She hurled her knife with a desperate prayer in her heart and a broken scream on her lips. “NO!”
There must have been something different in that last shout, something ragged and raw and vicious that startled the youth, because he hesitated in mid-throw to look back over his shoulder. He hesitated, and Freya’s knife ripped into his thigh. Leif snapped backwards with a wordless cry, slamming down onto the foam-kissed stones, twisting and shuddering.
Freya leapt the last few steps and crashed down on top of him, crushing his wrist and fingers in her two hands, sinking her jagged nails into his flesh. “Give it to me,” she gasped, struggling to catch her breath. “Give it to me!”
“No!” He twisted and rocked and kicked beneath her, but without a second arm to grapple with her, he had no leverage to push her off or get control over the muddy nest in his hand.
Freya bore down on his neck with her elbow as she kept both hands digging deeper and tighter in his arm and hand and fingers until dark beads of blood glimmered on his pale skin and trickled down over her nails.
Almost.
His fingers cracked open, shaking.
Almost.
Leif shrieked and kicked with both legs, rolling both of them together in a vicious tangle into the cold sea foam, and he smashed his hand down on the wet stones. The mud ball burst apart and Freya saw the dark splatter of tiny legs and wings glistening in the starlight.
“No!” She yanked his arm back up to stare at the dead bloodflies with every frayed nerve in her body screaming out, It’s isn’t fair!
But a sharp buzzing whine in her ear made her jerk to the side, almost rolling off her prey. And then something bit her bare hand. And something bit her neck. And her ear.
Freya leapt up and ran back from the water’s edge, trying to swat away the flies without smashing them.
Damn, that stings!
Leif jerked from side to side before getting his feet under him and staggering up and away from the smashed nest. He limped and hopped with Freya’s bone knife still hanging from the gash in his thigh as he tried to shield his head and swat away the flies. Freya grabbed a damp tarp from a pile of fishing tackle, waved it through the air once to fan away the flies, and then threw the tarp over Leif as he stumbled to his knees. She also reached down under the tarp and yanked her knife out of his leg, and was rewarded with a pitiful yelp and moan.
A stiff breeze blew in off the bay and the buzzing of the flies faded into the distance, and she hoped that they were moving back toward the center of the city, and not scattering out to sea to die.
When she was sure they were gone, she pulled the tarp off of Leif to reveal the shivering, coughing, bleeding wreckage. The blood shone brightly on his leg, and his arm was shaking as he tried to hold himself up with it.
After a moment he leaned back and looked at her. “Am I supposed to thank you?”
Freya glanced at the tarp and tossed it aside. “I didn’t do it to help you. I did it to save the bloodflies. I didn’t run all this way just to watch you swat them to death.”
She took a long, deep breath and exhaled slowly. The burning in her lungs was gone and the throbbing in her legs and back were fading quickly. She was still bone tired, but the edge was gone. She didn’t feel as raw and miserable as before. She took another breath.
The sea air can do wonders, I suppose.
Freya leaned back against the wall of the house behind her and took another long breath. “Well, I suppose I can either kill you now, or I’ll have to drag you back to the castle, don’t I?”
Frowning, she pushed off the wall and walked over to Leif, but the young man took a long steady breath and rose to his feet. He was breathing easy now, his whole body relaxed. Even the cut on his leg seemed to be bleeding less.
Leif blinked and looked her in the eye. “That damned fool was telling the truth, wasn’t he? He really did make a cure, didn’t he?”
“A vaccine.”
“Whatever,” Leif snapped. “The point is, it works. Look at me. Look at you. You were dead on your feet a moment ago, and I could barely sit up. And now we’re both fine, just fine.”
Freya looked over at the smashed lump of the nest and the flies that hadn’t survived. “Why’d you take it? Why try to destroy it?” Another fly nipped at her neck, and she grimaced, straining to keep herself from slapping at the pain.
“I thought it was more of the ones that bit Ivar, the ones that brought the plague.”
Freya nodded. “You thought Omar wanted revenge against you and Skadi?”
“Of course! Who wouldn’t?” Leif blew out a long breath and stood up a bit straighter. There was no trace of pain or fatigue on his face now. His expression was one of pure contempt and cold steel. “I split the man’s chest with my own sword. I saw him fall. He should be dead. Maybe southerners keep their hearts on the other side. Who knows? But what sort of fool would I be to believe that he’d been out in that cave for five years trying to cure the plague and not dreaming of killing me?”
“A trusting fool,” Freya said quietly. “Otherwise known as a good man.”
Leif chuckled. “Well, I suppose that isn’t me.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Don’t be so smug. I’ve known good men. Honorable men. Valiant men,” Leif said. “And I watched them die horrible deaths on the battlefield and in blood feuds, ever since I was a boy. Oh sure, they’re remembered as heroes. They’re remembered in songs. They’re remembered by their sons. But they’re dead all the same. And as much as I enjoy the women and the songs and the feasts, I enjoy being alive even more.”
“No one wants to die,” she said. Her knife was still in her hand, still dripping with his dark blood.
“No, but that’s not the fear anymore, is it?” He took a few casual steps toward the water. “In this war you might die, maybe even torn to pieces and eaten while you’re still alive. Or you might be bitten. Infected. Forced to watch as you turn into one of them, into a mindless beast, listening to your bones crack and your skin stretch and your hair bristle as you slowly go insane.” He swallowed loudly.
“It’s a hell of thing to happen to a person,” she said. “A hell of a thing to live in fear of for five years.”
“Hell is right.”
She wiped her knife carefully on the sodden tarp beside her. “You threw me off that wall. Threw me down to die.”
“Of course. You did the impossible, you killed Fenrir,” he said with a cocksure grin. “I couldn’t have you replacing me, could I? Besides, real heroes always die. I was just ensuring that you got the very best songs written for you.”
“You’re a murderer.”
“I’m a soldier. I follow orders.” He looked her squarely in the eyes and for a moment she thought she saw something more than just arrogance and vicious pride in them, but only for a moment. “We saw the bloodflies on Ivar. We saw him fall. And we saw him climb back up and turn into that demon thing, watched him tear three men to pieces not ten paces from us. I had the blood and entrails of a man sprayed all across me.” He gestured down the length of his body. “The stench of blood and shit in my nostrils, the innards of a man that no person should ever see. Not just dead, not just cut, but shattered and shredded. No one should ever know what a man looks like burst inside-out. It’s something you can never unsee, never forget.”
“But Ivar ran away.”
“And Skadi told me to kill everyone. No survivors, no witnesses,” he said. “I didn’t argue. I didn’t question. I didn’t think. I just killed them, quickly and cleanly. They were better deaths than what any reaver would have given them.”
“You murdered those men.”
“I served my queen!” he roared. “I was her bodyguard, her servant, her sword. I didn’t take my place in the royal castle by defying commands. When I was born, I was nothing and no one, and I knew from the first day I was old enough to think for myself that I would end up a rotting old fisherman or a corpse unless I became something more, something better.” He pounded his fist on his chest again and again. “And I did! I was the great swordsman in the city, the greatest duelist, the greatest warrior. I won those fights with my strength and my steel. That was mine! And I won my place in the castle at the queen’s side. It was mine! I earned it!”