Chapter 6 Freya
Tora and I struggled through the surf toward shore and my body trembled with exhaustion when my feet finally struck sand. The battle had shifted to the village, and the beach was now empty of warriors. The thralls who’d survived all knelt unmoving in the sand, hooded heads lowered. The strangeness of their behavior might have held my attention if it hadn’t been drawn to Steinunn and Volund, who knelt on the beach next to Skade.
The huntress was retching blood. Her right arm hung limp, the awkward angle suggesting it was broken.
Steinunn eyed me nervously as Tora and I stumbled out of the water. “The drakkar struck Skade when it overturned,” she said. “She can’t fight.”
“Yes, I can.” Skade spat more blood, then slowly climbed to her feet. In her hand was her glowing green arrow with its murderously sharp tip.
“Get down, you idiot,” Volund snapped. “Half your ribs are cracked.”
Skade only pushed wet strands of red hair off her face. “I’m fine. I can fight.”
The idea of it would have been laughable if not for the desperate fear in the woman’s eyes as she stared at the flashes of combat visible through the trees. I knew the desire to push past the limits of my body to war against those trying to harm me and mine.
Tora appeared less moved, for she only shook her head. “I’ll go, Skade. You stay with Freya.”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” Skade hissed. “I can fight.”
The child of Thor only gave the huntress a small shove backward. “You know how Harald feels about foolish choices, Skade. You might survive the fight only to wish you had not. Take cover in the trees until this is over.”
Skade’s already pale face blanched colorless and she gave a tight nod. “Fine. Go. Volund, help me now so that I might join them.”
Tora broke into a sprint up the beach to the village, and it was all I could do not to follow her. Battle sang in my blood, the clash of steel coming from just out of sight calling my name. Yet I could not move.
Harald’s voice filled my head: Will you fight for me to protect the village?
My heart stuttered and unease rose in my chest because my feet felt fixed to the sand.
I vow to serve no man not of this blood. I silently repeated the oath I’d sworn to Ylva. Words bound by blood magic. My teeth clenched together so hard they risked breaking. To fight would be to serve Harald, and Ylva’s magic kept me from doing that.
Steinunn and Volund were helping Skade up the beach to the tree line to take cover. I took a deep breath, worried that my oath would anchor me in place until the battle was finished, but my feet moved. I stooped to retrieve a fallen shield, as well as a small axe. Neither of the trio ahead of me made any move to prevent me from arming myself, though Steinunn kept casting glances over her shoulder as though convinced I’d put the axe between her shoulders.
I bared my teeth; she might have stabbed me in the back, but I was not such a coward as to do the same.
You could run.
The thought reared in my head, tempting me with its logic. Neither the skald nor the healer had the capacity to stop me, and with her arm broken, Skade wouldn’t be able to draw her bow. Wouldn’t be able to pursue me at all given she could barely walk. Nordeland was a wild place, which meant a person could get lost in it and never be found.
If I disappeared into the wilderness to live in solitude, I wouldn’t be able to curse anyone. Would be hidden from all of the men desperate to use me to gain power.
But running meant never speaking to Saga and never learning the full truth of what she’d seen. Meant losing the only opportunity I had to learn more about the magic gifted to me by Hel with her one drop of blood.
Was that knowledge worth my freedom? Was I an idiot not to take this chance?
My steps faltered, the distance between me and the trio growing without their noticing.
Run.
My body tensed, ready to burst into a sprint. Only for my eyes to catch sight of the familiar glow of Bjorn’s axe in the distance. Fighting on Nordeland’s behalf, yet my bitterness over that fact was tempered by the bodies on the beach. Fishermen who’d died so that raiders might take the few meager possessions they had. Through the trees, I could now see the cowering row of bound prisoners the Islunders intended to take as thralls. Mostly young women. Nordelanders, and yet if not for the magic in my veins, I’d be no different than they were. The wife of a fisherman trying to survive in a harsh world.
Run.
I had no supplies. No knowledge of the land. And with Skade at Harald’s disposal, the chances of being hunted down would be high. A failed escape might mean Harald choosing to have me bound where I currently walked free, making another attempt a far greater challenge.
Better to bide my time.
Better to learn what I could.
Better to…
My thoughts trailed off as a group of warriors burst from the trees, their elaborate helms and yellow-painted shields telling me that they were Islunders. They did not see us because their focus was on their ships. With them, they dragged a group of crying children.
My stomach dropped.
Children were taught at a young age to take the babies and run into the woods to hide during a raid. We were also taught not to clump together. Yet I remembered how fear drove us to one another, clutching hands and holding our breath in our hiding spots. This group had been found.
“No!” Skade stumbled past me only to fall to her knees, blood running down her chin. She staggered upright only to fall again, and then tried to crawl toward the children, glowing arrow clutched in her hand.
Harald had ordered me to protect the village for him. He’d said nothing about defending children on the beach. If Skade reacted, I could not have said, for I was already running.
“Hlin,” I snarled, “lend me your strength.”
Magic exploded over my shield and obscured the Islund colors painted on the wood with its glow. The Islunders were shouting at Harald’s thralls to aid them, to get in the drakkar, but none moved. With their black hoods covering most of their faces—and their expressions—they seemed like statues set in the sand.
I made it halfway down the beach before the warriors heard my steps and turned, but a few strides later, I was on them. The axe was not my weapon of choice, but by the gods I’d chopped enough wood in my life to know how to swing one.
Screaming, I dodged around one warrior and slammed the small axe down on another’s shoulder. Blood sprayed me in the face as I wrenched it out, whirling to take the impact of the first warrior’s sword upon my shield. My magic smashed it away, and as he staggered, I fell upon him and hacked like a woman possessed.
“Behind you!” Skade shouted, and I rolled. An axe came down on my shield, flinging the female warrior to one side. I stumbled to my feet and barely managed to block a blow from another. The children screamed and clung to one another, and rage burned in my chest that they had to experience this. Had to suffer because those in power always wanted more more more with no care for what it cost others.
With a shriek, I took off a warrior’s leg at the knee, my feet sliding in sand made slimy by gore. Yet beyond, more Islunders were fleeing the carnage in the village. Retreating to live and fight another day, and they’d take the children fromme.
You can stop them, Hel whispered in my head. Condemn these slavers of children to my keeping.
No. My stomach twisted even as I slammed my shield into the face of a warrior, finally getting between the Islunders and the children. But there were too many of them.
I could not stop them all.
They’d kill me and take the children.
Curse them, Freya, Hel whispered. Give these wicked men to me and save these children.
“Get back,” I screamed at the warriors, the sourness of desperation rising in my chest. “You leave them be!”
The Islunders circled warily, glancing toward the village and then back to me. Afraid Bjorn and Tora would pursue, but unable to let go of the profit they’d make off these children without a fight.
“Back away, Skalander,” one of them snarled, a large man with a helm carved like the maw of a bear. “This is not your fight.”
“I am the daughter of Hlin.” I lifted my shield. “This fight is in my blood.”
“So be it.” The bear helm glittered as he charged, a powerful down strike aimed at my shield.
Which he reversed at the last moment.
He sliced at my thighs instead, and though I fell back, the tip of his blade still opened a shallow wound. I landed on my arse and barely managed to shove myself out of range as his blade fell. He cut at me again, then withdrew when I raised my shield and circled for a better angle. Like he had trained to fight against someone with Hlin’s magic.
“Get them on the ship!” he bellowed. “This one is mine!”
A howl of fury tore from me as they grabbed the crying children and hurled them into the ship. Pushed the vessel into deeper water while I fought to get around the man in the bear helm.
“Freya!”
Bjorn’s distant shout reached my ears, but he wasn’t close enough to help. Wasn’t close enough to stop the Islunders as they readied to row.
I stumbled as Bear Helm attacked without mercy, avoiding my shield and pulling back to keep from striking it even as he wore me down.
“You fight well,” he said between panted breaths. “We will take you with us, if you wish. Our last shield maiden went to Valhalla many seasons ago.”
“I want nothing to do with slavers!”
He gestured to the still-kneeling thralls. “Says the woman fighting for Harald of Nordeland.” He abruptly backed away and waded into the waves.
His fellows caught hold of his arms and lifted him. Fury and fear boiling in my blood, I threw my axe, but it only glanced off the pauldron on his shoulder to fall in the water. He turned to look at me and he laughed. “Come to Islund if you change your mind, Shield Maiden.”
The Islunders began to row, the drakkar slipping over the waves as Bjorn and Tora slid to a stop next to me. Harald arrived next, face splattered in blood as he watched his young subjects stolen away. “Tora,” he asked softly. “Can you stop them?”
“Not without risking the children.” She pushed bloodied hair off her face. “What would you have me do?”
Harald waded into the water, waves rising to his thighs as his gaze went from the drakkar smoldering from a lightning strike to the two overturned vessels floating on the waves amidst corpses of the fallen. No time to right them and pursue, for the Islunders would soon be out of sight. Villagers were stumbling down the beach and screaming for the children who’d been taken. Begging for someone, anyone, to help them. Harald’s shoulders slumped and he said nothing.
“What would you have me do?” Tora’s voice was frantic. “My king, I must act now if you wish them sunk. The children who survive might swim well enough to reach shore.”
Or be swept away by the current to drown.
Nordeland’s king remained silent, and I fell to my knees. Blood splatter dripped down my face, the taste of it not half so awful as that of the failure I felt, because this was not right. Not right that these children should be stolen from their families for a life of servitude. A life destined to be short and miserable. “Hel, grant me your power.”
Though part of me screamed warning, though Bjorn shouted, “Freya, no!,” it was not enough to silence the words that rose to my lips. “I curse you.”
The ground shuddered as power flooded my veins, driving me to my feet. “I curse every warrior on your ship,” I screamed at Bear Helm, whose smile had fallen away beneath the fangs of his helmet. “You will never see Valhalla, for Hel now claims your souls!”
The waves churned and roots exploded from the depths. Water surged up the beach so that I was drenched to the hip. The roots reached like the tentacles of a great sea monster, snatching up the screaming Islunders and yanking them under the water one by one, but leaving the children untouched. Bear Helm fought the hardest and the longest, wrenching the roots off his body until one wrapped around his waist and dragged him under.
As one, the lifeless bodies, their souls now in Helheim, floated to the surface. It was over.
The only sound to break the silence was the roar of the sea and the weeping of the children in the listing boat. Every breath I took brought the stink of gore, and rivulets of blood trickled down the sand to stain the waves pink as they rolled in and out.
Finally, Harald spoke. “Fetch the children back.”
I sat down heavily in the sand.
A hand closed on my shoulder, and even before I turned my head, I knew it was Bjorn. His face was covered with blood and bits of ash. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
Logically, I knew he was right. My thighs stung from the slice across them and blood dripped down my legs. Yet the pain felt distant. “Why did you try to stop me?”
He dropped to his knees next to me. In a voice so low that only I could hear, he said, “Freya, you just won a battle with a few words.”
A tremor ran through me, because this was but a taste of the future that stretched out before me. Bodies everywhere and their souls bound to my godly mother’s domain.
I clambered to my feet and strode down the beach, walking until there were no more bodies. Until there was no more blood and each breath brought nothing to my nose but the scent of the sea. Then I fell to my knees and pressed my forehead to the clean wet sand.
Weep for what you have done, I screamed at myself. Weep for what you are!
But no tears would come.