Freya the Huntress (Europa #2: A Dark Fantasy) (37 page)

Wren nodded glumly.

“Well, we might as well break into the old castle and find someplace decent to sleep. Maybe the beds are still in one piece.” Omar gallantly gestured toward the open doors, inviting her to lead the way back out into the street.

Wren took one last look around the decaying church, trying to see every last little detail, to remember every little stone cherub and painted flower and tarnished candlestick. She could see them quite clearly in the gloom. In the shadows, her golden fox-eyes could find even the smallest lines and faintest forms.

Woden, when I return home to Ysland I promise to build you a temple like this one. Only less gloomy and ruined, of course, one worthy of the Allfather. But don’t worry, I won’t make it too pretty.

Boots crunched softly on the icy gravel of the road outside. Wren felt her tall fox ears twitching atop her head under the black scarf she wore over her wild red hair. She held up her hand and Omar rested his hand on the grip of his seireiken.

“How many?” he whispered.

She held up two fingers, and then unwound the leather sling from her wrist and slipped a fist-sized stone into it. They both faded back into the shadows to one side of the church doors and stood side by side in the darkness, waiting. Wren glanced at her mentor.

You know, they’re probably just travelers like us. All this hiding is stupid. He’s too cautious.

The footsteps approached the doors, and stopped.

“Hello?” a woman called. “Is anyone in there?”

Wren frowned. The voice was almost familiar, which made no sense. Everyone she had ever known was far away, back home in Ysland, hundreds of leagues to the north across the frozen sea.

Who is that?

She started toward the door, but Omar touched her shoulder and shook his head, and they waited.

“Hello?” the woman called again. “I saw you go into the church. You’re the first person I’ve seen in… a long time. Do you have any food?”

Wren glanced up at Omar again, who shook his head again.

Well, I’m not going to hide in the cold and the dark from some poor, starving woman. It won’t cost us anything to tell her that we don’t have any food to share.

She shrugged off Omar’s hand and moved toward the door, saying, “Hello? My name is Wren. What’s yours? I’m sorry, but I don’t have any food with me.” She stepped out into the doorway.

In the street stood a young woman in a filthy black dress and a young man with long black hair and only one arm. In his hand was a naked sword, an Yslander broadsword shining silver in the starlight. Both of their heads were covered with hoods that mottled their faces with shadows, but their eyes flashed gold when they turned their heads to the light.

Nine hells, it’s Thora and Leif!

They’re still alive.

And they’re here. How did they get here? How did they find us?

Wren felt her stomach contract into a cold knot, and she swallowed. “Oh, it’s you.”

The one-armed man smiled, and lunged at her.

Wren dashed back, the stone falling from her sling as she ran. Omar was running toward her, but he was still several paces away. Too far away. The young man darted through the church doors with his blade raised, and Wren tumbled over the first wooden bench just as the sword crashed down, reducing the bench to splinters. Wren scrambled back and stretched out both arms in front of her, and then jerked her hands upwards. The thick aether mist instantly flooded upward in front of her, forming a swirling white wall between her and Leif. The one-armed warrior dashed toward her again, and crashed to a halt against the aether wall. He stumbled back, wincing, trying to rub his nose with his sword-hand.

“Leif Blackmane. Leif, Leif, Leif.” Omar drew his seireiken slowly. The sun-steel blade shone with an unearthly white glow, bathing the entire church in piercing daylight, banishing the shadows. The air around the short sword rippled and boiled, and blue-white electric arcs snapped and crackled along the single edge of the blade. Omar held the deadly weapon loosely at his side. “You’re looking well. Exile must agree with you.”

Leif glanced from the bright sword to the wall of aether, glaring with bared teeth and dark gold eyes. “We’ve done well enough.”

“Have you been following us this whole time? Since Ysland?”

“No. Since Vienna. We heard a rumor about a girl with fox ears passing through there. And we just had to know who it was.” He tilted his head back to let his hood fall to his shoulders, revealing the tall fox ears on his own head.

“Oh. Well, I’m still flattered.” Omar smiled. “So, did you want me to even you out? Take off the other arm to match?”

The tall girl in the street called out, “Omar!”

The gentleman with the blazing sword glanced over his shoulder at Thora just as the arrow pierced his back and sent him sprawling to the floor.

Wren grimaced, but she kept her hands up, keeping the wall of aether as solid as she could, even though it kept her trapped far inside the church with Omar alone near the doorway. She yelled at the dark couple, “What do you want?”

Leif and Thora glanced at her once before focusing on the man wheezing and bleeding on the ground between them. They came closer, but stayed well clear of the seireiken. The snow and ice on the floor was rapidly steaming away, and the stones themselves were beginning to glow an angry, dull red beneath the bright blade. Wren could see her mentor’s hands moving, could see his lips moving, could see his eyes darting as his blood trickled out across the floor. The arrow in his back shuddered with the beating of his heart.

It’s in his heart. He can’t fight. He can’t even get up.

Wren swallowed. “Get away from him!”

The young man and woman ignored her, and Leif knelt down near the bright seireiken, its light revealing his pale, thin features.

“I said get away!” Wren pushed outward, shoving her wall of aether forward. The swirling mist crashed toward the church doors in an avalanche of cold vapor, knocking Thora and Leif straight out into the street. The blast rolled Omar over twice, snapping off the arrow between his shoulder blades before the mist thinned and fell back to the ground.

Wren dashed forward and dropped to her knees at his side. He stared up at her, his breath coming in tiny gasps, his chest pounding, his eyes small and frightened. She saw the barbed head of the arrow poking up through his shirt, and she took his hand. “This is going to hurt.”

Omar nodded with his eyes.

She reached down, grasped the arrowhead, and yanked it straight up through his flesh and breastbone. She had to fight for every inch as his body seemed to cling to the deadly missile, dragging at it as though his heart and muscles wanted to hold it inside. But it came free, dripping with dark blood, and she tossed it aside, and then held open the stained silk shirt to watch the man’s warm brown skin gently fold itself closed. Omar’s breathing slowed, becoming dry and easy again, and his heart slowed, no longer pounding and shaking his body. The man sat up, massaging his chest with one hand. “Good lord, that hurt. It’s been years since I’ve been arrowed.”

“Arrowed?” Wren grimaced as she helped him to his feet. “I don’t think that’s a word.”

“Oh, please. When you’re forty-five hundred years old, you can make up all the words you want.” He picked up his bright sword from the hotly glowing stone floor and peered out the door. “I must say, your aether-craft is coming along nicely. You must have thrown them back two dozen paces.”

Wren resettled her scarf over her tall, furry ears. “Two dozen, at least.” She winked at him, but then frowned as she listened. “They’re running away.”

“Really?”

They stepped out into the road where the bright moonlight fell gently on the glistening ice and snow between the dark, empty houses. Fresh boot prints led away south, deeper into the city of Targoviste. And so did several fresh footprints.

“Bare footprints?” Omar pointed at the ground. “Now who do you suppose was out here without any shoes on?”

Wren felt her fox ears twitching as they tried to follow the distant sounds. “They’re over that way,” she said, pointing southeast.

Omar touched his chest again. “I must say, I’m not entirely pleased to see them again. What with the treachery and the murder, I just get the feeling that they’re not good people, not the sort I would want my apprentice to associate with, anyway.”

“Well, that’s just typical,” Wren said with a pout. “You’re even more miserable and controlling than Woden.”

He looked at her with a curious smile. “You still talk to your god?”

“From time to time. I don’t want to trouble him too much, what with me being so far from Ysland. It must be a terrible burden on him to have to listen to my prayers from so far away. After all, he doesn’t have fox ears.”

“Well, that is very considerate of you.” He tousled her hair, knocking her scarf askew and letting her furry ears stand up tall in the cold night air. “But back to the matter at hand. Bare feet and missing murderers. I fear we must do the right thing, and stop them.”

Wren sighed. “All right. But then you have to cook supper.”

“Fair enough. I am the better cook.”

They set out at a brisk trot, following the footprints through the streets, winding their way past broken down wagons in the middle of the road and other strange bits of furniture and cutlery and foodstuffs, all frozen and rotting in the road. A broken chair, a shattered lantern, a handful of tin spoons, a burlap sack of beets.

Sounds of violence echoed from the next street. Grunting, yelling, the clangor of a sword, the twang of a bow.

Omar sprinted around the corner, his blazing seireiken hissing with heat and snapping with flecks of lightning. Wren dashed up beside him, her sling laden with a cold stone.

“Nine hells,” she whispered.

Leif and Thora stood back to back in the middle of the street, their weapons raised. All around them in a wide circle lay bodies, broken and dismembered bodies and limbs and heads lying in the snowy road. There were no weapons on the ground, just as there were no shoes on the feet of the corpses. The dead townspeople lay in tattered dresses and suits, unshod and unarmed, their bare skin pale in the moonlight. Outside the ring of bodies were three more people without so much as a stick to defend themselves with.

Thora loosed an arrow straight into the breast of an old woman. And then a second into her throat. And then a third into her eye. The old woman stumbled forward, but did not fall. Behind her, two men lunged at Leif with empty, groping hands, leaping clumsily over the bodies of the dead. The one-armed warrior hacked them down, chopping off arms and heads and hands and legs as fast as he could, and the limbs thumped down into the snow like hail stones.

“Good God!” Omar ran forward, his sword raised. “Stop! You sadistic cretin, stop!”

The two townsmen collapsed at Leif’s feet, and he dashed around Thora to cut down the old woman, who was bristling with arrows from her eyes to her knees. With her head and arms removed, she fell to the ground and lay still.

Wren spun her sling once and sent her stone flying over Omar’s shoulder to smash the bow out of Thora’s hands. Omar jumped over the mound of bodies and brought his burning seireiken down on Leif, but the young man leapt back, yelling, “They’re dead! They’re all dead, you old fool!”

“Of course they’re dead, you idiot, you killed them!” Omar shouted, chasing after him.

Leif ran backwards around the ring of the dead. “They were already dead. Look!”

Omar jogged to a halt, his sword still raised, but he did look down at the heads and hands and chests near his feet. “Dear God…”

Wren came forward as she set another stone in her sling. For a moment she locked eyes with Thora, but the taller girl looked away first and yanked her dark hood up to cover her tall ears. As she drew closer, Wren saw something move near the edge of the bodies, near the old woman that Thora had filled with arrows and that Leif had cut down.

The aether mist around the dead woman was shifting, gliding, flowing. And then a dim figure rose up from the body, the figure of an old woman identical to the one lying dismembered in the road. The ghost looked around herself, blinked, then turned to leave and simply faded away into the darkness. On the other side of the ring of bodies, Wren saw the shades of two men rise up and vanish.

“Omar? What’s going on?” she asked.

Her mentor waved his sword at the others. “Get back.”

Leif and Thora withdrew to the far side of the bodies.

Omar knelt down and picked up a severed bluish hand. “Look at this.”

Wren winced and stayed where she was. “Thanks. I’ve seen dead bodies before.”

“Yes, and now you’re going to look at this one.” He tossed the hand to her.

She caught it with a frown and then held it daintily by one finger. The skin was pale blue and veined in violet and black. The nails were black and chipped. The knuckles were black and scraped raw. She was about to drop it when it caught the light from Omar’s sword and the dead skin glistened with a strange blue glow. “What am I looking at?”

“Aether,” Omar said, standing up. “Frozen aether, in the skin. In the blood.”

“Aether can’t freeze in a person’s body,” she said, dropping the severed hand.

“No, but it can freeze in the ice, or the icy ground. Permafrost.” Omar walked around the dead bodies, sweeping his bright sword over them. “It’s everywhere. Aether crystals. Frozen inside them.”

“But how? People can’t get that cold.” Wren wiped her hand on her black skirt.

“They can if they’re dead and buried.” Omar looked up at the scowling pair on the far side of the road. “Where did they come from?”

“Everywhere, nowhere. I don’t know,” Leif said.

Almost as one, Wren and Thora and Leif all turned to look down the lane and saw two more bluish people walking toward them. The strangers moved quickly and heavily, thumping forward almost at a jog, but they were unsteady on their feet, weaving just a little drunkenly, gently colliding with each other every few steps.

The three fox-eared Yslanders turned at the sound of other bare feet on the snowy roads. Left, then right. North, then east.