White Stag

by Kara Barbieri

  As the three wolves pressed their bodies against Seppo’s, my nose crinkled. Seppo couldn’t smell of rot already. I turned in time to see the dismembered body of the draugr writhe and twist gruesomely, forming a pile of severed limbs. The flesh melted together, the bones and sinew knitting in ways it hadn’t been before. A new creature started to rise out of the ashes of the old, but this time the decaying flesh took on the form of a giant bear. It roared in rage, the stench coming off its breath enough to make my eyes water.

  Soren’s eyes widened. “No. I don’t understand. We dismembered it. It should’ve stayed dead.”

  I took another four arrows in my hand. “You deal with Seppo, all of you. I’ll finish it.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Janneke!” Real terror colored Soren’s voice. “It’ll tear you apart.”

  “Save Seppo!” I shouted and bounded from behind the rock. The first arrow went into the bear’s flank as it raged toward me. The second went into its stomach as I slid underneath it, barely missing being shredded by sharp claws.

  The draugr turned and stood on his hind legs, bringing his forelegs down with such strength that the ground beneath me shook and split. I lost my balance and rolled into a mess of carcasses and bones.

  Its sightless eyes turned to Soren, working tirelessly on Seppo’s body. Wicked yellow teeth grew from its gummy mouth. I scrambled to stand and released another arrow into its rump, hoping it would come back for me. It did, charging so fast that the whiplash of wind stung my cheeks during my narrow dodge.

  Dismembering it didn’t work. Firing at it was only getting it angrier. I didn’t have an unlimited supply of arrows. When I ran out, I would be done. Even the stiletto couldn’t do anything to this creature.

  I scrambled under an outcrop of rocks and skeletons, taking precious moments to think and hide. The nail in my bracer pressed hard into my flesh as I leaned on my arm. Its burning was agony, but the pain was nothing compared to the idea of failing. This monster would eat Soren and Seppo if given the chance. It would rip them apart while they still had breath in their bodies. It would crush the wolves and it would drive me mad, and then it would watch as I flung myself from the cliffs.

  There had to be something, anything that would kill it. In my village, whenever we thought a corpse would rise again, we burned it until there was nothing left and spread the ashes in the sea.

  But there was no fire here at the top of the mountains and no means to create one. But there’s a fire burning constantly against your arm. You thought so yourself. It was a nail, just an old iron nail.

  Before I thought I just couldn’t let go of the one remaining bit of my human life. But what if …

  It would probably get me killed. But insane plans were working for us pretty well at the moment, and all I had to lose was my life.

  I came out of the hill of rocks and bones on one knee, knowing I had one shot. I had to make it count. The nail came out of the bracer, and I pulled a glove off one hand with my teeth. I forced myself to hold on to the nail as the agony spread through my hand. My skin grayed then blackened as the fires of Hel shot through my fingers and lingered in my wrist, until my entire arm was ablaze with pain that brought black spots to the edge of my vision. Nothing could describe it; no months of beatings, no repeated assaults against my body, no emotional anguish, nothing was more painful than this iron against my skin.

  Iron that was now glowing white with heat. Quickly, as my eyesight went fuzzy, I ripped a strip of cloth from my tunic and tied the nail to the point of the arrow. The skin peeled from my hand as I did so, and I couldn’t help but let out a scream so loud I was sure they’d hear me back in the human world. With a trembling, bleeding hand, I steadied my bow and aimed at the draugr. I breathed in and out like my father taught me and let the string loose. The white-hot iron pierced through the sightless eyes of the monster and I stood by as the creature burst into flames.

  Chills set in. I was burning and freezing at the same time. My hand, oh my hand! I reached for the stiletto, determined to cut it off as my vision turned to darkness. It was like a part of me was dying, rotting in the most painful way, while the rest of me could only look on and scream.

  Hands pressed against my shoulder, rolling me onto my back. Through the hazy darkness Soren’s lilac eyes gazed into mine, his bloodied hair falling in my face. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay. Seppo’s going to be all right. I did it, I did—” His voice fell away as he caught sight of my hand. I couldn’t see it, didn’t want to see it, but I doubted there could be anything left but painful, exposed bone.

  “Cut it off!” I screamed. “Cut it off! Cut it off!” That was the only way for the pain to stop.

  “Seppo!” Soren shouted. “Get Skadi! Get Skadi!”

  From my blurring vision, I saw the young man rise and nod, weary lines etched across his face. But nothing else seemed wrong.

  Soren took my face in his hands. “Look at me, Janneke. Look at me!”

  I tried, I really tried, but the black spots were threatening to crowd out the white sky above us. Soren jerked my head up, forcing our eyes to meet. Mine, green like the moss on trees, and his, lilac like the flowers that never grew in the Permafrost.

  “Dammit, Janneka!” he snarled.

  He was calling me by my old name a lot lately. I thought I was supposed to hate that.

  “Stop screaming,” he pleaded. “Please stop screaming. You’re wasting your energy.”

  I was screaming? The only sound in my ears was a cold, tinny ringing.

  A hand like ice brushed against my forehead, and the numbness spreading through me was colder than the dead of winter. The burning was still there, but it was manageable.

  “Skadi,” Soren breathed in relief.

  A voice in the wind answered, “I come to those who fulfill their promises.” The icy hand brushed against my cheek once more. “Child, close your eyes. You’re safe.”

  I did as she said, and let the coldness take me.

  PART THREE

  THE STAG

  17

  GROWTH

  I WOKE TO the sound of bubbling water. My eyelids were heavy, my body trying to rouse itself from deep sleep. It took a few tries, but when my eyes finally did open, I found myself in an unfamiliar place. The cave surrounding me wasn’t cold, furs and blankets were draped around me, keeping my body warm, and in the back there was a spring with steam rising from the water.

  “Where?” My lips cracked as I said the word. The last things I remembered flashed in my head. The draugr. Seppo. The nail. My hand. Oh gods, my hand.

  I couldn’t feel it. When I turned to look, it was covered in bandages. Building up my strength, I propped myself up on an elbow, ready to take them off. Someone stopped me.

  “You really don’t want to do that,” Soren said.

  I stared at him. “How bad is it? Why can’t I feel it?”

  “It’s not as bad as it could be; it’ll heal. But you don’t want to look, not yet. Now lie back down.”

  I did as he said, tugging at the furs that covered me. They’d slipped down. I was wearing a long undershirt, though I couldn’t remember putting one on.

  “Skadi gave us clothes, food, supplies,” Soren explained. “I needed to get you out of your clothes, but I figured you wouldn’t want to wake up naked.”

  Heat slowly burned in the pit of my stomach.

  Soren pulled out a waterskin and a few strips of jerky and dried fruit. “Eat.”

  Despite my protests, he insisted on helping me sit up enough to drink from the skin. The freezing cold water brought the life back to my parched throat. I stared at the meat, mouth watering.

  As I ripped into the jerky with a fervor I didn’t know I possessed, Soren spoke.

  “You scared me for a while,” he said. “I thought you were going to die.”

  “Where’s Seppo?” I asked, remembering the young halfling, lying limp on the ground. “How is he? Is he … all right?”

  Soren nodded. “I man
aged to fix it. He’ll be sore for a while, but there’s nothing I can do about that. He’s out with Hreppir and the wolves; apparently Skadi found a sufficient task for him to repay his debt.”

  “Which is?”

  “He’s spending his day among the wolf pack, getting rid of fleas.”

  I snorted. “Doesn’t seem very punishing.”

  “I think he grew on her.” Soren lips twitched. “He seems to do that.”

  I harrumphed. Soren raised an eyebrow, a question piercing in his gaze. “He’s still annoying, but I suppose he grew on me too. He just better not give us fleas. Then I might really push him off the mountain.”

  Soren chuckled. “I never said he wasn’t annoying. He’s just the type of annoying that grows on people.”

  “How did I get here?” I asked. His words were lightening the dread I carried in my chest at the sight of my bandaged hand, but it was better to get the terrible news over and done with.

  “Breki carried you.” He wrapped his fingers around my good hand. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “Then why won’t you let me see my hand?” Every second that passed without knowing how wounded I was, the more worry churned inside me. I should’ve felt pain, agonizing, unbearable pain. I remembered what it looked like, remembered the skin ripping off as I tore it away from the iron nail. It was the cost of saving Soren and Seppo’s lives and the cost of honoring our bargain with Skadi. I needed to know what I had paid.

  Soren sighed, shaking his head. He came over to my other side as I leaned to watch him. He took my bandaged hand in his, gentle as could be, and slowly started to unwrap the wound. “I need to dress it again,” he said. “So it smells bad, I’m sorry.”

  I gritted my teeth, expecting the worst. Slowly, the bandages were peeled back from the flesh with a sickening sticky noise; it had to be bad. It had to be. The bandages were colored red and black throughout, soaked in my blood.

  Finally, he pulled the last of the wrapping away. The smell hit me first, and I recognized the sour ointment smeared across my skin. Tanya used it for burns. The skin was inflamed and bright red with black, scalelike patches all around. It oozed a bit from a few open sores, but the liquid was clear. A good sign. I tried to move it and with a burst of panic found I couldn’t.

  “Why can’t I move it?”

  “Skadi deadened it so you wouldn’t feel the pain. Unfortunately that also means you can’t move it right now. You’ll get the feeling back in a while.” He sat back against the rock. I nibbled on the food he offered me and drank when he shoved the waterskin in my lap, but we talked little. For a long time there was only silence and a wave of heat between our bodies.

  “What did Skadi say about Lydian?” I asked, breaking the long silence.

  Soren cast a glance outside. “You know that a hunt never lasts longer than until the next new moon, right?”

  I nodded. “For whatever purpose, yes.”

  Soren clasped his hands together. “Well, there’s a reason for that. Normally the contest ends by its own natural means before the month is up because usually the competition is thin enough for the most powerful goblin to kill the stag. But if it draws itself out longer, in order to make sure the destruction and transfer of power doesn’t get out of hand, the spirit of the Permafrost forces the stag forward toward the two goblins most likely to become the new Erlking. If the new moon comes and the stag hasn’t been slayed, then it will happen.” He swallowed. “What’s more is that if during this time it’s killed on the border along with the losing competitor, the cycle will stop. No one knows why; the ritual has mainly been forgotten.”

  A shiver went through me. Soren’s voice was calm, but he couldn’t not be worried. He was Lydian’s only competition. “Can’t you avoid Lydian and hunt the stag?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “We’ll be drawn together, someway, somehow.”

  I thought back to the sliver of moonlight outside. The new moon wasn’t long off. By the time it came, we might all be dead. “It must be why goblins are flocking to Lydian,” I said. “His power is showing, and they’re all jockeying for a piece of it.”

  Soren snorted. “Yeah, none to me, though. Guess that says something about my odds.”

  He slumped down, burying his head in his hands. It tugged at my heart to see him look so defeated. We’d figure out a way to defeat Lydian; I was sure of it.

  Feeling stronger, I sat next to him, leaning against the dark rock. He lifted his head, eyes flickering up and down my body as his shoulders tensed.

  “You really shouldn’t do that,” he whispered as he closed his eyes.

  “Do what?” His eyelids were pale blue under the soft light of the cave. He leaned his head back. His hair was loose again, and it spilled across his shoulders and chest. It was so long. It took decades for things to age even a month in the Permafrost. How long had he spent growing out his hair? I scowled. It wasn’t fair that he looked the way he did and I looked like a scarred mess.

  “Tempt me so much. It might not end well for you.” His eyelashes fluttered.

  “Don’t be absurd. How could I tempt you?”

  “I thought I explained it back in the caverns.”

  “I know what you said, but I also know I’m not very tempting-looking. I’m not blind.” If I could hear my bitterness, he sure could.

  He opened his eyes and leaned forward. Even with both of us sitting, he still towered over me. He rested a finger under my chin and tilted my head so I met his gaze. “You drive me mad, Janneke. Completely and utterly mad. I’m probably going to die in a few days, and all I can think of is you.”

  “I’m not beautiful,” I said. “Every inch of my body is marked by others.”

  “Do you think I care about that? That scars crisscross your back and stomach and thighs? Do you think any of it matters to me?” he whispered fiercely.

  “No, but it matters to me.”

  “I could be surrounded by unearthily beautiful, naked women, and I would prefer you as you are, fully clothed.”

  A shiver went through me and lingered behind my navel. When he put it like that …

  “Sometimes I think I’m losing it,” I whispered.

  “Hmm? Why is that?” He released his hold on my chin and skimmed his fingers down the length of my calf.

  “I think any human would think they were losing it in this situation.”

  “You’re not just any human,” he countered.

  His hand moved up a little higher and another pleasant shudder rippled through me, leaving an aftershock in its wake. “I shouldn’t like this,” I said. “I shouldn’t feel the hotness inside of me. I shouldn’t stare at you like I do. I’m supposed to hate you. Gods, when did I stop hating you?”

  He laughed softly. “I don’t think you’ve hated me in a long time. You just hated yourself.”

  “Maybe I still do.”

  “Now, that’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one,” Soren said.

  I closed my eyes as his hand roamed up and splayed against my ribcage. “This shouldn’t feel nice,” I whispered. “Not to me.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “It obviously does, doesn’t it?”

  I answered with a low moan. “A wolf shouldn’t lie with a rabbit.”

  He laughed louder this time. “You’re no rabbit, Janneke. And I know you don’t truly think that.”

  “Those are the words I hear my family screaming in the back of my head. I know, I know that choosing what makes me happy, choosing my own life, doesn’t make me a traitor or mean I’m turning my back on humanity. My family is dead and I’m alive; I know that they would want me to be happy and for me to live my own life. I know it’s all in my head, but it bothers me anyway.”

  “It takes time to forgive yourself, even if there’s nothing to forgive in the first place,” Soren said softly.

  I opened my eyes and found he was closer than before. His lips were right in front of me, and I burned with the desire to kiss him and with the knowledge that if I did, I
would say goodbye to any ounce of normalcy I had left in life. But I couldn’t quite find it in me to care.

  “I think I’m beginning to.” I smiled.

  He leaned forward until our foreheads touched, and in that quiet moment the rest of the world dropped away.

  I reached out and ran a hand through his hair. “You’re so dirty.”

  “Are you suggesting we take a bath?” he mused. “The water does look quite inviting, even for my tastes.”

  I stood, stretching my aching muscles. The feeling in my hand was slowly returning, but I found I didn’t really care. All that mattered was the heat in my body, the pressure building up in the bottom of my belly, and Soren. Most definitely Soren.

  He was fully clothed with the new things Skadi’d given him. A hooded tunic lined with rabbit fur and a jerkin, fine hunting boots and riding gloves, bearskin pants that hung low on his hips. In the corner there was a pile of leather armor. He reached for my hand and placed it on the strings of his jerkin.

  “Go ahead,” he said. My heart fluttered. “Or are you scared?” he teased.

  “Never,” I said, working at the laces. He left them deliberately loose, and he shrugged off the jerkin with ease. With one hand, he reached back and pulled the tunic over his head, baring his chest.

  Like mine, it was covered in scars and flat with muscle. This time, he didn’t need to take my hand. I traced the scars on my own. He reached around to cradle my head.

  “If I kiss you, will you kill me?” he asked, eyes sparkling.

  “Only if you stop,” I said and finally gave in.

  His lips pressed against mine with a type of urgency I didn’t know his kind could feel. My hands wrapped in his hair, and when he broke away to kiss my neck, the fine, white locks spilled around me. One of his hands went for the strings on my undershirt while mine tugged at his new pants. His teeth grazed against the sensitive skin of my remaining breast and I tilted my head back.