I gasped for breath, and the feeling began to dissipate, leaving nothing in its place. I felt my knees buckle, and Fen moved deftly toward me. "Don't pass out. Not now. We have them. Look." I listened, steeled myself against fainting, and glanced around me at the watching dwarfs. They stared in morbid fascination at the half-transformed werewolf and the bloodthirsty Valkyrie. "Speak to them now. Or you will lose them."
I wanted to nod, but I held the movement in check as I turned to face the crowd.
I glared at them, drawing an expression of strength and almost arrogance into my bearing. "What you just saw here was nothing. You will see worse in battle." My voice rang out across the field, clear and harsh. I had no intention of being nice. The wind lifted my hair and I found my braid had come undone. Dark red locks now hung to my waist, framing my face, setting off my bright-green eyes. I must look a sight, especially framed as I was by my wings. But I didn't care. "The Jotunn will not hold back. They will hound you until they kill you, and when they have no spears left, no ammunition left, they will merely thrust their fingers of icicles into your flesh as if you are a slab of meat. They have no feelings. They have no fear."
As I spoke I strode before the gathered dwarfs, my bloodstained sword swinging in my hand, catching the light and reflecting on the worried faces that surrounded me. "There will be no time to think. You need to learn how to fight, learn how to make every move automatic so you can thrust without thinking, block without thinking. Kill without thinking. Or else you will die. If you do not want to fight, leave now." My voice carried on the wind and I barely recognized it.
Silence hung over the field.
"What in Hel are you slobs waiting for? Start practicing," yelled Fen, glaring the dwarfs down until they scrambled into pairs. Then he glanced at me, a grin faint at the corner of his wolf lips, before shouting loudly, "Fight or die."
Only when the swords began clashing against each other did I move slowly to the wall closest to me. I was finally able to get off my shivering limbs, and now I truly felt I'd never be able to stand again. My muscles were mush, my bones rubber. I struggled to breathe as I sat and watched the warriors fight, now reinvigorated by a battle that had almost killed Fen.
Ice stilled the blood in my veins as flashes of the fight returned to me, fresh and clear. I'd lost all control. I'd fought and I'd wanted blood. I'd craved death. That was the reason I hadn't held back, the reason I'd fought harder and faster than ever before. The reason Fen now had a cut across his palm instead of being freed of the head on his shoulders. A shudder rippled through me.
"Stay calm. It will pass." Fen's voice was soft beside me. Whether to ensure we weren't overheard or whether it was meant to calm me, I didn't know.
"What the hell was that?" I asked, my voice breaking on a soft squeak.
"It is called the Berserker Rage."
"What's that?" I asked, frowning. I'd never heard of such a thing.
"It's when the battle rage becomes almost a living thing, when it takes control of your body and your mind, when the bloodlust consumes you and all you need, all you desire is the kill to satisfy it."
I shook my head, unable to understand what that had to do with me. "But why is that happening to me?"
Fen put a hand on my shoulder and the mere warmth of his now human palm served to calm me down a little. "It happens to many warriors. All the true warriors will feel the grip of the rage at least once in their lives. But only the most powerful, the most fearsome of warriors will sit on the knife's edge the rage presents."
"Knife's edge?" That didn't sound too positive to me.
Fen then said, "The rage will take you over if you let it. It will take control of your mind if you are not strong enough to take back what is yours."
"You mean take back my own mind? Is this some kind of mental sickness?" I asked, my eyes staring but seeing nothing except my blade hitting Fen's palm. Then a sliver of memory returned. The look of shock in Joshua's eyes from a sparring session a long time ago. The rage that had filled me almost to the point of hurting him. I'd been so shocked, so horrified by my actions and feelings that I hadn't asked anyone about it for fear I was going insane. Too many sessions with a psychiatrist would do that to anyone. So I'd stayed silent. "Oh crap."
"What?" Fen had been watching the fighting dwarfs, and now his gaze snapped back to my face, worry darkening his hooded eyes.
"It's happened before," I said softly, a part of me not wanting to say the words aloud, as if doing so would make it all the more real.
"When?"
"A while ago when I was sparring with Joshua. I almost killed him, but I stopped in time." My stomach tightened into an iron ball. I could have killed Joshua.
"Good thing you let him live. Hard to have a relationship with a dead lover," said Fen, and my gaze shifted slowly to his face. My mind had gone straight back to Sigrun, but it seemed Fen was dealing with his grief better than I was. He didn't seem affected at all by what he'd said.
I didn't reply. Instead, I swallowed hard before asking, "What do I do now?"
"Nothing," said Fen simply. "You just learn to control it. You work harder and practice harder and push yourself harder, and when the rage takes over, you learn from it. Because only then can you control it. Only from within can you defeat it."
"What if I fail?" I shivered with fear at the mere thought of feeling that deep, bloodthirsty rage again.
Fen shrugged. "You have a choice. Let the rage control you and then we will have to kill you or confine you to a cell for the rest of your life, your mind addled. Or you can learn to control it. You choose."
I sat silent for a moment, the wet sheen of perspiration on my arms and face slowly drying, unlike my mud-caked legs. "I guess I practice."
"Good choice, Bryn," he said as he pushed to his feet. "At least now you've put the fear of Bryn into this lot." He waved a hand at the dwarfs now fighting fiercely, lunging and parrying and creating a racket with the clanging of swords and the odd cry of pain. But that wasn't what I cared about.
What worried me most was I had almost murdered Fenrir.
CHAPTER SIX
My feet took over from a mind too filled with shock and fear and self-recrimination. I reached my room in a daze, my mud-caked sandals slapping dully on the stone floor. I walked in blindly and sat on the edge of the bed for a while, uncaring that I was covered in wet mud. I had no idea how long I sat there, but the room was cold and eventually, with all the mud that covered me, I began to get itchy. A shiver rippled through me.
With a sigh, I rose and grabbed a fresh dress from inside my garment box. I untied the mud-soaked sandals and threw them on the floor. And then I spent a moment just staring at them. What would Turi think when she saw them thrown there? I couldn't work up even an ounce of care. I pulled off my armor and added it to the pile. The iron shirt barely gleamed with all the muck weighing it down.
Forcing my body to move, I headed out the door and walked mindlessly, blindly to the bathing pools. The sight of the heated waters had always calmed me. And now the gigantic oval pool that covered the base of the small, secluded valley glittered in the afternoon sunlight. I walked the path to the edge of the blue marble pool and stood there for a moment, watching the steam rise from the surface of the clear waters.
I'd come here often with Sigrun, but today I was alone.
I tried not to let that get me down, and as I made my way toward an empty bathing alcove, I found it had gotten much easier. Each bathing area was small for privacy and had its own set of steps that led into the larger pool. The steps were crescent-shaped and at the tip of the curve, where it joined the seat of the neighboring alcove, sat a pair of marble bowls containing soaps and sponges. I slid off my mud-stained dress and glided into the pool, finding a seat low enough on the curved edge that I was submerged to my neck. Sighing, I closed my eyes and leaned against the side of the pool, allowing the heat to penetrate into my flesh. Minutes later, I felt better, my muscles less strained and less tense too.
Slipping off the seat, I swam to the bowl and grabbed a sponge and then a bar of soap. Today it was sandalwood flecked with brown specks that smelled of cinnamon bark. Not to mention little pieces of apricot. Heavenly soap. I breathed in the scent as I lathered and scrubbed, then paid serious attention to my mud-caked hair. I wasn't surprised to see the water run brown as it was drawn from my alcove and down toward the center of the larger pool. The bathing pools were a work of architectural genius.
At last, clean and fresh and a damn sight calmer, I rose from the pool. Grabbing a towel from the stack ready beside the conveniently heated seating area along the back of the alcove, I wiped off before tying my hair in the towel. Within minutes, I was dressed and walking back to the palace, the wet strands of my towel-dried hair trailing down my back and already beginning to curl.
My first stop was my quarters, where I changed from the light silk dress into my leathers and chainmail. I pulled on leather boots and threw my cloak around my shoulders for added warmth.
I headed straight for the war room and was surprised to see Joshua bent over a laptop.
"How the hell is that working here?" I asked, annoyed and amazed all at once.