Chapter 47
The Western Woods
Hekla pulled cobwebs from her grimy hair and grimaced.
She needed a bath. Needed a horn of ale.
Needed the comfort of a warm, feathered bed.
Instead there was only more grayish trees, more brittle needles crunching underfoot, more red-eyed ravens, trailing them through the dreary forest, and more tension in her stomach as Hekla worried about their timing.
Their timeline to reach the Forest Maiden’s other half had been tight to start with.
But then they’d encountered an impassible ravine, and had wasted a day skirting around it.
Kritka claimed they were now back on track, but it did little to loosen the knots in Hekla’s stomach.
She’d ordered their crew to walk through the night.
Had allowed them only a few scant hours of rest. They had a quarter moon left before the battle, and had not yet reached the other fragment of the Forest Maiden.
Hekla had nearly wept tears of relief when the Maiden predicted they would reach her second grove today.
They walked at a punishing pace through the dead woods, a stream burbling peacefully nearby.
Perched on Hekla’s shoulder, Kritka nibbled on a pilfered strip of smoked elk, ever dedicated to bulking up for the winter.
So slow you two-leggeds are, the squirrel said inside her mind.
“You’re awfully whiny for someone who’s been lounging on my shoulder,” Hekla grumbled aloud. The exertion of the past days had made her phantom limb ache worse than ever, and it put her increasingly on edge.
It is not much farther, chittered Kritka, eyeing a fresh cobweb strung from a skeletal tree. We must keep moving. I sense strangeness about these parts.
Hekla cringed at the cobweb, then whirled at a disturbance to her right.
A pair of Turned ravens regarded her from a dead tree, a third one landing a few branches above them.
Hekla craned upward, gazing at the overcast skies through the clawing branches.
A dozen or more Turned ravens flew above, sending shivers down her spine.
Yet on they walked at this relentless pace. It was another two hours before Kritka drew them to a halt. He leaped from Hekla’s shoulder and bounded down the trail.
Here! the squirrel chittered. The grove is just through there!
A Turned raven swooped down at Kritka, jagged talons barely missing the squirrel as it darted back to Hekla.
As the squirrel climbed her like a tree—a sensation she’d never get used to—another raven swooped down, and then another.
Suddenly dozens of Turned ravens descended from above, settling on dead trees surrounding the path.
“That’s not alarming,” mumbled Eyvind, turning in a wide circle. Glowing red eyes watched on, and if Hekla hadn’t thought the woods eerie enough before, now she certainly did.
“Blades,” Hekla commanded, unsheathing her sword while eyeing the ravens. But the birds merely watched as their group approached the Forest Maiden’s grove.
“Do you hear that?” Thrand asked, casting a nervous look over his shoulder.
Hekla’s ears strained, but all she heard was the increasingly loud rush of the stream beside them—was there a waterfall nearby?
“I cannot hear it,” said Hekla.
“There it is again!” exclaimed Thrand. “It’s like a clackclackclack.”
Kritka lifted his face from where it was buried in Hekla’s neck and released a flurry of squirrel nonsense.
Thrand nodded vehemently at the chittering sound. “Aye, small warrior.”
Then Hekla saw it. Prickles rushed down her spine as she stared in disbelief. A gleaming silken web stretched across the path, blocking their way into the grove.
And at last she heard what Thrand had—a rapid series of clicks that could belong to none other than the enormous wolfspider who called himself Gjalla.
The Turned ravens surrounding them began to caw.
“Shield wall!” Hekla shrieked, but it was too late. Gjalla charged out of the woods and lunged at the rear guard. Massive, gleaming fangs impaled the warrior as though he was not wearing the finest armor.
Kritka leaped from her shoulder and cocked his head to the side. Magic shuddered through the air, the scent of wet dog filling her senses. The squirrel’s limbs elongated, his russet fur shifting to gray. And where a moment ago a squirrel had been was now a grimwolf the size of a small horse.
Eyvind was suddenly by her side, Gunnar on the other, and Hekla forgot all about avoiding them.
Their group formed a loose shield wall, protecting them from an overhead attack.
Hekla scrambled to form a plan. They were roughly twenty warriors against the spider, but they’d walked right into his trap.
Trees were tightly packed on either side of the trail, and the beast of a spider obstructed the path they’d been traveling.
She glanced over her shoulder, where retreat was blocked by the thick, sticky web.
“Can you blast that web away?” Hekla asked Eyvind from the corner of her mouth.
“Not without risking the Forest Maiden’s tree beyond it,” he shot back.
Gjalla quickly flung the rearguard warrior aside, then advanced. With the spider’s missing forelegs, the beast’s gait was lumbering.
Gjalla has waited many days for you to come, chittered the spider inside Hekla’s mind. Soon you will be trussed in our web, waiting for our mother to Turn you. She wants you in her army, clawed mortal. The spider clicked disapprovingly. She thinks your strength would be useful to her cause.
“I’d rather die than be used as the leech’s doll,” muttered Hekla.
Kritka’s lips pulled back in a savage snarl, and Hekla urged him mentally to hold back for now. “We must target the underbelly,” she told their group quietly.
“It is too dangerous,” Eyvind replied.
Of course it was dangerous—they’d have to get directly beneath the spider. But what else could they do?
Their conversation was cut short as the spider let out an earsplitting shriek and jabbed forward.
A fang struck Hekla’s shield with such force that she stumbled back, fortified, thankfully, by the warriors behind her.
But her shield had cracked clean through, and Gjalla’s other fang had struck another of Eyvind’s warriors.
Kritka shrieked, lunging at the spider’s fang, but the creature was too quick.
With a gleeful chitter, Gjalla hefted the warrior into the air.
Blood spattered down on the shield wall as the man screamed in anguish, wriggling to get free.
The ravens cawed as horror and revulsion churned in Hekla’s stomach, her mind splintering much like her shield. Gjalla flung the warrior at their group with tremendous force, driving men to their knees as the bones of the dying warrior crunched.
Protect the Forest Maiden, Hekla ordered Kritka, and try to rid us of that web. She was relieved when the grimwolf obeyed without protest.
Cries rose up as Gjalla surged down, fangs scrabbling against shields while the force of the spider crushed them. Hekla frantically searched for a plan, but they were trapped between the spider and his web; she noticed only the crash of water from what had to be a nearby waterfall.
A waterfall.
Hekla focused with all her might, spinning a plan together. They could not flee into the forest without breaking their shield wall, yet they needed a diversion. Could she? No. It was a ridiculous, dangerous idea.
But Gjalla fell upon their huddle again, fangs piercing through another wooden shield and into a warrior’s chest. Gunnar tried to capitalize on this moment of distraction, slamming his sword between the shields.
Yet his blade connected with tough carapace, and Gjalla yanked the other warrior free from their group.
They were trapped on this trail in shield wall formation. Were being picked off, one by one. This could not continue. She could not let Gjalla reach the Forest Maiden. Hekla took a deep breath, then spoke to Kritka in her mind.
Stay with your mistress and help Thrand perform the ritual to free her other half. I will find you again when I can.
You must not— Kritka replied in her mind. But Hekla was already drawing a deep breath. Readying to launch herself into the woods—
The cries of Turned ravens left Hekla momentarily stunned. Eyvind, evidently having the same idea as Hekla, had broken off from their shield wall and now rushed into the woods. The spider’s fangs gnashed together as Eyvind paused. Turned. Waved his sword about.
“What is he doing?” demanded Thrand Long Sword.
“Trying to lure it away,” Hekla said, her heart in her throat.
Gjalla took one step off the trail, his gleaming red eyes darting from Eyvind to the huddle of warriors. But as Eyvind shouted at the spider, Gjalla’s choice was made. The enormous spider crashed through the underbrush in pursuit of Eyvind. For a moment, Hekla simply stared. And then, she moved.
Going after him wasn’t a question in her mind. It was instinct. It was fate.
“Cut through the web!” she shouted at Gunnar, launching into the brush. “And whatever else happens, protect the Forest Maiden!”
Grip tightening on her sword, Hekla didn’t wait for Gunnar’s inevitable protest. She moved with as much stealth as she could through the underbrush, never taking her eyes off Hakonsson.
They’d reached the stream, Eyvind now waist-deep.
Gjalla launched into the waters and threw himself at Eyvind with a loud, screech that sent goosebumps up Hekla’s arms.
As Gjalla’s lethal fangs stabbed into the frothing, swirling waters, Eyvind vanished from view. Horror built in Hekla’s chest as the spider jabbed downward again and again. A scream tore from her throat as she leaped between dead bracken and dried moss, sword raised in hand.
Eyvind’s head broke the surface of the waters just downstream of the spider, but Gjalla surged at him with impossible speed, chitinous fangs clashing against Eyvind’s steel blade.
But the current was too strong, the river rocks too slick, and Eyvind’s feet slipped out from under him.
His head vanished beneath the seething waters once more, and again Gjalla became a flurry of limbs and fangs.
The water bloomed red, and Hekla was sprinting—was screaming—but Gjalla was relentless in his assault on Eyvind.
There was no time to think. No time for revulsion or fear to grip her.
Hekla threw herself from the stream’s edge onto the spider’s turned back.
Momentum sent her careening along Gjalla’s tough, slick thorax, and just before she tumbled off the other side, Hekla’s hands folded around a thatch of coarse hairs.
Gjalla reared back with an ear-piercing shriek that rattled Hekla’s skull. But she did not relent—she held on tight as the spider thrashed about. And while no one would call her pious, in that moment she prayed to the Sun God Himself.
“Sunnvald, keep Eyvind bloody Hakonsson safe,” she gritted out. “So I can wring his neck myself.” Hekla unsheathed her prosthetic’s claws and slammed them through the spider’s thick carapace. With her grip more sure, she climbed toward the spider’s wriggling feelers.
Gjalla writhed about, trying to knock Hekla free from his back, but her claws held firm.
Slowly, she climbed higher on the spider’s thorax.
At last, she reached the top. Her gaze slid from Gjalla’s thrashing feelers to the glowing red eyes just beyond.
With the claws of her right hand embedded in the spider’s thick cuticle, she unsheathed her hevrít with her left, then brought it down over and over—as many times as she could manage before Gjalla finally knocked her free.
Hekla flew through the air, then plunged into the frigid waters, her head colliding with a rock and knocking her momentarily senseless.
But as Gjalla’s fangs struck through the waters and clipped the edge of her thigh, Hekla’s wits surged back. Pain speared from her leg as she floundered on slick river stones, her gaze searching frantically for Eyvind all the while.
Hekla’s heart gave a panicked lurch as she saw him just downstream—floating face down.
“Eyvind—” Her shout quickly turned to a gargle as she dove underwater to avoid Gjalla’s lashing fangs.
Bubbles gushed from her nose as she kicked and clawed her way along the riverbed.
Her lungs ached, her thigh throbbing as though it had a heartbeat, yet her only thought was of Eyvind—she had to get to him.
When her chest felt as though it might burst, she finally broke the water’s surface, gasping and choking. Hekla cried out as she saw Eyvind, mere paces away. Desperately, she crashed through the waters and flipped him onto his back. Her gaze roamed over his face for any sign of life.
But a shadow crossed the sun, and Hekla was dimly aware that the crash of the waterfall was now near deafening. She looped a loose arm around Eyvind’s neck, holding him face up, then gazed up at the wolfspider. Gjalla chittered angrily, black blood seeping from at least half his eyes.
You foul, bothersome creature, the monster screeched. Gjalla does not care that Mother wants to keep you. We will relish your death.
“Unfortunately, you wretched beast,” Hekla shouted, barely able to hear her own voice above the crashing water, “you’ll have to wait for another day.”
Her hold on Eyvind tightened as the stream beneath her vanished. And then they plunged over the waterfall’s edge.