The warriors staggered back, hardly able to keep their feet in the roaring gale. A mass of swirling darkness flitted through the gateway toward them and began ripping thick strips of dripping flesh from their flailing, writhing bodies.
The fury of the howling windstorm sucked them dry of screams, then moved on to attack any other Hel-warrior within the encampment.
“What in curses?” asked one of the warriors in the stable, listening as the tempest howled outside, shaking the walls of the stable as if about to blow them down. From time to time it seemed that screams of men in agony became mixed with the roaring of the raging storm.
The stable door flew open. A dark form loomed in the door and rushed inside. Screams and the sounds of ripping flesh now joined the howling of the wind within the stable.
Suffused with pain, Tyrulf swung back and forth at the end of the rope, weakly trying to make sense of what was happening, helpless in the gusting, roaring wind pouring through the open door. Warm blood spurted onto him as the last living warrior’s head was torn from his shoulders. Then something shredded the rope by which Tyrulf was suspended, and he found himself falling to the floor.
He hit the floor and cursed with more pain.
As the howling windstorm continued raging within and without the stable, the dark, swirling shape moved toward Tyrulf and then hovered above him. Pulsing purple light suddenly poured down upon him from within the hovering darkness.
New pain centered in his head tore through him as the ghostly image of a flaming skull slowly rose from beneath his skin.
Tyrulf, unconscious when Lokith had cast the Skull Slave spell, uncomprehendingly saw a curtain of flames suddenly appear on all sides of his head as the flaming skull expanded outward. But the burning torment in his head grew less torturous as the flames grew fainter, and when the flames finally vanished, so did the last remnants of his searing pain, though the other pains in his body still remained.
The purple ray disappeared. The swirling darkness drew away, moved toward the stable door, and rushed into the yard of the encampment, taking with it the howling wind within the stable. Moments later, the roaring of the wind outside also faded away into the distance and was gone.
Tyrulf tried to get to his feet and cursed at his pain. His wrists were still looped with rope, but other than that, he was free, and he didn’t intend to let the opportunity go to waste. As he struggled to stand, pain from his numerous wounds threatened to sweep away his consciousness once more, but then he thought of Jalna and gained the strength to keep struggling in defiance of his agony.
He finally managed to stand, then staggered toward the stable door, his bound wrists trailing a long length of rope with a frayed end. He steadied himself at the doorway for a moment, then cautiously checked outside but saw no living Hel-warriors, only those whose torn and bloodied corpses were strewn in ragged pieces upon the ground.
Tyrulf stumbled from the stable and toward the longhouse. The longhouse door stood open. Torchlight from within flickered into the darkened yard and revealed the mangled corpse of yet another Hel-warrior who sprawled, for the most part, face down in the snow.
Thoughts of Jalna driving him on, Tyrulf found his pain becoming more tolerable and his grip on consciousness more firm with every step.
He reached the longhouse and warily stepped across the threshold. He stopped by the pile of weapons just inside the door and used a dagger to cut the rope from around his wrists, then he gripped a sword and moved farther into the longhouse.
There were no Hel-warriors inside, only other prisoners, his friends and Bloodsong’s warriors.
“Tyrulf!” a man called. “What’s happened?”
“The guards are dead and we’re free, though Odin knows why or how,” Tyrulf growled, cutting away the ropes that bound the first person along the wall, “and for the moment I don’t care. Hel-warriors told me that Jalna has been taken away by Lokith, and we’re going after her. Where’s Bloodsong?”
“She escaped while we were all unconscious, or so I heard Lokith tell Jalna a short while ago. That’s where Lokith went, to try to recapture Bloodsong.”
“Not if we can help it,” Tyrulf vowed, and kept cutting away at ropes.
* * *
Through her constant blaze of pain, Jalna became dimly aware that a new sound had joined that of the moaning shadow-wind upon which the Hel-horses trod. The trees had begun to whisper with a gusting breeze. The breeze quickly became a howling wind.
Lokith glanced up at the sky through the thrashing branches of the surrounding trees and saw stars twinkling. He had been about to invoke a spell to banish storms, but this, he quickly realized, was no ordinary storm.
He reached out with his sorcerous senses. “No!” he cried with surprise. “It can’t be you!”
As if responding to the sound of his voice, the fury of the windstorm suddenly increased.
“Keep moving!” he shouted to his men. “Do not stop!”
Jalna gasped in agony as the merciless buffeting of the wind made the pain of her bondage even worse.
One of Lokith’s men screamed as he was lifted from his saddle and hurled against a broken tree limb, impaling him alive. His screams receded into the distance behind, but moments later another Hel-warrior cried out in agony, then another and another.
Lokith fought to ignore their cries as he concentrated upon both protecting himself with a sorcerous energy shield and conjuring a spell that could battle the attacking fury of Thokk.
JaIna felt unseen claws dig into her shoulders and try to pull her out of her saddle. She screamed with the pain. The relentless pressure increased as the invisible claws sunk deeper and deeper into her flesh, then suddenly the bonds that held her to the saddle shredded and broke. Only the rope that connected her ankles beneath the Hel-horse still held her upon the racing steed. Moments later it, too, snapped, and she was violently jerked into the air.
Unaware of what had happened to Jalna, Lokith tried to stop Thokk with first one sorcerous attack and then another, shadow-wind demons, bolts of searing Hel-fire, soul-crushing incantations, but again and again his attempts to stop the Hel-witch failed, the raging tempest spawned by her ravenous hunger for revenge overwhelming them all.
Lokith’s self-confidence began to falter. It now seemed that only one thing might stop Thokk. He cringed mentally from the thought of attempting it, but because nothing else had worked, there no longer seemed to be a choice.
His decision made, Lokith concentrated with grim determination upon a lethal new incantation.
Unseen claws tore at Lokith, but his sorcerous shields kept him safe from their touch as he clung tightly to his madly galloping Hel-horse and deepened his concentration, reaching out toward the north with his consciousness, seeking the approaching Hel-army upon the frozen wastes, seeking the touch of Hel herself. Face streaming sweat, he continued to concentrate as the last Hel-warrior in his wake was torn screaming from his saddle to be ripped into a spray of dripping limbs and entrails in midair.
Lokith finally sensed the dark aura of the Goddess Hel and made known to Her his need.
Where Lokith’s body had been, there suddenly blazed a column of purple Hel-fire that, an instant later, exploded with a thunderous roar of destruction and death.
The Hel-horse upon which Lokith had been riding was blasted into bloodless fragments. The other riderless Hel-horses galloping nearby were also caught in the violence of the Hel-fire explosion and shredded into twitching pieces of rapidly decomposing filth.
The tempest of Thokk’s fury died away with a mournful scream as the blast ripped through it. Silence fell in the forest, while all around the spot where the blast had been centered, uprooted trees lay flattened and flickering with cold and silent purple flames.
Beyond the circle of devastation, the mangled corpses of Hel-warriors marked the blood-splattered path the battle had taken. But
within the forest, one figure still lived.
With blood seeping from deep gashes in her shoulders where the unseen claws had gripped her, Jalna fought her way back to consciousness and then, her arms and upper body still painfully bound, struggled first to her knees, then back to her feet.
She stood for a moment, trying to understand something of what had happened, then began hurrying as best as she could within her punishing bondage, back toward the encampment, hoping Tyrulf would not yet be dead and that she could yet find some way to save his life.
From ahead she suddenly heard galloping horses approaching. She cautiously ducked into the trees.
The riders had torches. Tyrulf was in the lead.
Jalna’s shock kept her from moving for only a moment, then she rushed into view at the edge of the road. Tyrulf saw her and jerked violently back on his horse’s reins.
“You’re alive!” Jalna cried, tears stinging her eyes as the blond-bearded warrior reined up before her.
The look of shocked surprise on Tyrulf’s face vanished in a smile as he leapt to the ground, staggered, cursed with pain, and then stumbled forward to meet Jalna’s unsteady but determined rush into his arms.
THE SHAPE-SHIFTERS had left the forest behind and were now running across a flat expanse of hard-frozen snow. Behind them, a Death Rider and five Hel-warriors were rapidly drawing nearer. Looking back, Guthrun could now easily see the burning purple eyes of their Hel-horses, as well as the twin flames blazing within the Death Rider’s skull sockets.
“Huld?” Guthrun called. The Freya-Witch had said nothing since falling into deep thought about what other powers she might have. “They’re getting very close, Huld.”
“Just a moment more.”
“We don’t have many more moments to spare.” Guthrun glanced back again.
Huld lapsed back into silence, eyes half closed in concentration.
Guthrun looked back once more and decided that she would have to try using Hel-magic to at least slow their pursuers, but then Huld said, “I’m going to try something, Guthrun. Freya grant that I’ve got it right and that it works.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Just watch. If it works, you’ll soon know.”
Huld’s eyes, already glowing yellow-gold with her night-vision spell, suddenly flared as brightly as they had in Freya’s Wood. The Freya-Witch drew the Freya-Sword strapped to her back. Her touch again caused the blade to glow with yellow-gold light, but brighter than ever before. She held the sword over her head, the blade horizontal with the ground, the point aimed backward at their pursuers. Huld herself kept facing forward.
Guthrun assumed that she was again going to use the blade to focus a beam of Freya-Fire. “Are your powers strong enough now for the Freya-Fire to slay a Death Rider?” she asked, “instead of only stunning him?”
“Please, don’t disturb me while I’m attempting this new spell.” Huld closed her eyes. She began chanting Freya-Runes. She kept at it until her arms began trembling with the strain of holding the glowing sword. Her voice grew steadily louder as she wove the threads of the spell tighter, infusing them with energy, until soon she was shouting the chanted Runes of power into the night. Sparks of yellow-gold fire flickered within her mouth as each syllable was intoned.
For a mere instant a trail of even brighter golden fire raced along the glowing Freya-Sword, tracing out the Freya-Runes with which the blade was engraved. Then Huld’s incantation ended, and with a scream of power she released the hilt of the sword.
The blade stopped glowing, but the sword did not fall. Instead it remained oriented as Huld had positioned it, the blade horizontal to the snow-covered ground, pointing backward. For a moment its momentum helped it keep pace with the speed of the shape-shifters. Then it began to fall behind.
Guthrun started to speak but then noticed that Huld again had her eyes closed in concentration.
Bloodsong’s daughter looked back, tried to keep the sword in view but soon lost it in the darkness between them and their pursuers. The last glimpse she had of it showed that it was still pointed backward and still horizontal to the ground.
Huld kept her eyes closed in concentration, her lips moving silently until there was a brilliant flash of golden light, followed immediately by the high, keening sound of a Death Rider’s scream, mingling with the bestial cries of the Hel-horses.
Looking back, Guthrun saw the Hel-horses rearing madly and crumbling to dust in the fierce yellow-gold light, light that was coming from the Freya-Sword, its blade deeply embedded in the Death Rider’s chest, who was also crumbling to dust.
The Hel-warriors leapt cursing from their disintegrating mounts.
The Death Rider stopped screaming and clawing at the embedded sword, then tumbled disjointedly to the snowy ground. The Freya-Sword fell with him. Its light dying.
Guthrun shouted with delight, then saw with surprise that Huld’s eyes were still closed in concentration.
The Freya-Witch screamed another word of power.
Five shafts of yellow-gold fire erupted from the fallen blade. Each struck a Hel-warrior. Each Hel-warrior burst into a writhing mass of flames.
The screams of the dying men continued for a while in the distance behind, then stopped.
Huld opened her eyes and looked over at Guthrun.
Guthrun said nothing, stunned with what she’d seen.
“If only I had four more Freya-Swords,” Huld finally said, “we could be rid of the other groups of sentries too.”
“Huld, what you did just now, it was magnificent! Also terrifying. I hope you never get too angry with me.”
Huld laughed.
“I was not joking!” Guthrun responded.
“At least it worked.” Huld smiled, rubbing at the knotted and tensed muscles in her neck. “And it has given us a bit more time. The other sentries are much farther behind and certainly won’t catch us until after sunrise.”
“Then we should go back for the sword, to use it again.”
Huld shook her head. “That last burst exhausted the Freya-energy in it. It’s just a sword now, or a lump of melted metal.”
A rumbling growl from Bloodsong reminded Guthrun that the two shape-shifters, not having looked back as she had, did not know what had happened, and so she quickly and excitedly began to explain.
* * *
Across the flat expanse of snow, the tall pines of a far northern forest loomed against the throbbing purple glow of the northern sky. Following a beast-scent they had both detected some while before, the shape-shifters entered the trees at a full run, certain of which way to go, certain that they would soon arrive at Frigga’s Crag.
Huld was carefully searching her thoughts for other powers with which to fight Lokith and HeI. Guthrun was riding in silence, too, finding it more and more difficult to keep thoughts of HeI and Helheim at bay, for with each moment Hel drew nearer, and the pull of darkness within and without Guthrun’s soul became stronger and harder to control.
On through the night ran the shape-shifters as the pulsing Odin-force within them powered their steely muscles and gave them the preternatural strength to endure the headlong pace.
The eastern sky had begun to brighten with the coming dawn when the forest came to an end and they broke into the open once more.
“It seems warmer,” Guthrun noted aloud, puzzled. The farther north they went, the colder it should have become, until they reached the frozen wastes across which HeI was advancing.
“Aye,” Huld agreed, “and the air’s become scented with a distinctive aroma, pungent but not unpleasant. Bloodsong and Ulfhild have probably been following it to find the Crag.”
“I’ve just noticed something else, too,” Guthrun replied. “I’ve been having to struggle harder against the pull of Hel’s darkness within me as she gets closer. But the psychic pull is suddenly not as strong an
d is continuing to grow weaker.”
“Some magical barrier?” Huld speculated. “My enhanced Witch-senses detect nothing. Surely I could detect a barrier of Frigga’s magic.”
Guthrun shrugged, glad for the relief.
The snow grew thinner and thinner as they moved ever closer to the Crag, until soon they were running through a flat expanse of waving golden grain. Then, as the son broke the horizon, flooding the land with crimson light, they came to the lip of a vast hollow in the plain, and in the center of the hollow was a pinnacle of jagged rock surrounded by a wide lake. A green-leafed wood bordered the shore.
Into the hollow raced the shape-shifters. The air grew warmer still. They ran through the waving grain until they finally passed into the wood and soon emerged at the shore of the lake.
Bloodsong immediately transformed back into human form. “How far behind us are Lokith’s other warriors, Huld? How much time do we have before they arrive?
“Not enough to swim to the Crag and back, let alone find and read the needed Runes.
“Curse Odin for not just telling me where to find the Corpse Beasts.”
“I believe he told you all that he could,” Ulfhild replied, defending her Berserker God.
“If Lokith’s warriors arrive while we’re on the Crag,” Bloodsong said, ignoring Ulfhild’s comment, “we’ll have to fight our way back across the water while they’re waiting on the short. But I see we have no other choice, and we’re wasting time. Come on.”
“Mother!” Guthrun cried. “Wait! I thought the lake only looked red because of the rising sun, but it’s more than that.”
The sun was high enough in the sky that it no longer cast scarlet rays, but beneath a blue sky filled with white drifting clouds, the lake still gleamed crimson.
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