The other swimmers were coming up to the beach as well, all naked and exhausted, all gasping and shivering and barely able to speak. They cried out weakly, “Help me! Save me! A rope! Please!” And one by one they were set upon by the reavers swimming along right behind them. They were crushed and shredded and torn apart within throwing distance of the wall.
Freya raised her spear and moved to the edge of the wall, but Erik pulled her back and signed, “We can’t save them. We have to hold this line.”
Freya stepped back. “Slingers, faster!”
The rocks slammed into the waters and the reavers, and the beasts yelped and whined and howled as the stones smashed their arms and chests and faces. But still they came, killing the fleeing swimmers every step of the way.
And from across the dark waters, a gravelly voice thundered, “KILL THEM! CRACK THEIR BONES! SHRED THEIR FLESH!”
Freya and Erik exchange a worried look, but there wasn’t time to wonder who was hollering over the bay.
The reavers staggered up out of the surf and shook the cold salt water from their fur, but they only paused a moment before dashing toward the seawall door where they began leaping and snapping at the warriors. The slingers aimed upward so their rocks would sail over the men and fall straight down on the beasts, and the spears and harpoons swung down to stab at them.
Freya counted eight reavers on the beach below, with one or two more still in the water.
It isn’t fair. They shouldn’t have to die like this, not with the cure so close at hand. If only they had stayed away for a few more days, then no one would need to die. But we can’t let them kill us either.
“This is the last battle, the last night of blood!” she cried out to the grim-faced fishermen. “After tonight, there won’t be any reavers left in Ysland, one way or another!”
The men shouted, “For Ivar! For Rekavik!”
Springing upward from the beach, the reavers could just barely reach the top of the wall and the boots of the defenders. Freya took her time, readying her weapon just beside her eye, and when a reaver leapt up right below her, she drove her steel spear straight down into its shoulder or eye or even into its open maw. Erik stood at her side, striking swiftly and then yanking his blade free before the weight of the dead reaver could pull the spear from his hands.
After a few exhausting minutes, four of the reavers on the beach were dead, and one of the survivors had turned its attention to the task of gnawing on the bodies on the ground.
“We’re halfway home!” Freya shouted, and the slingers behind her cheered.
Two of the reavers on the ground stopped trying to scramble up the wall and began slamming their shoulders and heads against the iron door.
“Brace the door!” the fishermen shouted.
Freya moved back from the edge of the wall to catch her breath and feel the pounding of her heart in her chest. Erik tapped her shoulder and he pointed out at the water.
The last ripple was reaching the shore, but the dark shadow rose from the surface far sooner than any of the swimmers had. It rose, and rose, until it was wading waist-deep still far from the light of the torches. The driving snow wind obscured all but the creature’s dim outline. And then it roared a deafening, thunderous roar.
Freya stepped back, and so did every man on the wall. “That’s impossible! We killed Fenrir, we brought back his head!”
But as the monster came closer, she saw there were subtle differences from the reaver-king that Omar had beheaded on Thaverfell. It was enormous and completely covered in red fur, just like Fenrir, but this reaver’s fur was a bit thinner and browner, and when its hips rose out of the water it had only one tail, not three. Its muzzle was shorter, its features almost vaguely human behind a fox-like mask of fur and fangs.
Erik signed, “Look at the neck. A collar?”
Freya saw the silver shining in the starlight through the snow. “It’s a torque. That reaver’s wearing a silver torque. What does that mean?”
“Nine hells,” the old fisherman beside her muttered. And then he shouted, “It’s Prince Magnus!”
Freya spun to face the slingers on the roofs. “Run to the other door, and get Omar. We need his sword here, now! RUN!”
Three of the boys dashed off their perches, crashed to the snowy street, and took off at a dead sprint for the other door in the eastern seawall where the bright light of the rinegold sword was still clearly visible through the falling snow.
Freya stared at the huge creature coming toward her.
What was it Ivar said? He wanted to bite me again and again, until I was a god like him. This is what he meant. How many times did he bite his son? How much of the fox’s soul did he give to Magnus to change him into this monster?
The reavers at the foot of the wall stopped snarling and beating on the door, and they turned, whimpering and whining, toward the monstrous prince. The huge fox demon waded up out of the water and came straight toward the wall and Freya realized that the top of its head was only a few hairs shorter than the wall itself.
“Back, back, back!” she cried and the warriors all moved to the back edge of the wall, spears and harpoons raised in a bristling array of bloody steel.
The feral behemoth strode up to the seawall and swept one huge claw along the beach, smashing two of the small reavers aside and sending them flying down the strand. The other two bolted in the opposite direction, but the demon prince caught one around the legs and hurled it back into the bay. And then it turned its enormous golden eyes to Freya and the men on the top of the wall, and parted its fiendish jaws in a hideous grin.
“Slingers!” she cried, and the rocks flew thick and fast, but the beast only flinched and growled as they pelted its head and chest. She glanced north along the dim line of the wall to the crowd of defenders at the next door, but she couldn’t see the light of Omar’s sword.
The huge reaver slammed its shoulder into the seawall, and the ancient stones crackled and crunched and shuddered. The fishermen stabbed with their harpoons at the beast’s head and shoulders, and it drew back sharply, snapping its fangs as trickles of blood ran down its face, glistening in the torch light. And then the hulking monster stepped back and locked eyes with Freya, and growled, “You. Murderer. I come for you, girl. You die now.”
The men on the wall all looked at Freya.
“It speaks!?”
“It wants the girl!”
“Slingers!”
But the boys on the roof were at half their number since the others had gone in search of Omar, and those who remained were running out of stones to hurl. The rocks still flying across the wall were fewer and slower, and the beast ignored them entirely. And the men went on murmuring, “It wants revenge for Fenrir! It wants the huntress!”
But the salty old man at Freya’s side shouted, “Woden shits on what it wants. It’s not getting her or anything else. It’s getting killed, is what it’s getting, and we’re the ones killing it! We’ll bleed it dry and break its bones! And we’ll eat its black heart before midnight comes!”
A dark and bloody humor settled on the men. They all began muttering curses and threats and boasts and promises of the depraved and vicious things they were planning to do to the beast’s corpse when it laid steaming and rotting under their boots. Freya almost reminded them that the beast was their own prince, their own Magnus, just another man who fell victim to the plague. But she couldn’t imagine how many of Omar’s bloodflies would have to bite this creature to bring back his humanity, or how long the change would take.
Too long.
The demon charged at the wall again and threw one long, clawing arm at the warriors standing just above its head. Freya jumped left and Erik jumped right and the powerful limb crashed down between them, cracking the stones of the wall. They both lunged, driving their spears into thick fleshy muscles of that arm, and the beast whipped it back again with a bestial snarl.
It pulled the spear right out of Erik’s hands, but he had his steel knife out
in a flash. The claws crashed down on the wall again, with the beast snapping its sword-like fangs right at the lip of the wall, right at their boots. The men leapt back again, and attacked the arm again with harpoons and stones and hammers. The arm ripped away from the wall again, but a single hooked claw caught Freya’s foot and yanked her leg out from under her.
She fell down flat on the stone wall, but kicked hard two times, and her boot came free of the claw before it could drag her off the wall entirely. She rolled onto her stomach with her spear under her, and pushed herself back up.
Chapter 30. Silence
Erik felt naked. His borrowed shirt and trousers were too thin for the wind and the snow and the night air. The armored warriors and fishermen looked like iron gods beside him, heavy and solid, and most of all, warm. Erik was freezing. Even with his blood roaring and muscles burning, he was freezing.
Somewhere down below on the dark pebbled beach was his spear.
Gone. Useless.
The knife in his hand felt tiny and just as useless as he stared into the huge stinking maw of the beast below him. It was impossibly big. Twice as tall as a tall man, at least. And probably four times as heavy.
Is this what I turned into?
Did Wren see me like this?
Did Freya?
The monster pulled its arm back, yanking Freya’s foot out from under her. Erik darted forward, but she kicked free before he could take a second step, and she started to get back up. He held his knife at the ready, though every instinct in him was screaming to rip the harpoon away from the man next to him so he could do more than wait for something to stab with his little blade.
Freya stood up, her back to the beach.
The huge reaver shot its claws forward, not swinging them down onto the wall as before, but driving them straight on as a hunter drives a spear into a boar.
Freya!
He felt his lips and jaw moving, instinctively forming her name, screaming at her to run, to jump, to get down, and his free hand was waving, fingers signing as fast as he ever had signed in his life. But he made no screams and no one heard him. He beckoned madly with his hands, but she was looking at the old fisherman on her other side, and not at him.
The claws rushed forward.
Erik dashed across the wall, grabbed his wife with both hands, and spun her off toward the surprised fisherman.
The claws slammed into Erik’s back, four curving blades thrusting into his flesh, cracking his ribs, and snapping his spine. He felt his insides moving downward as his skin stretched and split. His arms snapped out to his sides all on their own, as though they hoped to reach back and take the claws out of his body, but just couldn’t reach. His legs kicked wildly, also beyond his control. The pain was everywhere, shrieking up and down his spine, and his jaw locked open as his neck strained to hold his head up.
He couldn’t think.
He couldn’t even feel.
He was the pain and the pain was him, and he stared up at the dark sky, at the thick clouds obscuring half the stars, at the tiny flakes of snow tumbling down toward him, and he didn’t understand what he saw.
As his head fell forward, he saw Freya. Her beautiful face, framed in white-golden hair and crowned with fox ears, her beautiful face turned toward him, her beautiful face red and white with rage and shock and sorrow. Her mouth was opening, her lips moving slowly.
Dimly, he knew she was screaming, but he couldn’t hear her.
He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t move his hands, and he couldn’t think of anything to say, and he couldn’t feel his…
Chapter 31. Fury
Freya spun into the arms of the fisherman and saw the reaver drive its claws into Erik’s back, saw her husband lifted off his feet, shaking and twisting with pain. She saw his face bright red as he screamed in silence. His chest expanded, wider and wider, until she saw the blood blossoming from the tears in his skin.
And then he was gone, ripped off the wall into the darkness and hurled back into the freezing waters of the bay.
“NO!” Freya ran across the wall and leapt into the cold, empty air with her spear raised in both hands, and she sank the steel blade and shaft deep into the reaver’s shoulder until it erupted through the beast’s back.
The reaver roared and stumbled.
Freya clung to the wet, bloody, stinking fur with one hand as she drew her serrated knife in the other hand and shoved it into the reaver’s neck. Heavy claws grabbed her legs, trying to yank her away, but she just tore deeper and deeper into the reaver’s throat. A vein burst and hot blood flooded out over her arm, and the reaver stumbled again, falling to its knees. The impact nearly shook her off, but Freya held tight, gasping for breath with her burning lungs and burning throat, barely able to see through her burning eyes drenched with hot tears.
The claws on her legs loosened and she shoved her knife deeper across the reaver’s throat, hacking and sawing at the monstrous windpipe and muscles and leathery flesh. The reaver leaned over and crashed onto the beach on its side and Freya slipped down to the ground, still clinging to her knife, which was stuck somewhere in the neck bones. Her arm was too tired and sore to cut anymore, so she let go of the knife and staggered back from the huge corpse. She fell on her backside, and sat there on the cold stones, weeping in silence.
He’s gone. Just… gone. I didn’t even… I should… he’s gone!
Slowly, she turned her head to look down the length of the dead reaver and she saw her spear, and then she saw four more harpoons all lodged down the belly and legs, and beside them were four gray-bearded fishermen in rusty, mismatched armor, gasping and wheezing and bleeding together on the beach beside her. One of them fell to his knees, his hand pressed to his chest, and two of his companions held him up and carried him through the door back inside the city. The last fisherman was the man who had stood at her side on the wall, and he shuffled over beside her and sat down in the snow.
After a few minutes, they both looked up to see a blinding white light bouncing along the top of the wall, and soon they could see Omar’s face as he ran toward them, sword in hand, and a moment later he was standing over them with a gathering crowd of men and women trickling out the seawall door to stare at the huge hairy body.
Back in the city there was cheering and shouting and laughing, and for a moment Freya couldn’t understand why anyone in the world could possibly feel any joy at that moment.
The old fisherman stood up, and Omar sat down in his place.
“We lost Erik?” he asked.
Freya nodded.
Omar stared blankly ahead, and then his face twisted in rage, and he leaned forward and plunged his bright sword into the body of the beast, and the fur and flesh instantly blackened, smoked, and burst into flame.
Chapter 32. Grief
Dimly, at the edges of her sight and hearing, Freya sensed the other people around them on the beach, some gawking at the corpse, some joking about the battle, others boasting and bragging. Gradually, they all moved back inside the wall, away from the stench of the burning reaver. But she stayed. And Omar stayed.
After an hour or so, when the fire had died down quite a bit and the drunken revelers of Rekavik were roaring merrily, Omar said, “My first wife died of old age. She was just forty-two, but that was quite old back then. I think I loved her, in a way. We were never close though. Two people in a house, was all. But we got along well, and there’s a kind of love that comes from just being together. Fixtures in each others’ lives. She died in her sleep, very peacefully, or so I was told. I wasn’t there. I was too busy forging my immortality. I regret that, a little. Even now. I can still remember her face, would you believe? But I’ve forgotten her name.”
Freya sighed.
“My other wives, I left. One by one, here and there. I don’t really know why I married any of them, except that at the time it made me happy,” he said. “They were pretty, or clever, or simply good company. It never lasted very long. Sooner or later, I would be re
ady to move on to some other project in some other country, and they wouldn’t want to go, and I never made them. A new land, a new life, a new wife.”
Freya sniffed and sat up a little bit, grateful for the distraction. “Did you really love any of them? I mean, really love them?”
“Yes, quite a few of them, though only for a short time. And that time grew shorter the older I grew. I’ve been losing touch with… whatever it is that makes a man a man. Growing, aging. Fearing, striving. I see young people like you, so full of life and passion, staring out at a world full of things you know nothing about, and yet full of confidence and bravado and your own sort of immortality, and I envy you, in all your crazed stupidity. Real immortality is a hollow imitation of the arrogance of youth. You have passions. I have regrets.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and she leaned into him. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying. Erik deserved better. And you deserved better, too, after all of this nonsense. But that’s all just more regret, and that’s no good to him or to you now. Just remember that he loved you, and he must have been very happy in that love.”
“How do you know?” she croaked through her raw throat.
“I knew it from the moment I met you two. You had your own secret language. It was the two of you, together, against the whole world. Against murderers and queens and monsters. And when the plague took him, he went to the water mill to wait for you, in chains. At that moment, facing the end of his life, the end of his humanity, no one could blame him for running away to save his own skin. But he was as good as his word. He stayed. Because he trusted you. He knew you would save him. And you did. You risked your life to save him.”
“I didn’t save him tonight.”
“The fishermen told me what happened,” Omar said. “It was his turn to save you. And he gave his life for yours. Many a young man throughout history, all across the world, in countless languages, has promised a beautiful young woman that he would die for her. But precious few actually would, or do.”
Freya the Huntress (Europa #2: A Dark Fantasy) Page 27
