Bloodsong Hel X 3 Read online

  “I can’t help your mother.”

  “You can help her.” Mani sobbed. “You have to!”

  “You must accept that your mother is gone. Do you have relatives? Someone to take care of you near here?”

  “No,” Sol answered. “But if you want money, we’ll try to get it. Or you could make us your slaves.”

  Bloodsong controlled her anger at that suggestion. “Stop it, Sol.”

  “We need our mother!” Mani whined.

  “Maybe she needs a life to sacrifice, Mani.” Sol raised her chin and held Bloodsong’s gaze. “Use me. Kill me and let Mother live again, for my brother’s sake.”

  Bloodsong shook her head. “It’s not in my power to help her.”

  “Because you’re not a real Witch.” Mani glared at her. “But we’ll find one! Come on, Sol! We’ve got to find a real Witch!” He pulled on his sister’s hand.

  Sol resisted. “Mani, wait. What if she’s telling us the truth?”

  “Yes, Sol,” Bloodsong said. “You are older. You know I’m telling the truth.”

  Mani released Sol’s hand and ran.

  “He needs me,” Sol said to Bloodsong. She rushed after her brother.

  “Children, wait!” Bloodsong limped painfully after them. “Come back! I have food! And—” She cursed her injured ankle and stopped.

  The children disappeared around a bend in the forest trail to the north.

  She knew what losing a loved one to sudden death was like. The empty eye sockets of the hanging corpse looked down. “I don’t have time for your children, anyway,” she growled. “My daughter comes first. And they’re safer alone than with a Hel-warrior marked for death.” The limb creaked as a sudden breeze started the corpse swinging. Ravens circled overhead. “But at least I can return you to your mother, the Earth.”

  With her sharp sword, Bloodsong sheared through the rope and the corpse fell to the ground. She started carving a grave using her war ax amongst the trees near the road, struggling against the icy-cold earth and thick tree roots with each blow. When she was satisfied, she carefully placed the woman’s remains in the depression and covered it with rock-hard chunks of frozen earth.

  She looked down at the grave-mound. “May Hel show your soul kindness, brave one. This grave will not long protect your flesh from hungry animals, but it will dissuade the ravens from disrespecting you further, for a while.”

  * * *

  Hel-horse saddle on her shoulder, Bloodsong limped down the trail to the south. Snow crunched beneath her boots. She listened for the sound of anyone approaching on the trail. If someone came riding a horse, she intended to steal the mount and relieve her swollen ankle.

  The night’s darkness deepened. From afar came the howling of wolves. Fluttering in a tree made her look up. Through a gap in the tall pines, she saw wraith-like clouds scudding across the face of a half-full moon.

  The children. She hoped they would be all right, but their path would not be easy. Nidhug’s soldiers had murdered their mother, just as soldiers had killed her own parents. Memories of her and her sister Geffon’s kidnapping prompted a curse.

  Of her parents she remembered little, a fragment of a lullaby her mother had sung, a memory of rich male laughter she believed was her father’s, and the screams both had made as Nidhug’s soldiers killed them for resisting. When she and Geffon had reached Castle Nastrond, Nidhug’s fortress, they were separated. Years later, she learned her sister had died. She never found out how.

  Her memories raced on, through the slave revolt she had led and her temporary freedom, the kindness of the villagers who had hidden and helped her, the villager named Eirik, their love and brief life together. Her memories were strong, too, of her son’s screams, and Eirik’s, as Nidhug tortured them to death. And she could never forget the feeling of her unborn child slowly dying within her as she neared death herself.

  “Eirik,” she whispered and wiped with the heel of a gloved hand at the wetness on her cheeks. Would the pain never go away? How many years must pass before the hurt and the loss grew easier to bear?

  With a curse, she pushed her grief aside, leaving only her hatred for Nidhug and her determination to exact justice. She must remain hate-strong and find a way to do what no Hel-warrior had yet been able to do—reach the War Skull in the cavern below Nidhug’s fortress and use the Skull’s power to summon Hel. The revenge of the Goddess upon the Hel-traitor would be far more horrible than any revenge Bloodsong could devise.

  But her desire for the reward Hel promised went deeper than her desire for revenge. “Guthrun,” Bloodsong whispered. “Guthrun—”

  * * *

  As Bloodsong continued limping down the snowy trail, she heard horses approaching from behind. She stepped off the road, dropped her saddle, took her shield from her back, and drew her sword, determined to acquire a horse. But soon, the sounds hinted at a large number of riders. Too large. Then they came into view, a dozen soldiers, several carrying torches, escorting a wagon in which sat a cage. Nidhug’s slavers. In the torchlight, mail glinted beneath their cloaks. Steel battle-helms covered their heads. The black shields tied to their saddles were emblazoned with Nidhug’s royal symbol, a silver skull, jaws open as if screaming.

  There were too many soldiers for her to ambush. She must think first of the more important battles awaiting her. Even more importantly, it was well known that Nidhug’s sorcerous senses could detect when one of his soldier’s died, and she did not want to needlessly attract his attention.

  She retreated deeper into the trees to watch the slavers go by. But then she noticed that the soldiers were moving slower than necessary, and that the torchbearers in front were bending low from their saddles, staring at the snow-covered ground, as if following tracks. Her tracks.

  Bloodsong overcame her surprise. She could not escape on her injured ankle. Her choices were to surrender or fight, which meant that there was no choice at all.

  The torches, she thought. Without light, with the moon behind clouds and trees, the soldiers would be all but blind. She, however, had honed her battle skills for six years in the darkness of Hel’s realm.

  A spell to conjure icy shadow-winds like those upon which Hel-horses trod would do all she wished, according to the Witch-lore in her mind, shadow-winds spawned by the moaning flight of shadow-wind demons from the depths of Hel’s realm.

  She waited until the torchbearers found the spot where her tracks left the road then hissed an incantation.

  Her Hel-ring flickered with purple light. The wind began to rise. Within moments, the trees that lined the trail were thrashing in the throes of an icy tempest. The torches were blown out by the gale, plunging the slavers into near total darkness while the horses reared in terror.

  Bloodsong rushed forward, gritted her teeth against the pain in her ankle, and began to reap lives.

  Fighting their rearing, terrified mounts, the soldiers failed to realize what was happening until half their number lay dying or dead. But then they fought back, flailing their swords blindly through the darkness, unable to bring the shields tied to their saddles into play, desperately trying to control their horses and save their own lives.

  Bloodsong moved carefully amongst the blindly slashing swords, using her darkness-trained senses to their utmost. Hearing the hiss of steel-sliced air, she ducked and felt a blade snag the hood of her cloak. The soldier who had nearly slain her died an instant later as her sword found its mark.

  She kept count as she fought and knew that five were left to be slain. She jerked sideways, avoiding a thrusting blade, gutted one soldier, blocked a wild cut with her shield, parried a stroke, thrust through another soldier’s flesh.

  By Bloodsong’s count, she knew one soldier yet remained alive. She heard boots crunch in the snow behind her and the hiss of a blade. She crouched low and spun, cutting a deadly swath. Steel whirred dangerously close above h
er head even as she felt her sword bite into flesh. The last slaver’s death cry rang out.

  * * *

  Several days’ journey to the south of the forest battle, the massive fortress of Castle Nastrond reared skyward upon a desolate, rolling plain. Its towering, age-pitted walls were cut off from the surrounding land by an encircling, shadow-haunted chasm brimming with swirling mist. Now, in the dead of night, with its mist silvered by a setting moon, faint screams and less identifiable sounds drifted from the chasm’s unseen depths to be heard by shivering soldiers walking sentry on the parapets.

  Within Nastrond’s walls, steeply slanting roofs and looming towers angled upward toward a central tower. The single narrow window near that tower’s summit flickered dimly with candlelight. And within that highest chamber, King Nidhug suddenly awoke with a scream.

  The nightmare had come to him again, his recurring horror, a vision of Hel towering over him in the Cavern of the War Skull, preparing to take Her revenge, to punish him with agony and terror. But something new had been added this time to his recurring nightmare of Hel.

  A figure had stood silently watching from the shadows. It had no face, but it was maddeningly familiar. And he had feared seeing that face even more than he had feared Hel’s revenge.

  The king took several long, deep breaths and disciplined his thoughts, fighting to control his fear.

  His skin was dry, corpse-cold. The death-stench of his spell-sustained flesh sickened him. And the weakness had begun to return once more, a weakness born of centuries of life, the natural order of age and death battling magic-willed youth.

  Six years before, a single youth spell every year had sufficed to keep him young and strong. But the interval was steadily decreasing. The potency of his latest youth spell had lasted less than one week.

  Nidhug’s irregular, faltering heartbeat finally grew slower and stronger as he banished the nightmare image of the faceless watcher from his mind.

  He glanced beside his bed at the thick candle set upon a small, irregularly shaped, black marble table carved with Runic symbols. The candle had burned down to three marks past midnight. He was not surprised. The hour of three was always when he awoke from the nightmare of Hel’s revenge.

  Thoughts raced through his mind. He would have to prepare the rejuvenation spell again on the morrow. Perhaps if he used two lives instead of one, the effectiveness of the spell would last longer. It was a worthwhile experiment.

  He turned onto his side, determined to go back to sleep. Facing him on the adjacent pillow was a grinning skull framed by long gray hair.

  Nidhug almost cried out with fright, but laughed instead. He had momentarily forgotten the slave woman who had been brought to him at dusk. It was only her corpse that had frightened him. She had looked quite strong, but perhaps her appearance had been misleading, for the years and strength he had stolen from her had already dissipated from his flesh.

  He closed his eyes, again seeking sleep. Almost at once, a new image flashed into his mind, a black-clad warrior slaying his soldiers. The warrior’s Helish aura was unmistakable to his sorcery-enhanced senses.

  After nearly two hundred years a Hel-warrior had again ridden from Hel’s realm to challenge him. He remembered the vision of the Witch he had recently killed on the Skull. That vision had ended with the challenger’s defeat. Nidhug took comfort from the memory. Let Hel send Her warrior! I will triumph again!

  A faint scream drifted through his window from the depths of Nastrond’s encircling chasm. Hearing that echo of agony from the realm of unending torment beyond the realm of the Earth further reassured him.

  Whatever the identity of this Hel-warrior might be, the warrior’s screams would soon join those who had come before. He would send this misguided soul to the Realm of Agony. And, if the Hel-warrior was she whom he had expected for the past six years, his pleasure in his victory would be even greater.

  Could it be her? Nidhug’s excitement grew. Six years before, she had been left to die, tied naked to a tree. After she died, he had intended to make a death-slave of her corpse. But her body had vanished from the tree, and when his sorcery had reached out, he had sensed a faint trace of Hel, possibly an echo of a passing shadow-wind demon sent by Hel to transport a newly sworn Hel-warrior to Helheim.

  But if it is her, why has it taken her six years to return?

  Nidhug rose from his bed, no longer sleepy. There was too much to do, too much to prepare. And of first importance was to renew his youth and strength.

  Suddenly he felt more alive than he had in nearly six years. He hurriedly dressed in purple, gold-trimmed robes, slipped a black silken hood over his head to hide his skullish face, pulled on black leather gloves to hide his corpse-like hands, then left the chamber to give orders that two slave women be brought to the Cavern of the War Skull.

  If it is indeed Bloodsong who dares ride against me, he thought as he descended the tower’s demon-guarded stairs, perhaps I can find new ways to prolong her suffering. He smiled beneath his concealing hood, eagerly anticipating Bloodsong’s screams.

  GRIPPING HER bloodied sword, Bloodsong spoke a counter-spell to banish the shadow-wind demons. The Hel-wind died to a breeze and was gone. The soldiers’ horses stopped rearing and grew quiet. The metallic scent of fresh blood and the stench of spilled entrails tinged the air.

  She strapped her shield to her back, found a torch, lit it with steel and flint from her spell-pouch, then examined each fallen warrior. Only one yet lived. She pointed her sword at him. “With that gut wound, you could be a long time dying. A quick death if you tell me why you were tracking me.”

  The soldier grimaced in pain. “Not you, not a warrior.” He coughed up blood.

  “Then who?”

  “A Witch.” He bubbled another prolonged cough. “The children—”

  “Children?”

  “—said they met a Witch who drove them away.”

  Bloodsong remembered the children saying soldiers had taken a Witch named Norda Greycloak away. “What does Nidhug want with Witches? A sorcerer with his powers should not need—”

  “Oh Gods!” The soldier doubled up, clutching his stomach. “It hurts! I don’t know what the king wants with cursed Witches!”

  “Then I’ll send you wherever your soul is bound.”

  “Wait!”

  “Why?”

  “Who killed me?”

  She hesitated.

  He squinted at her face in the torchlight. “It can’t be. Bloodsong? But, you died!” He coughed more blood. “Didn’t you?”

  “Some deaths are more permanent than others.”

  “I am honored.”

  “What?”

  “I wish I could see you better.” He tried to sit up, then slumped back down. “Curse it!”

  “I will end your suffering.”

  “When you appeared for a match, I always cheered for you.”

  “Cheered?” She remembered the insulting hoots and jeers of drunken men when she was forced to enter the arena, naked, for a fight.

  “I’ll never forget—” he coughed blood, “how your magnificent breasts danced when you—”

  She thrust with her blade.

  His last breath wheezed from his lungs.

  Bloodsong used the soldier’s cloak to wipe her sword clean before slipping the blade into its scabbard. At least she now knew that they had been looking for a Witch instead of a Hel-warrior. Nidhug must not have sensed her presence beyond Helheim. But he would now, she supposed, after she had killed his soldiers. Would he sense just their deaths? Or would he know it was a Hel-warrior’s work? Might he even discover her name? I should not have let that soldier recognize me! Nidhug might have read his dying thoughts. Curse me for a fool!

  She carried the torch to the slave cage and looked through the bars. She saw the two children from the crossroad, a man and woman who
protectively held a small child, and a young woman with long blond hair.

  “The soldiers are dead. You are free as soon as I deal with this lock.” She stuck the handle of the torch in the snow and took the ax from her belt. “Move back.” She raised the ax.

  “Wait!”

  She lowered her ax.

  The young woman put her slim-fingered hands through the bars near the lock. “Let me open it before you hurt one of us with that stupid ax.”

  “Stupid?” Bloodsong frowned in surprise.

  “Yes, stupid.”

  Bloodsong estimated the young woman to be fifteen or sixteen. She wore a threadbare green peasant’s robe, little more than a square piece of cloth with a hole cut in it for a head, the sides stitched together up to the arms, and a cord to cinch the waist. A tattered gray cloak was draped over her shoulders. Large, slanting eyes dominated a fine-boned elfin face, marred with bruises and scratches. “Stand back from the lock, child.” Bloodsong again raised her ax.

  “Child!” The teenager grasped the lock and spoke several words in a lilting tongue. Yellow-gold light flickered beneath her fingertips. The lock clicked open. She threw open the cage door.

  Bloodsong jerked back to avoid being hit as the door swung wide.

  Pointedly ignoring Bloodsong, the young woman leapt lightly to the ground and turned to help the other prisoners descend.

  Bloodsong hung her ax back on her belt and limped forward to help.

  “We don’t need your help,” the young woman snapped. “You’ve done enough harm.”

  “Harm? Slaying Nidhug’s slavers? Freeing you from—”

  “I could have gotten free any time I wanted, as you saw.”

  “And the soldiers?” Bloodsong’s surprise edged toward anger. “Do you think they would have let you walk away after you’d opened the lock with your tricks?”

  “Tricks! It was a proper spell!”