Freya the Huntress (Europa #2: A Dark Fantasy) Read Online Free PDF Page A

a spear and two knives all at once?”
    “I wanted to be sure.”
    “Fair enough.”
    A beast snarled, a girl screamed, and an elk snorted.
    Freya bolted forward half a step ahead of Erik and she rounded the corner of the tower just in time to see a third reaver leaping down from the top of a cottage wall to land on Arfast’s shaggy back. Erik’s spear flew just as Arfast stumbled, and he missed his mark. Freya saw the claws shoved into her mount’s sides, the dark blood just beginning to trickle down through the elk’s dirty white hair.
    She leveled her spear as she ran and thrust the blade up at the reaver, but the creature leapt clear, shoving Arfast down and the elk fell to the ground. The reaver hurled itself over Freya’s head and as she turned to look over her shoulder, she slipped in the mud, dropping to her knee.
    The beast crashed down onto Erik, planting its feet on his thighs and slashing both clawed hands at his face. Erik raised his fists and blocked both claws as he staggered back under the reaver’s weight, and then he fell flat on the ground with the beast hunched on his chest. The monster’s head slammed down on the man’s throat.
    “ERIK!” Freya felt her blood boiling and her skin burning as she scrambled to her feet and dashed back to his side. She hurled herself at the creature’s belly, planting both of her knives between its ribs and letting her own weight wrench the beast off of her husband and they all crashed down into the mud together. Freya rose up on her knees, her knife raised in her hand to cut the reaver’s throat.
    And she saw a hand.
    Erik’s hand, his red and white fingers straining at the beast’s neck, holding the fangs at bay as he crushed its windpipe. She leaned over the hairy, misshapen head and saw Erik grinning at her.
    He winked and mouthed the words, “It’s over. Dead.”
    The reaver’s claws were sunk deep into the man’s shoulders, but its foul maw was still some distance from his face. And when he took his hands away from its throat, the reaver’s head fell limp to one side. Freya gently pulled the claws from her husband’s flesh, wincing at the silent expressions of pain on his face. But after a moment, he sat up and heaved an easy breath and nodded.
    “I’m all right,” he signed.
    He’s all right.
    She sat down on his lap, her calloused hands on his dirty cheeks, staring into his bright blue eyes. His lips parted and Freya kissed him, slipping her tongue deep into his mouth, feeling the soft wet warmth of his living body, tasting his breath and sweat and adrenaline and fear and joy. He gripped her waist tightly for a moment, and then let her go and they stood up together.
    She looked at his bloody shoulders. “Can you climb back up?”
    He grimaced and signed, “I’d rather not.”
    So she sat with him on a broken stone wall and bandaged his wounds while Wren watched them from the open window. Arfast stood by the tower’s base, his eyes wide, his breathing swift and ragged. As Freya sat and listened to the tiny waves of the lake lapping at the black stones at the edge of the village, Wren disappeared from the window, but she stuck her head out a moment later and called down, “Freya! Come quick!”
    Erik nodded and picked up his spear with only a slight grunt, so Freya jogged to the knotted rope and climbed back up to the tower window. Inside she squinted at the shadowy figures of the vala and her apprentice crouched by Katja’s head.
    “What’s happening?” the huntress asked.
    “Gudrun is trying to help your sister,” Wren said.
    Freya knelt by the bed and saw that the crone had one shriveled hand resting on Katja’s forehead. On her frail middle finger, Gudrun wore a pale yellow ring. Freya inhaled sharply. It was only the second time she had ever seen rinegold in her life. Katja’s mistress had never owned such a relic, but she had told the children of Logarven more than a few stories about the powers of the strange metal. Legendary