Europa (10 page)

And the
Frost Finch
crashed into the earth.

Omar had half a second to hear the steel frame of the airship keening and wailing as it twisted and bent around him. He heard glass shatter and fabric tear, wood splinter and flesh thump. There was the grinding of stone and the groaning of brass pipes. And in the distance, there was shouting. But that half a second ended when Omar flew forward with Riuza still in his arms and he collided with the front of the cockpit.

The world ended, for a time.

When he opened his eyes, the sun was high overhead. He was lying on a cold bumpy street and he could see the sides of stone buildings around him. There was a giant smoking skeleton of steel off to his left, and to his right there was a group of people standing and kneeling around the body of Riuza Ngozi. The pilot coughed and her hand moved.

We’re alive. We’re both alive. We made it to Ysland. The airship is destroyed and three people died, but we made it. I made it. I’m here. Ysland, at last!

A scowling old man knelt down over Omar and the Aegyptian looked up into the wind-burned and bearded face. In his best Old Rus, Omar asked, “Is this Ysland?”

The man raised an eyebrow, and nodded. “It is.”

“And is there much sun-steel here? The hot gold? The bright metal?”

The man shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said slowly. “I have no gold. But you, you’re hurt. It’s very bad. I’m sorry.” He reached across Omar’s chest and lifted up a heavy cloth lying on the man’s shoulder. Omar rolled his head over and saw the stump where his left arm used to be.

A wild giddiness swam up into his brain at the sight.

My arm is gone. All gone. I’ve lost my arm. I’m sure I had it a moment ago. What did I do with my arm?

The ground shone with dark blood as far as he could see in every direction.

My blood. All of my blood. It shouldn’t be outside like that. That’s very wrong.

His teeth chattered for a moment, but he rolled his head back and reached up with his right hand to grab the old man’s wool shirt and pulled him down close. “I know there is sun-steel here. Where is the gold that keeps this island warm? Where is it? How much is there?”

The old man chuckled and shook his head as he loosen Omar’s grip on him and straightened up. “There’s no gold here, friend. Iron a-plenty, but no gold.”

“I don’t care what you call it, old man!” Omar felt his arm shuddering, felt his mind slipping back toward oblivion. His skin was cold and his vision was growing dim. “What keeps this island warm? Why isn’t it covered in ice?”

The old man shifted back and pointed at the northern horizon, and then to the east, and then to the south. Omar followed the man’s finger to see the huge smoking mountains around the city. Omar shook his head. “Volcanoes? No, no, no. But the stories. The stories said… I thought…” He clawed at the old man’s arm and hauled himself up onto his knees. He teetered off balance from the missing weight of his arm. Gripping the old man for support, he stared at the northern volcano with a terrible icy emptiness in his belly. “The stories were wrong. I was wrong.”

He stared across the street at Riuza, and then up at the brass ribs of the
Frost Finch
rising high above the city, with a few charred shreds of fabric still clinging to the beams. The airship’s engine was burning brightly and belching a thin column of black smoke into the sky. Staring and panting, he saw the stoic faces of the Yslanders all around him, all dressed in rough leather and fur, all standing outside simple stone houses, all carrying simple steel tools and weapons, and adorned in nothing more ornate that carved bone trinkets.

“There’s nothing here,” Omar whispered.

The hills outside the city shivered with yellow grass, and the lower slopes of the volcanoes gleamed with patches of snow on the black rocks, and the more distant mountains shone with sunlight glancing off their pale gray faces and snowy caps.

The roads were paved with gravel and dirt. The buildings were mortared with clay. The only animal in sight was a shaggy little pony.

“Nothing.”

There were no shining temples, no golden palaces, no proud warriors fighting alongside the spirits of their ancestors, no wise priests conversing with the souls of their predecessors. He saw no sun-steel, no marvels, no legends come to life, and no answers to the mysteries of the universe.

“It was all for nothing.” He pitched forward onto the stone street and his vision went white.

Is this my fate, then? Is this finally the end?

Against the hard gravel road, he felt the tiny lump of his golden pendant pressed into his chest through his shirt.

And after a moment, he felt the dull throbbing of his heart beating on and on and on…

No. There is no end for me.

At least, not yet.

Freya the Huntress
MAP

With special thanks to

Curt and Janine

A scream shattered the stillness of the night, echoing up the snowy slopes from the little cottage at the bottom of the valley.

Freya rolled her eyes and grinned. “How big a spider do you think Katja just found in the ice cellar?”

Erik smiled and leaned down to kiss her again.

The second scream was longer than the first, a warbling sound that shuddered with terror and pain in the darkness.

Freya sat up so quickly that she nearly smashed Erik in the nose, but her husband was already moving off her, standing up, and pulling on his trousers. As the young man dashed around the fire to fetch his spear, Freya grabbed her long leather coat and wrapped it around herself. “It’s not a spider.” She called up the hillside, “Arfast!”

Why would she scream like that? A bear? A ghost?

Erik was already running down the slope, his boots crunching on the frozen earth and frost-skinned grass, his steel spear flashing in the moonlight. His long legs flew over the dark terrain, but it was a long way back down to the little house beside the steaming lake.

A very long way.

“Arfast! Where the hell are you?” Freya yanked on her boots and grabbed her own spear just as the huge white elk appeared over the crest of the ridge and trotted down to meet her. Freya leapt onto the elk’s back and grabbed the shaggy fur of its neck. “Hya!”

The elk bolted down the slope, dashing across the loose scree. Tiny stones clattered in the shadows and plates of ice cracked and shot away down the hillside. But soon Arfast’s hooves were thumping on the frozen earth, and then he was dashing through the tall dead grass as they raced lower and lower toward the valley floor and the cottage beside the warm waters. Freya didn’t spare a glance for Erik as she passed him. All she could see was the wavering firelight in the window of their home, a single patch of warm color in the night.

The woman screamed a third time, and Freya hollered back, “Katja!”

The light in the window went out, and the night swallowed the cottage.

The white elk bounded over the low stone wall at the edge of the garden and slid to a halt just beside the house. Freya was already tumbling off his back as he trotted to a stop and she dashed to the doorway of the cottage with her spear in her hand. The leather curtain was torn away, letting a few feeble rays of starlight fall on the floor inside, but the rest of the cottage was hidden in shadow.

“Katja?” Freya hesitated. She could hear someone wheezing with wet and ragged breaths. “Katja?”

A black figure dashed out of the shadows, colliding with her shoulder and knocking her to the ground.

“Nine hells!” Freya kept her fingers wrapped tightly around her cold steel spear as she hit the earth, and she scrambled to her feet again, looking left and right for her attacker. Her heart was racing and a wave of heat washed through her arms and her face. She stared across the dark field, listening.

There.

The figure hunched low by the water some thirty paces away, obscured by the shadows of the rocks along the shore. It wasn’t moving but she could hear its labored breathing over the soft rippling of the lake beneath the cold winter wind.

It’s too lean and too quick to be a bear.

She stared at the shape, willing her eyes to grow sharper, willing the moon to grow brighter, but neither obliged her.

Could it be a wolf? There hasn’t been a wolf in western Ysland in years, has there?

Erik vaulted the garden wall and jogged to her side, where he planted his spear in the soft earth. His left hand danced in the darkness, signing, “How many?”

“One,” Freya whispered. “There.” She pointed to the black shape at the water’s edge.

“And Katja?” signed Erik.

“Inside,” Freya said. “You check on her.”

“Wait here.” Erik ducked into the house.

As soon as her husband was inside, Freya crept forward across the grass, her spear trained on the dark figure. It was still gasping and rasping, still choking on its own ragged breath, or maybe something wet in its mouth. Freya held her spear lightly in both hands, ready to thrust, ready to throw. The sharp chill in the air made her eyes stand a little wider, and made every faint sound a little clearer. A brilliant half moon cast its white light upon the lake, illuminating the pale wisps of steam rising lazily from the waters.

A low growl rose in the creature’s throat.

Definitely not a bear. So what are you?

Snarling and snorting, the beast shuffled around to face her, turning so that all she could see were two golden coins shining in a patch of darkness. The coins blinked, and then the shadow sprang at her.

Freya stepped in to meet its charge, and she thrust her spear into the heart of the dark shape flying up at her chest. She felt the sudden weight on her spear and she twisted aside to let the beast’s momentum drive the spear-tip through its ribs and carry it away from her. But the creature reached out and pulled the blade from its flesh so that it could limp away and stagger back down toward the water.

It has no tail. What sort of animal has no tail, except a bear?

She shook the blood from the tip of her spear and spun the long shaft about to point at the creature again. Freya started forward, carefully planting one foot in front of the other, closing the gap.

I need to be quick, before it rallies, before it goes mad with fear. I need to strike the heart or the throat, and hold it until it dies. The strike has to be perfect, or it will kill me in its death throes. I need to be perfect, or I’ll die. And I don’t want to die. Not yet.

Freya sighted her target and inhaled.

Now.

The beast stood up.

It rose up on its hind legs, rearing up to its full height, taller than Erik by more than a head, and it stretched out its hairy arms to both sides as though to shred the sky itself with its claws. For a moment, as it stood spread out and leaning back to crack its spine, Freya saw the moonlight flash on the blood oozing from the creature’s chest.

Then it curled forward again, hunching its shoulders and letting its arms dangle in front of its belly, its claws shining in the darkness. It stared at her with nightmare eyes, bloodshot orbs studded with brilliant golden irises. The black nostrils on the ends of its snout glistened, and its black jaws gaped to display a forest of yellow fangs.

Freya felt the sweat oozing down her palms and the small of her back. She felt her heart pounding and her belly knotting. But she managed a grin and said, “Well, you’re definitely one of the ugliest rabbits I’ve ever seen.”

The beast lunged at her again, driving its claws at her face. Freya whipped the butt of her spear in a vicious arc to smash its claws and nose away, and the creature stumbled to the side. But it lunged again and this time there was no room to swing her spear. She held the shaft of her weapon across her chest to block the beast and it grabbed the spear, wrapping its claws around the steel on either side of her hands. The yellow fangs glistened just in front of her eyes and its hot breath blasted her in the face.

She winced. “And you eat your own scat, don’t you?”

Freya planted her feet and whipped her hips from side to side, but she couldn’t wrench her spear free of the beast’s grip. With a sharp grunt, she lurched backward, yanking the creature forward onto her. As it tumbled off balance, still clutching the spear between them, Freya flattened her back on the earth and planted her feet in the beast’s belly, flipping it back over her head.

The creature yelped and squealed as it wheeled through the air and crashed down on its spine. Freya felt her spear come free of its grip, and she rolled to her feet and whirled to face the beast again.

It was gone.

She felt her heart freeze in her chest. She didn’t breathe. Left and right she swung her spear, searching for her prey in the darkness.

Nothing is that fast!

A shuffling sound drew her gaze to the west, and there she saw the hunching figure loping away across the dark meadow. Freya stood up, hefting her spear in her right hand and tilting it back over her shoulder. And then she let it fly.