Curse Of Blood: Gods & Monsters

Chapter LVII⎮Brenna

A sanguinary moon was awaiting just below the horizon. They could all feel it's fulness like a minatory pulsing beneath the earth. From the tail of her eye Brenna watched Renic's jaw clench in time with the rhythmic pull of the moon.

A bead of perspiration trickled slowly down his neck as she followed beside him. She longed to knit her fingers into his, but he seemed far too agitated and so she kept her hands at her sides. Roth too seemed to feel the cautionary itch, but his manner was not as restrained as his brother.

Roth slapped Heida's rump playfully as she strolled beside him. Over his shoulders he carried the blótdyr — a fat sacrificial goat who seemed more than content to be carried to its doom, little knowing that this night was to be his last. Under Renic's arm reposed a trussed up young boar who was far more suspicious than it's companion, its eyes restive as it struggled vainly.

By and by Roth, who lead their little party, halted and indicated that Renic should set his blótdyr aside for the nonce. "Here we are."

"Here?" Renic arched one dubious brow and laid the boar on its side, the beast grunting vexatiously, tusks gnashing as it strove against it's fetters.

Brenna could understand his perplexity for there was nothing here but towering pines and yews surrounding them. One old yew stood wide-girthed and hollow beside an ash so tall, its boughs thrown wide, that for a moment she mistook it for Yggdrasil itself. But there was no cave entrance to be seen. She scoured their surroundings with a skeptical gaze as Renic moved past is brother, questing the air carefully, his nose raised like a wolfhound's.

"There's nothing here," said she, turning around to face Roth and Heida.

"I beg to differ," answered Roth, but his gaze was locked instead to his brother, who progressed further forward, his smile lifted at one side of his face so that the scar stretched wickedly at his lips.

"Ay, it is here," Renic agreed, nose flaring, as he turned to look over his shoulder at them. "I can smell the—"

"Wait! Renic, stop!" Heida rushed forward suddenly, but it was too late.

With a shout of surprise, Renic dropped from sight as the very earth swallowed him up in a plume of leaves and rot.

"There it is!" said Roth, laughing as Heida slapped his shoulder.

"Renic!" Brenna leapt towards where she'd seen Renic disappear, but was abruptly forestalled as Roth latched an iron hand to her arm. "Let me go, you beast!" She struggled against him with valiant futility.

"Calm yourself, woman. He's unhurt." He gave only a faint grunt of pain as she kicked him hard. "You, however," he went on unperturbed, "will not be if you take another step forward." And he pointed to where she'd been about to plant her foot, moving his own foot thither to swipe at the blanket of earthy detritus beneath which was hidden more of the pernicious hole into which Renic had dropped. "Thank you, Roth," he muttered in a high pitch mimicry of her voice, finally letting go of her arm and leaving her to her own devices. "Most welcome, priestess."

"Renic!" Brenna knelt at the edge, peering desperately into the darkness below. When he answered her his voice was hale, if a little gruff, and she sighed with relief, breathing of the musty rot of the underworld.

"I'm fine!" he called again.

"No thanks to you," she hissed, glowering at Roth who'd by this time knelt down beside her.

"This was what you wanted to show me?" Heida asked him, her arms folded sternly over her chest as she scowled. "That you'd set a trap for your brother?"