Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Four (section)

===Frozen Battlefields===


As the afternoon arrived, Freya wandered out to the outskirts of the little town.  Life was clearly a struggle here, but children were children all over the galaxy.  A massive battlefield in the snow outside the town bespoke a great conflict.  There was no discarded weaponry or crimson snow, however, and the only fortifications were little piles of snow, with unused snowballs behind them.  Mounds of icy missiles and the occasional outline of a fallen combatant littered the field.

Freya smiled.  “Can’t have a winter without a real snowball fight,” she chuckled.

A faint scuffing behind her alerted her to the arrival of several dozen children.  She stepped to one side of the road and watched as the throngs of kids – some no more than six, none more than fourteen years – ran past her, already calling challenges and insults.  Clearly, this was a well-practiced game.

Freya leaned back against the wall of the building beside her and watched the spectacle.  One group of industrious lads was packing snow into a wide ring, and fortifying it with more snow, dug from within the ring.  They were crouching behind it and packing snowballs when the others caught on, and the group vanished under a barrage of impromptu ice grenades.

The Wolf Daughter grinned broadly as they boys retaliated, knocking one of their attackers back over a pile of snow of his own.  The groups splintered and attacked, as several smaller kids wandered away to make snow Valkyries in the field outside or grew tired of the game and went back to wherever they had come from.

A harried-looking woman in thick grey robes and boots huffed up beside Freya.  “Sakes of the ancestors, I’m not getting younger,” she panted.  “Teach me for getting in their way.”

Freya drew her hood back up and nodded politely.  “Are you their teacher, miss?” she asked.

“Aye, one of them.”  The two women watched as a pair of girls packed a massive snowball between them and hurled it sideways into the melee.  It broke apart over another combatant’s back, and the girls ran off giggling.

“Enthusiastic, aren’t they?” Freya asked.

The teacher snorted.  “If only they learned the ways of war as easily.  When their fathers come home from the campaign, it’ll be back to real learnings.”

“Oh?  They have nobody to teach them how to fight or scout while the men are away?” Freya asked.

The teacher looked at her funny.  “Lass, I don’t know how it works in your kin-hold, but around here, the campaigns never last the year.  They just leave the poor things in my care while their fathers go off and hunt or fight.”

“And…their mothers?” Freya asked.

“They mend the homes.”  The woman peered closer at her.  “Where are you from?”

“Asaheim,” Freya said.

“Never heard of it.”  The teacher examined her a bit longer before a loud shouting from the field drew her attention back.  “Oh, come on…”

Two boys were going at it, fists flying.  The others stopped their snow fight to watch as a circle appeared around them.  One looked no older than ten, the other nearly a foot taller but a little younger.  They weren’t even fighting, this was a brawl.  One grabbed the other by the hair and tried to wrench it as the other clenched both hands around the first boy’s throat.

“What in the hell kicked that off?” Freya asked.  “They’re going to kill each other!”

“I don’t even know.  They’ve been at each other’s necks for days now!”  The teacher groaned.  “At least they’re outside this time.”

Blood splattered the snow as the taller boy managed to get a solid elbow strike into the shorter boy’s mouth.  The youth staggered.

“So…should you stop this?” Freya pressed.

“I should, but those lads would turn on me if I tried to stop them,” the teacher said wearily.

“Want me to?” Freya offered.  Her hackles rose – literally – as the taller boy pinned the other and started waling away on the prone one.

“Lass, if you think you can,” the teacher sighed.

Freya cracked her knuckles and crossed the battlefield unnoticed.  Just as the taller one reached back to punch the prone one again, Freya grabbed his wrist.

“Desist,” Freya said coldly.  “You’ve won.”

“Off me, bitch!” the boy growled.  He tried to pull his hand free and found it locked in an inescapable vice.  “I said GET OFF!” he roared, his voice breaking in anger.  Then, he was ten.

“That’s what I was going to say,” Freya bit off.  She pulled at the boy, enough to get him to rise, then locked her hand around his neck.  She wasn’t clamping hard enough to choke him, but he could feel it.

He swung at her impotently, his fists skittering off of her Primarch muscle.  “LET ME GO!  HE DIES HERE!” the boy ground out through clenched teeth.  The other boy slowly rose, nursing a bleeding gash on his jaw, his eyes pouring out liquid hate.

“For what?” Freya snarled, letting the barest hint of her canine legacy color her words.

“The whoreson insulted my father!  I’ll RIP OFF HIS SKIN!” the taller boy roared.

“Your father was caught cheating at skillbones and you call me a whoreson for pointing it out?” the shorter boy managed through a split lip.  “At least I know who my mother is.”

The taller boy screamed and tried to claw his way free, when suddenly Freya had had enough.  Putting more than a little of her superhuman strength into the throw, she hurtled the taller boy away.  He landed in a snowbank, sending snowy ejecta high.  She wheeled over to the other and swept the legs from under him, toppling him back down with a yelp of pain.

“I don’t care who insulted whom, who cheated whom, and who has both parents,” Freya said coldly over the gasps of the other children.  “You’ve no right to ruin everyone else’s fun.”  She glared at the two boys, who were both rising, dazed.  “You stupid children were going to kill each other.  You think the Wolves come to collect the souls of those who die in a pointless scuffle?  Play nice, or I’ll be back for you.”

She turned on her heel and walked back to the teacher, flexing her fingers to work the rest of her tension away.

The teacher gaped.  “Now…I may not be a saddle-maiden any longer, I haven’t raised a blade in many years…but that was no ordinary throw, lass,” she said, boggling at Freya’s compact arms under the cloak.

“Anger gives you strength,” Freya said obliquely.  “Maybe the shame of getting their dumb asses kicked by a girl will take the fight out of them,” she said a bit louder.  A few of the female children sniggered.

The teacher looked out at the slowly-resuming snowball fight as the two boys wobbled away.  “What did you say out there?  Something about Wolves?”

“Yes,” Freya said.  “Figured I may as well put the fear in them.”  She grinned tightly.  “Hope you don’t mind.”

“Fear of what?  Animals eating them?” the teacher snapped.

Freya blinked.  “What do you mean?  I was referring to the ones who come to collect the honored fallen, and take them to the skies.”

The teacher sighed.  “You mean the Dead Guides?”

“I guess we call them something else back home,” Freya said.  “What do your Dead Guides do?”

“They come amongst us in armor as black as night, with the heads of animals, and burning eyes, and take the fallen away, like you said,” the woman said suspiciously.  She was giving Freya a look not dissimilar to the one the scholars had given her now.  “Why?”

“Just curious.  My people tell the same tale.”  Freya shrugged again.  “Well.  I should go,” she said.  She brushed snow off of her gloves and walked back up the street.