Aetherium (Omnibus Edition) by Joseph Robert Lewis

Author:Joseph Robert Lewis [Lewis, Joseph Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Copper Crow Books
Published: 2014-09-04T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

“That’s it,” Wren said. “That’s Rekavik. If there is a vala left in the west, Skadi or otherwise, she’ll be in there.”

On the western rim of the world the sun sat blazing in cold silence, and Freya looked down on a city beside a sea painted with bright splashes of blood and gold. The city sprawled across a broad peninsula jutting out into the sparkling bay where chunks of blue-white ice bobbed on the waves. From end to end it was three times the size of Hengavik, and much of it was twice as tall. The houses were all built of the shoreline stone, the same iron gray color as the rumbling clouds overhead, and each home looked to have an arching roof of turf supported by the bones of whales, bears, and deer, and each one so high that Freya guessed they held hanging attics of food stores and rope beds.

A heavy stone seawall ran along the water’s edge, as thick as a tall man and half again as high. The outer face of the wall was slimed with weeds and algae, but the top was pale and smooth, and the wall broke only twice that she could see for two iron doors that stood above the ancient stone quays reaching out into the bay. A few men stood on the quays casting fishing lines and nets over the dark, icy waters.

Another, taller wall ran across the south side of the city, cutting the small peninsula off from the rest of Ysland. This wall was three or four times the height of a man, and newer, and clumsier. The stones had been jumbled every which way and mortared in clumps and drips, leaving huge rocky bulges in some places and tiny sky-filled gaps in others. A handful of men stood on top of the wall, each one armed with a spear and sword, and the only breach in the inland wall was a single doorway, barely large enough for a horse to walk through, and that portal was sealed with an iron door as well.

Freya marched down the road to the door with a wary eye on the armed men above her. They watched her approach, slowly clustering together in the center of the wall so they could all get a good look at the newcomers in the deepening shadows below. Wren hurried up to Freya’s side and muttered to her, “Lord Woden is ever a friend to those who tell the truth, but he’s also one to appreciate the art of not getting yourself killed.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning there’s no reason to tell these people more than they need to know about Katja.”

Freya glanced back at the snoring woman on the back of the elk. “I think they’ll notice the hair and the ears, sooner or later.”

“If that’s our choice to make, then I choose later.”

The huntress nodded.

“Who’s there?” called down a huge bear of man with a wild brown beard and naked scalp steaming in the cold sea air.

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