bag. The sounds it was making were very ominous indeed. And very, very angry.
By the time Leo had dug out a pit the size of a shallow grave, he had to give up. He sat back on his heels and restrained his first impulse, which was to scream imprecations at the heavens. His tunic was plastered to his body with sweat and dirt, there was dirt in his hair and dug under his fingernails. And he didn’t care. All he wanted was Brunnhilde back.
Screaming wasn’t going to do any good. This was either the work of a very powerful magician, or—possibly one of the local gods?
Leo clenched his fists and tried to remember what the charioteer had said. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
He ran a grimy hand through his hair, thoroughly confused now.
Think, Leo. Think this through. The man shows up coming up out of the ground, and the ground closes up behind him. He says, “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!” And I’ve never seen him in my life.
Could the man have been looking for Brunnhilde?
If it was someone from the northlands…maybe. He was dressed like a local, not like one of the gods or mortals of Vallahalia. He’d never seen a chariot that looked like that in Vallahalia, and anyway, the only chariot there was one pulled by goats. The rocky terrain of the north wasn’t very good for chariots.
And he was dark, not blond; virtually every northlander he’d seen was either blond or red-haired. No, he looked like the people around here.
They didn’t know anyone local.
“There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!” The man certainly thought he knew Bru; Bru had certainly stared at him without any sign of recognition at all.
The only way he could have known her was if someone local had been scrying them—but if so, why would he say, “I’ve been looking all over for you”? If he could scry them, he would have known exactly where they were, and he wouldn’t have had to go looking for them.
He couldn’t have been looking for Bru.
If he hadn’t been looking for Bru, he must have been looking for someone like Brunnhilde.
What else had he said…? “You went to the wrong meadow, just like a girl.”
“You went to the wrong meadow”?
It not only sounded as if he was looking for someone, it sounded as if he was looking for someone who was expecting him.
And it must have been someone he had never actually seen.
So he had been looking for someone like Brunnhilde. It was a case of mistaken identity.
It would be hard to mistake Bru for anyone else, if you knew her. Even someone who had only been scrying them from a distance would have a hard time mistaking her for anyone else.
Conclusion: the man had to have been going from a description, and not a very good one, either.
And that meant another question. Man, or god?
Leo didn’t even have to think twice about that. Only a god would be so sure of his own power that he would simply appear and abduct a complete stranger without thought of consequences.
All right. Assume that it was one of the local gods. That put Leo up against a god. With all the power of a god, who could probably squash him flat without thinking twice about it….
To hell with that!
He lurched to his feet, feeling rage surge through him. So what if they were gods? They were pretty damned small gods, and he was married to a god, and he was going to get to the bottom of this and get her back no matter what it cost him!
He caught up his discarded sword and headed for the Vallahalian horses at a grim trot. Damn if he was going to bother going through an intermediary; let the natives putter about with priests. After all, he’d been presented to a goddess of the earth as her son-in-law, and faced down the All-father. In a Kingdom where the gods were real, physical beings, he might as well go straight to the top.
Or wherever he needed to get to in order to confront them directly. And he had a pretty good idea of who could get him there.
The two big bay horses—well, they weren’t just horses, after all, they could stride through the air, you never had to worry about them straying off and they always looked magnificent—were still where he and Bru had left them. They weren’t happy though; they were prancing and pawing the earth, looking every bit as agitated as he was.
And now, if ever, was the time to find out just how different they were from “horses.”
He seized the reins of the horse he had been given on either side of the bit and looked into its eyes. “Do you know where the gods of this land live?” he asked it. On the surface of things, such a question, put to a horse, might have seemed insane, but these were horses that had served the Valkyria, were bred in the pastures of Vallahalia, and he wasn’t inclined to put anything past them. One of Brunnhilde’s sister-Valkyria had given her mount to him, saying with a laugh that it made a fitting “dowry” for him, and that this way he wouldn’t have to ride pillion behind Bru. The other Valkyria had found this hilarious at the time.
Since then, his mount, named Drachen, had done literally anything he asked of it. The only “supernatural” ability it had displayed so far was the ability to fly—or rather, to run through the air. It had a doglike loyalty, was a cherub to him and Bru, and a devil to anyone else. He’d suspected it had a very a high level of intelligence, and perhaps a lot more than that, but hadn’t had a chance to ask Bru.
The horse looked at him measuringly, and then slowly bobbed its head up and down.
“Was that a god who took our lady?” he asked it fiercely.
Drachen snorted, as if it thought the answer to such a question was so obvious the question didn’t even need asking, but again bobbed its head up and down.
He didn’t ask any further questions. He threw himself into the saddle and took up the reins—but left them slack, because clearly, he was not going to be the one in charge on this ride.
“Then let us go to these gods and get her back!” he growled.
Both horses threw up their heads and trumpeted agreement. Leo’s mount reared up; its forefeet found purchase on the air through whatever magic it used to run, and they were off. Both of them plunged up toward the sky as if they were running on a hill. Powerful muscles drove them upward at a pace that far exceeded that of a flesh-and-blood horse.
Once they were well above the level of the treetops, it was pretty clear where they were heading; a cloud-capped mountain loomed in the middle distance, and looked to be exactly where one would want to set up housekeeping if one happened to be a god, at least in Leo’s mind. And as they headed upward, Brunnhilde’s horse cast a glance over its shoulder at him…and snorted.
“What?” he shouted at it. He got no direct answer. But his horse swerved a little and made a beeline for a patch of dark clouds. Before he got a chance to object, both beasts plunged in, and a moment later he found himself in the middle of a rainstorm.
When they emerged again on
