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black candle with her cloud of silver blonde curls above long, velvety black robes.
"I said away!" she repeated imperiously.
"I told you someone would see him." This came from behind Eirik, who spun and found himself staring at a little boy, of an age with the girl and in the same draping black velvet, though his dark hair was twisted up into a warrior's knot. Eirik planted his feet by the young man's head so that he could keep an eye on both children.
"Is this a hidden path?" he demanded.
The boy shook his head disgustedly. "See, even he knows you've no power over him here, in his world."
Eirik took that as a 'no', but the girl didn't seem to agree. She scowled and shoved curling wisps of silver from her eyes. "I have power everywhere," she said shrilly. She stuck out a skinny arm, palm open and facing up, and crowed as an ugly looking dagger materialized in her hand. She shot the boy a triumphant look. "It's like we were told. We kill him here, in their world, and his people will feel it too late to save him."
"Kill whom?" Eirik interjected.
"We've no quarrel with you, mansspawn," the boy said calmly. "Just move away from the pretty lad."
"You can watch us kill him, if you like," the girl offered generously.
It was the wrong thing to say. Eirik felt his lips curl into an unpleasant smile. "I don't think I will." Children might not have been his top choice for fighting opponents, but these two were making it very easy for him not to think of them as children, at all. They were fey, through and through, from their velvet to their magic to their careless cruelty. "Move, that is. I think I won't let you kill him." He said it like he would say, 'I think I'll have the cod instead of the capelin.'
Twin sets of ebony eyes fixed themselves on him. Eirik almost took a step back. Almost. Instead, he deftly unclasped and shook the weight of his cloak off his shoulders. He crouched low, axes held out and steady.
A feral smile crept across the girl's face. "You want to play!" she exclaimed merrily.
The boy frowned. "This is unwise," he warned. "The lad is more than half dead, already. Will you throw away your life for nothing?"
Eirik matched the girl's smile. "I said nothing about throwing away my life. The girl has the right of it. I want to play." A small part of his brain knew it was foolishness. He had no idea what the two child-beings were capable of, and he somehow doubted their confidence was mere baseless swagger. But in that instant, all he knew were the heat of his own anger and the fact that if he left them with the fallen young man, they would kill him where he lay, unconscious and helpless.
With that fear in mind, Eirik decided to establish himself as a serious threat sooner rather than later, so that he could maybe draw them away from the body. He locked eyes with the girl and took a step towards her. Before his boot hit the ground, he had sent one ax slicing through the air towards the boy.
He drew his sheath knife before registering whether the boy had managed to dodge. Even as he heard his ax clatter harmlessly against some rocks, the little girl flew at him, her long dagger raised high. Eirik blocked her thrust with his remaining ax and stabbed at the same time towards her face. She twisted away at the last second, though, and pranced back with a wild giggle. Eirik spun just in time to jump over the wide, swinging blow the boy aimed at his shins. The boy's dagger was longer and thinner than the girl's, but with the same jagged claws cut into the blade.
The little demons were fast. They fought with a frenzied wildness, hollering battle cries as they flitted around Eirik's guard, twin swooping swathes of black with deadly flashing blades.
Eirik let his rage unfurl to mirror theirs. He needed to be faster, as there was only one of him. If they were quick, though, the children did not seem unusually strong, and they did not fight as a team. Again and again, Eirik beat back their onslaughts unblooded.
The boy, he determined, was the better fighter. The girl had unnatural speed and a maniacal energy, but there was an erratic overconfidence to the way she hacked at Eirik with her evil weapon. The next time Eirik drove the boy back, he cut his follow through abruptly short and lunged at the girl before she was expecting his attack. She skipped backwards, raising her dagger.
Eirik used his ax to catch the dagger mid swing and force its momentum to continue until the girl was forced to abandon her weapon or overbalance. She shrieked and gripped the blade with both hands, letting her entire weight drag. Eirik lifted her easily, swinging her forward and onto his knife. The blade impaled her through the heart. Eirik drove it in to the hilt, then wrenched both knife and ax free. The small body tumbled down, vanishing before it hit the ground.
With a grunt, Eirik turned to finish the boy—and found him racing back towards the snow covered body of the young man. The child lifted his long blade as he ran.
"No!" Eirik cried out.
The boy was too fast. There was no way Eirik could reach him before he made it to the unconscious man. A desperate growl started deep in Eirik's belly, swelling up through his chest and ripping from his throat as a thunderous if rather puerile, "Mine!" He centered himself and took aim.
The darting boy fell just before he reached his target, a knife embedded in his back and an ax in his skull. By the time Eirik dashed to the spot, his body had disappeared. The jagged dagger remained, glinting ominously in the dawn. Eirik kicked it to the side and knelt by the motionless young man.
"Are you dead?" he muttered. In the space of a heartbeat, the clean fury of battle gave way to a much less pleasant frustration. He jabbed two fingers against the young man's neck, harder than necessary, and was only mildly relieved to detect a fluttering pulse. He was too cold.
More gently, Eirik brushed the snow from the man's head and shoulders. He started to gather him into his arms, then paused and stood to go back for his cloak, axes, and the weapons abandoned by the dead children, or whatever they had been. Eirik shoved both daggers into his belt with his axes, and then used the cloak to wrap around the young man. He lifted him easily, cradling him like a baby.
Then he hesitated, unsure of where to go. The closest village was an hour away, even if he ran as much of the way as possible, which wouldn't be significant with the dead weight he carried. The man needed warmth, and sooner than that.
He made his decision. Hefting the body, he turned and walked southeast, away from the villages and towards the glimmering gold horizon. There was a small thermal pool very close by. It was no more than a hole filled with water, but the rocks were hot, there, and they heated the water to pleasantly scalding no matter what the weather. Blankets and a fire could do no better.
Eirik knew these lands well, and strode purposefully through the desolate winter dawn. He took the most direct route, even when this meant trudging along lanes of mud or up and down knolls and hummocks. He avoided snow, which would slow him if it proved deeper than it looked. The stepping stones across the low stream gave him pause, but he slipped only once, and did not drop his burden. Light spread slowly, but the clouds had rolled in again, and he could no longer make out the sun.
The man stirred in his arms as they approached the pool. "N—no," he whimpered.
