Free Freya the Huntress (Europa #2: A Dark Fantasy) by Joseph Robert Lewis Page B

girl.”
    “Why?”
    “Just do it,” another man barked.
    Wren sighed and opened her mouth. Halfdan nodded. “Good.” He inspected Erik and Freya in the same fashion, and then reached over to pull the blanket off Katja.
    “No, leave her alone. She’s sick,” Freya said, stepping in front of him.
    Halfdan shook his head. “We check everyone. No exceptions. Even our own hunters, even if they were only out for half an hour. This is a safe place, and it’s damn well going to stay safe. So either I look at her teeth or you can all go right back out the way you came in.”
    Freya put her hand on her sister’s covered head. Erik and Wren both shuffled closer to the white elk, but the guards were quick to poke them back again with their swords. Freya nodded. “All right, look. She was bitten. But she isn’t—”
    The men erupted in a chorus of shouts, some telling the newcomers to leave, others threatening to slaughter them in the street. Spears and swords flashed with the light of the torches, and the huntress grabbed the handles of her bone knives.
    “Shut up!” Halfdan roared, and the men fell quiet, though their faces remained just as cruel and dark. “Now listen here, girl, if your sister’s been bit, then she’s not coming into the city, and that’s the end of it. So either you can take her and leave, or you can kill her yourself, or we can do it for you. No one will blame you for not wanting to kill your own kin. The Allfather knows we’ve all had to do the same and we’d wish it on no one. But the plague doesn’t pass these walls, not for anyone or any reason.”
    “The Allfather knows a great deal more than that,” Wren said. “And the valas of Denveller know more than most. Do you know what this is?” She held up her hand with the glint of yellow on her finger.
    Halfdan’s eyes widened. “Rinegold?”
    “That’s right,” the girl said loudly. “I am the keeper of the souls of all the valas of Denveller, and I’ve brought them here to help Skadi cure the reaver plague and save our people. But I won’t come in unless you let Freya bring her sister.”
    Halfdan’s expression fell back into stony resolution. “Then you don’t come in.”
    Wren stared. “But… I have the ring… and the souls… and the cure.”
    “No exceptions.” Halfdan sniffed and spat in the street. “Maybe you can end the plague and maybe you can’t, but this city stays safe either way. So what’s it going to be?”
    Freya counted the men and their swords, wondering if there was any chance of fighting past them, of escaping into the city, of racing to the castle down by the sea.
    No, no chance of that at all.
    She took her hands off her knives. “You can lock her up.”
    Halfdan smirked and shook his head. “No exceptions.”
    “You can lock her up in a cell, underground, guarded, in chains.” Freya swallowed. She imagined Katja shackled to a wall, whining and whimpering in the dark, her body mangled and twisted.
    “No exceptions.”
    Freya lurched forward and shoved the big man back. “If we find a cure, we’ll need someone to test it on, won’t we? And when that time comes, do you want your queen to send you outside your precious walls to capture a fully turned reaver with a whole pack around him, or do you want to go down to a cell where there’s just one reaver, already in chains?”
    Halfdan narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. “The latter, I suppose.”
    “Then help me put my sister somewhere safe.” Freya reached back and took hold of Arfast’s shaggy coat. “And then you can take us to your queen and be done with us, and go back to guarding your precious wall.”
    Halfdan paused, then grinned and called over his shoulder, “Bar the door! Back to your posts, all but Aenar and Tryggvi. We’re letting them in.”
    The other guards sealed the iron door and returned to their posts on the dark wall, and most of them grumbled a few curses on their way. Halfdan took the lead and his two friends