“I don’t know. Sunlight does not affect other Hel-warriors, only their Hel-horses. But Death Riders?” She ended with a shrug. “At night, however, we must be wary all the time. And whether night or day,” she said, turning to Ulfhild and Harbarth, “we may have warning of their approach by a low moaning sound, the Hel-wind upon which their steeds tread.”
“I will listen for such a sound,” Ulfhild promised, “as will all our people.”
“And at night,” Bloodsong went on, “if they are not riding the Hel-wind, we might have some slight warning by the purple fires that burn in their eyes and in the eyes of their steeds.”
“Our eyes are as sharp as our ears, Ropebreaker,” Harbarth replied, “and since they are living-dead creatures, our noses may be of help, too, in detecting their death-scent, if we are downwind from them.”
Bloodsong nodded and flexed her bandaged hands with a grimace. Her hands became stiff if she did not move them often, and gripping the reins of her horse was only making matters worse. The healing flesh beneath the bandages had also begun to itch. But she did her best to ignore her discomfort as she turned her thoughts to the dangers ahead, trying to think of other ways to ensure that the journey ended in victory over Thokk and Kovna and freedom for Guthrun.
* * *
The day faded into night as they kept traveling onward, Bloodsong keeping careful watch for specks of purple fire in the darkness and for the first hint of a moaning wind. But the night wore on uneventfully, stars wheeling serenely across the heavens. For a short while thunder rumbled far to the west, and they saw the faint flash of lightning, but the distant storm drifted south without coming nearer.
They gave the horses a short rest at a stream and took the opportunity to refresh themselves as well. Then they set out once more, moving ever northward toward the forests and mountains that were their destination.
At dawn, Bloodsong called another short rest, glad to see that the sky was still clear, no clouds in sight. But as they traveled on later in the morning, she saw black clouds forming farther to the north, moving southward with great speed.
“There’s a moaning sound, Runethroat,” Harbarth said, running alongside Freehoof, “getting louder.”
“Dismount!” Bloodsong shouted. “Form the shield wall, Harbarth!”
The riders dismounted. Designated men chosen by Magnus from his crew held the horses’ reins while the rest readied weapons. Bloodsong had warned them not to engage the Death Riders, but they were not going to stand weaponless during a fight.
Bloodsong flexed her bandaged hands and watched the Berserkers form their wall around the rest.
“I don’t care for staying out of the fight,” Grimnir growled.
“Neither do I,” Bloodsong agreed.
“Nor I,” Magnus added.
The Berserkers continued to joke and laugh while waiting for the battle to begin. The moaning sound grew steadily louder.
“I had heard,” Bloodsong said to Grimnir, “that Berserkers worked themselves into a frenzy before battle, even to gnawing on their shields.”
“Harbarth once spoke of that to me during our stay on the island years ago,” Magnus told her. “He said that it is a hard habit to break, but better that than to break your teeth.”
As the moaning grew ever louder, the Berserkers grew quiet, weapons and shields held ready. Noses wrinkled at the first hints of the death-stench that surrounded the Death Riders.
“They should have shape-shifted,” Bloodsong said.
“You tried to convince them,” Grimnir shrugged. “But they are convinced Odin’s magic is strong in them all the time.”
“Yes. But I feel they should have shifted.”
Grimnir shrugged again. “Harbarth feels it is not honorable to use beastforms unless faced by overwhelming odds, and your insistence that the nine Death Riders justified it was not convincing.”
“I should have tried harder!”
“Too late now.”
“Aye.” She wrapped a bandaged hand around the hilt of her sword and drew the blade, wincing at the pain. She held her shield in the other hand. Odin grant you were right, Harbarth, Bloodsong thought.
The Death Riders came into view. The heavy clouds racing ahead of the Death Riders covered the sun. The purple fires in their living-dead eyes and in the eyes of their steeds became visible.
They could ride the wind over the shield-wall, Bloodsong knew, but she hoped Odin’s magic in the Berserkers would attract the Hel-slaves attack.
Bloodsong gasped with pain. The burns around her throat had flared into agony. Her hands flew to her neck. Her sword and shield fell to the ground.
“Bloodsong!” Grimnir cried.
“My neck!” she moaned, crumpling to her knees. “It’s on fire!”
Grimnir knelt beside her, put an arm around her shoulders as she shuddered with the pain, and tried to comfort her, helpless to do more.
As suddenly as it had come, the pain was gone. She heard a howling arise from the Berserkers that covered the moaning of the Hel-wind. “The pain is gone,” she announced as she picked up her sword and shield and got back to her feet.
The Death Riders are indeed going to fight the Berserkers, she suddenly knew, but did not stop to question how she knew it, and she also suddenly knew that she had been right. Only in beastform could they defeat the Death Riders. “Don’t fight them as humans!” she shouted. “Harbarth! Ulfhild! Shape shift! I was right!” But there was no time.
The nine Death Riders charged the Berserkers.
Harbarth’s people began to fight and die. Some were slain at once, decaying as they fell. Others seemed unaffected by the death-touch and fought the Death Riders as they would have any foe. But then, some of those not at first affected by the death-touch began to succumb, and the ones who yet fought on soon found all their battle skills ineffectual against the preternatural speed of the Death Riders.
“Shape-shift, curse you!” Bloodsong screamed, filled with a rising fury as she saw more and more Berserkers fall decaying.
All around her the Berserkers continued to fight and fall, those who still stood fighting on with the ferocity of their kind meeting death without flinching, battling to the last.
The fury boiling within Bloodsong erupted in a ragged scream of rage. She started forward to do battle, shook off Grimnir’s attempt to pull her back, her emotions overflowing, out of control, sweeping away all rational thought. She ran toward the collapsing shield-wall, screaming a battle cry that quickly became more and more like the howling of a maddened beast.
Decaying bodies lay everywhere. Howls and shouts of Odin’s name mixed with the moaning of the Hel-wind as the Berserkers kept fighting and the Death Riders continued to reap their harvest of death, corpse-faces glaring down in triumph at those they were killing from atop their blood-splattered white steeds, black swords rising and falling like executioners, tirelessly, relentlessly, eyes of purple fire flaring brighter with each kill, skeletal mouths grinning the grimace of Death.
Then suddenly a howl ripped the air that gave even the Death Riders pause. Fiery purple eyes looked up. Black swords stopped in mid-stroke. Hel-horses shied nervously.
With another howl, a berserking, raven-black beast leapt amongst them and began tearing at dead throats with stiletto fangs, slashing through sunken, mail-clad chests with razor claws, howling and slavering with boundless bloodlust and fury. Thin, keening screams squeezed from the Death Rider’s skeletal throats and emerged from their gaping death grins.
A Hel-horse sped away, riderless, leaving a Death Rider writhing on the ground, headless, his decaying flesh turning to maggot-ridden, slime-coated dust.
Another Death Rider fell as the slavering beast tore at him and then at the others, the beast suffering deep cuts from black blades without pausing, moving with blinding speed, evading whirring strokes that might have proved fata
l, but ignoring less serious wounds as it continued to tear at its enemies. Another Death Rider succumbed to the beast’s fury and fell writhing to the ground.
The remaining six Death Riders turned and sped away.
The beast pursued them, a short distance, howling for more of their putrefying blood, then it stopped, collapsed onto the ground, jerked spasmodically several times, and lay still, blood pouring from its wounds.
* * *
Bloodsong groaned and opened her eyes. Grimnir was kneeling on the ground, cradling her head in his lap, grim lines of concern etched into his face as he soothingly stroked her raven-black hair.
“The battle!” she said, starting to sit up. Pain shot through her.
“Lie still,” Grimnir ordered sternly, easing her back down onto his lap. “Your wounds have stopped bleeding and seem to be healing, but if you move too soon, they might open again.”
“Wounds? My throat and hands?”
“You don’t remember what happened?” he asked. “Three of the Death Riders were slain, the other six driven away.”
Bloodsong frowned, memories flitting on the edge of her consciousness. “I’m beginning to remember, I think. A beast? A Berserker who finally did as I ordered and shape shifted! Odin’s magic gave Harbarth’s people victory!”
“Odin’s magic, I suspect, yes,” Grimnir answered, continuing to stroke her hair, “but it was not one of Harbarth’s people who came to our aid.”
“Then who—” she began, but stopped as other memories arose.
By the expression which then covered her face, by the look of horror and disgust in her eyes, Grimnir knew he would not have to tell her that she herself had become the beast.
“WE KNOW NOW how she broke the noose,” Ulfhild said to Harbarth, watching from a distance as Bloodsong lay with her head in Grimnir’s lap. At Ulfhild’s feet were Bloodsong’s sword, the bandages that had covered her throat and hands, and the shredded remnants of her doeskin breeches and tunic.
“Aye,” Harbarth agreed. “Odin’s magic burned the Runes in her neck.”
“And the Runes you could not read must have called forth the beast while she hung.”
“Then her flesh expanded as she shifted to beastform,” Harbarth continued. “Breaking the rope, just as she broke the seams of her clothes when she shifted during the battle. If she had worn just a breechclout, her clothes would not now need repairing.”
Bloodsong turned her head. Over the distance between them she looked at Ulfhild.
“Harbarth,” Ulfhild whispered, “I think we’d best watch our words around her from now on. I believe the beast’s appearance awakened her senses, and from the look on her face, I don’t think she realizes it’s a blessing instead of a curse.”
Harbarth nodded. Bloodsong’s gaze met his. “We became shape-shifters because it was natural to our souls,” he said, “but Bloodsong has had it thrust upon her without warning.”
Ulfhild picked up the shredded clothing, then they walked toward Bloodsong and Grimnir.
Bloodsong said, “You were right about the clothing. I am a beast who needs none.”
“Yes, you do.” Ulfhild held out the torn clothes. “We are not certain what you are, but you are not like us. You are something even stronger, and we envy you.”
Bloodsong sat up and took the clothes. Most of her pain was gone and her wounds from the battle had healed. Her injured palms, the Runes burned into her neck, and the spear wounds from her testing still remained.
“Only wounds received in beastform heal afterward,” Harbarth told her, “as long as they are not fatal while in beastform, of course.”
Bloodsong got to her feet and faced the two Berserkers. “How many of your people died?”
“Many now feast in Valhalla with Odin, but more than half remain alive.”
Bloodsong looked beyond him to the sprawled, decaying corpses that marked the battleground, looked at the Berserkers still on their feet. “But nearly half died,” she finally said, “and all would have died had I not become that—” Her voice trailed away, face twisting with disgust. She mastered her emotions and looked back at Harbarth and Ulfhild.
“Odin’s magic was strong in you both, and in the others who survived the Death Riders’ death-touch. Those who fell first were not so deeply imbued with Odin’s force. But in time you would all have succumbed. When the Death Riders appear again, shape-shift at once and fight in beastform. Surely you see now that no honor will be lost.”
“Aye,” Harbarth agreed.
“And you, Blackwolf?” Ulfhild asked. “Will you also shift and do battle by our sides?”
Bloodsong said nothing.
“It’s a blessing, Blackwolf, not a curse.”
“The beast she became was black, yes, but not exactly a wolf,” Harbarth commented, “nor exactly a bear. You saw its head.”
“Then what name would you give her to honor her victory?” Ulfhild asked, irritated. Her ability to invent appropriate names was well known.
Harbarth quickly tried to shrug it away. “Blackwolf is a good name, Nameweaver,” he hastily agreed, winking at Grimnir and nodding vigorously, “though in truth I’ve never seen the like of the beast she became. It was more like a wolf than anything else, I suppose, but Odin knows what its true name might be.”
“Why don’t you decipher the Runes around her throat,” Ulfhild taunted. “Odin probably wrote the beast’s true name there for all to see, don’t you agree, Runesmith?”
“I told you I thought Blackwolf a good name.”
“But you did not mean it. I saw the wink you gave Grimnir—”
“Enough!” Bloodsong cried. She pushed past the startled Berserkers and stalked to her horse. She jerked her rolled cloak from its saddle thongs and slipped it around her bare shoulders, then rolled up her torn clothing and tied the bundle behind her saddle.
“I did not mean to upset her,” Ulfhild said to Grimnir.
“Nor I,” Harbarth agreed.
“I know that, and so does she,” Grimnir assured them, then walked toward Bloodsong.
Magnus approached her holding a bundle of clothing. “If you like,” he said, “please take these.”
“You seem nervous. Afraid I will rip your head from your shoulders? That’s what beasts do, isn’t it?”
Magnus looked at Grimnir as the red-bearded warrior came up to them. “I collected an extra pair of breeches and a tunic from my crew. We are grateful for what she did. We would all have died otherwise.”
Grimnir nodded, took the offered bundle, and then motioned for Magnus to leave.
He held the clothes out to Bloodsong. “Put them on,” he urged, his voice low and soothing.
“I should go naked from now on.”
“Stop it. Think. Odin has given you a power that may help you rescue Guthrun and destroy Thokk. And it saved us this day from certain defeat. It is indeed a blessing, not a curse. Beasts no doubt dwell in all of us. Odin’s magic and fury merely gives it form, and the Gods help me if I ever should become your enemy, after what I saw you do to the Death Riders, the way you fought. I’ve never seen anything so—”
“Horrible?”
“Magnificent. Would that Odin had blessed me in such a manner during my testing.”
Bloodsong looked away, watched Harbarth and Ulfhild helping to pile their dead in preparation for burning. She cursed softly and looked back at Grimnir. “When I realized what I had become, that I had lost all humanity, I—”
Grimnir’s gentle touch on her face stopped her. He bent forward, kissed her lightly on her lips, pulled back, and looked into her eyes. “You did not lose your humanity. You killed only enemies. Do you see any disgust in my eyes for you?”
She shook her head negatively. “No. I see that you are insane, because I think I see love.”
“Your eyes are sharp.”
“I don’t want to become that thing, ever again.”
“Perhaps it won’t be necessary,” Grimnir suggested.
“I said I did not want to become that beast again, not that I would not.”
Grimnir nodded and squeezed her shoulder. “Should I ask Ulfhild to put more salve on your palms and throat and bandage them again?”
“I will ask her myself, but first let me put on these clothes.”
* * *
When Bloodsong had dressed and Ulfhild had again cared for her palms and throat, she went to help the Berserkers care for their dead. Soon the only bodies not heaped on the funeral pyre were the remains of the three fallen Death Riders.
Bloodsong looked down at them, forcing herself to remember that it was she who had destroyed them, fighting her revulsion with the knowledge that she had been able to combat Hel’s magic and win. She prodded the black mail shirt of a Death Rider with the toe of a boot, which, like all the clothes she now wore, was too large.
Nothing remained of the Death Riders’ flesh but dust. She reached down and picked up a black-bladed sword a Death Rider had but recently wielded. A silver skull gleamed on the pommel.
When she had fought Nidhug in Hel’s name, she had worn black mail and wielded a black-bladed sword much like the one she now held. She looked thoughtfully down at the empty mail shirt at her feet, at the black leather breeches, the black steel battle-helm. She caught the mail shirt on the point of the sword, and lifted it into the air. Several maggots fell out of it onto the ground and squirmed madly in the sunlight.
She carried the mail shirt to the fire that was consuming the bodies of the slain Berserkers, held it over the flames a moment on the outstretched sword, pulled it back, and dropped it onto the ground to cool.
Grimnir watched her and guessed her intent.
She walked back to the Death Riders’ remains and picked up a Death Rider’s shield.
The black circular shield was emblazoned with the three Runes that formed Hel’s name. Bloodsong remembered holding just such a shield during her battles to reach Nastrond and Nidhug.
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