by Scott Oden
“You what, little wretch?”
“I…” Dísa Dagrúnsdottir closed her eyes; she dredged down deep, clawing through ropy tendrils of fear until she found the cold, hard core of her anger. She saw once more the disapproving stare of her grandmother, who shone like a valkyrja in the esteem of her people; she heard once again the whispers of her sisters, the other Daughters of the Raven, who thought her but a silly girl and unfit for this so-called honor; she saw again the look of sadness in Flóki’s eyes, a look mirrored in the eyes of old Hreðel, who had had his high hopes—that he might wed his son to Sigrún’s granddaughter—dashed. She seized that core of anger and held on to it. Dísa opened her eyes. “I am here by Fate’s own hand, you lout!” she said. “Release me and stand aside! Better yet, release me and show me into your master’s presence!”
“So-ho! My master, is it?” the figure said, its tone dripping mockery. “My master is the one you seek? By all means, then. You’d best leg it, little bird, and double quick! Don’t want to keep my master waiting!”
The hand around her neck gave her a shove forward. She stumbled, catching herself before she could fall. Of the figure, all she saw as it shouldered past her and bounded up the steps to the longhouse was a swirling cloak of wolf pelts and a mane of black, plaited hair worked with beads of bone and silver.
Dísa cursed under her breath and followed, albeit more slowly. She reached the porch beneath the gable, upheld by carved posts, and found the door to the heart of the longhouse standing open. She paused in the ruddy light of the threshold, wincing at the stench that flowed forth. It was a mix of sweat and smoke, the coppery tang of blood mixed with the feral stink of unwashed animal pelts. Dísa exhaled.
“Halla!” She heard the figure bellowing from inside. “Halla, Ymir take you! Where are you?”
Carefully, like a warrior crossing into enemy territory, Dísa entered the longhouse. It was not all that different from the longhouses of Hrafnhaugr. Posts of rough-hewn timber ran in two rows down its length, supporting roof beams thick with cobwebs and dust. The floor beneath her feet was hard-packed dirt carpeted in old ash, bits of slag, and flaked hammerscale, while raised platforms to the left and right provided places to sit, sleep, or eat. A long stone fire pit ran half the length of the longhouse. Stifling heat bled from its bed of glowing embers.
By that dim and sanguine light, Dísa beheld the Hooded One’s domain. She expected something more ordered, more formal, like the sacred enclosure at Old Uppsala—now nothing but ashes and memory thanks to the Nailed God’s followers. Her mind had constructed a temple-space; the reality was closer to a troll’s lair or the bolt-hole of some hoard-hungry dragon: on each side, gold and silver shimmered in the ember-glow—torques and arm-rings, fine-wrought chains and mint-stamped coins, bent offering plates and broken altar pieces; bronze there was, too, and the red gleam of hammered copper. Among this spoil lay the trophies of war: swords and daggers with simple hilts, great maces, Frankish axes on hafts of aged oak, and spears so old their ash-wood shafts had warped; shields leaned against the central posts, some round and others shaped like inverted teardrops; hauberks of rust-spotted mail lay draped over ancient breastplates etched with the eagles of a dead empire; the skins of wolf and bear, silk gambesons torn and stained with blood, myriad belts, scabbards, sheaths, and girdles—all taken from centuries of dead foes.
“Halla, damn you!”
Dísa found the figure who had accosted her outside. He stared back at her from across the fire pit, his head tilted, his right eye like an ember that burned with a light of its own; his left eye was the color of old bone. His saturnine face was as sharp and lean as a starveling wolf’s, with a jutting chin, heavy cheekbones, and a craggy brow. A jagged scar bisected the bridge of his nose, crossed his left eye, and continued up until it vanished beneath gold-and-bone beaded braids of coarse black hair at his left temple.
“You…” Dísa said. “You’re no man!”
The creature’s thin lips peeled back over sharp yellow teeth. “For which you dunghill swine should be thankful,” he replied. He sprawled back in a throne-like chair that sat at the center of the longhouse, bandy legs knotted with muscle thrust out before him. He wore a Norseman’s hobnailed boots, a kilt of russet linen and iron-studded leather strips, and a bronze breastplate gone nearly black with age—its muscled belly cut down below mid-sternum and replaced with a riveted drape of mail and leather. The war-belt of a Saxon prince, made of fine wide leather with clasps of carved copper and red gold, held his sheathed long-seax and a Frankish axe.
“What are you?”
The creature leaned forward, nostrils flaring. “Your master, little bird.”
Dísa blinked. “You’re the Hooded One?”
“Halla!”
“I am here.” An eerie voice answered from the shadows behind him. Dísa caught the pale glimmer of flesh as a hunchbacked crone inched closer, an outcast hag who kept to the gloom at the edges of the longhouse. She wore a ragged green dress and no shoes, her black-soled feet inured to the cold of the bog. A grimace twisted her thin-lipped mouth as her eyes, two opaque orbs framed by fey locks of ashen gray, fixed Dísa in an unblinking stare. When she spoke again, her voice was that of a girl barely out of childhood. “He is called many things, child,” she said. “Corpse-maker, Life-quencher, and the Bringer of Night; he is the Son of the Wolf and Brother of the Serpent. You bear witness to the last of the kaunar, child. The last son of Bálegyr left to plague Miðgarðr. He is Grimnir, and he is all that stands between you and the hymn-singing hordes of the Nailed God.”
And Grimnir—whose name meant “the Hooded One”—leaned back, grinning at the young woman’s discomfiture.
Dísa was at a loss for words. Indeed, she wondered, then, if she’d crossed into the realm of nightmare when she stepped past the boundary stones at the crest of the hill. Nothing was as her elders had told her—though now she understood why only one person served this thing that called itself the Hooded One. Would the men of Hrafnhaugr have countenanced a beast protecting them? And would they keep their swords sheathed even now if they knew what it was that settled their disputes and squabbles? She stared, gaped, and tried to assemble the pieces of what she knew, what she’d seen, into an answer she could grasp.
“He’s … You’re the Tangled God’s immortal herald? You’re who defends Hrafnhaugr, who serves as our law-speaker? You?”
Grimnir’s grin turned to a snarl. “Aye, me. And scant thanks I get from you lot! A few scraps of food, a bit of gold, and for what? So you sniveling wretches can sleep at night?”
“Then, why do you do it?” Dísa glanced from Grimnir to Halla. “Why protect us if there’s nothing in it for you?”
At that, Grimnir harrumphed. He shifted his weight; one black-nailed finger idly traced an old carving on the arm of his chair. “Stop your yammering and bring me that basket, little bird,” he said, after an uncomfortable silence. “And be quick about it! Got a craving for something besides that old hag’s toadstool soup and maggoty bread!”
With halting steps, Dísa approached his chair and held out the basket. She was close enough to see the tattoos snaking across his gnarled and knotted arms, serpents and briars twisting among a webwork of old scars, runes that spelled out his enemy’s doom in cinder and woad. Rings of gold, silver, and wrought iron decorated his thick biceps. Grunting, he snatched the basket from her hands.
Grimnir set it on the floor before his seat and hunched over it, his good eye agleam as he riffled through its contents. The rolled parchments he tossed to Halla without a second thought, and then went straight for the mead and the smoked pork.
He uncorked a flask with his teeth, spat the wooden stopper into the fire, and took a long pull—lowering it only after half the flask’s contents had gone down his gullet. Grimnir loosed a gusty sigh; he wiped a rivulet of mead off his chin with the back of his hand and sat back, gnawing on a knuckle of smoked hock.
Dísa felt Halla’s leathery fingers plucking
at the back of her tunic. She scowled at the old woman and brushed her hand away.
“Kolgríma’s dead?” Halla said.
Dísa nodded. “We found her three days ago, at the mouth of the Scar, where it empties into Skærvík. From the spoor it looked like she’d been seeking something.” The young woman did not miss the sharp look Grimnir shot the old crone. A hint of a frown creased her forehead. What were they hiding?
“And the rune you bear?”
Dísa took the rune stone from the small pouch at her waist and held it out to Halla. The crone took it in her palm; she hunched over it, her long fingers twitching, never still.
“Dagaz…” she breathed; her milky eyes rolled back into her head. She hissed in a hypnotic voice: “The rune of Day, a harbinger of cataclysmic change—the light burning away the darkness. The endless winter is drawing to a close. The Wolf whose name is Mockery nips at the heels of Sól, who guides the Chariot of the Sun! Soon, the Serpent will writhe! The Dragon—”
“Nár!” Grimnir snapped. He flung a pork knuckle at Halla’s head. “Get ahold of yourself, witch!”
The crone shook and turned away, still muttering, still staring down at the rune stone cupped in her trembling hands. “The Dragon … the bones of the Dragon…”
Grimnir’s good eye rested on Dísa; for her part, she glared at the two of them as though they were nothing more than cheap mountebanks who had struck gold by playing the simple folk of Hrafnhaugr for fools. He sniffed in disdain and looked away, saying: “Wipe that snarl off your face, little bird, before—”
“Dísa,” she cut him off. Suddenly, Auða’s words of warning, her counsel for Dísa to school her temper lest she pay with her head, fell off like an anchor rope; like a raft tossed by a tempest, her long-simmering anger came unmoored. She would not be their silent accomplice. Not like Kolgríma; not like the score of other so-called priestesses who had come before her. “My name is Dísa, you black-hearted wretch! I am the daughter of Dagrún Sigrúnsdottir, who was slain fighting the Danes and their Christian paymasters in the surf of the Skagerrak! My mother died to keep those wretched hymn-singers at bay because that was the Tangled God’s will—or so Kolgríma told us. But that was just another lie, wasn’t it?” The younger woman thrust an accusing finger at the parchments Halla had set aside. “Like the lie that you are the law-speaker of Hrafnhaugr, when you cannot even be bothered to look at the complaints of my people! And our defender? Was that a third lie? Scavenger, more like! Did my mother die just so you could pick clean the corpses of more dead Christians?” Even as she spoke the words, Dísa felt the icy talons of fear close about her throat. Her eyes grew as round as stones; she dared not move, dared not even breathe.
The air of the longhouse grew chill and silent. Smoke hung frozen in the air. Grimnir’s neck tendons creaked as he slowly turned his head in Dísa’s direction. The dead yellow bone of his left eye bore a circle of deep-etched runes inlaid with silver for an iris; his right blazed with fiery wrath.
Grimnir sucked his teeth and spat. “I see your tongue works, little bird, but do your legs?”
“I—” Dísa shivered. “I d-don’t…?”
But it was Halla who answered. “Run, child.”
“Aye, run!” Grimnir snarled. “I’ll even make it sporting! I’ll give you to the ten-count.”
To her credit, Dísa did not need to be told a third time. Though fear crackled down her spine, knotting in her stomach like a fist clenching her entrails, it did not root her to the spot. Nor did it cloud her mind.
“One,” he said through gritted teeth. “Two.”
Dísa spat at Grimnir’s feet, turned, and bolted for the door. She paused at the count of three and snatched a Frankish axe from a pile of discarded weapons by the door. Its oak haft was the length of her forearm, with a flaring head no larger than a man’s fist. She risked a glance back at Grimnir, who leaned forward in his seat and clutched at the armrests like they were the limbs of an enemy.
“Four.”
Dísa allowed a hint of a smile to flirt with the corners of her mouth, and then she was gone. She would write her own destiny. And if she had to die, she would not go easily into the grave.
* * *
“FIVE,” DÍSA MUTTERED, TRYING TO mimic Grimnir’s cadence. She descended from the porch of the longhouse at a run, her feet barely touching the steps. She paused at the bottom, the axe clutched in both hands. Dawn was less than an hour off; atop the nearest pole another torch had gone out, its smoking head still reeking faintly of sulphur and lime.
“Six.”
She knew in the pit of her belly she could not outrun him. Grimnir had the deep chest and rawboned limbs of a born predator—and the wide, snuffling nostrils of a tracker. For a heartbeat, she allowed self-pity to surface. Damn me and my foolish tongue! But she tamped that down before despair had a chance to take root. If she could not outrun him, she’d have to outfox him.
“Seven.”
Though they loathed one another, her grandmother had nevertheless raised her not to be a victim. She knew how to escape and evade human trackers, how to lay ambushes, and how to hit a man hard before he could hit her—knowing she would only have one chance. Dísa plunged to her right, into the well of darkness left by the extinguished torch, and followed the base of the hillock along a path choked with dead weeds and nettles.
“Eight,” she gasped, reaching the halfway mark.
The bog’s stench was thick, mud and vegetable decay warring with rotting meat and waste. Without pause, Dísa scuttled up the side of the hillock. An ancient ash tree grew near the foundation of the longhouse, its trunk gnarled and bent like an old man; using its roots and tussocks of grass, she dragged herself up and into its shadow.
“Nine.”
Dísa fell prone. The damp cold and the stench, the tall grass and the knotty ash tree, the inky darkness before first light—all these things worked to make her nigh-upon invisible. Her eyes watched the front of the longhouse. She controlled her breathing, from gasping to slow and measured exhalations. Her breath steamed. For a moment, she wondered if Sigrún’s hard lessons would be enough to save her.
“Ten.”
And in the cold darkness, axe in hand, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir waited.
* * *
“TEN.” GRIMNIR SPAT OUT A gobbet of gristle and heaved himself up. He drained the mead; cursing, he slung the empty pottery flask into the heart of the fire pit. Embers exploded. Halla watched them swirl up into the damp air as though they were sibylline stars.
Grimnir put a hand on the hilt of his seax. “I’ll send them her head, and maybe those dunghill rats will send me a priestess who knows the value of respect!”
Halla caught his arm. “You mustn’t harm her,” she said.
“Oh, must I not?” Grimnir tore his arm free from her grasp. “I’ll not sit idly by while some motherless whelp insults me!” Bronze rang as he rapped his knuckles against his armored chest. “Me! And after all I’ve done for them? They serve me! I do not serve them, and it’s high time I reminded them of that!”
“Kill her,” Halla said, “and you kill us all.”
Grimnir’s brows beetled; his good eye smoldered like a banked forge. “What are you yammering on about?”
“She is Dagaz!” Halla hissed. The crone leaned forward, her milky eyes burning with a passion of their own. She had the witch-sight, a gift made more potent by the blood of the troldvolk—the troll-folk—seething through her veins. “She bears the final rune! Do you not see it? The circle ends with her. Kill her, and the circle is broken ere the prophecy comes to fruition!”
“Bugger off, you old wretch!” Grimnir snorted and turned away. “You and your cursed prophecy! I’ve told you time and again that the age of prophecies and portents is over! The Old Ways are gone! This is the Nailed God’s world now. The rest of us … we’re just monsters who dwell in the gloaming, awaiting their blasted god’s reckoning!”
“Then answer the girl’s question, skrælingr,” Hal
la said, using the derisive name given to Grimnir’s people by the ancient Danes. He stopped, turned slowly. Halla continued, unabashed. “For thrice-times-ten-score years you’ve haunted the shadows of Raven Hill, you and old Gífr before you, slaying their enemies and accepting their sacrifices. You’ve played the part of their Hooded One, and for what? If the Old Ways cannot be resurrected, why do you stay?”
“You know why,” he growled.
“I want to hear it from your lips!” Halla’s childlike voice took on an even eerier quality, a guttural chant that echoed about the longhouse:
“When the years tally | nine times nine times nine,
Again, and war-reek | wafts like dragon breath;
When Fimbulvetr | hides the pallid sun,
The monstrous Serpent | shall writhe in fury.”
Grimnir started forward. “Hold your tongue, hag!”
Halla, though, drew herself up to her full but unimposing height; wild silver locks framed the resolute crags of her face as she pressed on:
“Sköll bays aloud | after Dvalin’s toy.
The fetter shall break | and the wolf run free;
Dark-jawed devourer | of light-bringer’s steed.
And in Vänern’s embrace | the earth splits asunder.
“From the depths a barrow | rises through the water,
The stone-girdled hall | of Aranæs, where dwells
Jörmungandr’s spawn, | the Malice-Striker.
Its dread bones rattle | and herald an end.”
“I said shut your stinking mouth!” Two steps brought Grimnir within arm’s reach; he lashed out. The back of his knotted fist struck Halla across the cheek. A human woman would have reeled away, nursing a broken jaw at best … or a broken neck. But Halla, who sprang from the loins of Járnviðja, the troll-queen of ancient Myrkviðr, the dark wood of legend, took the blow in stride. Her narrowed eyes bled milky fire as she turned her head slightly and spat out a blackened fragment of tooth.
