Freya leaned back against the wall of the house behind her and took another long breath. “Well, I suppose I can either kill you now, or I’ll have to drag you back to the castle, don’t I?”
Frowning, she pushed off the wall and walked over to Leif, but the young man took a long steady breath and rose to his feet. He was breathing easy now, his whole body relaxed. Even the cut on his leg seemed to be bleeding less.
Leif blinked and looked her in the eye. “That damned fool was telling the truth, wasn’t he? He really did make a cure, didn’t he?”
“A vaccine.”
“Whatever,” Leif snapped. “The point is, it works. Look at me. Look at you. You were dead on your feet a moment ago, and I could barely sit up. And now we’re both fine, just fine.”
Freya looked over at the smashed lump of the nest and the flies that hadn’t survived. “Why’d you take it? Why try to destroy it?” Another fly nipped at her neck, and she grimaced, straining to keep herself from slapping at the pain.
“I thought it was more of the ones that bit Ivar, the ones that brought the plague.”
Freya nodded. “You thought Omar wanted revenge against you and Skadi?”
“Of course! Who wouldn’t?” Leif blew out a long breath and stood up a bit straighter. There was no trace of pain or fatigue on his face now. His expression was one of pure contempt and cold steel. “I split the man’s chest with my own sword. I saw him fall. He should be dead. Maybe southerners keep their hearts on the other side. Who knows? But what sort of fool would I be to believe that he’d been out in that cave for five years trying to cure the plague and not dreaming of killing me?”
“A trusting fool,” Freya said quietly. “Otherwise known as a good man.”
Leif chuckled. “Well, I suppose that isn’t me.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Don’t be so smug. I’ve known good men. Honorable men. Valiant men,” Leif said. “And I watched them die horrible deaths on the battlefield and in blood feuds, ever since I was a boy. Oh sure, they’re remembered as heroes. They’re remembered in songs. They’re remembered by their sons. But they’re dead all the same. And as much as I enjoy the women and the songs and the feasts, I enjoy being alive even more.”
“No one wants to die,” she said. Her knife was still in her hand, still dripping with his dark blood.
“No, but that’s not the fear anymore, is it?” He took a few casual steps toward the water. “In this war you might die, maybe even torn to pieces and eaten while you’re still alive. Or you might be bitten. Infected. Forced to watch as you turn into one of them, into a mindless beast, listening to your bones crack and your skin stretch and your hair bristle as you slowly go insane.” He swallowed loudly.
“It’s a hell of thing to happen to a person,” she said. “A hell of a thing to live in fear of for five years.”
“Hell is right.”
She wiped her knife carefully on the sodden tarp beside her. “You threw me off that wall. Threw me down to die.”
“Of course. You did the impossible, you killed Fenrir,” he said with a cocksure grin. “I couldn’t have you replacing me, could I? Besides, real heroes always die. I was just ensuring that you got the very best songs written for you.”
“You’re a murderer.”
“I’m a soldier. I follow orders.” He looked her squarely in the eyes and for a moment she thought she saw something more than just arrogance and vicious pride in them, but only for a moment. “We saw the bloodflies on Ivar. We saw him fall. And we saw him climb back up and turn into that demon thing, watched him tear three men to pieces not ten paces from us. I had the blood and entrails of a man sprayed all across me.” He gestured down the length of his body. “The stench of blood and shit in my nostrils, the innards of a man that no person should ever see. Not just dead, not just cut, but shattered and shredded. No one should ever know what a man looks like burst inside-out. It’s something you can never unsee, never forget.”
“But Ivar ran away.”
“And Skadi told me to kill everyone. No survivors, no witnesses,” he said. “I didn’t argue. I didn’t question. I didn’t think. I just killed them, quickly and cleanly. They were better deaths than what any reaver would have given them.”
“You murdered those men.”
“I served my queen!” he roared. “I was her bodyguard, her servant, her sword. I didn’t take my place in the royal castle by defying commands. When I was born, I was nothing and no one, and I knew from the first day I was old enough to think for myself that I would end up a rotting old fisherman or a corpse unless I became something more, something better.” He pounded his fist on his chest again and again. “And I did! I was the great swordsman in the city, the greatest duelist, the greatest warrior. I won those fights with my strength and my steel. That was mine! And I won my place in the castle at the queen’s side. It was mine! I earned it!”
“And once you had something so precious, you suddenly had something to lose, for the first time in your whole life. And that scared you more than death, didn’t it?” she asked. “You couldn’t stand the thought of losing what you’d won.”
He didn’t answer.
“So you served loyally when it suited you, and you killed mercilessly when it suited you. And Skadi knew the truth of it. She saw right through you,” Freya said. “She knew you would do anything to keep your place in her house. She knew you were not a man of honor. You were a man to be bought and sold. And she bought you. She used you to clean up her mess on Mount Esja. She sent you to make sure Ivar’s son died in the wilderness. She had you cover her tracks and mistakes. And when there was no one left to kill, not a soul left she could trust, she even took you into her bed. She bought you, soul and flesh together.”
“Only when I wanted it,” he said hoarsely.
Freya smiled sadly. “Keep telling yourself that.”
The salty sea wind whipped the young man’s hair up into a writhing tangle of black snakes around his pale face. “When Skadi dies, Thora will become both vala and queen, and I will be her king. And then I’ll have everything.”
“You really think it will be so easy?”
“Easy? Haven’t you been listening? I’ve been fighting and killing and whoring all my life to get this far. I lost my arm!” He glared at her with serpentine eyes. “I’ve suffered more than any man twice my age, and my reward will be twice as great for it.”
“Are you going to try to kill me again?” She held up her knife. “I’m no murderer, but I’ll kill a man in self- defense.”
“Maybe another time.” He nodded past her.
Freya turned to see Halfdan and a handful of carls trudging up the lane toward them.
“I guess you really are Leif the Lucky,” she said. “If you were any other man, it would be a small matter to kill you, even with witnesses. But you’re too well-loved now, aren’t you? You’re too popular to just die like a common criminal. Politics.”
“Which just leaves the question,” he said, “of whether you will tell them what really happened to the king.”
Freya sniffed. “If I tell Halfdan and he believes me, it’ll mean chaos in the city. Some will take his side, and some will stay loyal to the queen. There might even be someone else out there with dreams of sitting in Skadi’s throne. Dozens, maybe hundreds, would die before the matter was settled. But nothing would really change. Ivar will still be dead, and the reavers will still be out there.”
“That’s very true.”
“So I won’t tell him yet. Just remember that Omar also knows the truth, and he’s not as easy to kill as I am.”
Leif snorted.
She looked at him one last time. “But when the time is right, the truth will come out. And as a friend of mine once said, that will be an interesting day.”
Leif smiled coldly, and they waited in silence for Halfdan to arrive.
