by Matt Larkin
She unshouldered her bow and nocked an arrow. “You have a plan?”
Odin nodded, then beckoned to the jotunn warriors Hymir had lent them. “A mad charge that will catch him off guard. The boy’s young and very accustomed to counting on his insights to warn him of potential danger. With me here, he’d probably never have foreseen an ambush from this direction. He needs to think the attack and danger real enough, which means our allies must show ferocity sufficient to keep him from considering his actions, relying instead on instinctive reactions.”
In other words, Odin planned to sacrifice the better part of Hymir’s warriors to give the attack verisimilitude and thus ensure Narfi would believe the retreat for at least long enough to enter the wood and fall into the trap. And the dozens who would die for this plan? Did Odin think on their lives in the least?
Whether he did so or not, he signaled the jotunnar forward. They blundered past Sigyn’s hiding spot in a fury she could only imagine would well serve to accomplish Odin’s goal of making the assault believable, especially under cover of darkness.
Sigyn’s attuned ears caught the rustle as the varulf twins raced forward in wolf form.
The jotunnar didn’t have fires, which only exacerbated the difficulty posed by the mist. Unable to get a shot from so far off, Sigyn began to creep closer. Odin, though, rose, his walking stick rippling and becoming a spear as he did so. The old man strode forward with a purpose, an obvious intent to join the melee.
Long before she reached the enemy, the tumult of battle came to her. Screams and the thwack of metal on wood, the clang of steel on steel. And the meaty sound of flesh cleaved away.
While Hymir’s jotunn warriors might well have blended with Narfi’s own, the relative positions early on allowed her to determine—with reasonable certainty—who was on what side, though that ability would diminish as the melee turned to total chaos. Sigyn loosed on a jotunn charging out of a tent. Her shaft caught him in the throat.
She drew a bead on another, and another, sticking to only those shoots she felt confident represented Narfi’s soldiers and—more importantly—those too tall to have been human. A half jotunn might push six and a half feet, maybe a little more. Taller than that and it had to be a full jotunn, and probably one who had tasted man-flesh.
Calculating the effects of air currents on the flights of her shafts had become second nature. Sigyn no longer even thought about it. Predicting the likely positions of targets in motion presented a greater challenge, of course, and Sigyn missed more than a few shots when a jotunn moved erratically. Still, many arrows found their marks. Some of those embedded in thick animal hides the jotunnar wore as armor, but others hit vulnerable spots on jotunn faces, throats, shins.
Then the melee grew so intense she couldn’t risk taking further shots, even could she have identified friend from foe. So, instead, she crouched, watching as jotunnar tore into one another. She could only guess, but it did seem Narfi’s troops had gained the upper hand. Sigyn frowned. It had always been part of the plan that Odin and the others would have to retreat and draw them back to the forest, which had always meant Odin needed to lose.
Still, the rampant loss of life didn’t sit well.
Odin’s cry for retreat came sharp, even over the cacophony of the battle. A few jotunnar broke away as soon as that cry went up, but others seemed trapped in combat with their foes. One of the wolves raced past her, and Sigyn lost track of Odin who—as he’d claimed—seemed to have disappeared.
The other wolf came dashing for the wood and Sigyn gained her feet, ready to draw up her swan cloak.
Then a wood jotunn with a massive bow drew a bead and Sigyn flung herself flat before a shaft as tall as she was could impale her. She scrambled to get her bow into position.
That massive shot flew by. A yelp sounded behind her, but she couldn’t afford to turn.
Sigyn rose to one knee, arrow nocked. She loosed. The jotunn archer had already drawn another arrow back, so Sigyn ducked once more, even as her shot caught her attacker in the eye. His next arrow flew wild as he pitched over backward.
At once, Sigyn twisted around. One of the wolves lay on the ground far behind her, almost completely concealed by the mist, but still she could see it—the giant shaft sticking from the body.
A hollow dread opened in her stomach as she scrambled toward the fallen varulf. She pumped pneuma into her legs to cover the distance more quickly. As she drew closer, the shallow gasps became less frequent.
No, no, no. One of the twins was …
Before she even reached the wolf, his body shifted back. Freki lie face down, naked in the mud, the arrow still punched through from his shoulder blade and out his gut.
“Shit!” Sigyn dropped to her knees beside him, struggling to seize her pneuma. Her heart was pounding so fast she couldn’t make her head work, and the energy kept slipping through her mental grasp. “Shit!” She pressed her hands on the wounds and, finally grasping the pneuma with her mind, shoved it into the wolf.
Naught happened.
“No … Freki …”
Shifters resumed human form when they perished.
In the distance, a small army of jotunnar was swarming toward her.
“No …” Sigyn forced down a wail of despair. Left with no choice, she raised the hood of her swan cloak.
33
The smash of timber sounded first, like a herd of mammoths ran wild through the woods, crushing everything that went before them. Thor closed his grip around Mjölnir’s short haft. The commotion was already triggering a headache. One he could not afford before a battle.
He had crouched behind bushes, Loki beside him, and the rest of his men—plus a score of frost jotunnar loyal to Hymir—spread out across the wood. His legs had begun to cramp and his shoulders to ache from holding this position too long.
In the night, without torches, he couldn’t make out anyone else save Loki. The whole forest seemed too dark, too thick with mist. Like he’d crossed into Niflheim, if not quite so cold.
Loki glanced at him and lowered a hand, as if to remind him to wait. Thor didn’t need the reminder. He hated waiting, but he wasn’t like to forget Baldr’s plan.
The boy was across the path now, no doubt itching to unleash his blade upon Narfi’s warriors.
Screams reached him next, and the clash of metal, the sound of men and jotunnar dying.
Thor grit his teeth and clinched his other hand around his shield. Any moment now. Any moment, and he’d be unleashing Mjölnir’s wrath, feeding jotunn souls to the hammer, as he knew it longed for.
Loki’s hand fell on his shoulder, drawing Thor’s gaze. “Narfi,” his uncle mouthed.
Thor nodded. Yes, he’d spare the boy, though Narfi had no doubt sent thousands of Bjarmalanders down to the gates of Hel in his rampant slaughter across this land. But Thor had given his word and that was one thing he’d never break.
The crashing grew closer, a cacophony of battle sounds and chaos that brought on a pounding behind Thor’s temples. Those damn hazy spots floating in front of his vision like buzzing insects gnawing away at his brain.
One of the wolves came loping by in canine form, a shadow in the mist making a mad scramble past. Thor couldn’t tell which one or what had happened to the other. Either way, pursuit came in hard and fast behind the wolf.
A jotunn blundered by, and another, then another.
Could any of them have been Narfi? No easy way to know it in the dark. Magni had promised to strike up torches once the battle was well set in. That, and a plan he’d worked out with Loki. Thor had to trust his son to follow through.
More jotunnar came rushing forward.
Then Baldr’s war cry went up. Thor couldn’t even make him out in the mist, but that was the signal, sure enough.
Thor launched himself at the nearest jotunn, swinging Mjölnir with a roar of his own. The hammer crashed into the creature’s side with a sound like a thunderclap. Its flash of lightning, however brief, illuminated the
chaos of battle all around the wood for a single, stark moment. And then it was dark again.
Another blow felled the jotunn, and another flash of light that revealed a second of the beasts charging in on Thor. Again and again his hammer fell. He felt his speed and fury build upon themselves with each life claimed, with each soul devoured, leaving no remaining doubt about what the hammer really was. It was a fucking leech. But it was Thor’s leech and he couldn’t fight without it.
Skulls crunched.
Flames sprang up some distance away, faint lights.
Then that light spread like a wave, fire jutting up along a line of whale oil Loki had poured from here to the river, cutting off any hope of retreat for the frost jotunnar. Even Thor’s own jotunn allies let up an alarmed shout. But those flames also served to help burn away the mist and let Thor make out his foes more clearly.
Magni had done well.
Thor turned about to see Loki ram a sword through a jotunn’s throat. His uncle jerked the blade free, kicked out the knee of another jotunn, and then hewed into the creature’s neck as it stumbled. The man was fast, Thor would give him that. And he had a way of fighting with his whole body that didn’t quite match the wrestling techniques Thor had trained in. Had all kinds of strange learning in him, truth be told.
A fleeting thought, then another jotunn was upon him. Thor swiped Mjölnir upward and took off the jaw of his would-be attacker. That energy compounded in him until he felt strong enough to rip a tree trunk in half.
Screaming in bloody rage, Thor tore into jotunn after jotunn, barely sure whether the ones he killed were Narfi’s or Hymir’s warriors. Any who came up before him were a threat—or a feast for the dark hammer. One he could not deny the weapon.
Thor must have slain a score of the creatures, for oversized corpses littered the forest all around him. Most of them stood well over seven feet tall, like mockeries of human form, now beaten to shapeless lumps.
Lightning crackled and leapt with each blow, coruscating over bodies and igniting foliage. Indeed, the fire had grown into an inferno. And if Narfi was toward the back of it, that’s where Thor needed to be.
He needed to see this through. He plodded toward the flames, felling another jotunn along the way.
A shadow rose behind the wall of fire, then vanished, only to reappear on the near side, roaring in feral rage and brandishing a spear. It took Thor a heartbeat to even recognize his father.
Thor had, on the rarest of occasions, seen his father roused to anger. But not like this. The man flung his spear at a jotunn with casual disdain, seeming not to even notice as the missile punched through the creature’s eye. Rather, Father plowed forward and snatched a man about the throat with both hands, then bodily swung him into the trunk of a tree with enough force the wood cracked.
Hand raised against the now billowing smoke, Thor closed in.
Though he’d not seen him since the boy was a babe, surely this was Narfi, with those piercing blue eyes, now bugling as Thor’s father choked the life from him.
“Father!” Thor shouted. He understood the rage and bloodlust all too well. Still, he’d given his word to his uncle. “Father, we swore to Loki!”
Snarling, his father dropped Narfi, who slumped down to his knees. He’d not quite left his feet when Father’s fist caught him in the jaw and sent his head snapping back into the tree, sending bark flying.
Thor winced. Could the boy even live through that without an apple? Half jotunn or no, it seemed—
Loki barreled into Thor’s father and the two of them hit the ground, rolling through ash and smoldering undergrowth. “Leave him be.” Loki’s words were muffled through their struggle and the tumult raging around them.
Thor glanced to Narfi, saw he was still breathing, and spun back to grab Loki by the back of the neck and haul him off his father. Loki was tall, so Thor couldn’t easily hold him off his feet. Instead, he flung the man away, though Loki came up in a fighting crouch with such grace, he seemed like a damn snow leopard.
“Father,” Thor said.
His father too had gained his feet, face a mask of fury, staring a hateful glare at where Narfi lay prone. “Your brother … is dead.”
“Baldr …” How could …?
“Freki,” Father spat.
Thor stumbled backward. His heel caught on a root and he crashed down onto his arse. That was impossible. The varulf twins were … they were fucking invincible. Shifters who’d had an apple couldn’t die. They could, they had, but … not Freki. He’d always been there, by Thor’s side, and able to survive wounds that would’ve felled even other Aesir. How could an apple-enhanced varulf lose?
“Narfi killed him?” Thor asked, knowing he should get up but finding that hard to focus on.
“His jotunnar did.” Father took a threatening step toward Narfi, and Loki rose to block his way. “I didn’t see it. I didn’t see because I couldn’t see what Narfi would do. His Sight must have blocked mine and I didn’t …” Father drew in a sharp breath and then roared in wordless rage.
Loki raised his hands in front of his face as if warding against a sudden attack. One even Thor wasn’t sure wouldn’t come.
Indeed, his grip on Mjölnir had become so tight, it felt his own hand would break. The hammer seemed to beg him to feed it Narfi. To smash his cousin’s skull into pulp and allow Mjölnir to devour his soul.
Panting, Thor finally gained his feet and stalked up to his father’s side.
“He was raised by Skadi,” Loki said, hands shifting from focus between Father and Thor and back. “He did what his mother taught him. Give me the chance to teach him better and he can be a boon to us.”
Thor hefted Mjölnir. “My brother is dead. There has to be a reckoning.” Thor was so damn tired of losing those he loved. And no one ever really paid the price of it.
“He is my son!”
A swan dropped down beside Loki, pulling back the hood of her cloak and transforming into Sigyn even as she fell. “Any son of Loki’s is my son, as well. And the plan was to capture him. We succeeded. Turn your wrath on Skadi, where it belongs.”
Thor’s father growled at the two of them. If Father decided to push the issue, Thor had no doubt the two of them could take Loki and Sigyn.
The sounds of battle continued to rage around them, but Thor couldn’t afford to take his eyes off his aunt and uncle. “I intend to show Skadi the full aspect of my fury,” he said.
Father at last rose from his slight crouch and dropped his hands. “Our families seemed destined to tear us apart, brother. How oft your children have wrought chaos into Midgard. I wonder how long we can continue to forestall what’s coming.”
Loki released a shuddering breath. “As long as possible. I do love you as a brother, Odin.”
Father glowered and turned on his heel. “One day that won’t be enough.”
Thor chased after his father. While the battle wasn’t done, some things could not be borne any longer. “Where are you going?” he demanded. “We have to end this and eliminate Skadi.”
His father looked to him though didn’t pause in his stride. “You will see her dead, of this I have no doubt. I am needed elsewhere and I am already later than I’d wish.”
“Elsewhere?” Thor gaped. “Avenge your fucking son!”
Now his father did pause.
Thor hefted Mjölnir. “You think I don’t know what this is? You think, after decades with it, I’d never uncover the truth? Why did it only begin to issue thunder after so many years? What happened to the jotunn souls you had me devouring before that?”
His father frowned, shaking his head. “You would not understand.”
“Then help me. You sent me to the Midgard Wall to deal with Vörnir. You had me provoke the jotunnar all so Mjölnir could consume their souls. Do you deny it?”
His father fitted him with a hard look, offering no answer.
“No, you don’t deny it.” And now that the words were bubbling forth from him, Thor could no longer con
trol them. The dark suspicions that had begun so long ago, they seemed all confirmed now. A slaughter between men and jotunnar … and Father had sought it from the beginning. “You started all of this.”
“I didn’t start it, Thor. I’m the one who’s going to end it.”
“Avenge your son!”
“Avenge your brother,” his father snapped back. “While I work to protect all of Midgard.” With that, he started off again.
“Father!”
But the man did not pause, vanishing into the mists.
34
Kings and princes and jarls came from all around Reidgotaland, Hunaland, and even Sviarland for the wedding of King Gunnar to Princess Brynhild. Queen Grimhild had set a feast to rival those held by the Old Kingdoms, or so she herself told it, and indeed, Sigurd could not say he’d ever seen so generous portions of food.
There was shark and whale meat, as well as seal, and clams. There were over a dozen kind of fish served, and crab besides, with carrot and cabbage and many other vegetables. And there was wine and ale and mead aplenty, so much that Sigurd imagined the queen must have taken every drop of honey her army of bees could produce.
Skalds were called upon to recite verses—the Niflungar most favored those of the Old Kingdoms, of course—and musicians to play tunes both mournful and lively in turn. They played on lyres, on many kinds of flutes and pipes, and upon drums.
Sigurd took in the spectacle at his wife’s side, her belly clearly showing now—for which they received hearty praise from many guests. Another son, or perhaps a daughter, but either way a new heir for his kingdom in Rijnland.
And of Rijnland, even Prince Alf had come to heed Gunnar’s invitation. How could he not, after Sigurd had convinced him to pledge his fealty to the Niflung king?
When all the guests were gathered, Grimhild banged her scepter upon the floor. “Now comes to the time for the couple to make their vows. For this, they must stand in the courtyard.” In the mist, she meant, though she did not say so. Balconies above and covered walkways would allow the guests to see the couple as they pledged themselves to one another in the old Niflung way. Sigurd had enjoyed such a ceremony when he wed Gudrun, what now seemed so long ago.
