Erik gently took her arm and began to sign, but she turned away to face the queen, already knowing that her husband wouldn’t want her to go, and would at the least insist on her staying behind while he went on alone.
“It’s very hard to find Fenrir,” the queen said. “And almost impossible to face him and live. Leif’s hunters were all deadly swordsmen and they fell like children, helpless, before the demon. I will not send any more of my warriors to that end.”
“I’m not asking you to send anyone else. But I’m no warrior, and I’m not going to fight this demon in some sort of glorious battle,” Freya said. “I’m just going to hunt it down like any other animal. Stalk it, snare it, and spear it.”
“That’s not much of a plan,” said Halfdan.
“I know.” Freya nodded. “But it usually works just fine.”
Chapter 9. Drill
When their audience was over, the queen’s apprentice Thora led the three visitors to another wing of the estate, to a pair of rooms furnished with very large mattresses and very soft blankets. Thora gestured to the rooms in silence, her dark and haunted eyes staring at them each in turn. She looked exhausted, as though she’d been crying all night and day and had only stopped because her body simply couldn’t cry anymore.
“You’re going to hunt Fenrir.” The apprentice spoke very softly, her eyes straying toward the floor. “You’re going to kill him.”
Freya nodded.
“The reavers are victims, you know,” Thora said. “They all are. They were people once. Our people. Our families.”
Freya nodded again. “I know they were, just like my sister. Did you lose someone to the reavers?”
Thora nodded and whispered, “Yes, I did. And he didn’t deserve this. None of them did.” Then she pulled her black shawl tightly around her shoulders and strode swiftly down the hall. Freya watched her go, wondering what the other girl had been like before she lost everyone.
She was probably just like me. Content. Even happy. Looking forward to the future. And now look at her.
Wren said her goodnights and drew the curtain to her room, and Freya followed Erik into theirs. Starlight spilled through the barred window onto the bed, and thunder rumbled across the sky as the soft patter of icy rain began to fall on the heavy turf roof.
Freya and her husband shed their clothing, letting their knives and coats and shirts and trousers all slip to the floor in furry, leathery piles. She watched him move to the bed, his bare chest and arms distorted by the shadows, his muscles rippling like a snow lion’s in the night. Erik stretched out on top of the blankets and closed his eyes.
Freya paused, then untied the tight cotton stay from around her small breasts and let the cloth fall away. She walked slowly onto the mattress and stood over her naked husband as she stared out the window at the storm growling and pouring on the dark city outside. The cold air swirled over her skin and she felt the gooseflesh pricking down her back.
The black marks inked into her arms seemed to ripple and come alive in the shadows, and she ran her fingers over them. Katja had made them, working the ink into her skin with a single needle, one prick at a time, to create the ancient icons for bears, and elk, and eagles, and snakes, and everything that Freya had ever hunted and killed. And woven around the black animal heads were the runes, the words of strength and faith and health and luck that her sister had given her, years and years ago.
Warm fingers played on her ankles and she knelt down on Erik, feeling the heat rising from his bare skin as his hands traveled up her legs and belly and breasts. She sighed and closed her eyes as her husband gently massaged her tired muscles, and she felt his thighs begin to rock beneath her. Freya looked down at him, at the faint smile on his lips and the icy blue glimmers of his eyes. She said, “You know, there are times, not often, but sometimes, when I wish I could hear your voice, not much, but just to know what it would sound like. To hear you laugh.”
He nodded seriously.
“Or maybe sing?”
He shook with silent laughter as he plucked at her nipples.
“Or just… say my name.”
Erik took one hand back to sign, “Me too. Sometimes.”
“But back there, tonight.” Freya sighed again as his hands pressed hard into her thighs and buttocks, and he began shifting her down lower onto his hips. “Tonight, back there, I wish you could have spoken for me. Just that one time. Just because… seeing Katja like that was just, you know, I kicked her.”
Her lip trembled and she felt the corners of her eyes burning. “I kicked her in the head. In the face. I kicked her so hard. I looked at her and it wasn’t her. Not anymore. And I was scared, and I wanted to get out, and I kicked her in the face, and… a part of me wished that she would just die right there.”
The tears spilled down her cheeks, and Erik reached up to pull her down against his chest, and she huddled there against his warm skin.
“I wished she was dead, so it would all end, so we could go home.” She lay very still in her husband’s arms, staring at the wall. There was a blazing knot in her chest and she forced herself to keep breathing. “And then that bastard Leif made me think she was dead for a moment, and as much as I wanted to kill him for it, I was almost grateful to him. And then I told Skadi I would… that I would hunt that thing for her. For her ring. So that maybe she could help Katja. Maybe. All for a maybe. I’m going to hunt a demon for a maybe.”
Erik’s hand reached out in front of her and he signed, “ We. We will hunt it, together.”
“I know. We. I just keep thinking that soon it will be over. When we get to Gudrun. When we get to Skadi. But it just keeps going.” She whispered, “I don’t want to keep going, Erik. I want to go home. I want it to be like it was before. And what if we can’t save her? What if we have to drag Katja home and lock her up like that man in the mill with his brother? I can’t do that to her. I won’t do that to her. I’ll kill her first.”
Freya gasped quietly as the pain in her chest grew tighter, and then she let go, and she sobbed a little. She wiped her eyes and said, “I will kill her. I’ll do it. I won’t ask you to. I’ll do it myself. I’ll kill Katja, when the time comes.”
Erik wrapped his arms around her and kissed her head. Freya closed her eyes and felt her body relaxing one muscle at a time, the aches in her chest and back fading gradually, the tension in her neck and shoulders unbinding bit by bit, until she finally fell asleep.
She awoke in the dark, still lying naked on Erik’s bare body on top of the blankets with the freezing rain drumming on the roof. He was snoring.
Freya shivered and climbed off her husband, smiling in the dark as she felt his erection rubbing along her leg. Fumbling in the dark, she peeled back the blankets and crawled under them beside Erik, and closed her eyes.
A woman’s wail rose outside in the night.
Freya opened her eyes, listening through the noise of the rain. The wail faded away and did not return, but another sound drew her gaze back to the doorway. A familiar soft grunt came from the hall. She stood and crossed the room, feeling the cool air moving over her warm bare skin, and she pulled back the curtain to look out into the corridor.
A dozen paces away she saw the queen’s apprentice Thora pressed up against the wall with her skirts held high around her waist. Her legs were hidden by the youth kneeling before her, his long black hair obscuring the darkness between her legs. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders, her small white teeth biting down on her lip as she quivered, every muscle in her body straining to remain perfectly still. And slowly, the youth on the floor stopped moving his head, and he sighed.
That’s Leif! He’s a bold one, right out in the hallway like this. But good for her, I suppose. It looks like she took what she wanted from him.
Thora opened her pale lids and for a moment the two women stared at each other over Leif’s head, and Freya saw the flat, dead emptiness in the apprentice’s eyes. The brown-haired girl leaned her head back against the wall, no longer biting her lip, no longer straining, without any hint of joy or release or pleasure in her face. She just stood there, holding Leif’s head to her bare flesh, staring at Freya with no expression at all.