“Then her lover must have been a man.”
“Probably. But when my father died, I was very small. My father’s sister moved in and helped my mother raise me. They became close. Very close. I grew up surrounded by love.”
“I envy you, then.”
“Yes?”
“I mean,” she quickly went on, “I am glad you had loving people with you, like mine.”
“Yes.”
“So,” Huld frowned, changing the subject back to Valgerth and Bloodsong, “she was thrown in with the arena slaves and Bloodsong was already there?”
“Aye. Bloodsong somehow made her want to go on living. They trained together and planned an escape. Nidhug noticed their friendship and decreed they would next fight each other in the arena. Deeming it better to die fighting soldiers than each other, they put their plan into motion. Other arena warriors and slaves joined them, and a few cut their way to freedom.”
Ahead of them, the two women laughed again. Bloodsong leaned over, momentarily put an arm around her friend’s shoulder, then slapped Valgerth on the back. Both Huld and Thorfinn noticed and glanced at each other. And then they both laughed.
“I’m glad they are together again,” Huld said, and was glad to realize she meant it.
“As am I.”
“How did you and Valgerth meet?”
Thorfinn smiled. “I found her fighting off some rogues who had attacked her, much to their regret, I should add.”
“And you saved her from them?”
“I gutted two of them, but then fell to bad luck. My horse stumbled and threw me. When I regained consciousness, having skillfully fallen so as to hit my head on a rock, Valgerth was bending over me, bloody sword in hand. She could have been a Valkyrie come to take me to Odin’s Valhalla.”
“Or to Freya’s Folkvang.”
“I’d never seen a woman so magnificent, even if she was going to slay me. There are worse ways to die than at the hand of a beautiful woman.” He gave her a wink.
“That’s sick!”
He laughed. “Truly, I wasn’t certain she knew I had joined the battle on her side. But as you can see, she didn’t kill me, and as we rode and talked together, we—” His voice trailed away. His eyes narrowed as he stared at something in the sky.
“Valgerth!” he shouted. “Up there! Look!” he pointed. Bloodsong and Valgerth reined up and turned, then both looked skyward to where he pointed, as did Huld. A dark purple stain was rapidly spreading across the clear expanse of blue sky, boiling into existence far above their heads.
“The Hunt is up!” Valgerth cried. “We saw it once before, during a tempest! We must find cover!”
“There is no cover,” Bloodsong reminded her, sweeping an arm at the featureless rolling hills. “What concerns me is who leads this Hunt.”
“Odin,” Thorfinn cried, “come to stop us from aiding Hel!”
“Freya sometimes leads the Hunt,” Huld shakily said, suddenly afraid her Goddess was coming to punish her as a traitor.
“Not Odin, nor Freya,” Bloodsong countered. An icy wind had begun to rise as the dark stain reached the sun, bringing a twilight gloom to the land. “I sense Nidhug’s sorcery in this. Perhaps he leads this Hunt himself. But twice since leaving Hel’s realm I have summoned shadow-wind demons to aid me. Perhaps they can aid me yet again.”
Bloodsong closed her eyes, concentrated, intoned the incantation she had used twice before. Suddenly she heard Valgerth scream. Her concentration broken, she opened her eyes, reaching for her sword.
“Your face—” Valgerth whispered. “I thought I saw, I thought it became—”
“Pay it no mind!” Huld quickly said. She saw gratitude spring to Bloodsong’s eyes. “The skull-face of Hel appears to others whenever Bloodsong uses Hel’s magic. Being a Witch, I can see it all the time.”
Valgerth nodded. “Forgive me, Freyadis.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Bloodsong growled. “Now everyone be silent or the Hunt will be upon us before I can complete my summoning.”
She closed her eyes again and started over. The wind that had sprung up kept increasing in fury, whipping their hair and cloaks around them. Their horses shied nervously, sensing sorcery. But then a moaning sound joined the fray as an even colder wind began buffeting them from the other direction.
Bloodsong quickly repeated the summoning a second time to call more shadow-wind demons to her cause, then shouted, “Now ride!”
Through the howling, moaning windstorm they galloped at breakneck speed, all eyes searching the purple gloom for some sign of cover or a place to make a fighting stand.
Overhead the sky cried out with sounds of pain as the Hunt was attacked by the shadow-wind demons.
It won’t hold him for long, Bloodsong thought as she furiously tried to think of something more to do. As she rode she tried summoning even more shadow-wind demons, but this time it had no effect.
She turned her concentration back to the mad ride through the spectral gloom, trying to find any other piece of Witch-lore in her mind that might aid them against the Hunt.
An icy rain mixed with sleet began to fall, pounding against the riders, nearly blinding them.
Lightning split the sky, followed immediately by a thunderous roar. Bloodsong, looking skyward during the flash, saw black-clad riders mounted upon skeletal-white Hel-horses battling formless shadows. All the riders bore skullish faces, even the rider in the lead, though he wore gold-trimmed purple robes and wielded no weapons other than his claw-like, upraised hands.
Nidhug! she thought. His face must also become a skull when he works magic, and the black-clad warriors must be the Hel-warriors he has defeated.
An idea flashed through her mind. She screamed, “Rein up! Off your mounts! Leave me to face the Hel-traitor alone!”
“I fight by your side!” Valgerth shouted back.
“Trust me, Val! I may know a way to stop them! Your weapons would be worthless. Off your mounts, all of you. Crouch low to the ground but keep hold your horse’s reins. Do it! Now, curse you!”
“Do as she says!” Thorfinn yelled, dismounting.
Valgerth still hesitated.
“Valgerth!” Thorfinn shouted.
With a curse Valgerth slipped to the ground and crouched low, holding onto her horse’s reins. Huld and Thorfinn got low, too, gripping their own mount’s reins.
Gripping her horse’s sides between her thighs, Bloodsong drew her sword and held it in her right hand. She raised her left fist, aiming the Hel-ring toward Nidhug’s sorcerous attack.
Another flash of lightning showed her that the shadow-wind demons were being driven back. She was not surprised. And with the next flash she saw the skull-faced Hel-warriors streaming earthward toward her.
“Obey your Mistress!” she shouted and held the Hel-ring raised high. “Harm not this servant of Hel!”
The Hunt came on. Lightning revealed they had ignored her command. She repeated the words, then once again.
Through the driving sleet and icy rain came Nidhug’s Hunt of the Damned while Bloodsong stubbornly kept her left fist upraised toward them.
Nidhug was holding back, she saw, letting others do his fighting for him. I can’t let them take me! she told herself. For Guthrun’s sake! They must not win! Then they reached her and all her thoughts were submerged in the struggle to survive.
“For Guthrun!” she screamed as she swung her blade at a black-clad, skeletal warrior. Her blade swept harmlessly through him as, if through smoke. His sword hissed down toward her. But suddenly, as the black blade neared Bloodsong’s upraised fist, it veered to the side.
Writhing in its saddle and screaming raggedly, the skull-faced warrior and skeletal mount hurtled past Bloodsong and vanished ghostlike into the earth.
Another came at her. She didn’t even try to parry his st
roke but turned the Hel-ring toward him. He, too, veered away and disappeared screaming and writhing beneath the ground.
Three more came at her with similar results. She was laughing now, shouting taunts to Nidhug, who still hovered out of reach in the storm-racked sky.
Huld, looking up from where she crouched on the ground, saw with a shock that Bloodsong’s whole body had taken on the look of a corpse, glowing with a Helish purple light, as if the black clothing she wore had become transparent and a core of corruption revealed. Huld shuddered and looked away.
Thorfinn also saw the horror Bloodsong had become. With his right fist he instinctively made the Hammer Sign of Thor against the evil before him, hoping Valgerth would not see how Bloodsong now looked.
Suddenly the Hunt’s skull-faced leader screamed a command. Lightning slammed the earth a short distance away, jarring the ground with explosive fury. The Hel-warriors drew back.
Aloft in the cloud-boiling sky, Nidhug’s body began to glow with a pulsing purple fire. A purple ray shot downward toward Bloodsong.
She used the Hel-ring like a sword to parry the ray of fiery purple light. Agony shot through her. She screamed. Her hand felt ablaze, but it did not char. She screamed again and yet again but kept her fist upraised, then began hurling curses skyward at Nidhug through her pain, fighting to stay conscious and to stay upon her now madly rearing horse.
Valgerth looked up, started to scream, caught herself, and did not permit it. Sick with horror, she saw a glowing corpse with wind-whipped cloak mounted where Bloodsong should have been, a corpse screaming curses, upraised fist burning with purple flames as it absorbed an intense ray of light coming from a skull-faced horror in the sky.
Then suddenly it was over. Nidhug and his defeated Hel-warriors streamed southward in the direction of Nastrond.
Valgerth saw the body of her friend return to that of a living woman. Sweet Skadi, what has Freyadis become? she thought, still sick with horror.
Bloodsong swayed in her saddle, exhaustion pulling her down. Her mount had calmed. The pain in her left hand was gone and her hand appeared uninjured.
The sun returned. All was silent, save for faint screaming that drifted up from deep within the Earth.
“They are trapped there now.” Bloodsong motioned to the ground. “But still in agony. Would that I could help them, but—”
She felt consciousness going, began to fall.
Thorfinn sprang to his feet and caught her, fighting repulsion, vividly remembering the death-horror he had just seen her become.
“I will be all right.” Bloodsong moaned, clinging to consciousness.
“Wielding magic is exhausting,” Huld explained. The Witch knelt and placed her hands over Bloodsong’s solar plexus.
How can the Witch bear to be so near her after what she became? Valgerth thought, watching Huld, and was shamed by the thought. She started to go forward and kneel by Bloodsong’s side herself, but she found she could not, kept remembering the horror she had seen, felt a revulsion that would not go away.
Huld began to intone her healing spell.
“No, Huld,” Bloodsong said. She struggled up onto her elbows. “You need not use your energies. I am not injured.”
Huld slowly withdrew her hands, feeling rejected. “You could use some of my energy to get your strength back.”
“Who knows what lies ahead, Huld? I may need your help more later. Conserve your energy until we really need it.”
From beneath the Earth the sound of screaming went on and on.
“Help me back onto my horse,” Bloodsong said, struggling to her feet. “I can rest as we ride. I want to get beyond the sound of those screams,” she added, a deep chill passing through her. If Nidhug should defeat me, she thought, I’ll be screaming like that too. Forever.
“He won’t defeat me,” she said aloud as Thorfinn and Huld helped her onto her horse. “By Guthrun’s soul and my own, he won’t!”
* * *
A sphere of intense purple light suddenly appeared in the Cavern of the Skull. When it faded, Nidhug stood in its place, swaying on his feet, stooped with exhaustion, his energies dangerously depleted from the battle he had lost.
Air wheezed raggedly into and out of his lungs as he staggered toward the slave woman chained to the cavern wall, barely able to keep on his feet. He had never before felt so weak, so aged, so near death. There wasn’t time to summon more slaves for a new youth spell. He would have to steal some strength at once, to last until a new rejuvenation spell could be arranged.
He shuffled closer and closer to the chained slave, reminding himself not to kill her or rob her of too much youth. He still had other plans for her and intended to see them through.
He concentrated the dregs of his willpower, hissed paralyzing words of command.
Jalna fell sideways, unable to move or speak.
Nidhug went painfully onto his knees. He turned her face toward his. He bent nearer, noted the horror in her eyes. His fleshless mouth touched her soft lips. He drew back after only a few moments and noticed with satisfaction that the youth he had stolen from the slave only barely showed. A few strands of silver now glinted in her long dark hair, and a few lines had appeared around her eyes. But she was still young and strong enough to continue suffering a long while.
He struggled to his feet, stronger but still trembling with weakness. He pulled on his gloves, slipped his silk hood back over his head. He spoke a command that returned Jalna’s ability to speak and move.
She hurled curses at him as he walked away into the passageway.
A Hel-ring! he thought, remembering the battle. Bloodsong wore a Hel-ring! Obviously charged with energy from Hel Herself.
The slave had kept that information back from him as well. Indeed, she had much punishment owing. But with Bloodsong’s ring, his chances of recharging the War Skull would be even greater.
First, though, he had to defeat Bloodsong and acquire the ring for himself. After learning about the Hel-ring, however, his strategy for fighting her would be altered. He would not personally risk himself again. The ploys that had worked on other Hel-warriors over the centuries would not work on her. But there was something else that just might.
HULD RODE BESIDE Bloodsong. Since the battle, Valgerth had ridden with Thorfinn, following behind.
In a few hours the sun would set. The gray stallion with the Hel-horse’s saddle had not been found. Without the advantage of a Hel-horse’s wind-treading speed, Bloodsong was considering Dvalin’s Burrow, a danger Nidhug might not guess she would chance.
“Huld, my Witchcraft consists of bits and pieces of Witch-lore implanted in my mind by Hel. Can you tell me a little of the processes involved in the way magic works? I am seeking weaknesses or constraints I can use against Nidhug. Or foreknowledge.”
Huld straightened in her saddle. “I have already been thinking about what form his next attack might take. I doubt shadow-wind demons will be of aid to you again. They partake of the air and sky, as did Nidhug’s first two attacks. I would therefore guess his next attack will have nothing to do with the air or sky. Fire is closely allied with air, so we can probably rule fire out, too, though not for certain. He might, however, use some force partaking of earth or water. And—”
“Hold!” Bloodsong motioned for a halt. Her eyes narrowed. She stared down the road ahead.
“I see it too,” Valgerth said, riding up beside Bloodsong, upset with herself for again feeling repulsed by nearing her friend.
The rolling hills had given way to a flat, snowless plain. The road lay straight to the horizon, and far in the distance upon that road, a dark shape was coming toward them.
“A lone rider?” Thorfinn reined up next to Valgerth.
Bloodsong and Thorfinn drew their swords. Valgerth made ready her bow and took an arrow from her quiver. Huld, without a weapon, compensated by intoning
the spell to repel mental attacks, just in case.
The stranger reined up within bow-shot. He held up an empty, leather-gloved hand. “Hail, Bloodsong!” He removed his dented steel battle-helm. “I would ride with you against Nidhug! May I come nearer?” His dark hair and full beard were streaked with gray. Beneath a brown fur cloak matted with age, he wore a mail shirt that showed signs of frequent repairs. A massive silver amulet in the shape of a dragon-headed Hammer of Thor hung by a thong around his neck. The hilt of a sword strapped to his back protruded over his left shoulder. Shield, ax, and bow were tied to his saddle. The chestnut stallion he rode was, like its rider, well past youth, lathered sides heaving from the long gallop.
“What name did you call me?” Bloodsong asked.
The rider laughed. “Bloodsong! If I were an enemy, wanting to take you unaware, wouldn’t I have pretended not to know who you are?” He eyed the arrow Valgerth held aimed at him. “And I would have reined up out of bow-shot.”
“Perhaps,” Bloodsong answered, “unless you thought to make me trust you by doing the opposite of what you should.”
He laughed again. “A Valkyrie told me I was going to die fighting for you.”
“A Valkyrie? Or too much ale?” Bloodsong watched him carefully.
The stranger walked his weary horse toward them. As he neared, Bloodsong saw that his face was heavily battle-scarred. Only skilled warriors lived to become so marked. His deep-set eyes were hooded by shadows. His weathered, deeply lined face suggested that he was much older than she’d at first thought.
He pulled his horse up just out of sword reach, winked at Valgerth, who still had a killing shaft trained on his chest. “Hold tight to that arrow, woman,” he urged with a grin, then looked at Bloodsong again. “I am Ragnar Olaf’s son, and tonight I am to die aiding you against Nidhug.”
“You seem rather cheerful for one who carries such a belief,” Bloodsong replied.
He shrugged. “This morning I saw a Valkyrie riding the wind. As she passed overhead, she pointed her spear at me and into my mind came the knowledge that the legendary Bloodsong was riding to do battle with Nidhug, and that if I rode north to meet her, I would find my last battle this night. It is the kind of death for which I’ve always hoped. No straw-death for me! This night I feast in Valhalla!”
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