by Matt Larkin
This whole plan reeked of unmanliness, in so many ways. Who ever snuck into an enemy camp like this? Thor should have brought the armies of Asgard with him and come with fire and sword. Except that might have meant admitting to the rest of Asgard he’d gotten so drunk a jotunn could steal Mjölnir. Shit, and what would Father say about that? Naught that Thor wanted to hear, that was for damn certain.
They’d strapped the swan cloaks into little bundles tied against their chests.
Following Loki’s lead, they fell in with a group of women being escorted up to the fortress. It was easier than he’d have expected. The jotunn guards—a pair of frost jotunnar—weren’t looking for people to join, they were only watching to make sure no one ran off. Simple as pretending they paused for a piss, stepping into the line, and then the jotunnar were guiding them past their own ranks.
Except that one of the women in the back of the line kept glancing at him askance. She had red hair not unlike Thor’s own, and a simple mud-splattered dress. Probably captured in a raid and marched who knew how far to get back here to their king. Loki offered her a slightly raised hand, warding against her giving them away.
Thor had to admire her ability to return her face to impassiveness, knowing someone was back there like that. She didn’t beg for help or speak at all. Could he have managed such courage in her place?
The new jotunn lords had upgraded Hrungnir’s former fortress, at least a little bit. They’d reinforced the walls and mounted spikes on them such that the place now resembled a briar. Entering such a twisted hold made even Thor feel anxious, so how much worse for all the prisoners marched through here before them?
Once inside, guards slammed mighty doors shut.
Their line made its way into the great hall where several braziers burned, perhaps as a concession to the mortality of the jotunnar’s human captives. A wood jotunn marched up to the head of the line and leered down at the first woman. Then he grabbed her and ripped her clothes in half. Shrieks filled the hall, and some of the women ahead of Thor rushed past him, trying to escape.
Not much chance of that, given the guarded double doors behind them.
Thor pushed past the fleeing captives to the head of the line.
A hand fell on his shoulder. Loki. The man pointed to a throne. Occupied with the women, Thor hadn’t even noticed the shadowed figure at the back of the hall. A massive jotunn, four times Thor’s size or more, with wolf-like jowls. Thrym? At his side, looking like a toy, lay Mjölnir.
As each woman was stripped, the wood jotunn shoved her toward the center of the hall, where another jotunn had the women line up.
Thor continued to make his way until he was next in line. The wood jotunn towered over him, a good eight feet tall at least. The creature tore his cloak off. Thor lifted his gaze to meet that of the jotunn. And grinned. He surged strength into his limbs and landed a tight hook to the jotunn’s stones.
The creature doubled over and collapsed to its knees.
Thor’s other fist caught it under the jaw with a crack that echoed through the great hall and sent the jotunn sprawling over backward.
All the screaming stopped. Everyone was staring at him.
Even Thrym, lurching to his feet.
Thor spread his hands. “Who wants a war?” he bellowed.
20
Well into the night, Brynhild had spoken of runes and their meanings, of the secret power they might hold if carved just right, to attract the attention of a vaettr. Over and over she’d drawn symbols, patient as Sigurd stumbled to replicate them or understand their meaning.
And then, at last, sleep had taken them.
Sigurd had hunted on the morn, bringing down a reindeer that probably thought itself well safe from human predators on this mountain. While the flesh roasted, Brynhild sang cryptic songs of words without meaning—so far as Sigurd could tell—though Brynhild claimed the songs were older than the world itself. “The ancient art of Kumari Kandam,” she called it, though even she admitted she did not know who or what that place had been, save it had fallen before the rise of man.
She was not a witch and yet she knew so very much of the realms beyond the ken of mankind.
After they had eaten, she showed him more runes. “Signs of victory that shall strengthen your sword. Here, see how it mirrors the one on the center ridge of Gramr?”
Sigurd did see the rune, though he’d never before given overmuch thought to the meaning of any one of those symbols.
Other runes she showed him, to carve into the hull of a ship and ward it against storms.
Runes to carve into a drinking horn to ward it against poison. Runes to cut into a mother’s palm to aid in childbirth. So many runes Sigurd’s mind swam with them, and he could make little sense of the lot. The longer he stared at them, the more they seemed to shift and change, mercurial as the sea.
In the evening he massaged his temples. “I think my eyes are like to start bleeding from this.”
Brynhild chuckled, shaking her head. “Oh, Odin. You knew it all along. Bastard.”
Sigurd flinched at her blasphemy.
Brynhild, however, suddenly drew the shirt he’d loaned her up over her shoulders.
Sigurd gaped, gaze locked on her breasts. The welts from the mail had shrunken, now just hints, and she seemed all the more beautiful for having deliberately shown herself to him.
She smiled wanly, looking at him sideways. “Do you know of pneuma, Sigurd?”
He nodded, hardly trusting himself to speak.
“Pneuma saturates us, our flesh. You might share it with another, though, through release.”
“You mean … uh …”
Brynhild quirked a smile. “Such has always been the way of mystical instruction. Sorcerers and sorceresses bed one another in order to pass intuitive knowledge between them. Wisdom, as you call it. The wisdom to understand the lessons I try to put before you.”
So when the raven said he would come here to learn wisdom, it meant Sigurd should lay with her.
Still, he hesitated.
“Those with strong pneuma pass a greater amount of it into their partners on climax.”
“Women can … um … I mean how do you …?”
Now she broke into a chortle, shaking her head. “The dverg did you a disservice, Sigurd. But they always do. They hate us. Come now. It seems there are so many things for me to teach you.”
As Brynhild had claimed, Sigurd felt her energy pass into him in a rush of euphoric bliss that—had she not forewarned him of it—he might have overlooked as part of his own pleasure. And by Thor’s mighty cock, was there pleasure. Far more to make love to a woman who truly wished it. To find her excitement compounding upon his own in an unending circle of lust that left him disdaining the vulgar emotions Regin had forced him to indulge in.
Every time Brynhild climaxed, she would laugh and hold him close and they’d fall asleep entangled together.
And the lessons would resume on his waking, and seem, somehow, the smallest bit clearer.
Thus went many days, perhaps a fortnight even, before he began to wonder how long he might live upon this desolate mountain. His supplies had dwindled and, though he could hunt, he could not easily replace the oil for torches.
The shieldmaiden must have sensed his disquiet, for she laid her chin upon his shoulder as he stood on the rampart, staring out over the mist.
“Tell me more of your wisdom,” he said.
“Hmm. Honor your kin and don’t try to take vengeance for their misdeeds against you.”
“That … was not the sort of wisdom I had in mind, though I shall try to remember it.” He twisted around in her arms, then held her back so he could look her in the eye. “What if … what if we became kin?”
Brynhild smiled, saying naught.
Sigurd slipped the dragon’s ring from his little finger. Fafnir had thought it especially precious. “By this ring, I would make you my wife. You are wiser than any I’ve ever known and I … I swear I would do right
by you.”
The woman swallowed. “He said I would marry the one who was to come.” She looked faraway, like she was seeing something else. “And I swore only to take a man without fear. But he knew you’d come and marry me. And I have known from the moment you told me you passed through the fires.” She held out her hand.
Unable to form words worthy of such—for if Odin had foretold it nigh to two decades back it must truly be urd—he slipped the ring upon her finger. And kissed her, swearing to love her alone, always.
She embraced him and he lifted her in his arms and carried her downstairs and to the bed they’d claimed together.
“We cannot stay here forever,” Brynhild said, lying on her side, clad only in a bearskin rug.
Sigurd nodded. “At some point I have to return to my kingdom and see to it. And you should come with me.”
“I … I have to go back and see if Heimir yet reigns in Laaland. He was good to me and it’s been a great many years since I saw him. You ought to instead return with me. He is all the family that remains to me, and I want you to meet them at least once before we can make a life together.”
Sigurd could hardly refuse a request like that. “Heimir still rules. To reach Laaland, we’d have to pass close by my kingdom. I will stop there for a few days and see all is fine, then we’ll go to your foster father’s island.”
Brynhild nodded in agreement, so Sigurd found Grani, and together they rode from Mount Hindarfjall.
It was the first time in his life he could ever remember feeling truly content.
21
From the High Seat, Odin watched Brynhild’s continuing betrayal of her oath, teaching Sigurd of runes and other lessons a mortal man was never meant to understand. He’d foreseen this long ago, of course. He’d known the moment would come, even if his vision was ever broken by strands he could not yet see.
Still, he saw it as she spoke of Otherworldly things. He watched as they made love in between passing secrets and strange musings. In its own way, it was all so similar to how Freyja had once taught Odin, back when this place was yet Vanaheim. Back when the world seemed simpler and he had, for a time, set aside all his burdens and felt peace.
Part of him wished he could delve so easily backward as forward and relive those blissful moments. But perhaps it was better that he couldn’t. Had he such an ability he might dive into that time and never surface again, pretending, as Sigurd now must, that all wouldn’t be torn away from him by the merciless web of urd.
No, it was both easier and more meaningful to let his mind flit into the future, even if it should prove more damning.
The play of prescient memory had Odin, and he lived an endless cycle of foreknown sensuality that stripped away time. A woman had mounted him and another had lowered her trench over his face for him to massage with his tongue. Hands were all over his body. His fingers squeezing someone’s nipple.
He found himself continuously hard, finding new partners over and over.
In a daze, he realized Freyja herself had mounted him. Her body warm and slick with sweat, her sweet lips brushing his. He couldn’t stop touching her, nor find words to express his desire. At once he wanted to hold her so close that they became one soul, and to weep, for the relief of finally having found her.
On and on the orgy went, for hours. Perhaps days, as time lost all meaning.
The former valkyrie had fallen for Sigurd as much as he had for her, enough that Odin almost mourned their love. Maybe, lifetimes ago when he was whole, he’d have found enough pity for them to try to help them avert their urd. Now, he could scarcely bestir himself from this seat.
Not yet, at least, though he’d have to do so, eventually.
The time would come when his son would need him, and Odin would have to be there.
But he had not yet recovered from the ravages Audr had visited upon his body. In truth, he might never fully recover. Certainly the aging could not be undone. Every time he tapped the powers of the Otherworlds, they consumed bits of who and what he had once been.
He ought to grieve for that man. He’d grieved for the death of his mother. Of his father. Of his brothers.
He even still feared his own death.
Fenrir.
The varulf lord flying through the air, lunging at Odin. His jaws closing around Odin’s throat. Squeezing the life from Odin’s frail body. Tearing out neck and spine in one feral movement. A fleeting glimpse of his own headless body as he died.
Yes, he’d felt himself die to the varulf lord. Felt that pain a hundred times. Maybe Freyja could help him find a way to break that strand of urd.
Odin groaned, letting his head fall into his hands.
Freyja.
That passion alone remained undimmed.
He couldn’t grieve for losing the man he’d been long ago, fierce and proud and one who at least attempted a life of honor. That man was gone, lost to the ages, and Odin could not bring himself to mourn.
But for Freyja, still a fire burned in his chest, so fierce he sometimes thought it would consume him whole.
For her, he’d do aught imaginable.
Forcing himself to wait, to let Sigurd and Brynhild’s romance play out, it tore at what remained of Odin’s soul. But wait he must, for there were a few other ends he could not ignore.
Chiefly, the one other pull that compelled Odin forward.
Ragnarok.
All the strands from the web of urd led back to that battle. Every action he’d taken, every twisted path, it inevitably brought him back there.
His hands wrapped around Loki’s throat. The wolf’s jaws tearing out his own. The dying of all Odin held dear, perhaps, even of the very world itself. The end of time.
If Odin could not find a way to change the outcome, all else he had done would prove for naught.
Frigg waited for him, in his private chamber when Odin at last dragged his weary body from the High Seat. His wife, the glorious Queen of Asgard, sat with her hands folded in her lap, face impassive and yet somehow stern.
“You stay up there for days,” she said.
“Time doesn’t mean what it used to mean.”
A slight downturn of her mouth, immediately covered. “I don’t care much for the way you and Sigyn bandy your meanings in riddles.”
Odin slumped down into a chair across from his wife and stared at her. The truth was, Frigg was a great queen and would have made a great wife, had Odin been a less wretched husband.
“I cannot help but feel a premonition,” she said. “A foretelling of darkness coming for us.”
Odin had known this conversation would come, though he hadn’t realized it would be now until he’d settled into the chair. The order of things was hard to unravel, sometimes. And Frigg, despite her gifts as a völva, had nowhere nigh to his abilities as an oracle. Her vague premonitions and metaphoric dreams had cast her into her role as witch of the Hasdingi, true, but they had not crystalized into the damning certainty of the unfolding of time that so weighed upon Odin.
An irony, really, given that she had helped awaken the latent Sight within him. But she could not understand his burdens, if he’d wished for her to do so—and he’d not wish such an urd upon his wife. Even if he could not lie to himself and think himself in love with her, still, he loved her after a fashion, as the mother of his sons.
He’d come back from the Well and known he must lay with her, known she would bear another son. Known, even, with torturous insight, that Baldr must one day meet a foul end. Alone, with no one to look upon him nor hear, he’d railed at the night when Baldr had been born. Tried to deny urd.
Maybe there was still a way, but if so, it lay on the other side of Alfheim.
Baldr was a key to Ragnarok. He knew that much. Still some truths remained concealed. He had to find a way to change what he’d seen.
“Well?” Frigg asked. “Have you naught to say?”
Odin swallowed. “There will come a time when I must wander farther than I have ever wandered befor
e. You will probably think me lost forever.” Maybe he would be. “That’s when you must prove the strongest of us all.”
“Then you’ve seen the darkness, too.”
With a grunt, Odin leaned forward and patted her knee. He’d seen such darkness as she would not believe. Such, that he could not even speak of it.
22
As a valkyrie, Brynhild had surrendered her mortal life for an immortal one. She had cut ties with all her kin. All save Bekkhildr, her favorite niece. As the years had stretched, however, Brynhild had taken to referring to Bekkhildr as her sister, for they could have passed for it. The woman had married Heimir of Laaland and thus became its queen.
Brynhild had tried to follow Heimir’s exploits before Odin had taken her from her former master and pressed her into his service. Now, so many years had she slept, she could not say for certain what she’d find in Hlymdalir. The town was nestled in a valley on the island of Laaland, and she and Sigurd sailed there in a small ship out of Xanten.
The days with him were so pleasant and she longed to tell him all the truths she had yet withheld from him. The way Odin had used and betrayed his father, and her bitter part in the whole affair. The plans the Ás must still have for Sigurd. And more, the secrets from beyond life, though of the last, she could not speak, even if they had not already begun to fade from her memory, lost in a dreamlike haze.
No, she could not tell him everything, but still they talked of so many things. He spoke of the lands of Reidgotaland and Hunaland and how they had changed in the years she had slept. She had slumbered his entire life and Brynhild could not help but marvel as he expounded on fallen kings and wars and new developments.
He spoke only a little of his time being raised by that dverg, and Brynhild could guess why. All vaettir were warped by their own torments and dvergar, especially, suffered eternal agonies. They longed to obviate their suffering for even a moment by visiting the same upon mortals. Even from the few stories Sigurd did tell, Brynhild would have hunted Regin down and killed him herself had the creature yet lived.
