Loki's Wolves (14 page)

“Everything is under control.”
Say it often enough, and I might even start to believe it.
“Just go back to—”

“Shhh!”

Matt looked over at her. “Huh?”

Laurie opened her mouth to say something, but another
Shhh!
came from beside her as Fen sat up, scowling. His head cocked. He motioned around them.

When Matt frowned, Fen’s scowl deepened. “Are you deaf, Thorsen? Stop yammering and listen.”

Matt did and heard the faint rustle of grass. He was about to say it was just the wind, but Fen already thought he was a clueless rich kid. When he listened more closely, he heard a
thud
, like…

He wasn’t sure what it sounded like. Not the wind. Not a scurrying rabbit, either. It
was
familiar, but only vaguely, some memory locked deep in his brain.

Then another noise: a
click-click
, like dice knocking together.

“I’m going to take a look,” he whispered.

Fen shrugged. “Whatever.”

When Laurie gave Fen a look, he said, “What? He offered.”

Laurie began getting up. “I’ll come—”

Fen caught her arm. “The more of us go, the more noise we make. Thorsen can handle it.”

Matt squared his shoulders and gave what he hoped was a confident nod. Then he slipped to a patch of bushes, crouched, and made his way along. He’d gone only a few steps when he heard the clicking again. Then a snort. A bump. All three sounds came from different directions. He tried to take another step, but his body wouldn’t listen, frozen in place.

His amulet had started to vibrate again, like it had with the Norns, only it felt different. It felt like trouble.

A whisper sounded behind him. Matt looked back to see Laurie leaning toward her cousin, her gaze on Matt as she whispered something. He couldn’t hear the words, but he could imagine them.
Thorsen can’t do it. He’s scared.

He wasn’t usually so jumpy—he’d been camping plenty of times. But after last night, he couldn’t be sure it was just a wild animal out there. It might be… well, there were lots of things it might be. Norse myths were full of monsters.

He gritted his teeth and resumed walking, straining to see in the dark, leaning forward until he almost tripped. Then he glimpsed a huge pale form just beyond the forest. It had to be at least seven feet high and almost as long.

That’s not possible. Nothing’s that big.

Nothing natural.

But there was nothing natural about giant serpents and kids who turned into wolves.

Something had tracked them down. Some monster. His mind whipped through his mythology books. Trolls. Frost giants. Berserkers.

Another snort to his left. When he turned, he could make out a second huge pale shape. And a third behind it. And a fourth…

He swallowed.

They were surrounded. These things had found them, and now—

“I come for Thor’s son. Send him out!” It was a woman’s voice. But not like any woman’s voice he’d ever heard. There was no softness to it. It was as harsh as the caw of a crow.

He took a slow step back.

“You!” The pale beast moved to the forest edge. “I see you, boy. You cannot be the one I seek. The son of Thor does not cower in shadows.”

Anger darted through him, and he almost barreled out to confront her. He stopped himself, but after that first jolt of
Are you nuts?
he thought maybe that wasn’t so crazy after all.

Fen must be able to hear the woman. He’d know they were in danger and that Matt was the target. He’d take his
cousin and run. And that, Matt reasoned, was probably their only chance.

Matt strode from the forest. “I am a son of…”

As he stepped into the moonlight, he found himself staring up at a white horse bigger than any he’d ever seen. On its back was a woman. But not like any woman he’d ever seen, either. She had bright red hair that rippled and snarled around her pale face. Her cheeks were stained with what looked like handprints. The horse was painted with them, too, handprints and lines and swirls that shone blue in the moonlight.

The horse snorted and shifted, and when it did, he heard that clicking noise and looked over. The horse’s bridle. It was… it was made of bones. Finger bones strung together. More bones hung from the saddle, which almost looked as if it was made of… nope. He wasn’t thinking of that. It was leather. Just regular leather.

“Are you Matthew, son of Thor?” the woman asked.

He looked up at her. He had to. Even if his heart was pounding so hard he could barely breathe.

He noticed then how young she was. Not much older than the elder Norn. Pretty, too. His stomach twisted as he thought it. He didn’t want to think it. She shouldn’t be pretty with that wild hair and blue-stained face. She should be terrible—and she was. But as she sat there, perfectly straight, blue eyes flashing, shield over one shoulder, sword gripped in her free hand, he didn’t see a monster, he saw…

He swallowed as he realized what he saw. What she was. They had mosaics of her, too—her kind—in the rec center. Only they didn’t look like this. The women in those pictures were tall and beautiful with long blond braids and horned hats and breastplates that didn’t totally cover… well, he remembered how much his friends liked that picture. And maybe he’d kind of liked it, too.

The only thing this woman had in common with them was her sword and shield, but Matt remembered an older painting in a dusty book his granddad kept in his private library. In that painting, the women were wild-haired and painted, riding great winged steeds through the battlefields, stripping trophies from the enemy dead.

“Valkyries,” Matt whispered.

“Huh?” said a voice behind him.

Matt spun to see two women on foot leading Fen and Laurie around the forest patch, as if they’d tried to escape out the other side. Laurie was struggling and snarling. Fen just walked, as if he’d realized he couldn’t fight.

“They’re Valkyries,” Matt whispered as he stepped back beside Fen.

V
alkyries?” Fen echoed. That explained how the women had managed to sneak up on them. He looked back at the woman who held him. She was blond, but otherwise looked like the red-haired rider, right down to the blue war paint.

“The son of Thor is correct,” the red-haired Valkyrie said in her rough voice. “The son of Loki knows too little of his heritage.” She turned to Laurie. “And the daughter?”

Laurie pulled herself straight. “I’ll learn.”

“The descendants of Thor are taught their heritage.” Fen pulled away from the Valkyrie holding his shoulder. “Not all of Loki’s descendants are taught—because of the sons of Thor.”

He sent a glare Matt’s way.

“You must learn,” the Valkyrie said. “I am Hildar of the Valkyrie. We are pleased to see you have accepted the challenge. We have come to offer assistance.”

Fen looked around as a half-dozen horses and riders drifted in from the shadows. His gaze went not from face to face but sword to sword. He smiled. This was the kind of help they needed. The
wulfenkind
would be in for a surprise next time they came sniffing around. “So, how does this work?”

The Valkyrie gave Fen an amused look.

Laurie cleared her throat; Fen pretended not to hear. “Do we lead—”

Matt interrupted. “I know we need to find Odin. That’s what the Norns said.”

“One cannot rely on the Norns to set the order of battle plans—they jump forward and back and do not see the proper path,” Hildar said. “Odin is not your concern yet; your priority is finding the other descendants of the North. We will help you.”

Matt exhaled. “Thank you. I was wondering how we’d—” He stopped and glanced at Fen and Laurie. “I mean, I had a few ideas of how to do that, but I appreciate any help you, um, ladies can offer.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” Fen felt a guilty rush of relief. So far the entire plan had been to run and hide and stumble around in
the dark without a clue. They’d avoided the Raiders for now, and they would have to keep doing so because he was pretty sure that Skull was going to deliver them all to his boss if they were caught. Fen had told Skull he’d deliver Thorsen, but instead he’d fought Raiders to
help
him. He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d done that—other than the obvious fact that he didn’t want to work for the Raiders—but it had been a sort of last-minute decision. Still, last-minute or not, it would have consequences if Skull caught up with them.

So we need to be far enough ahead that they can’t catch us.

Fen stepped forward. “Do you have extra horses, or do we share with you?”

“It is not our place to take you to the descendants. You must find them yourselves,” Hildar said.

“So you’ll tell us where they are?” Matt prompted.

The Valkyrie frowned. “No. We will tell you where you can go to learn where they are.”

“Uh-huh.” Fen’s hopes of real help were quickly vanishing, but maybe it was a case of the Valkyries just not understanding. “Could you make it a little less complicated? We’re talking about the end of the world here.”

The look she shot him made him step backward, but all she did was say, “First, you must be tested.”

“I haven’t studied,” Matt said.

Fen stifled a laugh, but either Hildar didn’t get the joke or didn’t think it was funny.

“It is not that kind of test,” she said. “You must win a war.”

“I get that,” Matt said. “But I’m pretty good at fighting already. Can you just skip the scavenger hunt and do this the old-fashioned way? Mano a mano. I take on a challenger.”

The other Valkyries murmured among themselves in a language Fen didn’t know, and Hildar shook her head. “You are indeed a son of Thor: you think you can overcome any obstacle with a hammer in one hand and a stein of mead in the other.”

“I don’t think they’ll let me have mead, but I wouldn’t mind the
real
Hammer.” Matt fingered his amulet.

All the Valkyries just stared, stone-faced. Fen felt just as frustrated as they looked. Sure, Thorsen didn’t know what Fen had risked or what trouble awaited if the Raiders caught up with them, but here they were with an offer of help that was being dashed as quickly as it had arrived. He didn’t feel like arguing the matter, either, but Matt was persistent. Fen had to give him credit for that. He was ready to walk away, but Thorsen was obviously still clinging to the hope that the Valkyries could be convinced to offer genuine aid.

Matt sighed. “Come on. It’s a war. The Midgard Serpent isn’t going to let us settle this over a game of Tafl.” He paused. “Unless that’s a possibility, ’cause I’m pretty good at that, too. Would save a lot of trouble. Lot less messy, too. So, what do you think?”

“I think you are not taking this seriously enough,” Hildar said.

She seemed to think that Thorsen was being flip with her, but she’d already said it wasn’t a fight. It only made sense to come up with other possible types of challenges. Fen didn’t figure pointing that out would earn them any favors, though, so he kept his mouth shut and waited.

“The fate of the world is in your hands,” one of the other Valkyries said.

Laurie stepped forward, drawing everyone’s gaze to her. “Then
help
us.”

Fen felt a flash of worry and eased closer to her. She was where his loyalty should be—and would be. Hildar saw his movement and smiled.

“You’re the descendants of gods,” Hildar said, almost kindly. “They died, and it’s up to you now to fulfill the roles in the great fight. Ragnarök comes. This is your duty. We can’t assume your duty for you.”

“I didn’t sign up for this. None of us did,” Fen objected. It was like the world had spun backward a thousand years and they were now old enough to leave home and get married, old enough to fight, old enough to die. They were being asked to risk death because somewhere forever ago they had relatives who were gods. Worse still, those gods had died and left them a mess to handle.

“Did you not?” Hildar asked.

And Fen wondered briefly how much she knew. He
had
made a choice. When the Raiders came at Thorsen, Fen had chosen. When they were on the longship and Fen had heard Thorsen talk about Ragnarök just like Skull had talked about it, Fen had chosen. He’d decided to throw in on the side of the gods, the side that the prophecy said would lose. There was a part of him that wanted to be better than the god who was his long-gone ancestor, be a hero instead of a troublemaker, and maybe in doing so keep the monsters from winning. Being
wulfenkind
didn’t make Skull or anyone else a monster, but wanting to destroy the world certainly did.