Yowtgayrr clapped Jane on the shoulder as he strode toward the other side of the square, fighting the rampaging fire with his skittery silver runes with his other hand. The villagers stood well away from the Alf, despite his smiles of reassurance.
There had to be a better way of containing Skatlakrimr. I couldn’t pin him forever. I thought the triblinkr to spawn another animus, and the locals gasped as another antafukl burst into being above me. This one was much smaller—the size of an actual raven, instead of the size of a VW Beetle.
“Althyof,” I said, using the raven.
He glanced up at me and nodded.
“We need a jail,” I said. “Something to hold this one in.”
Althyof nodded and pointed to the edge of the village. He danced that direction, keeping his supporting trowba going all the while. I rocked back, holding Skatlakrimr’s throat between my jaws and scooped him up with my front paws. I bear-walked behind Althyof, squeezing the oolfur tight to my chest.
Jane stooped over a burned old woman, her glowing hands darting here and there across the woman’s body. Her half-closed eyes flickered to the old woman’s face, and Jane gasped, stumbling back on unsteady feet. The old woman’s eyes fluttered open, and she smiled at Jane.
“My Lady Freya,” the old woman whispered. “Come to carry me to Fowlkvankr?” Her breath rattled in her throat as she died.
Jane dashed her palm across her cheeks, wiping at the tears there. She already looked exhausted, and the line of waiting injured only got longer as word of her healings spread.
“Don’t overdo,” I said.
She waved me away. “Bear. Two birds. Talk to me when you’re not overdoing it, and maybe I’ll listen.”
“Love you.”
“Yeah, sure. Kiss up now,” she said, but she winked, and a small smile had replaced the look of mourning on her face. “Go on, now. Do your own work.”
I followed my own furry back toward the edge of town, and with one last, assessing look at Jane, Keri and Fretyi followed suit.
Luka scrambled into the rocks and treefalls of the mountains. The stag was undoubtedly a versatile form to take for traveling. He found an almost overgrown path and darted up it.
Althyof stopped almost a football field away from the edge of the small Norse village. He paced off a circle twenty-five yards in diameter. “Put him in there when I nod,” he said.
Skatlakrimr craned his neck to see over his own shoulder and thrashed against me, fighting harder than ever to free himself from my hug. He howled and whined, but nothing he did made the slightest difference.
Luka raced up the mountain, bounding from place to place with a huge stride and the grace of a forest creature while I followed him, enjoying the chase through the beautiful scenery. When he stopped, his breath huffed in and out like an idling steam engine. His deer-like mouth twisted with effort. “Mathur,” he croaked and began his change back to human form, staring at me with a sour expression as I hovered thirty feet above him.
Althyof scuffed the snow away and found eight head-sized stones. He walked around the circumference of the circle he described earlier, setting the rocks down at regular intervals. “Don’t suppose you have that nifty chisel handy?” he asked.
I made negative bear noises but swooped with my animus to land on the rock nearest the Tverkr. I imagined the silver chisel, imagined I felt its pulsing warmth in my taloned foot, and the tool appeared on the stone, my foot displaced upward to rest on top of it.
“You are going to tell me about those dreams you had while staving off death, right?” Althyof asked.
I imagined my animus hovering in the air, and just like that, it was. The Tverkr stooped and picked up both the chisel and the stone. He chanted a kaltrar, slicing into the rock with sharp, confident stokes of the silver chisel. He repeated the process with all but the last stone, then beckoned me over.
“I’ll enchant this last stone—all but the last stroke of the chisel. You stand here, and when I nod, throw the oolfur as far from you as you can. But, listen, you must not move forward, just throw him. Understand?”
“Yes,” I said through my animus.
Luka gazed up at me, face twisted with anger and frustration. “Proud of your new toys, aren’t you?” He shook his head, a puzzled look in his eyes. “How could… Did my brother teach you all this? A full change of shape? This…well, whatever it is you are doing right now?”
“No, but Meuhlnir taught me other things.”
“Ah,” he said, sounding satisfied—perhaps even relieved. “Why are you following me?”
“Why do you think, dummy?” I snapped.
He shook his head. “That again?”
“Give it up, Luka. You won’t escape, and Hel has abandoned you.”
He laughed, great booming cackles that echoed back and forth through the mountains. “Hardly,” he gasped between breaths.
Althyof chanted his kaltrar and whipped the chisel across the face of the stone. He looked at me and nodded. I unclamped my jaws from Skatlakrimr’s neck and hurled him away from me, stepping back at the same time so I could fall forward to a quadrupedal gait once again, Keri and Fretyi dancing back out of my way. Althyof carved the last mark into the stone and set it down as Skatlakrimr landed on his feet with a roar that the varkr pups felt obliged to answer with a symphony of snarls. The oolfur charged toward us, and I readied myself to grab him again if it came to that.
When the last echoes of his laugh died away, Luka wiped the mirthful tears from his eyes and shook his head. “No, Hank. Hel did not abandon me. She knew I could handle you and your friends as I easily did. She wouldn’t have left at all, but for the disgusting little Plowir Medn. They don’t always do as they are told.”
“She should pick better friends.”
Luka rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You don’t know enough of how the universe works to be a judge of anything she does. You are puny—puny—compared to her.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, alighting on a nearby branch. “That’s an old argument that wasn’t true back there on Mithgarthr. You’re quite insane, you know.”
“Not that old lay again.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
Luka blew out a breath, shaking his head. “Follow me if you want. I’ve got a cabin at the end of this path. Come visit. Hell, bring your lovely wife. We’ll make a night of it.”
I stared down at him without speaking, content to let him think he’d had the last word. With a lift of his shoulders, he turned and strolled up the path. After a moment, I slipped into flight, insubstantial wings spread to catch what breeze there was.
Before Skatlakrimr reached the stone Althyof had just finished, the runeskowld chanted a triblinkr and a shimmering soap bubble of energy popped into existence. The oolfur slammed into the glistening bubble, and it stretched, absorbing his momentum, and Keri and Fretyi barked like mad. He hung there trapped in midair for the space of a breath before the bubble snapped back into shape, flinging him back across the circle. He landed on his ass past the center of the ring and skidded to a stop, staring at us with a forlorn expression twitching on his lupine face. The whole thing gave Keri and Fretyi a severe case of the head-tilts.
“There,” said Althyof with an air of satisfaction.
“How long will it hold him?” I asked.
“Forever, unless I break the enchantment.”
Skatlakrimr’s eyes bounced back and forth between Althyof and my antafukl as though he were watching tennis. He slumped where he sat, his too-long hands resting on his legs. He was the picture of dejection.
“Bet he doesn’t know how to change back,” said Althyof. “It’s ‘mathur,’ in case your master forgot to tell you.”
Skatlakrimr spun where he sat, so he no longer had to look at us. Althyof chucked, tapping the chisel in his hand. “And you, Hank,” he said. “Might as well become a man again.”
I shook my shaggy head. “What about Luka? Can he break this over-sized soap bubble?”
Althyof laughed. “The day an Isir can break one of my enchantments is the day I’ll shave off this masterpiece of a beard.”
I chuffed through my nose and padded back toward the village square. I left my second animus hovering in midair, staring down at Skatlakrimr.
The path led through the rarified air near the top of the mountain. It reminded me of the proo we’d taken to the Darks of Kruyn the previous year. The thin air didn’t affect my animus, of course, but Luka panted as he walked toward the cabin built from time-grayed logs. He pushed the door open and stood aside. “Well? Come the hell on in, Hank,” he said with a nasty smile.
My mind raced back through time to that night at the safehouse when he’d said the same thing, inviting me to step in from the kitchen to the room where he’d displayed Jax’s broken, gnawed-on body on the dining room table. Anger prickled the back of my mind.
“No? Fine by me.” Luka walked into the cabin, pulling the door closed behind him.
I imagined myself inside the little building, hovering up near the peak of the roof, but unlike every other time I’d tried that trick, nothing happened. I tried it again and failed again. I drifted closer to the cabin, trying time and time again, but could not seem to get inside. As an experiment, I popped twenty feet back toward the path and instantly reappeared there. I slid up to the door and tried to swim through it as I could with most material things, but I could not.
My wife stood in the center of a ring of smiling people. She looked terrible—like a soldier who hadn’t slept in seven days, like a punch-drunk prize fighter three sheets to the wind. The villagers reached toward her, never quite touching her. I ambled to her side, careful not to crush anyone, though they made plenty of room for me.
Jane looked up at me as if surprised I was there, and leaned into me, letting me bear the majority of her weight. She tilted her head back against the pillow of my furry shoulder. “Girl could get used to this,” she murmured.
The villagers backed away, making twitchy little bows in our direction. The fires were out, smoke drifting toward the overcast sky. Of Yowtgayrr, there was no sign, but Krowkr stepped forward, carrying our packs, and my clothing.
“Is the danger over?” he asked.
I turned my furred head to look him in the eye and made the exaggerated nod my bear body limited me to. Jane sighed and pushed herself away from me. “Are there any more injured, Krowkr? Have we found them all?”
“We are still looking, Lady Fr—my lady.”
I chuffed through my nose, but softly. There was no getting away from it. In my mind, I chanted the triblinkr that would make me a human again and began to shrink and shift back into the form of a man. We could do things they didn’t understand, so it must be magic.
It didn’t help that it seemed like magic to me as well.
I glided around the cabin on the mountaintop, shrinking ever smaller, looking for a break in the chinking or a hole in the eaves. But there was nothing. Must be enchanted, I thought. He could have a series of tunnels under that cabin—he could be running through them now, making good his escape.
Krowkr approached, holding out my mail in one hand and my gun belt in the other. I got dressed, sighing as the cloak settled around my shoulders and brushed away the aches that had settled into my joints when I left the bear form behind. I donned my floppy hat and smiled at the young man. “Thanks, Krowkr.”
“It is my honor, Lord Hanki.”
I shook my head but said nothing. I was already tired of trying to convince him to treat me as he would any other man.
“Luka?” asked Jane.
I nodded toward the mountains. “He’s got a cabin, but I can’t get inside.”
“Rodent-proof?” she asked with an arched eyebrow and a teasing lilt.
“Raven-proof, at least.”
She nodded wearily, leaning on her golden spear.
All around us, the villagers soaked up every word, their awe approaching worship with every second that passed.
Six
Luka’s visit cost the residents dearly—all told, five died, two of them young children. Jane healed half the village, it seemed, while the rest of us did what we could to shore up the damaged buildings. The villagers worked side-by-side with us, but with a quiet reverence that irritated my sensibilities, though Althyof and Yowtgayrr took it all in with an equable grace.
Late that afternoon, I led the others up the stony path Luka had taken earlier in the day. We climbed in silence—all except Keri and Fretyi, who kept up a kind of running version of their foot-attacking game, barking and yipping the entire time. Karls from the village followed us, armed for battle.
I’d tried, but I couldn’t dissuade them. They were a proud bunch.
“I wish we could have done more,” Jane whispered. She walked next to me on the path, her eyes on mine.
“We did what we could,” said Yowtgayrr.
“More than anyone could expect,” said Krowkr. “More than anyone could have hoped for.” He had also refused to stay behind. He had listened to my arguments with a strange fervor burning in his eyes I didn’t much like, and at the end of my little speech, he’d nodded but kept right on walking with us.
When we reached the clearing that held Luka’s little cabin, the karls lined up at the edge of the clearing, strapping their shields to their arms and making their weapons ready. A small waterfall crashed into a rocky stream in the cabin’s rear.
“If there is a fight, Krowkr, you and the karls stay back. Let us deal with Luka.”
Eyes shining with a zealotry that made me nervous, he bowed his head, a forceful reminder of Yowtgayrr’s comment about people lying to their gods.
The pups circled Althyof as the Tverkr approached the cabin, his daggers out but free, for once, of their red auras. He looked at the door and cocked his head to the side, and the puppies sat, one on either side, and emulated his head-cock, each going a different direction. With a shrug, he pushed the door open on squeaking iron hinges. He glanced inside and walked back over to us. “It’s empty,” he said. “Except for a proo.”
Instead of following him, Fretyi nosed the door open a little more. Keri turned, nose to the ground and followed a trail around to the side of the cabin.
“Why would he leave it open? He must have known we’d come up here,” I said.
“Yes.” The Tverkr shrugged. “He may have set another trap.” He hooked a thumb at Keri. “It could be that the proo inside leads to somewhere…uncomfortable.”
I remembered where he’d left the first proo I’d traveled across. “Or it’s another one of his deadly ‘jokes.’”
“Or that.” Althyof glanced at the top of the waterfall, barely visible over the peaked cabin roof. “There’s something…”
“Yes?” I asked.
“I feel it, too,” said Yowtgayrr.
“Feel what?” asked Jane.
“Perhaps a bird's-eye view?”
I nodded and muttered the triblinkr to split an animus away from my consciousness once again as Fretyi trotted to join his brother. Behind us, the karls gasped. I shook my head and sent my animus straight up. I couldn’t seem to stop it from showing up in the form of a raven made from black smoke. Maybe it’s something in the triblinkr.
“What am I looking for?” I asked.
My animus soared through the crisp, cold air above the clearing, the bright eyes of my varkr puppies following my flight. The karls stared up at it, shielding their eyes. Krowkr stood behind me, smiling like the cat that ate the canary.
“There’s more here than meets the eye,” said Yowtgayrr. “I’ll be back.” He traced a few silver runes in the air and disappeared. The karls gasped, and I shook my head. How can we ever convince this bunch we are only men if we keep performing miracles?
From my lofty perspective—or maybe it had more to do with the embodiment of my animus—I could see the disturbance in the air caused by Yowtgayrr’s movements. He circled wide around the cabin, taking his time, never settin
g his foot down on something that would make noise.
I scoured the space between the cabin and the rock face from above. I couldn’t discern anything out of the ordinary. The waterfall crashed into a small pool, feeding the creek that snaked away through the woods and down the mountainside. There were no buildings, no huts, nothing that could conceal Luka.
“I can’t see anything back there,” I said.
Still holding his daggers, Althyof grunted. “Be ready for anything.”
Jane tightened the strap of her shield on her arm and hefted her golden spear. “Keri, Fretyi!” she called. “To me, now.” The two pups turned and looked at her but didn’t move a step in our direction. “Your puppies need better training, Hank.”
“I’m telling you, there’s nothing back there. Just the waterfall and the stream.” I clicked my tongue, and the pups came on the run, not stopping until they sat by my side facing back and front like some weird varkr-Janus, one looking at the waterfall, one at the line of karls.
Althyof shook his head and stepped away from us, muttering a triblinkr of his own. The customary red auras snapped around the blades of his daggers and began their jagged, stretch-shrink-stretch dance. Jane moved to my left side and set her feet, peering over the edge of her shield and holding her spear up at shoulder height. Behind us, the karls from the village made a shieldwall.
I swooped over to hover above the waterfall to get an oblique view of the back of the cabin. It looked similar to the front—stacked logs with a single door in the middle. Yowtgayrr stood in the center of the cabin’s backyard, turning in slow circles as if he couldn’t decide where the threat would come from.
“This is silly,” I said. “There’s nothing—”
A rumbling crack ripped through the air. It sounded as though an iceberg had split and dropped a huge chunk into the waiting sea. Althyof crouched, holding one cartoon dagger in front of him, and one stuck out behind.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 101