Rolf grinned. “But those aren’t real!”
“Don’t be stupid. Of course they aren’t real, not anymore, because Woden used them all up for the magic chain,” Wren said quietly. “But to bind the demon Fenrir, someone had to hold the wolf down and Tyr was all too eager to do it. So while Tyr held the wolf, Woden bound its legs. But the wolf grabbed Tyr’s arm in its fangs, and Woden saw his chance. He bound the wolf’s maw shut with Tyr’s hand still inside its mouth, and so the war god was forced to tear his own hand off to escape. And this meant he was no longer fit to command the gods, and Woden took his place as king.”
“Oh. I always thought Woden was a nice god.”
“He is, but he’s cruel when he needs to be.” Wren squatted down at the edge of the stairs to gaze into the black cell through the narrow bars of the window in the door. “They say that Bloody Tyr screamed for three days after Fenrir bit off his hand. The wolf’s venom was in the wound, burning him up, until Woden found an herb to cure it. But Tyr’s scream sank down into the earth, and sometimes, if you sleep on the ground with your head on a stone, you can still hear the war god screaming in agony.”
The ghost shuddered and sat down beside her. The wind rose suddenly, whipping through the narrow space between the outer wall and the castle, hurling snow and howling over the stones, and Wren felt her hair flying wild around her face and snapping in her eyes. But Rolf’s hair lay perfectly still on his head.
The boy said, “I heard screaming like that, once. The digger screamed. We could hear it here, every day.”
“The digger? You mean Ivar’s Drill?”
“Yeah. It went on and on, day after day, growling and shrieking. The sounds echoed across the bay for leagues.”
Wren glanced toward the east, toward Mount Esja, but all she saw was the castle wall.
“And then it finally stopped, and the monsters came.” Rolf sighed.
“I know. Skadi said that Fenrir climbed up out of the pit and killed the king right in front of her.”
The ghost looked at her with a faint furrow in his brow. “That’s not what I heard. I heard the king fell in the hole, and Fenrir came out later.”
It was Wren’s turn to frown. “So, then, were the workers trying to pull the king out when Fenrir killed them all?”
Rolf shook his head. “No, that’s not right. Here, let me get someone.” The boy turned away as though to stand up, and simply faded into nothingness.
Wren stared at the empty spot where the ghost had been a moment ago, and then she sniffed and stood up, stretching her back.
“Found him,” Rolf said.
Wren started and spun to see the boy leading a young man through the cold stone wall beside her.
“This is Arn. He was there that day at the pit when the king died. He saw it. Tell her like you told me, Arn.” Rolf nodded.
The ghost of the young man named Arn was tall and handsome, with a small and serious mouth and worried eyes. He wore rough wool trousers, sealskin boots, and nothing else. Wren’s first thought was that he must be cold. Her second thought was that she needed to stop staring at his chest, and his arms, and his…
“I was there,” Arn said. He gazed into her eyes as though he could see through her flesh to her own ghost itself. “I was there that day on the mountain when it happened. I saw it. I saw it all.”
Wren blinked and nodded and tried to focus on what he was saying. “Right, the drill, the king. Right. So what happened?”
“We stopped drilling when the tunnel got too hot,” Arn said. “The king was standing by the pit, talking to the foreman about what to do next. The queen and her guard were nearby, and I was near the drill. We heard the buzzing first, for many long moments, and then the flies swarmed up out of the pit like a storm cloud. They washed over the king in a wave, wrapped around him until all I could see were the whites of his eyes. He tried to beat them away, to crush them, to get away, but still they clung to him. A few men tried to throw a tarp over him. I don’t know what they were thinking. But everyone else just stood there and watched. Like me.”
“Why didn’t you help him?” Wren asked.
Arn shook his head. “It sounds foolish, I know. They were only flies. But you didn’t see them. No one has ever seen such a thing. They covered him like bees on a hive, like pitch on a stone, and he was screaming. Not yelling or cursing like a man in battle, or angry, or drunk. He was screaming like a child trapped in a nightmare. It just went on and on. And then he fell into the pit.”
Wren swallowed. “And then Fenrir came out?”
“And then the king climbed back out,” Arn corrected her. “The flies were falling off him like snow or ashes, all dead. But the king, he was growing bigger and taller, right in front of us. His arms getting longer, his face twisted and stretched like a hide being tanned from the inside. I saw the hair growing out from his face and hands. His clothes tore apart and hung off him in tatters. And all the while he roared at us, and snarled at us, and stared at us with those yellow eyes.”
The girl felt her face twisting into a frown as she realized the truth. “The king was the first reaver? King Ivar is Fenrir?”
“Not the real Fenrir, obviously.” Arn went on gazing into her eyes. “But just as terrible and monstrous, I’ve no doubt. The change came over him and was gone again in the time it takes two waves to sweep a beach clean. One moment he’s a man, and the next he’s a beast with claws and fangs, with tails and mad eyes, all covered in fur, white and black and red as blood.”
“Like a summer fox,” Wren whispered.
Arn nodded, and took a step closer to her.
Wren glanced down at his bare chest and then back up at his dark eyes. “And then?”
“Then the king grabbed the nearest man and tore him in half, ripping his arms off and splitting his chest open, spilling his guts on the ground with buckets of blood.” Arn paused. “But we didn’t falter. Every man grabbed a hammer or pole or pickaxe, and we ran at him. I don’t know what anyone else was thinking, but I was thinking we should push him back into the hole. I don’t suppose I thought we could actually kill a demon like that. The king killed another man, and then another, and then he hurled the bodies at us, knocking us to the ground. He roared at us, and I stared up at him and I thought, well, this is it. This is the end for me. But the beast turned and bounded off across the mountain.”
“It left you alive?”
“The king did.” Arn paused. “The queen didn’t. We were still picking ourselves up off the ground, still covered in the blood and bodies of the three dead men, when the queen’s viper struck.”
“She ordered your deaths?”
Arn nodded. “There were only four of us left, and the bastard slit our throats and split our hearts and left us there to rot in the sun.”
“What bastard? Who killed you?”
“Leif Blackmane.”
“Nine hells.” Wren covered her mouth and whispered, “Freya.”
The corner of Arn’s mouth fluttered as though he wanted to smile but couldn’t quite remember how to. “It’s the strangest thing, but as I lay there, breathing my last breath, I saw something. I could almost swear I saw the dead foreman stand back up again, and walk away.”
Wren barely heard him.
Oh, Freya.
“And that’s the end of it,” said Rolf. “What do you think of that?”
Wren stared at the dead man. “Why haven’t you told anyone? People need to know this. People need to know what really happened. Why did you wait? That was all five years ago. Five years! Think of all the people who’ve died since then!”
Arn suddenly looked ill and turned away, but Rolf glared up at her. “Hey! Don’t you yell at him. He’s only been out of the grave for a month, and he’s the first of the men who died that day to wake up. Don’t you know anything? You might lie in the ground a day or a year or an age before you wake up, if ever. So you back off! You leave him alone!”
“S-sorry, I’m sorry.” Wren pushed her hair back with trembling hands. “I do know that, I know all about it, I’m
