Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Freya stood and tussled the girl’s hair and plucked gently at the little tufts of hair on top of her fox ears. “I see that Omar’s bloodflies found you in time.”

  “Just barely. Someone up there must like me after all,” she said with a sidelong glance at the gray sky.

  “Mm hm. He liked you enough to dangle you over a ravine. Are you going to explain that any time soon?”

  The young vala straightened her jacket and made a show of brushing the dust from her black sleeves and skirts. “I really don’t think it’s any of your business.”

  “Oh really?” Freya smiled. “Then I guess I don’t need to let you ride Arfast back to the city.”

  “Oh please let me! My arms are killing me!” Wren pleaded. “I’ll tell you. I got to the mill and I heard reavers in the hills, so I took the spear to protect Erik, and I wound up here, and there was one reaver, and I, sort of, well, tripped.”

  Freya laughed and she saw Erik’s shoulders shaking silently out of the corner of her eye. “You tripped into the ravine?”

  Wren pouted haughtily as she walked over to Arfast. “Well, what do I know about fighting with a spear? I’ll stick to my sling, thank you very much.”

  Erik tapped his spear to get their attention, and signed, “What happened to the reaver?” There was worry in his golden eyes.

  “It tried to grab me, and missed.” Wren hopped up onto the white elk’s back. “And it fell a lot farther than I did. Now let’s please get going. I’m hungry. I didn’t bring any food because I really didn’t expect to live this long today.”

  They returned to Rekavik in no particular hurry. Freya and Erik walked side by side, occasionally catching each others’ hands or slipping an arm around the other’s waist or neck. They didn’t speak, each lost in their own thoughts and their own strange new sensations, each one exploring the world again for the first time, hearing it again for the first time in all its tiny, living details. They heard the crickets in the grass and the rabbits in their burrows, and when a rock broke free and tumbled down a distant hillside, all three of them turned to look. The sun glared through the overcast sky, and they all shaded their eyes with their hands or kept their gazes on the ground.

  It was late in the afternoon when they finally reached the iron door in the south wall of the city, and the guards let them enter without any questions or searches. Freya started to explain their ears, but then saw that a third of the warriors had them as well, in various states of growth. So after leaving Arfast in the stabler’s care, they continued toward the castle. The streets were quiet except for the handful of children running about. Freya saw the housewives through the open doorways making their suppers, and the fishermen cleaning their catches, and the crones knitting their scarves. And on nearly half of the heads she saw small or large furry ears, and bright golden eyes.

  “You have to admit, this is very strange,” Wren said.

  “The ears or the fact that everyone seems fine with them?” asked Freya.

  “Both,” Erik signed.

  The sun was setting as they approached the castle walls and the closed iron door. Freya banged on the door and called out, and after a moment of silence, the locks clicked and clanged and the door squealed inward. Freya stepped inside and found Halfdan and his guards standing around a crackling fire in an iron brazier. The bearded captain waved them over. “You’re all alive?” He grunted mirthlessly. “I suppose someone was bound to have a better day than us.”

  “What do you mean?” Wren asked.

  “What do I…?” Halfdan pulled the steel helmet from his head, letting his tall ears flop upward. “First the bloodflies started biting, but word came through that we’re not allowed to swat the damned buggers. So we sat at our posts while we were eaten alive. Then we started growing these damn fool ears. I know I should be grateful that we’re all safe from the plague, but why did it have to be our ears!?”

  The big man’s face was equally pale and red, and Freya wondered just how embarrassing he really thought the ears were.

  Is Erik embarrassed? He hasn’t seemed bothered at all since we left the mill.

  “And then we had to spend the day breaking up fights and keeping folk calm after Omar went around telling everyone that this was the cure. I suppose he thought he was helping, and I suppose he was after a fashion, but no sooner did he leave a group in the road then a new fight would start and who had to break it up? We did.”

  “That’s not so awful,” Freya said. “People are scared. A little brawl here and there is only natural.”

  “Natural!” Halfdan huffed. “Don’t talk to me about what’s natural. Not today!” He slammed his helmet back onto his head, and winced sharply. “But that’s not even the worst bit. We’d only come back here for supper a little bit ago and found Skadi dead. Killed. Her head sliced open.”

  Freya stared at him. “Sliced open?”

  “Aye, brains and pus all over the floor. I’ve never seen anything like it. Well, not with a woman, anyway.” Halfdan shrugged. “And then the lads caught Leif and Thora trying to slip out one of the eastern doors. Looks like the boy killed the queen to make off with the girl.”

  “I told you, Omar killed the queen! And I wasn’t trying to slip out!” The shout came from around the corner, and Freya took a few steps to the side to see Leif sitting shackled in the snow against the side of the castle. His one hand was bound to his ankle.

  “Omar spent the whole day out talking to the people bitten by the flies. Everyone saw him,” Halfdan shouted. “And you have a lot more to gain by killing the queen than him. Everyone knows about you and Thora.”

  “Then everyone is a damn idiot! That cow hasn’t let me ride her once!” With a quick roll and a little tottering, the young warrior got to his feet and hobbled forward, bent over to hold his hand near his foot, but when he approached the brazier he straightened up, standing on one leg so he could raise his arm and back properly. “I was at the wall checking our defenses. The reavers attacked us last night, if you recall, and we were barely ready for them, barely able to keep them out. And now we have swarms of bloodflies in the city and every man is hiding his damn ears like a scolded child instead of seeing to his duties.”

  “So what if they do?” Freya asked. “Do you have some reason to think the reavers will attack again tonight?”

  Leif licked his lips. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh yes, he does.” This voice came from the main door of the castle, which opened sharply, thrusting back the snow on the ground. Out stepped Omar in his finely tailored coat and blue sunglasses, with his hand resting lightly on his sword. “He knows they’re going to attack again, just as he knew they would attack yesterday, didn’t you?” Omar slapped the youth in the back of the head, sending him sprawling into the snow.

  The guards chuckled.

  Halfdan hauled Leif back up to his feet and looked at the southerner. “What are you talking about?”

  “While I was busy up at the drill site working on the cure for the plague, I saw a man on the footpath at the base of the mountain along the edge of the bay. A man with long dark hair. He was there to meet with someone very tall and very hairy. They spoke to each other.”

  “He’s in league with the reavers?” Halfdan shook the one-armed youth. “Impossible! Those beasts can’t talk or reason.”

  “Obviously one of them can,” Omar said. “I saw them meet. They stood together and talked for a moment, and then they both turned and walked away.”

  “Then it couldn’t have been a reaver,” said one of the guards.

  “Impossible,” muttered another.

  “We’ll see soon enough,” Omar said. “Because if I’m right, then sometime tonight—”

  A bell began to ring off to the east. And then a second one began to ring as well.

  “You see, my friends?” Omar ran his hand back through his wavy black hair. “They’re here.”

  Chapter 29

  Freya led Erik and Wren at a dead run into the castle and
down the hall of sleeping chambers where she rapidly ducked her head in and out of the curtains, looking in each one as she went.

  “Here!” She dragged Erik inside a room that appeared to belong to one of the older guards, and she grabbed a shirt and trousers from the clothesline strung across the low ceiling. As he put the clothes on, she pulled her long leather coat back on and checked her bone knives. “I have to get out there and help. Wren, I want you to stay here and keep an eye on Erik to make sure he’s fully—”

  Her husband bolted to his feet and signed, “I’m more than ready to fight!”

  “All right then.” Freya nodded. “Wren, I still want you to stay here. This is the safest place in the city, in case the reavers come over the walls.”

  “I can live with that,” the young vala said.

  “Good, I—” Freya froze.

  There was a young woman standing in the doorway, holding the curtain open with one hand and clutching a blanket around her otherwise naked body with the other hand. Reddish fox ears stood tall in her light brown hair. She whispered, “I heard voices. I thought…”

  Freya flew across the room and wrapped her arms around her sister. “Katja! Katja, you’re back, you’re better, thank the gods!”

  The two women fell to their knees, laughing and crying as Wren and Erik hovered over them smiling.

  “I woke up in the dark, in this cell, and a man with brown skin opened the door and brought me inside here, and put me in bed, and I think I ate some fish soup, and I think I spit up some of the soup,” Katja rambled. “I’ve been so hungry and so tired. Where are we?”

  Freya grinned. “I’d love to tell you everything, but Erik and I have to go fight some monsters right now. But this is Wren. She’s the vala of Denveller, and a very good talker, and she’ll tell you everything that’s happened in the last few days.”

  “Days?” Katja stared.

  Freya kissed her on top of the head right between her furry ears. “Days.” She started to stand up, but then dropped back down and squeezed her sister in another rib-cracking embrace. “I’m so happy to see you again. You have no idea. I…”

  “You cut your hair,” Katja said, frowning.

  Freya laughed again and kissed her sister’s head again. “Wren will tell you everything. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She hurried into the corridor and ran back to the dining hall where she and Erik found three house carls belting on their swords and cinching up their old, dented armor. The seawalls bells were still ringing, and men were shouting outside. In the cloak room the two hunters grabbed their spears and then they ran out to find a light snow falling, the wind rising, and the stars just beginning to shine in the young night sky.

  Erik took her hand. “Are you sure you’re all right to fight?”

  She smiled. “Are you kidding? All four of us are alive and healthy, the plague has been cured, and Skadi is dead. I feel like I could defend the entire city by myself!”

  Across the courtyard she saw Leif sitting in the dirty snow, his hand still bound to his foot. The youth glared at them. “Let me go! Let me fight, damn you! You need me! I’m the best sword in Rekavik!”

  Freya and Erik said nothing and ran out into the street. Freya led the way to the eastern seawall, tracing the same path she had taken the night before. When they approached the wall, she saw the same mass of warriors and fishermen with swords and harpoons crowding near the door with several men up on the wall and several boys on the roofs of the nearby houses, their slings already hurling stones over the wall.

  And then the blazing white light of Omar’s sword erupted atop the wall, and Freya grinned. “Come on, we’re not needed here. Omar can take care of anything that attacks this door. Let’s go to the next one.”

  They turned south and snaked a path carefully through the gawkers and the boys and the mothers.

  “If you’re not fighting, get back inside!” Freya shouted.

  At the next door in the seawall there were far fewer men on the wall, and all of them were fishermen, but they had three times as many slingers behind them, and the stones were flying as thick as the snow blasting down on them in the arctic wind. The torches fluttered and gasped, threatening to go out.

  Freya and Erik climbed up to the top of the wall and the fishermen made room for them.

  “The hunters!” One of the older men nodded. “Good. Everyone’s at the north door tonight. They all want to be near Omar. Everyone wants to see him fight with that damn sword of his.”

  “Let them. More for us,” Freya said. She peered out at the bay and her keen fox eyes quickly picked out the sharp ripples in the water driving toward the city. “They’re swimming? But that water’s freezing. They won’t put up much of a fight when they get here.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Erik signed.

  “But still, why would they? Why risk it? Why not follow the bank along the beach?” Freya leaned on her spear as the slingers’ stones rained down on the water with heavy plops and splashes. The torches growled, the wind shrieked, and the crowd at the north door was shouting and singing in anticipation of the battle. But gradually through all that noise, Freya heard something new. “Do you hear that? It sounds like voices.”

  “Just the reavers, snarling and carrying on,” the fisherman said.

  “No, it’s not.” Freya squinted at the ripples, and saw the first shaggy head rise high above the water as the swimmer came close to the shore. She saw the tall hairy ears and golden glint of two eyes, but the rest of the body that emerged from the black water was pale and smooth.

  “They’re human!” She spun to the slingers. “Stop throwing, stop! They’re human! They’re cured! They’re cured and coming home. Stop slinging and open the door!”

  “No! Wait!” the fisherman grabbed her arm and pointed at the bay.

  The first swimmer to reach the shallows and stand up was a young woman. She moved awkwardly in the deep water, which still rose to her breasts, and she paddled with both hands to help drive her forward. She was gasped and choking and now they could hear her crying out, “Help me, please! Help!”

  The woman was shivering, her head shaking from side to side, her teeth chattering visibly in the starlight.

  Freya shook the fisherman off her. “Let her in! Open the door!”

  A reaver burst up from the water just behind the naked woman in the water and sank its claws into her shoulders and chest. Snarling and barking, it drove the woman under water with its sheer dripping weight, and both vanished beneath the surface. The woman’s head and chest surged up out of the water, and she screamed, and was suddenly silenced as the reaver tore her arm from its socket and plunged its fangs into her bare throat.

  Freya screamed, “Slingers, loose!”

  The stones flew, battering the water and the beast standing waist deep in a black pool of blood and floating limbs.

  The other swimmers were coming up to the beach as well, all naked and exhausted, all gasping and shivering and barely able to speak. They cried out weakly, “Help me! Save me! A rope! Please!” And one by one they were set upon by the reavers swimming along right behind them. They were crushed and shredded and torn apart within throwing distance of the wall.

  Freya raised her spear and moved to the edge of the wall, but Erik pulled her back and signed, “We can’t save them. We have to hold this line.”

  Freya stepped back. “Slingers, faster!”

  The rocks slammed into the waters and the reavers, and the beasts yelped and whined and howled as the stones smashed their arms and chests and faces. But still they came, killing the fleeing swimmers every step of the way.

  And from across the dark waters, a gravelly voice thundered, “KILL THEM! CRACK THEIR BONES! SHRED THEIR FLESH!”

  Freya and Erik exchange a worried look, but there wasn’t time to wonder who was hollering over the bay.

  The reavers staggered up out of the surf and shook the cold salt water from their fur, but they only paused a moment before dashing toward
the seawall door where they began leaping and snapping at the warriors. The slingers aimed upward so their rocks would sail over the men and fall straight down on the beasts, and the spears and harpoons swung down to stab at them.

  Freya counted eight reavers on the beach below, with one or two more still in the water.

  It isn’t fair. They shouldn’t have to die like this, not with the cure so close at hand. If only they had stayed away for a few more days, then no one would need to die. But we can’t let them kill us either.

  “This is the last battle, the last night of blood!” she cried out to the grim-faced fishermen. “After tonight, there won’t be any reavers left in Ysland, one way or another!”

  The men shouted, “For Ivar! For Rekavik!”

  Springing upward from the beach, the reavers could just barely reach the top of the wall and the boots of the defenders. Freya took her time, readying her weapon just beside her eye, and when a reaver leapt up right below her, she drove her steel spear straight down into its shoulder or eye or even into its open maw. Erik stood at her side, striking swiftly and then yanking his blade free before the weight of the dead reaver could pull the spear from his hands.

  After a few exhausting minutes, four of the reavers on the beach were dead, and one of the survivors had turned its attention to the task of gnawing on the bodies on the ground.

  “We’re halfway home!” Freya shouted, and the slingers behind her cheered.

  Two of the reavers on the ground stopped trying to scramble up the wall and began slamming their shoulders and heads against the iron door.

  “Brace the door!” the fishermen shouted.

  Freya moved back from the edge of the wall to catch her breath and feel the pounding of her heart in her chest. Erik tapped her shoulder and he pointed out at the water.

  The last ripple was reaching the shore, but the dark shadow rose from the surface far sooner than any of the swimmers had. It rose, and rose, until it was wading waist-deep still far from the light of the torches. The driving snow wind obscured all but the creature’s dim outline. And then it roared a deafening, thunderous roar.