Twilight of the Gods

by Scott Oden

  On their swords shimmer | the lights of slaughter.

  “Vígríðr is the field | where the enemies meet;

  Wolf and Serpent against | the sons of Ásgarðr;

  The rock-crags crash; | the fiends are reeling;

  Heroes tread the Hel-road; | Miðgarðr is cloven.

  “The sun turns black, | earth sinks in the sea;

  The hot stars down | from heaven are whirled;

  Fierce grows the steam | and the life-feeding flame,

  Till fire leaps high | about Yggðrasil itself.

  “From below the dragon | dark comes forth,

  Niðhöggr crawling | from the roots of the Ash;

  Against the East-king, | thorn-crowned savior,

  The doom of mankind | in his jaws he bears.”

  A cold wind swirled through Gautheimr; the fire in the broad pit flickered, as though some cruel and cunning jötunn crept past on an errand known only to the Gods. Dísa opened her eyes and saw dozens of faces staring back at her with a mix of awe and fear.

  Askr grunted and nudged his brother in the ribs. “Told you, didn’t I?”

  Auða leaned forward. “Did you return with the gift of prophecy, cousin? Is what Askr speaks of true? Is this Fimbulvetr?”

  The younger woman went scarlet to the ears. She waved Auða away. “That was just a bit of doggerel,” she stammered. “Something Kolgríma used to sing is all. It’s nothing.”

  “I never heard her sing such a thing,” Auða said, frowning.

  “Nor me,” Hrútr added.

  “That wasn’t Kolgríma,” Sigrún said from across the room. “I sang that to you, and your mother before you, though I’m surprised you remember it. Those are the words of the Iðunnarkvitha Bragadottonar, the Lay of Iðunn the Daughter of Bragi, who was the first of our line.” Sigrún took a pull from her mead horn; with it, she gestured at the sisters, Berkano and Laufeya. “We were like them, in Iðunn’s day: outcasts from a dozen different Geatish clans, driven from our homes by war, by pestilence, by crimes that called out for a blood-price—a weregild. That was how the Hooded One found us, witches and outlaws and broken men, living in squalor like rats. He likely would have killed us all had Iðunn not prevailed upon him. She begged his mercy, and in exchange she pledged herself and her daughters to his service. Thus was our compact forged—one priestess, chosen at random from the descendants of Iðunn, would serve him until death. He permitted no others to cast their eyes upon him. He granted us this land, and from the Raven Stone Iðunn named our people. We became the Raven-Geats of Hrafnhaugr.”

  Sigrún drank again, more deeply this time. “But time makes us forget. It’s been years since the Hooded One has lit the war beacons. When my mother was a girl, she told me the Raven-Geats would fare forth every season—bound for the borders of our lands to repel invaders from the lands of the Swedes or from the Norse. How long since we’ve seen the wolf-cloaked figure in his mask of bone, prowling the edges of our shield walls?”

  “Do you doubt he exists?” Dísa said. She felt Sigrún’s eyes on her, as hot and sharp as an auger; she glanced over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of her grandmother’s sharp cheekbones with their faded tattoo and her narrowed black eyes. The room held their collective breath, waiting for an explosion of ale-fueled temper.

  “I know he exists, child,” Sigrún said, after a moment. “I have seen him, a shadow lurking in the trees, a night-skulker under our walls. No, the Hooded One exists. I doubt that he cares, anymore, about what becomes of us.”

  “He cares,” Dísa replied quietly, more to convince herself of this than others. “In his own way, after the fashion of his own kind, he cares.”

  Sigrún’s eyebrow arched. “Are we not his kind?”

  The younger woman felt herself skirting at the edges of Grimnir’s long-held secrets. “He is the Tangled God’s immortal herald—and that is no embroidery; it is telling no tales to remind you he is not like us. We are not his kind.”

  Sigrún shrugged, but kept her own counsel.

  “So what does it mean?” Auða chimed in. “This song?”

  “Just what you heard. Iðunn did have the gift of prophecy, and she foresaw a time when the world would end. She saw Ragnarök.”

  “See?” Askr hissed. Auða’s reply was a thunderous scowl.

  The sudden silence stretched on, as crisp and fragile as a skin of ice on the surface of a puddle. A moment longer … and then, Hreðel swore. “Ymir’s blood! You witches and your prophecies! Give us a song of mead and whores, or get your pox-ridden arses out of my hall!”

  His outburst prompted a peal of laughter. Berkano staggered upright—gentle Berkano, her face ruddy from the combination of the fire and mead. She clapped her hands. “I know a few songs,” she slurred. “Give a listen, you wretched Geats!” And before long-suffering Laufeya could intervene Berkano snatched up a lyre and managed to strum out a tune as she sang in a voice as strident as a cat in heat:

  “I dreamt a dream last night,

  of silk and fine fur…”

  But whether by accident or by design, the effect was the same. The cloak of doom was stripped away; slowly, conversation resumed, as did the gusty laughter of the thegns and the calls for more ale and mead. “Like I said, it’s nothing,” Dísa repeated, for Auða’s benefit as much as for her own. Hrútr glanced away; Askr sucked his teeth and returned to his handiwork, leaning over Káta’s shoulder as he wielded needle and paste. Káta pulled her father’s horn cup to her and drained it, wincing with every prick of the ivory. Dísa shook herself and yawned. “I’m weary, cousin. I’m for bed.”

  Though Auða yet watched her with a jaundiced gaze, she nodded. “Aye, you need it. You look like day-old shit.”

  Dísa smiled. “Can I stay with you?”

  “You have a place to stay already.”

  But the thought of trying to sleep under the same roof as her grandmother rankled. She wanted to curse and rail about how the old hag wanted her dead, and that dawn would find one or the other laid out on a bier with a belly full of cold steel, but Auða couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see it. Dísa’s lips thinned, flattening so they would not betray a tremble of frustration. Since their kinship ran through the blood of Dísa’s father, twelve years in the grave, Auða never saw the secret face of Sigrún. She never witnessed the fury, the scorn, the callous neglect. Even if she did, Auða would likely admire it. The world is an anvil, she would say, and you are virgin steel. Your grandmother is the hammer, sent by the Gods to mold you … and it takes a strong arm to forge a sword.

  But Auða must have heard something in her silence—some echo of melancholy. Softly, she nudged Dísa in the ribs with one sharp elbow. “Did you forget? You laid claim to all old Kolgríma possessed … would not such a claim also include that rat-hole she called a house?”

  A smile twitched at the corners of Dísa’s mouth. “It would, wouldn’t it?”

  “Go on, then,” Auða said. “Me, I’m going to try and get this great hairy heathen,” she nudged Hrútr, “to show me his sword. What say you, warrior? Care to show a lady your goods?”

  Hrútr glanced around, a smile tugging at the corners of his bearded mouth. “There’s ladies about?”

  “I’ve never had a lady,” his brother, Askr, said.

  “And you’ll not have this one, either! You think I’m one of your trollops from Frankia?”

  Still smiling, Dísa rose and went her way. She left Gautheimr with far less fanfare than when she entered. A few folk shouted their good nights before returning to their cups; Jarl Hreðel made a halfhearted wave and then went back to trying to convince Laufeya she needed a man like his son—stubborn wretch though he was—to protect her. Her grandmother marked her departure with a scowl. Dísa shivered at the malice in Sigrún’s gaze, hiding the gesture as she made to straighten her cloak. She hitched reassuringly at the seax in her belt and stepped out into the night.

  A cold wind blew fat flakes of snow down from the North. It was well after midn
ight, and flickering green lights illuminated the clouds as unseen jötnar struggled and strove between the worlds. Dísa averted her eyes. There was not much in this world she feared, but those weird shimmering curtains that illuminated the northern sky filled her with an unreasoning terror.

  The young woman made for the first terrace; thence to an alley near the gates. Wedged into a space behind Kjartan Sigurdsson’s house and smithy—its forge cold and dark more often than not—Kolgríma’s ancient hovel had the look of a huntsman’s shack to it, with animal skulls and antlers nailed to the roof timbers and half-rotted skins draped across a fence out front. Though Dísa saw a similarity between this moldering heap of timber and straw and the Hooded One’s longhouse.

  As she crossed the fence and approached the door, Dísa wasn’t sure what to expect. Here was the Niflhel of her childhood, the misty abode of trolls and witches; it was to Kolgríma’s lair that the women of Hrafnhaugr pointed when they sought to cow their unruly sprats. And Kolgríma played the part, gimlet-eyed and twisted, clad always in black, with gray locks that knew nothing of the comb or the braid. More than once, she threatened to hang Dísa from the rafters like a Yule boar and drain the blood from her.

  “How long till I’m the same, a twisted old crone that brats taunt and their mothers use to keep them in line?” Dísa muttered.

  “What?” came a soft voice at her back. Dísa whirled, her hand falling to the hilt of her seax. A familiar figure stepped from the shelter of the porch where Kjartan had his anvil.

  “Flóki, you bastard,” she said. “What are you doing lurking about?”

  “Waiting for you,” replied Flóki. At eighteen, he was taller than his father and possessed the lean frame and fine features of his mother’s people. She had died bringing him forth into the world; rather than souring Hreðel’s feeling toward him, the price he paid to have a son and heir caused the old Jarl to hold Flóki close. He remained clean-shaven, the mark of a youth untested in battle. “Tell me what you said, just now.”

  Dísa waved him off. “It was nothing. Do … Do you want to come in?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Who knows how many dead children I’ll have to move to sit down? You’ve a strong back.”

  Flóki smiled at this.

  Exhaling, she braced herself and opened the door. Eerie green light flickered in, revealing nothing. Dísa stepped over the threshold. Near the door, she found flint and steel and an oil lamp. She struck a light …

  It was not what she expected. No throat-slit children hung from the rafters, no carpet of bones obscured the floor, no fathomless sigils chalked the walls. It was … neat. Almost tidy: a cold stone hearth with its next fire set out, a bedstead covered in reindeer pelts, a chest for clothes, an old birch-wood loom, a cluttered table and chair. By the lamp’s warm glow, she saw details of an otherwise quiet life; a life spent mediating between a folk who did not appreciate her and the beast who ruled them from the shadows. Suddenly, Dísa understood. This was Kolgríma’s refuge. This was where she escaped to when Grimnir’s presence became too much to bear—and it was a reflection of Kolgríma’s own dream for herself, a young girl’s desire for a life of peace.

  And Dísa found she did not feel like an interloper. She felt welcomed, encouraged by the resonance of humanity she discovered. I survived decades like this, Kolgríma’s spirit said to her, and so can you.

  Behind her, she heard Flóki’s grunt of surprise. “Not what I expected.”

  “No,” Dísa replied. She placed the lamp on the table, alongside scavenged bits that were like pieces of a puzzle. A broken spindle in need of mending, an old cracked scabbard with a broken chape, bundled herbs and oak galls that awaited the grinding pestle. “But it will do.”

  Dísa turned. She drew the sheathed seax from her belt, tossed it on the bed, and discovered Flóki staring hard at her from the threshold, brows drawn together. “What happened out there?”

  “You first. And, you should know, your father is after Laufeya to warm your bed.”

  “That old sot can hang,” Flóki snapped with more heat in his voice than Dísa had ever heard from him.

  “Hrútr said you’re itching to be out from under Hreðel’s thumb. Is this true?”

  Flóki rubbed his bare chin. “It’s high time, damn him! He grooms me to take over from him when he’s old and gray, but he’s forgotten that I must make my own name ere the Raven-Geats see me their Jarl. I asked for his blessing, to go with Eirik Viðarrson and his brother, Ulff, to raid down past the Horn. Perhaps even journey down to Eiðar and take ship with the Danes. He refused to give it. I’ve given him eighteen years, Dísa. It’s time I go my own way.”

  “Then go,” she replied. “Make your own name, and come back to Hrafnhaugr bearing Irish gold and tales of sea-demons. Unless he marries you off to Laufeya, I’ll be needing a bedmate.”

  “Do you command me, as the Hooded One’s priestess?”

  “As your friend, you daft bastard.”

  Flóki fell silent, his dark eyes reflecting the eerie lights in the heavens as he glanced out the door. “Maybe you’re right. Now, your turn. What happened?”

  Dísa clenched her fist, felt the ache of bruised knuckles; thrice she did this, her attention focused on the play of muscle and sinew, on the abrasions left by her struggle with Grimnir. She rubbed at a fleck of black blood trapped by a fold of skin between her middle finger and her ring finger. “I went to him,” Dísa said at length. “I went to the Hooded One with anger in my heart, ready to die rather than live on in the shame of slavery. I provoked him. And when he came for my head, I did not back down. Can you believe that?”

  “You were always like your mother,” Flóki said, leaning against the doorjamb.

  “I wish I had more of a memory of her.” Dísa sat on the edge of the bedstead. She dragged the seax over to her and drew the blade half from its scabbard. “He gave this to me, the Hooded One did, after he nearly cracked my skull. He said, ‘Every bird needs a talon.’ This is mine. This is how my fame will spread.” Metal rang as she thrust the blade back into its scabbard. “But I must play my part.”

  “You do not sound sure.”

  Dísa looked up. “No, I am sure. It’s just…” She searched for the words to explain how she felt without betraying her oath. Finally, she gestured about, encompassing Kolgríma’s hidden refuge. “Why do you think Kolgríma fashioned this place in secret? Why did she want none of us to see past her grim countenance, to see that there was a woman of flesh and blood behind the black guise of a witch?”

  “For effect,” Flóki said. “Her name was built upon whispers of sorcery.”

  “But there was more to her,” Dísa agreed. She looked up. “What if there’s nothing more to me? What if I am like this scabbard, empty and useless unless filled with iron and the drippings of battle?”

  But Flóki only chuckled. He took two steps into the single-room house, caught Dísa’s head in his hands, and kissed her with the passion of a man who had seen his way laid out before him. A man who had far to go, but someone to wait for him by the hearth. “And you call me daft,” he said, retreating to the door. “You beggar belief. Hand you the thing you’ve dreamed of since you were in swaddling clothes and you will find a way to suffer over it. As for me, I’m for Eiðar, Ireland, or Valhöll. When you see me again, it will be atop a ship made of gold!”

  Dísa shed no tears. She smiled. “I just want to see you with a beard, you daft bastard.”

  Flóki cast an eye to the heavens. The eerie lights had faded, leaving nothing but scudding shoals of cloud and a bright gibbous moon. He winked, and then closed the door.

  Dísa heard his footsteps recede into the night, losing them as he passed the silent forge of Kjartan Sigurdsson. She sat at the edge of the bed. Her face ached. Her vision blurred; she yawned, looked at the cold hearth, with its logs and kindling awaiting only the spark of flint on steel. She knew she should rise and see to the fire, but exhaustion had its claws in her so deep she
could barely move. Dísa managed to kick her shoes off. She managed to burrow under the furs covering the bedstead—furs that smelled faintly of old herbs and dust. And as she slipped into a dreamless slumber, she managed to catch the hilt of her seax and pull it into a lover’s embrace.

  After that, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir knew no more.

  6

  The sun was fully up when the pounding started. At first, Dísa thought it merely in her head, the effect of too much mead, too little rest, and a dire crack to the skull. She groaned and burrowed deeper into the warm pelts. But it kept on, despite her every effort to ignore it.

  And with it came a man’s voice bellowing her name.

  “Dísa! By Odin’s lost eye, girl! Dísa! Rouse yourself!”

  Her door rattled on its hinges as a dagger pommel struck it half a dozen times in quick succession. Snarling and spitting, Dísa threw back the furs and rolled off the bedstead. Disheveled, with bruised eyes nearly swollen shut, she staggered to the door and flung it open. Light spilled in, and with it the shadow of two interlopers.

  “What do you want, you dung-bearded pot-licking whoreson starver of ravens?”

  “Mind your tongue, girl.” Dísa heard her grandmother’s harsh voice. She was in no mood, though. Her eyes watered; her head ached far beyond anything she thought possible.

  “Mind yours! What do you want, I said?”

  Dísa squinted, focusing one eye on the man who stood before her—heavyset and barely a head taller than she. It was Jarl Hreðel, she realized; like her, he was still bleary-eyed from the night before. The golden torque he wore around his neck caught the watery midmorning sun and reflected it—jags of light Dísa found too painful to look at. He sheathed his dagger. With trembling fingers, he smoothed his silver-flecked beard.

  “My son, where is he?”

  Dísa shrugged. “How the devil should I know? I’m not his minder!”

  Behind him, Sigrún smote the frame of the house with one balled fist. “Stupid girl!” she snarled. “Your Jarl—”