Twilight of the Gods

by Scott Oden

  Sigrún wiped her hands on the thighs of her trousers. Abraded palms left swatches of blood behind. The old woman winced. “You are the Tangled God’s herald. You carried the serpent banner of Angrboða in Jötunheimr, or so the legend goes. When the lords of Ásgarðr came against the children of Father Loki—mighty Fenrir, the world-encircling serpent Jörmungandr, and blessed Hel—they say it was you, lord, who led the Tangled God’s armies into battle. Why should I think you’d be a blond-haired and blue-eyed son of Miðgarðr?”

  Grimnir nodded, wiping his nose on his forearm and grunting to hide his sudden fit of humor. None of what she’d said was true, but he did not gainsay her. Let them reckon him older than Gífr if it kept them in line. “Those days are long gone, aren’t they?” he said, after a moment. “What am I now, but a wretched shepherd, keeping a flock of prattling fools safe from the Nailed God’s folk? Well, it’s high time you lot remember that you live on at my pleasure! And my pleasure, now, is answers!”

  “Answers to what? Why bring me out here if all you want are answers?”

  “You recognize this place?”

  Sigrún’s eyes shifted from side to side. “It’s where we found Kolgríma’s body. She’d slipped and fell, yonder.” The old woman indicated a place near the edge of the turgid water, slick with greenish moss.

  “Oh, aye. Slipped and fell, is it?” Grimnir’s lip curled in contempt. “You did her in, didn’t you, you sly wretch?”

  “Why would I do that? She was like a sister to me!”

  “And so? Dagrún was your daughter, but that didn’t stop you from sticking a knife in her gizzard, did it?”

  Color drained from Sigrún’s face.

  “Yes,” Grimnir hissed. “I already know about that little bit of wickedness. And I know it was Kolgríma who helped you get rid of the body. Is that why you dropped her over the edge of the Scar? To tie up your loose ends? Nár! You know it, and I know it, so don’t try to play the fool and deny it!” But she did. Even as Sigrún opened her mouth to frame her innocence, Grimnir’s seax flicked out. The razor-edged tip of the blade sliced through the thin cartilage of her left nostril. Sigrún hissed and flinched away, clutching at the side of her nose as blood dribbled over her lips and down her chin. “Hatr can taste your lies, hag,” he said. “Think hard, ere you speak again. Think hard, for every lie you spool will cost you, and Hatr means to take its payment in blood.”

  Sigrún’s chin jutted in defiance. “Aye, I killed Dagrún … that idiot wanted your head, and the glory that went along with it! She’d listened to one too many of Kolgríma’s drunken yarns. I did what I had to do, back then, to keep the peace—but I did not kill Kolgríma! Why would I? What do I care if that useless sack of bones Dagrún whelped finds out what happened to her mother? You may have trained Dísa to cut throats, but I raised her! I know her limits better than you, lord!”

  “Think you can take her, eh?”

  “That you think I can’t insults me,” Sigrún said, rage thick in her voice.

  “We’ll see.” Grimnir rocked back on his haunches. “So, if you didn’t do her in, what in Hel’s name was Kolgríma doing out here, at night?”

  “Was she not skulking about on some errand for you? By her spoor, Bjorn Svarti thought she was looking for something.”

  Grimnir rose to his feet and slunk to the edge of the ravine. He moved in a low crouch, his head in motion as he swept the ground with his good eye, and stopping from time to time to snuffle at the stones and the moss. There was a sharp current in the water of the lake, here; wavelets splashed against half-submerged boulders and a breeze whistled between the sheer walls of the Scar. Grimnir straightened, a curse forming on his lips. He was about to admit defeat when he caught a ghostly scent, a whiff of something like iron boiled in brine—the Nailed God’s stench.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the old shieldmaiden, who had clambered to her feet. She watched him with curious intensity. “I brought you out here, away from those other swine, expecting to smell the Nailed God’s reek on you, but all that sweats from your cursed pores is hatred. Hatred, and now…” Grimnir inhaled. “And now, fear. What are you afraid of, eh?” He gave her an opening to speak, but Sigrún remained silent. “Afraid I’d find this?”

  Grimnir crept close to the wall of the ravine. He took a deep, snuffling breath; by the dim ruddy light of the eclipsing moon, he noticed a rock out of place, its edges scraped clean. He clawed at it, and it fell out easily. Grimnir cursed and flinched away from the reek rising from the niche; covering his nose and mouth with his forearm, he speared something inside it with his seax and dragged it out into the open. Burlap ripped; a thing both bright and metallic clattered to the stony floor of the ravine.

  It was a standing crucifix.

  Grimnir snarled and spat. He turned his head to glare at Sigrún. “Yours?” he growled.

  The old woman gave a long, pent-up sigh before shaking her head. “She was curious about it, she said. Curious how something like that could have conquered the world. She was curious about its power.”

  “Who?”

  “Kolgríma,” Sigrún replied.

  Grimnir exploded. Two swift steps brought him face-to-face with the old shieldmaiden; he snatched her up in one black-nailed fist, spun, and slammed her against the wall of the ravine. “You wretched hag!” Spittle flew from his lips. “Kolgríma? Kolgríma was no blasted hymn-singer! I would have known!”

  Sigrún clawed at his arm. She coughed. “S-She was curious, I said! She kept it hidden away.”

  “How’d you find out about it?”

  “She was like a sister to me. Kolgríma wanted someone to confide in. Someone close…”

  “So she told you she was flirting at the edges of the Nailed God’s creed?” Grimnir scoffed. He turned Sigrún loose; the old woman slumped against the ravine wall, rubbing her throat. “And, what? You killed her?”

  “What if I did?” Sigrún glared at him. “You’re an ungrateful bastard, do you know this? Kolgríma—aye, precious Kolgríma!—wanted to send an envoy off to the King of the Swedes! Did you know that? She wanted him to send a priest by boat, so you’d be none the wiser! She said there was change on the wind! The days of hiding would soon be over, and we’d best prepare. And the best thing we could do, she said … was kneel before the Nailed God!”

  Grimnir said nothing for a moment. He stared hard at the crucifix—an altar piece as long as his forearm and wrought of heavy gold, the Nailed God’s pain-racked image taunting him. Then, with a sulphurous oath, he snagged it on the point of his seax and flung it out into the dark waters of Skærvík. “Who else knows?” he said, after the splashing echo died away.

  “No one. I made sure of it.” Sigrún stooped and picked up Grimnir’s headdress and mask. These, she held out to him.

  He raised an eyebrow, chuckled darkly. “A bastard, I may be,” he said, taking the items from her. “But I am not ungrateful. And Kolgríma, that hymn-singing old bat, she wasn’t wrong.” He gestured into the night sky with his chin, gestured at the blood-tinged moon. “The end comes. Sit, and let me tell you a tale…”

  * * *

  DÍSA CRIED IN HER SLEEP, dreaming of Flóki, until the trembling of the earth woke her. She opened her eyes, instantly alert, and listened as the vibrations faded away. She took it for what it surely was—a harbinger, an omen of the strife-filled days ahead, when the earth would split and disgorge the bones of Niðhöggr. Around her, the men of Úlfrún’s war band did not stir. They slept where they dropped, wrapped in their cloaks, pressed together for warmth. Their snores came like a chorus of ripping cloth. None of them seemed to notice the reverberations deep in the bones of the earth, the rousing of a giant.

  Quietly, Dísa came to her feet. She wiped her eyes. Something else disturbed her, something she could not put her finger on. She walked the perimeter of their makeshift camp, creeping past bleary-eyed sentries, as noiseless as the wind. The army of that wretched hymn-singer, Konraðr the White, was half a day and
more behind them. At Dísa’s urging, they made for Hrafnhaugr with all haste. “My people need time,” she’d said to Úlfrún. “Time to gather provisions and reinforce the walls. Time to come to grips with a battle on their doorstep.” And Úlfrún had agreed, though her men were not happy with her decision. They wanted to strike at Konraðr’s column, make them pay for every inch of their advance in blood. Forne even suggested they send Dísa on alone.

  “No,” Úlfrún had said. “She will need our presence to convince her people this threat is real.” Nor did she want to split her forces. The old wolf-warrior had cursed and stormed off, but he did as his Jarl commanded.

  Dísa came to a small glade, a tear in the forest canopy caused by a felled tree. Its rotting trunk lay at the center, surrounded by weeds and bramble. The girl was surprised to see Úlfrún sitting on that fallen log. The older woman stared at the heavens, her face bathed in the light of the full moon.

  Dísa came and sat beside her.

  “You felt it?” Úlfrún said.

  Dísa nodded. “It was Jörmungandr, the Miðgarðr Serpent, wasn’t it?”

  “It smells blood and strife, and it stirs,” Úlfrún replied. “It is almost time.”

  “How can you know?” Dísa said. She followed Úlfrún’s gaze and saw the ominous red shadows staining the moon’s bright face. Úlfrún closed her eyes. She wore a look of soul-weary exhaustion as she massaged the stump of her missing hand.

  “It is almost at an end.”

  Dísa looked from the moon to the silver-edged glade. She noted how the trees strained skyward, their limbs washed in moonlight; they were like the suppliants of a merciful goddess. She heard the hum of their roots, and felt their anticipation rising through the soil. They were eager for … what? For destruction? But their hum was not bloodthirsty, nor did she sense hatred behind their anticipation. Like an oak shedding its leaves, they were ready for the world to shed its blight, and for a new world to rise in its place.

  “How long do we have?”

  When Úlfrún did not answer, Dísa looked to the older woman—poised to repeat the question—and saw she’d leaned back against a thick branch. Her good hand still clutched the stump of the other, but now there was a beatific smile on her face that smoothed the lines of concern from her brow and lent her the aspect of youth. Dísa remained by her side and watched over the older woman as she slept.

  * * *

  “NINE TIMES NINE,” KONRAÐR MUTTERED.

  Sweat dripped from the lord of Skara’s brow; his pale skin was splotched and ruddy, and his reddish eyes glassy as the recurring fever dug its talons into him. He reeled from his pavilion on unsteady legs, barefoot, sword in hand, clad only in breeches and a tunic. Outside, the guard snapped to attention. Konraðr waved him off as he went out into the night, shivering, his eyes wildly searching the heavens. For a moment, the warrior, one of his sworn men, made to follow, alarmed by his lord’s behavior; instead, he hurried to the chapel tent, where he hoped to find Father Nikulas.

  “Times nine again,” Konraðr said, his breath steaming. “Nine times nine times nine again.” He staggered down the line of tents where his men slept. Most were too exhausted to notice the faint trembling of the earth much less their lord’s fevered rambling. The army had stopped half a day’s march from the bridge and set up camp in column—a great snake of weary men, small fires, and hastily erected tents. Some of the soldiers simply crawled into tree boles or bedded down in small groups, sharing blankets and cloaks for warmth. Sentries walked the perimeter between well-stoked fires, whose feeble light was barely enough to illuminate the wall of trees hemming them in.

  Arngrim’s men formed the vanguard, all experienced woodsmen who picked up the faint trail left by their attackers. But for that they would have been traveling blind, lost in the heart of Raven-Geat territory.

  “What is nine?” Konraðr hissed. He was delirious with fever. “Why nine?” He moved up the column toward the head of the snake. A few men watched him pass; one, an older soldier who’d served with Konraðr at Constantinople, nodded for his young tent-mate to go and fetch Arngrim.

  The lord of Skara came to a break in the forest. Through naked branches of oak, ash, and elm; through the green arms of spruce and fir and giant pine, moonlight lanced from the heavens and turned the remaining crusts of snow to drifts of silver and ivory.

  Here, his ghosts gathered. Pale wraiths in tattered rags still wet with the blood of their deaths. They called for Konraðr to join them. They looked up at the moon, shining above them, its light lending their siege-wasted bodies some semblance of life. A child-soldier, a boy of twelve who had died under Konraðr’s blade when they breached the walls of Constantinople, laughed and clapped.

  Konraðr wanted to shake him. “Boy, what is nine times nine times nine again? What does nine mean?”

  The boy pointed to the moon, to the ruddy shadow consuming its bright face and turning silver to blood. When the boy spoke, his voice was legion—male, female, old and young:

  “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.”

  Konraðr swayed and fell to his knees. “Yes. Yes:

  “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.”

  This was how Father Nikulas found him: kneeling, shivering, muttering out of his head as the fever racked his thin frame. The bearded priest turned as Arngrim joined him. The rawboned engineer had a blanket in his fists.

  “What happened to him, Father?”

  “God tests him,” Nikulas replied. “Tests his resolve with fevers and madness and apparitions from his days in the East.”

  “Will the bones of the blessed saint cure him of this affliction?”

  The priest shrugged. “Perhaps. Come, help me. Let’s get him back to his tent.”

  Arngrim started forward, and then stopped. “Father,” he hissed, looking up through the interlaced branches. Nikulas followed his gaze. The priest crossed himself. In the night sky, they watched as a sinister shadow consumed the moon, like the jaws of a wolf closing on its prey.

  “Do not look at it,” Nikulas said. He grasped Konraðr’s arm and helped the lord of Skara to his feet. “It is the Devil’s moon. The great Adversary wants us to fail.” Arngrim averted his eyes and looked, instead, at his lord. He wrapped the blanket around Konraðr’s trembling shoulders.

  “Nine times nine times nine again,” he muttered, clutching Arngrim’s forearm. “What is it?”

  “Nine times nine times nine again?” Arngrim met Konraðr’s ruddy gaze, his eyes the same hue as the blood moon. “That’s seven hundred and twenty-nine, my lord.”

  “Wrong,” Konraðr replied, pointing at the eclipsed moon. “It’s now.”

  * * *

  HALLA HEATED WINE AND SPICES in a copper pot, then poured the steaming concoction into a pair of horn cups. She handed one to the cloaked stranger, who sat now by the door of the longhouse. His good eye flitted over the treasures and trophies scattered haphazardly around the room; his gaze lingered over Grimnir’s throne. Halla thought she saw a gleam of contempt.

  The troll-woman sat in her accustomed place. She drank sparingly, listening as the stranger regaled her with news from faraway lands, fulfilling the customs of hospitality that called for the guest to help pass a cold winter’s night by being congenial company. He told of the defeat of the German crusaders at Otepää in Estonia, and their subsequent call for help; he spoke of a great arming by the followers of the White Christ in the south, who were intent on recapturing the lands called Outremer. “I do not understand their ways,” the stranger said, shaking his head. “They will journey halfway around the world to die on a barren rock be
cause their Nailed God might have trod upon it, but they refuse to help a broken man at their feet.”

  Halla nodded. “The world is nothing like I remember it.”

  “Aye, the trackless forest,” the stranger replied, his eye gleaming. “Myrkviðr, the Dark-wood, stretching from dawn to dusk. I remember well that world. It is lost now, and forgotten by all save you and I.” For an hour and more, the stranger and Halla traded stories, remembrances of the songs of the trees, of the laughing spirits, and of dark deeds done by moonless night when the sons of Man dared trespass under the emerald boughs of Myrkviðr.

  Finally, after three cups of wine, the stranger lapsed into silence. Time passed without any accounting, then: “Do you know me, daughter of Járnviðja?” he said, placing his empty cup beside him.

  “I’ve had word of your coming, and I know the guise you wear,” Halla replied. “The Grey Wanderer; the Raven-God; Lord of the Gallows; the shield-worshipped kinsman of the Æsir. Your names are without number. But I also know that the guise you wear, those names … they are not your own. They were chosen for you.”

  “You think me some puppet, then? Some wretched niðingr?”

  “We are all puppets, in some way.” Halla, too, put her cup aside. “We dance and caper about this stage, playing out the roles we’ve been given for the grim amusement of the Gods. Playing until they see fit to cut our strings. Then, we are puppets no longer. I have watched many such plays unfold, stranger, but I am not familiar with yours.”