The Head of Mimir

by Richard Lee Byers - (ebook by Undead)

  Heimdall now realized that if he and Sif simply fled across the face of Jotunheim, hostile magic was all too likely to bring them down. There was only one place to run if they hoped to evade their foes. “Follow me!” he called to Sif. He then shouted to Golden Mane. “Yggdrasil!”

  A luminous portal opened in front of the black steed. Golden Mane and his rider hurtled through into the void they’d visited before, and Sif and Bloodspiller appeared a moment after.

  Sif turned to her brother. “I agree we had to do this, but I’m not delighted to be back here.”

  “Nor am I,” Heimdall answered. Yet as he regarded the spectacle before him, something struck him. “Wait, though. It’s different for me this time.”

  The difference wasn’t overt. Yggdrasil remained a colossal tree floating among stars and nebulae with whole worlds perched among the branches and roots. But his expanded perceptions could encompass the terrible grandeur of the spectacle without distress. The immensity of it no longer threatened his capacity for thought or sense of self. This, he inferred, must be how the Valkyries experienced it thanks to the training or initiation that prepared them for the vista.

  “Does that mean you’re not in danger of losing your mind?” asked Sif.

  He smiled. “No more than usual.”

  “I should have smashed Mimir’s head. But since you seized on the easy part of the task, find us a way out of here. With luck, Bloodspiller will follow you and Golden Mane even if I’ve fallen into a stupor.”

  “Right.” He peered up at the high branch on which Asgard awaited, and the golden shimmering suggestion of a path appeared before him, twisting back and forth a little as it climbed toward the home of the Aesir. He surmised that this too was an aspect of the void outside the Nine Worlds as the Valkyries experienced it, and that following the pathways facilitated the passage from one to another. He started Golden Mane up the trail to Asgard and found the black steed negotiated the various turns without requiring any prompting. The winged horse also saw the path and expected his rider to use it. No doubt the stallion had been puzzled if not disgusted during their previous journey when Heimdall was oblivious to the tracks.

  After a few moments, another luminous round portal opened before them. They passed through into a frozen landscape in which a whistling wind blew snowflakes bigger than the first joint of his thumb, the sky was gray with cloud cover, and whiteness blanketed the ground below.

  “Are we back in Jotunheim?” called Sif.

  For a moment, Heimdall wasn’t sure either. He peered ahead, farther than she or any normal Vanir or Aesir could see, and found the remains of a longhouse sticking up above the snow. It was the right size for Asgardians to inhabit and looked as if passing frost giants might have smashed in the roof.

  “No,” he said grimly, “this is Asgard. The winter weather just shows the Jotuns have kept right on winning the war in the days we’ve been away.”

  Twenty-Seven

  After two more days of travel, as Heimdall and Sif flew toward the citadel of Asgard, he found it easy to use his heightened sight to give any frost giants a wide berth and likewise determine the disposition of forces. To his disappointment if not his surprise, everything he saw confirmed his initial impression. There were no Asgardian armies still in the field. Any that survived had fallen back to defend the All-Father’s city while the forces of Jotunheim were on the march to encircle the capital and lay siege to it.

  He wondered glumly just how long the rout had taken. Not long, he suspected. Thanks to his sojourn in the Realm Below and the jumping between worlds, he didn’t know precisely how long he and Sif had been gone, but he didn’t think it had been more than a couple weeks.

  He and Sif set down on a hilltop to give the winged stallions a rest. As he swung himself off Golden Mane’s back, Heimdall said, “Skrymir was right when he told Amora the frost giants don’t really need the head of Mimir any more.”

  “Not as things stand currently,” replied Sif, rubbing Bloodspiller’s flank. “But when the All-Father wakes and brings his wisdom and his power to bear, they’ll wish they still had it. We just have to convince someone with magical abilities to enter the vault of the Odinsleep and break the spell Amora cast on him.”

  Heimdall smiled a wry smile. “Of course. Why not, when we were so successful last time?”

  Sif laughed. “At least this time we know Lady Amora is a traitor. That ought to help.”

  “I hope so. Surely by now someone has grown suspicious of her mysterious absence. That should make it easier to convince people she’s a turncoat. Before we can even denounce her, though, we have to enter the citadel and obtain a hearing in front of the queen without being summarily killed for our own supposed treachery.”

  “How do you think we should do that? By stealth?”

  Heimdall thought about it and then said, “I’d rather not. I’d rather not do anything that reinforces the impression that we’re the traitors. If everyone can see us approaching the city, and if we make our peaceful intentions obvious, we might fare better.”

  Sif nodded. “That makes sense… except, could the horses whisk us from here right into the throne room? Then we could be sure no one would kill us before we ever reached the presence of the queen.”

  “Interesting idea,” Heimdall said, “but I doubt it. Their ability to flash from one spot to another seems to exist to shift them into the void where Yggdrasil stands and out again. I don’t think they can use it to go a precise point in a particular world. Once they’re inside Asgard, Jotunheim, or wherever, they depend on their wings to take them swiftly to where they need to go. Moreover, even if they could carry us straight into Frigga’s presence without flying over the city and the castle walls first, we don’t know how to tell them to do that.”

  “Approaching slowly and in plain view it is, then.”

  When they judged the horses were ready, they flew on. Though the giants were advancing on the city of Asgard, their various forces drawing tight around it like a noose, they were still some miles out from the perimeter, and brother and sister continued to avoid them as they had before. They still might die today, Heimdall reflected, but, if so, it would be at the hands of their own people.

  When cold and snow grudgingly gave way to the warmth and green of Asgard’s perpetual summer, which still prevailed in a circle around the city, Heimdall blew the Gjallarhorn and kept sounding it periodically thereafter to announce his and Sif’s approach. They held the steeds to an aerial canter, not an all-out gallop, and they left their swords in the scabbards. Heimdall hoped that, taken all together, the display would proclaim peaceful intentions.

  While he and Sif had been away, the effort to turn the part of the city that had spilled beyond the walls into defenses had continued and was ongoing even now. Warriors and common folk labored side by side to throw up still more walls and dig even more ditches and pits, to the point where the town beyond the towering ramparts of Asgard was scarcely recognizable as a one-time settlement any more. Dogged labor had transformed it into a maze of fortifications. The laborers raised up their sweaty, dirty faces as Heimdall and his sister passed overhead.

  Sif called across the space between the horses. “No one’s shooting at us.”

  “So far,” Heimdall replied, feeling somewhat encouraged. He wondered if they should land in front of one of the city gates and enter the capital at ground level. That too might signal benign intent more clearly than soaring over the wall intended to keep intruders out. He was still thinking about it when a trumpet somewhat like the Gjallarhorn sounded from the ramparts. This one, however, was blowing the call that meant the forces of Asgard were under attack.

  Below the riders and their steeds, warriors set down stones, dropped shovels, and scrambled for bows and spears. The guards on the ramparts ahead already had weapons in hand and used them, but they were too eager, and the first bowshots and spear casts fell short
of the targets and arced down to the ground.

  “Curse it!” said Sif. “What did we do to alarm them?”

  “Nothing!” Heimdall answered, bewildered. “I don’t understand!” But then, to his shocked dismay, he saw something that made it all clear.

  A slender blonde figure in green had appeared among the warriors on the stretch of battlements directly ahead. She called orders, and artillerymen turned a catapult and a ballista in the flyers’ direction and began to load the weapons. Archers nocked new arrows, and spearmen took up new spears. Satisfied that all the warriors were doing what should be done to kill her enemies, Lady Amora then took a long breath, raised her hands, and chanted the first words of a spell.

  Heimdall had hoped that with the conquest of Asgard imminent, Amora would remain with the frost giants. Instead, she’d apparently used magic to make a swift return to Frigga’s court and sabotage efforts at defense from within. Now that same sorcery had revealed Heimdall and Sif’s approach, and the witch intended to kill them and make sure they never had the chance to speak to the queen.

  His heart pounding with anxiety, Heimdall had no doubt the safe course was to turn and flee. A climb to a higher altitude or a shift into the void where Yggdrasil stood might save him and Sif if the steeds could manage it quickly enough.

  But he suspected that if he and his sister ran now, they’d never get this close to Frigga again. Exercising Mimir’s abilities, he frantically peered and listened for anything that could help them and, with an upwelling of hope, caught familiar voices and the clop of hooves sounding from the inner reaches of the citadel.

  He turned to Sif. She’d drawn her sword and was plainly an instant away from urging Bloodspiller into a swooping charge despite the barrage of missiles likely to meet her halfway. “Don’t!” he cried.

  Sif glared back at him. “If we can’t talk to the queen, Amora needs to die!”

  “Just wait! Help is coming!”

  After several more seconds, while the artillerymen were still readying the catapult and ballista and Amora was still declaiming the no-doubt devastating death magic she intended to unleash, a dozen Valkyries on their own winged steeds soared above the wall.

  The one in the lead was Uschi, as before clad and armored all in black and with her raven hair and inky cape streaming out behind her. She used her flaming sword to wave the other Valkyries on toward Heimdall and Sif.

  As she did, it occurred to Heimdall to thank the Fates for his luck. Given that Uschi had supposedly fallen asleep and been responsible for his and Heimdall’s escape, she could have faced discipline, but evidently, in the midst of wartime, her overall record was impressive enough that her superiors had allowed her to remain in command of her company. Moreover, like Amora, she too had noticed him and Sif approaching, and, still grateful for their help against the frost giants, rushed to save them.

  Unable to hurl missiles from the catapult and ballista, loose arrows, or throw spears lest they hit the aerial cavalry, the warriors on the ramparts simply stood and watched the Valkyries gallop through the air. Even Amora left off her conjuring. Evidently the magic she’d intended to unleash would likewise have struck the choosers of the slain.

  The Valkyries wheeled around Heimdall and Sif. “Where are the saddles and bridles?” Uschi called.

  “We lost them,” Heimdall said. “Things took an unexpected turn.”

  “Well, at least the horses are alive. My warriors and I will escort you into the citadel.” She smiled. “As our prisoners, obviously.”

  Heimdall smiled back. “This is twice you’ve helped us.”

  “You helped me and mine first, and even if you hadn’t, back in the farmhouse you gave me much to think about. If someone had stolen Mimir’s head, it might well mean there was a traitor at court, probably someone possessed of enough magic to counter the vault’s defenses. And when Amora commanded the warriors to kill you immediately, even though you were clearly approaching peacefully, that fixed my suspicions on her. Oh, look, here she comes now.”

  Amora’s magic floated her up from the battlements and on toward the warriors and winged stallions in the sky. “Don’t attack her,” Heimdall said. Even in the unlikely event that his sister could kill the sorceress despite the circle of Valkyries duty-bound to protect her, their ultimate objective was still to have someone wake Odin, and that wouldn’t happen if they looked like blackguards now.

  “Even though she’s putting herself within reach?” Sif sighed. “Oh, all right.” She slid her broadsword back into its scabbard.

  Despite that, Amora didn’t put herself within easy reach of Sif or Heimdall either. Probably, he thought, that was just as well. He’d warned Sif against attacking the sorceress, but now that she was close, he felt the same fierce anger his sister manifestly felt.

  Perhaps because another enchantment was involved, he didn’t need Mimir’s powers of perception to hear Amora clearly across the space that separated them. “Heimdall and Sif are traitors already condemned to death,” she said, addressing herself to Uschi. “You and your Valkyries, kill them, or if you’re unwilling, withdraw and let the warriors on the battlements do their duty.”

  “I know they’re accused of treason,” the Valkyrie in black replied. “I have not heard they were to be killed out of hand even if they surrendered themselves for judgment. Perhaps, Lady Amora, you have misinterpreted the queen’s commands.”

  “I assure you, I haven’t,” the enchantress said, “and I also assure you that you don’t want bad blood between us.”

  “I do not,” Uschi said, “but now that the prisoners are my prisoners, my duty, as best I understand it, is to keep them secured and alive until someone with actual authority over me commands me to do otherwise. I trust you understand.”

  “I do,” said Amora, “and I won’t forget this.” She gave Heimdall and Sif a poisonous smile. “It seems you may have the opportunity to babble your lies and excuses to Frigga after all. I promise, it won’t matter in the end.”

  Heimdall turned to Uschi. “We do have to speak to the queen immediately.”

  The Valkyrie gave a nod. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The riders flew on into the precincts of the citadel with Amora flying along beside them. They all set down in a courtyard Heimdall hadn’t visited before, one long and wide enough for winged horses to gallop, spread their wings, and rise into the air. He surmised that the surrounding buildings were the steeds’ stables, the Valkyrie barracks, and likely the workrooms of the smiths, armorers, and saddlers required to keep the warriors and their mounts ready to fight. The air smelled of hay, and metal rang as a dwarf hammered a glowing red sword blade on an anvil.

  Heimdall intended to keep an eye on Amora, but despite his vigilance and to his surprised dismay she vanished between one moment and the next without him seeing how she accomplished it. He hastily alerted Sif and Uschi that the enchantress was gone.

  “So I see,” Uschi answered. “My guess is that she wants to get to Frigga before I do and persuade the queen to order your execution before I ever have a chance to speak. I’ll chase after her in a moment, but first we have to take care of the formalities. Prisoners, dismount and hand over your swords.”

  Heimdall and Sif obeyed.

  “Good,” Uschi said, passing the weapons to a subordinate. She then addressed herself to all her Valkyries. “Keep these two right where they are, out in the open. If evil magic sends a thousand spiders to kill them, or anything like that, I want plenty of witnesses. Now, I’m off to catch up with the sorceress.” She wheeled her mount, kicked the stallion into a run, and the steed beat his wings and carried her back into the air.

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait, and Heimdall experienced an odd mingling of trepidation and anticlimax. Grooms saw to the horses including Golden Mane and Bloodspiller. One Valkyrie brought a bench for the prisoners to sit on, another found them oat fla
tbread, cheese, and ale, and he discovered that at the end of his long journey, anxiety wasn’t dulling his appetite. His stomach rumbled, and he attacked what he knew might be his final meal with gusto. Beside him, Sif ate just as ravenously.

  Until, her repast finished, she covered a burp with her hand and said, “I wasn’t expecting to sit around. I imagined that once we reached the citadel, one way or the other, everything would happen quickly.”

  Heimdall smiled. “It’s almost as if a monarch preparing her city to defend against armies that are nearly at the gates has other things to do besides listen to outlandish stories from two miscreants wandering in from the cold.”

  Sif chuckled. “I’m not complaining, exactly. Not considering what awaits us if we fail to convince Frigga.”

  “At least the frost giants don’t have Mimir’s head any more. We accomplished that much. Not that I assume we won’t persuade the queen.” He told himself they had the truth on their side, and surely that mattered.

  “That’s good to hear,” said Sif. “But if it becomes clear she doesn’t believe us, I’m going to rush Amora. The Jotuns shouldn’t have her any more, either, and if the giants do defeat our people, she shouldn’t be alive to share in the spoils.”

  “She’ll be expecting an attack,” Heimdall said, “and the guards in the throne room will be ready for one as well.”

  Sif shrugged. “I’m still going to try.”

  Heimdall realized he couldn’t talk her out of it any more than he could stand by passively while she fought her last fight alone. “Obviously, if you go for Amora, I will too. But at least give me a chance to make our case.”

  “I already said I would.” Sif smiled. “Do you remember when Father would sit in judgment and sort out disputes that happened on his lands?”

  Heimdall grinned. “Wardell the poacher. His excuses were so comical that Father couldn’t bring himself to punish him. Like when he claimed the hares he’d trapped were dark elf sorcerers who’d changed their shapes, and he’d saved the fief from a terrible invasion.”