“Oh.” Freya pushed her hair back over her head. “Can you tell me about the giant? The creature with the metal bones on the south side of town. Was it a frost giant? Or a whale from the sea?”
“It was like a whale.” Dalla looked up sharply, a wide-eyed look of wonder splashed across her face. “Yes, like a whale. It fell from the sky in the night, streaming fire across the heavens. It came from the southeast, plummeting like a wingless bird. I stood in the lane and watched it grow larger and larger, bigger than anything I had ever seen before. The beast smashed down into the ground, crushing the houses. Its skin was on fire, sweeping from nose to tail, shredding its flesh to the bones.” The ghost’s mouth hung open, moving slightly as though she had more to say but couldn’t find the words.
Freya squinted through the gloom in the direction of the skeleton. “Was that before or after the reavers came?”
“Before.” Dalla nodded. “I was alive then. I saw it fall. The reavers came later, and then I wasn’t alive anymore.”
The huntress winced and nodded and stepped back into the doorway of her shelter. “Thank you. Farewell, Dalla.”
“And to you.” The dead woman took two steps and vanished, leaving Freya alone with her spear and her thoughts, though neither gave her much comfort.
Chapter 6. Family
Freya woke to the sound of Wren waking Erik beside her. Night had faded into day once more, and a weak light fell through the doorway to illuminate the cold stones and earth of their beds. The aether had drifted away, taking the shapes and faces of the ghosts with it, leaving only the empty homes behind.
They ate nothing because they had nothing to eat, so they wrestled Arfast out into the street and stood staring at the distant hill crests as their breath steamed in the morning air.
“What now?” Wren nodded at Katja. “She’s getting worse. Gudrun tells me that your sister will be waking up soon, crazed and feral, mad with hunger. When that happens…”
Freya looked at her poor beautiful sister and saw limbs stretched too long and thin, fingernails stained yellow and narrowing into claws, and everywhere her skin wore more and more hair in blood-red and snow-white that hid the pinks of her cheeks and neck and chest. Katja’s ears were taller and sharper, and the bottom of her nose had grown black and rough to the touch.
“Should we go back east?” Erik signed. “If the reavers have killed everyone in the west, then maybe we can still find another vala somewhere to the east of Logarven where the reavers haven’t been yet.”
“No.” Freya banged the butt of her spear on the gravel of the road to feel the steel hum and shiver in her hand. “In the east, the reavers are still just stories from the old wars. No. The plague came from the west. If there are any answers to find, if there’s any cure for Katja, it’s in the west.” She rested her spear on her shoulder and nudged Arfast to follow her. “Let’s go.”
Erik set out just a step behind, but Wren did not move.
Freya called back over her shoulder, “You don’t have to come with us.”
“If the good lord Woden wants me to die by the claws of the reavers, then far be it from me to second guess his wisdom,” the girl said. “But he hasn’t mentioned any such plans to me yet.”
“Then go home, with our thanks.”
“Alone?” Wren began shuffling after them. “Back to that empty tower?”
“If you want.” Freya cracked her knuckles against the haft of her spear. “On the other hand, you’re more than welcome to come along with us.”
Wren grunted and glanced up at the sky. “Certain death behind me and certain death ahead. That’s quite the riddle, lord. I suppose I should have made it more clear in my prayers that I’m not as fond of riddles as you are.” The vala apprentice quickened her pace to catch up to Erik. “But I’ll do my best to unravel this one. Just don’t let me die before I do.”
Freya and Erik exchanged a silent smile.
They left Hengavik and its grassy fields and followed the old ridge road up west. The smoking peak of Mount Esja glowered down at them from the distant north, its lower slopes gleaming snow-white and blue against the pale sky. They were less than an hour on the road before Erik said he could smell the salty sea air. Freya smelled the change in the air as well, but whether it was the sea she could not tell. Something else, something foul, lingered in the hills.
Dark clouds gathered in the west, shrouding the sky and rumbling with the first angry hints of the storm to come. Freya minded the road, scanning for fresh tracks of men, or mules, or sheep. But the only tracks she could identify were fox prints, and they were all far too large. Erik moved on ahead, a hundred paces or more, always cresting the next hill long before the women and Arfast did, and each time he would wave the all-clear sign.
It was nearing noon, with the sun shining weakly on the shrubby hills patched with ice, when Erik reached the top of a hill, dropped to one knee, and raised his fist. Freya pulled the white elk to a halt and told Wren to stay put, and then the huntress jogged up the road to her husband’s side. He pointed to the northwest.
A bright warble of cold water ran down from the skirts of Mount Esja and raced in its narrow channel down through the hills, and not far from their hilltop Freya could see a small water mill standing beside the swift stream. The mill sat half-buried in the bank beside the water, roofed in turf that would hide the building from any travelers on its northern side, but to the south it presented a crooked stone face with a crooked, curtained doorway. Its three water wheels spun steadily in the water, each one a cleverly lashed arrangement of ribs and femurs with oiled leather sheets stretched tightly over the paddles to catch the water.
“It’s still working? Why the hell would anyone need a mill where all the farmers are dead?” Freya asked.
“Look again,” Erik signed. “Most of the paddles have rotted away. The bones are just spinning loose. And there used to be more than three, but the others are gone.”
Freya nodded, trusting her husband’s keen eyes over her own. He’d always had stronger vision and sharper ears, even before his injury, before he was excluded from the world of conversation and found himself simply listening and watching, year after year, until Freya and Katja had helped him learn to speak with his hands.
“It’s not far,” Freya said. “We should take a look inside. There might be food.”
“Really?” Erik raised an eyebrow.
“Maybe in a cellar buried along the bank, something forgotten when the people left, or ignored when the reavers came.”
They followed the road a bit farther and then struck out along an overgrown footpath down a gentle slope through tall grasses and crunching snow to the edge of the stream across from the mill. Thin plates of ice clung to the banks, floating on the silver ripples of the stream. The water wheels were indeed broken and rotting, still turning in the water but no longer able to turn anything inside the mill.
Freya leapt across the water and quietly dashed to the roof of the mill where she searched for tracks and signs. The ground above and behind the mill was wild and unmarked, but at the edge of the stream where the earth was softer, she saw the footprints leading to the door of the mill. She pointed at them and Erik nodded. They were boot prints. And they were fresh.
“Hello?” Freya circled around the mound of the buried mill and approached the muddy bank where the door faced the water and the broken wheels spun in the stream. “Is there anyone here? We’re travelers from Logarven. We mean you no harm. We’re just looking for some food.”
A dry scrape echoed from inside the mill, the sound of a boot on earth or stone. Freya rested her hand on her favorite knife. A gift from Erik, it had a serrated edge and a sculpted handle that fit her thin fingers perfectly. Holding it tightly reminded her of home.
There were a few more soft scuffling sounds inside the mill, and Freya began to wonder if she had been mistaken, if there was no man inside at all but some lost sheep or goat. Erik lowered his spear and nodded at the doorway, and Freya pulled back the leather curtain.
Inside it was pitch black, save for the rectangle of light from the doorway that revealed nothing except for a smooth earthen floor. The scuffling sound came again, louder and faster, as though some animal was struggling to stand or to run, but couldn’t.
