stone and gray ash. The summit exhaled a lazy trail of smoke into the cloudless sky.
For two hours they hiked along an old footpath overgrown with grass and weeds, and Freya kept her eyes on the ground and her ears on the wind, searching. From time to time, Erik would point out a track or a trace, a bit of fur or a depression in the frozen mud, but most looked and smelled old. And the farther they climbed into the hills, closer to Esja and farther from the water, the warmer the air and the ground became.
“How many reavers are there altogether?” Freya asked.
“A few hundred, at least.” Leif did not turn back to speak and his soft voice was muffled by the wind. “They run in packs, and sleep in dens. There are two or three dens on the northeast face of Esja, and many more farther north and east beyond Thorskull where the deer and bear hunting is better. There are also five or six dens to the south near Gulbringa, which is probably why we haven’t heard from Torsberg in a long while. We’ve had refugees from all over with all sorts of stories over the last few years. Usually the reavers just kill the people they find. Only a handful get bitten and survive long enough to turn.”
“Still, hundreds of reavers…” Freya frowned at the distant slopes of Esja. “Where should we start our search? Are we going to the ravine where you fought Fenrir the last time?”
“No. The queen told me to show you the pit where the beast was found.” At this, the youth did look back for a moment. His mouth was hidden by the collar of his jacket but Freya could see how he narrowed his eyes, and she wondered if he was merely squinting against the light shining off the sparkling bay icebergs, or if he might actually be smiling at them.
Shortly before noon, Leif pointed out a cluster of purplish-red barberry bushes and they made a light meal of the little fruits. Freya ate sparingly as she gazed down over the distant bay to the tiny walled city, half-hidden by the fog creeping in off the sea.
“Something wrong?” Erik signed.
She shook head and said nothing.
It took another two hours of steady hiking up the steep slopes of Esja, angling ever northward across the loose, ashy shale, before Leif paused again and pointed to a dark shape jutting out from the face of the mountain. “Ivar’s Drill.”
It was a dim and distant shape, a gray figure leaning out into the cool empty air from a shallow depression in the ground. Everything was silent and still. And Freya saw only a spear of rock that would take another half hour to reach, and so on they marched. As they drew closer, Freya began to see the details of the drill. It was massive steel drum, with a tangle of what looked to be pots and pans poking out of the top. Six massive steel legs reached out from the drum to stand on the rocky slope, holding the machine steady. And when they finally reached the edge of the pit, the huntress looked down and saw the long steel arm of the drill reaching down into the darkness.
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.
