RIDING SOUTH down the snow-covered forest trail, Bloodsong began to grow uneasy. She sensed danger. Had the slave woman broken? Did Nidhug now know all?
Huld was peering intently into the surrounding trees.
“You feel it, too, Witch?”
“I feel like a storm is about to break.”
“The sky is clear, but the forest around us—”
“—is growing darker.”
“Nidhug’s sorcery?” Bloodsong drew her sword.
“An attack,” Huld nodded, “but of what nature?”
The sky remained clear and bright, but soon they rode through a twilight gloom.
“You wanted to aid me, Witch. Do it. Repel this attack before it can harm us.”
“I—” Huld began, but suddenly she was jerked violently upward off her horse. She screamed, found herself hanging by her long blond hair from a tree limb that arched over the trail. She kicked and struggled to get free but could not. She felt a sharp pain on her left forearm and saw blood welling up from a cut. An instant later she felt another cut slice the flesh of her left leg, ripping through her clothing. She screamed again and again.
Bloodsong raised her sword, saw nothing at which to strike. Some unseen thing knocked her steel battle-helm from her head, grabbed her dark hair, jerked upward. She kept hold of the saddle with her left hand, sliced above her again and again with her sword. The sword cuts had no effect. She strained to keep her tenuous grip on the saddle.
Above her, Huld hung from the branch, green robe ripped to tatters, blood welling up from cuts on her arms and legs.
The force trying to pull Bloodsong out of her saddle increased. Grimacing with the strain of keeping her hold, Bloodsong thought of the shadow-wind demons that had helped against the soldiers. Might they also help her now?
She remembered the summoning incantation and recited it. The Hel-ring flashed with purple fire. An icy Hel-wind began to moan, quickly built in intensity. The trees thrashed violently.
Huld screamed with new pain as her hair was jerked and shaken by the moving branch.
A different scream rent the tempest-tossed air, an otherworldy sound, inhuman, monstrous.
The force pulling Bloodsong upward weakened for a moment, then increased in intensity once more. A cut ripped through her mail as if through rotten cloth, gouging the flesh of her left arm, then another, and another cut near the first one. Her attacker was trying to weaken her grip on the saddle. She held on, now also fighting her terrified, rearing horse. Huld’s mount had already disappeared down the road.
Suddenly Bloodsong’s gray stallion lurched sideways in its efforts to flee the attack of sorcery. Bloodsong lost her desperate grip on the saddle, felt herself flying upward as the horse galloped away.
She cursed, struggled to get free, slicing upward with her sword again, suspended between the trees and the ground by her hair.
A cut sliced through her mail on her right side. Above her she saw that Huld had reached up and grabbed the branch, trying to relieve her pain.
Unable to think of anything else to do, Bloodsong repeated the conjuring incantation, hoping it would summon more shadow-wind demons.
The fury of the tempest increased. The moaning of the Hel-wind grew even louder. Trees whipped madly in the icy windstorm.
The unseen attacker screamed in agony, released its grip on Bloodsong’s hair. She fell, landed on her feet, knees bent, and was hurled backward against a tree by the force of the wind. She threw her left arm around the tree and held on, sword ready in her right.
The moaning of the shadow-wind became even louder as the screams of the unseen attacker grew steadily fainter. When only the moaning remained, Bloodsong twice repeated the banishing incantation.
The tempest died to a breeze. Bloodsong let go of the tree. She sheathed her sword, looked upward to where Huld still desperately clutched the branch, sobbing with fear and pain.
“It’s over, Witch,” Bloodsong called out. “Can you free your hair?”
Huld tried. “No! Help me! It hurts!”
Bloodsong climbed the tree. Soon she was almost within reach of the young Witch, but the limb was too small to go farther. “If I come closer, the limb will break.” She drew her sword and extended it. “I’m going to cut you free, Huld.”
“Cut through my hair? No!”
“Hang on.”
“Isn’t there another way?”
“Hang on!” Bloodsong’s sword sheared through golden strands.
“Oh!” Huld hung by her arms.
“Now, work your way along the limb toward me.”
“I can’t!”
“You must!”
“Oh! Goddess!”
“Hang on, curse you!”
“I can’t!” Huld fell, hit the ground, and lay still, moaning and sobbing.
Bloodsong was on the ground within moments. She knelt beside the Witch. “Huld?”
Huld looked up at her, tears streaming. “What?”
“Are you hurt badly? Can you move?”
The Witch tried and, with Bloodsong’s steadying arms, slowly managed to sit up. “Nothing feels broken,” Huld wiped at her tears.
Bloodsong took a quick look at Huld’s wounds. “None of your wounds are deep enough to be serious, not much more than scratches. And the snow cushioned your fall.”
“Scratches!” Huld exclaimed. “Cushioned my fall!”
“The horses fled. We must try to find them,”
“I’ve nearly been killed! I’m bleeding everywhere, and my clothing is so ripped, I’m nearly naked! And my hair!” she added, looking up where the golden strands were entangled. She touched her hacked-off tresses, groaned, then cursed.
“You are unaccustomed to battle, Huld.”
“Thank Freya!”
“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.