by Scott Oden
“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.”
And with a sound like the rattle of immense bones, the stranger’s cloak is borne up as by a hot breath of wind. There is only darkness, beneath. And that darkness grows and spreads, becoming monstrous wings that blot out the burning sky. The darkness crawls like a serpent across the ruin of Hrafnhaugr. It snuffs the flames and robs the air of its breath; it slays the living with a pestilence that rots the blood in their veins. It crushes and destroys.
She turns to run as the darkness engulfs her. And in its hideous embrace, she opens her mouth to scream …
* * *
DÍSA WOKE WITH A START. A scream gurgled in her throat. She coughed and struggled against the harsh liquid burning its way down her gullet. A blurred silhouette loomed over her, red eye agleam. She wanted to turn her head and spit that foul-tasting liquor out, but a swarthy hand clamped over her mouth kept her from it. Dísa’s gagging redoubled as the liquor hung at the back of her throat.
“Nár, swallow it,” Grimnir muttered.
With little choice, Dísa ground her teeth together and bore down, forcing herself to swallow. Suddenly she could breathe again, and she felt a not-unpleasant warmth spreading out from her belly. Her clouded vision cleared; her aching face felt hot and swollen, and she could not draw air through either nostril. She had expected to wake up half-submerged in the bog—if, indeed, she had woken up at all. But, near as she could tell, she was back inside the longhouse. Dísa saw the fire pit again, and the drifts of gold and silver, weapons and armor; all of it lit, now, by shafts of pale gray light filtering down from the clerestory. She lay on one of the side platforms, on a pallet made from old pillows and ragged moth-eaten skins of fox, marten, and deer.
Grimnir crouched alongside her. Black blood still stained his face from where she’d broken his nose. He took a pull from a clay flask wrapped in a protective web of rope, sucking his teeth as he stoppered it. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “That’ll put hair on your arse!”
“Wh-what was that?” Dísa said.
Grimnir straightened and stood. “Mjöð, brewed after the fashion of my kinsmen, those wretched dvergar.”
“It’s got teeth.” Dísa struggled into a sitting position.
“Aye,” Grimnir agreed. He turned and dropped from the edge of the side-platform, hammerscale grinding beneath his heels. “You got a bit of a bite, yourself, little bird. It’s been an age since anyone’s managed to rap me on the beak, much less a scrawny little ape like you.”
“Little good it did me,” Dísa said, gingerly touching her face. Her own nose was broken, of that she was certain, and maybe the socket of her left eye—her vision jumped and twitched, blurring and then clearing once again. She tasted blood.
He glanced back at her, scowling. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”
“But for how long?”
Grimnir didn’t reply at first. He hopped up on the edge of the fire pit, and balancing there, he started walking toward his chair. She could tell he was mulling over her question. When he reached the end of the pit, he leaped off and sprawled into his makeshift throne.
“That depends on you, doesn’t it?”
“Me?”
Grimnir leaned forward, jabbing an accusing finger at her. “Don’t play the fool now, little bird! The rest of you lot, all who’ve borne the raven, have thought serving me to be some great honor. Old Kolgríma, Mæva before her—twenty-three generations of you, all the way back to Iðunn Bragadottír, who was a witch and an outcast before we came along, Gífr and me. They traded on our names to keep their sons and husbands, brothers and fathers alive—aye, let the Tangled God’s so-called herald shoulder the burden! When those dunghill swine from the Danemark came ravening into Geatland, who’d they let take the brunt? Who’d they let blunt the axes and break the shields of the whoreson Norse and the idiot Swedes?” Grimnir hawked and spat before leaning back in his seat. “To them, the Hooded One was their lord and savior—and they were proud to be our priestesses. Oh, how they cried their crocodile tears! How they crossed their fingers when they bound themselves to us with oaths none of your wretched lot would dare otherwise break. But not you! No, you take it as some mortal insult! Are you so much better than those other drabs?”
Now it was Dísa’s turn to mull over his question. This, she reckoned, was the end of the rope. Her face and head ached, and she had no patience left to dissemble with him. She would speak the truth, and either hang or start climbing. “I am no better,” she replied after a moment, “but I am no worse, either. I do not have the stomach to be any man’s slave, and you are no man, to boot. Those others? They wanted this. They craved your protection above all else. Perhaps they were wiser than I, or had more to lose. But me? I crave freedom, and the will to protect myself, is all.”
“Skjaldmær,” Grimnir said.
Dísa glanced sharply at him.
“You talk in your sleep, runt. That’s what you meant, out there, when you boasted that you’d write your own destiny. You think you have the sand and fire in your belly to be one of the skjaldmeyjar, those cursed shieldmaidens.”
“Perhaps,” Dísa replied, feeling the color rise in her cheeks.
Grimnir mocked her. “Perhaps? Ymir’s blood, little fool! Either you think you do, or you don’t! Which is it?”
“I do!” She jutted her chin out as if daring him to strike. “My mother was skjaldmær, and her mother before her! I was born for Odin’s weather, for the strife and clamor of shield-breaking, not for bowing or scraping!”
“Were you now,” said Grimnir, his eyes narrowing. He tilted his head to pierce her with his ruddy gaze. After a moment, he snorted. “Well, you’re an honest one, at least, though too full of yourself by half. You’re what? A hundred pounds, soaking wet? The scrum of the shield wall would chew you up and spit you out.” He drummed one black-nailed finger against the arm of his seat.
“I bloodied your nose,” she shot back defiantly.
Grimnir bristled. “You were desperate and lucky! That’s a piss-poor bet if you’re wagering your wretched life.”
“Men have wagered with less and still won the day,” Dísa said.
Grimnir chuckled and stroked his jaw with the back of his left hand. “And swine have wagered not a thing and still ended up on the spit.”
“Then kill me!” Dísa snapped. Tears of anger, pain, and frustration welled at the corners of her blue eyes. “Kill me and have done, for I’d rather be free and dead than alive and in thrall to you!”
“Don’t tempt me, little fool.” Grimnir fingered the hilt of his seax. He gave her one last look, long and hard, while he considered his next words. Finally, he said: “Fine, you’ve got a bit of skill and an arm you’ll likely brag about till the end of your miserable days. But you’ve got no meat on your bones. Makes you quick, but it means you’re never going to stand in a wall of men, shield to shield like a proper skjaldmær.”
“Jævla fitte!” Dísa hissed, employing a curse she’d heard a Norse trader level at Auða last year, when they’d gone into the borderlands of Eiðaskógr to scout—one that provoked Auða to take up the knife he was trying to sell her and cut the bastard’s throat. “And how would you know? What monster has ever stood in a wall of men?”
The corner of Grimnir’s lips crept up in a sneer of contempt. “Fool! By what lights do you judge me? By your years? Or by the well from which you dip out your knowledge? When I tell you you’d be dog meat in a stand-up fight I speak from what I have seen, across more lifetimes than your wretched little brain can imagine! I last stood among men at Chluain Tarbh, outside the walls of Dubhlinn-town, where the Gaels broke the back of the Norse. Before that…” Grimnir sucked his teeth, making a dismissive tsk-ing noise. “Too many to count.”
“So I should
just give up, then, and accept my lot? Serve out my time here and die like Kolgríma—a doddering old fool, destined to slip on a patch of moss while hunting for the Gods only know what?”
Grimnir chuckled again. “If I had my way, I’d just slit your throat and be done. Sink your skinny carcass in the bog and go on about my business. But no. My luck doesn’t run that simple. You’re destined to be a thorn in my arse, little bird. Damn my eye, but you’re quick, you’ve got a good arm, and there’s sand in your belly. Spear and axe, those are your weapons. Maybe a bit of blade-work, a dirk, or a good long-seax.”
Dísa’s eyes widened; she blinked, her jaw hanging open. “What … What are you saying?”
“I need a priestess, not a slave,” Grimnir replied. “But if I followed my gut and just staved your fool head in, your lot would likely send me another old crow, fawning and false. So, we make a compact of our own, you and I. You serve me, keep your damnable trap shut, and keep out from under my feet. In exchange, I’ll make a throat-slitter out of you. What say you?”
“I’ll be skjaldmær?”
“Call yourself what you will, little bird,” said Grimnir, rising from his seat. “When I’m done with you, you’ll be like the corpse-makers of old! Now, what say you?”
Dísa Dagrúnsdottir exhaled. Then, almost as if she expected this to be some cruel jest on his part, she nodded. “Yes.”
Grimnir reached into the small of his back and drew forth a thin-bladed knife. He flicked it, point down, into the wood beside her. “Make your oath, then.” He drew his seax; with the tip, he pricked the thumb of his off hand and let his black blood well and ooze. He sheathed his seax, then, and smeared the fresh blood into the palm of his blade hand.
Dísa rose on unsteady legs. She worked the knife free and mimicked Grimnir’s gesture, smearing her blade hand with rich red blood. She thought for a moment, recalling an ancient oath she’d heard her mother utter ere she set out for the shores of the Skagerrak, to find glory and death fighting the Danes. “Hear me, Tangled One, O cunning-wise Loki!” Dísa said, slowly at first. She hesitated. “Bear witness, O Ymir, sire of giants and lord of the frost!” Grimnir thrust his blade hand out; Dísa took it in hers, wincing as he clamped down. Their blood mingled. “By this blood, I swear myself to the Hooded One! I will serve him as my kinswomen did, of old! But bind him to his word, Friend of the Raven-God, lest he and his people be forgotten and their bones ground underfoot!”
Grimnir hissed sharply at that last bit and nearly crushed her fingers into kindling. Still, both of them heard it—distant and faint: the dull rumble of thunder from the far-off north, where the Nailed God’s influence did not reach. She thought of an ancient giant, nodding in its sleep.
“It’s done, then,” Grimnir said, letting go of her hand. “Halla!” He turned away.
The old woman emerged from the depths of the longhouse, skirting the shaft of gray light falling from the clerestory. In her hands, she carried Dísa’s basket—empty now, save for the rolled parchments, bundled together and tied with knotted twine, and a sealed clay jar like the one that had held her rune stone for a generation. Halla also bore a hooded cloak of wool, trimmed in wolf fur, and a seax in a wood and leather scabbard. Its hilt was fashioned after that of a sword, with a thick cross-guard, a grip of leather and copper wire, and an acorn-shaped pommel. Halla balanced the basket on one hip and offered her the seax.
Dísa took it, avarice agleam in her blue eyes. She drew it partly from its scabbard; steel rasped against the copper throat, etched with runes to protect the blade within from harm. She aired a hand-span of single-edged gray steel, thick along its spine—steel that would carve through mail, flesh, and bone like an oar through water.
“Every bird needs a talon,” Grimnir said, resuming his seat. He wiped his bloody palm down the thigh of his kilt. “Even a little sack of bones like you. And you’d best learn to keep an edge on it!”
Dísa nodded. She sheathed it again and tucked the seax into the belt at her waist. Halla then handed her the cloak, which she fastened about her shoulders with a smile. She was grateful for its warmth. Finally, the crone passed the basket to her.
“Take this back to Hrafnhaugr,” Halla said. She touched the clay jar. “Instruct them to place this back atop the Raven Stone.” Her wrinkled hand moved to the parchments. “And pass these to your chief. See to your injuries and then return here with the new moon. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Dísa replied.
“Then go.”
Dísa turned to Grimnir and started to utter her thanks, but he cut her short with a sharp gesture. “Nár! See that your legs work, this time, you miserable little runt.”
And with that, Dísa turned and fled from the longhouse.
* * *
HALLA WALKED TO THE DOOR and peered out. Her milky gaze followed the girl as she all but leapt down the steps and ran across the corduroy of logs connecting the hillock to the valley trail. Nothing could dampen her spirit. Not the nasty knock to the head she’d suffered, nor the broken nose, and surely not the thin rain that pissed from the overcast sky.
She felt Grimnir’s presence behind her.
“You wanted her alive?” he said, his voice a scornful hiss. “She’s alive and beholden to me now.”
“You were awfully charitable, skrælingr,” Halla said. “If someone didn’t know you, they might think you’d taken a liking to this girl.”
Grimnir grunted but said nothing. He leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. His nostrils flared as he snuffled the damp air. Despite his silence, Halla could almost hear the gears grinding away in his skull.
“But I do know you.” She turned, her seamed face wrinkled in a fierce scowl. “What are you playing at, with this talk of making a throat-slitter out of her?”
Grimnir kept his counsel for a long moment, long enough for Dísa to climb the valley trail and vanish into the trees along the ridgeline. Finally, he said: “You heard her, that headstrong little fool! Maundering on about how she’ll do this but she’ll not do that like she knows what she’s about? Well, I learned a long time ago that you can’t snare the likes of her with vinegar. Oh, no! They got too much pride for that. They need coaxing. Tease them with a bit of honey. Let them take a nibble off the comb. Dangle what they desire most just within their grasp and there’s not a hoop made by god or man they won’t jump through.”
Halla nodded slowly. “She desires to be like her mother, but is that wise?”
“You remember her, do you?” Grimnir sucked his teeth and spat.
The old troll-woman glanced sidelong at the distant ridgeline, where Dísa had vanished. “I do, but the Dagrún I remember did not die fighting the Danes on a Skagerrak beach…”
“Nár!” Grimnir replied. “Curiosity’s what done her in. Listened to too many skalds bang on about heroes and monsters. Saw her chance a few winters back, when she got Kolgríma blind stinking drunk and pried a few choice bits from her—like how a monster lived right in their midst. Well, the little swine thought she’d make a name for herself, then, as a skjaldmær and a slayer of beasts if she brought my head back and stuck it over the mantel!”
“It wasn’t you who killed her, though.”
Grimnir tsked. “She never made it to my doorstep. Was her own mother that done it. Knifed her in the back, then pressed Kolgríma into helping her cart the corpse out here and sank it in the bog. She probably added her to the tally of the dead from Skagerrak to keep the peace, not realizing how the lie would grow.”
A chill wind gusted into the valley. Halla gathered up a few of the logs stacked by the door and laid them atop the bed of embers in the fire pit, which she stirred to life with an iron poker. “And the girl knows nothing of what her grandmother has done.”
“A cold fish, that Sigrún.” Grimnir turned from the door and stalked back to his seat. “And I’d bet my good eye she did Kolgríma in, as well.”
“Cutting her threads and burning the loose ends? But why?
Conscience, or is it something else?”
“Find out. Bend your art to the shadows.” Grimnir leaned back in his seat, one elbow on the carved arm rest, and propped his chin on his fist. His gleaming eye stared into the heart of the burgeoning flames. “Put the screws to the landvættir of the wood. Send your spirits down to the fences surrounding Hel’s cold realm. Find answers. That little wretch was nattering on about something in her sleep, calling out names. Made no sense at first. But then she said something about a spider sitting in a web. Sæter, she called it.”
“One who lies in ambush,” Halla said.
Grimnir drew his seax and drove it point-first into the other armrest. “We’ve been sitting pretty up here, minding our own business, but my gut tells me we let something slip. Some cross-kissing rat, I’ll wager. Some poxy bastard with a gilded tongue has crept in and set up shop among them.”
“You think Sigrún’s turned to the Nailed God?”
“Maybe. Maybe others.”
Outside, the rain sheeted down; inside, shadows danced. The firelight lent Halla’s features a sinister cast. Her milky eyes darted back and forth as she plotted and schemed. “And the girl?”
Grimnir thumbed the blade of his seax, testing its edge against the thick callus of his finger. He grinned as it cut the skin. Holding up his thumb, he studied the welling blood as though it were a harbinger, all black and glistening. “Oh, I’ll make a slayer out of her, all right,” he said, pressing his thumb against his index finger and forcing more blood from the small laceration. “Hammer her into shape like copper on an anvil. Make her sharp. Put an edge on her.” He squeezed again and held the globule of blood steady, keeping it from trickling down his thumb. “And then, maybe, tell her what really happened to her precious Dagrún.”
The smile flirting at the corners of Grimnir’s lips turned to a snarl as he stabbed his thumb against the flat of his seax. There, etched deep into the steel, was the stylized eye that was the symbol of the sons of Bálegyr. Black blood filled the grooves in the metal. It spilled over the incised edges, giving the sigil the illusion that it wept for the Old Ways, for a world long gone …
