just above the level of the snow. Omar held his blazing sword out level over the snow, illuminating the path over the snare, and as he came through the sharp corner he turned to look over his shoulder.
No! Never look back!
Omar’s last step on the rock ledge didn’t hold. His boot slipped off the lip and he plunged down into the snow up to his hip and the man tumbled face-first into the drift.
“Omar!” Freya rose up. He had fallen only a dozen paces in front of her, but she couldn’t move that far without letting go of her cord tied to the teetering stone above her head. “Omar!”
A second shadow appeared in the pass, and then a long sleek snout came into view. Ivar’s head hung above the snow, his jaws open to release his steaming breath past his black gums and white fangs. Between the canine muzzle and the tall ears covered in blood-red fur, Freya saw the beast’s bright golden eyes staring at her.
He’s huge.
She glanced down at the dark hole in the snow where Omar had vanished, and then she looked back up at the deformed king. “Come on! I’m right here! Come on!”
The beast shuffled forward through the snow, bringing his arms and shoulders around the corner, but then he stopped again, sniffing at the snow, sniffing at the ledge where Omar had run before his fall.
“Come on, Ivar! You want Skadi, don’t you? Skadi? Remember her? She left you, abandoned you. Hell, it’s her fault you were stung by the bloodflies in the first place!” Freya straightened up, focused only on the head of the creature.
The great reaver licked its fangs, and said, “You think me a fool? You think me a simple beast?” His snarling voice was broken, deep, and gurgling, but his words rang out clearly enough. “I am a king. I am a god!”
Freya took half a step back.
He can talk!
“I know what I am. Do you, little girl? Pretty little girl…” The monster laughed, a sound choked with phlegm and bile. And then Ivar reached up to the rock walls on either side of the pristine snow covering the snare, and he lifted himself up off the ground. He was clumsy and awkward as he braced his arms and legs across the width of the crevasse, scraping for footholds on the icy ledges, and at any moment one of his claws was slipping and scrambling to reset its grip on the wall. But he did hold. And he did climb forward, far above the snare.
Freya shouted, “I am Freya Nordasdottir, and I’ve come for your ring! That’s all we want. Please, King Ivar, just give us the ring and we’ll leave you in peace! With the ring, we can cure you. Can you understand me?”
Her only answer was a bloodcurdling roar that echoed and shrieked down the gorge.
I guess not.
Freya let go of the cord and took two running steps before she hurled her spear at the giant fox demon climbing through the ravine toward her. The weapon flashed across the snow and struck the beast a glancing blow across the shoulder. He roared and his claws ripped free of the wall, and he crashed down into the snow atop the snare.
Fall! Damn you, fall all the way down!
She spun back to grab the dangling cord behind her as she drew her serrated knife from her belt. And there, not three paces in front of her, was a reaver.
It was one of the small ones, like the ones she had killed in Denveller with Erik. Just a person covered in hair with twisted bones and yellow eyes. Somehow, after seeing the bestial form of the king in all its inhuman strangeness, the common reaver suddenly didn’t look so frightening. In the darkness, she could almost mistake the creature in front of her for a person wearing a mask and a tattered fur coat.
The reaver snarled.
Behind her, the king rose out of the snow, roaring, “Freya Nordasdottir! I am your holy king! Kneel before me and I will give you the blessings of my flesh!”
“And become a monster, like that?” She pointed at the reaver crouched below her.
“One bite from me will make you like that one,” the king growled. “But you are no craven fool. You are a huntress. Stronger, braver than the others. Submit to me, girl, and I will bite you again and again. Ten times. Twenty times. Serve me, and I will make you a goddess like me, little girl. A goddess of the wild! A goddess of the hunt!”
Freya glanced back at the king and saw him rising above the snow, his claws clutching the rock walls of the gorge.
When in doubt, take the weaker one.
Freya dropped the cord and ran, plowing a deep furrow in the snow as she drew a second knife and lunged at the slavering plague victim. It swung its crooked claws at her head to grab it in a violent bear hug, but she drove inside its reach and slammed her knives into the reaver’s flesh, plunging one blade straight up through the jaw into the brain as she slipped the other between the ribs. The reaver went limp instantly, collapsing with its full weight on top of her, driving her down to her knees in the snow.
With a sharp kick and shove, she pulled her blades free and shoved the corpse off of her just as the blood began to pour out of the open wounds onto the ground. The hot blood steamed in the snow, melting round holes in the white drifts.
Ivar!
Gasping for breath and feeling her lungs burning with the cold night air, Freya spun to face the other beast with her two dripping knives. But the king was not just a step behind her, poised and ready to strike her dead. The king was still up in the narrow pass, knee-deep in the snow, and struggling to claw his way forward into the wider part of the ravine.
Her eyes wide with astonishment, Freya slammed her second knife back into its sheathe as she bolted up the slope toward the little nook in the wall where she had waited all night, where her braided cord of hair still dangled. She ran easily over the trampled snow and reached back into the nook for the cord just as Ivar roared and stumbled out of the narrow turn and crashed down into the snow several paces away from the snare.
Freya froze with her knife in one hand and the slender cord in the other. She stared as the huge vulpine monster reared up out of the snow and shook the icy white clumps from its fur. She swallowed, and raised her knife in a shaking hand.
Ivar shook his head again, and suddenly his head snapped to the right, facing her, staring at her with his golden eyes, his entire body visible in the bright starlight. Freya saw that he wasn’t twisted or stretched or broken. His limbs were smooth and massive, a gleaming coat of red fur over sinewy muscles from his broad chest to his long legs. His head was entirely inhuman, entirely that of a fox, long and sharp. And writhing about his buttocks she saw not one but three thick red tails.
His dripping fangs parted and his huge clawing hand reached down between his legs to hover over his transformed sex. “It burns,” he rasped, his claws shaking in the air. “Always burning, always craving, always hungry. It wants… it needs… I need…”
He slowly lowered himself to all fours, his jaw trembling with excitement, his haunches shivering, his hips jerking in short, sharp thrusts. Panting, his huge golden eyes shining in the starlight, the reaver king crept toward her. He lowered his head and raised his buttocks, and whined.
She felt her tiny bone knife in her hand, and her thin cord in the other.
He’s too big. Too heavy. Too fast. It can’t be done.
She let go of the cord and lowered herself into a crouch, gripping her knife so tightly that she could feel her own blood thundering through her hand.
The throat. I can slit the throat before he grabs me. I can kill him just before he kills me. And then it will end. The plague will begin to die out as soon as he’s gone.
I’m sorry, Katja. I’m sorry, Erik. I failed you both. But I can still save everyone else in Ysland, and that’s worth a good death. It’s worth dying for.
So here I come, Woden.
She lunged and the beast lunged. Her knife swept up and his claws swept down. For a tiny instant she looked into the creature’s face, searching for some hint of a man who had fallen in love, and been betrayed, and left to suffer in the wilderness for five long years, trapped between pain and fear and madness. But all she saw were fangs.
A muscular hand grabbed her shirt and yanked her down into the snow, and as she fell Freya saw Omar stagger up with his burning white sword in his other hand. His collarbone had erupted through his chest and his
