She went over to the closest leg of the machine and scraped at the rust on it. The drill’s feet were nailed into the mountainside and rust-colored stains had trickled down the rock face from the feet, looking like dried blood on the ground. She looked out to the west again, and in the distance she could still see the faint gray blot of Rekavik surrounded on three sides by the dark waters of the bay.
It started here. So close they could see the city. But the demon was buried here all this time, all these ages it was right here beneath their feet. A real demon, imprisoned by Woden himself.
How many times did the people of Rekavik look up at Mount Esja without a care in the world, without any idea that Fenrir was sleeping right in front of them? And how many other monsters might there be buried in the earth, or under the sea, or in the sky right now, just waiting for some fool to wake them again?
A snap of Erik’s fingers drew her attention back to the pit. He signed, “Has anyone ever gone down there?”
“What the hell is he doing?” Leif asked, jerking his chin at the taller man.
“He wants to know if anyone has ever gone down into the tunnel before,” Freya said. “And so do I.”
“Of course not.” Leif hooked his thumbs in his belt and stared down into the darkness. “I’ve only been back here twice since Fenrir came out, and not for long, and not to go down there.”
The huntress stared down into the darkness with him, the wind whipping through their long hair, silver-gold beside raven black. “I understand. It’s all right to be afraid.”
The pale youth glared at her, but then he glanced at the hulking Erik and sauntered away along the pit’s edge. “So, are you going down there?”
“Yes. There may be something in there that can tell us about Fenrir. What he eats and how he sleeps.”
Leif snorted. “He eats men and he sleeps on a pile of bones.”
Freya ignored him and looked up at Erik. “Ready?”
He nodded and began shuffling down the steep slope of the pit to the tunnel’s mouth, where he rested one hand on the shaft of the drill and paused. His fingers said, “I can hear something in there.”
Freya knelt beside him and placed her hand on the smooth rock wall of the tunnel, feeling the sharp grooves left by the drill. There were no shudders in the mountain, no vibrations telling tales of giant beasts moving about in the darkness below. “I don’t hear it. Is it like breathing? Do you think it’s Fenrir?”
Erik shook his head and signed, “It’s very faint. I’m not surprised you can’t hear it. I’m not sure, but I think it sounds like flies. If there is something down there, it’s probably dead.”
Chapter 10. Bullies
Wren huddled by the door of Katja’s cell. A light snow was falling on the city and beginning to lie thick upon the frozen mud and dead grass of the courtyard. Men crunched their way back and forth across the roads and the yards, but the snow fell in perfect silence. With an old blanket wrapped over her coat, Wren almost felt warm. At first when she sat down against the stone wall beside the cell door, the cold of the stone had nearly drained the heat from her body, but now the stone was warm and the blanket was warm and the stiff ache in her back was fading. She sighed and watched her breath twist and swirl in the chilly air.
After two hours of sitting in the snow, she sat up and peered around the corner at the courtyard and the iron door in the castle wall. Two of the older guards stood near the door by a small brazier that held a crackling peat fire. “You know, my lord,” she said with an upward glance at the gray sky, “I have often thought it was foolish to do a foolish thing, even for a good reason, and it seems to me that sitting here in the cold to protect a locked door is quite a foolish thing. I mean, had you seen fit to fill the hearts of the people with fear and hate toward poor Katja, then yes, I could see the honor and purpose in staying here. But you obviously have other designs for Rekavik today. This gentle snow, for instance. That’s a very nice touch, I think. Good work, my lord. I shall celebrate your wisdom over there by that warm fire.”
She scrambled to her feet, tugged her blanket more tightly around herself, and trudged through the soft snow to the guards and the crackling, sparking pile of burning moss beside them. The men nodded in greeting and she nodded back. Holding her hands over the fire, Wren felt the blood and the feeling creeping back into her flesh.
In no time at all she was smiling and talking cheerily to the two grim-faced men-at-arms, who seemed content to listen and nod in reply from time to time. She told them about her journey from Denveller, and the frogs on Delver Island, and the giant carcass in Hengavik, and she was about to describe the miller and his brother when a stream of glaring, bearded men stomped through the doorway, frowned at the guards, and stomped across the courtyard and into the castle.
Wren blinked. “Who were they?”
“No one,” the shorter guard said. “Ragnar Svensson and his friends. Just a few idiots who like to complain to the queen about the walls and the fishing and the weather. They show up about once a month to demand that Skadi fix everything with her magic, and she tells them where they can stick their whining, and they go home again. Hmph. They’re a bit early this month. Usually they wait until the new moon to make their noise. Bunch of jackasses.”
“Early?” Wren looked from the castle door to the corner of the building that hid the stairs down to Katja’s cell. She wrapped her hands up in the folds of her blanket and paced slowly and quietly back along the castle wall to the cell and descended the steps.
Wren peered in through the narrow, barred window in the steel door, but the cell was utterly dark except for the tiny patch of light falling through the window, which Wren’s head was now blocking. So she saw nothing inside. “Katja? Are you awake? Can you understand me? Katja? It’s Wren. Well, you probably don’t remember me, especially now that you’re a ravenous monster and all, but I’m a friend of your sister’s, and I’m going to keep you safe, all right? You just need to stay quiet, just like you are now, and everything will be fine. You’ll see. The Allfather won’t abandon us now, not after coming so far. Journeys like this one, they don’t end in the middle. They go on and on, like in the old sagas. Sometimes they go on for years, but they always end the right way. You didn’t survive all this time just to die in some cell, in the middle of the story, and I-”
Wren paused to frown. “Unless of course, this might not be your story at all. It could be my story. In that case, maybe you will die, and it’ll make me sad, so sad that I can’t cure the plague until a handsome young man comes along to make me smile again.”
She smiled at the cold door. “But no, that won’t happen. You and I aren’t exactly close, so it wouldn’t make me that sad if you died. I mean, I would be sad, Allfather knows I’d hate for anything to happen to you, but I can’t say it would break my heart more than anyone else’s death. After all, we’ve never even met really. Never even spoken.”
The young vala hunched down on the cold steps for a moment to blow some warmth into her thin fingers. “Then again, maybe this is your sister’s story. Oh, now that makes more sense. After all, she’s the one on the long journey and actually doing all the work, isn’t she? And if you died, it really would break her heart, I suppose. She might fall into a black state indeed, full of sorrow, maybe even starving herself in a tower by the sea, refusing to see her own poor Erik. Or she might go berserk and kill us all, kill every last person in Rekavik and burn the city to the ground, and then spend the rest of her life wandering the earth to repent her crimes and earn her way back into Woden’s good graces. Aye, I can see that story well enough. Worthy of a saga.”