Twilight of the Gods

by Scott Oden

  “Son of a bitch!” she said, seeing a wall of mailed Crusaders pouring in behind him. Cursing, she turned and bellowed: “Herroðr! Sound the withdrawal!”

  And Herroðr, blood-blasted and wild-eyed, raised a brazen horn to his lips and loosed a series of notes. Even so, it was to no avail. Iron men bearing cross-festooned shields and naked swords crashed into the rear of Forne’s formation. Half a dozen of his lads went down in that first clash, taking twice their number of Christians with them. She heard Forne roaring for the rest of them to scatter, echoing her order to withdraw.

  “Jarl!” Herroðr shouted. He gestured toward the third mangonel, its ropes cut but its frame not yet burning. She saw a small band of men rushing in to save the blasted machine. A small-statured Dane led them; he shouted orders, calling for a defensive cordon even as he bid men fetch water to douse the flames. He had the bearing of an engineer. Úlfrún wanted his head. She motioned for Herroðr to follow her and set off toward the little Dane at a loping run.

  The diminutive engineer shaded his eyes against the harsh flames …

  … And saw her bearing down on him, flanked by a handful of wolf-brothers.

  The little man had time to give a bleat of fear before Úlfrún of the Iron Hand crashed into him. He stumbled back, half-drew a seax from his belt. Úlfrún’s axe took him high, in the juncture of his shoulder and neck. Its blade cut sidewise, through muscle and tendon, bone and cartilage; blood fountained. The man gurgled, blowing froth from pierced lungs and a severed windpipe as he fell. Úlfrún wrenched her axe free of his corpse.

  “Back!” she called out. “Back to the boats! Herroðr, your horn! Sound the withdrawal again!” Úlfrún skirted the burning mangonels, retracing her path back to the crest of the hill where their attack began. There, she did a quick head-count. Three of her lads were dead, their bodies in tow; ten of the seventeen remaining bore wounds, though none severe. Nodding, she started for the boats when Herroðr gave a cry of alarm.

  Úlfrún turned.

  Scores of Crusaders converged on their position; hundreds more were streaming in from every corner of the camp, archers among them. She saw Danes mixing with Swedes, dour Norsemen among them. They had the foundations of a shield wall—one supported on its flanks by agile bowmen. And she saw they were herding Forne before them. Herroðr would have descended into their midst, once again, to die alongside the chief of her wolf-brothers had Úlfrún not stopped him with a sharp word.

  Forne staggered and pitched forward onto his knees. He struggled to rise, but Úlfrún could see he’d taken several wounds to the body. He left a trail of blood behind him. From the enemy ranks, a giant, red-bearded Norseman, spear in hand, stepped out and strode up to Forne. He kicked him in the back with one booted foot, sending him face-first onto the ground. The Norseman reached down and stripped the wolf-headed cloak from Forne’s shoulders. He gestured up the rise with his spear; Forne craned his neck, saw Úlfrún. The Norseman muttered something none of them could hear; a question, perhaps, for Forne nodded in answer. He clambered to his knees. The Norseman stepped away from him and gestured. Forne glanced over his shoulder, his gray-flecked beard bloody. The man gestured again, impatient. Forne nodded.

  Suddenly, he threw his head back. From his blade-pierced body came a titanic cry: “ODIN!”

  And on the rise above the Crusader camp, Úlfrún and her remaining wolves took up their brother’s howl: “ODIN!”

  Scowling like a man who’d been duped, the Norseman stepped in and rammed his spear in between Forne’s shoulder blades. The old úlfhéðinn gave a choking cry that turned to a death rattle as the Norseman twisted the blade of his spear and wrenched it free.

  Silence descended on the Crusader camp, save for the crackle of flames as they consumed two of the mangonels. Úlfrún stepped out from among her men. She pointed at the Norseman with her axe. “Your name, dog!”

  The Norseman shook droplets of blood from his gory spear blade. “Thorwald the Red, I am called!”

  “A dead man, I name you, Thorwald the Red!” Úlfrún roared. “I am Úlfrún of the Iron Hand, and by Odin, I swear I will kill you!”

  “I know you, bitch of the north!” Thorwald laughed and raised his spear aloft. “And by God, I swear you can try! Hrænðr has a taste for pagan blood!”

  Úlfrún felt a challenge building in her chest. Her lips writhed, eager to give it a voice. A red haze, a killing lust, danced before her eyes. She wanted to see this Thorwald dead at her feet. She wanted to taste his blood. But it was Herroðr who brought her back to the moment. Crusaders were hemming them in. He plucked at her sleeve. “We must go, Jarl, or we die here with him!”

  Úlfrún nodded. And like the wolves that were their namesakes, she and her folk backed away, their eyes blazing in wrath as they vanished in the drifting smoke.

  * * *

  FATHER NIKULAS CROUCHED BESIDE THE supine form of his lord. Konraðr lay on his cot, naked to the waist and bathed in sweat. His limbs trembled as though from great exertion, and his heart thudded against its cage of bone. The priest shook his head—both at the scars tracing the flesh of Konraðr’s torso and at the sheer futility of his disease. Was it, as Thorwald suggested, a God-sent curse, or was it merely the lingering effect of bearing so many wounds to body and soul?

  Nikulas bathed Konraðr’s brow with a cool compress. “O Lord, rebuke him not in thy indignation,” the priest quoted, “nor chastise him in thy wrath. Have mercy on him, O Lord, for he is weak: heal him, O Lord, for his bones are troubled. And his soul is troubled exceedingly: but thou, O Lord, how long? Turn to him, O Lord, and deliver his soul: O save him for thy mercy’s sake.”

  Konraðr’s lips trembled; under pale lids, his ruddy eyes darted to and fro. He muttered something. Nikulas leaned closer, straining to hear. Slowly, he could make out the words the lord of Skara chanted, almost like a mantra:

  “G-God … wills it.”

  “God wills it!” the man booms, his sword slicing open a blasphemer’s throat. He hurls the corpse aside and turns. A woman sits astride the patriarch’s seat—red-lipped and lascivious, her stolen cassock slit up the sides to just under her breasts, leaving nothing to the imagination. She gyrates and grinds as if the seat is her lover’s lap, beckoning to him with one crimson-tipped finger, imagining herself as the hard-fought prize he has come to claim.

  “Harlot of Babylon!” he roars. Three strides bring him to the top of the dais; grunting, he strikes the woman’s head from her shoulders. And suddenly, rather than a cacophony of voices there is only one. He turns, wipes the blood from his eyes, and beholds a carpet of bodies. He staggers against the patriarch’s seat, but dares not sit in it.

  He looks closer at the faces of the dead, expecting to see the coarse and unshaven visages of the soldiers he’s killed. But there is a child—a boy of eleven, split open like a ripe fruit—and he recognizes those lifeless brown eyes. He’d killed him years before, while breaching the walls of Constantinople. And there, sprawled amid the sea of flesh, was another familiar face—the woman he’d slain, the slave of a wealthy Greek, in the vestibule of her master’s home while the killing fever was upon him.

  All the faces, they look familiar. He knows them. From the young soldier killed in vicious street fighting around the Blachernae Palace, to the children, a boy and a girl, who died under his blade when they would not give up their family’s horse.

  “Wh-what have I done?”

  The specter at his shoulder chuckles, a sound like stones falling into his grave. “You’ve freed yourself,” he snarls. “But there is one more.”

  From the grim shadow steps an old man, a one-eyed Varangian—half Greek and half Norse. He shuffles forward, his hands slick with blood from a belly wound. He looks around, his pale blue eyes watery with terror. He mutters something in Greek.

  “Kill him, my precious fool,” the specter whispers, its voice now silky and as soft as a lover’s. “Come, kill him and be done.”

  “No!” The sword clatters
from the man’s hand as he rushes to the old Varangian’s side. “Begone, devil! Trouble this place no longer! This is a house of God!”

  “You milk-blooded little hypocrite,” the specter says. “Oh, aye, it’s a house of your foolish god when it serves your purpose. But what was it before, when you were slaughtering these innocents, eh? Was it a house of your so-called god, then?” The shadow-thing makes a derisive sound. “I will do you a favor, rat, though you ask none of me.” Hands like smoky talons reach out and seize the old man by the throat. The remaining voice howls in rage. He feels the earth tremble, as though a jötunn were stamping its foot in indignation. He cannot move; he can only watch as the shadow-thing throttles the old man … or, is it an old man? Its form wavers; for half a heartbeat, he sees an ancient and wizened thing hanging from those talons, one-eyed and pale, spitting in rage. Then, with a wrench, the thing’s neck bones crack and suddenly the shadow is holding an old man in its claws, dead.

  “You held troth with your ghosts,” the specter says, “and they with you. But those weren’t yours, worm. Go and fight that wretched kinsman of mine, if you must. But know it’ll be a fair fight from here on out. I have done you a favor, though I doubt you’ll live long enough to appreciate it. I have seen the warp and weft of Fate, my precious little fool. Death is coming.”

  “Death comes for us all,” the man replies. He lunges for his sword; grasping the hilt, he rises and whirls, ready to impale the shadow-thing on a yard of bright steel. But he is alone beneath the scorched dome of the Hagia Sophia—not even his ghosts stir the smoky air.

  He hears harsh laughter, a voice fading: “Not all of us, little fool.”

  * * *

  THE CRUSADERS LET THE TWO mangonels burn; around the third, Thorwald threw up a protective cordon of soldiers. Other fires he ordered extinguished, while woodsmen tracked the intruders’ retreat to the lake shore.

  “Two boats,” he told Nikulas. “Maybe forty men, and that she-Wolf of the north.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Úlfrún of the Iron Hand,” Thorwald replied. “I’ve come across her handiwork before. The king of Norway has a price on her head large enough to outfit a flotilla of ships. How is he?” The Norseman nodded to where Konraðr lay.

  “He sleeps soundly now.” The priest wiped his hands on a dry cloth. “He will mourn Pétr. We all will. This campaign has cost us much blood, especially the blood of friends.”

  “But it will be worth it, will it not? To retrieve the martyr’s bones and bring his Christ-blessed sword into the light of God once more…”

  “You sound like a priest, my friend,” Nikulas said. “Yes, all this loss serves a cause greater than any one man. Any ten men. We will persevere until we remove this heathen blight from our blessed lands, and restore our relics to their rightful place. Are your men in position?”

  Thorwald nodded. “They are ready.”

  “Give the order, then, and tell them God watches over them. Let the Heathen think we’ve gone quiet, that we’re licking our wounds. At dawn, we will raise the bridge and bring the fight to them!”

  “The Danes go first, as we agreed,” Thorwald said, nodding to Horsten. “But that northern bitch is mine!”

  “Agreed.” Nikulas made the sign of the Cross. “God wills it!”

  “God wills it!” the Crusaders answered.

  * * *

  DEEP BENEATH THE EARTH, THE coils of Jörmungandr, the World Serpent, twisted and writhed. The ground around Lake Vänern shuddered … and fell silent.

  PART THREE

  RAGNARÖK

  23

  Dísa woke with the stirring of the earth. She imagined the thing from the Raven Stone looming over her, its limbs made of blood and bowel, its eyes alight with the fires of hate. The young woman started, half drew her seax.

  But the shadow was merely that—a shadow, cast by the crackling fire burning on the hearth. It was the shadow of a Raven-Geat who sat near it, tending the fire in silence. Dísa knew it was the cold gloom before sunrise; she sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and surveyed the grim reality of Gautheimr. Women and children slept, or tried to; men with blood-splotched bandages coughed and groaned. She heard a soft mewling coming from a small form near her. She recognized Bryngerðr, the youngest of the Daughters of the Raven. The girl lay wrapped in a fur, her face pale and sweating. Dísa knew she was deep in the grips of a nightmare.

  Suddenly, the child bolted upright, eyes wide and glassy with terror. A scream formed on Bryngerðr’s lips, but Dísa caught it ere she could give it a voice. “It’s all right,” Dísa whispered.

  Bryngerðr gasped for breath and swallowed. Her eyes found Dísa’s; the younger girl had seen too many deaths. Her father had died in the retreat to the postern gate; her mother, a day ago—slain by a splinter of wood that pierced her like a thrown javelin. Bryngerðr had no one left to hide behind, no one left to protect her. No one but Dísa.

  “It’s all right,” she said again, stroking the younger girl’s heavy, sweat-matted hair.

  “I … I couldn’t run,” Bryngerðr whispered. “I couldn’t g-get away from it. The thing in the water … it kept tearing pieces of me off and swallowing them. It wanted b-blood.” She raised her eyes and met Dísa’s concerned gaze. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?”

  “Not today,” Dísa replied. “Go back to sleep.”

  “All I see are fire and death,” the girl mumbled. Her eyes were heavy. She’d remember this as part of her dream, Dísa reckoned. “Fire and death.” Bryngerðr’s voice trailed off. Soon, she was sleeping again—more soundly than before.

  “You’re not going to die here,” Dísa said. Rising, she first sought out Grimnir. Him, she found sprawled across the high seat of Gautheimr, snores ripping from his open mouth. The witch-work the night before had drained him. It forced him to seek sleep. And sleep, as she understood it, was an enemy of his people. Something about their blood. She left him undisturbed.

  I will do this on my own.

  Dísa looked around once more, seeking a familiar face. She knelt beside the man by the fire and asked a quick question. The fellow motioned outside. Dísa nodded; rising, she crossed Gautheimr and slipped out the door.

  Dawn was not far off. Overnight, a mist had rolled in from the lake, lending the ruins of Hrafnhaugr an unreal quality, pearlescent and damp. She found the man she sought under the eaves of Gautheimr. Old Hygge sat by himself, his son’s cloak draped over his thin shoulders. He looked like an effigy of a man carved from sacred ash wood: long-bearded, knotty; his wrinkled brown skin showed scars and tattoos in equal number. The only sign that he was himself alive was the plume of smoke he exhaled around the stem of his pipe. Dísa smelled a familiar blend of herbs, a scent that reminded her of home. Her own father had learned to smoke at Old Hygge’s knee.

  He glanced up at her, his ancient eyes a watery blue.

  Dísa nodded to him. She made no preamble, offered no small talk: “I want to send the children, the women, and the worst of the wounded off, someplace safe. Can you take them across Skærvík and show them the way to the Hooded One’s longhouse?”

  Old Hygge made no reply. He looked at her a moment longer before his eyes wandered away from her face and fixed on the empty, mist-bound air over her shoulder. She wondered, then if this had not been a mistake, if the death of his son had not left his mind in tatters. Finally, though, the old sailor nodded.

  Dísa mirrored the gesture. “Within the hour. I’ll get them up and ready.” She made to turn, but stopped when Old Hygge’s hand snaked out to take hers. It was papery and thin, his grip; his skin as coarse as sand.

  Around the stem of his pipe, he spoke in a voice gone soft with age: “Your mother would be proud of you, girl.”

  Dísa smiled. “I’ve known you all my life,” she said, gripping his hand all the more tightly, “and I’ve never heard you speak.”

  “I’ve never had anything to say.”

  “Until now?”

&n
bsp; “Until it was something you needed to hear,” he replied. “My boy will tell her, when he sees her at the doors to Sessrúmnir, Lady Freyja’s hall, or in the fields of Fólkvangr. He will tell her what you’ve become. And she will be filled with pride.”

  Dísa felt Grief’s fist clench around her heart. A sob caught in her throat. She nodded again, and wiped at her eyes with the heel of one hand. “I miss her.”

  “We will see them, soon.” Old Hygge gave her hand one last squeeze, and then he released her. He sank back into himself, his hoary head wreathed in pipe smoke as he recalled glories long past …

  * * *

  GRIMNIR WOKE TO THE CLAMOR of women and children. He pried his good eye open and glared at the folk jamming the doors to the longhouse. They’d packed their lives into baskets and bundles, into their mothers’ keepsake chests and their fathers’ trade-panniers. Everything they salvaged from the lower terrace and brought here for safekeeping they now carried out the doors of Gautheimr and into the misty morning.

  “Where the devil are you lot going?” Grimnir croaked. He pushed himself upright on the Jarl’s seat, stretched the kinks from his shoulders, and stood. “I said where are you swine going?”

  It was Dísa who answered. “I’m sending them someplace safe,” she said, coming up on his blind side. She bore a goblet of wine and a joint of roasted goat. He swiveled his head and fixed her with a milk-curdling stare. She continued unshaken. “The children, the older folk, the women who do not fight, and the wounded. Old Hygge is lashing three boats together to get them across Skærvík.”

  “What’s safe yonder?” he asked as Dísa handed him the goblet of wine. He tossed it back and accepted the joint of goat, attacking it with unfeigned gusto. “More wine,” he said around a mouthful of goat meat. “What’s safe across Skærvík, I said?”