“All that matters is that you are alive and not fatally wounded.”
“Ha!”
“And we are fortunate that Nidhug’s first attack was not intended to kill us.”
“It wasn’t?”
“I’ll wager, from the shallowness of our wounds, he wanted to take us alive, or at least me.”
“Right, and leave me hanging up there? To slowly die?”
Bloodsong ignored that and said, “Unfortunately, when he attacks again, he will know that I have Witch-powers, since I had to use them to drive away the attack.”
“I would have used my Witchcraft,” Huld quickly responded, “but I didn’t have a chance.”
Bloodsong looked at the Witch a moment, then nodded.
“But Jalna must have known about your powers.” Huld frowned. “So why didn’t Nidhug?”
“Somehow, the slave held that back. I am so proud of her! She fights with us, as best she can. What else did she keep from him, I wonder?”
“Maybe she had help. Hel told you She would help her, remember?”
“Aye. I hope Jalna survives. I hope I can set her free.”
“But Nidhug will be angry. What will he do to her, when he—”
“The sooner we get there, the sooner we can help her.” Bloodsong grabbed her battle-helm from off the snow and placed it back on her head. “Up, Witch. Now.” She helped Huld to get back on her feet. “Try to walk.”
Huld took a few cautious steps. “Nothing hurts too badly, I suppose.” She grimaced.
“Good.” Bloodsong looked at the horses’ tracks in the snow. She thought about the Hel-horse saddle and bridle on the gray stallion and cursed beneath her breath.
“What?” Huld asked, hearing the curse.
Bloodsong pointed at the tracks. “Let’s find our mounts.”
* * *
In the Cavern of the War Skull, King Nidhug forced Jalna out of her sleep then shouted curses at her.
I helped her! she thought with relief. I must have helped Bloodsong, or he wouldn’t be so angry! She made herself laugh.
He quieted himself and stared at the slave. She had withstood the strongest pain the Venom Wand could give, lied to him, and now laughed?
There was no point torturing her for more information. He could not trust anything she said. But punishing her for defying him was another matter.
A new thought occurred. Had she been helped by some deity or guardian spirit? None should have been able to penetrate his sorcery’s barriers. But if they had, his occult senses might still detect it. Thoughts of Hel came, and with it a reminder of his nightmares, and the faceless figure that had recently appeared. Could that faceless one be this slave? He rejected the notion as he reached out with his mind and caught a fleeting glimpse of a small child with black hair. The hate in the girl’s dark, brooding eyes reminded him of someone. Perhaps the tortured slave herself? As a child? He decided it was merely a disembodied fragment of her mind, ripped free by her prolonged agony.
“To reward your treachery, slave, I could destroy your body a different way, heal you again, start over again.”
“Promises, promises.” And she winked down at him.
He shook his head in amazement. Who is she? “If physical pain does not upset you, I will find something else that will.” He bent over his table of scrolls, searched for a moment, picked one up, began to read.
As Jalna waited, she fought to conceal new fear.
Nidhug tossed the scroll aside and looked back up at her. “I will still defeat Bloodsong, never fear. But now, I am going to make you wish a mere Venom Wand was boiling your flesh.”
Panic swept through Jalna, but she tried not to let it show.
”I am going to summon your most relentless nightmares and let them play with you while I watch from a safe vantage point within your mind. Venturing into your mind no longer threatens me, you see. That young Witch with Bloodsong about whom I worried? Her failure to defend herself or help Bloodsong magically during my failed attack showed me she is a fraud and no threat to me at all. But though I could now safely read your thoughts to discover Bloodsong’s secrets, I could not trust what I found. False memories might confuse me. Watching your nightmares torment you, however, might give me a clue about who you really are.”
Jalna often had nightmares from which she awoke screaming. She did not want to know more about them.
Nidhug closed his eyes and chanted a ragged phrase over and over.
Jalna felt something growing within her mind, something pushing outward from her innermost depths, something dark and formless that filled her with stark terror. The formless darkness began to assume a shape. She could not look away because it was locked within her. Closing her eyes made the distant vision of horror even clearer. It oozed nearer.
Jalna’s screams began anew, and there was no escape.
WALKING DOWN the snow-covered forest trail beside Bloodsong, Huld reached up time and again to touch the hacked-off strands of her hair. When the soldiers took her prisoner, they had thrown away the few possessions she carried, including the pouch of talismans and herbs that Norda had taught her to use. But Norda had also taught her that much of a Witch’s power came from the length of her hair. Huld touched the severed strands another time. She felt miserable and cold. Her shredded garment did little to protect her from the chilly air, and her tattered gray cloak was too thin to provide much warmth.
Huld shivered. Bloodsong noticed and stopped walking.
“What’s wrong?” Huld looked apprehensive.
“You are cold.” Bloodsong removed the sword belt from which her sword and shield hung on her back atop her cloak. She held them out to Huld.
“I’m not carrying your weapons.”
Bloodsong shook her head. “Just hold them a moment. Or must I dump them in the snow?”
Huld took them. “But, why would you dump—”
Bloodsong slipped off her heavy fur cloak and put it over Huld’s gray cloak. For a moment she thought Huld was going to protest, but then the young woman handed Bloodsong’s weapons back and gratefully pulled the fur tightly around her. “My thanks. But you will be cold now.”
“I am used to the cold,” Bloodsong answered, remembering Hel’s realm, remembering Guthrun. The Hel-warrior strapped sword and shield to her back again and resumed walking, watching the tracks left by their fleeing horses. If she could not find the gray stallion and the Hel-horse saddle he bore, conjuring a new Hel-horse at the next sunset would do her no good. And without the speed of a Hel-horse, her chances for victory would grow even slimmer. She wondered if Huld would consent to ride behind her on a steed from Hel. It would either be that, or the Witch would be left behind.
“Bloodsong,” Huld said, “I don’t mean to be a bother and complain so much. Even though you ruined my hair, you saved my life.”
“And my own.”
“But I have something else to tell you. I have not studied with Norda Greycloak for three years. It was three—” she hesitated, “months.”
Bloodsong stopped and stared at the young Witch.
Huld met Bloodsong’s gaze. “Well, say something!” she finally cried.
“Months?” Bloodsong asked at last. “Just how many spells do you actually know, Huld?”
“Enough to free Norda Greycloak from Nidhug’s dungeons and enough to help you defeat him.”
“How many?”
“Well, there’s the night-vision spell, the one to heal, the spell to repel mental probes, one to open locks of all kinds, basic herbcraft, and—” Her voice trailed away.
“And?”
Huld hesitated, then shrugged. “That’s all. But I assure you that I can do all of them perfectly, and they’re enough, if I use them cleverly.”
Bloodsong looked at Huld a moment more, then shook her head. “They didn’t help either of
us very much a little while ago. “
“Be angry with me if you wish,” Huld said. “I don’t care. And go on without me now that your ankle is healed, thanks to me. But I have vowed to free Norda, and I will, with or without your help.”
“You love Norda, Huld. She was kind to you, more of a mother than your own, from what you have told me. But perhaps you should reconsider your vow to save her. Would she want you to risk your life for her?”
“After I’ve set her free, I’ll ask.”
Bloodsong smiled. “You remind me of someone,” she said after a moment, thinking of her own youth.
“Who?”
“It was years ago.” Bloodsong shrugged. “She died.”
Neither said anything for a moment.
“We’re wasting time. And I am glad of one thing, at least.” Bloodsong poked Huld’s arm.
“Ow!”
Bloodsong laughed. “I am glad it was not weeks.”
After a short pause, Huld smiled, then they began walking again, following the horses’ tracks in the snow.
* * *
When King Nidhug had strengthened himself with a hearty breakfast, he made his way through the upper levels of Nastrond toward his private chambers in the central tower.
Richly robed and bejeweled nobles whom he met bowed and spoke careful greetings. Soldiers snapped to attention as he passed by. He ignored them all, thinking of a spell he had not used for over two hundred years. But before he could safely use it, he needed to refresh his memory, and to do that he had to consult a scroll he kept in a carefully protected cache in his sleeping chamber.
He finally came to a narrow stairway which wound into the shadowy upper reaches of the tallest tower. There were no soldiers or nobles allowed here, only unseen demons, bound there by his sorcery to guard the passage from all intruders.
He spoke a complex phrase, repeated it twice more, then began to ascend the stairway. Unseen, the guardian demons drew back, allowed him to pass, then crowded together again, blocking the stairs.
Flickering torches lighted his way up the twisting stairway, torches whose flames cast no shadows and never needed tending.
At the top of the stairs he came to a wooden door carved with intricate Runes. He spoke a word of command. An unseen demon opened the door.
He strode through into his private chambers.
The door closed behind him.
Midmorning sunlight squeezed through his room’s tall, narrow window. Through the window the roofs and towers of Nastrond were visible and, beyond them the desolate plain surrounding the sprawling fortress.
He went directly to an ironbound chest. Speaking another word of power, he waited as the invisible demon who guarded the chest obeyed. The lock on the chest clicked. The heavy lid opened.
He got to his knees and searched within the chest till he found a small yellowed scroll sealed with blood-wax. Saying a different sorcerous command, he broke the seal. He took the scroll to a wooden table inlaid with gold and silver. He sat down on a thickly cushioned chair and studied the scroll. Upon it was a fragment of text from a forbidden grimoire, copied from memory after a dangerous spirit-journey centuries before. It would, if properly executed, bring Bloodsong alive to Nastrond, writhing and screaming. No magic she could wield would prevail against it, because its power did not derive from any of the Nine Known Worlds. It came from an alternate reality.
Once she was in spell-chains, he intended for Bloodsong’s prolonged suffering to provide him with much pleasure. Yes, before he banished her soul to the realm of eternal agony and imprisoned her rotting corpse in a chamber beneath the Cavern of the War Skull, with the bodies of all the other Hel-warriors he had defeated, he would question, experiment upon, and use Bloodsong in any way he desired. And eventually, when he tired of her agony, he would drain her life-force into the War Skull and see if it might recharge his source of power. Bloodsong’s unexpected magical energies, undoubtedly coming directly from Hel, might be more compatible with the Helish energies of the War Skull than the energies of all the other Witches he had tried.
Excited and cheered by the prospect, and encouraged that by using the Hel-warrior he might solve many of his own problems, King Nidhug continued struggling to translate and fully understand the spell detailed in the yellowed scroll.
Again and again he found dangerous gaps in his memory of the spell, stubborn blocks to his understanding. He poured a jeweled goblet of blood-red wine and sipped it slowly, studying the scroll, occasionally rubbing at a growing headache throbbing in his temples.
Finally, he had to admit that it was hopeless. It had been too long. He had forgotten too much. It would take days to fully recapture the spell and be able to use it safely. He could not waste that much time. He would have to use a less potent spell, one less certain of success, one which exposed him to more danger.
He sat thinking, sipping wine, gazing out the window, considering spells he could conjure without recourse to forgotten languages and only partially remembered rituals. To his surprise, he found that many of his most effective sorcerous weapons were also in need of study before being used.
A feeling of uneasiness crept through him. How many skills, how many hard-won spells, abilities, weapons had he lost by not using them over the centuries? He had become so certain of his powers that he had failed to practice them. And now?
His uneasiness edged toward fear. Unbidden into his mind came an old saying.
Hel laughs last, he remembered. And again he remembered the faceless watcher in his recent nightmare.
With a curse he went to the open chest, grabbed up several more scrolls, and returned to the table to read.
* * *
Bloodsong stood staring down at the trampled snow before her. “Other riders headed in this direction must have intercepted our horses,” she said, gesturing at the tracks.
“And then veered off through the woods,” Huld said, pointing to where the trampled snow led away through the trees.
“Or perhaps our horses went straight on, long after the riders were here, but there’s no way to tell that now, not from these jumbled tracks.”
“Do we go on, then?” Huld asked.
“First, I want to follow these other tracks a short distance. There was a wagon. See?”
Moving carefully through the trees, making as little noise as possible, the two women followed the riders’ tracks. Out of sight of the road, the tracks disappeared over a low rise.
Bloodsong and Huld cautiously edged toward the top of the rise and peered over it. Huld quickly ducked down before she could be seen, but Bloodsong studied what she saw there before lowering her head. They went back down the rise and were nearly back to the road when Bloodsong stopped. Huld kept going.
“Wait, Huld,” Bloodsong whispered.
Huld stopped, glanced around. “Wait?” She whispered back. “We must get out of here! There are a dozen soldiers over there!”
“Only eight,” Bloodsong answered. “And two prisoners in a slave cage.”
“Eight too many,” Huld noted.
“You said you wanted to help me, Witch. Do you wish to prove it? Circle around through the trees. Wait until I start slaying the soldiers, then use your Witchcraft to open the lock on the slave cage. The soldiers will be too busy with me to notice you.”
“You can’t kill all eight of them alone!”
“I can.”
Huld looked at the warrior for a moment. “I don’t see how.”
“Just be glad there aren’t nine.”
“You’re joking. Aren’t you? Some kind of warrior humor? Well, it’s not funny!”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Bloodsong, are you certain this is not a trap Nidhug has set for you?”
“I know the prisoners, Huld.”
“Even more of a reason why it may be a trap.”
“Others may be hiding nearby.”
“If you see any when you are circling around through the trees, come back and warn me.”
“Bloodsong—”
“Don’t worry, Huld. I once fought ten men at one time in the arena. They lost. And when this battle is over, I will be—”
“Dead.”
“I have no intention of dying again for a very long time.” Bloodsong unstrapped her shield and gripped it in her left hand. She drew her sword. “Go slowly and quietly, Huld. Don’t expose yourself to unneeded danger.”
“Of course not. I’ll just follow your example. And what danger? A mere eight soldiers?”
“You need not help, Huld. You can go back the way we came, or wait here until it is over.”
Huld shook her head, then moved quietly away to circle around the camp.
Bloodsong loosed her war ax from her belt and slipped its wrist thong around her left wrist. Then she walked back through the trees, up the slope, and peered over at the soldiers.
She noted that the groupings had not changed. One soldier stood by the slave cage on the far side of the camp. Five were grouped several paces away, eating and drinking. But at the moment it was the remaining two who interested her. Both stood near the base of the slope talking with their backs to her. All the soldiers had swords at their sides, but their skull-emblazoned shields hung from their nearby horses’ saddles.
While she waited to give Huld time to circle around the camp, she wondered what the soldiers were doing there. It was near midday, their camp was well off the main road, and there was no fire, suggesting that they did not want their presence known. Perhaps there was no mystery after all. One of the prisoners was a woman. After finishing their meal, the soldiers no doubt intended to enjoy themselves at her expense. Not this time, Bloodsong thought, smiling coldly, anxious for the battle to begin.
She waited a little longer, decided that Huld must have had time to get into position, took her throwing knife from its sheath on her belt, clenched the black steel blade between her teeth, and rushed to the top of the rise.
Bloodsong Hel X 3 Page 9