JALNA MOANED apprehensively. Another wave of torturing nightmares built within her mind. Then suddenly the new horrors vanished.
She heard voices and opened her eyes, blinked away tears, saw Nidhug looking up at her. Cold hatred filled her.
“Enjoy yourself, slave?” He laughed.
She made herself yawn. “Already morning? I was having the best dream.“
Three soldiers and four slave women stood nearby. She looked for Tyrulf. He was not there.
The king again wore his dark hood to cover his face. A stench of death wafted up to her.
“We have much left to discuss, slave. I witnessed your nightmares but still do not know your true identity.”
“Perhaps I am just a slave.”
He laughed at that. “Get her down.”
Two soldiers shoved the platform into place and climbed up while the third guarded the four women.
“Run!” Jalna shouted at the women. “Fight! Take weapons! Kill them all! Try!”
The women looked up at her in confusion. They huddled closer together.
“You are not sheep! He’s going to kill you!” she screamed at them. “Kill him first!”
Nidhug hissed an incantation.
Jalna lost the power to use her voice.
The soldiers unchained her numb feet.
“Do not be gentle with her,” Nidhug ordered. “Feel free to touch her where and how you wish.” He chuckled. “She enjoys it.”
Jalna tried to curse at him but no sound emerged.
One grinning soldier held her tighter than necessary, hands roving, while the other freed her wrists. Circulation burned its way back into her hands and arms as she was carried to the cavern wall and dumped roughly on the cold, rocky floor. She resisted having an iron collar clamped around her neck, but her exhaustion made her struggles ineffectual. A long length of chain ran from the collar to an iron ring embedded in the cavern wall. The soldiers walked away.
Jalna was surprised that her hands had been left unchained and even more surprised when one of the soldiers then returned and placed food and water within reach.
At first she thought the food must be some new torture, some ingenious cruelty Nidhug had devised. Perhaps, though suddenly ravenous with hunger, she would be unable to eat the food because of some unknown spell. Or perhaps the food was poisoned to give her fresh pain without killing her.
She reached out and lifted the earthenware jar of water. She sniffed it, sipped it, waited, but no pain came. She picked up the wooden plate and sniffed at the bread and cheese, nibbled at each. Still no pain came. Soon, her hunger overcame her caution. She had assumed, not long ago, she would never eat another meal. Surprised that she even had an appetite after all that had happened, and considering her surroundings and uncertain future, she nevertheless attacked the simple food with undisguised eagerness.
As she ate, she watched the four women being chained to the Skull. They were struggling now, but too late.
One soon hung before each eye socket and another in the center. The fourth was stretched between chains embedded in the top of the Skull. Not knowing what to expect, the four apprehensively twisted their heads this way and that. Remembering Jalna’s warning, they were now begging the king not to kill them.
The soldiers left the chamber.
Jalna finished her food and drank more water. She cautiously tried to use her voice again, hoping the spell might have faded, but discovered she still could not make a sound. Inwardly cursing Nidhug anew, she sat back against the wall, and with the comfort of the food within her, felt sleep pulling at her, exhaustion taking its toll. She resisted, determined to stay awake.
Screams awakened her. She saw that the purple glow of the Skull was brighter. The pulsings and energy discharges on its surface came closer and closer together as if attuned to a racing heartbeat.
Nidhug stood before the Skull, his back to her, arms upraised, shouting above its rumbling moan and the screams of the four women. The women were writhing madly, their bodies glistening with sweat, smoke rising from the Skull where it touched their bare skin. The stench of burning flesh filled the air.
Rays of purple light suddenly began to stream from the women’s heaving bodies, rays that slanted downward, bathing Nidhug’s body.
Slowly, the screams and struggles of the women weakened, and Jalna saw with horror that their flesh was withering, even as they feebly continued to jerk against their chains.
The purple rays from the women dimmed, then vanished. Four skeletal corpses now hung from the Skull. The purple light pulsed more and more slowly as Nidhug lowered his arms. Then he turned and came toward Jalna.
She noticed that his step was now quick and firm, unlike the slow, unsteady gait he had displayed a short time before. Jalna sat with her back against the rocky wall, stared defiantly up at the approaching man. Her paralyzed legs were stretched out before her.
As Nidhug neared, the stench of death came to her again. He stopped and looked down as he pulled away his silken hood. He began to speak then, but Jalna’s horror-stricken gaze stopped him. With sudden unease, he pulled off his gloves and gasped at what he saw.
Though strength now flowed through his veins and he felt like a man in his prime, his hands had remained those of a corpse. He raised skeletal fingers to his face and felt the taut contours of a death’s-head. Panic rose within him. The rejuvenation spell had failed to restore his youthful appearance.
Nidhug hurried back to the Skull, searching his mind for reasons the spell might have failed. The energy he had expended on the Hel-warrior must be the cause. He had to make Bloodsong his prisoner at once! With the Skull in decline, she posed more of a threat than he had thought.
From among the scrolls on the table he picked up the one he had brought from his tower chamber. He studied the Runes and incantations. He closed his eyes, emptied his mind, drew his concentration slowly tighter, spiraling in to focus on the spell as he drew energy from the Skull. He visualized a series of Runes blazing with purple fire and twisted his thoughts through their shapes and secrets. He began to incant a phrase with measured cadence, repeating a series of Runic sounds over and over, drawing to his mind and flesh transforming radiation from the Skull.
His body became one with his consciousness and merged from physicality to spiritual essence. Now more ghost than flesh, he sank through the cavern’s floor and continued down, deep into the rocks beneath Nastrond as he mentally continued repeating the incantation.
When he sensed different surroundings, he stopped chanting, opened spectral eyes that flickered with purple fire, and saw in the total darkness around him that he stood in a small cavern, circular, low-ceilinged, completely enclosed by cobweb-draped rock walls.
He resumed his physicality.
The air stale with the stench of death, the floor was strewn with the corpses of black-clad warriors, the decayed remains of all the Hel-warriors Nidhug had defeated through the centuries. Many were no more than skeletons with scraps of black leather clothing clinging to their bones. Rusted mail shirts covered the ribs and arms of a few.
The king chanted a different phrase, energized his disciplined will with necromantic radiation channeled from the Gray Between through the conduit of the War Skull of Hel, and commanded the souls of the defeated Hel-warriors in the realm of agony to which he had banished them to return to their former bodies. Disembodied screams slowly filled the cavern as the cries of souls in unending pain obeyed Nidhug’s order.
First one and then another of the corpses on the floor began to stir, to jerk and writhe as unnatural life crept back into their tattered flesh and bones.
The screams became louder, hoarse, gasping, ragged cries of agony emerging from decayed throats and tongueless mouths. Disturbed by the spell’s progression, squirming albino corpse-worms awoke from their centuries-long sleep to escape the awakening dead.
Satisfied, Nidhug concentrated anew and began chanting a different Runic formula, willing Hel-horses into existence, willing the reanimated corpses to rise and mount the skeletal white mares.
Already feeling fatigued from his efforts, he willed into physical manifestation a Hel-horse for his own use and mounted. All around him the moaning, screaming Hel-warriors awaited his command, clutching their black-bladed Hel-swords in corpse-clawed hands. Hel-horses pawed impatiently at the stone cavern floor, their eyes of purple fire flickering like Nidhug’s own.
Gathering his concentration into a new focus, Nidhug shouted words of command.
He and the mounted dead vanished from the cavern.
The Hunt of the Damned had begun.
* * *
The four companions left the forest behind as they descended to a lower elevation. They rode through a region of low, rolling hills. Snow lay in patches, here and there. Bloodsong and Valgerth rode in the lead, talking eagerly. Huld rode beside Thorfinn, irritated with herself for wishing she could be riding beside Bloodsong. With one hand she held closed against the cool a heavy gray cloak taken from a slain soldier.
“So, a Witch you are.” Thorfinn made a new attempt to start a conversation with the increasingly sullen young woman.
“You saw me heal Bloodsong’s wounds.”
“That I did. And you are feeling stronger again?”
“The healing spell drains me, but my strength comes back with rest.”
“How long have you been a spell-caster? You seem rather young.”
“I’m nearly sixteen,” Huld answered defensively, “and I have been casting spells all my life. I was practically born working magic, according to my parents. My mother saw a vision of the Goddess Freya just before I was born, proclaiming me a powerful priestess come back to the flesh.”
Thorfinn laughed softly
Huld gave him a scathing glance. “You laugh?”
“In awe and admiration. Was Freya as beautiful as the tales say?”
“I have never seen Her myself, but those who saw Her before my birth claim that the older I’ve grown, the more I’ve come to resemble Her. Perhaps that is why my parents loved me so much, since I looked like the Goddess Freya, I mean.”
Thorfinn was silent for a moment. She lies inventively, he thought. I like her. “Huld, aren’t you worried, just a little, about riding with Bloodsong? Your Freya is not friends with Bloodsong’s Hel, if the old tales are believed.”
“Freya is my Goddess, but Bloodsong is my friend,” Huld instantly replied, surprised to realize it was truly the way she felt. She suddenly wondered if Bloodsong felt friendship for her. At that moment, it seemed to matter very much, which began to irritate her again. She had at first been suspicious of the Hel-warrior, even repulsed. When had her feelings changed? “Besides, Bloodsong was thrown by circumstances not choice into association with Hel.” But does that matter to Freya? she wondered.
“There is something else I have been wondering about, Huld. What happens if Bloodsong does return the War Skull to Hel?”
“You have ears. Guthrun will be set free, as will Bloodsong, if Hel keeps her promise.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant what will Hel do if it gives Her increased power? What if the tale Hel told Bloodsong is a lie, as I suspect? If Hel is as evil as I believe, might She not wreak terror upon us all? Perhaps extend Her icy domain? Cover the sun with clouds and the Earth with ice and snow? Might it mean Fimbulwinter, when summer never comes and the end of the world as we know it nears? And if that happens, how are we going to feel about having helped? Bloodsong wants her daughter back and turns a blind eye to the potential evil she may unleash.”
Huld felt even more irritated. She could see no way around Thorfinn’s questions. What, indeed, was she doing helping an enemy of Freya? “You can always turn back if your conscience bothers you too much,” she finally said, thinking about herself but knowing she would not turn back.
“Where Valgerth rides, so do I,” he answered, “and there’s little doubt but that she will be loyal to Bloodsong to the death. I sometimes wonder if she doesn’t love Bloodsong more than she loves me,” he added with a forced laugh.
“They survived slavery together. I suppose that forges strong bonds.”
“Of course,” he quickly agreed. “Did you know they were friends even before being made arena warriors?”
“No,” Huld begrudgingly admitted. “But I’ve heard the ballad about how Bloodsong became one, how she refused to go to Nidhug’s bed, so was sent to the dungeons for the guards’ pleasures, but killed the first one to touch her with his own sword.”
“For which she was given the choice,” Thorfinn said, “of death by torture or death fighting in the arena.”
“Was Valgerth made an arena warrior to punish her for also spurning Nidhug?”
“No, Huld. She did something even more forbidden. She fell in love with another slave. She’s never told me his name, or hers.”
“What? Hers?”
Thorfinn shrugged. “Love is love.”
She looked at Bloodsong and Valgerth riding side by side, but in a new way. Was it jealousy she now felt? She immediately rejected the notion. Valgerth laughed at something Bloodsong said, reached over, and squeezed Bloodsong’s hand.
“Val would not tell Nidhug her lover’s name,” Thorfinn said, also watching the two friends. “He tortured her, of course, but still she refused to say the name, even while knowing he could and eventually would use his sorcery to find out. Then, when her pain began to bore him, he did use sorcery, brought her lover to the dungeon, and tortured him—”
“Or her—”
Thorfinn nodded, “—or her, to death while Val was forced to watch.”
“I hope Hel gets Her cold hands around his neck and—” she paused. “But had they been seen? Did someone tell on them? How did Nidhug even know? I suppose there were many spies. But if they had been seen, why wasn’t the lover’s name known to the king before he—”
“He plays games to amuse himself, Val says. Who knows why he does anything?”
“But why even care if they loved?”
“Again, who knows? Power, perhaps.”
“Or just plain evil.”
“That, too.”
“I bet Nidhug was nicer before he started using that cursed Skull.”
“Nicer?” Thorfinn shook his head. “Nice enough to betray Hel and keep the Skull for himself? No, he must always have lusted for power. Maybe he was powerless as a child.”
Huld thought of her own childhood and suddenly wondered how much of Nidhug’s motives she might share? She loved Freya, but did she love the power of wielding Witchcraft even more? Norda had warned her to guard against that very thing, many times, but—
“Nidhug punished Val most cruelly of all by using sorcery to make certain she would never be able to bear a child. Then he threw her into the arena slaves’ pens.”
“No children? How horrible! Why do that?”
Thorfinn shrugged. “It amused him, perhaps. Or he assumed she and her lover had dreamed of one day being free to have a child together.”
“Then her lover must have been a man.”
“Probably. But when my father died, I was very small. My father’s sister moved in and helped my mother raise me. They became close. Very close. I grew up surrounded by love.”
“I envy you, then.”
“Yes?”
“I mean,” she quickly went on, “I am glad you had loving people with you, like mine.”
“Yes.”
“So,” Huld frowned, changing the subject back to Valgerth and Bloodsong, “she was thrown in with the arena slaves and Bloodsong was already there?”
“Aye. Bloodsong somehow made her want to go on living. They trained together and planned an escape. Nidhug noticed their friendship and decreed they would next fight each other in the arena. Deeming it better to die fighting soldiers than each other, they put their plan into motion. Other arena warriors and slaves joined them, and a few cut their way to freedom.”
Ahead of them, the two women laughed again. Bloodsong leaned over, momentarily put an arm around her friend’s shoulder, then slapped Valgerth on the back. Both Huld and Thorfinn noticed and glanced at each other. And then they both laughed.
“I’m glad they are together again,” Huld said, and was glad to realize she meant it.
“As am I.”
“How did you and Valgerth meet?”
Thorfinn smiled. “I found her fighting off some rogues who had attacked her, much to their regret, I should add.”
“And you saved her from them?”
“I gutted two of them, but then fell to bad luck. My horse stumbled and threw me. When I regained consciousness, having skillfully fallen so as to hit my head on a rock, Valgerth was bending over me, bloody sword in hand. She could have been a Valkyrie come to take me to Odin’s Valhalla.”
“Or to Freya’s Folkvang.”
“I’d never seen a woman so magnificent, even if she was going to slay me. There are worse ways to die than at the hand of a beautiful woman.” He gave her a wink.
“That’s sick!”
He laughed. “Truly, I wasn’t certain she knew I had joined the battle on her side. But as you can see, she didn’t kill me, and as we rode and talked together, we—” His voice trailed away. His eyes narrowed as he stared at something in the sky.
“Valgerth!” he shouted. “Up there! Look!” he pointed. Bloodsong and Valgerth reined up and turned, then both looked skyward to where he pointed, as did Huld. A dark purple stain was rapidly spreading across the clear expanse of blue sky, boiling into existence far above their heads.
“The Hunt is up!” Valgerth cried. “We saw it once before, during a tempest! We must find cover!”
“There is no cover,” Bloodsong reminded her, sweeping an arm at the featureless rolling hills. “What concerns me is who leads this Hunt.”
“Odin,” Thorfinn cried, “come to stop us from aiding Hel!”
“Freya sometimes leads the Hunt,” Huld shakily said, suddenly afraid her Goddess was coming to punish her as a traitor.
“Not Odin, nor Freya,” Bloodsong countered. An icy wind had begun to rise as the dark stain reached the sun, bringing a twilight gloom to the land. “I sense Nidhug’s sorcery in this. Perhaps he leads this Hunt himself. But twice since leaving Hel’s realm I have summoned shadow-wind demons to aid me. Perhaps they can aid me yet again.”
Bloodsong closed her eyes, concentrated, intoned the incantation she had used twice before. Suddenly she heard Valgerth scream. Her concentration broken, she opened her eyes, reaching for her sword.
“Your face—” Valgerth whispered. “I thought I saw, I thought it became—”
“Pay it no mind!” Huld quickly said. She saw gratitude spring to Bloodsong’s eyes. “The skull-face of Hel appears to others whenever Bloodsong uses Hel’s magic. Being a Witch, I can see it all the time.”
Valgerth nodded. “Forgive me, Freyadis.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Bloodsong growled. “Now everyone be silent or the Hunt will be upon us before I can complete my summoning.”
She closed her eyes again and started over. The wind that had sprung up kept increasing in fury, whipping their hair and cloaks around them. Their horses shied nervously, sensing sorcery. But then a moaning sound joined the fray as an even colder wind began buffeting them from the other direction.
Bloodsong quickly repeated the summoning a second time to call more shadow-wind demons to her cause, then shouted, “Now ride!”
Through the howling, moaning windstorm they galloped at breakneck speed, all eyes searching the purple gloom for some sign of cover or a place to make a fighting stand.
Overhead the sky cried out with sounds of pain as the Hunt was attacked by the shadow-wind demons.
It won’t hold him for long, Bloodsong thought as she furiously tried to think of something more to do. As she rode she tried summoning even more shadow-wind demons, but this time it had no effect.
She turned her concentration back to the mad ride through the spectral gloom, trying to find any other piece of Witch-lore in her mind that might aid them against the Hunt.
An icy rain mixed with sleet began to fall, pounding against the riders, nearly blinding them.
Lightning split the sky, followed immediately by a thunderous roar. Bloodsong, looking skyward during the flash, saw black-clad riders mounted upon skeletal-white Hel-horses battling formless shadows. All the riders bore skullish faces, even the rider in the lead, though he wore gold-trimmed purple robes and wielded no weapons other than his claw-like, upraised hands.
Nidhug! she thought. His face must also become a skull when he works magic, and the black-clad warriors must be the Hel-warriors he has defeated.
An idea flashed through her mind. She screamed, “Rein up! Off your mounts! Leave me to face the Hel-traitor alone!”
“I fight by your side!” Valgerth shouted back.
“Trust me, Val! I may know a way to stop them! Your weapons would be worthless. Off your mounts, all of you. Crouch low to the ground but keep hold your horse’s reins. Do it! Now, curse you!”
“Do as she says!” Thorfinn yelled, dismounting.
Valgerth still hesitated.
“Valgerth!” Thorfinn shouted.
With a curse Valgerth slipped to the ground and crouched low, holding onto her horse’s reins. Huld and Thorfinn got low, too, gripping their own mount’s reins.
Gripping her horse’s sides between her thighs, Bloodsong drew her sword and held it in her right hand. She raised her left fist, aiming the Hel-ring toward Nidhug’s sorcerous attack.
Another flash of lightning showed her that the shadow-wind demons were being driven back. She was not surprised. And with the next flash she saw the skull-faced Hel-warriors streaming earthward toward her.
“Obey your Mistress!” she shouted and held the Hel-ring raised high. “Harm not this servant of Hel!”
The Hunt came on. Lightning revealed they had ignored her command. She repeated the words, then once again.
Through the driving sleet and icy rain came Nidhug’s Hunt of the Damned while Bloodsong stubbornly kept her left fist upraised toward them.
Nidhug was holding back, she saw, letting others do his fighting for him. I can’t let them take me! she told herself. For Guthrun’s sake! They must not win! Then they reached her and all her thoughts were submerged in the struggle to survive.
“For Guthrun!” she screamed as she swung her blade at a black-clad, skeletal warrior. Her blade swept harmlessly through him as, if through smoke. His sword hissed down toward her. But suddenly, as the black blade neared Bloodsong’s upraised fist, it veered to the side.
Writhing in its saddle and screaming raggedly, the skull-faced warrior and skeletal mount hurtled past Bloodsong and vanished ghostlike into the earth.
Another came at her. She didn’t even try to parry his stroke but turned the Hel-ring toward him. He, too, veered away and disappeared screaming and writhing beneath the ground.
Three more came at her with similar results. She was laughing now, shouting taunts to Nidhug, who still hovered out of reach in the storm-racked sky.
Huld, looking up from where she crouched on the ground, saw with a shock that Bloodsong’s whole body had taken on the look of a corpse, glowing with a Helish purple light, as if the black clothing she wore had become transparent and a core of corruption revealed. Huld shuddered and looked away.
Thorfinn also saw the horror Bloodsong had become. With his right fist he instinctively made the Hammer Sign of Thor against the evil before him, hoping Valgerth would not see how Bloodsong now looked.
Suddenly the Hunt’s skull-faced leader screamed a command. Lightning slammed the earth a short distance away, jarring the ground with explosive fury. The Hel-warriors drew back.
Aloft in the cloud-boiling sky, Nidhug’s body began to glow with a pulsing purple fire. A purple ray shot downward toward Bloodsong.
She used the Hel-ring like a sword to parry the ray of fiery purple light. Agony shot through her. She screamed. Her hand felt ablaze, but it did not char. She screamed again and yet again but kept her fist upraised, then began hurling curses skyward at Nidhug through her pain, fighting to stay conscious and to stay upon her now madly rearing horse.
Valgerth looked up, started to scream, caught herself, and did not permit it. Sick with horror, she saw a glowing corpse with wind-whipped cloak mounted where Bloodsong should have been, a corpse screaming curses, upraised fist burning with purple flames as it absorbed an intense ray of light coming from a skull-faced horror in the sky.
Then suddenly it was over. Nidhug and his defeated Hel-warriors streamed southward in the direction of Nastrond.
Valgerth saw the body of her friend return to that of a living woman. Sweet Skadi, what has Freyadis become? she thought, still sick with horror.
Bloodsong swayed in her saddle, exhaustion pulling her down. Her mount had calmed. The pain in her left hand was gone and her hand appeared uninjured.
The sun returned. All was silent, save for faint screaming that drifted up from deep within the Earth.
“They are trapped there now.” Bloodsong motioned to the ground. “But still in agony. Would that I could help them, but—”
She felt consciousness going, began to fall.
Thorfinn sprang to his feet and caught her, fighting repulsion, vividly remembering the death-horror he had just seen her become.
“I will be all right.” Bloodsong moaned, clinging to consciousness.
“Wielding magic is exhausting,” Huld explained. The Witch knelt and placed her hands over Bloodsong’s solar plexus.
How can the Witch bear to be so near her after what she became? Valgerth thought, watching Huld, and was shamed by the thought. She started to go forward and kneel by Bloodsong’s side herself, but she found she could not, kept remembering the horror she had seen, felt a revulsion that would not go away.
Huld began to intone her healing spell.
“No, Huld,” Bloodsong said. She struggled up onto her elbows. “You need not use your energies. I am not injured.”
Huld slowly withdrew her hands, feeling rejected. “You could use some of my energy to get your strength back.”
“Who knows what lies ahead, Huld? I may need your help more later. Conserve your energy until we really need it.”
From beneath the Earth the sound of screaming went on and on.
“Help me back onto my horse,” Bloodsong said, struggling to her feet. “I can rest as we ride. I want to get beyond the sound of those screams,” she added, a deep chill passing through her. If Nidhug should defeat me, she thought, I’ll be screaming like that too. Forever.
“He won’t defeat me,” she said aloud as Thorfinn and Huld helped her onto her horse. “By Guthrun’s soul and my own, he won’t!”
* * *
A sphere of intense purple light suddenly appeared in the Cavern of the Skull. When it faded, Nidhug stood in its place, swaying on his feet, stooped with exhaustion, his energies dangerously depleted from the battle he had lost.
Air wheezed raggedly into and out of his lungs as he staggered toward the slave woman chained to the cavern wall, barely able to keep on his feet. He had never before felt so weak, so aged, so near death. There wasn’t time to summon more slaves for a new youth spell. He would have to steal some strength at once, to last until a new rejuvenation spell could be arranged.
He shuffled closer and closer to the chained slave, reminding himself not to kill her or rob her of too much youth. He still had other plans for her and intended to see them through.
He concentrated the dregs of his willpower, hissed paralyzing words of command.
Jalna fell sideways, unable to move or speak.
Nidhug went painfully onto his knees. He turned her face toward his. He bent nearer, noted the horror in her eyes. His fleshless mouth touched her soft lips. He drew back after only a few moments and noticed with satisfaction that the youth he had stolen from the slave only barely showed. A few strands of silver now glinted in her long dark hair, and a few lines had appeared around her eyes. But she was still young and strong enough to continue suffering a long while.
He struggled to his feet, stronger but still trembling with weakness. He pulled on his gloves, slipped his silk hood back over his head. He spoke a command that returned Jalna’s ability to speak and move.
She hurled curses at him as he walked away into the passageway.
A Hel-ring! he thought, remembering the battle. Bloodsong wore a Hel-ring! Obviously charged with energy from Hel Herself.
The slave had kept that information back from him as well. Indeed, she had much punishment owing. But with Bloodsong’s ring, his chances of recharging the War Skull would be even greater.
First, though, he had to defeat Bloodsong and acquire the ring for himself. After learning about the Hel-ring, however, his strategy for fighting her would be altered. He would not personally risk himself again. The ploys that had worked on other Hel-warriors over the centuries would not work on her. But there was something else that just might.