Twilight of the Gods

by Scott Oden

  We nearly tripped over the first raft of bodies. Most were thralls, worn out slatterns we’d taken in raids against the fjord-men or brought back from over the sea. Their minders were among them—a ragtag bunch of lame and crippled wretches led by a half-blooded old hag who had no legs and got herself around on the back of this cow-footed shortwit she called her son. The whole lot of them lay jumbled together, strangled by the fumes or ripped asunder by the beast’s claws. Those miserable thralls bore the brunt of it, though. They couldn’t run fast enough from that scaly bastard’s breath, which was a pestilence to your kind. It boiled them alive or turned them into boneless sacks of flesh that leaked pus and blood.

  We rolled on, my mates and me, following the dragon’s wake deeper into Orkahaugr. That filthy lizard was quick for its size, and it seemed … guided, like the point of a spear driven by a will not its own; it knew where the heart of the mountain was and was making straight for it. None of the bodies strewn along the path gave us pause. Nár! We were wolves, hunting for a fresh kill. We passed lads we’d known since we were squalling babes, crushed and riven and drenched in black blood. Their gore-clotted faces cling even now to my mind. They all bore a look of surprise.

  The dragon’s stink drew us on. Its reeking breath hung low to the ground, like a fog. It nearly covered the ruin of a hasty barricade others had thrown up at that crossroad we called Einvigi, where we settled disputes among kin with knives and fists. The left-hand road led down to the smithies and the mines; the right took you to the bolt-holes and the lairs. Straight and you’d find yourself on a rising path that led to the Hall of the Nine Fathers and the armories—empty, now that the ships had gone to Èriu.

  The bodies strewn left and right, the splintered wood … they told a plain tale any idiot could read: the wretch was making for the Hall.

  Grimnir’s nostrils flared, as if recalling a stench from long ago.

  And the Hall’s where the lads and me caught up to it.

  You’ve never been in a real scrape, have you, little bird? I don’t mean these games we play or the few things you learned from that old wretch, Sigrún. I mean a real fight, where the dogs are baying for your blood and the steel cuts it close to your precious head? Ha! I didn’t think so. I’ve been party to more shield-bitings and spear-shatterings than there are Geats left in the whole of your stinking village. Half of them I can’t even recall, anymore. But this one …

  This one I remember like it happened a week gone.

  Grimnir planted his feet wide and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he gestured with his hands—an artist painting a portrait from memory and air. We burst out into the Hall, my mates five steps ahead of me—I’d stopped to grab a spear, since it was clear my little pig-sticker would be useless. Snatched one off the wall, and a shield for good measure, and turned back around in time to see Malice-Striker’s tail crush my mates like eggshells. A squalling, spitting knot of little hate-mongers with murder in their eyes one minute, and the next … broken, shredded corpses smeared across the stone floor. I won’t lie. That caught me off guard.

  I stood there, gaping like an idiot while that misbegotten wyrm tore Bálegyr’s throne down. Its belly crushed the fire pit. Its clawed feet left furrows in the stone walls as it clawed its way up. Up and up, it went, its nostrils oozing clouds of poison-wrack, until it battered the hard bones of its head into the ceiling. And me, rooted to the spot with my fool mouth hanging open.

  I would have died a second time, crushed under the debris raining from the ceiling, if not for Raðbolg. He snatched a handful of my hair and fairly dragged me out of the way. Slung me down, put an arrow on the nock of that great black bow of his, and whipped the cord back to his ear. Twang! Two more he sent after the first—and not a damn one of them did more than shatter on the plates of the bastard’s belly.

  But they got its attention. Ha! That thing looked down at us like we were shit-nuggets it had stepped on. And when it opened its jaws—to roar or to boil us alive—I knew there would be no third time. I felt the cold touch of the Norns’ shears on the thread of what would be a wretchedly short life.

  But Raðbolg, that mad whoreson, drew and loosed his last arrow. Sent that black-barbed shaft flying right down that stinking wyrm’s cheese-pipe.

  Grimnir laughed and sank back in his seat. Were this one of you Geats’ tales, well, that would have been the end of it. Break open the mead and let’s fire the corpse! But this wasn’t some skald’s dream. Nár! I watched that arrow spring off the nock; watched it sail as straight as a hymn-singer’s spine … and watched it splinter against one of Malice-Striker’s teeth! Ymir! All that did was piss it off.

  Well, we were done for, weren’t we? That beast came for us in an avalanche of scales and talons; eyes burning like green lamps in that ugly head, its jaws wide and spewing poisoned vapor. “Spear!” Raðbolg screamed at me. I fumbled around, and at the last moment raised the spear to meet Malice-Striker head-on.

  Grimnir’s eye smoldered like the banked fires of a forge; his voice dropped, becoming a hoarse whisper. That’s when I saw her. Skríkja Kjallandi’s daughter, the fell-handed Queen of Orkahaugr and she who gave me life. She was on the parapet above that vile wyrm, come from the summit of the mountain.

  In her fist, Sárklungr. The Wound-Thorn …

  Silence fell. Grimnir sat stock-still. A dozen heartbeats passed, then a dozen more. When once again he spoke, his words were grim and heavy, laden with the doom of his people. More than a queen, she was. She was a warrior! My sire’s name was on her lips as she hurled herself off that parapet, hurled herself onto Malice-Striker’s flank. Our arrows, our spears … useless. But Sárklungr—forged from the heart of a fallen star by the hammers of the dvergar—Sárklungr struck true and pierced the dragon’s hide.

  By Ymir! She held that hilt in a white-knuckle grip and rode the blow to the ground. You should have heard the bastard scream! Sárklungr had shorn through its bony armor behind the right shoulder and cut a furrow through its muscle and sinew. Ha! So much for Odin’s vaunted dragon, I thought. Damn my eye, but I was callow and stupid back then—both traits Gífr would beat out of me over the decades to come. I was ready to dance a little jig on the wretch’s grave when it decided it had had enough of our lot.

  Quick as a snake, Malice-Striker spun around. Like that—Grimnir snapped his fingers—its tail came whipping at me, scraps of my mates’ bloody flesh still hanging off it. I managed to get my shield up, ducked my head, and braced myself …

  Grimnir chuckled. That was the wrong thing to do, little bird. I should have went as limp as a boned fish. Rode with the blow instead of fighting it. That tail … it was like getting hit with a battering ram. Wood splintered. The iron rim of the shield came apart and nearly took my head off; the blow drove the shield-boss into my arm, shattering the bone, and sent me flying into Raðbolg.

  Grimnir’s brows drew together.

  Must have blacked out, because I only have bits and pieces of what happened next. I heard Raðbolg’s voice like the roar of thunder. He was shouting Skríkja’s name. Saw him grab up my fallen spear and thrust it under the wyrm’s armor, into its wounded flank. And I heard my mother’s death shriek.

  Grimnir leaned back in his seat, his face a mask of scorn. He stared at his left arm, at the knots of gristle that marked the places where the bone was broken; raising his hand, he made a fist.

  Skríkja’s bleeding out a dozen yards away from me, ripped open from her left shoulder to her right hip, and what do I do? I lay there like a limp rag, crying over this busted arm like it meant something! Faugh! What happened next should have come from me. I came around long enough to realize the dragon was gone, skinned out back the way it had come. I saw Raðbolg kneeling over the slaughtered remains of Skríkja. I saw him lift Sárklungr from her limp grasp, saw him trail his hand through her blood and smear it on the blade. And I heard him howl at the heavens like a cornered wolf. “Hear me, Sly One, Father Loki!” he said, sword raised aloft. “Bear wit
ness, O Ymir, sire of giants and lord of the frost! By this blood, the blood of my kin, I swear! I, Raðbolg Kjallandi’s son, will not rest until I’ve brought that wretched dragon to heel! I will not rest until Niðhöggr is under my blade!”

  Grimnir lowered his fist and stared into the heart of the fire pit.

  * * *

  EMBERS CRACKLED AND SPAT; OUTSIDE, a cold wind moaned across the ridges as the first fingers of light crept into the eastern sky. For a long moment, no one spoke. Dísa turned the tale over in her mind, while Halla and Grimnir nursed their private thoughts. Finally, the girl stirred.

  “You said you’ve waited for vengeance these many years,” Dísa said. “Did Raðbolg fail?”

  Grimnir glanced sidelong at her, his eye gleaming in the ember-light. “Would we be dickering over this cursed prophecy if he had? Nár! For four hundred and nineteen years Raðbolg hunted Odin’s little pet. We were away in the East, Gífr and me, when he finally caught up to it. Back then, the bay you call Skærvík was a peninsula—narrow spit of land rising to a set of great jutting cliffs. Malice-Striker had gone to ground in a cave beneath them. Takes a cursed long time for a wyrm’s scaly hide to mend. Bastard was under there, biding his time, sneaking out by the dark of the moon to seize a few goats or raid some luckless Geat’s herd of cattle. That’s how Raðbolg found him. Followed a trail of gnawed hoof bones and goat horn to Malice-Striker’s lair, snuck inside, and waited for the blasted thing to crawl back home.”

  Grimnir took up a long, fire-blackened spear and used it to stir the embers. “What went on there, under the earth, no one knows. Not a soul witnessed the death of Malice-Striker, save Raðbolg—and he died in the wyrm’s death-throes. And after, the whole peninsula just … vanished, like some jötunn’s hand had scooped it from the earth and left a puddle in its wake.”

  “Not a jötunn.” Halla tsked. “The Allfather.”

  Dísa scowled. “Why would he do that?”

  “That wretched, one-eyed wandering tosspot!” Grimnir stabbed savagely at the heart of the fire. “Didn’t like that one of the kaunar—one of us poor plague folk—beat him at his own game! Oh, no! Didn’t like that one of us had shoved a foot of dwarf-steel down the throat of his little pet, so he cheated! Sank the peninsula and sang his cursed prophecy over the ruins!”

  “And stole your vengeance.” Dísa understood, after a fashion. As a Geat, she was no stranger to the lure of revenge. And as the daughter of a woman slain in battle, she recognized the driving need for it, the thirst one could only assuage with the blood of a sworn enemy.

  “Not for much longer,” Grimnir snarled. “What is it those filthy hymn-singers say? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Well, that dunghill rat stole from me, so I will steal from him, eh? Let old One Eye have his Ragnarök. Let him raise that cursed barrow and resurrect his precious dragon! Aye, I’ve sworn no oaths that might draw the eyes of Ásgarðr, so he’ll be none the wiser when I slip into that stinking hole, take up Sárklungr from the dead hand of my kinsman, and cut that bastard wyrm’s head off!”

  Halla thrust an accusing finger at him. “You’d deny us our vengeance for the sake of your own?”

  “Aye! And why not?” Grimnir’s chin jutted forward, his manner savage and belligerent. “What do you even know of the world beyond your precious trees? What do you know of the ambitions of Men, their hatreds and their wars? Nothing! You’ve never seen the ramparts of Miklagarðr or the stews of Parisius! You’ve never heard the marching-song of fifty thousand men, or walked the bloody fields where the dead lie in their war rags! By Ymir, you old hag! Thrice have these hymn-singers gathered in their multitudes to carry their war over the sea and lay claim to their Nailed God’s barrow! And a fourth time just so they could put the screws to the lords of Miklagarðr! They are like barley—reap your fill and more will arise with every passing season! Faugh! You could not destroy them even if that wretched wyrm came boiling out of Skærvík with a hundred offspring! So, tell me: why should I pin my hopes on a prophecy of smoke and lies when I can take the vengeance that is my right?”

  “We’re not saying vengeance isn’t your right,” Dísa piped up.

  Grimnir’s good eye slid to the young woman. “We? I forget: how is this any of your business?”

  “The end comes for my world, too, does it not? That gives me a voice. See, what if you but delayed your vengeance? What would this dragon do if loosed upon the Nailed God’s world?”

  “Nothing!” Grimnir snapped. “Because, by the…” Lips writhing, he choked back an oath. “By my hand that scaly wretch dies ere its blasted eyes open fully on this world!”

  Halla leaned forward and spat into the embers of the fire. “You’re a pig-headed fool, skrælingr, you—”

  Suddenly, Grimnir bolted upright in his seat, his good eye ablaze. His nostrils flared; his lips skinned back over his teeth. “Quiet!”

  A moment later, Dísa heard it, too: three long blasts of a horn. She had a sinking feeling as she recognized it. “That’s Askr’s horn.”

  “One of your lot?”

  “Aye,” Dísa replied, reaching for her haubergeon. Her gaze met Halla’s, and in that milky stare she saw a touch of fear reflected—neither of them had told Grimnir of Hreðel’s threats for fear of what he might do. Now, that fear bubbled to the surface. “He’s kinsman to my cousin’s bedmate. I’ll go down to the beach and see what this racket’s all about.”

  Dísa shrugged into her mail, twisting and rolling her shoulders as it settled into place; Halla fastened Dísa’s weapons’ belt about her slender hips; the girl hitched at it, adjusting her sheathed seax and the Frankish axe in its leather frog—all the while trying to avoid Grimnir’s suspicious glare. She caught up her helmet, shield, and short spear.

  “Expecting trouble, little bird?” he said acidly, settling back in his seat. “Are these not your folk?”

  “What was it you said? ‘Blood’s no proof against a jealous blade’?”

  There was no humor in Grimnir’s chuckle as she eased open the door and vanished into the rising light. He shot a suspicious glance at Halla, who moved deeper into the longhouse and away from the petrifying gleam of daylight. “I saw that look. What’s she not telling me, eh?”

  12

  Three times more did Askr’s horn sound before Dísa reached the end of the forest trail leading to the stony shingle. A niggling voice in the back of her mind preached caution, and her gut followed suit. So, rather than burst forth in full view of Askr and whomever made the journey with him, Dísa held back. She left the trail and crept silently through the undergrowth, keeping to the shadows beneath the towering evergreens so she’d have time to take the measure of what awaited her.

  Askr, she saw, and Hrútr. Both were clad in wolf skins and mail. Hrútr leaned on a spear while Askr had his horn poised for a fourth blast. Auða paced alongside them, her hair drawn back in a long black braid; it twitched like a lion’s tail with each sharp turn she made. She kept her gaze fixed on the trail head. Auða muttered something to Hrútr, who merely shrugged. The fourth man waited by the boat. Dísa recognized the white-haired bulk of giant Bjorn Hvítr, Bjorn the White. A bear skin hung from his shoulders, its great paws clasped around his neck. He cradled an axe in his arms.

  They are clad for war, she reckoned. Not a good omen.

  Auða nodded to Askr, who drew a deep breath and blew a thunderous note on his silver-chased horn. He held it for a moment, letting the sound echo across the ridges and into the hollows. It ended, and as that echo died, Dísa stepped from the shadows of the tree line and onto the shingle.

  Her sudden and savage appearance took them by surprise. Auða’s eyes widened; Hrútr cursed and leveled his spear at her. Askr dropped his horn to his side and clawed at the hilt of his sword. And even Bjorn Hvítr, whose temper was as mild as his curiosity, scowled at the pale-skinned apparition conjured by the horn-song.

  “Cease your racket,” Dísa said. She drove her spear’s butt-spike into the ground, stripped o
ff her helmet and hung it from the lug behind the broad-bladed head, and leaned her shield against it. She approached the four slowly. “I’m here. What goes, cousin?”

  “We’ve been worried about you,” Auða said. “You left Hrafnhaugr over a month ago and none have seen hide nor hair of you since. Are you well?”

  Dísa stopped a dozen feet from the four; by newfound habit, she kept her distance, her carriage loose and poised to move. Though Auða was her kinswoman and she’d known the other three all her life, there was nevertheless a gulf between them. Dísa felt like a pet they’d turned loose in the wild, a dog gone feral; one that recognized her former master’s smell but remained skittish. “You came all this way to ask after me? I am flattered, cousin. Truly. As you can see, I am hale and in good spirits.”

  “What has he done to you, girl?” This from Hrútr, who cast a scornful eye on her war-rags and ironmongery. She was lean and hard, her flesh mottled with bruises, purple fading to yellow; she looked like some fey spirit summoned from the fences of Hel’s icy realm.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He doesn’t know what he means,” Auða snapped, glaring at Hrútr. “But since we can see with our own eyes that you are well, there’s another matter we must discuss. The matter of Flóki. He’s not back, either, and Jarl Hreðel is beside himself. The man is not well, cousin. Food stores run low and he does nothing to replenish them. His temper is unchecked. Even Sigrún gives him a wide berth. He wants you, Dísa. He wants you to come back to Gautheimr and explain the Hooded One’s inaction. Jarl Hreðel—and a lot of us with him—feels the Hooded One has much to answer for.”

  Dísa bristled. “And what does Hreðel have to answer for, eh? He should have thought of this when he was busy coddling his son. Flóki seeks to be a man, his own man, is all. The Hooded One bears no blame in this, and he certainly doesn’t answer to the likes of a bench-hugger like Hreðel!”