The Saga of Hilde
by the Poison Pen, bs904@freenet.carleton.ca




copyright 1998


The children sat huddled before the fire pit in the vastness of the
Great Hall, silent and motionless as they waited for the tale to begin.
Old Helga smiled at them, making her shrivelled-apple face crinkle like
leather.  The statue of Frigga All-Mother loomed over them all from its
place of honour in a niche in the wall.

"Hear my tale!" began Old Helga, in the traditional manner of the
skalds, her voice ringing from the ancient, blackened timbers of the
Great Hall.  A shiver of excitement rippled through the children as Old
Helga's eyes caught the firelight and glittered with the magic of a
master storyteller.  "Long ago, so long ago that the people yet
remembered the passing of the Age of Men, there lived two sisters in
this very village.  Their names were Hilde and Hulde, and they were the
mightiest warriors in all of the land."

"What is a men, Old One?" asked one of the children, for the telling of
a tale was a dance done by speaker and listener both.

Old Helga peered into the dark, into the mass of identical,
golden-haired little girls at her feet until her old eyes found the
questioner.  "Have you not listened to the lessons of your elders,
Adunna?"

Adunna stiffened at the mild rebuke.  Old Helga was held in great
esteem by the Valkyr, for in a world of violence and lean winters, only
the very strongest and wisest may live to such a great age.  Once, many
long years ago, Old Helga had been the comeliest and fiercest warrior
in the village. A rebuke from such an authority, no matter how tiny,
carried great weight and Adunna knew that every Valkyr would know of
the slight by tomorrow.

"I am the fleetest runner and the strongest swimmer of all the children
in the village," boasted Adunna, thumping a fist to her chest.  "What
need have I with musty old lessons?  I will be a great warrior, not a
scholar!"  Her young face was so serious that Old Helga wanted to burst
out in merry laughter and clasp the girl to her breast, but restrained
herself to keep from embarassing Adunna before her peers.

Instead, Old Helga fixed Adunna with a steely glare.  "The strongest
weapon is not made of steel," said Old Helga.  "Nor is it wielded by
the hand.  It is your mind, and if it is strong, you may defeat even
the fiercest of foes. If it is weak, not even the the swiftest sword
arm will save you from death at the hands of a clever foe."

Adunna looked away, unable to meet those fierce eyes any longer.  "I
don't need to know about a stupid old men," she grumbled, chastened.

Old Helga hid a smile.  Adunna reminded her much of herself at her age,
with good cause, for they were in many ways the same person, both being
exact physical replicas of one of the original ancients of the village.
"Men," said Old Helga, "were ferocious beasts kept by women in their
homes.  In those days the magic of quickening a child in the womb was a
secret owned only by the men.  Half of the children produced this way
were human, and the other half were men."

The children shivered, imagining a man-beast growing like a tumor
within their very wombs.

"Eventually," Old Helga continued, "the magic was stolen from the men,
and the foul beasts were put to the sword.  The Age of Men was over."

"Now may we hear the tale of Hilde and Hulde?" asked Adunna, impatient.

Old Helga nodded once and began again.  "Hilde and Hulde were sisters
of a twin birth, and lovers, though in those days such a relationship
was not the custom between sisters.  Both shared a passion for
journeying, and while they were often apart on their travels, it was
said they shared a bond within their hearts that they might always feel
the other within them. It was this bond which was to be the cause of
the later calamities."

                          @   @   @   @   @



The inn appeared like a phantom out of the trees.  Hilde had not
expected to find such in these wilds, but it was welcome all the same.
Though she was no stranger to bedroll and camp fire, a mug of beer and
a soft pallet would not be unwelcome after so much long, hard travel.

The trading road became visible to Hilde as she stepped from the leafy
confines of the forest.  The reason for the inn's existence here was
thus explained.  A pity, she thought, that she had not known of the
road or she might have shaved days from her journey.  Since the passing
of the Age of Men, the old highways which once criss-crossed the world
had fallen into disrepair, and eventually vanished along with their
cities and infernal machines.  Roads, such as there were, now wound
through the rejuvenated forests more or less at random, known only by
word of mouth.  Few maps existed to aid wayfarers from other lands.

The inn was made of fieldstones with a second storey of wooden
planking, and boasted two chimneys, one at either end.  A crudely
painted sign over the door showed a bare-chested and amply endowed
woman eating a cluster of grapes.

Hilde pushed open the front door and was greeted by the smells of
roasting meat and spilled beer.  Lamps had been lit against the
gathering gloom of evening and hung from pegs on the walls.  A half
dozen women, traders from the look of them, shared the single trestle
table in the room.  All fell silent as Hilde entered.

"Welcome to the Hungry Maiden, traveller," said a buxom woman of middle
age who bustled from the kitchen.  She had the olive complexion of the
people in these parts, her face ruddy from the heat of the stove, and
wore simple, rough homespuns.

"You've a pallet?" asked Hilde.  Though flawless, her Hespanish, the
language spoken by these Hesperians, was heavily accented.

"Aye, two silver denarii a night, three if your horse needs mash,"
replied the woman, setting platters of boiled vegetables and roasted
pig on the table.  "Supper and your morning meal are included."

Hilde felt the hungry eyes of the traders on her body.  The leathers
she wore left much sun-bronzed, solid-muscled flesh exposed.  The
proprietor watched with curiosity as Hilde pulled a small fur coinpurse
from her girdle and spilled a mismatched assortment of coins into her
hand.

"You will accept Allemainish silver marks?" grunted Hilde, sifting
through her coins with a callused finger.

"Yes, we've travellers from those parts through here from time to time.
I'll have no trouble passing them."  The woman paused and looked Hilde
up and down, taking in the worn leather sandals, the backpack, the
heavy broadsword in its leather sheath strapped to Hilde's powerful
thigh.

Hilde dropped two coins into the woman's hand.  "I've no horse, I came
afoot."

The innkeeper seemed surprised.  Travel was slow enough on horseback;
to travel great distances on foot was nearly unheard of.  "Well.
Enough of my chatter then.  There is pig to be eaten and beer to be
drunk, and I've a confection in the kitchen as needs attending."

Hilde slung her pack to the floor.  It made a metallic clanking sound
that drew curious looks from the traders, but they forebore to question
the grim stranger about it.  As Hilde heaped a trencher with steaming
chunks of greasy pig, the others at the table turned back to their
meals.

The woman across from Hilde, auburn-haired with an acquisitive face
like a ferret, was the first to break the silence.  "I am Croesia, a
fur trader out of the Tyrol.  You have come far?"

Hilde grunted in agreement, concentrating on stuffing meat into her
mouth as fast as her grease-slicked fingers could shovel it.

"How are you named, traveller?" asked a second woman, raven-haired and
stocky, her pudgy fingers bedecked with rings.

The silence stretched while Hilde washed the meat down with a tankard
of beer.  It was bitter and thin, not at all like the rich, thick beer
of the Allemaine that she preferred.  At last Hilde gave a great,
rumbling belch and looked up at the women observing her.  "I am called
Hilde of the Valkyr."

No more details seemed forthcoming as Hilde ripped into the haunch of
pig with her fingers, seemingly oblivious to the sizzling fat.  With a
shrug of their shoulders, the traders began once more to talk amongst
themselves of commerce and profit-taking.

Some time later, Hilde felt a cautious touch on her ankle.  When she
did not react, the touch became bolder, toes questing against her shin.
Hilde looked up and saw the ferret-faced woman across the table from
her staring directly at her, open invitation in her eyes.  Hilde
lowered her gaze and went back to her trencher.  "Those who touch me
without first asking my leave oftentimes find themselves less a limb,"
said Hilde in a casual voice that was all the more menacing for its
matter-of-fact tone.

The offending foot withdrew quickly and an uncomfortable silence fell
across the table.

When the food was eaten, the beer drunk, the pastry confections served
and lingered over, the group began to break up as women went to check
on their horses and wares before bed.  Hilde approached the innkeeper.

"You've slaves for bedding with?" asked Hilde.  "Good strong ones?"

The innkeeper looked momentarily taken aback.  The use of a slave for a
night's pleasure was not an uncommon request, of course, but she knew a
handsome woman such as Hilde could have the pick of anyone in the inn
for the night.  Flicking her eyes over the traveller's taut, powerful
form, the innkeeper knew that not even she, herself, would pass up a
night of passion with Hilde.

"Several," replied the innkeeper.  "But--"

Hilde cut off the woman's question in mid-sentence with a sharp
chopping gesture.  "Send your strongest to my room," she said, dropping
a silver mark into the innkeeper's hand.  "And have her bring hot
water."  Turning her back, Hilde hefted her pack and climbed the stairs
to her lodgings.

                                *  *  *

The room was plain but well-maintained.  The straw ticking of the
pallet was fresh and clean, still smelling of the field.  A simple
oaken table held a chamber pot, a wash basin, and a small bucket of
water with a wooden dipper.  A single lamp lit the room, though the
moon was bright enough to see by through the unshuttered window.  Hilde
was pleased to see that the door boasted a sturdy latch rather than a
lock.  Locks were made for convenience, not for security.

Hilde laid down her pack and settled herself on the pallet.  The warm
comfort lulled her, and her eyelids drooped heavily.  Soon her eyes
were closed entirely, her breathing slow and even.  Some time later her
eyes snapped open at the stealthy tread outside her door.  Her hand was
on the hilt of her sword, the weapon half-drawn without conscious
effort.  The person outside the door paused, as if indecisive, and then
there was a timid rap.

"Enter," growled Hilde.  She remained prone, but her muscles were
tensed like steel bands, ready to spring.  The door opened as a young
woman wearing the iron collar of a slave entered, bearing a bucket of
steaming water.

Hilde relaxed and let go her grip on the broadsword's hilt.  "Don't
stand about gawking, girl.  Close and bar the door.  Draw the
shutters."

The slave did as she was told, giving Hilde a chance to appraise her.
The girl was large-breasted and had wide hips that would whelp many a
child one day.  Her face was plain though not uncomely.  Her skin was
not so pale as that of Hilde's people, but lighter than the olive
complexions of most in these parts.  Curly, dark brown hair fell to the
girl's shoulders. Adequate, thought Hilde, surveying the girl as she
might an auroch at market.

Climbing to her feet with cat-like grace, Hilde began pulling the draws
on her clothing.  "You've washcloths?" she asked.

"Aye, mistress, and soap and scraper," said the girl.  She swallowed
and tried not to stare as Hilde's leathers fell to the floor.  The body
thus revealed was a symphony made flesh and bone.  The corded bands of
muscles might as easily been of chiselled stone, each sinew clearly
defined.  Yet there was no bulk, as might be expected upon the body of
a common field worker.  She was lean and lithe, each muscle lovingly
sculpted to maximize speed with strength.

Hilde scratched absently between her large breasts where the sweat and
grime had caked beneath the strapping which had held them constricted.
The breasts, shielded from the sun which had otherwise baked Hilde to a
golden brown, were the pale white of alabaster, each topped with a
delicate rose hued aureole and nipple.

The girl approached Hilde and knelt before her, setting the bucket on
the floor.  Carefully, the girl unwound the lacings of Hilde' sandals,
allowing Hilde to step out of them.  With a block of soap and a thick
washcloth, she began to scrub Hilde's feet.  Soon a small puddle of
begrimed, soapy water began to pool on the floor.

"Your feet, mistress, they are like leather," said the slave girl,
scraping with a fingernail at the calluses where the sandal straps had
rubbed.

"And the soles like wooden planking, aye," said Hilde with a touch of
pride.  "I've trod the bredth of the world with these sandaled feet."

"I heard them marvelling that you came afoot," said the girl.  "Surely
a horse is not so hard to acquire."

"Mayhap I could not outrun a horse were we both given our head on a
level stretch of road -- though I'd not wager heavily against me -- but
neither do I require frequent rests and watering lest I founder.  A
week's travel afoot will see me half again as far as she who goes
mounted."  The words came quickly, and Hilde frowned.  Too long alone
with her thoughts had made her far freer with her tongue than was her
wont.  "Mind your work, girl. You speak too much," growled Hilde, as
much to herself as the girl who laboured at her feet.

"Forgive me, mistress," said the slave girl, abashed, as her face
flared crimson.

When the girl had thoroughly washed Hilde's feet, Hilde laid face down
on the pallet with her head pillowed in her arms.  The smooth line of
Hilde's deltoids pointed like the point of an arrow at the gentle
swellings of her heart-shaped buttocks.  Starting at Hilde's calves,
the slave girl began applying a lather of soap.  Several times the girl
opened her mouth to speak, then closed it as she thought better of it.
Finally, unable to stand the silence any longer, the girl dared a
question.

"You are from far away, mistress?" asked the girl.  "Beyond the
Allemain? I did not believe the world was so large."

Hilde snorted.  "Beyond the Allemain, and beyond Franconia after that.
My people live at the edge of the world, beyond which is only ice and
eternal dark, where the leviathans hunt."

As they spoke, the girl lathered on more soap higher and higher, until
she had completely soaped Hilde's legs and started on her ripe
buttocks.  With trembling fingers, the girl kneeded the iron-hard
muscles that lay beneath the soft ass flesh.

"Your hands are strong," said Hilde.

The girl blushed deep crimson.  "I-- I apologize, mistress.  I am not
the usual girl for-- for this.  I cut the wood and perform other tasks
which require such ignoble exertion.  I shall send for another--"

"Did I ask for such a thing?" growled Hilde.

"N-- no, mistress," said the girl, stammering her discomfort.

"If I wished the touch of soft skin, I would hie to the brothels of
Paris, whose courtesans are trained from birth in the ways of pleasure.
The touch of their lips are as the brushing of a dove's wing."  Hilde
shifted as her nipples hardened against the pallet.  Memories of nights
of hot passion floated to her mind unbidden.  "The slat-assed,
money-counting haridans such as I found infesting this inn hold no
allure for me."

The slave girl kneeded soap-slicked fingers along the banded muscles of
Hilde's back.  No amount of pressure succeeded in grasping so much as a
single inch of loose flesh; it stretched taut as a drum over the
clearly defined muscles.  When Hilde's back glistened with moisture,
the girl drew the wooden scraper across, rinsing off both water and
dirt.

"I am done this side, mistress," said the slave girl, squatting back on
her heels.

Hilde laid still for a time, long enough so the girl wondered if
perhaps Hilde had fallen asleep, before she sat up.  When she did, her
expression was intense, like that of a jungle cat stalking its prey.
Languidly, Hilde reached out and seized the slave girl's simple shift
by the collar with her fist.

Surprise and then a flash of panic rushed across the girl's face.  "I--
mistress, what are you...?"

Hilde gave the material a sudden, sharp, downward yank.  The slave girl
gave a brief squeal of shock as she was thrown painfully to the ground.
The shift tore in a long, irregular rip down the front in Hilde's
powerful fist, exposing the girl's breasts.  "Enough talk," growled
Hilde.

"Ow," said the girl, lifting herself with an elbow from the floor.  Her
eyes were watery with hurt.  "Why did--"

The girl was cut off as a powerful backhand from Hilde caught her
across the face, sending her sprawling back over the floor.  The fist
felt like a large, heavy brick.  "Shut up," snapped Hilde.  She prowled
over to the slave girl's prone form and straddled her waist with her
massively muscled thighs.

Other than a single hiccup of fear, the girl said nothing.  She could
only stare helplessly with wide, doe-like eyes at the powerfully built
woman who sat astride her.

Hilde grabbed the girl's large, soft breasts in her hands and squeezed
with enough pressure to turn the skin white.  She glared at the girl as
if daring her speak, but the girl merely bit her lower lip against the
pain.  "You're learning," said Hilde, nodding with satisfaction.  Her
rough, callused thumbs rubbed over the girl's nipples, making them
swell with arousal.  The juxtaposition of the intense pain and intense
pleasure radiating from her breasts made the slave girl gasp.  No
sooner had the girl opened her mouth than Hilde bent and mashed her
lips against the girl's, invading the girl's mouth with her tongue.

All the while Hilde's tongue probed, her eyes remained open, burning
like anthracite into the girl's, which stared back only an inch away
with a mixture of terror and lust.  With obvious pleasure, Hilde lapped
at the blood which oozed from the girl's split lip, uttering breathy
grunts of satisfaction.  Hilde's teeth sank deep into the girl's lip,
tearing the cut wider and making the girl whimper.

"You mewl like crippled kitten," said Hilde with a sneer when she
finally pulled her face away.  A trickle of the girl's blood dripped
from her chin. "Not the weakest of the Valkyr would accept such
treatment without mortal struggle.  Fight me or by Hel's frozen cunt I
swear I'll give you a beating you won't soon forget."

Hilde stood, dragging the girl up with her by the tattered remnants of
her shift.  Two quick yanks staggered the girl and tore her shift
entirely away, leaving her naked and shivering.  Her breasts were
larger than Hilde's, and covered in freckles.  The fur that covered her
groin was dark and wooly, unlike the fine, blonde tuft that crowned
Hilde's.

"Please mistress," whimpered the girl.  "I'll do what you want, just
don't hurt me."

Hilde drew back her fist and let fly with a triphammer right that
crashed into the girl's nose like a battering ram.  The impact threw
the girl from her feet and bounced her off the wall before she came to
a shuddering stop in a crumpled heap on the floor.

"Frigga damn you," growled Hilde.  "Fight back!"

The slave girl looked up from the floor, wiping the blood and snot away
from her nose with the back of her hand.  Tears streaked her face, but
there was a flash of something like anger in her eyes.

Hilde took a step forward and launched a vicious kick into the girl's
ribs, right below the breast.  Her foot landed with a hollow thud that
made the girl grunt, but instead of rolling away the girl grabbed the
extended foot and twisted.  Hilde went down heavily to the floor.

In an instant the slave girl had scambled up and thrown herself at
Hilde's prone form.  Hilde rolled to her back and, jamming her foot
into her attacker's midsection, grabbed the girl's outstretched arms by
the wrists.  The girl's own momentum carried her forward and Hilde's
foot launched her into the air.  Anchored by Hilde's grip on her
wrists, she squawked in surprise as she flipped high overhead and came
down with a tooth-rattling crash on her back several feet beyond Hilde,
the wind knocked from her.

"You're slower than an auroch bloated with young," said Hilde as she
drew herself lithely to her feet.  She stalked on the balls of her
feet, like a cat, seeming almost to float across the floor.  Before the
slave girl could get her breath back, Hilde lifted her by a fistful of
hair and fell to her knees, mashing the girl's face into her groin.
Hilde's powerfully built thighs wrapped themselves around the girl's
head like pythons.

The slave girl struggled in the grip of Hilde's legs.  Her fingers
clawed for purchase but could find none on the rock-hard muscle.  The
girl's nails scored long, red jagged cuts on Hilde's thighs, but
Hilde's legs pressed ever tighter.

"Tongue me or I'll crush your skull like an egg," hissed Hilde.  She
flexed her thighs and the girl gave muffled cries of pain.
Desperately, the girl opened her mouth and began slithering her tongue
between the steaming hot, dripping folds of Hilde's cunt.

"Faster," said Hilde, driving her point home by squeezing her thighs
even tighter.  She could actually feel the girl's skull deforming under
the intense pressure.  The girl, in indescribable agony, screamed into
Hilde's cunt as she thrust her tongue deep inside Hilde.

Suddenly, Hilde let out a yelp.  The slave girl had seized Hilde's
clitoris between her teeth and was biting down for all she was worth.
Hilde's lips peeled back from her teeth in a furious grimace as
white-hot lightning bolts of agony exploded from her clitoris.  The
pressure on the girl eased slightly as Hilde allowed her thighs to
unflex for a moment.  A second later, Hilde brought her balled fist
smashing down on the top of the slave girl's head, stunning her and
tearing her teeth loose from Hilde's bleeding cunt.

Hilde backed away, rubbing her crotch.  Her fingers came away damp with
her own juices and a smear of blood.  She thrust her fingers into her
mouth and savoured the taste.  The slave girl scrambled away on all
fours to crouch warily in a corner, watching Hilde and ready to spring.

"So," said Hilde, slitting her eyes, "the rabbit has a little fight in
her after all."

The slave girl's eyes went wide with fear as Hilde stalked over to her
discarded leathers and picked up the sheathed broadsword.  The blade
made a wicked whispering sound as it slithered from its sheath.

"No," said the girl with a gasp.  "No, please.  Please mistress, no!"

Hilde caressed the naked blade with her fingers as she might a lover,
and flicked her tongue at its razor-keen edge.  Then turning her
attention back to the cowering slave girl, she held out the sword
hilt-first.  "Take it."

"Mistress?" said the girl.

"You heard me," growled Hilde.  "Take it.  Or I will."

Hesitantly, with trembling fingers, the slave girl reached out for the
sword.  Her eyes remained locked on Hilde, ready to leap away at the
first sign of danger.  Hilde remained motionless as the girl seized the
leather- wrapped hilt of the heavy, blue-steel blade.  Hilde, however,
did not release the blade from her iron grip.

Hilde raised the point of the broadsword's vertical blade and pressed
it hard against the softest part of her throat until a small drop of
blood beaded up.  "Kill me," said Hilde in a voice hoarse with lust.

The girl's hands held the hilt in a white-knuckled death grip.  A whole
gamut of emotions passed in succession over her face.  "I can't," she
whispered.

Hilde's eyes narrowed.  Her heartbeat slowed to a crawl as she gathered
her concentration to a single blazing point.  "Kill me," she said
icily, "or I will slit your pretty gut open and laugh while you hold
your entrails in your lap."

"They would kill me slowly," whispered the girl.  She could not look
away from the Hilde's fierce, smouldering eyes.  "I am a slave.  They
would roast me alive and feed my flesh to the pigs."

"I have watched women die with their guts in their hands," said Hilde.
"It is not fast.  I have seen hardened warriors sobbing like children
as they try to stuff their lights back inside.  They can live for hours
with the stink of their own shit in their noses before Frigga grants
them release. Kill me or I will give you a death not fit for a cur."

The girl could only stand frozen, mesmerized by Hilde's words.  For a
time that lasted whole millenia the two stood motionless, lost in each
other's eyes.

With a sob, the slave girl suddenly thrust the point home with all of
her strength.

Time for Hilde had slowed to the pace of glaciers.  The slave girl
could have been fixed in amber for all the speed she seemed to move.
Hilde felt the point of the blade tremble, saw the muscles in the
girl's arms bunch for the thrust.  Hilde's hands began moving with
agonizing slowness, as if they were immersed in cloying water.  Her
mind was crystalline with the force of her concentration.  The girl's
muscles began uncoiling, the blade sinking into the flesh of Hilde's
throat.  Hilde's hands completed their long trek, clasping together
palm to palm with the blade vertical between them.

The girl never saw Hilde's hands move.  One instant they were by her
side, and the next they were clasped around the blade of the
broadsword.  The sheer strength of Hilde's arms trapped the blade
completely immobile, and no force of the girl's, though her own arms
bulged with the strength of long manual labour, served to shift the
point so much as the tiniest fraction of an inch deeper into Hilde's
throat.  With a final sob, the rush of mingled emotions the slave girl
experienced overcame her and she collapsed bonelessly to the floor in a
pathetic huddle, wracked by tears.

The broadsword's hilt quivered in mid-air, its weight suspended
entirely by the small area between Hilde's palms.  Hilde herself
remained totally motionless as a colossal, volcanic orgasm detonated
with the force of a screaming gale wind through her body, making her
taut nerve endings sing. The focus of her mind served to magnify and
multiply the sensations of the orgasm until it seemed larger than the
universe itself and filled Hilde completely, like an earthenware vessel
filled with wine.

Hilde remained utterly motionless, her face a blank mask.  A single
fragrant droplet of her love juices beaded on her cunt and rained to
the floor.  When her climax had run its course, Hilde allowed the
broadsword to hit the ground with a clattering bang that made the
huddled, sobbing form of the slave girl jump.

After snuffing the lamp, Hilde padded over to the slave girl and curled
herself feline-like against her in the dark.  For a long time, Hilde
just laid in darkness, sated, and allowed her fingers to roam idly over
the sobbing girl's body.  Eventually she fell asleep and began to
dream.

                                *  *  *

"Hilde?  Hilde, where are you?  I can't see, Hilde.  Help me."

Hilde swam through a void of blackness deeper than simply the absence
of light.  This was the utter negation of light.  The sound of Hulde's
voice, so much like her own, was faint but much stronger than it had
been in recent weeks.  At least Hilde now had confirmation that her
travels were taking her in the right direction.  The voice drew her on,
calling to her.

"Please Hilde," said Hulde.  "Help me.  I'm so cold, Hilde.  I can't
feel myself.  I am losing myself.  Where are you?"

"I am here!" shouted Hilde.  "I am coming, Hulde!  Hold on.  I will
find you, though I march into the mouth of Hel itself.  Wait for me,
Hulde!"

"I need you," came Hulde's faint reply.  "Oh my sister, my sweet lover,
my wife, I cannot find my way.  It is so dark and I am so cold."

And as always, Hilde felt something else stirring in the dark, like the
insectile rustle of the legs of ten thousand spiders.  Something that
loved the darkness.  Something inimical to life itself.  Something
terrifyingly, horrifyingly aware of her presence.

"Frigga guide me," said Hilde as she kicked desperately in the
direction of Hulde's voice.  If only she could see, if only she could
find something to point her to Hulde...

"So cold..."

Hulde's voice faded away again, as it did every night, and Hilde was
left alone in the void.  Something massive and somehow serpentine slid
by her in the dark, close enough Hilde could feel the nearness of its
passage.  It vanished along with the void it occupied, and Hilde
blinked into the band of morning sunlight that wedged its way through
the shutters.  She still lay curled around the form of the sleeping
slave girl.  With a grim smile Hilde decided she still had time for an
hour's pleasure before rising and began waking her bed partner.

                            *  *  *

"You would be welcome to accompany us," said Croesia as she tightened
the girth on her horse.  Behind her, Croesia's five slaves loaded
bundles of fur and trade goods onto a train of mules.

"Whither do you travel?" asked Hilde.

"South," said Croesia,"to Quastille.  The Tulledan-Turin silver caravan
passes through twice a year, so trade should be profitable.  Plenty of
work for a... mercenary?"

Hilde ignored the subtle question and considered.  Having followed a
meandering southerly route thus far, she was confident that she neared
the place of her sister's confinement.  The ferret-faced trader posed
no danger to Hilde, and probably knew the roads hereabouts better than
she did.

Hilde nodded.  "I will accompany you."

One of the spare horses was provided for Hilde, but at her request the
saddle was removed.  The slaves watched curiously as Hilde mounted the
animal with only a thick blanket between her thighs and the horse's
broad back.

"You ride strangely," said Croesia when the train of animals was on the
road and well away from the inn.  "Is such the custom in your land?"

"No," said Hilde, simply, and fell silent.  She could have explained
that she did not fight from horseback, which made stirrups unnecessary,
and that with her legs and thighs bare against the beast's back, she
could feel even its smallest twitches, allowing her to predict its
actions even before they began.  Instead, she stared straight ahead and
remained quiet and taciturn.

Croesia made a number of other sallies, but became quickly discouraged
by Hilde's monosyllabic responses and lapsed at last into defeated
silence. For hours the two rode in a silence disturbed only by the
sounds of animal life around them.

Hilde drew her horse suddenly to halt and raised her arm in a stopping
gesture to the rest of the train.  Croesia nearly collided with her.

"What the Furies--" began Croesia.

Hilde loosened her broadsword in its scabbard.  "Listen."

Croesia closed her jaws with a snap and tilted her head, straining for
any untoward sound.  She shook her head.  "I hear nothing."

Hilde silently scanned the surrounding woods.  She did not explain that
it was this very lack of sound, the silence of the near-omnipresent
bird calls, that boded ill.  Even more compelling was the powerful
sensation of being... watched...  Thunk-thunk-thunk.  Suddenly the air
was alive with hissing death, steel-tipped wooden shafts that sprang
like vipers through the trees.

Two of the slaves went down at once with shafts embedded in them, one
through the eye and the other through the throat.  Hilde felt her
steed's muscles gather for a panicked leaping gallop.  Savagely, she
twisted its head aside with the bridle, bringing it back under control.
Something whistled past her head.

"Bandits!" shouted Croesia, trying unsuccessfully to control her horse
and draw her rapier at the same time.

Crossbows, thought Hilde.  It had not been the twang of bows, but the
clatter of crossbows.  How many?  Five... six.  Hilde's count made it
at least six separate crossbows.  Crossbows meant they had to take time
to reload.  Surely they would not risk... ah, there.  The underbrush
came apart with explosive rustles as armed women poured out onto the
road.

Hilde leaped with lithe grace from her mount.  Even as her knees bent
to absorb the impact, her broadsword slithered from its sheath into her
hand.

They wore green and brown cloaks that blended into the foliage of the
forest, and, beneath, each wore boiled leather.  Most were armed with
rapiers or longswords.  They gave voice to terrible shouts as they
sprang from hiding to strike fear into their foes.

Like the prow of a dragonship smashing straight through a breaking
ocean wave, Hilde exploded directly toward the ambushers.  Sword in
hand, she crouched low to minimize the exposure of her abdomen.  One of
the bandits brought her longsword around in an overhand chop that would
have cloven Hilde through her head had it connected.  Instead, Hilde
slid aside with such speed that she appeared to flow like water, and
flicked her massive broadsword out and up at her opponent's exposed
throat as if the blade weighed little more than an epee.

The bandit saw the sinister silver flash of the blade whisper beneath
her chin and staggered back in a blind panic.  A moment later, the
expected wave of pain not yet arrived, she brought her left hand up to
prod fearfully at her neck in confusion. How could that yellow-haired
bitch have missed...?  The thought was to remain forever unfinished as
her head toppled from her severed neck.  So clean was the cut that not
a drop of blood fell until the headless body had fallen back into the
brush.

Like a panther, Hilde was spinning even before her first target had
fallen.  One of the bandits, a thickset woman with wrists like the
boles of trees, turned to Hilde and brought her battle axe over her
head.  Hilde feinted forward and the axe came down in a whistling arc.
Too slowly, the attacker realized her mistake.  The axe bit earth as
Hilde spun through her feint to the side and brought her sword down in
a vicious sweeping slash that severed the bandit's arms at the elbows.
Thick streams of blood jetted from the stumps of the woman's arms.  Her
howl of pain was cut short when Hilde smashed the pommel of her broad-
sword into her temple with enough force to shatter bone and pulp her
brain.  Hilde knew better than to risk the edge of her blade on a
target that was already neutralized.

Seven bandits had leaped from ambush.  While Hilde was bringing down
two, the five others had swept past to attack the mule train.  Two of
them harried Croesia while one each paired off with the slaves who were
armed only with long knives.  Hilde pondered only long enough to see
one of the slaves go down, overcome by her opponent's longer weapon.
The two remaining slaves screamed their terror, fending swordblows away
with increasing desperation.

Another slave went down and the other looked soon to follow.  As the
three bandits converged, they suddenly found themselves in the midst of
a storm of flashing steel.  Hilde appeared as if by magic among them,
her heavy broadsword hacking all around her in a dazzling silver web of
death.  She roared her fury, seemingly heedless of her safety as she
swung her weapon two-handed, hacking through leather and meat like a
butcher.  In seconds her sudden onslaught had brought down all three
and left Hilde covered in thick red gore.

Croesia, still mounted, had drawn her rapier in the meanwhile and was
laying about her as best she could.  Two of the bandits accosted her,
one on each side, and they would surely have made short work of her had
they not been concerned with keeping Croesia's horse undamaged.  Hilde
turned in time to observe one of the bandits thrust her rapier right
through the trader's shoulder.  Croesia gave a sharp cry and fell from
her saddle. The bandit lifted her weapon to finish the job.  Hilde knew
she would never make it in time to stop the fatal blow.

Instead, Hilde drew back her broadsword and, with a single smooth
motion, sent it screaming point first like a stroke of lightning
through the intervening space to impale the poised bandit through the
back with a hollow thud.  The point exploded out of the woman's chest
in a spray of foamy pink blood as the sword sank up to the hilt between
her shoulder blades.  The force of the impact drove her over the fallen
Croesia to land in a heap several feet beyond, dead even before she
stopped skidding.

The last bandit, a buxom brunette, spun to face Hilde, holding her
longsword before her like a shield.  "Pax," she said warily over her
blade.  "I want no more of this."

Hilde grabbed for the nearest weapon, one of the slaves' knives.  As
she did so, the bandit's eyes flicked for the tiniest fraction of a
second to the side of the road.

The knife was spinning from Hilde's hand even before she heard the
wooden thunk of the crossbow.  The knife vanished into the greenery,
from which, an instant later, emanated a cry of pain.  The deadly
steel-tipped missile from the unseen crossbow whirred through the air
with unerring accuracy at Hilde's throat.

Time slowed.

The world came into sharp focus.  Hilde could see each leaf on each
tree, every whorl of cloud in the sky.  Every unique drop of crimson
blood that spattered the road became a perfect ruby that reflected the
sun's light in encarnadined rainbows.  The steel point of the bolt
pushed relentlessly through the molasses thickness of the air.  Hilde
brought her hand up before her with infinite and deceptive efficiency.
The beat of her heart was a thunder-like roar in her ears.

Time flowed once more.  And the deadly bolt shuddered impotently in
Hilde's fist, its point quivering inches from her throat.  A powerful
orgasm rumbled through Hilde's veins.

"Holy Mother," whispered the bandit, her eyes huge.

Hilde calmly snapped the bolt in half.

The bandit threw down her longsword and fell to her knees with her
hands locked over her head.  "I yield."

Hilde stalked over and snatched a handful of the bandit's black hair in
her left fist, jerking her head up.  The woman's face was white with
fear as she looked up into Hilde's face, which bore no trace of
emotion.  "You offered no quarter," said Hilde.  "I also grant none."

Before the woman could move, Hilde launched a brutal punch at her
throat that landed with a sickening crunch as cartillage was crushed.
Hilde released her hold.  The bandit staggered to her feet, took two
steps, and collapsed once more to her knees.  Terror froze her
rapidly-purpling face into a horrible rictus as she failed to draw
breath through her smashed larynx.  Hilde watched dispassionately as
the woman fell over to claw desperately at her throat with her nails,
tearing at the skin in a vain attempt to draw a breath.  It was some
minutes before her fear-filled eyes, now bulging grotesquely from the
blackened flesh of her swollen face, ceased their rolling.  A single
great spasm lurched through the bandit's writhing body, and then she
lay still.

Croesia had staggered to her feet, one hand over the puncture through
her shoulder which had bled badly, but had now begun to slow.  She
stared at Hilde with something like horror.  "That was... sickening,"
she said in an awed, quiet voice.

Hilde shrugged.  "There is but a single punishment for banditry in all
lands.  Quastille is saved the price of a length of rope.  See to your
slaves."

The torso of the impaled bandit yielded Hilde's great broadsword only
grudgingly, it having right passed through the breastbone, and Hilde
was required to place her sandaled foot on the woman's back for
leverage.  When the sword had been reconered, she bulled her way
through the shrubbery to the spot where she had flung the knife.  Ten
feet into the brush, she found a wounded woman struggling to crawl away
with a knife embedded in her right breast.  Bright pink blood bubbled
hissingly through the wound around the knife's blade, showing that a
lung had been punctured.  Several crossbows lay discarded on the ground
nearby.

Hilde used her foot to push the woman over onto her back, causing the
woman to gasp with pain.  The woman looked up at Hilde in recognition
and blinked suddenly in surprise.  "You...?"

Hilde frowned, but her heart lurched in her chest.  Hulde!  This woman
had seen Hulde!  The sudden intensity in Hilde's furious glare alarmed
the woman.  "Where have you seen me?  Tell me now!" demanded Hilde.

The woman shook her head in confusion.  She coughed wrackingly and
groaned before she spoke.  "I don't... not possible..."

With a hiss of anger, Hilde squatted over the woman and took the hilt
of the knife in her hand.  "You will tell me now!"

The woman's eyes went wide with fear.  "No... please..."

Hilde growled and ground the knife agonizingly back and forth.

A tortured groan of pain tumbled through the bandit's lips along with a
stream of blood.  Her eyes rolled up into her head as she twisted and
writhed in agony.  "No more... no..."

"You will tell me," said Hilde quietly.  "You will tell me or your
passing shall be a thing to horrify the gods themselves."  As she
spoke, she carefully untied the draws which held the woman's tunic shut
and bared both her breasts.  Her right breast, tacky with blood,
remained half-covered, the tunic pinned there by the knife.

"The Children of the Goat," whispered the woman, who stared with
something between horror and lust as Hilde lapped at her wounded breast
with her tongue.  The blazing pain in her chest swelled alongside the
tingle of sexual heat, making her ears buzz.  When Hilde nibbled
delicately at the nipple, sucking hot blood like gory milk, the woman
closed her eyes and let her head fall back.

Hilde lifted her face.  Her lips were red with the woman's lifeblood,
and she licked them with sensual hunger.  Slowly she manoevered down
the length of the woman's prone form.  With deft fingers, Hilde
unknotted the draw on the woman's skirts and drew them down to reveal
her damp cleft.  "Who are the Children of the Goat?"

The woman bit her lip as she felt Hilde's tongue enter her, probing
skillfully among the folds.  Her breath came faster, which turned her
torn lung into a fireball of hot agony.  "Cultists...  Quastille...
ooh... take strangers... yes, yes!  Uhh.  Can't stop them.  Too strong.
From far away.  All... uh... all pay tribute.  Ooooh."

"And you saw me among them?" asked Hilde, stopping her ministrations
only long enough to speak.

"Yesssss," said the woman through clenched teeth.  The wound in her
chest was beginning to pass beyond her awareness as she neared her
climax.  She panted now despite the knife that still protruded
grotesquely from her chest.  "Prisoner... sacrifice..."

Hilde sat straight up with the bandit's juices smeared over her lips
and rolling down her chin.  She said nothing.

The woman opened her eyes and stared at Hilde with frank need.  "Don't
stop.  Please.  Finish... need..."

"You want me to fuck you?" said Hilde.  Her voice was without tone.

"Yesssss," said the woman, closing her eyes and biting at her lower lip
with her unrequited longing, hovering on the edge of explosive sexual
release.

Hilde ripped the knife from the woman's chest, forcing a hoarse scream
from the woman's throat.  "Freeze in Hel," growled Hilde.  The woman's
eyes snapped open in shock -- as Hilde slashed the bandit's throat open
with the knife.

Croesia blinked in surprise as Hilde emerged from the trees covered in
fresh smears of bright red blood.  Both hands were crimson to the
elbows. "What in the name of Juno...?"

Hilde ignored her and used the cloak of one of the bandits to carefully
clean the blood from her sword.  After she was certain that it was
clean, she inspected it for nicks or wear.  Only then did she wipe the
worst of the blood from herself and the knife.

When Croesia realized no answer was forthcoming, she walked back to her
horse and painfully lifted herself into the saddle, grimacing.  "Three
of the slaves are dead.  One is wounded, though I think she's likely to
live.  Won't be much good for a month at least.  Deuced nuisance.  I'll
need to buy at least two slaves in Quastille, and you can wager crowns
to coppers I'll be paying a pretty premium."

Hilde flipped the knife to the remaining uninjured slave and mounted
her own horse.  She could feel its nervousness.  The smell of blood was
making it skittish.  Hilde patted its neck and whispered soothing words
into its ear.  "I'll lead," said Hilde at last, kicking her horse into
a trot and passing in front of Croesia.

"Frigid bitch," muttered Croesia under her breath.  "I've taken some
fair booty from the bandits," she said.  "Swords and such.  I imagine
you'll want a share?"

"No," said Hilde, and refused to speak otherwise.

Croesia stared at Hilde's back, shrugged, and got her own horse moving.
The mule train followed behind, though somewhat more ragged than it had
been when there were more to direct it.  The bodies of the three slain
slaves were draped over three of the mules, and the wounded slave rode
nodding, half-conscious, on another.  The bandits they left for the
wolves and ravens.

Quastille was a large town, one of the largest in Hesperia outside of
Tulledan.  The buildings were mainly of stone and red brick, though
some of the newer buildings looked to be made of wood.  This was not
unusual, as cities go, for the forests had only in recent generations
recovered from the depredations of the Age of Men.  The conspicuous
lack of sewage in the streets informed Hilde that Quastille sported a
system of sewers, and likewise informed her of the town's wealth.  The
town's prosperity, however, was also obvious in many other aspects:
its well-dressed citizenry; its cobbled streets; the lack of beggars
and cripples; and the large number of taverns and inns which sprouted
everywhere like weeds. It was at one of the latter that Hilde took her
leave of Croesia.

Croesia nodded approvingly at what she saw around her.  Already her
eyes seemed far away, as if seeing profit-taking at some future
transaction. "Yes, I shall do most profitable business here indeed."
She looked towards the inn which rose three stories beside them, which
possessed its own private stable and obviously catered to the merchant
class.  "Shall we?"

"No," said Hilde, dismounting and lifting her pack onto her back.

Croesia's eyebrows lifted.  "If it's a matter of... funds, I can
advance you a few against your share of the booty.  Or mayhap,"  she
began, her angular ferret's face turning crafty, "mayhap you'd care to
split the cost of a private room?"

Hilde's face darkened and she opened her mouth to speak, then shut her
mouth with an audible snap.  Without saying a word, she turned on her
heel and strode off into the swirling crowds.  Croesia could only stare
silently after her retreating back.  Finally the trader shrugged.  It
was not, she thought, as though a courtesan would be hard to find.

                                *  *  *

Hilde spent the night in the common room of a travellers' inn.  It was
neither so luxurious as to attract burglars, nor so indigent that one
risked disease by merely entering the premises.  The constant flow of
strangers allowed Hilde a measure of anonymity, even with her golden
hair.  With her broadsword bare in her hand across her body and her
pack pillowing her head, none entertained the thought of accosting her
in the night.

Sleep once more carried Hilde into the formless black void in which
something terrible stirred.

"Hilde?"

Hulde's voice was so close that Hilde felt almost as if she could reach
out and touch her sister.

"Hulde!  I've come!  I am near, my sister!"

"Oh Hilde," sighed Hulde's voice across the ocean of blackness.  Her
voice was a thin whisper, the sighing of the arctic bora over endless,
desolate plains of ice.  "I am so cold.  I am afraid as I have never
been.  Tired... so tired..."

"Wait for me!" cried Hilde.  "Guide me, show me the way!"

There was a new sound in the darkness.  Chanting.  Strange warbling
voices raised in a dark undercurrent that swept through the shadow with
a palpable force.  It insinuated itself into Hilde's pores until she
felt dirty, as if covered in excrement.  She could understand no word,
but the animal within her knew it and recoiled from it.  It was a foul
paean to the primal evil that lived in the darkness between the stars.
Hulde was saying more, urgency in her voice, but the chanting drone
made nonsense of it, and soon her voice faded away until Hilde was once
more alone in the void with whatever lived within it.

When Hilde awoke it was not yet light.  She touched her face and her
fingers came away damp with tears.  And she thought she knew why.

"Though I march into the mouth of Hel itself..." whispered Hilde.

                                *  *  *

Hilde spent the next day tramping across the length and bredth of the
city.  Anyone watching her would have known instinctively that she was
searching for something, though none could have said just what.  She
seemed to feel her way around, allowing some subtle sense to guide her.

It was nearly dark when Hilde found what she was looking for.  It was
at the perimeter rather than at its heart, but at last Quastille's
dirty belly revealed itself to her.  Here there were cripples and
beggars, though not in great numbers, and here dogs and pigs ran freely
in the streets to consume the garbage which rotted in the gutters.
Many of the buildings leaned drunkenly, and might well have fallen had
they not been packed in such close proximity that they supported each
other like drunken sailors on leave.  If Hulde had come to Quastille --
and Hilde was now convinced that she had -- this was where she'd have
come.  Not for Hulde nor her sister were the soft, decadent nests such
as Croesia inhabited.

A very few inquiries produced the location of the place which she
sought. The name was never the same and its appearance varied from land
to land, but from the Sea of Nippon beyond Cathay in the Mystic East to
the farthest volcanic reaches of Ultima Thule in the west, every city
through which Hilde had journeyed had such a place as this, where
information could be had for as little as the price of a beer -- or as
much as the seller could extort.

Fat Samiel's was just as Hilde could have predicted: badly lit,
smelling of spilled beer, and crowded with a seedy clientele that
talked in low voices while watching each other from the corners of
their eyes.  The main chance was somewhere in the room, and everyone
was looking for it. Every eye in the house turned to inspect Hilde as
she entered, sizing up the huge sword that hung at her side, her
unusual blonde hair, and the road dust that clung to her like a second
skin.  Behind the bar was an immensely fat woman in a beer-stained
apron.  Samiel, Hilde presumed.  Hilde cast a casual eye around the
room, noting the number of weapons and the location of every door frame
and window.

"Tall beer," said Hilde, throwing down a handful of assorted copper
coins onto the bar.  Samiel glanced at them, shrugged, and gathered
them up in her pudgy fingers.  The beer was thin and bitter, but served
to wet down the dust in Hilde's throat.  The clay mug was large; she
downed half of it in a gulp and carried the rest to an empty spot on a
bench.

The other patrons paid little obvious attention to Hilde.  She was an
unknown quantity and, as such, both a potential threat and potential
advantage.  They were prepared to wait.  Those who lived on the edges
of the civilized world, who sustained themselves from the scraps which
fell from its table, knew well the skill of waiting.  Two hours later,
they knew no more about Hilde than they had when she had arrived, but
she having bought several rounds for her neighbours, they were willing
enough to admit her to their circle.  The serving wench, a comely ebon-
skinned Aethiop, sat in Hilde's lap and played with the strange golden
locks of Hilde's hair.

"The silver caravan, now there is a prize," one of the women, a short
Franconian with fiery red hair, was saying.  She sighed.

"Aye," replied a dumpy woman who was the worse for drink.  "But such as
you and I shan't be seeing a lick of it, and there's the truth."

"The Corsicans could take her!" cried someone farther down the table.

"Fool!" said the Franconian.  "The Corsicans own it!"

A loud argument broke out as each person asserted that some particular
faction of the underworld and no other could waylay the silver caravan.
Hilde listened carefully, but could catch no reference to the Children
of the Goat, as she had hoped she might.

"Carlotta's bunch could do it.  Bloodthirsty lot they are," said one.

"Not any more!  Lost half her squad today, she did," said the dumpy
woman.  "Heard they got wiped out by a patrol north of the city."

"T'weren't no patrol," said another, "I heard as was the Corsicans done
it, a blood feud."

A fresh argument broke out over this, to join the first which, itself,
showed no sign of abating.

"Perhaps," said Hilde, "it was the Children of the Goat."

A hush fell across table.  The Aethiop serving wench stared at Hilde
with frightened eyes.  Everyone turned to look at Hilde with something
like terrified fascination, as one might look at a woman who juggled
live scorpions while holding an asp in her teeth.

"Sweet Mother," hissed the dumpy woman angrilly.  "If you've a death
wish, you've no call to involve me."

"Nor I," said the Franconian, edging away from Hilde as if she expected
lightning to burst through the door at any moment and cook Hilde where
she sat.

The serving wench got up and scuttled across the floor to the bar,
where she whispered something in Samiel's ear.  Samiel's eyebrows rose,
turned to look at Hilde, and then, with a look midway between fear and
fury, waddled out from behind the bar to talk to someone seated at the
far end of the tavern whom Hilde couldn't see.  This someone rose and,
with Samiel waddling behind, strode slowly across the tavern in the
direction of the table where Hilde sat.

The dumpy woman leaned close to Hilde.  "Manuella," she whispered. "You
had better get moving, chica."

Hilde leaned back, her spine flat against the wall.  She watched the
woman, Manuella, approach and come to a stop before her.  Manuella was
enormous, with massive forearms each as thick as Hilde's legs.  Her
shoulders spread wide and powerful, like a draft horse, and her chest
was of epic proportions, capable of smothering a woman not much smaller
than Hilde.  When she spoke, her voice was a low bass rumble.  "Y'can
leave with all yer limbs or none o' them, but either way yer leaving,"
she said, glaring at Hilde from beneath a single eyebrow like a black
hedge row.  The tavern was completely silent now.

"I paid for this beer," said Hilde, hefting her mug.  "I will drink it
and then I will leave.  I want no trouble."

Manuella's scowl deepened until her eyes were entirely hidden by the
escarpment of her brow.  "On yer feet now, piss-hair, or you got all
the trouble you need.  I said NOW!"

Hilde looked down at the meaty finger that punctuated each word against
her breastbone.  Then she looked up with a smile that showed lots of
teeth and held absolutely no mirth at all.  "Remove your finger," she
said quietly.  Her voice radiated arctic chill.

"The only thing gettin' removed is you," growled Manuella.  Suddenly
her jaw sagged open and she let loose a howl of pain.

Hilde had reached up and, with the speed of striking adder, neatly bent
Manuella's extended digit back until it snapped.  The cracking sound
was audible throughout the tavern.

Manuella roared and formed a fist with her good hand the size of a
small beer keg.  "Yer walkin' dead!" howled Manuella, as she bent the
broken finger agonizingly back into position with her chin.

Hilde took a last sip of her beer and stood up.  This was worse than
useless, she knew.  Foolish, even.  But the berserker rage roared and
gibbered like naked flame behind her eyes and demanded to be sated. She
thrust her jaw forward as she advanced a step, dwarfed by the far
greater mass of the awesome Manuella.  "Show me," said Hilde from
between clenched teeth.

People went scrambling for cover as Manuella threw her weight forward
with a roar like a wounded tigress, her arms poised to crush Hilde
between them.  Except Hilde was no longer there.

Faster than anyone's eye had followed, Hilde had crouched under the
huge arms and slid smoothly to the side.  Her right fist lashed out
twice as Manuella flew past, driving into the side of Manuella's rib
cage.  The big woman's ribs felt like leather-wrapped stone, making
Hilde's knuckles scream with pain.  Hilde hardly noticed.

Manuella was impelled awkwardly forward by her own mass, forcing her
into the table where Hilde had sat, and shattering it to planks.  Hilde
leaped atop the woman's massive back and took hold of her ears, which
she used as handles to repeatedly slam Manuella's face into the remains
of the table.

Roaring incoherently, Manuella shook herself like a dog, trying to free
herself from the harpy on her back which now had one fist tangled in
Manuella's hair, and was using the other to repeatedly pummel the woman
in the back of the head and bull neck.  Manuella's gyrations took her
near a wall, against which she hurled herself backwards with all of her
weight.  Hilde tried to leap clear, but one of Manuella's big ham fists
held her by one leg, and Hilde found herself slammed with bone-breaking
force into the wall, crushed between the stone and Manuella's ponderous
mass.  Hilde's breath left her in gust.  Gritting her teeth against the
pain, Hilde brought her arms briefly apart, then slammed her hands with
terrific force against Manuella's ears, boxing them savagely.  Manuella
howled with pain and staggered forward, away from the wall, allowing
Hilde to throw herself clear.

Hilde kneeled on the ground, panting, trying to get her breath back
while keeping one eye on her opponent.  Manuella shook her head from
side to side, swaying slightly on her feet as the room stopped spinning
around her.  Each had only a few seconds' reprieve before they were
circling each other warily, looking for weaknesses.

One of Manuella's fists swung in a wide haymaker.  Hilde ducked beneath
it and landed a solid left to Manuella's iron-hard abdominals.  A back-
handed slap caught Hilde a glancing blow to the head.  Blue-white stars
danced before Hilde's eyes.  She knew she could not afford to let even
a single one of Manuella's mighty fists connect solidly.  Once, twice,
three times, Hilde rabbit-punched Manuella to the kidneys, working the
same spot.  She could feel the thick bands of muscle beneath, but even
this behemoth had to have a limit.  Manuella tried once more to close
in a grapple with her smaller, faster opponent only to have her dance
away again.  Come on, thought Hilde, just a single mistake...  Twice
more her fists landed on Manuella's massively muscled abdomen.  And on
the last blow, Manuella instinctively dropped her guard to cover her
aching kidney, half-bending.

Hilde was ready.  Grabbing hold of Manuella's hair in both her fists,
she yanked Manuella's head down until her face had smashed stunningly
into Hilde's raised knee.  The crunching noise Manuella's nose made as
it collapsed could be heard through the whole tavern.  The hollow thud
of Manuella's head rebounding from Hilde's knee followed, and the huge
woman went down like a toppling pillar.

In an instant, Hilde was astraddle the fallen woman.  Again and again
her fists flashed out, smashing into Manuella's face.  She couldn't
tell if the woman was conscious or not.  She didn't care.  The voice of
her death-rage was screaming in her head, "Kill!  Kill!  Kill!"  Blood
flew everywhere.  Manuella's face vanished in a contused and swollen
mass of bleeding flesh.  Hilde's hand reached instinctively for the
broadsword at her side, her fingers closed around the hilt -- and the
sound of two dozen blades being drawn from their scabbards penetrated
her mind with icy clarity.  Hilde looked up and blinked, the red slowly
retreating from her vision.  All around her, dangerous-looking women
had pulled a deadly variety of swords and long, wicked knives.  Every
eye in the house was on Hilde. Carefully, Hilde released her hold on
the broadsword's hilt and rose until she stood straddle-legged over her
defeated opponent.  After a few seconds the tension broke and the naked
steel disappeared just as quickly as it had materialized.  Hilde
wondered if they'd have been so protective if it was she lying helpless
on the floor and not Manuella.  Somehow she doubted it.

"For the table," said Hilde, tossing several silver coins into the bar.
She retrieved her pack and shouldered it.  "My thanks, but I think I've
enough beer for one evening.  Perhaps another night."  In the silence
as Hilde made her way out of the bar, her eyes watching hawkishly for
any sudden motions, she could hear Manuella's wet, laboured breathing.
No one moved until long after Hilde had left.

                                *  *  *

The alley across from the bar was olid with mouldering garbage.  Rats
rustled through it, but Hilde had it otherwise to herself, which suited
her needs well.  She hunkered down on her heels and was prepared to
wait many hours if necessary.  Only minutes had passed when Hilde saw a
woman step out of the bar and glance around with careful nonchalance.
Hilde drew herself deeper into the shadows.  Satisfied with what she
saw, the red-haired Franconian hurried off down the street.  Hilde slid
out of the alley behind her, creeping on cat's feet.

At least one -- and probably more -- of her companions, Hilde knew,
would make a report of Hilde to a merchant of information.  Such
brokers lived in every city and would pay hard coin for good
information.  Hilde would have wagered upon the barmaid, but had
granted the Franconian at least even odds.  By morning, news of Hilde's
arrival would have travelled to every interested ear in the city.

The Franconian hurried through the streets with her grey cloak pulled
up around her ears against the fog which was rolling off the oily black
water of the nearby river.  The night was silent save for the distant
sounds of revelry and the creaking of ship hawsers in their berths.
When Hilde's form loomed up suddenly before her, like an apparition,
the Franconian gasped and drew her shortsword.

Hilde eyed the naked blade.  "You believe perhaps that you are a match
where Manuella was not?"

"No, no, of course not," said the Franconian nervously.  She sheathed
her sword.  "Just startled me in all."

"I am not a stupid woman," said Hilde.  "I will not not insult you by
pretending that you are.  You will tell me whither you go to report."

The Franconian's eyes darted nervously around the street, but they were
alone.  Hilde had chosen her spot well.  "I don't--"

Hilde's backhand laid the Franconian out flat in the street.  It was
some time before the woman could gather sufficient wits to stand.  Her
nose was bloody and one eye was already swelling shut.  She hadn't even
seen the hand that struck her, so fast was its movement.

"Do not lie to me again," said Hilde.  Her voice was so calm she might
have been discussing the weather.  "Whither do you go to report?"

"Tis no great secret," said the Franconian, rubbing the side of her
face with her hand.  Her voice was petulant.  "Mama Mathilde pays well
for accurate news.  Any guttersnipe could have told you."

Hilde ignored the woman's tone.  "Where might I find this Mathilde who
pays so handsomely for the news of the day?"

"She keeps a shop on Scribe Street," said the Franconian.  "She is a
seller of antiquities."

Hilde nodded.  "And what report do you bring her?"

The Franconian stared at Hilde as if the blonde-haired outlander had
sprouted another head before her.  "A road-weary warrior sporting a
blade that could fell an oak blows into Samiel's and savages Manuella
as as easily as a baker might kneed dough.  Surely no one is so modest
as to regard this as commonplace!"

"And nothing," said Hilde, matching the Franconian's gaze, "about her
interest in the Children of the Goat."

The Franconian paled.  "That is your business.  I've no desire to...
wait."  She looked at Hilde as if for the first time.  "The golden-
maned warrior.  You're she!  But... impossible.  I can't --"

Hilde snarled and grabbed the Franconian's cloak in both hands, nearly
lifting her off her feet.  "My sister!  Tell me of my sister!"

A light seemed to go on behind the Franconian's eyes.  "Of course," she
whispered.  "I had thought it was you.  At the sacrifice.  They showed
us --"

"Sacrifice?" said Hilde in a low, dangerous voice.

The Franconian swallowed hard, her eyes shining with fear.  "Your
sister.  Weeks ago.  They sacrificed her before us.  She is... dead."

Dead.  The word rang in Hilde's head like a great war gong.  Dead.  Her
sister Hulde, her lover, her heart, was... dead.  The Franconian was
saying something, making buzzing sounds that made no sense.  Hilde did
not care what the woman said.  Hulde was dead.  And had been for weeks.

But of course, Hilde had known that.

Hilde had known her sister was dead since the first.  Some part of her
had known that.  All along Hilde had fooled herself into believing that
she had come to rescue her sister, to save her, to touch her and to be
herself touched, to make herself again complete.  Now her self-imposed
blindness had been lifted and the roaring inferno of grief in her chest
swelled and blossomed within her like a poisonous flower, each petal
the colour of freshly-spilled blood.  This was not a journey of rescue
and new beginnings.  It was a journey of endings.  And... vengeance.

When Hilde's eyes came back into focus, the Franconian had stopped her
frightened babble and stared with trepidation at the new expression on
Hilde's face.  It was almost serene, and terrified her more than a howl
of rage would have done.

"You will tell no one of me," said Hilde, casting her eyes around the
deserted street.

"I will tell no one," said the Franconian quickly.  "I swear it on the
robe of the Holy Mother.  No one at all."

But the Franconian was unaware that Hilde was not giving an order.  She
was making a perfectly factual observation.  Hilde's eyes fell on a
rain barrel near the rear of what was probably a warehouse.  It was
full nearly to the top, the moon reflecting against the oily residue
that floated on top of the water.  Hilde backed her protesting captive
up against the barrel until the Franconian's shoulder blades pressed
against its rim.  Then, reaching into the Franconian's cloak, Hilde
pressed her hand under the woman's groin -- and lifted.

"What are you --" said the Franconian with a yelp, but she got no
further, for Hilde had suddenly upended her as easily as a rag doll
and, pushing against the woman's groin, driven her head-first into the
barrel.

Water slopped over the edge of the barrel.  Hilde had her arm deep
inside the rain barrel, her hand still pressed between the woman's
legs, keeping the thrashing Franconian upside down and crammed into the
bottom. She could feel the woman's cunt spasming in panic under her
hand.  Dull thuds emanated from the barrel where the Franconian's fists
struck the wooden ribs inside in her fruitless struggle.  Only the
woman's ankles and sandaled feet could be seen scissoring back and
forth above the rim of the barrel.

A minute passed and the thrashing began to still.  Hilde waited five
full minutes before she removed her arm from the barrel.  The feet had
long since stopped moving.  A glance up and down the street assured
Hilde that she had been unobserved.  Quickly, she pushed the protruding
ankles below the surface of the water.  The body would, of course, be
discovered eventually, but not before morning.  That was all the time
Hilde knew she would need.  All the time in the world.

                                *  *  *

Hilde had to search twice before she found the antiquities shop of Mama
Mathilde.  Hilde had been expecting something grander than the tiny
brick building she eventually spied.  It was neat and well-maintained,
but there was little to differentiate it from the other shops which
surrounded it.  The front door was closed and barred, but a lamp burned
in a shuttered room on the second floor.  Hilde pounded loudly on the
door.

A small square panel opened in the door, beyond which a pair of eyes
regarded Hilde with open suspicion.  "What do you want?  We're closed."

"I will talk to Mathilde," said Hilde.

The eyes looked Hilde up and down, pausing briefly on the broadsword at
her side.  "Go away.  I told you, we're closed."  The panel began to
swing shut.

"I come to speak of the Children of the Goat," said Hilde, loudly.

The panel swung open.  The eyes were furious.  "Wait here.  And for the
love of the Mother, keep your mouth shut."  The panel swung shut.

Several minutes passed while Hilde fingered the hilt of her broadsword,
her ears cocked for any sound that would betray an ambush.  Finally the
door swung open before her, and a tall, muscular woman in leathers, her
clone-cropped hair a light tan, motioned her inside.  The woman's eyes
were the ones which had regarded Hilde through the door panel, and they
were no less furious now than they had been earlier.

Hilde and the woman sized each other up like cautious lionesses.  It
was no great trouble for Hilde to see that the woman was a warrior. The
muscles were built for swinging a sword, not hefting crates.  The way
she moved was smooth and athletic.  She held herself with a casual
confidence that bespoke considerable martial skill.  True warriors did
not need to pose and flex.  They had nothing to prove.  The woman
looked unhappy, clearly having come to the same conclusion about Hilde
and hoping a contest at arms would not prove necessary.  A longsword
hung by the woman's side, its hilt gilt with gold.

"Senora Mathilde will see you," said the woman, stepping back to allow
Hilde to pass.  She escorted Hilde past the darkened lower shop and up
a flight of stairs to the second floor, which Hilde guessed was the
private office.

The room into which Hilde was led gave evidence of a mind at work which
demanded order.  The floor was spotless, the wood a uniform pale white
from many bleachings.  The walls were unornamented save for several
shelves of books which had been arranged in order of size.  In the
centre of the room was a wooden desk of rich walnut, the surface of
which had been sanded and polished to a reflective sheen.  On the desk
was a tidy pile of scrolls, a soapstone inkwell, and several quills of
varying size and length, all neatly arranged.  A woman sat behind the
desk, regarding Hilde with interest.

To say the woman sat was not quite accurate.  To Hilde it seemed more
as if the woman squatted like an enormous toad.  Indeed, the woman had
a definite toad-like appearance.  She was immense, larger even than Fat
Samiel.  Great yellow jowls of skin hung from her chin, making it seem
that she had no neck, her great toad face protruding directly from the
spherical bloat of her body.  Iron-grey hair hung listlessly around her
immense shoulders.

The woman's eyes, though... they were a piercing black.  They glittered
with intelligence.  They caught Hilde's own, and both women regarded
each other for a time, judging.

"Please come in," said the woman.  "I am Mama Mathilde.  You may leave
us, Esmerelda."

"But Mama, --" began the warrior woman.

The toad face flushed red.  "I said you may leave us," said Mathilde in
a voice which made it clear she was a woman used to having her orders
followed.

Esmerelda caught Hilde's eye and rubbed her thumb over the pommel of
her longsword meaningfully.  "I will be /just/ outside if you should
need me, Mama."  She left the room and closed the door behind her.

"You may sit," said Mathilde.

"I will stand," said Hilde.

Mathilde shrugged minutely.  "As you will.  As a matter of interest, I
shall not, in fact, be needing Esmerelda, I trust?"

"It is unlikely," said Hilde coolly.  "I believe our interests are not
in opposition."

Mathilde's large red lips curled in a cynical smile.  "That is also my
assessment.  You of course are of the Valkyr.  Your sister?"

Hilde nodded.

"As I suspected," said Mathilde.  "I have been expecting you for some
time, since the sacrifice.  I am familiar with your people.  You have
come for weregild?"

"I will take my gild in blood," said Hilde.

Mathilde nodded, and pressed her fingers together before her.  Her
hands were small and delicate, totally at odds with the porcine bulk of
the rest of her body.  "Your people are among the greatest warriors on
Earth," she said at last.  "You have no idea what you face, but you
would face it regardless... unless I am mistaken?"

"You are not," said Hilde.

"Chaos serves no one well," said Mathilde.  "It is bad for business.
Unless I believe you are capable, alone, of crippling the Children, it
would be incumbent upon me to prevent your attempt.  Either you must
weaken them enough that they may be quickly and efficiently disposed
of, or I must act to prevent anything which may cause them to inflict
chaos upon us in retaliation.  You understand this?"

"You may try to stop me.  If you do you will fail," said Hilde.  Her
face hardened, her mouth a grim, determined line.  "I will take my
weregild."

A corner of Mathilde's lip turned turned up in an enigmatic smile.  "I
do believe that you will.  I have wagered on dark horses ere now with
less to gain than this.  I will not stop you."

"I did not come to ask your blessing," said Hilde.

"No, indeed," said Mathilde thoughtfully.  "No one is aware that you
have come to me?  No one has recognized you other than me?"

"None that yet breathe," said Hilde.

Mathilde winced.  "And no doubt I'm an ear or two short in the deal?
No, don't answer, I know the answer well enough.  In truth it is a
small enough price to be rid of these cursed Children.  They came from
the jungles of Rajipoor, their pockets bulging with gold.  Legends of
hot blood aside, we Hesperians are a practical people.  Any church with
a fat vault and a free hand is welcomed with open heart.  Even the
Thuggee."

Hilde hissed, snakelike, and narrowed her eyes.

"Aye, you've run across them," said Mathilde.  "Then I need not tell
you of their perversions, the kidnappings, the assassinations, the
endless human sacrifice.  Their power grew quickly, faster than I'd
have thought possible.  And, you understand, I heard /nothing/.  You
cannot know how... unlikely it is that such a group could grow to such
strength without my knowledge.  To see a stone fall up or the sun
travel north to south would be merely a fascinating miracle.  For me,
Mama Mathilde, to be unaware while these Children spread tendrils of
corruption is a perversion of the natural order!

"My best people vanished.  It became known that to whisper of the
Children was to seal your own fate.  A word in Mama's ear, a promise of
more to come, and pffft! the next day you are gone, never again to be
seen by the eyes of women.  Soon, no one may be trusted, not even the
good Mama.  Noble or pauper, merchant or warrior, it made no
difference. To speak of the Children is to invite death into your
breast.

"Some began to realize the extent of the Children's power, but too
late, too late.  The gangs moved against them.  The leaders of the
gangs vanished and then their replacements were made to vanish.  No one
dared to raise their hand against them.  And then the public sacrifices
began.

"The Children moved to consolidate their strength.  The leaders of
those factions which yet remained, the nobility, the people of power
such as Mama Mathilde, we were brought in groups to observe the
sacrifices of those who had disobeyed them.  Your sister was one such.
We were told that she was the greatest of the Valkyr, who were
themselves the greatest of warriors.  Her passing was not pleasant,
though I can tell you she died with great bravery, defiant to the
last."

The muscles worked in Hilde's jaw, but she remained silent for some
time after Mathilde had finished.  When at last she spoke, her voice
was without tone.  "Where is the serpent's nest?"

Mathilde inspected the tips of her fingers.  "You have no idea how
great was the cost of the knowledge which you ask of me.  If you fail,
it shall likely be Mama Mathilde who is next to vanish in the night."

"Where in the serpent's nest?" repeated Hilde, tonelessly.

Mathilde studied Hilde for a time.  "You're not coming back."

"No," said Hilde.

Mathilde shook her head and sighed.  "Such a waste.  In the old temple
of Venus you'll find an entrance to the sewers.  There you will find
the Children.  Sell your life well, Valkyr."

Hilde turned without replying, opened the door, and strode out past a
startled Esmerelda, down the stairs and into the waiting darkness.

                                *  *  *

It was time.  Hilde crouched in the shadows of an ancient pillared
portico, across the lane from what was once the temple of Venus.  The
old temple quarter was mostly abandoned.  A few small cults had taken
up residence in the buildings which still possessed some measure of
their old opulence.  The new temple quarter sat on a hill and was not
so prone to flood, nor so infested by mosquitoes as this lowland area
that was slowly being reclaimed by the swamp on which it sat.

Hilde had watched for an hour, and had seen no one enter or leave the
temple.  She might even have doubted Mathilde's information had she not
felt Hulde's presence so clearly.  Hulde had died well.  She had earned
her seat at Valhalla amongst the einheriar.  And yet her shade remained
here, terrified as she had never been in life.  Hilde would free her
sister from whatever restrained her.  And, this very night, Hilde would
earn her own seat in Frigga's greathall by her sister.  Without Hulde
she did not crave life.

"Though I march into the mouth of Hel itself," murmured Hilde as she
took off her pack and pulled its draws.  Inside, steel links glittered
in the moonlight.  First came the mailshirt of chain links so small
that not even a poiniard could force its way between them.  It was
double-layered for strength, and covered Hilde from her shoulders to
mid-thigh.  Over this went curved plates of hammered steel, beaten to
the specific form of Hilde's body, rampant with runes of protection.
Shoulders, shins, elbows, knees, groin, breasts, all were covered by
the extra protection of the plates.  A steel gorget protected her
throat.  Bracers guarded her wrists.

At last only a single object remained in the pack, and this was
swaddled lovingly in bear fur.  Hilde lifted it reverently from the
pack and pulled off its coverings to reveal a massive horned helmet.
The horns, which thrust themselves forward on either side like the
crests of ocean waves, were carved from the teeth of a great leviathan.
A mask of gold-gilt steel extended from the front of the helmet,
half-covering the face, leaving only the mouth exposed, and with holes
for the eyes. The helmet was a relic, passed down from mother to
daughter for many generations.  Hilde would pass from Midgaard this
night.  She would bear no children.  The helmet would fall where she
did, and it would pass into the legends of the Valkyr.  She placed the
helmet on her head.  She was ready.

Hilde threw the backpack away.  She would not need it.  She was not
coming back.  Then she drew her broadsword.  The moonlight danced on
its edge.  "Frigga guide my arm," said Hilde and stepped out of the
shadows towards the old temple.

Once there might have been doors.  No longer.  The front entrance
yawned open like a throat.  Hilde stepped inside and nearly walked
right into a surprised-looking woman in a simple brown robe.

"Who --?" began the woman.  She never completed her sentence.

Hilde's sword flashed in the moonlight.  The blade sank home, cleaving
down through the junction where the woman's neck met her shoulder, and
tearing open her rib cage.  She fell back and was dead before she hit
the floor.  Hilde stepped over her corpse into the darkness.  Was the
woman a guard?  Or was she simply someone in the wrong place at the
wrong time?  Hilde neither knew nor cared.  A grievous insult had been
forced upon both Hilde and upon the Valkyr as a whole, an insult which
must be expunged in blood.  There would be no quarter asked and none
given.  Savage hatred blazed behind the eyeholes in Hilde's mask.

The interior of the temple antechamber as well as the temple proper was
bare and deserted.  Any egress to the sewers would be in the rooms once
used by the priestesses of the temple.  Hilde allowed her eyes to
adjust to the dim moonlight that filtered through skylights overhead,
then made for the darker squares at the far end that represented doors
which led deeper into the temple.

Neither vision nor hearing offered any clue to the whereabouts of the
sewer entrance.  Hilde inhaled deeply.  There.  The arch to the left.
The faint smell of burnt wood.  She padded silently through the arch
and found herself in a bare room that showed no sign of habitation. The
smell was stronger.  Hilde crouched to examine the floor.  Thick
grooves in the stone outlined a particularly large stone floor block.
Hilde placed her broadsword down beside her, within easy reach, pushed
her fingers into the groove, and lifted.  The section of floor
surrounded by the groove lifted smoothly on a counterweight to reveal
an ancient stairway lit by torches which sputtered fitfully in the damp
which wafted up from the depths below.  Hilde had found the serpent's
nest.

The stairs were worn by age and slippery with dampness, but Hilde took
them at a run.  At the bottom of the stairs was a small room in which
two women sat half-dozing in chairs, their feet up on a rickety table.
They wore suits of chain and at Hilde's entrance, they looked up with
open astonishment at the rampaging armoured colossus that sprang into
their midst.

One was dead before either could move.

Hilde's broadsword chopped down at the woman's unprotected head,
entering with a crunch and cleaving bone until it stopped midway down
the woman's shocked face.  Without waiting to tear her stuck blade
free, Hilde leaped at the other guard with a snarl of hate.

Both women went down in a crash of metal on metal.  Hilde's fist rose
and fell with savage regularity as she shattered the woman's nose and
jaw.  Her opponent fumbled for the sabre at her side, but Hilde drove
two stiffened fingers straight into the woman's eyeball, crushing it.
The woman screamed as Hilde dug with her fingernail through the jellied
remains of the eyeball, searching for the hole.  When she found it, she
drove her middle finger into the woman's brain.

The sound of running feet informed Hilde that the guard's scream had
been heard.  She rose from the guard who thrashed and shivered in deep
shock on the floor, and yanked her broadsword free from the other
guard's sundered head.

The single wooden door in the guardroom opened with a crash.  Beyond,
in the corridor, was a crowd of a half-dozen women, most of them either
naked or half-clothed but armed with an assortment of hastily snatched
weapons.  Hilde took them at a run, throwing herself into their midst
with a blood-curdling battle-cry and slashing wildly with her
broadsword. Unprotected flesh cleaved away in bloody chunks as Hilde
hacked again and again.  Sparks sprayed as sword edges smashed
jarringly into Hilde's armour -- but failed to penetrate.  It was
butchery.  In seconds all six women were dead or dying, their blood
mixing together on the floor and covering Hilde in crimson splashes.

The corridor was clearly part of the city's sewer system, the ceiling
of cobblestones and arched low overhead.  Torches every twenty feet lit
the tunnel, illuminating dozens of branching paths.  Hilde picked one
at random and began searching for more opponents.  She did not have to
look far.

A stout wooden door had been placed so as to block one arm of the
sewer.  Hilde opened it and found what appeared to be kitchens.  Two
women were bustling about, and looked up in terror as Hilde's blood-
soaked form flew into the room.  They were not warriors.  Though there
were a great many knives and heavy rolling pins about, neither thought
to arm herself.  Hilde cut them down where they stood, deaf to their
cries for mercy.

Two corridors down, Hilde found an old woman in black robes who was so
blind she had to ask Hilde who she was.  Hilde's answer came on the
edge of her broadsword.

A room with a dozen sleeping women became an abattoir.  Hilde slashed
their throats while they slept, and only the last three were given any
warning when one woman managed to make a gurgling half-scream before
dying.  Two died quickly under Hilde's sword.  The third nearly escaped
by running from the room, but Hilde, though burdened by armour, was yet
still faster than her naked, fleeing target.  Hilde hacked open her
bare back from behind, threw her to the floor, and thrust the tip of
her broadsword into the woman's cunt.  Hilde pumped the sword tip in
and out of the screaming woman, raping her with the blade, until shock
and blood loss had stolen her enemy's life.

Hilde moved from room to room, bringing death and terror as she went, a
blood-soaked phantom that killed without mercy.  The women called upon
their dark goddess, but if dread Kali listened, she turned her back
upon her worshippers.  And thoughout, Hilde was conscious of Hulde's
presence hovering nearby, almost close enough to touch.  Hilde had the
powerful sensation, like an itch she couldn't scratch, that her sister
was desperate to tell her something.  To warn her of something.

The sewers were vast, yet everywhere Hilde went, she found more women,
more cultists.  There had to be hundreds of them.  Thousands, perhaps.
And Hilde was aware that she had met few warriors thus far.  Where were
they?

Bodies were being found.  Hilde heard alarms.  The cultists were
finding carnage everywhere.  It was as if an invisible army, terrible
and undetectable, was rampaging through their tunnels.  Ahead of Hilde
ran confused tales of a yellow-haired demon-woman with a face of steel
stalking the corridors, meting death to all who opposed her.

In a small room off a minor branching corridor, Hilde found a young
mother with a baby nursing at her breast.  At Hilde's entry, the woman
looked up with calm defiance.  "Will you kill my daughter while she
suckles at my breast?"

Hilde paused.  There was something odd about the woman.  Something
about the way she stared without blinking.  Something about her long,
strangely formed fingers, the skin between growing almost to the first
knuckle.  Then the woman's gills fluttered.  Hilde took a step back in
shock.

"The child," growled Hilde.  "Show me the child."

The woman looked up and spread her lips in a wide grin -- a grin that
revealed two rows of spiny, razor-sharp teeth.  Hilde gasped. The woman
plucked the suckling child from her breast, and flung it with great
speed directly at Hilde's throat.  Hilde had a brief flash of claws and
teeth, and then the infant was tearing at her, its tiny, sharp talons
scratching furrows in her gorget.

The mother leaped from her chair at Hilde and all three, Hilde, mother,
and infant, went down in a tangle of limbs.  Hilde brought her head
forward, slamming the steel rim of her helmet into the woman's bared
teeth, which shattered like icicles.  Her sword useless in this melee,
Hilde threw it aside and took the woman's head in both her hands.
Slowly, she fought the incredible corded strength in the woman's neck
as she twisted the head irrevocably to the side, ignoring the claws
which scrabbled and tore at her mailcoat.  Shortly there was a loud
crack, and the woman, if woman she was, went limp.

While Hilde was struggling with the mother, the infant had managed to
burrow beneath the gorget and was tearing gobbets of flesh from Hilde's
throat with its teeth.  Snarling, Hilde grabbed it by one leg and tore
it from her.  The baby, for it did seem to be an infant of some sort,
had black lidless eyes like a fish, two slits for a nose, a mouthful of
spiny teeth, and pronounced gills.  Its hands and feet were webbed, and
equipped with razor-sharp claws.  It writhed and squawled like any baby
as Hilde dangled it by one leg.  In disgust, Hilde drew the thing back
by its leg and dashed its head against the wall.  The soft head hit
wetly and exploded, showering the body of its mother with brain matter
and a thin, black, brackish ichor.  Hilde cast the tiny corpse aside
and stalked back into the corridor.

Hilde and a squad of four heavily armed guards spotted each other at
the same time.  The women were encased in boiled leather sewn with
large iron rings, and each but one wielded a heavy battle axe.  The
fourth carried a crossbow and fell to one knee, trying to snap off a
clean shot while her companians rushed forward at Hilde.

Disdaining to stand with her back to a wall, Hilde lunged forward to
meet the attack with a crash.  One woman fell, toppled by the force of
Hilde's collision, and she died with the point of Hilde's blade in her
unarmoured throat.  A battle axe smashed with terrific force into
Hilde's shoulder, denting the steel plate, but failing to penetrate.  A
second battle axe followed a second later, cleaving through one layer
of chain links in a scream of metal on metal, but also failing to
completely penetrate.  Hilde whipped her blade up and to the right, its
great weight tearing into and through the leather of the guard who
stood there.  Seconds later, the guard crumpled over as coils of her
intestines exploded from her abdomen onto the floor.  Hilde spun to the
left, grappling her remaining opponent as she heard the clatter of the
crossbow firing.  The guard gave a grunt of surprise as the bolt meant
for Hilde slammed into her back.  Her eyes grew wide for a second, then
became glassy as her life ebbed away.

The crossbow was only half-loaded when the fourth, desperate guard
looked up from her crouch to see Hilde's gore-slicked form standing
silently before her.  "Please," said the guard in a small voice, too
terrified to move.  "Mercy."  The woman, Hilde noticed, had faint,
vestigial gills.

The point of Hilde's sword travelled up to the woman's throat, causing
the woman to shake with fear.  She could see nothing of Hilde's face
behind the frightening mask except the grim line of her mouth and the
eyes which burned with icy rage.  Slowly, the tip of the sword
travelled down the length of the woman's crouched body.  Each time the
blade would slow, the woman would cringe, waiting for the point to sink
home.  The blade slipped between the woman's legs.  Suddenly the blade
turned and, with agonizing slowness, slid through the soft flesh of the
woman's thigh.  The woman gasped and then groaned as an astonishing
amount of blood jetted from the wound.  Hilde turned her back on the
woman and strode away.  Having had a major artery carefully severed by
Hilde, the woman would spend her last minutes sobbing her terror and
despair as she tried futilely to stop her life from leaking away.

In a darkened corridor away from the main living areas, Hilde stood
still and closed her eyes.  "Guide me, Hulde," she whispered.  Hilde
laid open her soul until she stood, a living antenna, waiting for some
tiny voice which would show her the way.  In the silence, a sound
trickled into Hilde's mind.  Whether she listened with her ears or with
some more subtle sense, Hilde could not have said, but she heard the
distant echo of chanting.

Chanting.  Hilde's eyes snapped open.

Once more Hilde stalked down the corridors.  She nosed her way forward
like a hunting dog, always following the path which took her closer to
the chanting she heard.  Those whose misfortune brought them within
reach of Hilde's sword were chopped down almost as an afterthought. Now
that she knew what to look for, Hilde noticed more and more of the
women she encountered with gills or lidless eyes, or fingers webbed to
the first or second knuckle.  Some were more so, nearly icthyan in
appearance, while others possessed merely the slightest hint of such
deformities, but few were entirely untouched.  Hilde did not care. They
screamed and died the same, whether it was blood or ichor that flowed
through their veins.

The chanting became louder, and the corridors less crowded.  The
tunnels into which she travelled were no longer part of Quastille's
sewer system, but natural winding tubes through the surrounding rock.
The tunnels led ever deeper into the earth.  Damp heat soaked Hilde and
made her eyes smart with the salt of her sweat.  And with every step
the chanting gained strength until the walls vibrated with it and the
sound buzzed around Hilde's head like a swarm of maddened bees.

"Praise the Black Goat of the Woods," came the chant.  "Ia Shub-Kali!
Shub-Kali fhtagn!"

The cavern into which Hilde entered was enormous, so large that despite
the hundreds of lamps and torches its farthest reachest remained unseen
in the darkness.  Before her stood at least two hundred creatures --
Hilde could not bring herself to call them women -- heavily armed and
armoured.  Their backs were to her, and they gazed with rapture at the
scene beyond, a scene which horrified even Hilde.

A vast underground sea, its waters oily and black as night, lapped with
turgid waves at a carved dais which stood upon its shore.  Atop the
dais were women and more of the fish-creatures, all dressed in the
robes of the Thuggee.  A cyclopean statue of black basalt loomed above
all of them on the dais, four-armed and hideous.  The statue stood
fifteen feet tall and was carved to resemble a lusciously-endowed woman
but with a horrific and vaguely fish-like face.  Around the neck of the
statue was a necklace of real human skulls, some of which still
retained scraps of flesh and hair.  Before the statue was an altar of
the same black basalt, upon which was chained the body of a dead woman
with a bloody hole where her heart should be.  To one side were six
cages, each large enough to hold a single woman.  Five were empty, but
the sixth held a naked captive -- whom Hilde recognized with a start to
be Croesia.  A brazier by the altar burned smokily, crackling as
something wet burned within it.  The air was redolent with the stench
of burned meat.

But what struck horror into Hilde, what made her mind reel, was the
woman who held the knife in her hand before the altar.  Golden hair
like a river of gold flowed over her shoulders.  Lips which Hilde had
tasted and had known she would taste no more were twisted into a
terrible black smile of infinite malice.  In the sudden silence which
followed the chanting, Hilde's voice roared out across the cavern's
crowded floor: "HUUUUULDEEE!"

The effect was electric.  The entire crowd turned as one.  Hulde's head
snapped up and for a moment the smile faded.  Then it returned, darker
than before.  "My children," said Hulde in a an echoing voice which was
the match to Hilde's own.  "Take her!"

The crowd of fish-things gave a great roar and surged forward in a wave
that glittered with weaponry.

Hilde screamed her defiance in a war cry that rose above the collective
voice of the wave which gathered before her.  Then, taking three great
steps, Hilde threw herself among them.

The creatures went down like scythed wheat.  Unable to manoevre or
dodge in the great crush of bodies around them, they were helpless
before Hilde's broadsword.  Heads and limbs fell like rain.  The ground
was awash with blood and ichor, making sure footing impossible.  Yet as
the bodies piled in heaps around her, as Hilde brought her sword up and
down, up and down, up and down in ceaseless death, she could not avoid
the weapons which surrounded her on all sides.  Blades punctured her
armour, driving deep into her flesh.  Gobbets of flesh were torn from
her arms, her legs; blood ran in torrents from her wounds.  Her wounds
were mortal, but she would not fall.  The dancing flame of her hatred
was pure, and the rage of the berserker was upon her.  She did not feel
the blows which landed on every part of her body, tearing muscle and
ligament, breaking bone.  The sweet song of her hatred shrieked in her
ears.  Laughter roared from her lips in great howling gales, as if pain
was the merriest jest she had ever heard.

"ENOUGH!"

By the time Hulde's voice rang out, half of those who had chanted were
dead or dying.  Bodies lay in piles five feet high on the floor.  Blood
and ichor lay in every hollow, as much as a foot deep in some places.
And as those remaining drew away, Hilde yet stood.

Hilde was dead.  She was a dead woman whose heart yet beat though it
had but little blood to pump, who stood erect on legs which could not
have supported her, whose sword was clasped in hands that could not
have had the strength to move, much less lift the heavy, battle-notched
blade of her massive broadsword.  Her abdomen lay open, her intestines
spread in looping coils under her feet.  Three fingers on her left hand
were gone, buried somewhere amidst the bodies of her foes.  One eye was
vacant blackness where a blade had torn away half the mask, the jellied
remains of the eyeball nothing more than wetness on one cheek, but the
other remained, and hatred blazed pure and strong within it.

"You have done well, my sister," said Hulde with a malevolent smile.

Hilde spit several teeth from her mouth, and when she spoke, it had an
odd slurred quality.  One cheek was little more than a hanging flap of
flesh through which air escaped.  "You are not my sister."

"Of course I am," said Hulde irritably.  She turned to one of the fish
women and gestured.  The creature brought her a heavy greatsword, which
Hulde swung experimentally a few times.  She nodded, satisfied.  With a
taunting leer, Hulde stripped off her robe.  She was naked beneath, and
between her breasts, where her heart should have been, was a puckered,
vacant hole.  Hulde chuckled.  "I am, however, somewhat changed from
what you remember."

"Foul thing," hissed Hilde.  Her rage flared brighter, like a star, as
her body began to consume itself.  Her body screamed at her, begging
for release from the terrible, unthinkable pain it endured.  Hilde
ignored it, bent it to her will.  She gathered the precious core of her
hatred to her breast for what she knew would be her last moments upon
the skin of the world.  The soulless thing which stood before her and
mocked her in her sister's voice was not Hulde.  It was an abomination
and Hilde would not pass from the world until it had been destroyed.

"Hilde!" cried Croesia from her cage.  "Help me, Hilde!"

Hilde ignored the woman.  Using her broadsword, she hacked her own
innards free from the gaps in her gut so they would not trip her.

Hulde came at her with the speed of an arctic wind.  Hilde only just
managed to parry a blow that would have cut her in twain at the waist,
feeling Hulde's strength in her wrists.  Two more slashes by Hulde in
rapid succession were partially turned by the ragged remnants of
Hilde's mailshirt, the last one nearly severing the flesh of Hilde's
right breast.  There was no blood.  Hilde had little left to bleed.
Hilde launched a vicious forward sweep, but Hulde danced nimbly away,
manoevering in an attempt to get to Hilde's blind side.  Hilde turned
to keep Hulde before her.  The thing she fought possessed every scrap
of her sister's skill, strength, and speed.

"First blood," said Hulde, grinning.  Those of the fish-women which
lived gathered around the two combatants in a great silent circle.

The swords of the sisters came together again and again, neither able
to gain advantage on the other.  Hilde felt her body beginning to
falter.  Even the rage of the berserker had limits, and Hilde felt it
approaching.  She could draw almost no breath.  Her heart beat wildly
out of rhythm.  Blackness gathered at the edge of her vision.  Her body
was beginning to realize that it was dead.  She had to end this soon.

Hulde's sword drew back for a lightning slash.  Hilde forced her mind
to focus just one more time.  Her heart stopped entirely.  Worse than
pain, a numbing emptiness began to spread through her body.  Focus, she
thought, her mind crystal with clarity.  Focus.  Time slowed as Hulde's
sword came around.  Hilde's sword came up to block.  Just one more
time, thought Hilde.  Block and thrust.  Just once more and then she
would leave for her seat at Valhalla.  The edge of Hulde's sword was
slashing the air apart, driving forward, unstoppable.  Hilde forced her
arm up, up, the broadsword coming up for one last time.

Too slow.

Hulde's greatsword completed its great semi-circle through the air and
bit deep into Hilde's neck.  The blade emerged from the other side, and
Hilde's head fell from her shoulders.  Her body, robbed of the fury
which had forced it to act against its will, crumpled instantly and
bonelessly to the floor.  And Hilde of the Valkyr was no more.

Hilde watched her head roll to a stop as if from a great distance.  She
had no sense of herself.  She existed only as a viewpoint, a collection
of thoughts with no purpose, nor brain to think them.  The roar of her
body's pain had vanished and now she could feel only cold.  A deep and
infinite cold from which she would never again become warm, for warmth
belonged to the living.

"Hilde."

The voice came to her not as sound but as a series of thoughts and
associations.  To hear was to know, for there was no reasoning without
a brain to think it.  There existed no intermediate state.  A thing was
know, always and forever, or it would not ever be known.  The thoughts
which had been Hilde knew her sister.

"I am here, Hulde," whispered Hilde to the void.

"Behold, Hilde," said Hulde.  "You see what must happen."

And Hilde did, for she saw without eyes and without seeing.  The heart
of the great basalt idol throbbed with power.  It exerted a pull upon
the thought-stuff of Hilde and her sister, like a great blue-white
vortex.  Hulde struggled against its sucking pull, orbiting like an
infinitely small mote of dust.  Within the statue's heart pulsed the
strength stolen from the spirits of every screaming victim sacrificed
upon the altar.  None save Hulde had been capable of withstanding the
pull, for Hilde had anchored Hulde in the world of flesh.  Now, both
sisters were without hold upon the world, and the vortex drew them into
its maw.  And near, very near, something that loved the dark, something
that moved on ten thousand insectile legs, rustled in anticipation.

The thoughts of the sisters met and joined and cleaved unto each other
and merged in a process of which the primal act sex is the dimmest echo
upon the world of flesh.  Two halves had been united, stronger than the
sum of its parts.  I am Hilde, she thought, and I am Hulde.  And I am
one.  She blazed with the light of a sun -- and dove straight into the
heart of the vortex.

The vortex sucked at them.  Their thoughts began to unravel, to come
apart into quanta of spirit that could be safely digested.  But the
fusion of the sisters was greater than any which had come before, and
though it tore at their thoughts with clawing fingers, it could not
consume them outright.  The blaze of their star dwindled and still they
sank toward the eye in the centre of the vortex within the great basalt
statue.  Thoughts streamed away from them like the tail of a comet, but
the core of their beings remained untouched.  Something outside the
vortex gave a terrible inhuman roar of frustrated hunger, a sound which
echoed in the void between voids that lay in the darkest space between
the galaxies.

And suddenly, the glowing mote of sentience which had been the sisters
Hilde and Hulde punched through with a triumphant shout into the core
of the vortex.

With the fall of the yellow-haired demoness, the fish-creatures had
danced their jubilation among the bodies of their fallen, raising their
voices in praise of their Mother, Shub-Kali.  The soulless shell of
Hulde bent to the body of her sister and carved the still heart from
her breast.  While the Children exulted, Hulde feasted on the flesh of
her sister's heart.  The cavern rumbled, slopping icy black water upon
the feet of the statue.  The exultant voices fell silent.  Cracks
appeared on the surface of the statue, at the weak points where the
limbs joined the body.  The stone shuddered and rippled with unnatural
life.  And then it began to move.

"Shub-Kali!  Shub-Kali!  Ia Shub-Kali!" came the cry of the creatures
in the room.  The Kali-Yuga, the time of Chaos had come!  The stars had
come right, and mighty Shub-Kali would rule the world for a million
years!

The statue took a ponderous step forward, its awesome weight cracking
the dais beneath its foot.  The head turned from side to side with the
sound of stone grating upon stone.  It held its arms before it, as if
shocked to see them.  Hulde threw herself down before the statue, tears
of joy in her eyes, and abased herself.

"Great Mother, you have come," sobbed Hulde, her forehead pressed to
the statue's basalt toes.  "Your unworthy servants await thy pleasure!"

One of the great feet rose into the air.  Hulde looked up with a look
of confusion on her face.  "Mother?"

The statue's stony mouth opened, and it spoke with a voice like an
avalanche.  "I AM NOT YOUR MOTHER... AND YOU ARE NOT MY SISTER!"

Hulde screamed as the foot descended, smashing her down with a dull
crunch as dozens of bones shattered at once.  Twice more the foot rose
and fell until the thing which was not Hulde was little more than a
greasy smear on the floor.  There was very little blood.

Inside the statue, the spirits of Hilde and Hulde thought basalt
thoughts, and turned upon the fish-women who now ran in blind panic in
all directions.  The four mighty basalt hands clenched into fists, and
the slaughter began.



                            @   @   @   @   @

"And that is the tale of Hilde and Hulde," said Old Helga.

The children were spellbound, wide-eyed with wonder.  Once more Old
Helga had proved herself the greatest storyteller in the village, and
it made the old woman smile to herself.  Perhaps, she decided, this
would not after all be the year she took her walk in the snow.

Like sleepwalkers, the children rose to their feet, the magic of the
story lingering in their minds.  Old Helga laughed inwardly as the
children filed out into the night with such unaccustomed silence, then
rose herself on her tired old bones.  It was then she noticed that
Adunna remained seated on the ground, her eyes unfocussed and her mind
wandering in her head.

"Adunna," said Old Helga, gently.  "It is time for bed.  The story has
come to its end."

Adunna shook herself and looked up at the old woman.  "What happened
after, Old One?"

"After?"

"Yes," said Adunna.  "What happened to Hilde and Hulde?"

Old Helga's eyes twinkled.  "Why, they returned to this very village."

Adunna frowned.  "But --"

Old Helga smiled.  "Statues," she said, her eyes shifting to the great
black basalt statue of Frigga All-Mother which loomed protectively
above them, "may be recarved."  And then she made her way painfully, on
legs gnarled by age, to the door and out into the village beyond.

Adunna stared with awe at the statue.  Hesitantly she walked to the
alcove where it stood and laid a hand on its cold stone ankle.  "One
day I will be a great warrior, just like you," she said.  "The Valkyr
will tell tales of Adunna when I have gone to my place at Frigga's
table."

The statue remained stolid and unmoving, its gaze impassive.  Adunna
looked vaguely disappointed and, after a last look over her shoulder,
went out, leaving the Great Hall empty at last.

In the dying light of the embers in the firepit, it might almost have
been possible to say there was a faint smile upon the lips of the great
basalt statue of Frigga All-Mother.  But only almost.