White Stag

by Kara Barbieri

  I snorted. Seppo made a good speech when he wanted to, that was for sure.

  “As you should be,” Skadi said. “But I hear the honor in your words, and I accept your proposal. I will think of a fitting favor for my brethren, and the blood will be washed from your hands.

  “But you”—she pointed a finger at Soren—“didn’t I tell you to never come back here? Not while you had another person in your—” She paused, looked closer at me, then smiled pleasantly. “Ah, I see our quarrel has come to an end, then.”

  A strangled sound came from my throat as I turned to Soren, eyes wide. He avoided my gaze and gave a small shrug. Oh, we’re definitely discussing whatever this was about if we live past this.

  “Girl!” she snarled, and I snapped back to attention. “You want something, so ask. The mountains are no place for a human, even one like you, and they aren’t as forgiving as the ground below.”

  I heard the warning laced so gracefully in those words. I raised my chin to look her as closely in the eye as I could. There was something about her, the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her head, that made me want to cower in fear. This woman was a wolf in human form, a regal predator taking the time to deal with the rabbits at her feet.

  “We need to stop Lydian,” I said. “The goblin who disgraced you before, who asked for your knowledge about the stag.”

  She nodded. “And?”

  “And we need to know what he’s planning. Without the information, it will be impossible to know how to stop him. He wishes to kill the stag for good. And—and—” I got to my knees. I didn’t make a habit of it, but groveling wasn’t the worst way to deal with an angry deity and renowned giantess. “We humbly ask for the companionship of your wolves, if any of them will have us. We have need of their ferocity and agility and their great speed. We will keep their company no longer than our need lasts. We humbly ask this, and in exchange, whatever it is you wish, we will do.”

  The wind picked up around me, and, if possible, the temperature dropped even lower. I forced myself not to stick my hands underneath my arms, but the cold brought spasms to my muscles. I couldn’t feel my fingertips, and I dared not look underneath the gloves, but I stayed on the ground with my hands spread out before me. In the most vulnerable position I could think of, head bent, neck exposed, hands out with open palms.

  “You ask me to betray the confidence of another who asked for a favor. This would leave a smirch on my honor, child.”

  “The honor of the man whose information you gave was smirched when he tricked you into giving with nothing in return, and he lied about the reason he wanted your information,” I said softly. “He offered you a favor and left it unpaid. We would be willing to take this favor—to actually kill what is preying on your pack—if we can learn how Lydian means to kill the stag and complete his plans. We will do whatever it takes to be deemed worthy by you and your wolves.”

  The silence dragged on until I dared to look up. Skadi gazed down at me, her features brooding. She motioned for me to rise and I did. “You speak well, child,” she said, a fond look in her eyes.

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  “You’re right about the favor,” she continued. “They must be paid in full, and though I normally wouldn’t betray the knowledge I’d given another, perhaps I was too foolish as to the consequences of my actions and too blind to see the truth.” She sighed. “We may make a deal. I will summon my wolves and they will take their pick, then they will take you to the spot where their brethren were slain. You will defeat this monster, so it can die its second death and leave us in peace. Then I will give you the information I gave to Lydian, and the wolves who’ve chosen you will help you forward.”

  Second death? What creature dies a second death? There was a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it was only growing colder. “I accept this deal.”

  The giantess raised her arms, and once again the wind spiraled, howling as it did. Out of the blinding snow came a pair of yellow eyes, then another, until we were surrounded by the eyes of stalking wolves.

  I stood and backed up to where Soren and Seppo were, each giving the other uneasy glances. They were as out of their element as I was. I closed my eyes and reached out with my mind, trying to feel the ribbons of power these animals possessed. Come to me.

  Hot breath blew against my face, and I opened my eyes to stare at the muzzle of a smoky, dark-gray wolf. He inclined his head, his yellow eyes flickering to mine, and I knew he had accepted me.

  It took longer for the silver wolf to approach Soren, but when she did, she curled her bushy tail around his legs. The dark-gray wolf by me huffed, like something about that amused him.

  Finally, a younger wolf, the color of cedar trees, trotted up to Seppo and put his nose in the young halfling’s ear. Seppo jumped from the cold nose, inviting a lick from the young wolf. “Hi,” he said, trying to dry his ear. “Nice to meet you too.”

  “Go forth,” Skadi said, as the countless eyes began to disappear. Her form wavered too, but I shouted out into the wind. We still had no clue what we were up against, but she had to know something.

  “Why do you need us to kill this creature? Why does a being of your power prove no strength against it?” I asked.

  The giantess looked sadly down at me, like she was counting the lives she’d already lost. “The cold can’t kill the dead.”

  The wind blew through her, and she shattered like ice.

  Soren came over to me, his wolf pressed close against him. He looked down at her, awkwardly trying to shove her away. “Hey, ever heard of personal space?” The wolf blinked and Soren grumbled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “She told me her name was Lykka, and I should be honored that she deems me worthy of her presence.” He frowned at the idea.

  I choked back a laugh. “Sounds like a perfect match to me.”

  Soren made a face.

  The smoky wolf pressed his nose into my palm. I am Breki. You are? The deep voice inside my mind startled me, until I figured that was probably how these animals communicated.

  “Janneke.”

  You have come far, Janneke? And much farther to go still, yes?

  “I suppose,” I said, frowning.

  Breki huffed and sat by me, looking expectantly at the younger, brown wolf. Seppo’s wolf was kneading the ground with his paws, his rump up in a playful position. Breki growled lowly, and the brown wolf straightened.

  “He says his name is Hreppir,” Seppo said. “And that he’s really excited, and he hopes we succeed in our goal because he doesn’t want to eat me.”

  I bit my lip to hold in my chuckle, the skin harsh and chapped from the cold.

  “May I, um…?” I motioned toward Breki’s back. The large wolf nodded to me and bent so I could climb onto him. It was awkward, nothing like sitting on a horse. My body fell between his shoulder blades, in the dip of his neck, before I managed to sit straight, but he never once complained.

  He waited for Soren and Seppo to climb on their own wolves and then he ran.

  I gripped his dark fur and buried my face in his shoulder as the mountain air stung my face. The tundra and rocks whipped past me at a frightening speed and my stomach tensed, then rose as my body became weightless. This was as close as I’d ever be to flying, Breki’s smooth leaps creating an almost undetected rhythm underneath my body.

  We could’ve run for hours or minutes or days; time melted away as our bodies flew across the snow. When he slowed to a trot, my heart sank in disappointment. How wonderful it was to run like that.

  Seppo and Hreppir and Soren and Lykka flanked me as the wolves began to pick their way across the rocks. The smell of rot and carrion wafted through the air. The bitterness of death tasted rancid on my tongue. Bones littered the mountainside, the skeletons of animals both huge and small. Pools of frozen blood, turned black from the cold, surrounded half-decomposed bodies. Not just of wolves, but of giant mammoths, of lindworms, of the predators of the mountains. The plac
e was eerily absent of the maggots and flies that usually flocked to the dead.

  “I don’t like this,” Soren said, his hand reaching back to check if his swords were still there. “I don’t like this at all. What does this?”

  Something the giantess had said struck me. “She said we needed to deal it a second death. It’s already dead, whatever it is, and we need to kill it again.”

  “Draugr.” For once, Seppo’s voice was grim. “It’s a draugr.”

  “I thought you didn’t know what it was?” Soren said.

  “I was never close to it,” he said. “But Hreppir confirms it’s a draugr. The stench of death is everywhere.”

  I shuddered, gripping Breki’s warm fur. The creatures of nightmares, undead shapeshifters who were strong enough to move mountains, cruel enough to dine on the bones and flesh of the living, dangerous enough that the mere presence of one could drive you mad—that was what we were facing.

  “Well, then.” I tried to keep my voice from shaking, with little success. “Let’s kill this thing.”

  Sliding off from Breki, I came close to Soren, whose eyes flickered anxiously around him. “Scared of draugrs too?” I teased.

  “My mother was killed by one.”

  I kicked myself internally. Way to be an ass, Janneke.

  Like always, it was as if he read my mind. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.”

  I gripped his hand. “We can do this,” I said. “We have to.”

  “Well, the other option is being ripped to shreds by wolves.” He tried to sound lighthearted and didn’t quite succeed. “So yes, we have to.” His hand squeezed mine, and I took reassurance in the pulse that beat there.

  “So, does anyone have an idea how to kill this thing?” I asked.

  Soren pursed his lips. “Decapitation and dismemberment is one way, I think. The only one possible at this rate.”

  Seppo swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “This will be fun.”

  Soren paced, his hands folded behind his back. Before he paced like a trapped wolf, but now he was a strategist, a battle commander, thinking of every way we could possibly take this creature down.

  I turned toward the three wolves, who had seated themselves away from the opening in a semicircle. “You three don’t have to fight with us if you don’t want to. I know how many of your kind were killed.”

  Breki stood, stretching to his full height. He was more like a horse than a wolf, honestly. Even Hreppir, who was the smallest by far, dwarfed the size of a pony. The three wolves came forward, and three voices spoke in unison inside my head.

  We fight with you to avenge our brethren.

  Soren paused in his pacing, staring at the wolves. Seppo jumped in surprise. “Odin’s ravens, I’m never going to get used to that. Magical wolves or not, it’s weird.” Lykka huffed, turning her back on him. Hreppir just whined and poked Seppo in the ear with his nose again.

  “I think you hurt his feelings,” I said.

  “Sorry, Hreppir.” Seppo ruffled the wolf between the ears. “It is weird, though.”

  The three wolves trotted forward until they stood beside us. Soren came to a halt. “We need to draw it out of its den; we can’t fight it in an enclosed space. Remember the lindworms? This will be bigger and deadlier. We’re burning our own funeral pyres if we go in there.”

  I stared ahead, past the boneyard to the mouth of a large cave. It was so close. Could the draugr smell us already? “We need to lure it out, then.”

  “How?” Seppo asked.

  Lykka and Breki looked at each other, some type of knowledge flashing between them. Then they turned to Hreppir. The younger wolf jumped up from where he’d been sniffing a flesh-covered bone. Who? Me?

  Breki huffed. Of course, you. You’re the least threat, pup. Besides, you can act well.

  It’s an honor, really, Lykka chimed in. You have the ability we do not.

  “You can do it, Hreppir,” I said. “I know you can.”

  The young wolf thrust out his chest.

  Go, Hreppir. We will be right behind you.

  Hreppir started forward, faking a limp. A high-pitched whine came from his parted lips, and he shook, dragging his back foot uselessly against the ground.

  All was silent until the ground shook. The smell of rot and things long dead grew stronger at every beat. I curled my nose in disgust, though it did nothing to help the smell. I took four arrows in my hand and nocked one into place, holding the other three in my spare fingers. It’d been the first trick my father’d taught me. I may have forsaken him in the family’s eyes, but I’d never forget what he taught me. From beside me, Soren’s swords clinked sharply together as he drew them out, and Seppo’s feather staff whistled from the hollowed spot where the blades were kept.

  My eyes burned as raspy, labored breathing came from the cave. It was the sound of someone whose lungs had filled with water; the last heaves of a suffocating man. The draugr was large, larger than Skadi, his body made of half-decaying flesh and exposed bone. Where his eyes had been, there were now only sightless gray masses of skin, and I gagged at the rotten smell that came with decomposing body.

  Countless pictures flashed before my eyes: a woman screaming as her body was torn apart, rats eating each other alive, two men throwing themselves into the fire, the crying of children as the flesh was peeled from their bodies strip by strip. They came fast and hit me like waves until I almost dropped my weapons. A cold hand against the back of my neck brought me out of it.

  “You’re all right, Janneka,” Soren whispered, and I managed to relax at the endearment of my name. “You’re all right.”

  The creature lunged for Hreppir, far too graceful for its body, and the wolf dodged, a brown streak as he jumped off the rocks. He then regrouped with his pack, and they growled in unison, their hackles high.

  The wail of the draugr shattered the bones around him. With that, the fight began.

  Soren came at the monster first, his two blades intertwining and slashing. He fought like he was dancing with the blades as his partner. His body twisted and curled inward, dove close to the ground and then sprang high into the air. Red welts appeared on the draugr’s body, deep in one of his arms. Lykka growled as Soren landed beside her and launched herself into the air, her teeth digging deep into the creature’s arm. Breki came beside her, and together, they managed to rip off his hand.

  Seppo and Hreppir danced around the creature’s legs with timed strikes and skilled evasions. Pale blood rained down onto them, burning their skin like acid, but they continued to swerve and tumble unaffected.

  As for me, I waited low to the ground, shooting an arrow at an elbow, then another, watching them sink deep into the flesh. The monster screamed and ripped the weapons out, crushing them in his hands. But it was too late; his joints were broken, and all they needed was a good clean cut.

  I sprang up and scurried onto a boulder as tall as me, unwilling to fight at such a large distance. If Seppo and Soren risked their lives by fighting close up, so could I. The stiletto in my hand, I joined Soren as he waltzed around the draugr. The piercing coldness of his swords lingered on my skin as we fought together. A slash here, a stab there. Before he danced with his weapons; now he danced with me. Our moves were in sync, our attacks countered what the other’s lacked, and our defenses shielded what the other’s left open. A fire was alight in my chest, and exhilaration coursed like a drug inside me.

  A howl of pain brought me back down to the real world, as the draugr grasped Hreppir in his fist and squeezed. Immediately Seppo lunged, the hand completely severed before the monster even knew what hit him. The small, bracken-colored wolf breathed heavily, his tongue lolling out on the side. My heart froze in my throat as I waited what felt like an eternity until the wolf rose, shaking off his pain.

  With his other arm, the draugr smashed Seppo against the rocks, and he fell limply to the ground. The slight rise and fall of his chest proved he was still alive, and the two elder wolves wasted no tim
e in tearing into the draugr’s remaining arm. It writhed like a swarm of maggots even as it was disembodied.

  The grayish skin of the draugr bubbled and shifted, until sticklike limbs sprouted from his legs, reaching with talons toward Soren and me. We exchanged a glance and dove in, dodging pairs of arms and hacking off others. The hot wetness seeping from my back, my shoulder, my leg were the only indicators that I was harmed. Everything else was a rush of fire and ice and an almost painful ecstasy as I fought the creature. The blackish-red blood of goblins pooled by my feet, and I was alarmed to see Soren hadn’t been spared from the talons either. Cuts littered his face and tore through his tunic. But even with blood in his hair and soaking his clothes, he fought with the strength of a thousand men.

  And finally, the draugr toppled down, the body whole no more.

  Soren pulled himself against a boulder, ripping off a piece of his tunic, and started seeing to his wounds. I raced forward until I was at Seppo’s limp body, my ear placed against his chest. His breath was weak, but it was there, and his heart kept on beating.

  “Help me with him!” I screamed, and the three wolves braced his body between them. Soren, the bleeding of the gashes in his arms slowing, pulled Seppo’s body under the protection of the boulder.

  The young halfling’s eyelids flickered. “I’m okay,” he breathed. His eyes rolled back in his head, the whites of them streaked with red.

  “Can you do something?” I asked Soren, remembering how he healed my arms. It seemed centuries ago. “Like how you healed me?”

  “I’ll try my best,” he said, ripping open the thick layers of Seppo’s clothing with a dagger he drew from his boot. The young man’s chest was a mess of blood, and the outlines of bones stuck out against the flesh in a way even a goblin would find unnatural.

  Soren hissed in frustration. “Hold him down,” he said, barking orders at the surrounding wolves and myself. “I need to relocate his ribs, then I’ll see what I can do about the bleeding. I’ve never tried it on an internal wound before.”