Winter Witch Read online

  The shield wall held. Warriors stabbed at the wolves who reared over the shields. They reached down to fend off snapping jaws from below. When one warrior fell, others shifted to closed the gap. The villagers dragged away those of their wounded whom the wolves had not yet torn from their reach. Ellasif tried desperately to ignore the horrible rending sounds from the far side of the shield wall as the enemy desecrated the village defenders.

  But the shield wall was shrinking, and soon it would no longer fill the gap between the cliff and the river. The warriors behind the shield wall readied weapons for the inevitable breach.

  Ellasif’s friend Jadrek ran past clutching a cut-off bill in his hand. Its broad head curved in a hook to one side, a perfect weapon for cutting the hamstrings of foes across a shield wall. Jadrek jolted to a stop and spun back toward Ellasif. His expression was so fierce that for a moment Ellasif expected him to throw the weapon in her face.

  “Attend your task,” he growled, reciting Red Ochme’s first rule of battle.

  A wave of shame swept Ellasif. Everyone in White Rook knew what to do in case of an attack. She was expected to be in the loft, greeting anything that crossed the fire moat with an arrow to the throat. Nothing, not even tending her mother, should have kept her from her battle task. Everyone in the village had already obeyed his or her duty.

  Everyone but Ellasif.

  She acknowledged Jadrek’s reproof with a curt nod and ran back into the house. She barred the door behind her. Straight to the bed she strode, pausing only briefly when she heard Red Ochme call for fire arrows. She longed to be in the battle, not on its edge.

  Marit bowed her back in another fit of agony. Her breath came in faint gasps. Ellasif hurried to the foot of the bed and saw that the babe was finally emerging. She cradled the crowning head and slipped her fingers around the tiny neck to make sure the cord wasn’t entangled. All seemed well. There was no reason the child could not be born now.

  “Once more,” she urged.

  Marit’s eyes fluttered open. Her gaze focused on her daughter’s face. Ellasif smiled with more confidence than she felt and gave her mother an encouraging nod.

  Her mother gave one final effort, and the newborn slid into her sister’s waiting hands.

  “A girl,” Ellasif exulted, holding the infant up for their mother to see.

  Marit smiled and fainted dead away.

  And so it happened that Ellasif was the only witness to her infant sister’s first breath. What followed was not a newborn’s wail but merry peals of laughter.

  Shock froze Ellasif’s limbs, and dread gripped her heart with fingers of ice. Everyone knew that first-breath laughter was the sign of a tiren’kii.

  She stared at the bloody infant still tethered by its birth cord, still laughing. She wondered how this could be her newborn sister, this tiny creature so new to life and so soon fated to die. She was cursed.

  The folk of White Rook would sooner carry a haunch of venison through a sow bear’s den than allow so dangerous a child to live. No one knew exactly what the tiren’kii were, nor why they occasionally possessed Ulfen newborns, but understanding such mysteries held little allure for Ellasif’s people. What they did understand was that such children were dangerous, their spirits tainted by the fey powers harbored in nearby Irrisen. No such child could be suffered to live among the Ulfen.

  And yet, Ellasif thought, this was her sister. She had sworn to protect this child.

  A new voice joined the chaos of storm and battle, a sound born of the unholy marriage of a beast’s roar and an eagle’s cry. It reverberated in the deepest recesses of Ellasif’s body, chilling her liver and paralyzing her lungs. It was a sound she had heard before only from a great distance, a sound that had made her huddle under her blankets and recite the three prayers she remembered over and over until dawn.

  It was the shriek of an ice troll.

  Marit’s eyes snapped open, the reflex of a warrior coming fully awake at the sound of danger.

  “Ellasif, to the loft,” she croaked. She sounded even worse than Ellasif had feared earlier.

  Ellasif laid the infant down on her mother’s belly. Marit gripped her eldest daughter’s wrist with startling strength. Her fever-bright eyes burned.

  “Take the babe to the loft,” she commanded. “You swore to care for her. I hold you to your oath.”

  Before Ellasif could respond, her mother slipped back into unconsciousness.

  Ellasif set her jaw and went to work with sure hands. Everything lay ready: a knife to cut the cord, clean linen thread to tie it off, a soft blanket in which to wrap the babe. Moments later, Ellasif climbed the ladder to the loft, one hand holding the rungs, the other clasping the bundled infant to her shoulder.

  She laid the baby on the straw mattress to free her hands and dragged the ladder up into the loft. A rope and pulley attached to the ceiling secured a heavy wooden door. It was scant protection from troll invaders, but it was the best Ellasif could offer her sister.

  The boards beneath her feet shuddered as the crash of another doomed tree shook the village. A moment later, the door burst open.

  Ellasif’s father, Kjell, lurched into the house. Blood streaked his yellow beard, and his wild gaze swept the room. At the sight of his empty hands, Ellasif knew true fear.

  Her father had left his place. He’d put aside his axe before battle’s end. Ellasif could imagine no surer proof that White Rook was defeated.

  Kjell ran to the bed and swept his wife into his arms, blankets and all. He whirled toward the loft.

  “Hurry, Ellasif!” he shouted. “The north pine is falling.”

  Their house stood at the northern end of the village crescent, closest to the forest. The groaning creak of a falling tree grew louder. There was no time to push the ladder back down. She could jump and roll, but not with the baby in her arms.

  For the first time, Ellasif noticed the bleating of her goats outside. The byre stood separate from the cottage, but the roof and loft ran over both buildings. A second, smaller hatch led down into the pen.

  She was reaching for the baby when her father’s shout drew her attention back to the cottage floor. A huge winter wolf crouched in the doorway, blocking her parents’ escape.

  “You slew my mate,” the beast said in the rough female voice so like Red Ochme’s. “Now watch me kill yours.”

  A defiant curse bubbled to Ellasif’s lips, but the oath she’d sworn forced her to silence. She clutched the baby tight to her breast and ran.

  Ellasif slid down the ladder into the goat byre and waded through the milling herd. She unlatched the door and burst into the clearing amid a small stampede of panicked animals. The north pine had broken free of its halter of vines and tilted swiftly. Wind shrieked through its branches as it plummeted toward the house.

  Ellasif ran through the storm, ducking under the swing of an ice troll’s club as she headed for the weapon shack closest to the hot spring. It was stone-built and solid, and it would be warm inside. The baby would be as safe there as she could be anywhere in White Rook.

  The tree crashed with an impact Ellasif felt in her bones. She chanced a quick look back to see if her parents had escaped.

  One glance told the tale. She heard herself whimper, but was too heartbroken to be ashamed of the sound.

  “I’ll take that bundle, bitch cub,” growled a familiar voice.

  Ellasif had not heard the wolf approach. She stumbled and fell hard on one knee.

  Steel swept over her head, and the wolf yelped in pain. Ellasif scrambled aside and rose in time to see Red Ochme bury her sword in the hump of the winter wolf’s shoulder. The tough old warrior jerked the weapon free and held it at guard, but the sword’s task was finished. The wolf’s legs folded, and she fell heavily on one side. The blood pouring from the wound stopped when the wolf drew a breath. She had suffered a sucking wound, and so
on her own lungs would drown her.

  Bloody froth spilled from the creature’s jaws and froze on her muzzle. She fixed her strange blue eyes to her killer’s face.

  “Die, old woman,” she cursed. “Drown in a pool of your own piss. Perish, forgotten by your pack.” The wolf turned her head to Ellasif, and her lips curled in a canine sneer. “Die weaponless, like the bitch cub’s sire.”

  Something deep within Ellasif cracked, and something else slipped free. She snatched a dagger from Red Ochme’s belt, thrust the baby into the warrior’s arms, and leaped upon the dying wolf. With one blow she severed the plumy white tail, not caring that no one in the village, not even Red Ochme herself, had ever dared to take a winter wolf trophy. Ellasif brandished the grisly talisman at the wolf that had killed her parents.

  “Die, you miserable old bitch,” she snarled. “Die and know your tail hangs from this cub’s belt.”

  “Ellasif!”

  Ochme’s tone told Ellasif that she’d uttered the girl’s name more than once before Ellasif heard it. Ochme took her knife back and pressed the baby into Ellasif’s arms. The expression on the battle leader’s face was impossible for Ellasif to read.

  “Go, child,” she said. “Take that babe to shelter.”

  Ellasif ran, the wailing baby clasped to her chest. Hail pelted them as she wove a path through the ruins of the battle. Most of the winter wolves had fallen. A steaming puddle of gore told of ice trolls and fire arrows, but two of the monsters still lumbered through the village. Small packs of ice goblins ran here and there, singing cheerful obscenities as they swarmed cottage after cottage.

  Ellasif darted between two of the small houses and skidded to a stop. An eight-foot-tall troll blocked her path, the monster facing off against Agithra and her spear. The creature swung its club in a pendulous arc. The blow snapped Agithra’s weapon like an autumn twig and lifted the midwife off of her feet. She bent in half and dropped to the ground like a rag doll.

  Three axe-wielding warriors pushed past Ellasif and converged on the troll, hacking it limb from limb. Behind them came children who picked up the smaller troll pieces and ran them to the fire pit. Not every piece of a dismembered troll would grow back into another monster, but the villagers of White Rook had learned to be thorough. Ellasif darted off to find another path.

  A hand clutched at her feet. She stumbled but ran on. Her stomach clenched when she realized the hand still gripped her ankle, fingers digging into her boot leather. She set her jaw and kept going, dragging along the huge blue hand and its severed arm. The armory was just ahead.

  She tucked the baby into a wooden bin and closed and bolted the hut door. Her charge secured, she looked around for a weapon. A woman’s corpse lay nearby, so mangled that only her long red braids identified her as Tanja, mother of Ellasif’s friend Olenka. The woman’s short sword was buried to the hilt in the body of the winter wolf she’d died slaying.

  Ellasif braced her free foot on the wolf’s bloodied white pelt and tugged the sword free. She dragged her burden closer to the fire pit, where the battle-churned ground was as soft as summer loam, and stabbed through the blue hand. She leaned on the sword to thoroughly impale the troll limb before jerking her foot free. Lifting the skewered arm and hurling it into the fire took every bit of strength she could muster.

  Oily flame leaped up around the severed arm. Perhaps twenty paces away, a blue head screamed in agony, still attached to one arm and a mangled chunk of shoulder, but little else.

  Ellasif caught a passing lad by the arm and pointed at the troll’s head. “Missed one,” she said. The severed head had already begun regenerating a windpipe and a dark pulsing bud that would become a heart. The boy nodded and hurried to dispose of the head.

  For a moment Ellasif simply stood by the pit, at a loss for what to do next. Everyone else seemed to know his task and place. Two children with pitchforks stabbed a troll hand and ran it back to the fire pit, where elders ensured every scrap of their enemies was destroyed.

  Ellasif’s gaze fell on Jadrek. He stood with his back to a cottage wall, knife and bill whirling as he fended off a pair of goblins. A surge of feral joy filled her heart. Ellasif hauled the sword up high over one shoulder and charged toward her friend.

  Jadrek’s eyes widened as he saw her approach. One of the goblins turned toward Ellasif. Her first wild thrust cut his startled cry short as she stabbed the little monster directly in the mouth. Then she turned her body and directed her momentum and the weight of the sword into a leg-slashing cut. Bright blood sprayed from his severed artery. The goblin’s disbelieving expression would have been comical in other circumstances. It looked down at its wound, then up into Ellasif’s face with an expression of supreme pique. Then it died and fell to the cold ground.

  The second goblin wailed and crumpled, Jadrek’s bill stuck deep in its craw. Jadrek knelt on the goblin’s narrow chest and slit its throat with his knife.

  A goblin pack boiled toward them as he rose. Jadrek offered his bloody knife to Ellasif. “Want to trade?”

  Ellasif scoffed and kept her sword.

  She ran to meet the foremost goblin. Her first strike knocked aside its pike, giving her an opening to kick the creature between the legs. The goblin squealed and doubled over. Ellasif’s backswing missed its head but sliced the leather jerkin of the next goblin. The creature jumped back, tripping the three behind it.

  Ellasif lunged, sword thrusting deep between a goblin’s ribs. She was dimly aware of a knife scoring her arm, of filthy claws and fetid breath and horrible high-pitched curses, and Jadrek fighting at her side, his knife flashing again and again.

  She felt as though she were in paradise. There were no troubling thoughts, no doubts, no uncertainties. She wanted to live, and to live she had to kill. Nothing in the wide world was more glorious.

  When the pile of goblins lay silent—and perhaps more thoroughly slain than necessity demanded—the young warriors rose and regarded each other for a timeless moment. Jadrek’s lean body shook with the exertion of his own breath. There was terror in his heart to be sure, but he radiated even more power and courage, and Ellasif felt something within her stir and move toward him. She hesitated, and their gazes locked for a moment. Ellasif licked her dry lips. Jadrek glanced away, his shoulders slumped. The moment was gone.

  “It’s over,” said Jadrek. His voice was mingled relief and regret.

  Ellasif wasn’t so sure it was over. The night was filled with the muted groans of the dying, the rattle of hail against the roof thatching, the indignant demands of a toddler who could not understand why his mother would not rise to hold him. Beneath it all lay a silent, trembling energy that Ellasif could not name.

  A deep thump resounded through the forest, then another. By the time Ellasif could identify the sound as footsteps, they had accelerated into a charge. She looked up at a shadow upon the snowy trees and saw a thatched hovel flying incongruously above the ground.

  No, she realized. It was not flying. Rather, the hut was perched upon two enormous scaled legs. Ellasif’s first impression was that they were the limbs of some emaciated golden dragon, but then she recognized the avian angle of the joints and the black talons of a chicken. This was no mere monster.

  The walking hut stepped over a fallen birch and strutted into the village. No one uttered a command. No one raised a weapon. None dared defy Baba Yaga, the mother of the Irrisen queens, or whatever dread emissary the great witch had commanded to direct her dancing hut.

  At the southern edge of the village, a baby wailed. The hut whirled toward the sound. Its sudden movement broke the spell. Warriors forgot their injuries and rushed to attack.

  Fire arrows streaked toward the hut and bounced away without touching the shingled walls. A white-braided old warrior charged with battleaxe raised high. One enormous talon flicked him away with no more effort than Ellasif might expend on a gnat. The hut crushed two s
pear warriors underfoot as it stalked toward the house containing the child whose cries had alerted it.

  The infant was quiet now, no doubt hushed by its siblings. The hut stopped beside the house and tilted to one side like a bird listening for worms. Faster than thought, it lifted one clawed foot and tore away half the roof.

  More axe-wielding warriors closed in. A lump rose in Ellasif’s throat as she recognized her father’s weapon in another man’s hands. The hut trampled the men into bloody ruins with its scythe-like talons as it strode to the next cottage.

  A dark square on the ground caught Ellasif’s eye. She stooped to pick up a wooden shingle, larger than those on the village homes. She sniffed it. It smelled of cooking smoke and herbs, old blood and the skin of reptiles. It smelled exactly how Ellasif imagined a witch’s hut to smell.

  She broke it in two and tossed one half onto a smoldering wolf carcass. The shingle flared into light, just as any ordinary bit of dry kindling might do.

  Ellasif ran to Jadrek, who was stitching a deep gash across the face of Ivanick, his father. Waving the shingle as she ran, she shouted, “It’s wood! Baba Yaga’s hut is wood!”

  The boy scowled and reached for a flask of vjarik. He poured some onto a rag to clean the wound.

  “It’s wood,” Ellasif repeated. She threw the shingle at Jadrek.

  He batted it away. “So? What else would it be?”

  “Woods burns,” she persisted. “The fire arrows can’t get past Baba Yaga’s magic. None of our attacks can get past. But if we send fire into the hut in a different way, we might surprise it.”