Twilight of the Gods

by Scott Oden

  She saw no way clear to slip in and free him. Not now. Not through a shield wall. The knot in her gut convulsed; Dísa leaned to one side, spat the bolt from between her teeth, and retched. Wiping bile from her chin, she heard a soft step as Úlfrún came alongside her. In the daylight, the older woman reminded Dísa of her grandmother, Sigrún. Both bore the scars of battle alongside the scars of a life spent proving themselves in the world of men; both had eyes as hard and cold as ice, but where Sigrún’s gaze revealed a shriveled and diminished soul, Úlfrún’s eyes brimmed with life.

  “Give Skaðmaðr to me,” she said, crouching alongside Dísa. “You go find Forne and blood your axe on Crusader skulls. Leave this to me.”

  “No,” Dísa replied. “It must be by my hand. I owe it to him.”

  Úlfrún sighed. “Then, be quick about it. Do not let him linger.” The older woman took one of the bolts from Dísa’s hand and slotted it against the crossbow’s drawn string. Its head gleamed lethal and gray in the dim sunlight. “Say his name and loose. Skaðmaðr will do the rest. I told you, the Man-slayer never misses.”

  Dísa nodded. She settled the crossbow’s butt into the hollow of her shoulder and let the trunk of the fallen tree bear most of Skaðmaðr’s weight. She tried to conjure Grimnir’s face—his merciless snarl, his callousness, his casual cruelty. Instead, she kept recalling the last time she’d seen Flóki, standing in the door to Kolgríma’s shack on the night he and the others fled Hrafnhaugr. He’d winked at her, smiled. When you see me again, it will be atop a ship made of gold! Dísa wiped her eyes, snarling as she knuckled away her tears.

  “Daft bastard,” she whispered.

  Beside her, Úlfrún purred: “Do you have him in your sight?”

  Dísa wiped her eyes again, and nodded.

  “Then do it. Say his name…”

  Her hand hovered over the trigger lever. One squeeze. Dísa exhaled, shook her head to clear it.

  “Move aside,” Úlfrún hissed. “We’re almost out of time. There is no shame in not being able to do this thing. Put Skaðmaðr down and leave it to me, child.”

  “I’ll do it, I said!” Dísa snapped. She returned her attention to the crossbow—and to the merciful release it offered Flóki, yonder. She drew a shuddering breath, held it, and released it in a drawn-out sigh. Dísa settled against the stock. She sighted down the firing groove, her fingers on the trigger lever. “I am no child,” she whispered. “I am a Daughter of the Raven. Bearer of the rune Dagaz, the Day-strider, chosen of the Norns. I am a servant of the Hooded One, immortal herald of the Tangled God.” Her voice cracking, she added: “And I … I am your death … Flóki Hreðelsson.”

  Flóki stirred; he looked up, a weary smile twisting his cracked lips as though Dísa’s soft exhalation of his name reached his ears over the din. And as her hand squeezed the trigger lever, as the Man-slayer discharged its bolt with a rattle and a thunk, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir closed her eyes.

  * * *

  THE ATTACK ENDED AS SWIFTLY as it began as the wolf-men faded back into the undergrowth, dragging their dead and wounded with them. Smoke drifted over the crusaders’ camp.

  Arngrim nodded to the lord of Skara. “You were right, my lord.”

  Konraðr squeezed his engineer’s arm and smiled. “Pray you’re not there when I’m wrong, eh?” He ordered the shield wall to break ranks, save for a company of his sworn men, led by their captain, Starkad, who would stand watch around the chapel tent.

  Konraðr had under his command his five hundred household troops, mailed sons of Skara who pledged themselves to their famed lord; their ranks were bolstered by mercenaries from the Danemark and by a band of Norse freebooters eager for gold and salvation. A one-eyed old pirate called Kraki Ragnarsson led the Danes, some four hundred strong, while three-hundred-odd Norsemen followed their Jarl, Thorwald the Red.

  Konraðr sent Thorwald forward with a force of men to hold the bridge; Kraki, meanwhile, he set to tending the wounded and counting the dead, aided by Nikulas’s monks, Brother Marten and Brother Johan. That done, Konraðr turned his attention to the corpse nailed to a cross at the heart of his camp.

  They’d come for the boy. A score of his men had died while half again as many bore wounds, and for what? For a beardless lad? For the supposed love some silly girl who sought to play among men bore for him? And when she could not have him, when she realized he was beyond her grasp, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir had ended Flóki’s life with a crossbow bolt through his right eye.

  “God save me from that sort of love,” Konraðr muttered. But as much as it pained him to admit, he knew Arngrim had been right. The pagan spirits protected their own; if not for these four boys and their foolish plan to divert a crusade ordained by God by burning the bridge, Konraðr doubted that even his scouts could have found a way in to the land of the Raven-Geats. And they would have looked like fools, or worse.

  “Whatever devils this boy knelt to,” Konraðr said to Nikulas as the priest joined him, “they seem set upon keeping the bones of blessed Saint Teodor—and his sword—away from we good followers of Christ.”

  “They will fail,” Nikulas replied. “For how could they not? We have God upon our side.”

  “And God wills it!”

  The soldiers around them took up their lord’s cry: “Deus vult! God wills it!”

  “Cut him down,” Konraðr ordered, turning away. “Leave his heathen carcass for the dogs!”

  “Wait!” Father Nikulas seized Konraðr’s arm in an impassioned grip. The priest stared up at the cross, eyes wide. “Look!” During the affray, the clouds overhead had thinned; now, through rents and tears could be seen the blue vault of heaven. A lance of sunlight stabbed down from the firmament, piercing clouds and smoke to bathe the chapel tent and the cross before it in its golden glow. Wreathed in that light, the body on the cross assumed a sublime beauty—from the fall of his hair over his eyes to the mysterious smile forever frozen upon his lips. In that moment, Nikulas saw the face of the Redeemer. “Witness!” the priest cried. “Bear witness, O soldiers of Christ! We stand at the edge of pagan lands, but God is with us! We have lost companions, this day, but God is with us! And the army that knows God is the army that knows victory!”

  “Victory!” answered the crusaders. “God wills it!”

  Lord Konraðr crossed himself. He watched as Nikulas walked to one of the soldiers and took the man’s spear from him. “After they were come to Jesus,” the priest quoted, “when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers with a spear”—he raised the weapon on high, its head gleaming razor-sharp in the golden light—“opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water.” Nikulas pierced Flóki’s side, and to the wonderment of all, blood and water flowed from the wound.

  Men dropped to their knees. Shouts and cries went up. Some wept openly. “It is a miracle,” Nikulas declared, tossing the spear back to its owner. “In death, this pagan has been shriven by God, himself! The Almighty has absolved him of the sin of unbelief and made his soul Christian! He has given him everlasting life! Bury him, my lord! Bury him as you would bury a revered saint! For he has revealed to us the truth of our struggles this day, and in the coming days: that we are blessed in this task, and we are not alone! Forward, into the land of the wretched pagan! Forward for the power and glory of Christ Almighty! God wills it!” Nikulas stood before the army like a prophet of old, his eyes fiery, his beard a wild tangle of gold in the light that streamed from the heavens.

  “Deus vult!”

  PART TWO

  VÍGRÍÐR

  16

  In the cellar beneath Grimnir’s longhouse, surrounded by walls of rune-cut stone, Halla crouched over a black iron basin filled with steaming water and sought to divine the future. Wrought in the time before recorded history, the basin had come to Miðgarðr when Grimnir’s folk fled from Jötunheimr—but whether as spoils of war or stolen from their master, Gífr never said. The old kaunr had called it the Ey
e of Mimir, and he’d showed her how to harness it in order to catch a glimpse of what was yet to come.

  “Bastard likes to speak in riddles,” he’d said, eyeing the basin as though it were a living thing. “And its answers are as clear as a slag puddle until you come to see it in hindsight. But maybe you have more patience for its bollocks than I.”

  Halla used the Eye sparingly over the centuries, and only when other avenues were exhausted. This night, she had to know; she had to see … “The Grey Wanderer walks abroad,” she breathed, her words rippling the steam. “Show me.”

  She leaned over the Eye of Mimir and peered into its ink-black water. Halla breathed the steam, which was acrid and smelled of smoke, blood, and churned earth—the stenches of the battlefield. The smell of Vígríðr, the blood-plain where gods and giants strove and slew.

  The steam wafting up from the water’s surface coiled and danced, forming images in the air. Fragments of prophecy drawn in oak gall and iron, traceries of black against a fragile tapestry of air. Halla concentrated and saw …

  … eyes of hateful red glaring from stark white fur; from the black fur, eyes as blue and cold as mountain ice. Two wolves pad in circles—one black, one white—hackles raised; slaver drips from bared fangs. Their low growls promise no mercy. From above, Raven watches, head cocked. Its voice is harsh against an empty sky.

  The wolves surge together. Fangs rip; claws rend. Blood drips like rubies, jewels of life staining the snow. Raven watches. They fight, but for what? What is their prize? Is it dominance? Is it territory? Raven knows. Their prize is an illusion, a Lie driven under their skins. It is the Lie that makes them kill. It is the Lie they die for.

  A silhouette watches. It is vaguely man-shaped, but it is no man; it wears the slouch hat and cloak of a wanderer, but it is no wanderer; it is one-eyed, but not Ein-eygdr. Its smile is malice; its laugh, hate. It watches.

  The white wolf kills the black. The black wolf kills the white. Hearts beating, hot blood soaking the earth, they drag themselves toward the Lie. Howling, moaning. The Lie beckons. Raven screams the truth, but they do not hear. Raven takes wing; it tries to stem the red tide of blood as it cools and turns to an avalanche of rubies. Raven gathers them in its talons, secrets them in its feathers and protects them. But the silhouette cannot abide Raven’s interference. With its wooden staff, it drives Raven away. Rubies of blood spill from Raven’s wings to shatter as they strike the earth.

  The ground shakes. The wolves howl their last. The silhouette waits.

  Raven soars into the sun, wheels, and returns for vengeance. Black-winged, razor-beaked, it flies as true as an arrow. It pierces the figure, slicing through muscle and bone to seize its prize: the silhouette of a heart, black and beating. The man that is no man, the God that is no god, laughs, and its laughter is hatred. Its smile is malice. Its heart is doom. The silhouette crumbles like ash.

  Its heart grows. It becomes vast and winged. Raven screams as a monstrous shadow devours the earth …

  Halla shifted, suddenly aware of a tremor running deep under the earth. Dust filtered down from the roof of the cellar; ripples disturbed the surface of the water, breaking the spell cast by the Eye of Mimir. She rocked back on her haunches and waited for the trembling to subside.

  Gífr had spoken the truth: the Eye of Mimir made riddles of the future. She recognized the imagery, or thought she did, of the wolves and the raven … these were spoken of in the prophecy. She’d expected to see the face of the dragon, the destruction of the Nailed God’s world. She hoped to see the fires of Ragnarök kindled and well-burning.

  And the shadows. The silhouette of a figure who was a man but not a man; a god but not a god. This was the Grey Wanderer, she reckoned, though his mortal identity remained a mystery. Lines of concern creased Halla’s ancient brow as she rocked to her feet. Her limbs creaked as she climbed the steps. With each one, she felt as though she was diminishing—becoming a gnarled thing good for nursery tales, that children might take fright at but their parents would dismiss as a figment of feverish imagination.

  Halla stopped at the head of the cellar steps. What if Grimnir was right? What if this feeling meant the prophecy would not change the world in any measurable way and the scourge of the Nailed God could not be stopped? Could she live in a world like that, a world bereft of the mystery and magic of her youth?

  Slowly, she shuffled through the longhouse, her shoulders bowed by the weight of her years. She paid no heed to the trophies of long-forgotten triumphs, to the drifts of coin and weapons taken from dead foes, to Grimnir’s throne or the banked fire in its pit. She shuffled out the door and onto the columned porch, where she stood and stared up at the nighted sky.

  A full moon hung over the earth. Its bright silvery glow dimmed the other lights of heaven. But as Halla peered up at the moon, her breath caught in her throat. There was a shadow on its edge, a reddish tinge. A tremble of anticipation ran through the troll-woman’s hunched frame. “Can it be?”

  A voice, soft and menacing, answered her from the shadows:

  “Sköll bays aloud | after Dvalin’s toy.”

  Halla turned as a figure emerged from the darkness, a twisted silhouette leaning upon a staff of carved yew, cloak-wrapped, a low-brimmed hat drawn over its face. From beneath it, a single eye burned with the fires of Ásgarðr.

  “Will you not offer hospitality to a stranger, daughter of Járnviðja?”

  * * *

  GRIMNIR AROSE FROM THE BENCH where he’d spent the last hours feigning sleep and crept among the warriors of Gautheimr. The hearth-fire was a bed of smoldering embers; by that ruddy glow, he moved soundlessly—though mailed and bearing arms—his body bent low to the ground, his nostrils flaring and snuffling like some beast of old, come to slake an unholy thirst. As he passed, the ground underfoot rumbled, a shudder that trembled through the bones of the earth. He stopped, listening. The men did not waken, but their snores became groans as dreams turned to nightmares of blood and slaughter.

  He scrithed through the benches of the sworn men and down among the sleeping pallets of the Daughters of the Raven. A dozen of them, the eldest of the war-hags, slept fitfully among the men. He ghosted past Auða, who lay curled in a tight ball, and Geira, whose ripping snores echoed like any man’s; he stepped over Thyra, who was Old Hygge’s eldest daughter. Grimnir’s eye gleamed with a feral light, narrowing as he caught sight of the one he was after.

  Sigrún.

  The old wolf-bitch lay on a rug of bear skin, her head pillowed by one lean-muscled arm. A cloak lay draped over her body from shoulder to ankle; unlike the others, she slept fully clothed in a loose tunic of russet wool and cross-gaitered linen trousers the color of cream. A naked sword rested near her blade hand, her fingers barely touching its acorn-shaped pommel. Her shield leaned against the rough wall of the longhouse, and her hauberk was close at hand, ready to snatch up and shimmy into at a moment’s notice.

  Grimnir, however, gave her no such moment.

  Black-nailed fingers clamped over her mouth. The old woman’s eyes flew open; her hand clawed for the hilt of her sword even as she came up off the bear fur. She was nearly upright when Grimnir dealt her a sharp buffet with his forearm, under her left ear. And like that, Sigrún went as limp as a boned fish.

  Grimnir wasted no time. He snatched her up, threw her over his shoulder like a manikin made of twine and dry wood, and darted out the door of the longhouse. Nor did he pause there. Like a drifting shadow, he spirited her from Hrafnhaugr through the postern gate. He loped down the forested trail to the dock, skirted past it, and followed the rocky shore until they came abreast of the Skærvík mouth of the Scar—the moat-like ravine that cut the peninsula of Hrafnhaugr off from the mainland.

  Here, Grimnir slung Sigrún to the ground. The moon overhead, as full and fat as a spring lamb, sported a bloody edge as a shadow slipped over it. The Wolf, Grimnir reckoned, devouring Mani, goddess of the Moon. That meant a turning of the glass—a last trickle of sand before the wo
rld shook and oceans boiled and the herald of Ragnarök emerged from its death-like slumber, or so the doggerel ran. Grimnir snarled at the harbinger of destruction and drew his seax.

  It was not the same blade as the one Skríkja had given him, in the days of Bálegyr’s reign over the North; the blade he’d carried on his murderous quest to avenge himself on Bjarki Half-Dane, though it was close. He had reforged it himself; its core was that ancient blade, hammered by Kjallandi from the heart of a star that had fallen on the dwarf-realm of Niðavellir. Grimnir had added steel to it, dusted it with ground scales from the wyrm’s own hide—fetched from the ruin of Orkahaugr over a hundred years before—and woven into it spells of destruction. “Hatr,” he said. “Hate is your name.”

  “What?” The old shieldmaiden at his feet groaned from where she had fetched up against a damp and moss-grown boulder. She struggled to rise, but then satisfied herself by dragging her body into a sitting position. The light of the darkening moon touched with ruddy fire her gray locks, and they fell over her scarred face as she fixed Grimnir with a deadly glare. “By what right—” she started to say, but Grimnir cut her off with a sharp bark of laughter. He crouched just out of reach, an eerie figure in his horned headdress and wolf-skull mask. His good eye gleamed like an ember in the murk.

  “By what right?” he mocked her. “Useless hag! I have been a raider, a throat-slitter, aye, and a slayer of men; I have terrorized a dozen lands, given birth to a score of wretched folk tales, and killed hundreds of your so-called heroes who’d come looking for vengeance, for glory, or just for a storied death. You dogs used to whisper my name for fear that saying it aloud might summon me, and not a bastard among you would dare question my right as your lord.” With one black-nailed hand, Grimnir stripped off his headdress and mask. Sweat-heavy hair fell like a veil across his cheeks; he tossed his head back, bone and silver fetishes ticking together. To her credit, the old shieldmaiden did not blench at the sight of him. Grimnir leaned to one side and spat. “You do not scream and call me out as a monster?”