Freya the Huntress (Europa #2: A Dark Fantasy) (29 page)

Gudrun used to tell tales of Alba where there were trees as far as the eye could see, and bushes dripping with berries, and flowers of red and yellow. She said her own father had gone on one of the last raids and seen it for himself. Back when there were ships to sail. Back when heroes walked the earth and the gods were kind and the demons stayed in their hells.

I wish she’d never told me about all that.

Wren set out on the road heading east. Every foot step crunched on the frosted earth, and in the early morning stillness each step sounded like an avalanche, but no one called out to her from the south wall of Rekavik, and soon the entire city had disappeared behind her over a small rise in the road, and she was alone.

She walked slowly. There was no hurry in her bones or blood. There was only the burning and the hunger, and beneath them, the fear. She felt her heart pattering and pounding in her chest as her eyes darted about the road and across the hills.

They’re out there, somewhere. Sleeping in their dens. Dreaming beast-dreams. Or hunting rabbits. Or killing people. I wonder if they can remember being people themselves. I wonder if I’ll remember. Maybe that’s what drives them mad. They remember what they were and can never be again.

The dirt road crunched on and on underfoot. A cool breeze blew through the frozen grass and the air keened softly and sadly, but she did not feel the chill in the air at all. She knew it was cold, and she knew she should be cold, but she wasn’t. Wren paused and took the blanket off her shoulders, and then took off her black coat, leaving her in just a thin black shirt and skirt and boots. She pushed her sleeves up to her elbows and looked at the thick, dark red hair on her arms.

Fur. Not hair. It’s fur. My fur.

The longer she stared at it, the less horrific it became, fading to the merely strange, and then settling into something that was almost familiar.

Fur is just hair. Everything has hair. Rabbits, mice, beavers. And they’re not monsters.

She set out again, quicker this time, moving lightly with long easy strides. There were faint scents on the breeze, the pheromone traces of grouse in their nests and rabbits in their burrows, all sleeping safely tucked away in their holes in the earth, their little bodies wrapped around each other for warmth in the long night of winter. And for a moment, Wren looked to her right and considered following the smell of rabbits back to wherever it was coming from, and digging the delicious morsels out of their holes.

She blinked and gulped the cool air through her mouth.

An eagle screamed and she slowed down to scan the skies, and after a long moment she spied a tiny black dot on the northern horizon in the no-color space between the fading darkness of the night and the growing light of the morning. As she stared at the bird, wondering how far away it must have been, another sound whispered in her ear and she jerked her head away from it.

“Damn flies. You know, Allfather, not that I’m speaking to you, but after everything you’ve done to me and everyone else in this poor land, the very least consideration you might have made would be to spare us the whining of bloodflies in our ears.”

She hissed as the fly bit her ear, and she slapped the bite mark. Her fingers froze, and she swallowed, and closed her eyes. Under her fingertips, she felt the long pointed shape of her ear poking up through the thick tangle of her hair. This wasn’t like the fur, there was nothing normal to compare it to, to wave it away. This was her flesh, grown and twisted out of form. Her hand shook and she took it away from her head.

In a flurry of gestures and gasps, she ran her hands over her face and chest and legs, and then held her hands closer before her eyes, searching for more changes. And she found them. Her nose felt rough instead of smooth, and her fingers looked shorter and thicker, and her skirts no longer reached all the way to the bottoms of her boots, having rising above the level of her foot.

There was also a soreness in her back.

It’s not from walking, though, and it’s not from sleeping in that soft bed in the castle.

Wren tried to reach back to touch her shoulder blades and spine, but felt nothing strange.

I’m cracking apart, splitting and tearing. And when the pain is more than I can bear, I’ll scream until I can’t scream anymore, until I’m not human anymore, and I’ll go running mad across the hills, naked and crazed, to kill some frightened child in her bed, to kill some brave young man, to go on killing until someone kills me. It’s happening. It’s happening right now.

But there was something else, something both like and unlike pain, a warm dull throbbing between her legs. It had been easy to ignore as long as she had been moving, but now, in the stillness, she felt the heat in her sex slowly rising. Hesitantly, and then gingerly, she pressed her hand against the firm curve of flesh between her thighs, and a rolling wave of fire and hunger and joy crashed upward through her spine and down through her legs. She moved her fingers slowly and stood on unsteady legs, her chest heaving.

Wren sank to her knees, licking her lips, closing her eyes and thinking of Arn, lovely young Arn standing in the darkness, his naked arms wrapping around her, his warm flesh rising sharply inside her. Her hips shuddered again, and again, trembling in ecstasy.

The pain in her back sharpened suddenly, and she cried out as she stumbled to her feet, and ran.

Her legs devoured a league or three, or maybe only a half. As she ran, there was no road and no hills and no legs, there was only the blast of wind in her eyes and the burning in her blood. The sun’s fire and gold shone on the horizon, just barely, just enough to banish the black of night and leave the sky a dusky violet in the west and a pale slate blue in the east. And as she came through a dip in the road she recognized the narrow path off to the side, and she darted away from the road into the tall dead grass. She heard the trickle of the water long before she saw it, and she heard the leathery creaking of the little paddles in the stream long before she saw them.

The mill. And Erik. Erik will know what to do. He knows about animals, and traps, and habits, and instincts. He’ll know about foxes. He’ll know some trick. He’s had hours to deal with this. He’ll know some trick to hold it in, to hold it back. Erik will help me.

She bounded down to the grassy bank and leapt clear over the water and stumbled into the stone wall of the water mill. The stones were cold against the naked palms of her hands and she paused to look at her hands again.

The fur. Is it thinner? Lighter?

She moved toward the curtained doorway of the mill. Over the sloshing and trickling and babbling of the stream, she could clearly hear the slow and heavy breathing of the man inside. For a moment she thought of the miller and his brother, deformed and tortured. But she had only glimpsed the brother after Freya had killed them both, and there were marks on the ground that she read as a body being dragged out of the mill.

Erik cleaned it out, of course. Those two are long gone, probably floated down the stream when he first got here.

She took a deep breath.

He’ll understand. He’s infected too. He’ll look a little different, like me, but it’s all right. We’ll be safe here, for now.

She exhaled and drew back the curtain.

Blood painted the walls and floor of the mill, and fat black flies buzzed out at her in a cloud of angry wings. She yelled and jerked back, swatting the flies away, but they hovered over the water and they hovered around her, walking on her.

Not bloodflies. Just regular flies. Corpseflies.

She could feel their tiny legs on her face, landing and walking and flying away again. She pressed her lips tightly and squinted with both arms raised around her head, and she stepped inside the mill again.

The blood lay in thick, congealing splashes on the walls and floor, with small black lumps glistening in the pale morning light. Her gaze swept across the room to the far end, to the shadowy shape lying on the floor. The figure moved, and a chain rattled against the wall.

He chained himself. That’s good. He’s being careful.

“Erik?” she whispered. “Are you asleep?”

The figure snorted and groaned.

“Erik?”

The head rose from the floor and two golden eyes stared at her as a long black tongue curled inside a yawning muzzle.

Wren stepped back. “Erik?”

The reaver dashed at her, snarling and snapping its fangs. But the chains drew taut and the creature crashed to the floor, twisting and kicking as it struggled to get free of the chains. Wren stumbled back into the blood-soaked wall and felt something soft under her boot. She looked down at the shredded remains of a sheep’s leg. The reaver scrambled up to its feet again and stood at its full height, head bent against the ceiling, arms straining against the chains locked to its wrists.

Choking on the stench of blood and viscera, Wren turned toward the door and again her foot found a strange shape in the blood. She didn’t want to look, but she heard a metallic scrape so she glanced down and saw a long steel spear lying against the wall. She looked at the spear, and then she looked at the reaver, and then she ran outside and vomited in the stream.

When her belly was empty, she sat by the water, washing her face and rinsing out her mouth. After a few moments she leaned over the rippling waters and saw the dark smudge on the end of her nose and the tips of her ears poking through her hair. And then she looked at her cold, dripping hand.

It was bare skin.

The fur is gone!

She yanked off her shirt and stared at her bare, fur-less, hair-less arms and she felt their smoothness until the chill air made them dimple with gooseflesh. Then she stood and found that her skirts hung to their proper length against her boots. And as she pulled her shirt back on and reached for her blanket, she realized she could no longer feel the pounding of her heart in her chest, though she could hear it faintly.

She wrapped the blanket around herself and sat with her back against the wall of the mill and watched the little bone and leather paddles turning in the sparkling water. The sun was up now and the sky was pale blue and soft white clouds stretched across the heavens.

She shivered.

“Thank you, Allfather. Oh, thank you, thank you. I take it all back! You’re a perfectly lovely god of seidr-magic and death!”

And as the sun warmed her face and the stones at her back, she felt her fears melt away, draining out or her weary bones, and she slept.

Wren awoke slowly. She was lying on her side in an awkward heap, tangled in her blanket. The sun was high and the air was mild, and aside from an empty belly and a pleasant warmth between her legs that reminded her of the dream she had just left behind, she felt wonderfully solid and whole and safe. She touched her ears and found them just as tall as before, and she gently stroked the soft hair on them, feeling the way it swept up either side of her head to two downy tufts. It was a strangeness, to be sure, but it did not frighten her.

They’ll go away, or they won’t. But I’m still me.

She leaned over the stream, trying to see her reflection clearly in the rippling waters, and she saw that her eyes were far more gold than green.

That’s hardly even a change, is it?

A low shuffling sound rose in the mill behind her, and she turned to look at the blank stone wall. Then she went to the door and held the leather curtain open, letting the light fall on the furry form hunched in the far corner.

It must be him. He hasn’t growled or barked or anything. He can’t make a sound, even like this.

“I’m sorry, Erik. But Freya is all right. She made it back. And she said she found another man called Omar. Did you meet him? I think he might be able to help. They were supposed to find a cure, you know. And just look at me. I’m getting better all on my own. Look.” She held out her bare arm. And gradually, as she stood there looking down at Erik, she remembered the bloodfly that bit her as she crept out of the city in the morning gloom.

A bloodfly. In winter?

Her jaw dropped and a fresh tear came to her eye.

Is that possible? Well, for a god, most certainly. It really was Woden. He sent me the cure in a bloodfly!

She smiled at the reaver. “There is a cure.” She touched one of her tall, hairy ears. “Well, sort of. But it’s going to be all right. I’ll stay with you until Freya comes. Then we’ll find the cure for you too, and then it’ll all be like it was before.” She knelt down and picked up the spear on the floor and dragged it out into the light, and then she washed it as best she could in the cold stream and scrubbed the blood away with a fistful of dead grass.

And then Wren sat back down at the door of the mill with the spear standing between her legs, leaning against her shoulder. “Well, Woden, it seems you managed to redeem yourself again, this time. And thank you again for that. But I just want to know why I can’t have a simple, normal friend? I mean, really, Gudrun and that woman in the cellar and poor Erik here. Am I really such bad company? I know I shouldn’t complain. I’m alive and well, and free, with the hearing of a fox, no less. But it’s hard not to feel sorry for myself when all I want is a sane person to talk to, like Freya, for example. I know you understand, Allfather. After all, you made me this way. So really, it’s your own fault you have to listen to me now. So I don’t want to hear any complaints from you about it.”

Wren rested her chin on her knee and closed her eyes. From the distant north came a cold and lonely howl, and she tightened her grip on the spear.

Chapter 26. Riuza

Freya stood in the cold morning light staring at the rusted door of the cell half-buried in the earth under the castle’s south wall. She could hear Katja shuffling about inside, the noises echoing in the confined space. And she heard a pair of boots crunching toward her across the trampled, icy snow.