by Scott Oden
Dísa shrugged out of her mail and stripped off the gambeson she wore beneath. This was her third since Halla had counseled her to wear armor. Though it protected her from the mail’s hard edges and gave her an added layer of protection, the fabric acted like a sponge, soaking in every last drop of sweat and blood each day’s exertions wrung from her. The garment quickly grew sodden, heavy, and it reeked. Dísa chucked it out the open door—she’d sink it in the bog tomorrow—and snatched up another one from the pile of old gambesons she’d looted from the Hooded One’s hoard. Her limbs were hard with muscle, her flat belly ridged now, like Grimnir’s sculpted cuirass; once pale flesh had a yellowish cast, and an array of bruises, knots, and scabbed sores warred with gooseflesh from the cold air to create an uneven veneer. She gritted her teeth and drew on the fresh gambeson, made of purple-dyed quilted linen and worked with gold embroidery on the breast and the sleeves. Its previous owner had died from a spear thrust that took him in the back, between his shoulder blades—no doubt splitting his spine and tearing into his lungs and heart.
Lacing the gambeson, she turned back to Halla. “Why did the Gods not intervene?” she said. “Surely they could have driven these Cross-men away.”
The troll-woman stirred. “The Gods of the North are a harsh lot, child. Only grudgingly do they take notice of us, so wrapped up are they in their own affairs. And when they do take note, it is often only to heap more misfortune upon us. They looked away, and when their gaze returned to this Miðgarðr they discovered the Cross-men had done with ink and parchment what no Jarl could with axe and sword: unite men under a common banner—a banner made from the scraped skins of sheep and decorated in oak gall and iron with the words of their Nailed God. They had brought their holy war north, under our very noses, and we did not realize it for what it was until too late.”
“What do we do, then?” Dísa said, shaking her head. “How do we settle the score?”
“Grim days are coming. It is Fimbulvetr, the Endless Winter. The Gods of the North gird their loins and look to their steel, for there is the reek of war upon the winds of Miðgarðr. Even the spirits of the land have fled, taking with them the sorcery of the Elder Days. And soon,” Halla’s voice dropped to a whisper:
“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.
“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.
“Wolf shall fight she-Wolf | in Raven’s shadow;
An axe age, a sword age, | as Day gives way to Night.
And Ymir’s sons dance | as the Gjallarhorn
Kindles the doom | of the Nailed God’s folk.”
Dísa listened, a hard set to her jaw. She nodded. “Good. This dragon, this Malice-Striker, he will be our vengeance. He will bring death to the Cross-men.”
“To all things,” Halla said. She did not look up from the fire. The ruddy light burnished her crag-set features, so like carved stone, and illuminated the wisps of hair growing from the point of her chin. “Malice-Striker will scour the earth with fire and with pestilence, and war will follow it like a shadow. Stones will crack and trees shatter; seas will boil and the skies burn! And from what scraps it leaves behind, the Elder World will emerge again, reborn.”
“How long?” Dísa said after a moment. “How long do we have until the end comes?”
The troll-woman glanced sidelong at the girl, who sat shivering despite the heat rising off the fire pit. “None can say, child. Seven hundred and twenty-nine years have passed since the prophecy was first spoken—nine times nine times nine again—and we are in the throes of the Endless Winter. The rest?” She shrugged. “There is no guarantee it will come to pass. Especially if Grimnir has his way.”
Dísa straightened. “How could he be against this?”
From the shadow at the rear of the longhouse came a harsh snort. “Aye, tell her why, you gobby old hag.” While Halla did not so much as flinch at the unexpected sound of Grimnir’s voice, Dísa reacted as though stung; she came to her feet, her seax partly drawn from its sheath. The girl relaxed only a little as Grimnir rose from where he’d been crouched on his haunches and came around to his throne-like chair.
“What are you on about with all this peaching sneakery?” Halla said.
“Don’t change the subject! Answer the little bird’s question. Tell her how I could be at odds with this precious fantasy you lot have concocted.”
Halla lapsed into silence for a long moment, deep in thought; Dísa resumed her seat. From the fire pit, embers crackled and spat. A breeze that reeked with the cold promise of snow moaned through the doorway.
“Don’t be shy,” Grimnir goaded. There was a hard and sardonic edge to his voice. “Tell her what I believe, since you seem to know my mind better than I do!”
Finally, Halla stirred. She jabbed a gnarled finger at Grimnir. “The Old Ways … the old prophecies … you foolishly think they are just meaningless doggerel now. ‘Miðgarðr is the Nailed God’s world,’ you have said, ‘stolen fair and square.’ And you think the only harbingers of doom that matter anymore are the ones uttered by desert prophets and cross-kissing madmen—and they make no mention of us.”
“You dance around the answer, hag! Tell her the truth, Ymir take your gnarled old bones! Tell her why!”
Dísa slowly turned her head to look from the hunched old troll-woman to Grimnir. The latter was silent now, and glowering. His single eye blazed like a beacon of hate; what it saw, Dísa could not say. “Tell me.”
“Vengeance,” Halla spat. “Cold, useless vengeance! He would rather give this world to the Nailed God than see the dragon arise! All over the matter of an ancient grudge between Malice-Striker and his folk, recompense for a great sacking and burning, and the fulfillment of an oath sworn over the cairn of his slain kinsfolk!”
“I understand the need for revenge,” Dísa said, nodding. “But is it worth it to let the Nailed God’s folk keep what they’ve stolen from us?”
“Oh, you know revenge, do you?” Grimnir’s eyes narrowed; his lips thinned and peeled back over jagged yellow teeth. “Answer me this, then: the one who slew your mother, little bird … what would you do for vengeance? How blasted long would you wait to feel their hot blood spill over your hands? A day? A week? A year?”
“Longer,” Dísa replied. Beside her, Halla stiffened. “I would wait my entire life, even if it meant I’d spend my dying breath knifing the swine.”
“And you would let some wretched prophecy stop you?”
Dísa shook her head. “No.”
Grimnir growled. “Good, then you do understand. This prophecy Halla yammers on about means nothing to me. Nothing! Not when I’ve waited one thousand, one hundred, and forty-nine years to see vengeance done on the wretched snake, that so-called Malice-Striker, that killed my mother, destroyed my home, and scattered the remnants of my people to the winds…”
11
I first drew breath at Orkahaugr, Grimnir began, in the Kjolen Mountains. It was the last days of the Butchering Month, forty-eight years before the strife and shield-breaking that was Mag Tuiredh. Nár! I was still milk-drunk and foolish in those days, so when the ships launched for Èriu, Bálegyr took my wretched brother, Hrungnir, but left me behind with the other whelps and the crones! Grimnir spat into the fire, his saliva crackling among the embers. No matter. The she-Wolf who birthed me, Skríkja Kjallandi’s daughter, stayed to keep an eye on Bálegyr’s throne, and Ra
ðbolg, her kinsman, stayed to keep those thieving little apes down in the fjord-lands in line.
I remember the night before the wolf ships put to sea. It was midsummer’s eve, and there was a great council fire in the Hall of the Nine Fathers, where Bálegyr had his throne. You should have seen it, little bird! You were raised in timber and wattle; I was raised in granite and limestone, our mines, smithies, armories, and dwelling halls hacked from the mountain’s innards by my sire’s hands—the same hands that once fashioned trinkets of gold and iron for the kings of Jötunheimr.
The whole of your stinking village could fit in that hall. Columns of living stone stretched higher than a titan, holding up the mountain itself; shafts cut through the rock let in cold air, and hundreds of lamps hung from the branches of great trees forged from iron and bronze. Trophies dripped from the walls: banners and flayed skins, the shields of fallen foes, the hauberks of heroes slain on the field, the skulls of Jötnar and the thigh bones of trolls. And my sire’s throne, carved from a block of obsidian. Two wolves—Grimnir made an expansive gesture, his eye alight—crouched to make the arms. And at the center of it all, a fire pit so big it could hold a brace of whole steers, spitted and dressed for the feast. Aye, the Hall was the jewel of Orkahaugr, the heart of the kaunar lands of Miðgarðr, and it had been for close to a thousand years.
By this time, Bálegyr was the last of the Nine Fathers—the chiefs of the dvergar clans chosen by the Sly One for the honor of becoming kaunar. Five died when the Æsir came against us in Jötunheimr, ere my people fled to Miðgarðr; two, Lútr and Hrauðnir, died in the Duel of the Four Fathers on the slopes of Orkahaugr, where Bálegyr lost an eye to Kjallandi even as he won the wolf-mantle of the North. Old Kjallandi took the exile Bálegyr offered, and his folk wandered with him. By the time of Mag Tuiredh, he’d been dead a century and more, slain fighting the cursed Romans in the Atlas Mountains, far to the south.
Skríkja was the eldest of Kjallandi’s brood, but she had two brothers—Gífr and Raðbolg—who came back to the North after their father’s death. Bálegyr took them in, treated them like his own stinking sons—better, even, since he had a habit of lopping off his sons’ heads when they displeased him. And why not? I had twenty-two brothers, little bird. Twenty-two! And that’s not counting my sisters, or the dozens of bastards he sired, or the wretched half-breeds he got on captive women. I learned early to keep my head down and toe the line, lest I wound up on the wrong side of Bálegyr’s axe.
But Gífr and Raðbolg … the pair of them Bálegyr treated like the sons he wished he’d had. That night, on the eve of their journey to Èriu, the brothers quarreled over who would go with Bálegyr and who would stay behind. Neither wanted to miss the spear-shattering, but Bálegyr did not trust the fjord-men in the foothills of the Kjolen Mountains to behave themselves in his absence. He wanted a good lad at his back, one he could trust. You should have heard their howling and yammering! Some wretch proposed they wrestle for it, but Gífr refused—Raðbolg was younger and stronger; another threw out the notion that they cast axes, but Raðbolg complained Gífr’s aim was better than his. Both ignored my idiot brother, Hrungnir, when he hollered they should dice for it—dice are sacred to dvergar, and though the bloody feast Loki made from Angrboða’s monstrous afterbirth had left them twisted and scarred kaunar, some habits were too ingrained to break.
It was Skríkja who broke the stalemate: she bid them draw lots. That was her way, simple and direct. She prepared the draw, told them the short lot stays. Raðbolg lost. How he cursed and thundered! But not even he dared defy his sister.
Midsummer’s day, in that year when the dogs of Rome put their wretched crown on four different heads, was the last time I saw my sire. They put to sea at dusk—two score wolf-prowed ships crewed by every black-hearted kaunr throat-slitter Bálegyr could bribe or brow-beat into joining him. He emptied Orkahaugr, leaving only the old, the sick, and the young. Skríkja stood on a tongue of rock overlooking the lake in the shadow of the mountain, a great horn in her hands. Each ship that rowed past, bound for the fjord that led to the open sea, she greeted with a thunderous blast. Bálegyr’s ship came last, its keel black as pitch, its rails thick with shields and bristling with spears. Thrice did Skríkja sound that horn, thrice he answered with a howl that could split the heavens; ere the sun’s last light died away, she rushed to the edge of the rocks and drew her sword—Sárklungr was its name, the dwarf-forged Wound-Thorn. She threw her arms wide and roared: “Así att-Súlfr Bálegyr skiari tar nekumanza!” Bálegyr is the Wolf, and he comes to devour your entrails! That’s how I recall her best—a fell-handed queen girded for war, as dark and wild as the sea, bidding farewell to her king …
Grimnir lapsed into silence, his gaze fixed on the bed of embers. He leaned back in his seat. Memories are a bane, little bird, like a thorn lodged in your eye. Cut them out, if you can, or they’ll do nothing but haunt you in your dotage. He hawked and spat. At any rate, summer faded away and no word reached us from Èriu. Skríkja and the old crones cast a circle and summoned all manner of birds, but none had traveled so far as the Isle of Emerald where the vestálfar—the cursed West-Elves—made their home. There was one night I can recall, on the cusp of the Sere Month ere the trees shed their leaves, when visions assailed her. A storm raged over the mountain. It sounded like a jötunn had hauled an anvil up the slopes of Orkahaugr. Thunder crashed and rang with the fury of a thousand hammers, and lightning set fire to the sky. Witchery was in the air that night. I could smell it.
But it was the screams that drew us, Raðbolg and me, up to the summit of the mountain. Long ago, when the kaunar first crawled up the slopes of Orkahaugr looking for shelter, Bálegyr had them fashion an altar of stone and on it he sacrificed the eldest of his sons to Ymir. Up there, in the wind and the sleet, we found Skríkja huddled over some wretched scrap of a girl—one of the latest thralls we’d taken from the fjord-men. Skríkja had gutted her, had her liver out, and was rooting around for her heart. She was wild-eyed. Kept saying she’d seen Bálegyr’s death in the clouds, a fiery eye wreathed in darkness. Skríkja was like Gífr … cunning in the ways of sorcery; I had more in common with Raðbolg. Even as a pup, I trusted cold iron and what I could grasp with both hands rather than those invisible webs spun by witches and seers. So we left her to it, but I couldn’t shake a sense of unease.
That was the night of the battle at Mag Tuiredh.
Grimnir leaned forward and gestured with one black-nailed finger. See, I knew something was off. I knew something had slipped. I could feel it twisting in my guts, a premonition of doom creeping up on us. But who was I? Just a know-nothing whelp, a fool with milk on his lips, that’s who! But I had a mouth on me and I wasn’t shy about using it. Nár! Even so, Raðbolg laughed when I told him we had to be on guard. He laughed, cuffed me about the head, and sent me off with a few other lads to fetch honey from the hives down by the fjord. But I knew! I knew and I was right … I was right …
Mark this, little bird: you can judge how high you stand in your enemy’s esteem by the weapon he draws against you. By that measure, the one-eyed lord of Ásgarðr must have thought us lords of the earth. For what he drew against us in the days after Mag Tuiredh was a weapon without mercy, as cruel as the grave. Niðhöggr, it was called, the Malice-Striker. Grimnir’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. I saw it, me and the lads Raðbolg sent to fetch the honey. Saw the dragon when it crawled out of the fjord and slithered up the slopes of Orkahaugr. This was no flying wyrm that breathed fire like you miserable Geats like to yammer on about. No, this one was a creeper, half serpent and half lizard. Longer than a wolf ship, it was—longer even than the dragon ships of the Norse—and it pulled itself along on two clawed legs. Scales of bone armored it above and below, pale as man-flesh on its belly but darkening to the colors of moss and lake mud along its back. That monstrous head … Grimnir’s brow furrowed at the memory. He shook, as if to rouse himself.
The bastard paid us no mind. Why should it? We were a h
alf-score of spitless, piss-legged whelps. My mates cowered, but I watched from the shadow of the trees as Malice-Striker scrabbled up the mountainside. That wyrm paused at the gates of Orkahaugr, its chest juddering, and from those jaws came a cloud of vapor that ran before it like storm-rack. It plunged into this froth and fume and clawed its way into the heart of the mountain.
“Up, you louts!” I said to the lads, after the sounds of steel and slaughter reached us. “Up! Were we grumbling and moaning that Bálegyr left us behind? Aye, well here’s our chance to prove our mettle! Up! Put a blade in your hands and follow me!” Like an idiot, I drew my seax and charged up the mountain.
Grimnir sat back in his seat. He rubbed his jaw with the knuckles of his blade-hand. The lot of us, this was our first fight. Our first real fight. Oh, we’d scraped and scrabbled with each other, but this … this was different. We plunged into the wrack like dogs of war, yipping and baying. That fume, it was like breathing the steam rising from a doused forge—scalding hot and reeking of copper and rotting meat. We couldn’t see a damn thing, but we charged on like a gibbering horde of fools.
