Scourged

by Kevin Hearne

  The Lewis Range of the Rocky Mountains, which runs north and south over the border between Montana and Alberta, had a portal open up a wee while ago and temperatures in the region began dropping all out of proportion to what could be called normal. On the Montana side it’s part of Glacier National Park, which I’ve heard tell of before. Mostly I’ve heard that it used to contain glaciers, but in the last century they’ve melted away like Popsicles in an oven.

  Once I shift to the area, I ask the elemental what’s the problem.

  //Unknown / Source of cold to the north / Find and report//

  All right, reconnaissance is easy enough. But I’m feeling the chill already—it’s cold enough for me nipples to be used as diamond saws. It’s still dark here and I cast night vision to see better, but even with the elevation and time of day, it shouldn’t be quite so cold. With a sigh of resignation, I strip off the clothes I just put on and bind me shape to a red kite, taking wing into the freezing air. Curiously, once I get a few hundred feet above the mountaintops, the air actually gets warmer. Not balmy by any means—it’s still fecking cold—but there’s a noticeable difference, and it’s not the natural sort. Normally ye get colder, not warmer, as ye climb higher.

  I point meself north and am awestruck by what I see: These Rocky Mountains are beautiful, even in the frigid blue tones of night. I never saw the like before; the Bavarian Alps were fine, make no mistake, but I didn’t get to admire them from above. I surely never got to see such things in Ireland or on me few trips to the European continent in the old days. I saw some grand cliffs and some fantastic hills, but nothing like these mountains. I could see a Druid falling in love with land like this.

  The air gets even warmer as I head north, and eventually I’m able to see why: There’s a pack of frost giants on the mountains, actively sucking the cold out of the air and leaving only heat behind, bizarrely creating something close to a thermal updraft. And they’re taking all that cold and moisture and making themselves a bit of a shelter out of ice. They have a lot of bags and parcels scattered around them, and one of them is using a shovel to dig a fire pit—though maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part. I sure could go for a cozy fire.

  Watching actual ice and snow crystallize from their outstretched hands to form frozen walls is what identifies them; otherwise I would have thought them nothing more than tall lads with powder blue skin, maybe some kind of Fae. But what are frost giants from the Norse stories doing here? The portal that brought them, at least, seems to have closed—but who opened it?

  I begin to circle them, counting on the night and the tendency of people not to look up to keep me concealed, and work through what I know.

  The original stories of Ragnarok suggested it was to begin with years of cold, to soften up the human plane—Midgard, they call it—and make it ripe for conquering. Perhaps that’s still a part of the plan, except they’re going to try it on a different continent. Maybe Loki figures once he gets the other hemisphere under control, this one will fall easily later on if it’s frozen out just as spring begins. North America will lose a growing season, and suddenly you’ll have famine conditions in the land of plenty. Weak folks put up a weak fight.

  Maybe that’s it. But they don’t look like they are any sort of military force. They have a couple of wee ones with them. Giant kids. These are families.

  Bright movement in the sky attracts me gaze eastward. There are streaks of orange in the dark, like a meteor shower passing by so close ye should be screaming, and while many of them pass high overhead in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, heading to points west, methinks some will be landing nearby.

  One of them indeed plows into the ground short of our position, maybe a kilometer or more to the east, landing on the side of the mountain in a stand of timber, which immediately ignites a full acre or so—the opposite of a cozy fire. These things are fireballs, not meteors. Landing on a patch of forest like that, where there’s no easy way to fight the fire, means it’s going to burn for days, unless of course these frost giants decide to do something about it.

  And they do. There’s some angry grunting and pointing at the sky, then four of the giants break off from the group and take long, loping strides toward the site where the fireball hit. Must mean that the fire giant Surt has emerged from Muspellheim; there’re going to be fires all over the world, and I wonder if any of them will make it down to the Flagstaff area. There’s a whole lot of dry pine around there. Lot of trees everywhere, really. These fires are going to ravage the planet.

  I drift away from the frost giants working on the shelter and follow the ones heading for the fire. They have some rough terrain to navigate, but those long legs help them scramble down; it’s probably twenty minutes until they can make it there, and by that time the fire’s not only caught on, it’s spreading. They combine their talents and start throwing snow at the flames, lifting it right off the ground and smothering the tree trunks and branches with it.

  It’s going to take them some time, but they’ll have this fire contained and extinguished in an hour, I’m guessing. And that kind of behavior doesn’t fit with them being agents of Loki. If they’re on the same side, they should be laughing about that fire, rubbing their hands together like villains and muttering darkly about how the world will soon be theirs. The shelter they’re building is above the tree line, so they wouldn’t be threatened by it, unless they’re wanting to preserve the habitat here for animals. That’s a different kind of long-term thinking, that is. That’s the sort of thing ye do if ye want to stay. That’s what ye do if ye want to protect your neighborhood.

  I circle back around to where the group is working on their shelter and take a closer look. It’s not a bunker or barracks that’s forming up there. That’s a home. Two of the giants—a man and a woman—are putting some decorative touches on the front pillars, little whorls and blossoms in ice. They’re smiling at each other and saying, “Graah,” whatever that means. I wish I could talk to them, but they speak Old Norse, a language I never picked up.

  But add it all up—the kind of shelters, the makeup of the group, the baggage—and these are most likely refugees. These families don’t want any part of Ragnarok or Loki’s shenanigans. They want a safe place to raise their kids, and this particular slice of the Rockies has few humans running around. Siodhachan told me about the national park; it only has a couple of roads and they’re closed off for the winter and much of the spring. The frost giants’ only true chance of running into somebody would be mountain climbers in the summer, and if they kept this peak covered in snow and ice throughout—not difficult at these elevations—then even that would be unlikely.

  I can’t tell for certain, of course. Maybe they have some sinister agenda packed away in one of those bags, but they’re not behaving like they want to destroy the world. They’re acting like they want to hide in this one wee corner of it, bothering no one. Fact is, they’re not doing anything now that’s worth me putting on the knuckles. They opened a portal, and that raised an alarm with the elemental, but now it’s closed, and so far they’ve done nothing else but make a cold place a bit colder, build an ice house, and put out a fire. Seems like this could be a noncrisis.

  I spiral down to the north of them all to report to the elemental.

  //Twelve frost giants / Building shelter / Plans unknown// I say, then add that the portal is closed, though the elemental surely knows that already.

  //Very well / Watch and wait// the elemental says, and I decide it’s best to shape-shift into a bear on the spot. There’s no use for me to freeze if this is going to take a while, and bears can handle the cold a bit better.

  I pad through the snow and find a place where I can watch the frost giants from a distance. They have that cozy fire going now in the pit, and they’re starting work on a second house. The couple who were decorating that first house, they’re taking a moment to stand back and admire it and smile. Th
e man spreads his arms, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath as he turns in place. He grunts and nods, and the woman says, “Graah,” and nods back. They like it here—and what’s not to like? It’s fecking beautiful, and if I liked the freezing cold I’d want to stay too.

  How they got here—who opened the portal and closed it again—is something I’d like to know. But it doesn’t appear to be an urgent matter requiring me attention. These folks have demonstrated by their actions that they’re here to build and preserve rather than destroy. Meanwhile, I know right well there’s plenty of destruction happening elsewhere. Those fireballs are most likely going to do damage wherever they land, excepting perhaps the ocean, but the elementals seem content to let those burn or let someone else take care of them. Plant life can come back from fires. It’s tougher to come back from the drains and death that portals cause.

  Watching the frost giants build their wee hamlet, I’m wondering if we might not work with them if they’re going to be staying here a while. I might be able to bind tons of carbon to the ice if they are going to rebuild the glaciers. Could be good for the region and good for the world. I’d need Siodhachan to talk to them, though. I hope he’s managing all right.

  The frost giants who’d left to fight the fire eventually return and help build the houses. It’s a bit after dawn when they figure they’ve done enough and disappear inside them for some rest. I let the elemental know that they’re harmless, and I’m glad to see that.

  She gives me permission to leave and get some rest in one instant—and then takes it back the next. She relays a distress call from near the equator. Something horrible is happening in Peru.

  after the fire I expected the ice. The frost giants were, by all accounts, on Loki’s side and eager to transform the world. But for some reason, only a few emerged from the Norse plane to cool down the area where Surt had stood and smooth the way for the horde. And it was indeed a horde of draugar, the spirit-filled undead from Hel, that bubbled up out of the volcano’s cone. That spirit inside them prevented me from unbinding them like vampires, and they were tough to kill otherwise. They had to be decapitated or somehow have their brains scrambled to be defeated, and they had a couple of squiffy dodges that made even that rough: They could swell up or shrink fairly easily and were also semi-corporeal. They could pass through solids—or let solids pass through them—if they wanted. Sort of like those spooky twins from the second Matrix movie, except a smidge slower and without a sense of humor or fabulous hair extensions.

  They had very little going for them in the way of fashion. They did have swords, shields, and helmets, but everything else pretty much was left to hang out. And I’m not just talking about naughty bits. I’m talking intestines and organs, their manifestations looking an awful lot like Hel herself, except the various bits of draugr flesh were largely gray and bloodless. They were dead meat wagons for the saddest of spirits, and rather unappetizing meat at that, like nine steps down from fast-food roast beef.

  Behind us—a couple of putting greens away—the darkened sky thundered and a rainbow descended from the sky to earth. It was yet another portal to the Norse plane, but this time originating from Asgard. Troops marched down ten wide on the Bifrost Bridge, far better armored and looking far less dead, even though in practical terms they were the same as the draugar, spirits riding around in manifested flesh. They were the Einherjar, the valorous dead selected by the Valkyries to live in Valhalla and dine with Odin, practicing for this final battle every day for centuries. They had to train vigorously and get really good at the killing bit because the valorous dead were far less numerous than all the other dead. They sure did look fancy, marching in ranks and with their spangenhelms all buffed and polished up, their wooden shields brightly painted. But they were going to be vastly outnumbered.

  The Norse did have some gods on their side to even things out. Behind the Einherjar, Odin rode on a magnificent if rather ordinary horse—I was the reason he wasn’t riding Sleipnir. I was the reason any of this was happening, in fact.

  Valkyries circled above Odin on white winged horses. Frigg rode next to him, and behind him, in a chariot pulled by flying cats, rode Freyja. More of the Æsir followed behind, as did many of the Vanir, dwarfs from Nidavellir, and elves from Álfheim, but I still doubted we would prevail without more help.

  More help soon arrived, before the rainbow bridge was finished offloading its troops. Yet another portal opened to my left, and at first I thought it was another fire giant rising from Muspellheim but quickly saw my mistake. It was Brighid in her battle dress, rising on a pillar of flame. And behind her came not only her own Fae host but another army we had coaxed to our side: the dark elves from Svartálfheim. Now it was starting to look like we had a prayer.

  Brighid noted the draugr hordes mustering under a banner and moved toward me to parley. Her eyes flicked to the large Fae host and noted Fand and Manannan waiting to receive her, but she did not acknowledge them yet. Instead, she dropped to the earth in a scorched circle, extinguished her flames, and removed her helmet.

  “Siodhachan. Why are you standing here by yourself?”

  “I am less than popular with pretty much everyone I’m to fight alongside today.”

  “Including the Olympians, eh?”

  “Olympians? Where?”

  Brighid pointed over my shoulder. There, behind me and to my left, were many of the Greco–Roman deities. Zeus, Jupiter, Hermes, and Mercury floated in midair above the others. As before when I had met him in England, Zeus had a visible erection underneath his toga, because the prospect of violence excited him so. The Apollos were there, as were Ares and Mars and Athena and Minerva. I had never seen the latter four in person, and I did not want to get into a fight with any of them. The gods of war appeared to be comfortably wearing enough steel for a heavy-duty truck and gripped huge weapons and shields. The goddesses of wisdom were a bit more sensibly armored but looked no less deadly. Athena’s owl was perched on her left shoulder; Minerva’s flew lazy circles around the Olympians from above. I was relieved to note the absence of Bacchus and Diana, since either or both of them would enjoy filleting me and feeding me to their dogs.

  We waved to them, and the Olympians gave us curt nods in return. Zeus’s toga twitched.

  “Has Hel or Loki emerged yet?” Brighid asked, her gaze turning to the volcano’s slopes, which still poured out more and more draugar.

  “Not visibly. They may have, though. Either could be wearing a disguise and watching us right now.”

  “Hmm.” Brighid considered and shook her head. “Perhaps that would be true of Hel. She has the same blackened heart but does not have the bloated ego of her father. Loki will reveal himself, I feel sure. His constitution demands it. He must preen and be seen to be powerful. He may be part of the horde now, but eventually he will make himself a target.”

  “That sounds quite likely to me. When he does, though—is there already a plan that you know of to take him out? Because he is immune to both fire and lightning.”

  “Lightning?” Brighid scowled. “Didn’t Thor used to punish him with that?”

  “Perhaps so, in the past. But Perun sent multiple bolts at Loki since he escaped, and he was unaffected.”

  “Well. He is not immune to steel. And we have plenty of that to go around.” Brighid’s eyes slid left and right to make sure no one else was in listening range and then she lowered her voice. “In fact, we have a little wager afoot on who’s going to get him. My money’s on Ares. You want in?”

  “Sure. Who’s available?”

  “You are, for one.”

  “I am? Nobody thinks I’ll be the one to get him?”

  “Not so far. The gods of war and the thunder gods are taken, as are the Apollos and all the Norse gods. So am I, plus Fand and Manannan.”

  “Well, what if I do get him and nobody’s bet on me?”

  “Then you win everyt
hing. The one to get him gets half the winnings, and whoever bet on that person gets the other half.”

  “Nobody’s taken the goddesses of wisdom?”

  “They’re free.”

  “Then give me twenty on Athena.”

  Brighid scowled. “When I said ‘money’ I was speaking metaphorically. I did not mean we are using modern systems of payment.”

  “Then what’s the buy-in? Not favors to be named later, I hope.”

  “No, it’s…” She paused, sighed, and rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t my idea, all right? Odin insisted, and it’s all your fault.”

  “Of course it is. Everything’s my fault.”

  “We’re using Girl Scout Cookies. One thousand boxes, winner chooses what kind.”

  “Are you joking with me right now?”

  “I am not. Odin is obsessed with them, ever since that time you gave him Samoas.”

  “Then a thousand boxes of Girl Scout Cookies on Athena.”

  “Fine.”

  “Out of curiosity, who did Odin pick?”

  “Freyja. Now if you will excuse me, I must greet Manannan and Fand.”

  I was abruptly alone again and hyperaware that I may have as many enemies on my side as against the forces of Hel. The Olympians did not come over to say hi, nor did the Fae or the dark elves. I might have to watch my back every bit as much as my front—though except for the dark elves and some of the Fae, I did not think of the forces on our side as backstabbers. Certainly not any of the deities.

  Though there was one I was hoping to see precisely because of his backstabbing ability but didn’t see yet: Coyote hadn’t shown up, and he’d left me little hope that he would.

  I was pretty sure we’d get some interference from normal folks soon, however: “mere mortals,” as the Olympians might call them. Every scientific instrument they had pointed in this general direction must be going bonkers. So far, three different portals had opened near here, and there’d been an unheralded eruption to boot. Add to that the atmospheric disturbances that Zeus and Jupiter were no doubt causing by floating there, and we could expect all kinds of investigation soon from the Swedish government, and probably other governments as well, at least via satellite. The amount of fodder this would provide the tinfoil-hat crew would last for decades.