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

from the window and stood with them in the mud. Two small sacks of stones clicked and clacked on her belt, and her sling was wound loosely around her right wrist.
    “Uhm.” Wren glanced around, looking lost and sick. “All right then. I guess we just, that is, I guess we should, well, find Skadi. Allfather willing.”
    The girl gave one last lingering look at her tower and then trudged off along a westward path out of the village with the others following a short distance behind. Freya kept one hand on Arfast’s shaggy neck and the other hand on her knives, while Erik thumped along with both of their spears resting on his bandaged shoulders.
    After an hour of walking, Erik signed, “What are you thinking about?”
    Freya said, “I’m just wondering if we’re doing the right thing. We could have stayed home and tended her ourselves. We could have taken her up into the hills to the hot springs above Logarven. But instead Katja’s lying like a sack of barley on Arfast’s back and we’re wandering through dead villages. Her skin is on fire, and her ears look bigger, and the hair on her arms looks darker. She’s getting worse, and this isn’t helping her. We should be helping her.”
    “We are helping her,” he signed. “We’re looking for someone who can heal her. That’s all we can do.”
    “Maybe.”
    Wren squinted back at them, then turned around and began walking backward so she could face them. “Excuse me, but Gudrun wants to know about your friend there.”
    “Erik is my husband ,” Freya said loudly.
    “Right, Erik. My mistress wants to know why he doesn’t talk.”
    “Your dead mistress whose soul is in your little ring, and who speaks to you in your mind? Or you?”
    Wren grinned. “I confess to being a little curious, as the good lord Woden wills, he being a seeker of arcane knowledge himself. But Gudrun wants to know too.”
    Freya glanced at Erik and he nodded. She said, “When were young, Erik’s father took him hunting on the southern downs. They found a few deer, and the stag turned to defend his mate. Erik was standing too close to his father, and when the killing blow brought the stag down, one of its antlers pierced Erik’s throat, nearly killing him. The vala saved his life, but not his voice.”
    “Oh, I see.” Wren stumbled over a small stone on the path, and she turned back around to continue walking. But a moment later she turned around again. “And he talks with his hands?”
    Freya sighed. “Yes.”
    “How did he learn that?”
    “It’s something we made up together, him and me and Katja, when we were children. Only a handful of folk in Logarven understand it, but most know it well enough to get the gist of what he means, most of the time.” Freya stroked her sister’s damp hair back from her face, looking for more signs of the change.
    “Can you teach me?” the girl asked.
    “Why don’t you ask Erik to teach you? He’s right there,” Freya said.
    “But how will I understand him?”
    Freya grinned. “Well, now, that is the trick, isn’t it?”
    Wren turned back around to watch where she was going as she muttered, “No, lord, that wasn’t very kind of her at all. And here I am, the very soul of kindness leading them on their way, walking myself into danger on their account. It’s a terrible trick you’ve played on me, lord, making me so wonderfully generous and filling up the world with less kindly folk to take advantage of me.”
    They followed the western path along the shore of Denveller Lake and shortly they came across a pair of houses buried in the hillside above the steaming waters. Wren stopped and frowned at the empty doorways and the broken jug on the ground and the torn cloth flapping in the breeze between two stones in the mud.
    “What is this place?” Freya asked.
    Wren shook her head. “It’s nothing. Just a place. Just a home. But not anymore, I guess. The reavers have been here, too. They’ve been everywhere.” She paused to gaze out