by Matt Larkin
He saw few guards among the shades, besides the occasional snow maiden ushering them onward. They marched, not under the whip, but perhaps, because they realized they had nowhere else to go.
Grimacing, Hermod eased Sleipnir forward, joining the procession that headed in. A small throng had gathered before those enormous gates in the distance, awaiting the chance to enter the last place they would ever see. How many of the dead lurked beyond? Did the souls of all who had passed in every era dwell within?
Not all, of course, for some had become vaettir, while others, according to Odin, were drawn back into the World Tree and spun out again in the Wheel of Life—an idea Hermod found hard to wrap his mind around.
Feral howls erupted from somewhere ahead, echoing through the pass, melding with the wailing wind.
“What the …?”
The hounds of Hel …
Oh. Damn.
From a cave he’d not even noticed in the path, a trio of massive dogs surged forward, each the size of a horse, but dead-looking, composed of rotting flesh that sloughed off to expose muscle and bone beneath. Fell bone spikes jutted at irregular angles from the hounds’ backs, and their eyes gleamed red like draugar’s would.
Hermod grabbed Dainsleif’s hilt, but the runeblade held fast in its sheath.
“Oh, fuck me.”
Fumbling with it, he caught the sheath with one hand and heaved with the other. A coating of ice cracked and the runeblade lurched free an instant before the closest hound bounded straight into him. The weight of it hit him like an avalanche, sending him toppling off Sleipnir, while the horse himself crashed down beside him, neighing in pain or fear.
Snow broke his fall, but the snarling hound—fuck, it stank!—bore him down. The claws on its foreleg dug into his left shoulder even as slobbering jaws dribbled acid-like saliva over his face. Screaming, Hermod rammed Dainsleif up through the hound’s chest. Its blood sprayed over him like a scalding geyser blinding him.
Everywhere, screaming. Sleipnir’s wild shrieks. The dead fleeing in terror. Howls of those hounds.
Claws raked Hermod’s shoulder, snapping the links of his mail, shredding his gambeson like plain linen. Gouging his flesh almost to the bone. Roaring in agony, he twisted the runeblade, then yanked on it. It sheared through decaying flesh with ease, and that massive weight collapsed atop him, knocking his breath out.
Grunting with the effort, Hermod drew on his pneuma and heaved. His muscles strained. He could scarcely use his left arm. Trying felt like his tendons were apt to snap in half.
“Gah!”
An agonizing hair at a time, he pushed his way out from under the yelping and somehow not dead—or still undead—hound. Dizziness swept over him in waves as he finally yanked his legs free. Unable to use his free hand, he scrubbed the blood from his eyes with his arm, though they continued to sting.
Swaying, he managed his knees.
The other two hounds of Hel now flanked around him. Beyond them, they had torn Sleipnir to shreds. Half-devoured legs lay strewn over the snow. Flesh and tendons were flung over a space of forty feet or more. A lake of blood drenched the snow, and steaming entrails lay flung in all directions, reeking.
Hermod’s chest clenched at the sight. Odin’s precious horse. His companion for centuries. And over this long ride, Hermod’s own truest ally. He couldn’t control his breathing, though his own wounds scarcely hurt anymore.
“Fuck you all …” Panting raggedly, he advanced on the nearest hound at an unsteady gait. They would pay for this slaughter. He would cut down every last one of these monstrosities …
Beyond the perimeter of blood, the shades had formed up in a ring, some of them even kneeling to scoop up handfuls of bloody snow and devour it. The sight further turned Hermod’s stomach.
These abominations deserved to rot within Hel’s fortress.
But his view of them quickly dimmed as the mist thickened just behind the hounds. In the space of a few breaths it grew so dense he could make out naught else, like an almost solid wall of the vapors. The shades shrieked in terror, though he could no longer see most of them. Those he could, turned and fled toward the fortress with such abandon that even Hermod faltered.
What now?
Empousai …
What?
Mistwraith … Her ancient servants …
Indeed, within the mist, a darkness seemed to take form. Clad in scaled shoulder guards like the plated manica sometimes worn by Miklagardians, whilst further armor seemed lurking beneath a shroud that bled off into the mist—or perhaps formed that very mist. No hint of a face was visible beneath an equally ethereal hood. The Mistwraith bore an axe with blades so wide it ought not have been able to swing it.
She can …
She?
Beneath the shroud and scaled armor, Hermod could not have begun to guess at a gender. Nor would he have attributed one to any sort of ghost.
Fool …
The hounds moved to flank the Mistwraith, which advanced on Hermod, seeming to float through the vapors rather than walk. It drifted close enough that Hermod found himself taking an unconscious step back. This thing seemed composed of the very fabric of Niflheim, and gazing into its empty hood was like falling into a well of cold darkness that would swallow him whole.
The ghost hefted that massive axe.
Damn it. Not too welcoming of the living, then. Teeth grit against the pain in his shoulder, Hermod backed up, raising Dainsleif to ward off the entity before him. Between the darkness and the thickening mist, he could barely make out where the Mistwraith began or ended. It almost seemed to encompass the entire fog bank, closing in all around him.
“Walk …” Its voice was hollow, like Keuthos’s, seeming to waft in around from all angles.
She will grant you an audience …
Even as the thought of beholding Hel terrified him, Hermod hoped Keuthos had the right of it. Indeed, the Mistwraith pointed that hideous axe at the gates. Ushering him forward.
Not wanting to turn his back on the fell ghost, Hermod cast frequent glances over his shoulder. Though he could still feel the hateful presence setting the hairs on his neck and arms on end, he could no longer see the Mistwraith. This thing was something of a combination of a snow maiden and ghost, wasn’t it?
Yes … That, and more … Ancient … Trapped here from days when the world was … young …
Like Keuthos himself?
Yes …
At last, he came to stand before the mighty gates, and they stretched taller than he had even realized from a distance. The gathered shades retreated to the fringes as the mist beside Hermod congealed and formed up once more into the vile Mistwraith.
Hermod’s blood froze to even look upon this entity. This thing Odin had never prepared him for.
The truth was, there remained so very much even the king had not known about the Otherworlds. How many fell kinds of abomination lurked beyond the Veil? Each of the spirit worlds seemed to have at least one form of sentient vaettr, but these Mistwraiths were something else entirely. Or, at least an amalgamation of two already vile kinds of vaettr.
The sound of iron grating over stone rumbled from within the fortress. Like chains, massive beyond imaging, tightening around gears. Slowly, almost painfully, those gates began to creak open, exposing a darkened vestibule within. A wide staircase descended into that darkness.
Grimacing, Hermod sheathed Dainsleif and set about lighting a torch. Managing it with one hand half limp proved no easy task.
A hissing whisper undulated out of the Mistwraith and wafted around the mist itself, snarling with hatred.
Hermod jerked the fragile torch up between himself and the entity. It didn’t like fire.
Of course it doesn’t …
Fire banished the mist. Fire is life. Every child learned that. Never let the fires go out. Hermod’s father had admonished him of it, back when they’d lived on Wolf Lake, so many lifetimes ago.
“I cannot see in the dark,” Hermod snap
ped at the Mistwraith.
Whether or not that appeased the creature, it hissed once more, then drifted forward, into the opening gates.
Well. The gates of Hel. Warriors across the North Realms swore by these things. And here he was, actually entering them. Alive. At least for a little while longer.
He followed the Mistwraith down the stairs, to a lower landing. In alcoves to either side, massive chains did indeed loop around gears—those pushed by dozens upon dozens of ragged looked shades. Ghosts of men and jotunnar, both.
The Mistwraith did not pause, though, instead leading him to a colonnade flanked by enormous columns with statues almost as tall. The statues looked bronze, but they wore strange clothes, styled their hair oddly, and otherwise seemed alien to him. Nor did he recognize … Wait.
Was that Loki at the end of the colonnade? Hermod stepped away from the main path to raise his torch and inspect the statue more closely. If it wasn’t Loki, it still resembled his features, the cut of his chin, his gaze, with sapphires set in his eyes, catching the torchlight. No other statue had gemstone eyes. And this one stood apart from the others, along with a woman across from him.
Hel’s mother and father?
Keuthos remained oddly silent.
The Mistwraith, though, hissed in irritation, and Hermod dared not test the limits of its patience, so he chased after the ghost, but glanced over his shoulder to see that the other shades did indeed file inside, guided by a snow maiden.
The colonnade ran a long distance, with side exits the Mistwraith bypassed, though the snow maiden guided her charges down one. Hermod’s guide, though, paused before another set of doors. While the ghost gave no command Hermod could hear, the doors began to creak open of their own accord.
Pale light filtered in as the doors drew wide, revealing another long hall, this one with upper arches exposed to the frost. Ice coated everything within, from the floor to the vaulted ceilings, to the columns supporting that roof. Icicles the size of spears lanced down, as if the entire hall was a fanged maw of an immense dragon, waiting to clamp down upon any foolish enough to tread within.
The thought didn’t much appeal, but the wraith wafted through the doors the moment they finished opening, forcing Hermod to continue onward. Chilling mist billowed in through the open arches, seeming to meld with the vapors emanating from his guide, turning the entity in a cloud that seemed to suffuse the entire passage.
Indeed, the mist clung to his legs, making walking more like wading through a bog.
Hermod jerked the torch around and the worst of the vapors thinned, recoiling from the flame as they did in the Mortal Realm. In response, a silent anger seemed to creep into the air, a wrath that threatened to swallow him.
This long hall led to yet another set of gates, that, once again, drew open when the Mistwraith paused before them.
The doors opened into another long hall, one that swallowed the light of his torch and dimmed it much as Svartalfheim had. Hermod took a step inside, and his torch crackled out, as if even fire itself could not survive in this place.
Instead, he found the chamber lit by braziers that burned like pale blue flames but radiated not heat but coldness, casting the mighty hall within in distorting light. Hermod tossed the useless torch aside.
Once again, columns flanked the hall, but these were not stone. That was … bone. Even the vaulted ceiling was supported by giant curving ribs too large to even have come from a linnorm. About the ceiling flitted ephemeral shades.
The Mistwraith allowed him no further time for inspection, though, forcing him forward. Skulls crunched under his feet as he moved, drawing a wince from him. Skulls and broken bone formed the walkway and, beyond the columns and arching ribs, the floor dropped away into darkness. Within the walls of that pit, shadowed bodies writhed, half dead, and locked in eternal torment. Their moans filled the chamber, and they reached out to him with skeletal hands, as if he might somehow yank them free of their prison.
A pit composed of the damned. The cold braziers did not light deep into the abyss, but with his keen eyes, he could make out that more tormented souls squirmed within a wall of corpses and bones. Hundreds of thousands of shades, drawn into this prison.
The Mistwraith led him up to a vertical circle of bone flanked by two more of the pale braziers, and there fell to one knee, offering no indication of what it expected Hermod to do.
Keep walking … You came to see her …
Yes. He had.
Of course, he had to clench his teeth together to keep his mouth from trembling, and his heart was hammering so loud he suspected the wraith could hear it.
But he stepped through the archway.
Beyond, stairs of writhing corpses led up to a dais upon which rested a throne of skulls and bones. On this sat a woman, naked and with her legs spread provocatively, though there was naught sensual about her. For half her body had rotted away, exposing muscle and skeleton within. It was like someone had sliced her down the middle, and her entire left side had rotted away, decaying and reeking, even from ten feet below her. One eye was missing while the other gleamed faintly red despite the lack of firelight to reflect it.
Her auburn hair—threadbare on her decaying side—looked rather like her father’s. She was large, too, at least six and a half feet tall, larger even than Loki, who was no small man.
“Hermod Agilazson.” Hel’s voice echoed through the chamber, as hollow and mind-rending as any wraith or draugar’s. More so, perhaps, and Hermod could not quite contain his wince. “I cannot say a living man has come before me … in long ages … Come to taste the honey of my trench?”
She traced a lazy finger over her sex, but half of it had rotted away like the rest of her, gray and necrotic and exposing raw flesh beneath, while part of her pelvic bone jutted free of loose skin.
Hermod wanted to retch. Vaettir delighted in making mortals suffer, Odin had told him, time and again. They would taunt men in whatever way they could, horrifying them with word and deed and feasting on the disquiet their actions engendered.
And Hermod refused to give her the satisfaction of a response, verbal or otherwise. Instead, he strode to the edge of the stairs, just shy of where grasping fingers reached to snare his boots. “I have come for the soul of Baldr.”
“Have you? I rather think … you wish to see another …”
Sif. Now he couldn’t quite suppress the anticipation that crept onto his face. “S-she’s here?”
“Oh … yes …”
“I can offer you tribute of gold and silver and gems.” All of which had been on the saddlebags.
Hel grinned, the half of her face with flesh twisting into a sickening smile while the other side remained disquietingly still. She knew his tribute lay outside. Maybe she’d already even retrieved it. Her laughter was a cackle that made Hermod want to curl up into a ball and weep for his parents and beg forgiveness for all his misdeeds in life.
Finally, the dark goddess shook her head. “Well, then, Melinöe. Take him to see those he would bargain for. Let it not be said I deal in bad faith.” With that, she waved her hand.
Hermod spun to see the Mistwraith—Melinöe—rise from its knee and beckon him forward.
Yes. Let him see them. Let him see Sif, at long last. And he’d pay aught imaginable to have her back.
18
The temptation to create a paradox and thus begin unraveling the web of urd kept rustling around in Odin’s mind. His visions had revealed Didrik’s death here, at the fire beside Bergljot, where Odin sat watching them. Should he not, then, send the varulf away, to safety? Not merely to save the man’s life, but to forestall the designs of urd.
Except, his very plan now hinged upon allowing the future to play out precisely as he had envisioned it. The Patriarch—Thurkell, Odin had learned its name was—would come to kill varulfur this night, Didrik included. And he would succeed. If Odin saved Didrik by hiding him, as he had hidden the liosalfar, he might save the varulf, yes, but Thurkell would not co
me.
Or rather, more damning, Odin had seen the vision, which meant he would not, rather than could not save Didrik. He needed to let the future unfold, sacrificing a few lives in the fragile hope of saving this world.
Self-delusion …
Yes. Odin wanted to save Freyja and Thor and those he loved. Saving Midgard was secondary, in his heart. Did that make him a monster as much as the ghost that prattled on in his mind?
We are all dead …
Oh, Odin knew he had lived and died so many times. He did not need Audr to remind him of that. Those lives were a constant murmur in the back of his mind. An endless collection of skills and talents and experiences, all waiting to bubble to the surface.
The crackle of the fire was a small comfort. It would begin so very soon.
This plan sacrificed not only Didrik, but another varulf—Petra—and dozens of human soldiers. So, yes, he knew what he was, allowing others to die for his plans. He’d had a great many years to justify his actions to himself. The wars he’d started. The men he’d used and betrayed. All toward a greater purpose, or so he told himself.
Thor would judge him harshly, if he understood half of all Odin had done. As for the liosalfar, it had almost bothered him that they did not judge him. Because they placed so little value on life, much less mortal life.
But poor Didrik. Brave, and loyal, and worshiping Odin, even now, having no idea that Odin had planned his imminent death.
“Whatever happens,” Odin finally said, “know that Asgard honors you for all you did. You fought for us, even as the faith died around you.”
Audr cackled in Odin’s mind, the sound drawing Odin’s lips pursed.
Didrik grunted, then looked up sharply. An instant later, he leapt to his feet. He’d smelled his foe, closing in. “Arise! Nachz—”
