Free The Sleeping Army by Francesca Simon Page B

Roskva. She fixed Freya with a dark look. ‘And Sleipnir might talk.’
    Roskva spread her heavy cloak on the ground, sat down on one side and beckoned to Freya. ‘Here. We can share.’
    Freya hesitated. The night wasn’t cold, but she had nothing to put on the ground.
    â€˜Thanks,’ she said.
    Alfi already lay snoring beside them. His pale bare feet stuck out from the end of the cloak he’d wrapped himself in. Snot sat brooding over the fire, poking at the embers and singing tunelessly: ‘Thor’s lost his hammer/ Oh look it’s in your head.’
    Freya gazed at the glittering stars studding the blue-black sky. They didn’t look like any stars she’d ever seen before, grouped in unfamiliar patterns. Her parents would never know what had happened to her. Bob would do his rounds, maybe peer into the case housing the Lewis Chessmen, never realising that … that …
    I won’t think about it, she decided. I’ll just try to get through tonight and hope I survive tomorrow.
    Freya huddled down on the dusty fur and tried to get comfortable. It was impossible. She needed to sleep in a bed. She could feel stones dig into her back.
    Freya tossed and twisted. Tears stung her eyes. She’d never get to sleep.

5 Jotunheim
    â€˜Wake up! The quick catch the prize!’
    Freya startled awake and opened her eyes. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw Snot’s ugly face and sniffed his horrible smell and it all came back to her. She jolted up and inspected her tingling legs, just visible in the pre-dawn light.
    The bleached ivory colour now snaked past her ankles up to her calves.
    It was as if her feet werealready corpses. Freya trembled.
    Roskva and Alfi were already up and Sleipnir, steaming and glistening, saddled. His eight legs were mottled-ivory to the knees. The early dawn sky was tinged pinky-orange on the edges of the horizon. Restless ravens circled overhead crying
kraa kraa kraa
and wisps of mist rose from the chilly ground. The damp air smelled faintly of pine.
    â€˜We want to cross into Jotunheim as quietly as possible,’ said Roskva. ‘If we get over the River Irving now, we can hopefully reach the forest without being seen.’
    Alfi crammed a few acorns and berries into his mouth. Roskva gnawed on some wild leeks. Snot ate some dried fish that looked like stiff dirt.
    Roskva opened Sleipnir’s saddlebag and rooted around inside.
    â€˜Eat,’ said Roskva, passing her a crumbling prehistoric oat cake.
    Freya was about to say she wasn’t a breakfast person but decided not to. The oat cake tasted like dusty cardboard. Freya slipped the remains into her pocket. Her fingers touched a bar of chocolate. She gazed at the smooth red wrapper. No. She’d keep it for later. She felt something smooth and round, and her face flushed. It was the silvery pot of pink lip gloss she’d bought with her pocket money.Clare forbade her to wear make-up so Freya always kept it hidden. She also found her squeaky duck keyring which emitted a tiny light when she pressed the beak, the ugly tortoiseshell hair clip Clare liked her to wear, and her black mobile phone. She put the clip into her hair, then pulled out the mobile.
    Dead. What had she expected?
    â€˜What’s that?’ said Alfi.
    â€˜My phone,’ said Freya. ‘It doesn’t work here.’
    â€˜Ah,’ he said. ‘I always wondered … in the place of dead things people were always talking into them, like madmen mumbling to themselves.’
    Freya heard wings flapping. Instinctively, she ducked. Then she saw what had drawn the carrion birds: the ravens were tearing at the bodies of two slaughtered wolves. Freya averted her eyes. That could have been me, she thought.
    They slipped down to the water’s edge and mounted Sleipnir. Freya looked out across the silvery river to pebbly banks, wreathed with scrub, sloping uphill to the thick,