Whether Nidhug’s sorcery intervened or not, so much for Hel’s promises, she angrily thought, then wondered about the promise Hel had made to free Guthrun when Nidhug was defeated and the Skull had been returned.
She remembered her daughter’s courage with pride. Guthrun had stoically accepted Bloodsong’s mission, and though trembling with fear had not pleaded with her mother to stay.
With a curse, Bloodsong jerked her thoughts away from worry. It was too late to turn back. And it was six years too late to worry about whether Hel kept promises.
Hel laughs last, Bloodsong remembered again. “Not this time!” she vowed, and limped onward.
* * *
Morning sunlight streamed through the open doorway of an isolated, rough-hewn forest cottage. Within, a tall woman, her hair short-cut and reddish-blond, awoke, stretched beneath the furs, and shivered. Why was it so cursed cold?
She opened her pale blue eyes. Thorfinn, her mate, was not beside her. The door was open. And the wall peg where Thorfinn’s scabbarded sword usually hung was empty.
Instantly alert, Valgerth Holdasdottir vaulted from the bed and grabbed her sword from its wall peg, unsheathed the blade, hurried to the door, and cautiously looked out.
She saw no danger.
Snow glittered in the slanting morning sunlight. Booted footprints led away from the door and into the trees that marked the edge of the forest clearing.
Frowning, Valgerth closed and barred the door. The wooden chest near the bed was open. She looked inside. Thorfinn’s leather armor was missing. Hers was still there.
Placing her sword within easy reach, senses alert for danger, she hastily dressed in brown leather breeches, tunic, and boots, then donned her leather armor quickly and efficiently, as if the last six years had never been. Soon, wearing her sword-belt, iron-ribbed leather battle-helm, gloves, and heavy cloak, she grabbed her circular wooden shield by the iron grip on its underside, and with sword ready opened the door.
No danger still in sight, she stepped outside. A breeze whispered in the tall pines around the cottage. Somewhere, a bird sang. She sniffed the air. Nothing seemed amiss.
Frowning, she followed Thorfinn’s tracks in the snow, left the clearing, and soon saw him. He was sitting on a fallen tree. His shield leaned against the tree trunk at his feet. His battle-helm was beside him on the log. His dark hair was still rumpled from sleep. With one hand, he absently stroked his short-trimmed beard.
“Morning, Val.” Thorfinn turned his head and smiled at her. “Come, sit beside me.” He picked up his battle-helm and brushed snow from the fallen tree.
She cursed. “Skadi’s Bow! Is nothing wrong?”
“You slept deeply, for a change. So, I—”
“So you put on your armor, left me to freeze with the door open, and took a little stroll?” She slammed her sword into its scabbard. “You had another cursed dream. Yes? What was it this time?”
“Freyadis is alive.”
Valgerth stiffened. “Freyadis is dead.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “She was. But not now.”
“Don’t do this, Thorfinn. Dreams be cursed. She’s dead. Lost to me. Forever. Your vision six years ago, in her slaughtered village—”
“We never found her body.”
“No, but—”
“Just before dawn, I had another vision. It started as a dream but became much more. I saw her riding out of the north clad all in black. The steed she rode was thin and wasted, almost skeletal. And its eyes, Val. They burned with purple fire.”
“Hel’s work.”
“So it seems.”
“Freyadis died Hel-praying?”
“As you had hoped.”
“And feared.”
“She lives, Val.” He shrugged. “I know it.”
A grim smile curved Valgerth’s lips. “Freyadis, Freyadis, why did I waste years hurting and grieving for you? I should have trusted you not to let a little thing like Death stop you.”
“Sit with me, Val. Please?”
She walked forward and sat down beside him.
“You still look good in your armor.” He took her hand and winked at her.
She shook her head. “I had hoped never to wear it again, as we vowed, unless our lives were in danger, unless someone discovered who and where we were.”
“Or if Freyadis returned.”
“I will not completely believe she lives until I see her with my own eyes. Do you think your vision was of something that has already occurred, or something that soon will?”
“I felt the time was now. I saw what looked like the frozen northern wastes around her. So, if she rides south from the northern frontier, there’s only one likely road she can take until she is out of the mountains. Perhaps I will have other visions to guide us. Or perhaps the Gods will lead us to her. Your fate and hers were always linked and no doubt still are.” Thorfinn squeezed her hand.
“We don’t have enough silver to buy two horses.”
He chuckled. “Then we’ll steal them, or some silver. It won’t be the first time.”
Valgerth thought of the battle cry that she and the other slaves had screamed as they cut their way to freedom behind Freyadis Guthrun’s Daughter, the arena warrior known as Bloodsong. She pulled her sword from its scabbard and kissed the blade. “For Bloodsong and freedom,” she whispered as she gazed into Thorfinn’s brown eyes.
He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Valgerth’s blade. “Bloodsong and freedom,” he solemnly repeated, then grinned and kissed her lips, too. “I may have missed adventuring, after all.”
“And the quiet forest life does not agree with me as much as I’d pretended.”
“Then let’s be to it!” He slipped on his battle-helm and grabbed his shield.
WHEN BLOODSONG reached the forest, she set the Hel-horse saddle beside an ice-encrusted pine, then sat on the snow, her back against the tree, and removed her left boot. Her ankle was inflamed and swollen. She touched the fevered flesh and felt agony shoot up her leg. She did not think it was broken, but it didn’t matter if it was. She had to keep going. “Garm’s Blood!” she cursed.
Beneath the darkness of her cloak, she opened the spell pouch and found a small, stoppered earthenware jar containing a pain-numbing salve. Her nose wrinkled at the pungent odor. She considered not using the salve, suspicious of all of Hel’s magics. Yet she needed to keep moving, and she could walk faster if fighting less pain. She smoothed on the ointment.
The pain eased slightly. She stoppered the jar, replaced it in the spell pouch, then began the painful job of getting her boot back over the swollen flesh. Many curses later, she succeeded.
She got back to her feet, lifted the Hel-horse saddle onto her shoulder, and resumed her trek through the closely packed trees.
Several miles later, she noticed wolves pacing her, closing in from all sides.
She set down the saddle, opened the spell pouch beneath her cloak, and found the Hel-charm she wanted. She reclosed the pouch and examined the talisman.
Its harmless appearance was anything but comforting to a warrior new to the ways of Witchcraft. It was only a piece of bone to which several tiny scraps of fur had been tied.
She frowned suspiciously at the unconvincing talisman then at the wolves. She drew her sword.
The wolves’ bright eyes gleamed with anticipation. She wondered at their brazen behavior. It was not usually their way to openly stalk a human. But perhaps they sensed her pain and knew she was injured. Or, could Nidhug be in some way responsible?
Hunger or sorcery or both, the reason didn’t matter. She had no intention of becoming the wolves’ next meal.
She transferred her sword to her left hand and held the talisman in her right. Hail killed the Horse by the Lake! Remember! she recited in her thoughts, as Hel had taught her, to spark implanted memorie
s, then sifted through Hel’s Witch-lore. An incantation arose to activate the talisman’s power.
She pointed the Hel-charm toward the nearest wolf. “In the name of Hel, by all the powers of Hel, and in the name of the Fenris Wolf, Hel’s brother, I command you, harm not this servant of Hel!”
The nearest wolf growled low in his throat and edged closer.
Bloodsong cursed, not too surprised, and then tried again. Still the wolves came nearer. She recited the spell a third time. The nearest wolf began his run.
She dropped the talisman and gripped her sword with both hands. The wolf leapt snarling, going for her throat. She met his leap with the blade, splitting his skull, splattering the snow with blood and brains. The beast twitched at her feet, then was still.
“So be it!” she yelled at the remaining wolves. “Witchcraft be damned! Come meet your deaths!”
The silver skull set in the ring on her left hand gleamed, catching her eye.
Another rule of Witchcraft, she suddenly recalled, was that the left hand was the hand of power. That was why Hel had placed the Hel-ring on Bloodsong’s left hand.
She quickly scooped the talisman out of the snow, held it in her left hand, pointed it at the nearest wolf.
Once more, she repeated the incantation. The Hel-ring flickered with purple light. The wolves turned and ran, whining in terror, their tails between their legs.
* * *
The last few miles to the crossroad on the frontier were the worst as, eyes on the rapidly setting sun, Bloodsong Freyadis Guthrun’s Daughter pushed herself to the limits of her endurance, determined to reach her goal in time to conjure another Hel-horse.
Her face streamed sweat in spite of the cold. Her swollen ankle burned with agony. Each breath was a gasp of pain. Yet she moved faster until she nearly ran.
Mere moments before sunset, she stumbled out of the dense forest into the crossroad. Startled ravens roosting in a nearby tree took flight, squawking angrily at being disturbed. A half-eaten corpse hung by a rope around its neck from the vacated tree.
Bloodsong dropped the saddle, knelt in the center of the crossroad, dug in the spell pouch, found the three splinters of bone from the Hel-horse’s skull, and placed them on the snow in front of her. She made sure the bones were in shadow to prevent any damage from the remaining sunlight. She extracted a small ritual dagger from the pouch. A grinning silver skull on the dagger’s black handle gleamed in the weakening sunlight as she drew the rune-blade from its sheath.
Hail killed the Horse by the Lake! Remember! she mentally recited and found the implanted Witch-lore she needed.
Holding the dagger in her left hand, she used the point to draw a large ring in the snow around the shards of bone. She quickly cut Runes in the snow around the rim of the circle, ending with an Ehwaz Rune in the circle’s center.
Focusing all her concentration upon the complex ritual she now had to perform before the sun finished sinking below the horizon, she stood and began the conjuration with a Runic chant to raise the powers of Hel to her aid.
* * *
Hidden in the trees lining the intersection of the narrow forest trails that formed the crossroad, two watchers silently studied the tall, black-clad woman. Her presence chilled them and made the very air seem to grow colder. Her warrior’s weapons dismayed them. Both were glad that the shadowy hood of her shaggy black fur cloak covered her head, and both felt an irrational fear that she might throw back the hood and reveal her face.
Their terror of the strange woman grew as she stood with her back to them, arms outstretched, fists clenched, intoning strange chants. But still the two watchers stood their ground, certain that at long last, after days and nights of fruitless watching and waiting, they had finally found a Witch.
* * *
Bloodsong turned slowly through a circle, nearly finished with the conjuration. Spirits of the west and south winds had been called upon. The spirits of east and north remained. A scream rang out. She dropped into a crouch and drew her sword. Nothing stirred in the twilight gloom. But from nearby, within the deeper shadows of the trees, came a frightened whimpering, as if of children.
Bloodsong waited, ready to fight.
The whimpering continued.
“Are there children there? Come out if there are. I won’t hurt you.”
The whimpering faltered an instant, then began again, louder.
“If this is a trick, a trap, spring it, curse you! Come into the crossroad!” Bloodsong glanced uneasily on all sides. Then it hit her. After all her effort and pain to reach the crossroad in time, her conjuration of the Hel-horse had been ruined and could not be repeated until the next sunset. Without a Hel-horse, she might well be doomed and her daughter with her.
“Garm’s Blood!” she cursed. “Whoever or whatever is there, show yourself, or I will—”
Whimpering with terror, two small shapes moved forward out of the shadows a few steps.
“Closer,” Bloodsong ordered, not trusting appearances.
The two advanced a few more steps, weeping.
Bloodsong saw that the boy and girl, if that is what they truly were, wore filthy, tattered furs. She judged the boy near Guthrun’s age, six or seven years, and the girl older, nine or ten. They were undoubtedly brother and sister from the similarities in their features and mops of white-blond hair.
“One of you screamed. Which one? And why? You interrupted something very important.”
The girl slowly raised a trembling hand. “Punish me.”
“No,” the boy whispered. He pointed at himself. “Punish me.”
“No, Mani. I screamed. Punish me.”
“Sol’s wrong,” Mani responded. “We both screamed.”
Bloodsong scanned the forest around her again, still suspicious, half expecting the children’s forms to become something monstrous and deadly.
“But I screamed first, Mani continued, “so,” his voice broke, “punish me.”
“If you really are children, I’ll not be punishing anyone. But why scream at all? If you’d just been silent a few moments more—”
“Your skull-face.” Mani sobbed. He buried his face in his hands.
“My what?”
“In your hood.” Sol whimpered. “It was glowing.”
“I don’t understand.” Bloodsong pushed back the drooping hood of her cloak.
The children gaped at her. “But,” Sol said, “there was a skull! I saw it!”
Bloodsong felt sick. Something had happened while she was doing Hel’s Witchcraft. The magical half of Hel’s face, the dead half, must replace her own when she used Witch-powers. She had not been warned about that. What other effects of Hel’s Witchcraft had been kept secret from her? Hel laughs last, she remembered again.
Bloodsong decided there was no trap. She sheathed her sword. “Go home, children.” She turned and limped back to the Rune-circle in the snow. She knelt, picked up the three shards of bone. She replaced them in the spell pouch then looked around. The children had not moved.
“Go on,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Your mother and father must be worried. It’s getting dark.”
“There’s no one at home.” Mani scuffed the snow with the toe of his boot.
“Our father died a year ago,” Sol explained. “Plague. And now, our mother—” Sol’s voice trailed away.
“But you are a Witch?” Mani asked.
“Of sorts.”
“Our mother told us Witches worked magic at crossroads,” Sol said. “So we waited.”
“And you came!” Mani added.
“How long since you have eaten?” Bloodsong asked. “I don’t have much, but—”
“We are used to hunger,” Sol shrugged and put an arm around Mani’s shoulders.
“Just help our mother!” Mani pleaded.
“Is she sick? Has she had a
n accident?”
“Our mother told us a story once, about a Witch who knew how to wake the dead.”
Bloodsong felt uneasy. “Go on.”
“Soldiers came to our hut a week ago,” Mani said. “They wanted children to put in their slave cage.”
“Mother hid us and wouldn’t tell them where we were,” Sol added. “Not even when they made her cry.”
“They made her cry to death!” Mani wiped at his eyes. “But now she can wake up!”
“Please?” Sol begged. “We would have asked Norda Greycloak, but the soldiers took her away.”
“Norda Greycloak?”
“The Witch who lives to the south,” Mani said.
“You’re our only hope!” Sol insisted.
Bloodsong looked from one to the other. Only a God or Goddess could do what the children wanted. “Where is your mother?” Bloodsong quietly asked, already guessing the answer.
Mani pointed to the corpse hanging from the tree.
BLOODSONG WALKED to the hanging corpse and looked up. The darkness of the coming night filled the empty eye sockets of the skullish face.
“Your mother was a brave woman. She did not give you to the soldiers. Always honor her memory. She was a warrior armed only with courage and her love for you.”
“We tried to get her down,” Mani said, “but we couldn’t get up the tree.”
“And we tried to keep the ravens off her, too,” Sol added, “but there were too many of them. They ignored the rocks and sticks we threw. But you can still wake her up, can’t you? And make her look like she did, before?”
The hope in the girl’s voice tugged at Bloodsong’s emotions. She knelt to look them in the eye at their level, as she often had Guthrun.
Bloodsong Hel X 3 Page 2
