Bloodsong dipped a hand into the liquid. It was warm to the touch and left red stains on her skin. She touched the tip of her tongue to a drop and then spit it out.
“Blood,” she told them. “But we still have no choice. We must reach the Crag.”
“Blood?” Huld asked. “We must swim through blood?”
“Evidently,” Guthrun replied, and began stripping away her clothes. “You’ve survived much worse, Huld,” she noted. “Hurry up and strip.”
“Freya’s Teats!” Huld cursed. “I have a better idea. You already know that my powers are stronger than they were. I’ll stay on the shore and hold off the Death Riders and Hel-warriors, even kill as many as I can with my Witchcraft. I can sense that Lokith still is not with them, so there won’t be any sorcery for me to fight.”
“I’ll stay with you,” said Guthrun.
“No,” Huld replied. “In case something does happen to me, you should be with them. Your Hel-magic could help them get back across the lake if I can’t hold a safe place on the shore.”
“It’s a good plan,” Bloodsong decided. “Freya give you victory, Huld,” she added, gripped the Witch’s shoulder, then turned and waded into the lake of blood. Ulfhild already stood waist-deep in the shallows.
Guthrun finished stripping and started to follow her mother, but at the last moment she stepped back. Her brows drew together in a puzzled frown as she squatted down and held her hands over the surface of the warm crimson lake.
“What’s wrong?” Huld asked, coming nearer.
“Use your Witch-senses,” Guthrun urged. “I can’t decide why, but I sense danger.”
Huld held her hands over the lake, too, and closed her eyes in concentration. Only a moment passed before she drew away from the edge. “Frigga has filled the lake with beast-blood,” she said, unable to conceal her disgust.
“What difference does that make?” Ulfhild asked.
Guthrun experimentally touched a finger to the blood. She cried out with pain and jerked back her hand. “It burned me!”
Bloodsong quickly splashed back onto the shore and rushed to her daughter’s side, Ulfhild close behind. Blood dripping from Bloodsong’s crimson-stained body nearly fell upon Guthrun’s arm.
“Get away from her!” Huld cried, but Bloodsong had already seen the danger and jerked back.
“It seems obvious,” Guthrun said, grimacing with pain, “that only those with beast-blood in their veins may endure this lake’s touch. Mother, you and Ulfhild go ahead. Without Lokith’s sorcery to aid them, the Death Riders and Hel-warriors won’t stand a chance against a High Priestess of Freya and me. Hurry and learn what you must on the Crag.”
Bloodsong hesitated but a moment more, then quickly went back into the lake of blood and started to swim, Ulfhild by her side.
“And now,” Guthrun said to Huld, “I know it’s only a small burn, but could you heal it for me? It hurts!”
Huld began the proper incantation.
* * *
The four remaining Death Riders and their Hel-warriors had converged with each other during the night to follow the tracks of the fleeing shape-shifters. When they’d come to the scene of death and destruction caused by Huld’s Witchcraft, they had not stopped, but as they’d galloped past, more than one of the Hel-warriors had cursed at the sight and smell of the charred corpses of their slain friends.
With black clouds protecting them from the newly risen sun, they continued onward after their prey. Then suddenly, directly in their path appeared a brightly burning column of purple fire. When the fire vanished, Lokith stood in its place.
The Death Riders reined to a halt.
Lokith swayed unsteadily on his feet for a moment, then regained his balance. The dangerous and complex transport-spell with which he had escaped Thokk’s attack had left him weak and in need of fresh blood. He cursed, thinking of Jalna and how Thokk had ruined his plan to keep the slave nearby. But if only he could recapture Guthrun and taste but one drop of her blood, he would no longer need the blood of other women in order to preserve his strength.
All the Hel-horses had riders, and Lokith had no intention of sharing a mount. His sorcery could conjure another Hel-horse, but only at the exact moment of sunset.
Lokith pointed to a Death Rider and shouted an order. The corpse-warrior dismounted and then leapt up behind another Death Rider to share a Hel-horse, while Lokith climbed into the vacated saddle and kicked the steed into a gallop, leading his men once more, anxious and determined to finally have done with the hunt and to taste his sister’s blood.
* * *
“What is it, Huld?” Guthrun asked.
Only a moment after starting to invoke the healing spell, Huld had suddenly stopped and opened her eyes. “Lokith is now riding with the approaching warriors.”
“But I thought you just said—”
“He wasn’t with them,” Huld insisted, “but now he is.”
“Perhaps you should leave my blistered finger alone,” Guthrun suggested. “It’s such a minor injury, and your healing spell requires energy. You’ll need all your strength to fight Lokith when he arrives.”
“You forget that my powers are stronger now,” Huld replied. “Healing one blistered finger won’t weaken me,” she added, then began to concentrate on the spell.
FRIGGA’S CRAG jutted abruptly from the lake, a towering, splintered tooth of jagged gray rock. Bloodsong saw a narrow ledge in the cliff face just above lake level and headed for it.
The women pulled themselves dripping crimson onto the ledge. “You swim well, Blackwolf,” Ulfhild commented.
“There was a lake near my childhood home.” Bloodsong pointed at the rocky surface of the Crag. There were hand-holds and toe-holds aplenty. “We’ll have no trouble climbing it.”
Ulfhild nodded. “There are Runes everywhere! Odin’s Breath, Bloodsong, the whole Crag is covered by Runes. Finding the Runes of the Corpse Beasts could—”
“Could take longer than we have,” Bloodsong finished. “I was warned in the hut that my human self would never find them. I must let the beast in me find them. I must, for the first time, surrender full control to that monster.”
“Praise Odin!”
“If you want. But curse him for me as well, while you’re at it.”
Bloodsong closed her eyes in concentration. Her transformation began.
Painful moments later, the transformation ran to completion, and for the first time, Bloodsong forced herself to relinquish conscious control.
As the beast clawed its way to full consciousness, Bloodsong felt panic building, but she held herself in check and this time did not fight the beast.
The beast dropped to all fours, stalked to the edge of the ledge, leaned over, and saw its face reflected in the lake of blood.
Bloodsong’s human-self recoiled in disgust. She saw the beast open its mouth, revealing stiletto fangs. Sickened, she watched a blackened tongue emerge and lick the fangs. Then the beast sniffed at the crimson surface of the lake, leaned even farther forward, and began to lap up blood.
* * *
Lokith reined to a halt at the lip of the hollow, frowning in puzzlement at the crag he saw rising from the crimson lake. He could sense great power but could not define its source. In all his sorcerous knowledge there was nothing about a place such as that which loomed ahead.
But his sorcerous senses had begun to detect psychic whiffs of his prey. Though clear contact was still being prevented by the magical shields of the two Witches he pursued, he knew for certain that they were there in the hollow and no longer moving away.
Soon now, he told himself, this cursed weakness of mine will be gone, along with my need for blood. I’m coming for you, Guthrun, and this time you’ll not escape.
“Draw your swords,” he ordered as he drew his, “and make ready your shields. Our prey has stopped r
unning and is in this hollow. Watch carefully for physical traps while I concentrate on detecting magical ones.”
Into the hollow of Frigga’s Crag rode Lokith and his men.
* * *
Huld and Guthrun watched the boiling black clouds coming closer and closer. All they could think of to do in preparation had been done. All that remained was to await the battle. Guthrun wondered if the Thor’s Hammer amulet she’d been given might bring with it some sort of Thor-magic to strengthen her. It seemed no more than a symbolic metal medallion, but whether that was because of her own Hel-magic countering its power, she did not know.
On the Crag, Ulfhild, too, was watching the nearing black clouds, listening to the moaning of the shadow-winds, her nostrils flaring at the death-scent now in the air.
The black beast that Bloodsong had become had stopped lapping from the lake and was now lying flat on the ledge, eyes staring as if entranced, open mouth showing crimson-stained fangs. Then suddenly the beast plunged into the bloodlake and vanished beneath the surface.
As soon as the crimson surface closed over her, Bloodsong found the beast drawing back from full consciousness and causing her to revert to human form. Then she suddenly became aware of a wordless communication pressing against her thoughts and, with a shock, realized that it was coming from her beast-self. She had never supposed the beast within her was capable of communication, but now she quickly resolved to heed its urgings.
As the painful transformation back to her human form continued, she obeyed the beast’s desire to keep moving downward into the lake of blood.
When the claws of the beast had again become human hands, Bloodsong stopped swimming and began gripped the blood-slicked surface of the Crag to pull herself deeper, letting the beast guide her as it instinctively sensed the path she should take.
The blood through which she moved began to cool and thicken. Soon, she was moving through the near total darkness of a congealing crimson ooze, her lungs empty and aching. And still the beast urged her to go deeper, farther down along the submerged face of the Crag, until suddenly she reached the opening the beast had been seeking, pulled herself inside and along a short passageway, then up into a hollow within the heart of the Crag.
She kicked hard for the surface, hoping there was one, fought her way upward through the thickened blood-slime. The congealing ooze thinned and warmed. She broke the surface and breathed in blood-scented air.
The cavern’s walls within the hollow Crag glowed with a throbbing crimson light. Except for Bloodsong’s breathing, all was silent. At irregular intervals in the emptiness stretching overhead, a red spark flared into existence and soundlessly streaked downward, into the lake. One struck near Bloodsong but did not disturb the lake’s surface or give off any noticeable heat.
Like ghosts, Bloodsong suddenly found herself thinking, and realized with another shock that it was the beast within her who had thought it. The ghosts of dying beasts, and the spirits of those about to be born.
We’re here to find and read the Runes of the Corpse Beasts of Hel, her human-self thought, hoping to communicate with the beast. I need your help to do it. I’ve let you bring me this far. Now hurry! Do the rest! My daughter, our daughter, is in danger! As is all the world!
A narrow ledge ran around the entire circumference of the cavern. Bloodsong felt a strong urge to swim to a particular spot along the ledge.
Bloodsong pulled herself onto the ledge and got to her feet. The walls of the cavern, like the outer surface of the Crag, were covered, for as far as she could see, by Runes. But her eyes were immediately drawn to an oval patch of Runes that were subtly different from the rest.
They are similar to the Runes that encircle my throat!
Feeling a strong urge to trace the outlines of the Runes, Bloodsong reached up and touched the first one from the left in the top line. Fiery pain, centered in her throat, shot through her.
Bloodsong jerked back her hand but then nodded with satisfaction. The Runes must indeed be the ones she had sought. My thanks, she told the beast, for helping me find the Runes. But now I must also understand their meanings, and I do not know how.
With Werebeast blood, she heard herself think. Stain them crimson. Lick them clean.
“Werebeast blood?” she asked aloud, her voice echoing hollowly within the vast cavern. “My blood?”
Our blood, came the beast’s thoughts.
Naked, Bloodsong had nothing with which to open a vein but her fingernails and teeth. She used her fingernails and soon had blood oozing from a wound on her left forearm.
She quickly dipped her right forefinger into her streaming blood and cautiously touched the first Rune. This time there was no pain. She stained the first Rune with her blood and moved on to the next. When blood stopped flowing freely from the wound on her arm, she tore it open once more and continued staining the Corpse Beast Runes.
At last she was done, all the Runes stained dark with her blood. Now lick them clean, urged the beast.
Bloodsong pushed down a momentary repulsion, pressed her face close to the wall, and touched the first Rune with the tip of her tongue.
As she worked from one Rune to the next, the taste of her own blood strong on her tongue, she felt a raging excitement building more and more strongly deep within her, an excitement she was sharing with the beast, until soon she was working with a Berserker frenzy to clean the Runes.
Sweat streaming, her skin glistening in the crimson glow of the cavern, Bloodsong reached the last Rune, licked it clean, then fell panting to her knees. Emotion-charged images flooded in waves through her thoughts.
The whirling images crashed to a jarring halt.
In Bloodsong’s mind, she was now somewhere outside the cavern. Around her stood a veritable army of monstrous beasts with furred, skullish faces much like the one she’d seen reflected in the lake of blood.
Lake of blood? she wondered, suddenly feeling a deep confusion. Then, with a growl, she pulled her thoughts back to the coming battle.
She glanced around. In one direction across a fertile green plain were aligned the forces of Hel. In the other direction were aligned the forces of Odin and His allies.
Among Odin’s forces, Bloodsong’s gaze fell upon a warrior atop the crest of a hill, a woman who stood tall and proud in a chariot drawn by two savage mountain cats. Her armor flashed golden in the sunlight. Around the warrior woman, spears and shields held ready, waited an army of golden-armored Valkyries.
Freya, Bloodsong thought, tears of awe stinging her eyes as she gazed with envy at the soul-wrenching beauty of the fierce Warrior-Witch Goddess. Then she looked down with disgust at her own body, at her furred beast’s feet and claws. Would that I could be like her, she thought, a warrior in human form using spear and sword and shield, instead of this misshapen thing I am, a creature of HeI, made from the filth of tombs.
The bright, piercing gaze of a one-eyed man sitting atop a massive, eight-legged war-steed suddenly drew her thoughts away from her self-loathing. She bowed her head to Odin.
Bow not your head to me, Odin said to her in her thoughts. My followers bow to no one, and my follower you have vowed to be.
Bloodsong raised her black-furred, skullish face and forced herself to hold Odin’s gaze.
I felt your desire just now, Bloodsong, Odin continued, using her Corpse Beast name, and I promise you this. If our battle with Hel ends in victory this day, I shall reward you and all of your people.
Those who do not survive the fight shall have a place in Valhalla, and those of you who do survive will, by my power and decree, no longer be known as Corpse Beasts.
You shall thereafter be known as Werebeasts, and with your new name shall come the power to transform into the shape of a human at will, just as my Berserkers change into beasts whenever they so desire. Then, in time, throughout the generations of the children your people will spawn, the
beast within them will sink far beneath the surface of their minds until, in time, if they so desire, they may become totally unaware of the beasts their ancestors once were, and believe themselves to be wholly human.
Bloodsong was overwhelmed by what she had heard, as were the other Corpse Beasts Odin’s thoughts had touched. In soul-deep thanks she bowed her head to the one-eyed warrior God once more.
Bow not your head! Odin ordered.
She quickly raised her head.
His expression softened. You are free, Bloodsong, you and all your people, free by your own deeds. I have heard the war cry they scream in their thoughts. ‘Bloodsong and freedom,’ is it not? And so it should be, for if not for your leadership and your rebellion, you would this day still be Hel’s slaves, fighting against me and my allies instead of by my side to break Hel’ s power and banish Her beneath the Earth.
The Orlog of your bloodline will be a hard one, Bloodsong, and often your warrior descendants shall curse my name for the pain and suffering I shall set in their paths. But without battles and challenges, warriors grow soft and weak, and those who follow me must ever be strong, and free, as are you and your people.
Odin raised his spear toward Bloodsong and her assembled army of Corpse Beasts.
Bloodsong and freedom! Odin shouted in his thoughts.
Bloodsong raised her chin high and held Odin’s gaze. Odin and Asgard! she shouted back with her thoughts.
Odin and Asgard! thought first one Corpse Beast, and then another, following Bloodsong’s lead, until soon her people were all repeating the battle cry over and over again.
“Freya and Folkvang!” screamed the Valkyries as Freya raised Her spear.
Other battle cries arose from within the ranks of Odin’s forces, cries to Thor and Sif, to Frey, to Skadi, to Heimdall, to Frigga, on and on, while from behind Hel’s lines came only the silence of the grave.
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