The men on the wall all looked at Freya.
“It speaks!?”
“It wants the girl!”
“Slingers!”
But the boys on the roof were at half their number since the others had gone in search of Omar, and those who remained were running out of stones to hurl. The rocks still flying across the wall were fewer and slower, and the beast ignored them entirely. And the men went on murmuring, “It wants revenge for Fenrir! It wants the huntress!”
But the salty old man at Freya’s side shouted, “Woden shits on what it wants. It’s not getting her or anything else. It’s getting killed, is what it’s getting, and we’re the ones killing it! We’ll bleed it dry and break its bones! And we’ll eat its black heart before midnight comes!”
A dark and bloody humor settled on the men. They all began muttering curses and threats and boasts and promises of the depraved and vicious things they were planning to do to the beast’s corpse when it laid steaming and rotting under their boots. Freya almost reminded them that the beast was their own prince, their own Magnus, just another man who fell victim to the plague. But she couldn’t imagine how many of Omar’s bloodflies would have to bite this creature to bring back his humanity, or how long the change would take.
Too long.
The demon charged at the wall again and threw one long, clawing arm at the warriors standing just above its head. Freya jumped left and Erik jumped right and the powerful limb crashed down between them, cracking the stones of the wall. They both lunged, driving their spears into thick fleshy muscles of that arm, and the beast whipped it back again with a bestial snarl.
It pulled the spear right out of Erik’s hands, but he had his steel knife out in a flash. The claws crashed down on the wall again, with the beast snapping its sword-like fangs right at the lip of the wall, right at their boots. The men leapt back again, and attacked the arm again with harpoons and stones and hammers. The arm ripped away from the wall again, but a single hooked claw caught Freya’s foot and yanked her leg out from under her.
She fell down flat on the stone wall, but kicked hard two times, and her boot came free of the claw before it could drag her off the wall entirely. She rolled onto her stomach with her spear under her, and pushed herself back up.
Chapter 30. Silence
Erik felt naked. His borrowed shirt and trousers were too thin for the wind and the snow and the night air. The armored warriors and fishermen looked like iron gods beside him, heavy and solid, and most of all, warm. Erik was freezing. Even with his blood roaring and muscles burning, he was freezing.
Somewhere down below on the dark pebbled beach was his spear.
Gone. Useless.
The knife in his hand felt tiny and just as useless as he stared into the huge stinking maw of the beast below him. It was impossibly big. Twice as tall as a tall man, at least. And probably four times as heavy.
Is this what I turned into?
Did Wren see me like this?
Did Freya?
The monster pulled its arm back, yanking Freya’s foot out from under her. Erik darted forward, but she kicked free before he could take a second step, and she started to get back up. He held his knife at the ready, though every instinct in him was screaming to rip the harpoon away from the man next to him so he could do more than wait for something to stab with his little blade.
Freya stood up, her back to the beach.
The huge reaver shot its claws forward, not swinging them down onto the wall as before, but driving them straight on as a hunter drives a spear into a boar.
Freya!
He felt his lips and jaw moving, instinctively forming her name, screaming at her to run, to jump, to get down, and his free hand was waving, fingers signing as fast as he ever had signed in his life. But he made no screams and no one heard him. He beckoned madly with his hands, but she was looking at the old fisherman on her other side, and not at him.
The claws rushed forward.
Erik dashed across the wall, grabbed his wife with both hands, and spun her off toward the surprised fisherman.
The claws slammed into Erik’s back, four curving blades thrusting into his flesh, cracking his ribs, and snapping his spine. He felt his insides moving downward as his skin stretched and split. His arms snapped out to his sides all on their own, as though they hoped to reach back and take the claws out of his body, but just couldn’t reach. His legs kicked wildly, also beyond his control. The pain was everywhere, shrieking up and down his spine, and his jaw locked open as his neck strained to hold his head up.
He couldn’t think.
He couldn’t even feel.
He was the pain and the pain was him, and he stared up at the dark sky, at the thick clouds obscuring half the stars, at the tiny flakes of snow tumbling down toward him, and he didn’t understand what he saw.
As his head fell forward, he saw Freya. Her beautiful face, framed in white-golden hair and crowned with fox ears, her beautiful face turned toward him, her beautiful face red and white with rage and shock and sorrow. Her mouth was opening, her lips moving slowly.
Dimly, he knew she was screaming, but he couldn’t hear her.
He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t move his hands, and he couldn’t think of anything to say, and he couldn’t feel his…
Chapter 31. Fury
Freya spun into the arms of the fisherman and saw the reaver drive its claws into Erik’s back, saw her husband lifted off his feet, shaking and twisting with pain. She saw his face bright red as he screamed in silence. His chest expanded, wider and wider, until she saw the blood blossoming from the tears in his skin.
And then he was gone, ripped off the wall into the darkness and hurled back into the freezing waters of the bay.
“ NO! ” Freya ran across the wall and leapt into the cold, empty air with her spear raised in both hands, and she sank the steel blade and shaft deep into the reaver’s shoulder until it erupted through the beast’s back.
The reaver roared and stumbled.
Freya clung to the wet, bloody, stinking fur with one hand as she drew her serrated knife in the other hand and shoved it into the reaver’s neck. Heavy claws grabbed her legs, trying to yank her away, but she just tore deeper and deeper into the reaver’s throat. A vein burst and hot blood flooded out over her arm, and the reaver stumbled again, falling to its knees. The impact nearly shook her off, but Freya held tight, gasping for breath with her burning lungs and burning throat, barely able to see through her burning eyes drenched with hot tears.
The claws on her legs loosened and she shoved her knife deeper across the reaver’s throat, hacking and sawing at the monstrous windpipe and muscles and leathery flesh. The reaver leaned over and crashed onto the beach on its side and Freya slipped down to the ground, still clinging to her knife, which was stuck somewhere in the neck bones. Her arm was too tired and sore to cut anymore, so she let go of the knife and staggered back from the huge corpse. She fell on her backside, and sat there on the cold stones, weeping in silence.
He’s gone. Just… gone. I didn’t even… I should… he’s gone!
Slowly, she turned her head to look down the length of the dead reaver and she saw her spear, and then she saw four more harpoons all lodged down the belly and legs, and beside them were four gray-bearded fishermen in
