Joseph Robert Lewis
Freya the Huntress
Chapter 1. Beast
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.