Bloodsong Hel X 3

by C. Dean Andersson

  Guthrun glanced up at the now black sky overhead with a shudder. It was still a long way to the sacred wood, and she was no longer certain that they could reach it before Lokith reached them. Suddenly she realized she could faintly hear the moaning of the Hel-wind upon which the pursuing Hel-horses trod. She cursed with tension and began to think of spells with which she could try to slow their pursuers, considering each in relation to Lokith’s powerful Hel-sorcery, rejecting another and then another until finally none remained. She cursed again and decided to conserve her magical energies until the last moment, in case they didn’t make it to the wood and needed to engage their pursuers in battle.

  If only Huld could add her magic to mine, Guthrun thought, looking back at the Freya-Witch tied to Ulfhild’s back and shuddering to see that the corpse-gray skin had now spread to cover nearly half of Huld’s face. How she would hate her resemblance to Mother Hel now! Guthrun thought, then turned her attention back to the path. “The path is about to fork,” she announced. “Keep to the left.”

  The left fork soon emerged from the trees and descended into the cleft of a small valley. “Go upslope to the right just past that outcropping of rock ahead,” Guthrun ordered. “Over the crest of the hill you will see a stream glinting in the distance. Head toward it, and then to the right alongside it when you reach it.”

  Over the crest of the hill they saw the distant stream and raced downslope toward it through the preternatural twilight gloom, black clouds boiling overhead, the moaning of the Hel-wind behind them howling louder and louder.

  They reached the narrow, gurgling mountain stream and began racing alongside it.

  “Watch for a large boulder in the center,” Guthrun told them, “then use it to cross the stream and head straightaway to the crest of the next hill.”

  They were close enough to the sacred wood now that Guthrun began to hope that they were actually going to make it, but then, before they reached the boulder, their pursuers drew close enough for her to hear Lokith’s triumphant laughter.

  Guthrun changed her mind about conserving her magical energies for a final battle. They were so close now to the wood that if she could just slow Lokith by a slight amount, it could make the difference between escape or capture.

  The young Hel-Witch began concentrating upon her spell to disperse clouds.

  Lokith sensed what she was doing and erected a countering spell.

  Guthrun’s spell shattered upon Lokith’s sorcerous shield.

  Laughing expectantly, he sent a paralysis-spell toward the fleeing women.

  Guthrun sensed it and quickly erected a magical shield of her own. Her muscles screamed with pain as Lokith’s magic struck the defenses, but her shield held, and moments later his spell faded away, leaving her dizzy and slightly numbed but still conscious and determined to fight on.

  The shape-shifters reached the boulder and crossed the forest stream.

  Moments later, Lokith and his warriors followed in their wake.

  Guthrun conjured a mental shield that would, for the moment, keep Lokith from reading her thoughts to learn their plans. “Over the crest of the hill the ground will seem to end in the edge of a cliff!” she said. “The edge is an illusion! Leap outward as far as you can, and hopefully the barrier of Freya-Magic will confuse Lokith’s Hel-senses so it seems to him that we’ve fallen to our deaths.” And, she added in her thoughts, Freya! I hope You are paying attention! I have Hel-magic in me, but I’m on Your side! Let me pass through Your barrier, and those with me, for the sake of Huld!

  Guthrun looked skyward at the black clouds boiling above the tops of the towering trees. Are you listening, Freya? she wondered. Make an exception! Allow me to enter Your cursed wood!

  They crested the hill. Both shape-shifters, though warned by Guthrun about what to expect, nonetheless momentarily slackened their headlong speed, for not nine paces away gaped the edge of a precipice beyond which distant snow-edged treetops were no more than tiny specks at a dizzying distance below. But then both women gathered their courage, put their trust in Guthrun, quickly resumed their fastest speed, reached the edge of the cliff, and leapt out into what gave every indication of being nothing but empty air.

  “I DID IT!” Yngvar exclaimed.

  “Keep your voice down!” Valgerth hissed. “Remember the guard outside the door.”

  The boy sat up and brought his freed hands around to the front. “But I’m bleeding,” he whispered.

  “Hold your wrists out so I can see,” Valgerth whispered with concern. “Skadi grant that you didn’t tear open a vein.”

  “I’m all right, Mother.” Yngvar held his wrists toward her. “I think.”

  Thora was close enough to see. “He’ll live. Just puny scratches. A long way from his heart.”

  “Kind of deep scratches,” he responded. “And they hurt. But I can take it.”

  “I envy you, brother. There will be scars,” Thora decided.

  “Really?”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  “Get the poker by the fireplace, Son,” Thorfinn said, “but move slowly and carefully, on your hands and knees, so your ankle chains won’t rattle enough to alert the guard.”

  Yngvar carefully and quietly slipped the manacles that had been around his wrists through the loop of his ankle chains and then left them behind on the floor as he slowly crawled to the fireplace. He grasped the heavy iron poker.

  “I don’t think that poker’s going to do us any good,” whispered Tyrulf. “How’s he going to get enough leverage to pry our manacles free? And even if he could, I doubt that any boy’s muscles have the strength to apply sufficient pressure.”

  “I’m pretty strong,” Yngvar whispered defensively.

  “Maybe we should forget the manacles and concentrate on the links,” JaIna suggested. “If we could just get the connecting chains off the manacles, we’d be free enough to fight. Try it on mine, Yngvar.”

  “I’m going to free my father first,” Yngvar replied as he crawled past JaIna. The boy reached Thorfinn and started to work.

  “It’s no use,” Thorfinn decided before long.

  “My manacles are looser than Father’s,” Thora reminded him. “Come here, Brother. Perhaps you can slide the poker between my wrists and the manacles or something, and help me slip my hands out too. Mine will already go nearly halfway through before getting stuck.”

  Yngvar tried Thora’s suggestion but soon saw that it wasn’t going to work, either. “Your hands should be able to slip through,” he said, laying the poker aside. “Maybe if I just used my hands to help squeeze yours together?”

  He tried his plan. It started to work. Thora’s hands were soon halfway through as he squeezed and pushed and pulled.

  “It would probably be best,” Thora hissed through gritted teeth, stoically enduring the pain, “if you did not break any bones.”

  Her hands came free. She sat up and rubbed her wrists. Because of Yngvar’s help her wrists were not as bloodied as his had been. “My thanks,” Thora said, beaming at her brother. “Now hand me the poker and let’s see if working together we can get Father free.”

  “I’ll keep the poker for now,” Yngvar countered. “I’ll let you take a turn with it in a little while, if we don’t free him right away.”

  “I’m older and a little stronger,” Thora replied. “I should have the poker. Please, Brother. This is no time to fight.”

  Yngvar cursed softly and handed over the poker.

  The fire in the hearth slowly burned lower as the two children determinedly worked to free their father. The others could do nothing but wait and hope. The strain in their muscles and joints caused from their bound positions caused them growing pains.

  There was a sharp click, and one of Thorfinn’s wrist manacles sprang open.

  “You did it!” Thorfinn exclaimed in an excited whisper as he sat up. �
��Now do the same on the other one.”

  “I’m not exactly certain what we did,” Yngvar hesitantly whispered. “We were pulling and prying lots of different ways.”

  “I think it happened when you pulled there.” Thora pointed. “While I was twisting the poker between there and there.”

  They tried her suggestion. It didn’t work at first, but then suddenly there was another sharp click.

  “Now for my ankles,” Thorfinn urged.

  The children succeeded almost at once this time, and a few moments later had both of their father’s ankles free.

  Thora held the poker out to Thorfinn, but he shook his head. “Free your own ankles first, then free the others,” he said with a grin. “You’ve earned the right. I’m proud of you both.”

  “And I,” Valgerth agreed.

  “We’re all proud of you, curse it,” Jalna whispered impatiently. “Just please hurry.”

  Thorfinn crept to the small, shuttered window on one side of the door and peered through a crack. “The shadows are long,” he announced in a whisper. “The sun will soon set. I see many Hel-warriors.”

  “Anyone else?” Valgerth asked, also whispering, wondering about Bloodsong and Guthrun.

  “No,” Thorfinn softly replied, “and no one coming in this direction at the moment.”

  While Yngvar had worked at his bonds, they had all agreed that their best hope of getting away would be to surprise whoever next entered the hut, then use captured weapons and clothing and take the next step as it came. But they had no way of knowing when one or more guards might come. Someone might bring food near sunset, but if no one did, after dark they would risk tricking the guard outside into the hut and ambush him. Everyone also agreed that it wasn’t much of a plan, little better than Tyrulf’s earlier joke, but with the limited options open to them, no one could think of anything better.

  The children had soon opened everyone’s manacles, each one sooner than the last as they mastered the technique. Thora handed the poker to her father. They had decided Thorfinn would stand behind the door with the poker to spring the trap when a guard, and hopefully only one, finally entered.

  Thora hurried to the pile of wood near the fireplace and joined Jalna, Tyrulf, and Valgerth in choosing clubs.

  Yngvar peered through cracks around the shuttered window, watching for approaching Hel-warriors.

  “They could have bound us just as well with our clothes on,” Tyrulf complained.

  “Unlike JaIna and I,” Valgerth commented, “you’ve never been a slave.”

  “Stripping is often a prerequisite to binding,” Jalna added, “especially if torture is planned. Nidhug explained it to me. Being naked for torture is—”

  “Merely a practical convenience?” Valgerth suggested. “That’s what he told me.”

  “Aye,” Jalna nodded. “So that every part of your body—”

  “I get the picture,” Tyrulf cut in. He did not like the fearful look he now saw in Jalna’s eyes. It was how she looked after her nightmares.

  “So that every part of your body is available for pain,” Jalna finished.

  “I was just trying to make a joke. We’re not facing torture.”

  “You can’t be certain.”

  “Jalna, they just wanted to make it harder to escape. Naked in the snow, we would not get far.”

  “Better to freeze than be tortured.”

  “I am sorry I got this conversation started. I was just trying to lighten the mood with a cursed joke.”

  Jalna gave him a frown. “Torture is no joke.”

  “Did I say it was?” Tyrulf saw more anger in her eyes now than fear. “As I see it,” he continued, “the real danger here is that we’ll become so distracted by each other’s bare flesh, that when a guard does come for us to ambush, we’ll all be in the midst of an orgy and miss our chance.”

  There was silence until Valgerth softly chuckled. “Lokith’s fiendish plan.” She winked at Thorfinn.

  Jalna kept frowning. “Tyrulf, have you no sense at all?”

  “What did I do now?”

  “There are children present.”

  “Oh. Yes. Sorry.”

  “Catch.” She threw a heavy piece of wood at him.

  He caught it. “Thanks,” he whispered. “It will make a good club.”

  * * *

  Lokith reined up, cursing at the edge of the precipice. He watched until his falling prey disappeared in the distance far below, then cursed again. He studied the edge of the sheer cliff. It curved away on both left and right to meet on the far and distant side, forming a vast crater that seemed to have no entrance or exit, save the top of the vertical cliff that completely bounded it.

  It must be an illusion, he told himself, a magical barrier. It can’t be real. Bloodsong and that Berserker would have turned and fought. They would not have voluntarily leapt to their deaths, and I can’t believe they did not see the edge in time to stop.

  As he sat looking down at the dizzying vista below him, he probed with his sorcerous senses, seeking some sign that Bloodsong and Guthrun were still alive, some hint that their consciousnesses still existed upon the Earth. He found nothing, but if they were now safe behind a magical barrier, nothing is exactly what he would have expected to find. But whose magic would be involved? Freya’s? Odin’s?

  Illusion or not, his prey had for the moment escaped him. Of course, if all was as it seemed, he could have followed the escaped women over the edge by riding his wind-treading Hel-horse to the forest far below to search for their bodies, but because he suspected an illusory barrier of powerful and potentially lethal magic, he dared not attempt it.

  Anger and disappointment possessed him as the exhilaration of the chase began to pass. Then suddenly a wave of weakness washed through him.

  He had tasted Bloodsong’s blood, but the battle in the encampment had kept him from tasting Guthrun’s, and because of that he was still not entirely healed and was still, outside of Helheim, dependent upon an occasional strengthening draught of human blood untainted by death, something that was now long overdue. Until he had it, he and his sorcerous powers would grow steadily weaker.

  What blood the Death Riders possessed was a thick and putrefying black, while the Hel-warriors, though fully alive and mortal, had blood that was death-tainted from the Hel-magic that had resurrected them after their deaths.

  It was ironic that even though his mother and sister had been resurrected by Hel-magic, their blood would heal him because of who they were.

  After leaving the encampment he had seen no other humans or their dwellings. It seemed, therefore, that he would have to return to the prisoners in the encampment for the blood he needed.

  Lokith cursed, seeing no other way, and felt another wave of weakness, noticeably stronger than the first, flood through him. To have come so far, only to have to turn back, was unthinkable, yet if he did not, he would continue to weaken.

  Guthrun’s not dead, he assured himself. I will still recapture her and be healed by her blood. But not now.

  Lokith concentrated his will, raised his arms, chanted Runes, and used his outstretched hands to gesture through a complex series of Runic forms. His hands began to glow with a pulsing purple light. The light expanded upward, thinning and dimming as it went, until finally a pale dome of throbbing purple light formed above the crater.

  He enhanced the spell, forcing the dome to extend itself downward through the Earth until, unseen beneath the ground, a completely enclosed sphere of Hel-magic had been formed. If anyone within it passed back to the outside, he would now know it.

  The sorcerous exertion made him even weaker. Lokith quickly ordered his five Death Riders, each accompanied by five Hel-warriors, to position themselves to wait and watch at five points around the crater. Then he turned his Hel-horse and headed back toward the distant encampment.


  The remaining Hel-warriors, weary from the chase and eager for the comforts of the encampment, followed obediently in his wake.

  BLOODSONG FELL helplessly toward the distant treetops. Wind whipped past her as her daughter clung to her back. Nausea washed through as panic built. It isn’t an illusion! her thoughts screamed. She heard Guthrun utter a ragged cry of horror as a sphere filled with shadows appeared below.

  She crashed into the dark sphere. Pain tore through her. Darkness claimed her.

  Moments, days, years later, she knew not which, she opened her eyes.

  Her thoughts confused, she fought to clear her mind, remembered falling, remembered striking the sphere of shadows.

  She was in her human form again, lying naked upon a warm, thick carpet of emerald-green grass upon a high hill in a forest clearing. Low in the clear blue sky, the sun shone golden above green-leafed treetops. Brightly colored wildflowers nodded in a warm, gentle breeze, scenting the air with their sweet perfumes. The treetops stretched for as far as she could see. There was no sign of the vertical cliff off whose edge she had leaped.

  Guthrun lay sprawled unconscious nearby. Beyond Guthrun lay Ulfhild in her human form. Huld was still strapped to her back.

  Bloodsong hurried to Guthrun’s side, remembering her cry of pain before they’d struck the shadowy sphere. “Guthrun?” Bloodsong knelt and cradled her daughter’s head in her lap.

  Guthrun moaned, flinched as if struck, opened her eyes, and grimaced in pain.

  “Are you injured?” Bloodsong asked with concern.

  “I’ll let you know in a moment.” Guthrun groaned and grasped her head with both hands. She grimaced. “I believe I’m all right, Mother. My head hurts, but I guess Freya heard and believed me.”

  “Explain.”

  Guthrun grimaced again as she sat up. “I wasn’t certain I could pass through the barrier of Freya-Magic alive, because of the Hel-magic in me. There is no sign of Lokith or his warriors?”