Freya spun into the arms of the fisherman and saw the reaver drive its claws into Erik’s back, saw her husband lifted off his feet, shaking and twisting with pain. She saw his face bright red as he screamed in silence. His chest expanded, wider and wider, until she saw the blood blossoming from the tears in his skin.
And then he was gone, ripped off the wall into the darkness and hurled back into the freezing waters of the bay.
“ NO! ” Freya ran across the wall and leapt into the cold, empty air with her spear raised in both hands, and she sank the steel blade and shaft deep into the reaver’s shoulder until it erupted through the beast’s back.
The reaver roared and stumbled.
Freya clung to the wet, bloody, stinking fur with one hand as she drew her serrated knife in the other hand and shoved it into the reaver’s neck. Heavy claws grabbed her legs, trying to yank her away, but she just tore deeper and deeper into the reaver’s throat. A vein burst and hot blood flooded out over her arm, and the reaver stumbled again, falling to its knees. The impact nearly shook her off, but Freya held tight, gasping for breath with her burning lungs and burning throat, barely able to see through her burning eyes drenched with hot tears.
The claws on her legs loosened and she shoved her knife deeper across the reaver’s throat, hacking and sawing at the monstrous windpipe and muscles and leathery flesh. The reaver leaned over and crashed onto the beach on its side and Freya slipped down to the ground, still clinging to her knife, which was stuck somewhere in the neck bones. Her arm was too tired and sore to cut anymore, so she let go of the knife and staggered back from the huge corpse. She fell on her backside, and sat there on the cold stones, weeping in silence.
He’s gone. Just… gone. I didn’t even… I should… he’s gone!
Slowly, she turned her head to look down the length of the dead reaver and she saw her spear, and then she saw four more harpoons all lodged down the belly and legs, and beside them were four gray-bearded fishermen in rusty, mismatched armor, gasping and wheezing and bleeding together on the beach beside her. One of them fell to his knees, his hand pressed to his chest, and two of his companions held him up and carried him through the door back inside the city. The last fisherman was the man who had stood at her side on the wall, and he shuffled over beside her and sat down in the snow.
After a few minutes, they both looked up to see a blinding white light bouncing along the top of the wall, and soon they could see Omar’s face as he ran toward them, sword in hand, and a moment later he was standing over them with a gathering crowd of men and women trickling out the seawall door to stare at the huge hairy body.
Back in the city there was cheering and shouting and laughing, and for a moment Freya couldn’t understand why anyone in the world could possibly feel any joy at that moment.
The old fisherman stood up, and Omar sat down in his place.
“We lost Erik?” he asked.
Freya nodded.
Omar stared blankly ahead, and then his face twisted in rage, and he leaned forward and plunged his bright sword into the body of the beast, and the fur and flesh instantly blackened, smoked, and burst into flame.