Page 40 of Odin

Share your knowledge with me, she seemed to say, though Freyja was sure she hadn't heard the words at all, before her mind went mad, flipping through memories like some sort of movie montage. Her pracs in the respiratory ward. Page after page from her textbooks. Dissecting endless cadavers. Rotations in the Emergency Department. More textbooks.

And then...the image of what was inside Sibyl's chest, beneath the dressing. The jagged wound, her lung collapsing in on itself. Like someone had stuck an endoscope in there, but they didn't have that sort of stuff here. Yet as Freyja watched, the wound began to heal. In the darkness beneath Sibyl's ribs, her lung swelled as she inhaled.

"Fuck," Freyja breathed.

The strange man was shouting something, but Freyja ignored him. She had to save Sibyl. She had to...

"It's all right. She's a healer." That was Odin, standing in the doorway.

"Yeah, I know all about medieval medicine. Butchers full of bullshit, the lot of them. Can you get someone to call an ambulance? If I'm lucky, I might be able to stabilise her, but I need to get these two out of here first. I told them, but either they don't understand or they don't care that a girl could die if they don't."

Odin spoke, and the girl replied.

Odin sighed. "She says she is healing your friend, using your knowledge. You must be patient and quiet, because this requires focus and a delicate touch, with just the right amount of power. When she is finished healing her, she would like to borrow your books."

Freyja just shook her head. "If this girl can save Sibyl's life, she can have all of my textbooks to keep. Or, better yet, I'll buy her a set, brand new, in whatever language she does speak, seeing as English evidently isn't one of them."

"Latin and Old Norse, I'm afraid. Like me."

Freyja stared at the girl. "She's a gargoyle like you?"

"No, she's...she's the witch who made us into gargoyles. And him into...whatever he is." Odin gestured at the strange man with the hairy hands.

The girl said something, then looked expectantly at Odin.

"She says she's finished healing your friend. Now, she needs to rest, and eat."

Freyja nodded, then turned to her patient. Beneath the oxygen mask, Sibyl's lips were losing their bluish tint. She peeled back the wound dressing, only to find no wound there any more.

She looked up to find the girl's knowing eyes on her. The girl inclined her head, which Freyja took to mean, "You're welcome."

"She says she hopes you have plenty of food, because after that, she could eat a whole dragon," Odin said.

"Definitely not a gargoyle, then." Freyja led the way to the cafeteria.

FORTY-FIVE

While the women ate their meal, Odin stood against the wall of the feasting hall, waiting to see if he'd be needed as an interpreter. The wolf man imitated him, though now he looked fully human again, as he watched over the witch. He definitely took his bodyguard duties seriously.

A hand tapped Odin's shoulder.

Loki. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

Odin's eyes never left the women's table. "Sure, but it'll have to be here. I'm not leaving Freyja alone with that wolf man here."

"It's the witch I'm worried about. If she does anything to Jorunn..."

Loki in love. Odin never thought he'd see the day.

"What do you wish to discuss?" Odin asked. He hoped it wouldn't be marital advice.

"It's about the things Erik said, and what happened when I left you all in the pass to go scouting. I need to know if you believed him, that I was a traitor."

"Erik was a bag of piss and wind. I'd sooner believe what came out of a wolverine's arse than anything that came out of his mouth. I know you. You'd happily turn Thor's hammer into a fish, or my spear into a sausage, but you would never turn on your brothers in arms. Every prank you played, you were only too happy to admit you were responsible, so we could all laugh with you. Yes, you have your secrets, as do we all, but you never kept them from me."

Loki breathed out a sigh of relief. "You don't know how happy I am to hear that. I sneaked into Erik's camp in the hope of killing him, but the witch caught me, and kept me from returning to you. I didn't even know you'd survived until the night she cut out our hearts. I figured if I was the last of us, I owed it to you all to stay and find a way to kill Erik, and take away his family. His sons..."

Odin's eyebrows rose. "So it was not the traitor Orm who poisoned them, but you?"

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