Twilight of the Gods

by Scott Oden

  Why, then, had he shown such unaccustomed kindness to Berkano? Or to me?

  The night wore on. Bjorn Svarti stoked the hearth, fed the glowing heart of the fire, and settled into his sleeping furs. The lads of the Jarl’s sworn men who remained drew lots to see who would stand the first watch at the gate. The loser they bundled off with an extra cloak and an iron pot of embers while the rest followed Svarti’s lead and sought their beds.

  Sigrún dispersed the Daughters of the Raven to their homes—some still dwelled under their fathers’ roofs, while older Daughters had their own houses among the folk of the first terrace. Soon, only Sigrún, Geira, and Auða remained.

  Dísa came and sat next to the high seat.

  Grimnir glanced down at her. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping, maybe dreaming up a hare-brained plan to find this lad of yours?”

  Dísa shrugged but said nothing.

  Grimnir’s eye narrowed. “What?”

  “Do you hate my kind?”

  “You have to ask?”

  “You were ready to kill me, just a short month ago; ready to kill Auða and the lads today. But then, you do something like that business earlier with Berkano.” Dísa nodded to where the two Otter-Geat sisters lay curled together near a brazier; Berkano still clutched the Norse scalp, and a ghost of a smile played about her lips as she slept. “It makes me wonder, is all. Wonder if your hate is real.”

  Grimnir was silent for a time. Then: “There was this one time, out East, beyond the lands of the Kievan Rús, when me and Gífr ran afoul of a pack of wolves. Huge, shaggy beasts, like Odin’s own lap dogs. Now, Gífr hated wolves. Even though the blood of mighty Fenrir flows in our veins, he never let pass the opportunity to kill one.

  “It was a hard winter, that year. Enough to make this one look like a mild spring. So they were hungry, these wolves. Bastards herded us like we were sheep. Gífr let his hate build, and when he’d finally had enough, we turned and lit into them. Ha! That was a fight, little bird! Gífr’s bow sang, and the blade of my seax smoked with wolf blood. Killed all but one, a giant female. Wounded her bad. Aye, she had two of Gífr’s arrows in her and I’d nearly taken off one of her forelegs at the haunch. Still, she ran. We tracked her over the snow, across a frozen river and into the hills.

  “We caught up with the bitch at the mouth of a hollow. Then she turned and lit into us—nearly got old Gífr, too. I dragged her off him and split her heart with my blade.” Grimnir nodded, recalling the heat of the wolf’s blood as it sprayed over his knuckles. “Well, the old git was just lying there, trying to get his breath back, when we heard it … a cry coming from the hollow. Soft, it was. Gífr rolled over and spied a litter of wolf pups watching us. And they’d seen us kill their mother.

  “Right then, Gífr decided we would ride out the winter there. Made a shelter, hunted, found water. And the old git raised those pups. He endured their bites, put up with their rage, and taught them to fend for themselves. He meant for us to take off at the spring thaw, but we had become their pack. Those mangy curs followed us back into the lands of the Kievan Rús. We raided with them, and they killed alongside us. And one by one, they died—one of old age, the rest in battle.

  “Gífr sang their death-songs. The old git even wept over the grave of the last one, an old crone of a wolf. But three days after she had gone on to whatever Valhöll awaits them, Gífr put an arrow through the eye of one of her cousins, a great brute that tried to pinch a kill from us. He still hated wolves, you see, but some he hated less than others.”

  Grimnir raised his mask so she could see the silhouette of his face. “I hate your kind, little bird. I’d gladly set fire to the world if it meant an end to the sons of Man. But some of you I just hate less than others.”

  Dísa left her shield and helmet behind; she filled a small shoulder bag with whatever supplies she could find: flint and steel, a coil of braided rope, needles and twine, dried herbs and a small jar of rendered fat; she took from the Jarl’s larder some hard bread, smoked fish, strips of jerky, a cloth-wrapped half-wheel of cheese, a bag of dried dates, and a flask of water. She wore a wolf-skin cloak over her mail; her sheathed seax rode her left hip, a Frankish axe her right, and she carried her short spear. When she left Hrafnhaugr, only Grimnir and the guard at the gate were conscious of her departure.

  And neither said a word.

  Dísa made good time. From Hrafnhaugr, she headed south toward the Horn—that broad inlet shaped like a cow’s horn, where the Hveðrungr River tumbled through a rocky gorge to drain into Lake Vänern. An old bridge at the throat of the Horn marked the limits of her people’s territory. Beyond the bridge, an overgrown trail eventually joined a rutted road leading farther south to Eiðar, the nearest outpost of the Swedes. Dísa reckoned she’d pick up Flóki’s trail somewhere along the way.

  She maintained the pace she’d learned from her morning runs with Grimnir, a long, loping stride that ate up the miles. At midday Dísa paused to drink from a freshet of water and wolf down a bit of bread and smoked fish. A cold wind blew from the north; on it, she caught the scent of ice and snow. It was nearing the end of the month called Skerpla, the Oak Month, and still there was no sign of an impending thaw. She thought of the prophecy, of Fimbulvetr and the ending of the world. And she wondered how long her people had until the breaking of Miðgarðr …

  On, she ran; the day waned, and by the hour of the gloaming she caught the gleam of last light on the waters of the Horn. She pushed on until she broke through the trees and came out on a rocky beach. Only then did she stop to rest. By her estimation, she had strayed too far to the east, enough that she stood now near the mouth of the Horn. Lake Vänern was off on her left; right, the Horn curved north and narrowed, its banks rising, until the inlet became a tree-shrouded gorge. In that direction, across the glistening water, Dísa spied a curious glow—like hundreds of fires lending a ruddy tinge to the low clouds. Was Eiðar ablaze? Had Norse raiders struck over their border for plunder and slaves? The glow made Dísa vaguely uneasy, so she disdained a fire of her own, ate a cold meal, and curled up in a makeshift shelter formed of tree roots and boulders.

  As her exhaustion caught up with her, Dísa fancied she could hear the roots humming to her …

  * * *

  SHE WAKES TO SMOKE AND to ash and to the heat of crackling flames. It is familiar, if not comforting. The mail she wears is still in tatters, but her limbs are no longer heavy with exhaustion. Her dark hair is sweat-damp; her silver beads and bone fetishes clicking as she turns her head to gaze at her surroundings.

  Hrafnhaugr burns around her. She stands near the ruined gates, broken and tilting crazily on their hinges. The dead still lie in their heaps: pale and bloody-limbed Geats intertwine with bearded Danes and dark-eyed Swedes, their ragged surcoats emblazoned with the Nailed God’s cross. The young woman walks from those cracked portals, down streets she had known since she was a child.

  She knows the path she’s on will lead to her destruction. This, she has seen before: the crazed man who flays his own flesh from his bones, the Hooded One with his wagon of severed heads, the Dragon. It is a path she is no longer beholden to walk. She turns and chooses a new direction.

  The flames die; the sky overhead glows with the green lights of the North. By that emerald glow, she descends a flight of rough steps cut into an embankment and finds herself at the water’s edge. A rocky beach stretches before her; surf rolls in, combers breaking in long frothy curls, crashing and hissing against the shore. Ahead, a figure waits. It bears the shape of a man, though hunched and as twisted as the staff he leans upon; he is clad in a voluminous cloak with a slouch hat pulled low. A single malevolent eye gleams from beneath the brim.

  She knows him. The Grey Wanderer, he is; the Raven-God; Lord of the Gallows; the shield-worshipped kinsman of the Æsir. She knows him. She, who springs from the loins of Dagrún Spear-breaker; she, who is a Daughter of the Raven, bearer of the rune Dagaz; she, who is the Day-strider, chosen of the Gods. She, who is skjaldm
ær, shieldmaiden. She knows him, and she is not afraid.

  “Niðing,” the stranger says in a voice deeper than a tolling bell. “Useless whelp of a useless race! What you choose in this moment, now, will determine if your people survive what is to come.”

  “What must I choose?” she says.

  The sky ripples and burns with green fire.

  “To serve me.” The stranger raises his head to look at the eerie lights of heaven. “Bring me the skrælingr’s head, and what your heart desires most will be granted. Serve me, and I will spare your people,” he says. The stranger turns and walks away. “Serve me…”

  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 northern lights. The darkness crawls like a serpent toward her home, toward Hrafnhaugr. It will rob the air of its breath; it will slay the living with a pestilence that rots the blood in their veins. It will crush and destroy all she holds dear.

  She makes to follow, but realizes something has wrapped itself around her ankle. She glances down to see a pale and wriggling root.

  It hums.

  It pulls at her, gently.

  “No, child,” it says in a voice she recognizes. “He deceives.”

  “But my people,” she says, struggling against the root. She looks up and sees an empty beach. Her shoulders slump. “I’ve doomed them.”

  “No.” The root tugs her back; it pulls her into the embrace of more of its kind, all softly humming a lullaby of the earth. “We are all already doomed.”

  “Halla?”

  * * *

  “HALLA!”

  Dísa woke with the troll-woman’s name on her lips. Daylight had come, though thick clouds still obscured the face of the sun, and fat flakes of snow swirled on the cold wind. Dísa had wormed her way deeper into her bolt-hole; surrounded by roots, swathed in wolf fur, she felt warm and snug enough that she dreaded crawling forth. But crawl forth she did. Already, images from her dream were fading, leaving only longing and a sense of unease. She had to find Flóki and get back. The young woman stretched, cracking the tendons in her neck, and went to relieve herself before making a quick breakfast of bread and cheese.

  As she surmised the night before, she was too far east. She’d follow the shore of the Horn, keeping to the trees, and before midday she should reach the bridge over the Hveðrungr River. She would look for some sign that Flóki and the others had passed that way—the remains of a camp, footprints, something. Nodding to herself, Dísa bolted the rest of her food, drank her fill, and set off.

  An hour passed and the day brightened but did not warm. Her breath yet steamed in the chill air. But for the moaning wind, the forest along the north shore of the Horn was eerily silent. Dísa slowed her pace and moved as quietly as she could—each crackling leaf and crunching footfall like a tocsin of alarm. The wind shifted, and her nostrils caught the faint stench of a great burning.

  Dísa stopped. She stood on a rocky ridgeline, the remains of an old cart road running east to west underfoot. Thickets of birch and willow stretched away north, while on the south side of the road the forest thinned as it ran to the crumbling edge of a bluff about ten feet above the shoreline. Dísa listened to the oppressive silence, bereft of the natural sounds of squirrels and birds; she snuffled the air as she’d seen Grimnir do so many times. A tree limb creaked. Dísa brought up her spear, its iron head poised to strike. Movement caught her eye.

  A willow seemed to twist on the wind; in the silence, she heard a low hum. Farther off the track, another tree branch clacked—another willow, seeming to move of its own volition. Dísa recalled her dream, the gentle humming and the tree roots seeking to shield her from harm. “Halla?” she muttered, her voice profane in the absolute silence.

  Dísa’s gut told her she could trust the signs; on that authority, she followed the sounds of willow branches. Even so, she went warily. She carried her spear at the ready. The trees guided her to the mouth of a ravine that cut through the forest, a steaming trickle of foul-smelling water at its bottom—a hot spring. Even more than sulphur, the place reeked of death. Dísa set her jaw, teeth clenched, and as she stepped foot in that gloomy chasm, the oppressive silence suddenly lifted.

  A gigantic raven screamed at her and took wing, its flight stirring the stench of putrefaction. Fear ran down Dísa’s spine; she nearly backed away and ran, but the humming of the trees around her bolstered her courage—they lent her the strength of root and bole, and gave her assurances that she was not alone. Forward, she went. Cat-footed, settled into a fighting crouch. Ahead of her, in a cone of thin gray light, she saw a body. It was sitting with its back against the ravine wall, tilted to one side, its eyeless face looking up as though it sought succor from the cloud-racked sky.

  An arrow stood out from beneath its left breast.

  Dísa crept closer, afraid she would recognize the corpse as Flóki. While it was not Hreðel’s son, she nevertheless knew that long straw-colored hair, the thin beard, even the slack face ravaged by ravens and crows. It was Eirik Viðarrson.

  He’d been dead two days, perhaps three. Dísa could see that his legs were broken. She squatted on her haunches an arm’s length from the corpse and glanced up. In her mind’s eye, she could see him running through the forest, away from the Horn. Alone, most likely, for neither Flóki nor Eirik’s brother would have left him. So, he’s running, she reckoned. He’s wounded—an arrow in his ribs. He’s wheezing blood. He’s afraid. And he makes a misstep and falls into this ravine, breaking both legs. He lives long enough to drag himself to the side of the wall. He calls for help … and none comes.

  Dísa took hold of the white fletchings of the arrow. Placing the blade of her spear flat against Eirik’s chest—to provide a counterweight—she drew the arrow from the wound with a moist sucking sound. Grimacing at the stench, Dísa rinsed it in the fetid stream and studied the head. It had a long, narrow bodkin point, good for piercing mail, with a crude cross scratched into the socket. A war arrow. But whose? Was it Swedish? Norse? Some Danish hymn-singer?

  “Who were you running from, Eirik?” she muttered. “And where’s Flóki?”

  Near her head, the roots of an ancient ash tree hummed and rustled. Dísa looked sharply at them, and then cocked her head to one side. In the sudden silence, she heard it: crunching footsteps coming toward the ravine. She scuttled across the stream and past the corpse, pressing herself into a hollow in the far wall under an overhang of roots.

  Dísa dared not breathe. Above, she heard the heavy tread come to a stop. She heard a man grunt, heard him murmur: “Whew! There you are, you bastard.” His footsteps receded as he followed the ravine down to its entrance.

  Dísa moved. Quickly and silently, she came out of her hiding place and sidled deeper into the ravine, away from the entrance. Here, the walls widened even as the top of the ravine grew more narrow and choked with tangled roots and debris. It was warm and dark, and it stank.

  She stopped, fading into the shadows as the newcomer reached the ravine’s mouth. Dísa saw a man of average size, with a golden-brown beard and hair short at the temples but long down the scalp, braided and gathered at his nape by a leather cord. He crouched and peered into the depths of the ravine.

  He wore a black gambeson under a white surcoat embroidered in black with the Nailed God’s symbol—a cross with flaring arms—belted around the waist. A horn with bronze fittings hung from a baldric over his shoulder. He had a falchion sheathed on his left hip; on his right, she saw a sheaf of bright cloth strips.

  He rose and entered the ravine, eyes sweeping the walls, the floor. Without warning, he stopped. His eyes narrowed. From the small of his back, he drew a long-bladed knife. Dísa knew he’d spotted her footprints; he’d seen the arrow lying where she’d dropped it. No fool, he knew he wasn’t alone.

  “I found him like that,” Dísa said suddenly, making her v
oice small and fearful.

  He looked up, toward the back of the ravine. “Show yourself,” he said, speaking Geatish with the harsh accent of the Danes. “Nice and slow.”

  Leaving her spear in the shadows, Dísa stepped forward, into a shaft of gray light.

  The man grunted, taking in her feral appearance, her mail and seax. “What the devil? You’re one of them, aren’t you? One of those heathen Geats we’ve come to bring into the light of our lord, Jesus Christ.”

  The roots around her shivered; Dísa sensed their distress. The Nailed God’s name was a poison to them, to the remaining landvættir, the land spirits.

  “Aye,” she said. “I am a Geat, of the Raven tribe. What are you?”

  The man crouched beside Eirik’s corpse and retrieved the arrow, tucking it into his belt. His hands went swiftly over the body, searching. “I am the bearer of glad tidings and salvation, girl. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Don’t touch him!” Dísa snapped.

  The man sat back on his haunches and stared at her. “Or what? You’ll dice me up with that onion slicer of yours?” He snorted. “I have fought the Saracen and the Moor, the Princes of the East. I have seen Greek fire burn the ships of Crusader kings in the straits of the Golden Horn, off Constantinople. You’ll forgive me if I’m not put off by the bravado of a heathen girl.”

  “What are you doing here?” Dísa nodded to the strips of cloth, red and yellow, obviously torn from an old tunic.

  He glanced down at them. “Surveying the trees. Marking the ones my lord will need to bridge the river, back yonder.” He inclined his head in the direction of the Horn’s throat.

  “It has a bridge.”

  “Aye, it does.” He shifted his weight. “But some of your folk decided to try and burn it down ere Lord Konraðr’s vanguard arrived. This idiot,” he nodded to Eirik’s corpse, “was among them. Well, it was God’s own luck that the scouts had already crossed. These dogs thought themselves safe—until they weren’t. Killed one, captured two, and we’d thought this cur had escaped. Guess not, eh?”