A fierce roar of shouts crashed from the throng, as their swords and axes flashed high in the torchlight.
"Our swords for Asgard!"
"It is well," Odin said with somber pride. "Now let this feast of ill omen end. Heimdall, keep closest watch on Asgard's gates tonight. Loki's mind knows the key is here, and he might telepathically incite the Jotuns to attack us and secure it. And you, Frey, see that your castle is well guarded, to protect your kinswoman and the key."
Freya stood fingering the cord of the rune key. She looked at me with wordless, troubled appeal as she left. I followed her into the night.
The eldritch faint green glow of the streaming, tingling radiation clung to the towering castles. No aurora was visible, for that streamed up outside the blind spot. A haggard Moon was shining through flying storm clouds. The driving north wind wailed keen and cold. From far below came the dim, distant booming of the surf as the stormy ocean dashed against the cliffs. Freya turned toward me, her eyes dark and big.
"Jarl Keith, I am afraid!" she whispered. "I, who never knew fear before, am fearful now. If Loki is loosed—"
"There's no chance of that, while you and your people hold the key," I encouraged her. "And even if he were set free, he is only one man."
"He is evil itself." She shuddered. "I never saw Loki. Long centuries before my birth, he was prisoned. But I have heard the tales of the other Aesir. I know that, in their secret hearts, they still dread Loki and his dark powers."
She was trembling like a wind-shaken leaf. I put my arm protectingly around her, and she shivered closer to me in the moonlight. Even the dread that I, too, was feeling could not keep my blood from racing as I looked down at her lovely face. Freya of the White Hands, daughter of the goddess of long ago, Viking maid of the Aesir — I held her in my arms!
I kissed her. As I held her close against my mail coat, the chill wind blew her bright hair across my face.