seemed to be dead, yet furtive and shadowed movements were everywhere. The trunks of the trees around him were bound in a layer of frosty rime, thick fog carpeted the ground of the haunted landscape, and large snowflakes still fell and obscured his vision as he sank wearily into the snow.

He closed his eyes and sleep began to take him again.

“You must get up,” a voice growled from the embracing darkness. “Here. Let me re-sheathe your sword.”

Then a hand brushed snow from his face and lifted him from the snowdrift. He gasped as his rescuer threw him over an enormous shoulder. The gigantic man wore the hides of several silver wolves, the thick furs dappled grey and stinking of canine odor.

“My name is Fenris — I'm the wolf that tackled you and got you away from Hela.”

The burly man's voice was gruff and his tone matter-of-fact, as if explaining that a shape-changing ability was similar to choosing a par
ticular style of clothes to wear.

Fenris hoisted the knight down to the ground with the expectation that he should stand, but Aurelius's legs collapsed under him and he fell to his knees.

“Don't try to speak anymore, Friend,” Fenris cautioned. “You'd be hard pressed to make it far in Niflheim without Hela's pursuit.” He knelt in front of the seated knight with a supportive hand on Aurelius's shoulder. “We must flee from this place. Can you walk yet?”

Aurelius grunted, and opened his eyes — a supreme effort, given the fact that he just wanted to fall asleep. He saw a hand near his face and grasped it. With its assistance, he stood and looked at the man helping him. Gigantically framed, with massive slabs of muscle, Fenris had a silver-bearded, broad face, whose golden-yellow eyes wryly complemented his currently grinning lips.

As the snowfall increased in eddies about them, the shadowed movements he'd noticed earlier came into full clarity. A pack of twenty-five wolves rose from the snowbanks and underbrush. Yellow eyes gleamed as steam issued from slavering jaws.

The animals, without an explicit command from their master, sat on their haunches to await his bidding.

Fenris lifted the knight in both arms as the youth began to topple forward, finally succumbing to the exhaustion and cold. A warm drowsiness started to come over the knight and, feeling bizarrely like a child in the giant's arms, he began drifting into sleep.

“
Skade
!” Fenris exclaimed, lowering him to the ground. “He's failing. Come here and help me tend to him!”

Aurelius opened his eyes and saw a cloaked woman.

“Fenris, we've got to get out of here,” the woman said, pulling away from him, barely controlling a very evident rage. “I can't believe you've revealed yourself to Hela because of him!”

“Come, come, Little One — he was trapped,” Fenris said, the burly man's voice indulgently calm. “He showed no sign of using his magic, so I had to do something.” He reached out and touched the woman's cheek. “Skade, calm down. I was tired of Hela and Abbadon's games, anyway. We've learned all we could.”

Skade flinched, her anger still evident, but instead of immediately withdrawing from him she nuzzled the man's hand for a second, pressing her cheek tightly against it, and then nodded at the knight lying face-down on the snowy field.

“We can still escape,” she offered, “leave it to the Fates to decide if he lives or dies.”

“Skade,” Fenris said, his tone still serenely insistent, “I think our presence here is
part
of the Norns' design. The future Urd was with him until the moment we escaped the Tower.”

The woman looked at him in obvious surprise, again took a look at Aurelius, and then seemed to resign herself to the situation.

“Let's get him up, then,” she said.

Fenris knelt and pulled the knight over. Aurelius, teeth chattering, looked questioningly into the shadows of the cowl, but still couldn't clearly see the woman's face. She reached into a fold of her robe and withdrew a small glass vial that she handed to Fenris.

“A bit on his chest, over the heart, and then the rest he must drink,” she said curtly.

“All of it?” Fenris asked as he administered the liquid.

Skade grunted an affirmation but said nothing as she reached into a slim satchel slung over her shoulder and withdrew a pair of thick gloves.

“Put these on his hands when you're done, Fenris.” She paused. “So, yes, give him a full dose — all of it. He'll pay for it later, but we need him able to fight when they come.”

She interrupted herself, bending her head intently as she listened to something.

“Hurry, my Love — I hear the horns of the
Wilde Jagd
.
The gathering's completed and I can hear the screams of the
Ville Folk
and howling of the
Nachzehrer
.
” She listened again, impatiently noting his progress. “Hurry, Fenris — they're coming!”

“We really need you to move,” Fenris repeated and jerked Aurelius's head backward, bringing a flask to the youth's mouth. Hot liquid that tasted of mulled wine, milk, and honey coursed into his throat. He coughed convulsively as he sat down hard on a shattered log.

Then, a pleasant warmth overwhelmed the pain and frostbitten numbness, giving strength to his limbs. The tiredness fled from his body and his head cleared for the first time since awakening from the long fall from Hela's tower.

“You should be able to walk now,” Fenris said, handing the wool-lined gloves to Aurelius before re-corking the vial and handing it back to Skade.

“Thank you,” Aurelius said, putting on the gloves and feeling more than better, every nerve crackling with renewed energy.

“What was that drink?” Aurelius asked as he scrambled to his feet, wonderingly taking in the giant and the blond-haired, buxom woman.

He could see Skade's features clearly now. Although he and Fenris were much taller than her, Aurelius was struck by a contrasting combination of fierce warrior-like resolve and almost supernatural beauty — from her heart-shaped face with sculpted chin, to the shoulder-length blond hair and widely set, long-lashed, and electric-blue eyes, Aurelius thought her one of the most sensuously beautiful women he'd ever met.

“It's Audumla's Milk,” Skade replied, regarding him with frank distaste. “If it was good enough for Ymir, then it's good enough for you — I don't care what the prophecies foretell about how powerful you are. I only see a pathetic Midgardian at the moment, and you'll remain that until you prove otherwise.” She glared at Fenris. “Let's get out of here — don't you hear the Clamor? The
Wilde Jagd
's begun.”

“The ‘Wild Hunt?'” Aurelius repeated.

“
Ja
,
Hela's army of vampyrs, harpies, griffins, and all the fell sprites of the air and corpses of the ground. She's not going to let her prize escape so easily.”

“We'll be fine, Skade,” Fenris said, “they haven't gotten here yet.”

Skade glared at Fenris as she retrieved the bow she'd shoved into a snowdrift.

“Men,” she muttered. “You escape one danger, but forget about the five or six perils that lie ahead!”

She turned back to the forest where she seemed to hear sounds beyond the range of Aurelius's hearing.

Fenris chuckled, his voice a deep rumble as he fondly laid a hand on the woman's shoulder. He glanced at Aurelius and shook his head from side to side, smiling.

“Don't mind her manner, my friend. You've been saved by a frost-giant's daughter, and can expect no less, given our peril. Skade, a kinder greeting, perhaps? We're about to be fighting beside each other in a few minutes.”

Skade stared at both men and then took a deep breath.

“Greetings, Codex Wielder,” she said, striving for a polite tone, “I'm Skade.”

“Hello — you can both call me Servius,” he said, “and, again, thank you for saving my life.”

“You're welcome, although if we don't start running that condition is going to be short-lived.” She looked at him and frowned before unclasping her cloak. Aurelius averted his eyes at the amount of deeply suntanned breasts revealed by the brown leather bodice beneath, but not before noticing that the low-plunging top was part of her formfitting battle-dress. Skade was very toned, with a slim waist girded by weapons and leather pants that emphasized muscular legs tucked into high hunter's boots. A quiver of arrows strapped to her back and short-sword at her side completed the martial ensemble.

She held the cloak toward Aurelius, annoyed by his gawking, flaming face.

“Here — what's wrong with you? Put this on. It'll keep you warm when the battle starts.”

Aurelius wanted to ask more questions, yet grateful for even a momentary reprieve from the woman's irritation, he quietly accepted the cloak and pinned it around his shoulders with a triquerta brooch similar to Clarinda's.

Skade nodded at Fenris, and they began running across the snowfield toward a deeper part of the wood.

I've got to get back to Clarinda, but that seems impossible from here.

The trio waded through the frigid landscape as an arctic wind blew snow through the trees like an inland sea of rolling white foam. Aurelius knew that without Skade's cloak and gloves he wouldn't have survived even a few minutes in the inhospitable wasteland of Niflheim.

How many times can I be injured and healed? Every world here is filled with pain.

He pulled the cowl tighter around his head and concentrated on following Fenris and Skade.

The winds were shrieking around them, with snow falling so heavily that Aurelius had to lift one leg high after the other to trudge through the drifts. He abruptly strode into Fenris's back.

The man unwrapped a long cord and handed Aurelius one end of it. “Tie this about your waist! Take heart — we're almost at the Haunted Wood where we can make something of a defense!”

Both men resumed their march as the storm intensified and — after what seemed like days but perhaps was less than an hour — the trio finally entered into the shelter of a forest of fir and pine trees.

“Our home is a short distance into this wood!” Fenris shouted, grinning at the Hospitaller. “We might escape before the Hunt reaches us.”

“Unlikely,” Skade said, brushing snow off her body. “They're almost here.”

Aurelius and Fenris saw a mass of dark grey against the snowfall's blurred horizon line. A large force was approaching.

“We'll keep running, though?” Fenris asked.

“Or, we could stay here a while, and see what happens,” Skade said, her voice becoming husky and eyes glittering with excitement. Aurelius was confused. The woman's hunger for battle seemed completely at odds with her earlier reservations. She moved closer to Fenris and gave him an affectionate hug. “Let's take a moment before the attack, and just…
be
.
..my Love.”

Fenris chuckled, and looked resignedly at Aurelius. “Draw your sword, my friend. We're in it. The madness is taking her, which means that —”

The quiet of the forest shattered in a cacophony of yells, howling, barking, and horn-blowing.

Screaming at the top of their lungs, the
Ville Folk
,
or “Wild People,” emerged from the snowy field. Animal revenants preceded the racket and madness of that horde, this mass of undead horses, wild dogs, pigs, goats, and cats bounding across the Niflheimian expanse and collectively baying like the Hel-beasts they were.

The
Ville Folk
and berserkers were horrifying, unkempt men and women, so completely covered in shaggy hair and furs that they reminded Aurelius of the African apes he'd seen years ago in an Alexandrian fair. Theirs were the screams of the damned who Hela had recruited for her armies. Upon seeing them, Skade moved so quickly that Aurelius had only partially drawn his sword by the time she'd killed three flying creatures with fast-shot arrows.

“They're here! If you can, run!” The man warned and threw off his cloak. “I'll find you afterwards.” Fenris started transforming into his lupine self, and within seconds was again the gigantic wolf that the knight had first met at Hela's side.

Skade started laughing as she fired more arrows into the rushing horde, and then drew her own sword.

“Come, Codex Wielder, let's make Hela's Dead die again!” She shouted before running pellmell into a group of beserking, undead Vikings who were attempting to make a shield wall. Skade's speed was such that she leapt over the first of the upraised leather-faced shields and began hacking at the corpses with a ferocity that made her seem a berserker herself.

“Her name means Destruction,” Fenris rumbled admiringly beside Aurelius, “but she's right. We must fight as never before if we're going to get out of this.”