The other swimmers were coming up to the beach as well, all naked and exhausted, all gasping and shivering and barely able to speak. They cried out weakly, “Help me! Save me! A rope! Please!” And one by one they were set upon by the reavers swimming along right behind them. They were crushed and shredded and torn apart within throwing distance of the wall.
Freya raised her spear and moved to the edge of the wall, but Erik pulled her back and signed, “We can’t save them. We have to hold this line.”
Freya stepped back. “Slingers, faster!”
The rocks slammed into the waters and the reavers, and the beasts yelped and whined and howled as the stones smashed their arms and chests and faces. But still they came, killing the fleeing swimmers every step of the way.
And from across the dark waters, a gravelly voice thundered, “KILL THEM! CRACK THEIR BONES! SHRED THEIR FLESH!”
Freya and Erik exchange a worried look, but there wasn’t time to wonder who was hollering over the bay.
The reavers staggered up out of the surf and shook the cold salt water from their fur, but they only paused a moment before dashing toward the seawall door where they began leaping and snapping at the warriors. The slingers aimed upward so their rocks would sail over the men and fall straight down on the beasts, and the spears and harpoons swung down to stab at them.
Freya counted eight reavers on the beach below, with one or two more still in the water.
It isn’t fair. They shouldn’t have to die like this, not with the cure so close at hand. If only they had stayed away for a few more days, then no one would need to die. But we can’t let them kill us either.
“This is the last battle, the last night of blood!” she cried out to the grim-faced fishermen. “After tonight, there won’t be any reavers left in Ysland, one way or another!”
The men shouted, “For Ivar! For Rekavik!”
Springing upward from the beach, the reavers could just barely reach the top of the wall and the boots of the defenders. Freya took her time, readying her weapon just beside her eye, and when a reaver leapt up right below her, she drove her steel spear straight down into its shoulder or eye or even into its open maw. Erik stood at her side, striking swiftly and then yanking his blade free before the weight of the dead reaver could pull the spear from his hands.
After a few exhausting minutes, four of the reavers on the beach were dead, and one of the survivors had turned its attention to the task of gnawing on the bodies on the ground.
“We’re halfway home!” Freya shouted, and the slingers behind her cheered.
Two of the reavers on the ground stopped trying to scramble up the wall and began slamming their shoulders and heads against the iron door.
“Brace the door!” the fishermen shouted.
Freya moved back from the edge of the wall to catch her breath and feel the pounding of her heart in her chest. Erik tapped her shoulder and he pointed out at the water.
The last ripple was reaching the shore, but the dark shadow rose from the surface far sooner than any of the swimmers had. It rose, and rose, until it was wading waist-deep still far from the light of the torches. The driving snow wind obscured all but the creature’s dim outline. And then it roared a deafening, thunderous roar.
Freya stepped back, and so did every man on the wall. “That’s impossible! We killed Fenrir, we brought back his head!”
But as the monster came closer, she saw there were subtle differences from the reaver-king that Omar had beheaded on Thaverfell. It was enormous and completely covered in red fur, just like Fenrir, but this reaver’s fur was a bit thinner and browner, and when its hips rose out of the water it had only one tail, not three. Its muzzle was shorter, its features almost vaguely human behind a fox-like mask of fur and fangs.
Erik signed, “Look at the neck. A collar?”
Freya saw the silver shining in the starlight through the snow. “It’s a torque. That reaver’s wearing a silver torque. What does that mean?”
“Nine hells,” the old fisherman beside her muttered. And then he shouted, “It’s Prince Magnus!”
Freya spun to face the slingers on the roofs. “Run to the other door, and get Omar. We need his sword here, now! RUN! ”
Three of the boys dashed off their perches, crashed to the snowy street, and took off at a dead sprint for the other door in the eastern seawall where the bright light of the rinegold sword was still clearly visible through the falling snow.
Freya stared at the huge creature coming toward her.
What was it Ivar said? He wanted to bite me again and again, until I was a god like him. This is what he meant. How many times did he bite his son? How much of the fox’s soul did he give to Magnus to change him into this monster?
The reavers at the foot of the wall stopped snarling and beating on the door, and they turned, whimpering and whining, toward the monstrous prince. The huge fox demon waded up out of the water and came straight toward the wall and Freya realized that the top of its head was only a few hairs shorter than the wall itself.
“Back, back, back!” she cried and the warriors all moved to the back edge of the wall, spears and harpoons raised in a bristling array of bloody steel.
The feral behemoth strode up to the seawall and swept one huge claw along the beach, smashing two of the small reavers aside and sending them flying down the strand. The other two bolted in the opposite direction, but the demon prince caught one around the legs and hurled it back into the bay. And then it turned its enormous golden eyes to Freya and the men on the top of the wall, and parted its fiendish jaws in a hideous grin.
“Slingers!” she cried, and the rocks flew thick and fast, but the beast only flinched and growled as they pelted its head and chest. She glanced north along the dim line of the wall to the crowd of defenders at the next door, but she couldn’t see the light of Omar’s sword.
The huge reaver slammed its shoulder into the seawall, and the ancient stones crackled and crunched and shuddered. The fishermen stabbed with their harpoons at the beast’s head and shoulders, and it drew back sharply, snapping its fangs as trickles of blood ran down its face, glistening in the torch light. And then the hulking monster stepped back and locked eyes with Freya, and growled, “You. Murderer. I come for you, girl. You die now.”
The men on the wall all looked at Freya.
“It speaks!?”
“It wants the girl!”
“Slingers!”
But the boys on the roof were at half their number since the others had gone in search of Omar, and those who remained were running out of stones to hurl. The rocks still flying across the wall were fewer and slower, and the beast ignored them entirely. And the men went on murmuring, “It wants revenge for Fenrir! It wants the huntress!”
But the salty old man at Freya’s side shouted, “Woden shits on what it wants. It’s not getting her or anything else. It’s getting killed, is what it’s getting, and we’re the ones killing it! We’ll bleed it dry and break its bones! And we’ll eat its black heart before midnight comes!”
A dark and bloody humor settled on the men. They all began muttering curses and threats and boasts and promises of the depraved and vicious things they were planning to do to the beast’s corpse when it laid steaming and rotting under their boots. Freya almost reminded them that the beast was their own prince, their own Magnus, just another man who fell victim to the plague. But she couldn’t imagine how many of Omar’s bloodflies would have to bite this creature to bring back his humanity, or how long the change would take.
Too long.
The demon charged at the wall again and threw one long, clawing arm at the warriors standing just above its head. Freya jumped left and Erik jumped right and the powerful limb crashed down between them, cracking the stones of the wall. They both lunged, driving their spears into thick fleshy muscles of that arm, and the beast whipped it back again with a bestial snarl.