Gods of the Ragnarok Era Omnibus 3: Books 7-9

by Matt Larkin

  “Kind of like … the crossing to Vanaheim …” he wheezed.

  “There was sun then. It never rises in this world. Just starlight for all time.” Idunn reached the beach first, and was wringing her hair out by the time Odin caught up with her. “And a fair chunk of the world lies within the Gloom Hollow, a cave network.”

  A shiver ran through her. Hardly a surprise. In a world without sun, everything seemed too cool. Not cold, exactly, not like winter on Midgard. But standing around in wet clothes they might still catch deathchill. He stripped off his shirt. Idunn’s dress was so sheer, he imagined it would dry quickly.

  The Dark wakens …

  Odin jolted at Audr’s voice in his mind. After such long absence, the wraith’s vile hiss sent him slipping to one knee. The hateful voice sounded louder than he recalled, but who knew what tricks his memory played these days.

  All memory lies …

  Gah. Odin beat a hand against his brow. He had not missed the intrusion in his mind.

  “Are you all right?” Idunn asked.

  “Yes, I’m—”

  “Odin!” she shrieked, her gaze locked on something over his shoulder.

  Odin twisted around but could see naught.

  At least at first.

  A shadow within a shadow moved inside the lake. A spot of darkness almost imperceptible within the black waters. Odin scrambled away, grabbing Idunn’s wrist and pulling her aside.

  The shadow burst up through the water’s surface, becoming the head of a serpent, with a neck as thick as a tree trunk. The creature rose up, murky waters running off it in a shower.

  A sea serpent?

  “Odin …” Idunn murmured, and he glanced at her then followed where she was pointing.

  Another head had risen in the distance, visible more in outline where it blocked out the stars than clear in itself. Further to the side rose yet another of the great serpents. Three sea serpents.

  “Hydra …” Idunn whispered.

  Odin held an arm out between them and her. “Make no sudden moves. We don’t want them provoked.”

  “Not them, Odin. It.”

  It? A single creature?

  A fourth head rose up from the waters, this one damnably close to the beach where they stood.

  All at at once, the creature surged forward like a striking viper. As it broke over the shore, he caught sight of where several of those necks joined together, though most of the creature’s body remained concealed beneath the dark waters.

  One of the heads lunged at him.

  Odin seized his pneuma and flung himself to the ground, knocking down Idunn in the process. The head crashed down where he’d just stood, munched a mouthful of sand, and left a crater bigger than he was. The creature stank of brine and decaying meat, a foulness that turned Odin’s stomach.

  Before he could even react, Idunn flung him away from her as another head crashed to the beach. She disappeared in a hail of sand.

  “Idunn!”

  As the head withdrew, he saw her scrambling away on the far side.

  “Run!” she shrieked.

  The hydra had crawled further upon the beach. The heads all joined together—five of them!—and formed into a single tail that trailed off into the lake. A monstrous foreleg like that of a linnorm stomped down mere feet away from Odin. Each of those serpent necks had to be thirty feet long.

  Another head lunged at him and Odin rolled away, unable to gain his feet under the biting assault.

  One of the heads roared, the sound echoing over the waters and nigh to deafening. Odin couldn’t keep all those heads in view at once, especially in the darkness. The creature seemed almost made of the night, glistening with water, yet its movements were hard to track.

  Two heads snapped toward him. He’d never manage to get away from that, so he flung himself toward the hydra’s leg. The two heads crashed into one another, then shook off the impact as though dazed.

  He needed a damn weapon. A sword, a spear, something!

  When another head rose up, he flung himself into a roll, desperately scrambling behind that leg. The head bellowed in rage, perhaps unable to get to him in such a location. Of course, now the clawed foot began stomping around, while the hydra’s serpentine bulk threatened to crush him beneath its shifting.

  Seeing no alternative, Odin seized his pneuma and leapt up onto the back of the creature’s knee, then heaved himself up onto what should have been a torso—if it weren’t a scaled joining of writhing serpent heads.

  They probably couldn’t bend back to bite him while he remained here, but the thick, squirming muscles could easily pulverize him if he got caught between them. Roaring, he pulled on every drop of pneuma he could and punched his fist into one of those necks.

  The hydra didn’t seem to even notice, much less care about his attack.

  Oh, well, damn it.

  A momentary flash of vision had him swaying as he saw himself scaling one of those necks, up toward its head. Each of those necks had numerous ridge-like spines, so he’d be lucky if those didn’t impale him. But he’d seen it in a vision … Better not to think on it long.

  “Odin!” Idunn shouted, but he couldn’t afford to spare even a breath to look for her.

  Instead, he leapt up and caught a spine. It was slick with water, and his palm slid, drawing a deep gouge in it before he managed to gain purchase. Odin grit his teeth against the pain and heaved himself up onto the neck.

  The hydra’s flailing grew wilder than ever. Its twisting threatened to fling him off and back out into the lake. The hydra began to twist around, perhaps intending to dive underwater once more. Odin climbed higher, panting, desperate to hold on to aught.

  The ridged scales were sharp, and they clicked together as the hydra moved.

  “You want to kill me?” Odin snapped. “Bigger than you have tried.”

  He grabbed a scale and—pulling on as much pneuma as he could—heaved. The scale tore free in time with the creature’s bellow of pain and rage.

  The descending shadow was his only warning and he flung himself free an instant before another head bit down on the neck he’d been sitting on. He hit water less than a foot deep and smacked down on the wet sand, dazed for an instant.

  The hydra’s injured neck flailed about chaotically before slapping down in front of him, throwing up a spray of sand and water.

  Odin scrambled around it, throwing himself to the side once more as another head chomped down on his position. “Thought I couldn’t hurt you?” he shouted at it.

  A hand closed around his wrist.

  His vantage warped and shifted, and he stumbled, suddenly having been moved several dozen feet away from the water’s edge. Idunn released his arm and shook herself. Even the faint glow of her skin had faded now.

  No more sunlight.

  “Run!” she shouted at him.

  Seemed good advice.

  Odin took off at a sprint. He didn’t have much pneuma left to call on. He needed rest, food, and meditation to replenish himself. At the moment, he didn’t seem like to get any of those things.

  Beyond the beach, the landscape was harsh, dry grasses so sharp they tore at his trousers and scratched his shins and thighs.

  Idunn stumbled along, just ahead of him, heedless of how the thorn-like grasses shredded the edges of her dress.

  Odin could only assume she was as lost as he was, but probably imagined anywhere was better than here. Behind them, the hydra roared once more, and lurched its way back into the waters with a splash. Not inclined to chase them far on land, at least. He’d call that a blessing if—

  Idunn drew to an abrupt stop and Odin crashed into her, sending them both stumbling to the ground. The thorny grasses snared his beard, scraped his cheeks, and tore a hundred gashes into his arms. Odin groaned in pain. He supposed he should be grateful he hadn’t lost his remaining eye, but still, that had hurt.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded, struggling to crawl out from underneath Idunn.

&
nbsp; She didn’t answer, though, instead rising slowly, hands up in warding.

  The shadows seemed to melt up around them, forming into dark, gray-skinned figures with black hair. All women, and all armored in mail augmented with sharp-ridged plates around their shoulders and over their thighs, armor unlike aught he’d ever seen. Save in distorted visions of this world.

  Svartalf warriors, twelve of them. They bore heavy swords and spears, brandished toward him and Idunn.

  Flush with pneuma, maybe Odin could have beaten them, even unarmed as he was. If they were human, at least. So many vaettir, though, well armed and armored, while he was injured and exhausted—that seemed impossible.

  Mirroring Idunn’s gesture of surrender, Odin rose, hands up in warding.

  One of the women stepped forward, grin dark and menacing, and pointed a sword at him. “Trespassers.” She spoke in Supernal and it took Odin a moment to understand what she’d said.

  Especially, since she seemed almost delighted at the thought of trespassers in their domain.

  Given the cruelty Odin had seen in Volund, one of their princes, he could surmise the reason. Prisoners offered them new subjects to torment.

  14

  Beyond the bounds of Lappmarken in the farthest northern reaches of Sviarland, the days seemed to last but a few hours while the nights stretched on forever. To Hödr, it made little difference, but Andrik’s crew complained of the darkness while at the same time gaping over the dance of colors in the sky. Hödr had heard of such a sight, but he couldn’t really imagine it.

  Now, though, they probably couldn’t see much of those lights, given he heard thunder almost continuously.

  Every so oft, they had to let the dogs loose from the sleds to hunt. Those periods seemed to take longer and longer as game became scarce. The snows here were thicker than anywhere else Hödr remembered walking, save once on the peaks of Nidavellir. All around him, the men crunched where they walked, setting up a camp to rest awhile and pass a few hours.

  In the first such respites, Kasmira and some of the others had tried to sneak up on him and touch him without him realizing they were there. Hödr had caught her hand every time, barely able to keep down the smile that threatened to rise at the corners of his mouth. He didn’t bother to tell them he not only heard them coming, but heard them making their plots on the far side of the camp.

  The wounds on his face clearly made them uncomfortable, so he’d taken to tying a bandage around his eyes, and that seemed to give them a little bit of ease. Over the years, he’d had to wear the thing in places where it became impractical to keep his hood over his face. No one liked to look at the gaping holes where his eyes ought to have been. Maybe they served to remind people of just how much they relied on very fragile organs.

  Today, Kasmira didn’t bother trying to sneak up on him when she trod over, bearing a pot of roots. “In case the hunters don’t catch aught tonight.”

  Her subtle way of encouraging him to go out for the hunt. No one had believed it, when he’d first shot a bow. But people got accustomed to most things over time, and now everyone knew he had a way of tracking game that would have escaped most others.

  Hödr took a root and gnawed on it, while Kasmira plopped down beside him. “We’ve passed into the hunting grounds of a cave lion. If there was game here, it would have caught it.”

  “How in the gates of Hel do you know a thing like that?” she asked.

  He’d caught the scent, but Hödr wasn’t much inclined to tell her so.

  “Wait … What about the dogs, then?”

  “They’ll stick together. Not even a lion wants to take on a whole pack of them. If they’re lucky, they might find some snow rabbits or squirrels.”

  “I could go for some squirrel. Or rabbit. Not too particular about which, when my gut is rumbling.”

  Hödr continued chewing on the root a moment. “Something’s different about this place. Something unnatural in the air.”

  “Hmm, Andrik says we must be passing into Pohjola now.”

  “What does it look like?”

  Kasmira grunted, not quite concealing the nervousness in her aura. “There’s dark clouds in the sky, rumbling with thunder and the occasional bolt of lightning.”

  “That much I know.”

  “Eh. Well, it got colder when we passed the threshold. Suppose you could tell that one, too. Andrik claims the sun never comes up in these parts, even if it weren’t winter. Says it’s a land of cold and darkness damn close to Niflheim itself. More mist than usual, too. I can’t make out too much beyond a few feet, and what I can see, I almost wish I hadn’t. Most of the trees seem misshapen, like someone twisted them all around and back onto themselves. Some of them have leaves, but a lot don’t. A lot of jagged rocks, too.”

  The shieldmaiden was scared, wasn’t she? She didn’t want to admit it, least of all to herself, but this place frightened her. More now, since she’d seen it, than it had before.

  “Well,” Kasmira said. “Looks like Brynjar’s got a solid blaze going on.” She rose and offered him a hand—perhaps testing again whether he could tell—and when he took it, pulled him to his feet.

  Brynjar was the group’s woodsman and archer and his aura had reeked of jealousy from the moment he’d seen Hödr doing better at the both things than he could with two eyes. Hödr didn’t bother trying to console him on it. What was the point in explaining that it had taken him years, centuries even, to hone his abilities to their present level? The mercenary would’ve grunted and pretended to understand. But he couldn’t. Some things were so far beyond a man’s realm of experience that they defied reconciliation to the known.

  Still, Brynjar did have another skill: he was a damn fine cook. Very little remained of the snow bear Hödr had slain two days back, but what was left, the man had brewing with the roots and what little herbs he still had.

  “A war band’s only as good as its cook,” Andrik was fond of saying.

  Their leader, too, welcomed Hödr over warmly and handed him a skin filled with water. All they had left to drink was melted snow, after all. Hödr sipped it.

  Andrik slapped his knee. “Me, I’m supposing those witches can’t be much more than a few days north of here, truth be told.”

  “It’s not the witches we need,” Hödr reminded him. “Just Rutto, and he’s intent to conquer Kalevala.”

  “So we’re turning south, then? Can’t say as I’ve heard better news since my wife bore me a son.”

  “You don’t have a wife,” Kasmira objected.

  “Nope! But I got me a half dozen bastards all clamoring for my silver, so I figure the best I can do is keep earning it. Or get myself killed and then they can’t hardly blame me for not paying them a trollshit more.”

  “Or,” Kasmira said, “and this is just a thought, now. But you might consider not getting any more women with child.”

  Andrik spit in the fire. “Talk like that’ll get the men thinking you’ve gone mist-mad, girl.”

  Everyone laughed. Everyone save Hödr, at least, though he had to smile at the captain’s foolery. How could he not envy the band’s easy camaraderie? These people knew each other well, and—in their own way—loved one another, even as they sometimes hated each other. They were a family, and Hödr had never truly enjoyed that with the other Aesir, save Mother and Father.

  Brynjar said little, save to jibe at the others, but no one resented him for it.

  Andrik was all nonsense—at least until the fighting started and then, according to Kasmira, he was fierce as a berserk.

  Kasmira got treated as one of the men. She’d hinted that early on, some few of them had tried to get her to lay with them, before Andrik made it clear the band was to stick to whores and women from the villages. She said he’d promised any man who got one of his fighters with child would lose his stones, and that was that.

  Ingfred was always carrying on about how his eldest son was going to be a skald one day. The boy was still back in Gardariki, training with
other poets, so Ingfred fought, and occasionally brought plunder back to his wife and boys.

  Then there was Gudbrand, always polishing and sharpening his axes. He carried three of them, saying he never wanted to be without a way to chop down men or trees. Gudbrand swore at every strange sound in the night. Given it was almost always night here, his stream of curses never abated.

  And Sture. An arrow had scraped his throat some winters back, and though he’d lived, he could speak in but a rasp. He also lost two fingers and an ear, plus at least one toe to frostbite. Kasmira told Hödr the man’s face was a crisscross of vicious scars. The band called him lucky. Kasmira said he’d survived more wounds than the rest of them put together. They figured he must be immortal and just by keeping him close, they were all like to live longer. Hödr had asked whether he wasn’t unlucky for having taken so many injuries, but Kasmira had just laughed and pointed out the man was still walking and still fighting.

  When he’d eaten, Hödr settled down for a few hours’ rest. They couldn’t afford to let too much time pass, considering Baldr might return and claim Nanna far too soon. Hödr couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Baldr got everything he ever wanted.

  But not this time. Not Nanna.

  In the morning—or at least when they rose to hear Gudbrand’s objections that it was still godsdamned dark—they turned south and passed into wooded hills. In the valleys, snows seemed to cover large amounts of marshland, so Brynjar guided the sleds along the slopes. Eventually, the trees seemed dense enough they had to dismount the sleds and lead the dogs behind them, turning their progress painfully slow.

  “Arse-ugly trees a troll couldn’t love,” Gudbrand complained. “Looks like something a jotunn shit out.”

  “How close have you been inspecting jotunn shit?” Kasmira asked.

  “Close enough to shut your godsdamned mouth, that’s how close!”

  “That makes not the least bit of sense,” Andrik objected.

  Several of the dogs had begun to whimper, fighting against Ingfred and Sture when they tried to pull them forward.