The animals, without an explicit command from their master, sat on their haunches to await his bidding.
Fenris lifted the knight in both arms as the youth began to topple forward, finally succumbing to the exhaustion and cold. A warm drowsiness started to come over the knight and, feeling bizarrely like a child in the giant’s arms, he began drifting into sleep.
“Skade !” Fenris exclaimed, lowering him to the ground. “He’s failing. Come here and help me tend to him!”
Aurelius opened his eyes and saw a cloaked woman.
“Fenris, we’ve got to get out of here,” the woman said, pulling away from him, barely controlling a very evident rage. “I can’t believe you’ve revealed yourself to Hela because of him!”
“Come, come, Little One — he was trapped,” Fenris said, the burly man’s voice indulgently calm. “He showed no sign of using his magic, so I had to do something.” He reached out and touched the woman’s cheek. “Skade, calm down. I was tired of Hela and Abbadon’s games, anyway. We’ve learned all we could.”
Skade flinched, her anger still evident, but instead of immediately withdrawing from him she nuzzled the man’s hand for a second, pressing her cheek tightly against it, and then nodded at the knight lying face-down on the snowy field.
“We can still escape,” she offered, “leave it to the Fates to decide if he lives or dies.”
“Skade,” Fenris said, his tone still serenely insistent, “I think our presence here is part of the Norns’ design. The future Urd was with him until the moment we escaped the Tower.”
The woman looked at him in obvious surprise, again took a look at Aurelius, and then seemed to resign herself to the situation.
“Let’s get him up, then,” she said.
Fenris knelt and pulled the knight over. Aurelius, teeth chattering, looked questioningly into the shadows of the cowl, but still couldn’t clearly see the woman’s face. She reached into a fold of her robe and withdrew a small glass vial that she handed to Fenris.
“A bit on his chest, over the heart, and then the rest he must drink,” she said curtly.
“All of it?” Fenris asked as he administered the liquid.
Skade grunted an affirmation but said nothing as she reached into a slim satchel slung over her shoulder and withdrew a pair of thick gloves.
“Put these on his hands when you’re done, Fenris.” She paused. “So, yes, give him a full dose — all of it. He’ll pay for it later, but we need him able to fight when they come.”
She interrupted herself, bending her head intently as she listened to something.
“Hurry, my Love — I hear the horns of the Wilde Jagd. The gathering’s completed and I can hear the screams of the Ville Folk and howling of the Nachzehrer.” She listened again, impatiently noting his progress. “Hurry, Fenris — they’re coming!”
“We really need you to move,” Fenris repeated and jerked Aurelius’s head backward, bringing a flask to the youth’s mouth. Hot liquid that tasted of mulled wine, milk, and honey coursed into his throat. He coughed convulsively as he sat down hard on a shattered log.
Then, a pleasant warmth overwhelmed the pain and frostbitten numbness, giving strength to his limbs. The tiredness fled from his body and his head cleared for the first time since awakening from the long fall from Hela’s tower.
“You should be able to walk now,” Fenris said, handing the wool-lined gloves to Aurelius before re-corking the vial and handing it back to Skade.
“Thank you,” Aurelius said, putting on the gloves and feeling more than better, every nerve crackling with renewed energy.
“What was that drink?” Aurelius asked as he scrambled to his feet, wonderingly taking in the giant and the blond-haired, buxom woman.
He could see Skade’s features clearly now. Although he and Fenris were much taller than her, Aurelius was struck by a contrasting combination of fierce warrior-like resolve and almost supernatural beauty — from her heart-shaped face with sculpted chin, to the shoulder-length blond hair and widely set, long-lashed, and electric-blue eyes, Aurelius thought her one of the most sensuously beautiful women he’d ever met.
“It’s Audumla’s Milk,” Skade replied, regarding him with frank distaste. “If it was good enough for Ymir, then it’s good enough for you — I don’t care what the prophecies foretell about how powerful you are. I only see a pathetic Midgardian at the moment, and you’ll remain that until you prove otherwise.” She glared at Fenris. “Let’s get out of here — don’t you hear the Clamor? The Wilde Jagd ’s begun.”
“The ‘Wild Hunt?’” Aurelius repeated.
“Ja, Hela’s army of vampyrs, harpies, griffins, and all the fell sprites of the air and corpses of the ground. She’s not going to let her prize escape so easily.”
“We’ll be fine, Skade,” Fenris said, “they haven’t gotten here yet.”
Skade glared at Fenris as she retrieved the bow she’d shoved into a snowdrift.
“Men,” she muttered. “You escape one danger, but forget about the five or six perils that lie ahead!”
She turned back to the forest where she seemed to hear sounds beyond the range of Aurelius’s hearing.
Fenris chuckled, his voice a deep rumble as he fondly laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder. He glanced at Aurelius and shook his head from side to side, smiling.
“Don’t mind her manner, my friend. You’ve been saved by a frost-giant’s daughter, and can expect no less, given our peril. Skade, a kinder greeting, perhaps? We’re about to be fighting beside each other in a few minutes.”
Skade stared at both men and then took a deep breath.
“Greetings, Codex Wielder,” she said, striving for a polite tone, “I’m Skade.”
“Hello — you can both call me Servius,” he said, “and, again, thank you for saving my life.”
“You’re welcome, although if we don’t start running that condition is going to be short-lived.” She looked at him and frowned before unclasping her cloak. Aurelius averted his eyes at the amount of deeply suntanned breasts revealed by the brown leather bodice beneath, but not before noticing that the low-plunging top was part of her formfitting battle-dress. Skade was very toned, with a slim waist girded by weapons and leather pants that emphasized muscular legs tucked into high hunter’s boots. A quiver of arrows strapped to her back and short-sword at her side completed the martial ensemble.
She held the cloak toward Aurelius, annoyed by his gawking, flaming face.
“Here — what’s wrong with you? Put this on. It’ll keep you warm when the battle starts.”
Aurelius wanted to ask more questions, yet grateful for even a momentary reprieve from the woman’s irritation, he quietly accepted the cloak and pinned it around his shoulders with a triquerta brooch similar to Clarinda’s.
Skade nodded at Fenris, and they began running across the snowfield toward a deeper part of the wood.
I’ve got to get back to Clarinda, but that seems impossible from here.
The trio waded through the frigid landscape as an arctic wind blew snow through the trees like an inland sea of rolling white foam. Aurelius knew that without Skade’s cloak and gloves he wouldn’t have survived even a few minutes in the inhospitable wasteland of Niflheim.
How many times can I be injured and healed? Every world here is filled with pain.
He pulled the cowl tighter around his head and concentrated on following Fenris and Skade.
The winds were shrieking around them, with snow falling so heavily that Aurelius had to lift one leg high after the other to trudge through the drifts. He abruptly strode into Fenris’s back.
The man unwrapped a long cord and handed Aurelius one end of it. “Tie this about your waist! Take heart — we’re almost at the Haunted Wood where we can make something of a defense!”
Both men resumed their march as the storm intensified and — after what seemed like days but perhaps was less than an hour — the trio finally entered into the shelter of a forest of fir and pine
trees.
“Our home is a short distance into this wood!” Fenris shouted, grinning at the Hospitaller. “We might escape before the Hunt reaches us.”
“Unlikely,” Skade said, brushing snow off her body. “They’re almost here.”
Aurelius and Fenris saw a mass of dark grey against the snowfall’s blurred horizon line. A large force was approaching.
“We’ll keep running, though?” Fenris asked.
“Or, we could stay here a while, and see what happens,” Skade said, her voice becoming husky and eyes glittering with excitement. Aurelius was confused. The woman’s hunger for battle seemed completely at odds with her earlier reservations. She moved closer to Fenris and gave him an affectionate hug. “Let’s take a moment before the attack, and just… be...my Love.”
Fenris chuckled, and looked resignedly at Aurelius. “Draw your sword, my friend. We’re in it. The madness is taking her, which means that —”
The quiet of the forest shattered in a cacophony of yells, howling, barking, and horn-blowing.
Screaming at the top of their lungs, the Ville Folk, or “Wild People,” emerged from the snowy field. Animal revenants preceded the racket and madness of that horde, this mass of undead horses, wild dogs, pigs, goats, and cats bounding across the Niflheimian expanse and collectively baying like the Hel-beasts they were.
The Ville Folk and berserkers were horrifying, unkempt men and women, so completely covered in shaggy hair and furs that they reminded Aurelius of the African apes he’d seen years ago in an Alexandrian fair. Theirs were the screams of the damned who Hela had recruited for her armies. Upon seeing them, Skade moved so quickly that Aurelius had only partially drawn his sword by the time she’d killed three flying creatures with fast-shot arrows.
“They’re here! If you can, run!” The man warned and threw off his cloak. “I’ll find you afterwards.” Fenris started transforming into his lupine self, and within seconds was again the gigantic wolf that the knight had first met at Hela’s side.
Skade started laughing as she fired more arrows into the rushing horde, and then drew her own sword.
“Come, Codex Wielder, let’s make Hela’s Dead die again!” She shouted before running pellmell into a group of beserking, undead Vikings who were attempting to make a shield wall. Skade’s speed was such that she leapt over the first of the upraised leather-faced shields and began hacking at the corpses with a ferocity that made her seem a berserker herself.
“Her name means Destruction,” Fenris rumbled admiringly beside Aurelius, “but she’s right. We must fight as never before if we’re going to get out of this.”
The wolf tore apart a ravening dog and then bit deeply into the thigh of a wild man before a mob of the dead warriors jumped on him, cruel daggers stabbing repeatedly into Fenris’s fur. His wolf pack leapt to his defense, but Aurelius lost sight of him as he fell beneath the undead attackers and lupine defenders.
Then it sounded as if Fenris laughed, so resounding were his growls and snarls, and suddenly he was thrice his earlier height, easily shrugging off the Ville Folk and crushing many creatures under his tree-sized paws before returning to the knight’s area.
Aurelius said nothing, his sword drawn and fully preoccupied with his own battle. He blocked the jabs and strokes of the blank-eyed, slack-jawed corpses in front of him, aware that some archers were starting to fire arrows into the woods. The black-feathered, iron projectiles thudded deeply into trunks nearby, causing hissing sounds wherever they hit; some of the arrow-tips were dipped with a substance that made the frozen bark smolder and burn.
He felt a tugging at the top of his boots and looked down to many yellowed and deteriorating hands grasping at his legs, trying to pull him into the snow with a hideous strength. It seemed as if the members of the Wild Hunt weren’t limited to the skies and forests of Niflheim; the corpse-laden earth, too, offered another line of attack for Hela’s hunters! Invigorated in a way that would’ve seemed impossible only seconds ago, Aurelius leapt from the clutching hands toward Fenris and Skade. He tripped, and bony hands latched themselves onto the wrist of his sword arm, immobilizing it.
Then Fenris bounded toward him, plucking the emerging bodies like they were troublesome weeds, hurling them into one another and making his way steadily toward Aurelius. When he reached the knight, fangs that were now the size of the youth’s legs chomped the hands and freed the Hospitaller. Aurelius stumbled backward, wrenching off the last hand still clinging to his wrist.
“They don’t want us, Codex Wielder — they want you!” Fenris snarled, whirling to defend him against more wild men and women racing into the forest.
“Leave Skade and me to fight this,” Fenris continued. “Flee, else all will be lost! Make your way directly backward from this point, in as straight a line as possible….”
An arrow burying itself deeply into his left shoulder interrupted the enormous wolf’s words. Fenris yelped in pain and scrambled into a stand of trees as his fur burst into flame where the projectile had struck.
Aurelius lost track of him, then, because more bodies were emerging from the frozen ground, their eruption from the ice-caked soil like miniature earthquakes that imbalanced him as he worked furiously with his blade. He hacked his sword into the nearest corpse, the blade splintering its arm like dried wood. He kicked another who approached, and knew Fenris was correct. It was time to retreat.
He began to run, then stopped short, choking as his cloak got yanked backward. He managed to free himself, but as he flailed at his unseen attacker more gaunt creatures erupted from the earth! His fumbling left hand brushed against Grimnir’s mattock, still securely slipped into his belt at the hip. He grabbed the hatchet and swung downward at the creatures.
The effect was explosive. At the touch of the mattock’s blade, the hands and arms of the undead burst asunder, the putrefied flesh and aged bones bursting at the tool’s touch.
More arrows flew through the air as he rolled behind a tree and heard the familiar hissing as the wood began to burn at their touch.
“Codex Wielder!” Fenris roared upon seeing him, a massive shrug casting a host of cadavers off his back. He burst into the ranks of wild men to help the injured knight, the impact like a wooden ball in a game of Dutch Pins, bowling over the members of the undead and Ville Folk that cleared a path to the beleaguered Hospitaller.
“The Død Bueskytteres come!” Fenris growled. “The Death Archers! We’ll forget the plan to escape for now, eh?”
“I can’t keep my footing, Fenris!” Aurelius shouted in frustration. “I’m spending more time hacking at my feet than helping you!”
Fenris stomped a few more attackers into the icy ground directly in front of Aurelius, the undead bodies unable to withstand the force of paws that were now the size of a man.
The wolves were still with him, presenting a formidable force to any that came against them. Aurelius, heaving, looked up in wonder at the monstrous ally. The arrow in Fenris’s shoulder had been extinguished, but still smoldered and reeked of attar. The giant wolf’s blood ran freely from it, staining the entirety of his chest and leg.
“Onto my back, then, my friend!” Fenris snarled the command at him, his ears erect, and fur bristling as his lips curled backward to reveal spear-length incisors. “We bring the war back to Hela! My sister forgets that she’s not the only Power on this field!”
Aurelius nodded, saying nothing because the heat of battle was upon him, also.
He’d had enough of running, enough of not understanding, and enough of being injured — it was time to fight back. A fury overtook him, matching the wolf’s in its intensity.
Fenris crouched to a place where Aurelius could make his way from an oversized boulder onto the great wolf’s shoulders.
Once the knight was astride him, Fenris roared in approval and gave more instructions. “Grasp the mane tightly, and ride as if I were a horse. If you’re unseated, stay with the wolves until I can get back to you!”
“We
ride, Codex Wielder!” Fenris barked. “We need to help Skade to drive away the Hunt — kill until not one remains or they’ve fled the field!”
“Così sia,” Aurelius screamed, his anger at the last few hours finally finding release. This was an impossible task. The members of the Wild Hunt were everywhere, and his ally’s only plan was to wade into the center of the horde and fight until they or the attackers were dead.
“So be it!” he shouted again, flexing his knees on Fenris’s shoulders, and urging the wolf forward. The creature roared in exultation and leapt into the melee, in one bound reaching Skade’s side where she was battling werewolves and death archers with sword and dagger.
Girded by the horrors of Hel, Aurelius gripped Fenris’s mane as tightly as he could and began wielding his sword, in one swing he beheaded a vampyr, and then with the back stroke dispatched a wild man trying to scramble up Fenris’s left flank.
The wolves howled as the Wilde Jadg advanced on the trio across the plain of Niflheim.
Chapter 7
The Grottoes of Mimir’s Well
Back in Hela’s tower, Clarinda didn’t even run to the window to see what happened to Aurelius. Instead, she broke into a sprint at Old Nick.
It wasn’t that she was unconcerned about the young knight — actually, her attraction to him had warmed again since realizing he’d been a pawn in some game between Hela and Satan — but merely that she’d begun to follow the instincts of the part of her that was becoming Urd. She intuitively knew that the wolf had just saved Aurelius, and she’d had enough experience in the Nine Worlds to know that he’d find a way survive. If he didn’t, the frigid winds and pelting snow rushing into the hall through the shattered window forestalled any hope of trying to help him at the moment; she might have supernatural assets as a Norn, but the ability to fly wasn’t one of them.
Pragmatic as ever, though, she’d have to take care of herself first, and then look for him. Another thought flitted into her mind about the wolf itself, and the name Hela called it: Fenris.
The Codex Lacrimae Page 33
