I forced the creature to stop in its efforts to kill me just as a flurry of beating wings rang out over the quiet wood.
Six ravens, as big as eagles, flew low over the heads of the hounds. They landed on the branches above us, watching with dark, intelligent eyes. The hounds glanced back at the stag, as though suddenly unsure.
Taking advantage of the hounds’ momentary distraction, Leif raced to my side and cleaved the menacing hound in two. Spraying me with blood, the two halves sank wetly to either side of me. Leif kicked the hound away from me and spat on the ground. He hauled me to my feet. Deep scratches covered his arms, but he appeared whole.
A crow’s caw drew our attention to the sky, where it circled far above us. It tucked its wings and dived. Just before it crashed into the ground, it transformed—but only partially. It was the body of a woman clad all in black except for her head, which was still that of a crow with its inky-black feathers and sharp beak: the Morrigan
It turned its gaze toward me, its eyes red. Beside me, even Leif looked suddenly unsure, his grip on the sword so tight his knuckles were pale.
The stag lowered its antlers and pawed the earth, but when it raised its head again, its dark eyes were anxious.
The Morrigan shot forward, as fast as a viper, and sank each hand into the chest of a hound. With a sickeningly wet sound, she pulled out their hearts. It happened so fast the beasts fell over dead without a sound.
I trembled as the blood dripped down her arms, so red against her pale white skin. Holding the hearts before her, she tore into each organ with her crow’s beak, spraying blood until I was sure I would be sick. The stag seemed frozen in place—whether from fear or shock, I didn’t know.
“I will feast on all their hearts,” the Morrigan said. The voice was harsh and distorted and struck such fear in me I could not move.
The stag let out a breathy, distressed sound. If the two beings were conversing, it was a conversation we weren’t privy to. I risked a glance at Leif. His every muscle was tense, his face pale.
Suddenly, the stag turned toward Leif and lowered its antlers. Leif raised the broadsword.
My whole body stiffened. Not him, I thought, surprising myself at my own vehemence.
Forgotten and silent until now, the ravens shifted in their branches, talons scraping across the wood ominously. All at once, the temperature in the forest dropped. Our breaths made plumes before us.
The Morrigan glanced up at the ravens before leveling her gaze on the stag. The meaning was clear: whoever the ravens were, they were on our side.
The hounds retreated to the stag’s side. The ghostly white animal bowed its head just once before bounding away, hideous hounds following.
The Morrigan turned back to us. Her bloodred eyes met mine before black feathers erupted over the entirety of her body. A caw broke the air as she transformed back into a crow and took flight. With a heavy rustling of wings, the ravens followed, until only Sleipnir, Leif, and I remained.
With an explosive exhalation of breath, my knees buckled, and I sank to the ground.
A warm hand touched my shoulder, so steady that I realized I was shaking violently. “They’re gone,” Leif said, his voice more gentle than I had ever heard it. “Come, let me help you.”
I held out my tremulous hands to him, and he pulled me to my feet. “Did you hear what she said before? About the giants? The jötnar are already here. That must have been why we encountered the each-uisce.” We started to walk toward Sleipnir, but when I stumbled, Leif glanced down at me in alarm.
“How badly are you hurt?” Leif asked, true concern there instead of his usual sarcasm.
“I’ll live,” I said, gingerly touching the back of my head. When my fingertips came away with bright red blood, I felt the color drain from my face.
Leif gently examined it. “Head wounds always bleed horribly. How do you feel? If it feels like you’re about to lose the contents of your stomach and everything around you is tilting like a ship in storm-tossed waters, then we shouldn’t waste any time getting you to a healer.”
I glanced around me, suddenly noticing the darkness. “Am I losing my vision, or has night fallen?”
Leif’s fingers dropped away from my head as he looked at the bright moon above us. “No, it’s not your vision. It appears to be the middle of the night, even though it was early afternoon when we entered that forest.”
I shook my head and then winced. “It’s the Faerie Tunnel. I’ve never been caught in one, but I know what they say: it’s a realm between realms. Time is measured differently there. It may not even be the same day as it was when we entered.”
Leif took a step back in alarm. “So we have lost days instead of hours?”
“It’s possible,” I mumbled, feeling suddenly like I needed to sit down.
“We should continue to Dyflin if you feel able—it’s the only way we’ll find a healer,” Leif said.
The next moment, I was astride Sleipnir, lifted into the air by Leif. If I hadn’t been so dazed, I would have remembered to be indignant for being treated like a helpless maiden. But even with such gentle treatment, my head pounded. The trees around me tilted, and I gripped Sleipnir’s mane. Leif settled in behind me, only one hand on the reins, the other wrapped securely around my abdomen. I did nothing to discourage him; in fact, I leaned back against him, unable to help myself.
“You can trust me to keep you on this horse,” he said softly. “Don’t waste your strength trying to hold yourself upright.”
Sleipnir shot forward eagerly, desperate to leave the macabre forest. A wide path appeared, guiding our way. In only a few strides, the trees disappeared, and rocky, green meadows lay before us. Each beat of Sleipnir’s hooves brought terrible pain, which quickly spread throughout my body until I was shaking. As my vision blurred, I lost the fragile hold I had on my consciousness.
But even as the blackness swallowed me, I saw things in a dreamlike state. The world around me was hazy. Though I still made out Sleipnir and the rocky meadow beyond, it was through a mist that I viewed them. All color had been leached from the scene around me, and a terrible wind buffeted my ears such that no other sounds could penetrate.
With a terrible jolt of surprise, I realized that while my body remained astride Sleipnir, I could see my still form leaning against Leif. Without color, Leif and I were in shades of black and white, even in the bright light of the moon. Was this a vision, then? Or some hallucination brought on by the shock my body had endured?
Was I dead?
But no, I watched as my chest rose and fell. The moment I focused on my body, I saw a bright red spot amid all the black and white—a pulsing thing that glowed with vitality. It was where my heart was, and as I shifted my gaze to Leif, I realized he had the same.
I watched as Leif pulled Sleipnir to a halt and gently shook my shoulders. I could feel the pull on whatever form I’d taken now—an insistent tugging that seemed to come from my very core. I closed my eyes against the increasingly uncomfortable sensation . . . and opened them to the world full of color again.
Leif let out an explosive breath. I blinked slowly at him, still dazed. He had me draped across his lap so that I was looking directly into his eyes. His face was twisted into some expression I couldn’t yet name, but once my mind cleared, I realized what it was. He was concerned for me.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said.
Something inside me softened at his kind words and his worried eyes, and this frightened me so terribly that I summoned my flagging strength and righted myself. My head ached, and my side where the hound had scratched it burned, but I found I could bear it. It certainly wasn’t a serious enough injury to cause me to lose consciousness. The more I tried to puzzle out the strange occurrence, the more muddled my thoughts became.
Leif halted Sleipnir and helped me down, his hand lingering on my shoulder. “Will you be all right alone?” he asked. “I want to get you water, but . . .” He looked so unsure, so far from his usual ar
rogant bravado, that my breath hitched.
“Water would help,” I said, just so he would leave and stop looking at me like that. Fool, I thought. Someone—an enemy—shows you the least bit of kindness and your heart softens like—
Like it did toward Séamus. Thinking of him made me reach toward the necklace he’d given me, but when I touched my collarbone, there was nothing but skin. With a painful stab of regret, I realized the hellhound must have ripped the necklace free during the battle. It was lost in the Faerie Tunnel now, and my throat swelled. The last connection to my life before my powers manifested had been torn away. As I spent many moments lost in that disturbing line of thought, I didn’t notice right away that Leif had returned until he handed me the flask of water.
“Better?” he asked after I had guzzled most of the flask down.
“Yes.”
He took the flask from me and sat down. “What happened?”
“I just fainted for a moment.” And somehow floated outside my body. “I must have hit my head harder than I thought.”
“We should make camp here. I don’t think you will make it to Dyflin tonight.”
He got to work on a fire, and I watched him, willing my head to stop spinning. I’d never lost control of my mind so much that I left my own body, and I feared it would happen again. If Leif hadn’t been with me, I would have fallen. “Thank you for staying with me,” I said quietly, without looking at him.
He turned. “Did you just thank me?” He laughed as my expression quickly turned to a scowl. “I wouldn’t leave an injured ally. You fought well against those hounds.”
Though I didn’t want to be reminded of anything we’d just seen in the Faerie Tunnel, it made me think of our strange rescuers. “The ravens there,” I said. “Who are they really?”
The smile fell from his face. “The Valkyrie—the Choosers of the Slain. They decide who lives and dies in battle, and the dead they carry to Valhalla.”
Awareness trickled through the haze. As a pagan war goddess, the Morrigan was also said to be responsible for who lived and died on the battlefield.
A gift of the gods, then, Leif had said to me when we’d discussed my power, as though he had experience on the subject.
I thought of his otherworldly abilities in battle, and a slim connection formed in my mind. “What have the Valkyrie to do with your power?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I have a pact with the Valkyrie; they endowed me with the power to defeat Fenris and his kind.”
“And the terms of this pact?”
“They are not something you need concern yourself over.”
“Such a thing does not often end well for the mortal,” I said quietly.
He chuckled humorlessly. “I care not.”
“You told me you wanted vengeance on the giants. Is that why you sought out the Valkyrie?”
“You put things together quickly.” He sounded grudgingly impressed. “Yes, vengeance was what motivated me.”
We sat and listened to the fire hungrily consume the wooden branches, and I thought Leif would say nothing more, but then his voice joined the sounds of the fire. “That village I told you about—it wasn’t just bloody footprints we found. We also found my sister . . . what was left of her.”
I glanced at him, but his face could have been carved from rock. Every muscle in his body was tense. I was surprised by my desire to reach out to him—to place my hand on his arm to tell him without words how much I understood—but I knew it would stop him from continuing his tale, and I knew it needed to be told.
“Finna was visiting our aunt and uncle in our mother’s home village—she spent every summer there for as long as I can remember. I think she needed that—to have someone be a mother to her. I could only do so much for her,” he said, and nodded toward my braid with a ghost of a smile. “Summer is the best time for trade, so my father and I were often gone for many months anyway. But this time, we came home early. Father sent me to get her, and I remember as I rode there . . .” He trailed off, his mouth twisted in pain. “I remember thinking how excited she’d be to see the silks we’d brought back.
“When I got there, I kept telling myself that I’d taken a wrong turn somehow. I couldn’t be at my mother’s village. There was nothing left. Everything was blackened, and ashes floated in the air. I walked to where my uncle’s house was, and that’s where I found Finna on the ground just outside where the door used to be. She was mangled almost beyond recognition,” he said, his voice gruff and angry. I couldn’t look at him. I knew this pain: seeing your sister, once full of life, dead. “Her hair was soaked with blood, her chest was torn open from neck to navel, with her organs spilling out around her.”
Nausea burned in my throat as I imagined not only his sister’s body, but Alana’s. This time, I couldn’t stop myself. I reached over and touched his arm—just once, and only for a moment. “I know what it is to endure the loss of a sister, and I understand that need to have revenge on her murderers.”
His eyes met mine. “Then you know there is nothing I wouldn’t give to stop the jötnar.”
“So you made a pact with the Valkyrie?” I thought of the way the Morrigan had always followed me as a crow, and how she’d finally revealed herself to me. I shivered and moved closer to the fire. “How did you find them?”
“When I brought my sister’s body back to our village, I went immediately to the seer. I begged her to tell me what I could do to destroy the creatures that had done this to Finna. The seer told me I would have to cross a glacier and scale a mountain, and even then, I would have more to pay before I’d receive the power I needed to avenge my sister.” His hand curled into a fist. “I started for the cave that same day. The Valkyrie only appear during midsummer solstice, in a cave where seers receive their first visions, high on the mountain. It left me a mere three days to get there.
“I was nearly frozen and exhausted from lack of food and sleep when I finally clawed my way to the cave. A red light glowed from within, as though Hel’s fires burned in its depths, and I had to crawl inside like an animal. They weren’t ravens in the cave—they were women dressed in identical golden armor, huge black wings soaring out from their shoulder blades. There were six of them, and they stood in front of the red fire, with their faces half in shadow.”
I thought again of the Morrigan, appearing as half bird, half woman. “How terrifying it must have been to seek such creatures out.”
Leif shook his head. “It wasn’t bravery at that point. I was desperate and almost delirious from the cold and lack of food. Fear was the furthest thing from my mind.” He scoffed. “Though now I think I should have been afraid.”
“I think we’ve seen firsthand just how frightening these immortals can be,” I said as my side and head throbbed in sympathy.
He passed me the water flask. “Do you think you can eat?”
“I’d rather hear the end of your story.”
He flashed his teeth at me in a grim smile. “There’s not much more to tell. They made predictions, one of which has already come true: that I’d be forced to ally myself with my enemy.”
“Hm. We share the same prophecy, I see.”
“Did I not save you from those hounds? It seems the prophecy worked in your favor.”
“We saved ourselves,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in correcting his arrogant assumptions. “There must be more to the tale—what did the Valkyrie promise you?”
“They told me they would give me the power to defeat the jötnar—strength, fighting ability”—he glanced down at his arm, where scratches from the hounds were already fading—“fast healing. Strength of mind so I never lose focus during battle.”
My gaze darted to his. “Is that how you resisted me? Your mind is as fortified by your goddesses’ strength as your body?”
He nodded once.
Just what had he traded the Valkyrie for such power? I tilted my head. “And I’m sure they offered to do that freely—at no cost to you.”
&nb
sp; “There is nothing I wouldn’t do to stop the jötnar,” Leif said, echoing the words I’d sworn to myself. “The price is high, but higher still if I fail. If the jötnar overthrow the gods, they will enslave those who took up arms with them and slaughter the rest. The Valkyrie have also promised that if I fail, I will be denied a warrior’s death in Valhalla and be taken straight to Hel’s realm of torture.”
“And should you succeed?”
His jaw tightened, discouraging any further questions. “It was necessary, and I would do it again no matter the cost.” As I watched, a mist of foreboding seemed to creep across his features. “I’ve kept you awake for far too long. I’ll hunt something to eat, and then you should sleep.”
“Should I? I’m glad I have you to tell me when I should eat and sleep.”
He snorted as he walked away, and then I was alone with my thoughts and the fire. The day’s events had taken their toll—the Wild Hunt, the disturbing moment when I was outside my own body, and Leif’s tale of the Valkyrie—and I barely wrapped my cloak around me before I toppled over on my side to sleep. As exhausted as I was, Leif’s words haunted me. The brutal murder of his sister made his vendetta against the giants almost noble, and I hated that we had so much in common. Everything I’d ever known about the Northmen made it difficult to believe that he would go to such lengths over someone he loved. I had come to think of the Northmen as barbaric monsters who could no more love than a snake could.
There was no doubt, though: Leif loved his sister. Maybe as much I loved Alana. Enough that he would risk his own soul to avenge her.
I would do it again no matter the cost, he’d said.
Even as my eyelids drooped closed and I slipped away into sleep, one thing stuck out in my mind: the price of such power must be more terrible than I could imagine.
10
Dubhlinn, at last. The morning had revealed that we’d made camp close enough to see the river Liffey snaking through the land in the distance. It ran through the heart of Dubhlinn, so we’d known we weren’t far from the city. Even still, Leif kept Sleipnir at a much slower pace, though I’d told him repeatedly my head injury was much more bearable this morning. But now, I couldn’t help but feel a little dizzy and cover my nose with the edge of my cloak. The combined smell of animals, thick wood smoke, human waste, and refuse was so pungent—even through my cloak—that my eyes watered. The streets were narrow, pressing us close to the thatched houses made of mud, where I could hear the rise and fall of voices as we passed by. There was no privacy; I could view the entirety of their one-room houses from Sleipnir’s back. I watched a pair of young boys carrying bread back to their mother, feet clad only in woolen socks. Their poverty caused my heart to twist in my chest; their lot was such that even if I gave them every coin I had with me, they would never escape their fate of living and dying in one of those one-roomed houses.
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