Page 2 of Heart of Fire
Loki yipped as she stumbled. The skies were darkening swiftly now, large fat drops of rain spattering down. One struck her cheek like an icy bullet, wind whipping her skirts and shawl. Her long blonde plait slapped her in the face. The whisper of the storm drove through her, setting her alight with a feverish excitement, her heart quickening. This was the time she felt mostalive.
“Henrik!” she called, her voice stolen from her lips by another gust. The pen was empty; or no, not quite. The ram cowered against the wall, head bowed as if to fight the force of thewind.
“You stupid beast,” she muttered, grabbing her skirts and straddling the fence. Loki darted in and snatched a mouthful of skirt, almost hauling her back onto hisside.
“Curse you,” Freyja cried, trying to shake him free. A sudden sharp spatter of rain made her gasp. “Do you wish me to be soaked? Then I shall catch a chill and you must find your owndinner!”
The little fox worried at her skirts, his ears flat to his head. Freyja scraped the wet strands of hair off her face and tugged the material, her curses lost in another hammering echo ofthunder.
Letgo!
But the little fox wouldnot.
Henrik bleated suddenly, turning in circles as if he didn’t know where to go. Freyja shot him a frustrated look, then reached down and grabbed Loki’s ruff. A blast of wind knocked her into the ram’s pen. She landed flat on her back in the mud, breathless andcursing—
A sudden roar echoed through the air, cutting through the thunder as if it werenothing.
The scream of it beat against her skin, pulsing in her ears until she was forced to clap her hands over them. The primal shiver of it seemed to be inside her, in her head, in her pounding heartbeat— everywhere. It was the type of sound that echoed down through ages past, and sent both man and animal fleeing in mindlessfear.
It cut off and Freyja choked in her first gasp, lifting her head in disbelief as a sinuous tail flew directly overher.
“Wyrm,” she whispered, the heat draining out of herface.
Not just a wyrm, but the Great One. He who haunted Krafla’s depths, slithering out to stalk the night and hunt hisprey.
She’d never seen him this close before. Golden scales gleamed even in the stormy darkness, each wing sweeping out an impossible forty feet wide. She shouldn’t be scared; the village paid its tithe and had for decades in exchange for being left alone. But there was something distinctly primeval about the sight of it directly above her. Some ancestral fear that made her feel likeprey.
Then its forelegs curled up, claws plucking delicately at its victim. Henrik bleated one last time, and she could sense his fear as the wyrm thrust its wings downward again, launching itself into theair.
With her ram in itstalons.
“No!” Freyja pushed herself upright in disbelief, mud squelching through her fingers. Without the ram she couldn’t breed. It wouldn’t matterthisspring, but next year…. “No!”
Leaping to her feet, she chased after it.Curse you! We pay the tithe!Each week a lamb or goat was tethered out on the hilltop as sacrifice, though eddas told of a time when the sacrifice had been virgin flesh. Her father’s face flashed into her mind, thin with lack of nourishment and color fleeing his cheeks as hecoughed.
“Come back!” She snatched up a stone and hurled itskyward.
A pitiful effort, for the wyrm sailed high, soaring beneath gray clouds with mocking disdain, both for her and theweather.
Freyja sank to her knees in the mud, the fist in her chest tightening. What was she going to do? Hope and pray one of the undropped lambs was a male? There were only two ewes still due to deliver, and even if the lambs were male it would be years before she could breedthem.
She and her father didn’t have thattime.
Something broke inside her. Tears she hadn’t shed even when her mother passed away three years ago, finally tore free. Since then she’d been holding on, trying to keep it all from washing over her as she looked after her increasingly frail father. Slamming her fists into the dirt, Freyja heard the lash of lightning strike the hill nearby. Again. And again. Lightning crashing down in answer to her fury. She would not accept this. She would notfail.
Not even if she had to take her ramback.
The cold rain washed away her hot tears as she looked up. Loki slithered through the wickerwork of the pen and licked at her hand tentatively as if to appease her, but Freyja shook himoff.
“I’m going after him,” she told the fox. Dragging her shawl tight, she lurched to her feet, wet through, her skirts caked inmud.
The creature had terrorized her village longenough.
And Freyja was not without herdefenses.
Two
FREYJA WAITEDUNTIL her father was tucked in bed and snoring before she began ruthlessly stripping off her mud-encrusted clothes. Cold was a constant enemy outhere.
