Chapter 5 #2
Before Freya can answer, one of the vanir, a storm vanir, based on his dull grey scales, launches airborne and arrows toward me.
I veer sharply left, aiming for the closest exit, but he’s much, much faster than me.
He’s about to hit us when Freya, who has been rocking around on my back like some kind of insane squirrel, says, “Here.” She drops one of my blades. The edge of it clips my heel.
“Ow.” I dive for it, and I barely catch the end of the blade in time to twist and jam it upward. It’s all very badly handled and haphazardly executed, but the razor edge of the blade glances across his shoulder, and that sends him just a little outside of his intended path.
Enough that we bobble our way past him.
We’re only a dozen feet from the exit now.
That’s when one of the ice vanir, Brynhild I think, fires off a volley of ice. I’m mere feet from the exit when they should hit me, but just before they can, they disappear.
“What—” As we burst through to the courtyard outside the vanir caverns, I can’t help spluttering. “Why didn’t that kill us?”
“I may be stuck in this useless, powerless form,” Freya says, “but apparently I can still negate ice-attacks.”
Now that we’ve reached the courtyard, I realize how little we thought this through.
Instead of the few vanir waiting at the edge of the entrance to the secret cavern, there are dozens of vanir milling around as we leave the caverns.
Some of them are winging around, some are running drills, and many, many of them are staring at the winged earth child who just burst out of the side exit to the caverns with another earth child on her back, and an angry ice vanir pursuing.
My right arm’s barely strong enough to keep hold on the hilt of the sword I’m carrying.
When a very small, very young moon vanir falls into the airspace beside me, where I’m laboring my way along, wheezing and panting, I realize this is it. We’re about to be killed by the equivalent of the dormouse of the vanir.
“Just do it,” I shout. “If you’re going to attack, just attack already.”
The tiny, nearly black vanir with gleaming scales tilts her small head. You smell. . .strange. Familiar. Are you Freja’s bonded?
“You know Freja?”
The vanir bobs her head. “She saved me once, and I’ve been worried about her. When her dad went after her earlier. . .”
Brynhild couldn’t fit through the small side exit, but she’s clearly looping around, because I hear her howl from the main exit, and other vanir are starting toward us. We don’t have time to chitchat.
I have an idea.
A crazy idea.
“Freja’s on my back right now. I can’t explain how that’s the case right now, but I can later. This is your chance to repay her by saving our lives.”
That’s Freja? The earth child? She looks shocked, but she’s not calling me a liar outright.
I wait for Freja to say something. Hello? Say anything.
Like what? Freya asks. Tell her Jore changed me into this? She snorts. She’ll think we’re lying or insane.
Maybe, I don’t know, tell little Tiny Bits here that you remember saving her. Mention where you were when you did. Anything!
Freya doesn’t make a peep.
Aaaand, we’re doomed.
Okay, I’ll do it. The teensy little vanir starts to vibrate, which I’ve never seen up close, and then as her magic engages, the whole world becomes a little hazy. I’ve heard about this, but I’ve never experienced it myself.
It’s amazing.
For all intents and purposes, we just disappear to everyone but Tiny Bits.
So where are we going, exactly?
I hadn’t really thought past the escape part. I just didn’t want Bjorn to kill us, but now. . .
We’re going to the aesir, Freya says. Because the vanir shouldn’t be forcing bonds on the earth children as we have been.
It really is you, Little Bits says. Then you’ll understand when I say I really need to make one quick stop before we depart.
“Where?” I hate how panicked I sound, but even through the hazy place the world has become, I can see vanir answering Bjorn’s calls in the courtyard we just flew out of. “Because, I’m guessing the other vanir like you have ways of seeing us.”
They do, but no one would have any reason to suspect I’d help you. The only one who might have even seen us disappear was Brynhild, and I waited until we went behind a cloud to engage the dispersal.
“Another problem is that I’m slow,” I say. “Like, really, really slow. You may not have noticed, but it’s going to take us forever to get out of here. Like fleeing a racehorse in a cart.”
“Or on foot,” Freya mutters. “If you were crippled.”
I glare.
I’d offer to carry you, Little Bits says. But the stop I’m making is to pick up my bonded, and I’m probably not strong enough to carry all three of you.
Of course she needs to take her own bonded. I hope hers doesn’t hate her. “Then we should hurry.”
She waits patiently while I fly pathetically slowly behind her to her tiny, remote cave entrance on the very far side of the vanir complex.
When we land on the lip, however, her small, muscular earth child attacks, spear in hand.
I watch, dumbfounded, as the spear arcs toward the tiny moon vanir’s frame, wondering how he can see her.
Just as I think she’s a goner, which means we are too, she shifts and the spear sails out past her and down, down, down. That was sloppy. Now you’ll have to make a new spear. I bet that broke on the rocks below. She makes an actual tsking sound.
“I did what you said,” the guy says, grimacing. “The wards warned me someone was coming, and I. . .”
When she drops her shield, his eyes widen. “Who are—what’s—why are they here? And who are they?”
This winged earth child is Freja’s bonded, and the other one is Freja.
Actually, it’s Freya now.
We have a lot to catch them up on, but thanks to the speed of my flight, or the lack thereof, we’ll have plenty of time to do it.
Now I’ll be praying to Jore that once they know the truth, they won’t turn around and betray us.
Because by the time we leave, the vanir are everywhere, and they’re definitely looking for us.
My speed actually works in our favor.
As we pass by the various vanir out on patrol, they’re all looking ahead, expecting Freja to have flown us far and fast once we managed to sneak out. No one’s expecting us to bob along like a tiny boat on a river.