In the longhouse, Torg Bloodear saw the beast and cursed as the huge, red-furred wolf ran toward him and his warriors. “Kill it!” Torg ordered, standing his ground in spite of his terror.
“It’s Ulfhild!” Bloodsong shouted, jerking at her chains.
Ulfhild tore into the Hel-warriors in a battle-crazed fury, ripping and slashing with her talons, tearing flesh with her dagger-like fangs. Within moments half the Hel-warriors lay dying. The other half, including Torg, gave ground. Ulfhild pursued them, killed two more as they fled, until Torg and the others who still lived retreated out the door.
Ulfhild threw herself against the door, closing it, then turned and saw Mani and Sol pressed against the far wall, their eyes filled with terror.
“We could have told him about your being awake, but we didn’t!” Sol cried. “Let us live and we’ll use our magic to help you!”
“We can’t!” Mani told her. “The skull-flames!”
“I can stand the pain a little while, I think,” Sol said, drew a sword from an unconscious warrior’s scabbard, and ran toward the suspended women.
Ulfhild leapt forward and reached Bloodsong before Sol.
“Don’t kill her, Ulfhild!” Bloodsong shouted. “If they have magic to unlock these spell-chains, let them use it! But free Guthrun or Huld first, then they can use their own magic to open the other manacles.”
Sol ran to Guthrun and swung the sword. The blade hacked through the rope that had kept Guthrun suspended. Guthrun fell, twisted so she would land on her shoulders, and cursed at the pain of the impact.
Ulfhild was shape-shifting back into her human form. Within moments, the transformation was complete. She raced to an unconscious warrior and grabbed up an ax.
Sol gripped Guthrun’s manacles and began to concentrate on an incantation. Pain ate at her from inside her skull almost at once, but she kept concentrating, her face a mask of pain, determined that she was going to set Guthrun free.
Ulfhild cut Bloodsong down, hacked through the ropes around Bloodsong’s ankles, then ran to cut down Huld.
Bloodsong got to her feet, hands still chained behind her, and rushed to where Sol was still trying to open Guthrun’s spell-chains.
Every breath a gasp of pain, face streaming sweat, Sol kept working at her spell to open locks. Finally, the manacles snapped open. Sol collapsed, unconscious, to the floor. Mani rushed to her side, then started half carrying, half dragging her back toward the wall.
Guthrun quickly freed her ankles by using Sol’s sword, then grasped Bloodsong’s manacles. Not having to fight against the pain of skull-flames, Guthrun’s spell to open locks worked at once and Bloodsong was free.
Guthrun ran to free Huld. Ulfhild had already cut Huld down and freed her ankles.
Bloodsong grabbed a sword for herself, ran to the door and slid the bar into place, then ran back to the others.
Guthrun finished freeing Huld’s hands. Huld ran to Jalna and Tyrulf and drew both their swords. The swords had been imbued with strong Freya-magic after Jalna’s and Tyrulf’s ordeal in Freya’s Mound two years before. As the Freya-Witch’s hand touched the hilts, the Freya-Runes cut into their blades began to glow with golden light. Huld was not a swordswoman, but she had often used the swords to help focus her magic.
Guthrun quickly concentrated on a spell by which she hoped to counter Lokith’s sorcery and awaken their unconscious warriors, but only Grimnir gave any hint of responding. “If it were only Lokith’s sorcery at work, I could counter it!” Guthrun cried, “but the drug is still keeping them asleep!”
Bloodsong saw Ulfhild heading for the concealed trapdoor of the escape tunnel and ran to join her, shouting for the others to do the same. Ulfhild reached it and threw back the furred skins that covered the trapdoor.
The door to the longhouse crackled with Hel-fire. The bar was thrown aside by an unseen force. The door burst open.
Lokith rushed into the longhouse with his Death Riders and Hel-warriors. Ulfhild threw her ax at him and began at once to transform to her beastform.
Lokith dodged the ax, but a Hel-warrior behind him didn’t and fell dead, Ulfhild’s ax buried in the gushing red fountain of her split skull.
Lokith’s face contorted with rage. “Kill everyone but Guthrun!” he shouted to his warriors. “I still need her alive!” The Death Riders and Hel-warriors started forward. But before they could reach the women, a blazing screen of yellow-gold energy suddenly appeared, stretching across the longhouse.
Huld had driven the point of one Freya-sword into the floor and it was glowing even after she had released the hilt, projecting a protective curtain of Freya-Magic. “I didn’t have time to weave much energy into the barrier,” Huld told them. “Even strengthened by the Freya-sword, I don’t know how long it will hold.”
Lokith concentrated his will and hissed words of power. Purple rays shot out from his hands and struck the golden fire-curtain.
The energy barrier collapsed into the Freya-sword, melting the blade to ruin.
“But I’d hoped longer than that!” Huld cried. “Freya’s Teats! His magic is strong!”
Death Riders and Hel-warriors rushed forward,
Ulfhild attacked in her beastform, snarling and leaping for a Death Rider’s throat. Her fangs fastened in his rotting flesh. Her powerful neck muscles wrenched sideways, tearing a gaping wound. Another Death Rider struck with his black-bladed sword before she could evade it, opening a crimson wound in her side. She howled in pain, but the Odin-magic that powered her Berserker strength and endurance kept the Death Rider’s death-touch from slaying her. She dodged another blade, then leapt, snarling, for another throat.
Bloodsong and Guthrun fought side by side, parrying strokes, feinting, lunging, thrusting into throats exposed above mail shirts, cleaving heads from shoulders, aiming crippling cuts at leather-clad legs.
Ulfhild destroyed a second Death Rider, but suddenly a bolt of blazing purple energy shot out from Lokith’s upraised Hel-sword and struck the Berserker, hurling her back to strike the far wall. She scrambled shakily back to her taloned feet, a patch of flesh black and smoking on her side, then howled in pain and rage and leapt forward to rejoin the battle once more.
Lokith raised his sword to again sear Ulfhild, determined to make the next fire-beam strong enough to kill her, but suddenly a bolt of yellow-gold fire slammed into his chest, hurling him to the floor. Ulfhild glanced around and saw Huld holding the remaining Freya-sword in a two-handed grip, the blade smoking from the energy blast it had just discharged. Huld swayed unsteadily for a moment, fighting a sudden weakness from the energy she had lost in hurling the fire-bolt at Lokith. Then Ulfhild saw Lokith slowly getting back to his feet, launched herself forward, broke through the Death Riders’ ranks, and headed for Lokith himself.
The Death Riders followed.
Hel-warriors had surrounded the other three women.
Fear flickered in Lokith’s eyes as he saw the Berserker hurtling toward him. With a curse he hurled a quick energy bolt at her. It struck her and threw her back but was weaker than the first had been. She recovered her feet and started forward once more, only to see Lokith rushing out the open door.
“Ulfhild!” Huld screamed. “Don’t follow! We need you here!”
The Berserker stopped, howled with frustration, and raced back to attack the Death Riders once more.
Safely outside the longhouse, Lokith began shouting orders and directing more Hel-warriors into the fray.
Bloodsong and Guthrun had been backed against a wall, still fending off blades, still slaying relentlessly, the floor now slick with blood. But they knew it was just a matter of time until the greater numbers of their attackers proved their downfall. Then suddenly the pressure against them lessened.
A huge, red-bearded warrior appeared in the Hel-warrior’s midst, hacking and slashing with powerful strokes of his sword
as he butchered every Hel-warrior within reach of his blood-drenched blade.
“Grimnir!” Bloodsong cried. “He’s shaken off the drug!”
“But if he keeps fighting,” Guthrun shouted to her mother, “the Hel-flames in his skull will kill him!”
Grimnir kept fighting, his face contorted with ever increasing pain, the blazing agony in his skull growing worse by the heartbeat. Ragged cries of pain emerged from his throat as he continued to slay Hel-warriors.
Bloodsong and Guthrun, both bleeding from several minor wounds, began pushing away from the wall, their blades wrenching more and more death cries from those they fought, even as every shout of pain coming from Grimnir’s throat tore at Bloodsong’s soul.
“Grimnir!” she cried. “Lokith made you a Skull Slave! If you keep fighting his warriors, you will die!” she shouted as she continued to fight by her daughter’s side.
“I am no one’s slave!” Grimnir bellowed brokenly as he continued to fight.
A Death Rider’s blade hacked into Ulfhild’s left shoulder.
She howled with pain and fell to the floor, staggered back to her feet, and lunged to one side in time to evade a descending black blade, but then saw the six remaining Death Riders surrounding her as they moved in for the kill.
A blast of yellow-gold fire lanced from Huld’s Freya-sword into the Death Rider nearest Ulfhild, hurling him to the floor. The other Death Riders hesitated in their attack on the Berserker.
“Ulfhild!” Huld cried. “This way!”
The wounded Berserker lurched toward the Freya-Witch just as another curtain of yellow-gold energy, this time generated from Huld herself, blazed across the longhouse, separating the Death Riders from their prey.
Hel-warriors in the path of the energy screen screamed as they burst into flames. Only three Hel-warriors were left on the near side of the yellow-gold fire to fight Bloodsong and Guthrun. Grimnir was still on the far side, reaping lives as the agony in his skull grew worse and worse. His face had begun to blister from the Hel-flames burning beneath his flesh.
Bloodsong disemboweled a Hel-warrior and lunged to pierce another’s neck as Guthrun beheaded the remaining one with a savage backhanded slash, leaving the near side of the flaming curtain momentarily free of enemies.
“Into the tunnel!” Huld urged, standing beside the trapdoor she had just opened. “Hurry! Before Lokith uses his sorcery to break through once more!”
“Grimnir!” Bloodsong shouted.
“It’s too late!” he roared with a gasp of agony. “Bloodsong and freedom!” he shouted with the last of his strength, the battle cry turning into a ragged, prolonged scream as his head suddenly exploded into flames and he fell writhing upon the floor.
“Grimnir!” Bloodsong cried. “Oh, Gods! No! Grimnir!”
“Mother!” Guthrun shouted as she grabbed a torch from a wall bracket. “Hurry! We’ve but moments before Lokith gathers the courage to come back inside and wield new sorcery!”
Bloodsong heard her daughter’s voice but stood momentarily numbed by what she had seen. Through the flaming curtain she saw Grimnir spasm his last, then lay still.
Rage displaced her grief, sweeping the numbness away. “Lokith!” she screamed, blood lust in her eyes.
“Mother!” Guthrun urged, pulling on Bloodsong’s arm.
Bloodsong ran with Guthrun to the trapdoor. A trail of blood marked where Ulfhild had already entered the tunnel to check ahead for danger. “You go next, Huld,” Bloodsong ordered, “and now you, Daughter.”
Guthrun slipped into the dark opening holding her torch and quickly descended the wooden ladder into the tunnel.
Bloodsong took one last look at the longhouse, at the unconscious bodies of her friends and the charred corpse of the man she had loved. Then with a final ragged cry of rage, she entered the tunnel and bolted the trapdoor from inside.
BLOODSONG HURRIED down the sloping passageway of the narrow tunnel gripping her sword. Grimnir’s death cry echoed in her mind, stoking the fires of vengeance in her heart.
The air in the tunnel was cold and damp, the packed earth freezing cold beneath her bare feet. The light from Guthrun’s torch flickered beyond a bend in the cramped, twisting tunnel. But then suddenly the torchlight began to dim. Moments later, Bloodsong was stumbling through total darkness.
“Guthrun!” she called out. There was no reply. She stopped. Except for her own breathing, silence reigned in the black tunnel. She cursed, thinking of Lokith’s Hel-magic. If he had somehow known about the tunnel, he might have sealed it with sorcerous traps. “Guthrun!” she called again, but again she heard no reply.
She moved forward, groping blindly, allowing the beast senses within her to rise near the surface, sniffing the musty air, straining with sensitized eyes and ears but still detecting nothing save the silent dark.
Lethargy spread through her, slowing her movements. Soon, every step required an act of will. Sweat chilled her in the icy air as she determinedly took another and yet another defiant step. But then even her iron will began to succumb to the opposing force. The darkness that surrounded her seeped into her mind and weighed down her soul.
She slumped against the tunnel’s earthen wall, fighting to hold her sword and keep unconsciousness at bay, gasping for air. The muscles that controlled her lungs began to succumb to the paralysis that was relentlessly spreading through her body and mind. Sweat streaming, she battled to take just one more breath, felt cramping pains shoot through her chest as the clutching paralysis began squeezing at the muscles of her faltering heart. The heart pains grew worse. She gasped in agony as consciousness and life itself began leaving her flesh.
Then, a sound in the darkness, faint and far away, a voice, calling her name, growing louder, the voice of her daughter.
Two lights floated in the darkness, expanding and brightening, a torch and the glowing blade of a sword. Four more lights also were there, the purple glow of Guthrun’s eyes and the yellow of Huld’s.
“Mother?” Guthrun asked with concern. She slipped an arm around Bloodsong’s shoulders.
“Yes,” she gasped. Bloodsong’s pain receded.
“Lokith cast out a corpse-net spell. Huld and I felt it pass but were not affected, nor was Ulfhild.”
“We assumed,” Huld continued, “the Odin-magic in your beast-blood would protect you.”
“Perhaps I have succeeded too well at controlling it.”
“We banished that spell,” said Huld, “and conjured one of our own to mask our presence.”
“And I think that the way this tunnel twists and turns, Mother, if he doesn’t already know where the exit is, he’ll have to search for it.”
Bloodsong grabbed the torch. “But I’ve delayed us, and he could probe the hostages’ thoughts to find the exit.” She pushed past them and took the lead. “Hurry!”
“Curse it!” Guthrun hurried to keep up. “I should have thought of that!”
“Me, too,” Huld agreed. “Maybe we were more affected by the corpse-net spell than we thought.”
They reached the wounded shape-shifter. Ulfhild’s Odin-imbued beastform had almost healed from its battle-wounds, and her strength had returned. She took the lead.
“Quiet!” Bloodsong hissed. The tunnel had begun to slope upward. She crushed out the torch. “Hold the Freya-sword behind you, Huld,” she whispered. “The exit’s near. If guards are there, light would give us away, before we kill them.”
Ulfhild leading, they hurried up the sloping tunnel.
Guthrun whispered, “I see the exit.”
“And I,” Huld added.
They moved forward more slowly, careful to keep silent, and reached the opening.
Guthrun peered through the branches of the pine tree that grew close against the tunnel’s hillside opening. “I see no soldiers.”
Bloodsong nodded. “And there
are no suspicious sounds nor scents. Ulfhild, check outside.” But Ulfhild was already moving.
The Berserker squeezed beneath the lower branches of the concealing pine, warily sniffed the air, then crept slowly into the open.
They waited but a moment before hearing hurried footsteps crunch snow. “No guards,” Ulfhild whispered, again in human form.
The three women pushed through the scratchy pine needles. A reddish glow from the still blazing longhouse lit the sky through the towering trees as they rushed to the hidden cache of supplies a short distance away.
Bloodsong and Ulfhild dug through snow and hurled aside the stones that covered the shallow pit of the cache as the two Witches concentrated upon a spell to deflect Lokith’s sorcery, should he cast more spells of detection or attack.
The cache uncovered, Ulfhild growled, “Eyes that glowed would be welcome about now. A battle-ax for me, and a cloak.”
“Won’t you get too warm in a stifling cloak?” Huld asked with sarcasm as Guthrun handed Ulfhild the ax and cloak.
“Suffocate your skin in clothes if you must, Brighteyes,” Ulfhild replied.
“Thanks,” Huld shivered, desperately searching for clothing in the cache, “As if I needed your permission.”
Bloodsong’s enhanced beast senses still detected no signs of pursuit. “Ulfhild, can you carry a rider astride your back?”
“One? Or two?”
“One.”
Ulfhild clapped Bloodsong on her back. “Aye, Blackwolf!”
“Hurry,” Bloodsong urged the Witches.
“We are!” Huld assured her, teeth chattering, as Guthrun and she pulled on ill-fitting and itchy but warm brown woolen breeches and tunics, fur-lined leather boots, gloves, and heavy, shaggy-furred cloaks. Then both grabbed sword belts in which to scabbard their blades.
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