Asgard’s records show that the third and only other example of a less-than-heroic, non-battlefield entry into Valhalla was that of one Knut Cod Killer, courtesy of his quick-witted, five year-old grandson, Erik (later “Sharp Axe”) Haraldsson, who managed to deliver Knut’s sword into his hand, whilst the recipient was otherwise occupied being crushed to death by the tree which had inconsiderately fallen on top of him, moments earlier.
This same Knut Cod Killer now stood facing the grandson who was responsible for his being able to spend his death in Valhalla, a place the existence of which, ironically, Knut had strongly doubted, right up until the moment he had found himself standing in front of one of its gigantically-proportioned doors.
Sharp Axe, currently mesmerised by the presence of his long-deceased grandfather, suddenly felt something bony strike him in the side of his ribs. That felt suspiciously like Mithrén’s elbow, Sharp Axe told himself; it was, indeed, Mithrén’s elbow and it served to bring him abruptly to his senses.
‘Ow – grandfather!’ wheezed Sharp Axe, slightly winded by Mithrén’s well-aimed strike, ‘Er… this is Mithrén… my… er… ’ but no more words proved necessary as Knut Cod Killer, ever the old charmer, took a step forward, reached out to take Mithrén’s hand in his and brought it gently to lips, ‘… yes, er… Mith… rén… ’ concluded Sharp Axe distantly, then turned his head the other way, ‘… and this is – ’ but Thor had long since departed.
Knut looked from Mithrén to his grandson, smiled approvingly, then gave a little shake of the head, not surprisingly finding it difficult to believe that this reunion was actually taking place.
‘Well, how – ?’ began Knut, having to shout to be heard above the noise of revelry which had, by now, grown to something approaching its previous level; he frowned disapprovingly and shook his head more vigorously. ‘Come on!’ he cried, having given up on being heard properly where they stood. ‘Let’s – find – somewhere – quiet!’
‘Quiet!?’ exclaimed Sharp Axe, at full volume. ‘Is there such a place, here?’
‘I know somewhere,’ mouthed Knut silently, with a devious grin and a conspiratorial wink.
*
Fynn the Fortunate had been blessed with inexplicably good luck throughout his life, and those around him were often grateful to share the benefits of that luck with him. Sharp Axe, for example, had come to consider Fynn a close and trusted friend and would not now have dreamt of taking on any serious challenge without Fynn by his side. When it came to serious challenges, Fynn’s record in the good-fortune category played a major part in Sharp Axe’s decision-making process.
Aldaron the Light Elf, then, must have been cursing his own luck because, despite having Fynn right by his side, he found himself a virtual prisoner in the Wolf-Wrestler family home, while Sharp Axe and Mithrén were, for all he knew, currently having the time of their lives in Asgard.
‘Can’t we just make a run for it?’ whispered Aldaron to Fynn, as the two of them lay awake in the pitch blackness of night, just out of earshot of the house’s permanent residents.
‘I... can’t leave Fearless,’ replied Fynn quietly, the regret evident in his voice. ‘He begged me to stay: he’s scared stiff of his father and I just haven’t got the heart to leave him here, alone.’
‘Really?’ pressed Aldaron, far from convinced and very tempted to ask Fynn if he thought Fearless might ever be caught doing the same for him, but he held his tongue and, as a result, a rather long silence ensued.
‘Yes… ’ whispered Fynn eventually, apparently with some reluctance, ‘… these hunting-trips of Harald’s… I just think that... well, if I weren’t there, Fearless would probably wind up dead.’
‘And your problem with that would be what, exactly?’ retorted Aldaron, sounding genuinely puzzled.
‘Well… er... ’ began Fynn, wondering how best to explain, ‘… you’re a sibling… put yourself in Sharp Axe’s position… how would you feel if you came back from Asgard only to find your brother had been eaten by wolves?’
‘If Fearless were my brother,’ replied Aldaron, with hardly a moment’s pause, ‘I’d learn to live with it!’
‘You might be able to,’ hissed Fynn, ‘but I couldn’t and I don’t want that to happen to Sharp Axe.’
‘Why not?’ enquired Aldaron. ‘You know there’s no love lost between them. Fearless almost killed Sharp Axe not so long ago, remember?’
‘All right,’ came back Fynn, with forced patience, ‘so he did... but he wasn’t himself then, was he?
‘Well, no,’ conceded the Light Elf, ‘he was quite brave, then.’ Aldaron decided to change tack. ‘Why can’t you just use your luck... and make Fearless kill a wolf?’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ replied Fynn, sounding as though he wished it did. ‘It’s… it’s out of my control.’
‘Shame,’ sighed Aldaron, wistfully.
‘It does work, though, my luck’ muttered Fynn. ‘I mean, how many wolves did we see today?’
‘None,’ replied the Light Elf again, after giving the question only the briefest consideration.
When all was said and done, it was a rather tricky predicament from which Fynn and Aldaron found themselves unable to walk away: Harald was continuing to insist that Fearless could not possibly have performed any ‘heroic feat’ which might result in his being named Wolf Slayer, so if Fearless wanted to use that name, he should earn it for himself all over again. Consequently, Fearless needed to slay a wolf, which – and the two guests were in absolute agreement over this – was the least probable outcome of any hunting-trip involving Fearless, Harald and one or more wolves. Fynn and Aldaron felt it might be unwise to point this out, given the unpredictable, unstable and downright violent nature of their host and, since the fear of being torn apart by one or more wolves paled into insignificance compared with his fear of his father, Fearless was most unlikely to point it out, either.
Understandably, Fearless had pursued the only option open to a congenital coward such as he was: he had pleaded with Fynn (the luckiest man he, or anyone he knew, had ever met) to stay close to him, in the hope that this might increase his chances of survival. Fynn was far from happy but had simply not had the heart to refuse.
‘Wait a minute! There’s no need for you to be here, anyway,’ whispered Fynn in a louder voice than he had intended to use, after another long period of silence. ‘I was the one Fearless asked – well, begged – to stay! You can go home if you want to.’
Aldaron appeared to mull over this suggestion in his mind for some time.
‘You… don’t know the way back home, do you?’ said Fynn, finally.
‘Er… no,’ admitted Aldaron reluctantly, sounding more than a little embarrassed.
‘I think you might be stuck here, then,’ concluded Fearless and assumed that the quiet, pitiful groan of despair he then heard from somewhere in the pitch-black darkness had come from Aldaron.
*
Knut Cod Killer had led Sharp Axe and Mithrén out of Valhalla’s great hall and all the chaos within it, into what appeared to be a kitchen. Despite the relative quiet of this part of Valhalla compared with the great hall, it was far from being completely devoid of activity.
Standing by a table, with blood dripping freely from his hands and forearms, stood a man wielding a large and incredibly dangerous-looking knife. The man looked flushed, damp with sweat and short of time. On top of the table lay what looked suspiciously like the carcass of an enormous, recently-slaughtered wild boar and behind the knife-wielding man, a huge cast-iron kettle half full of boiling water sat on top of a very fierce-looking, loudly-crackling fire.
As Knut led his visitors into the kitchen, the man looked up, wiped his brow hurriedly, nodded once, smiled as fondly as present circumstances allowed and raised a hand to greet Knut, who returned the greeting in similar fashion, with a cheery, ‘’Evening, Andhrimnir!’
‘That’s Andhrimnir,’ Knut informed Sharp Axe and Mithrén, needlessly. ‘Excellent cook�
�� although he tends to stick with a menu he knows... he cooks boar-in-the-pot… every single night.’
Sharp Axe and Mithrén looked at each other, as Knut resumed the introductions.
‘That’s Saehrimnir, lying there on the table... not really looking his best, just at the – ’
‘That dead boar has a name?’ interrupted Mithrén, incredulously.
‘Oh, yes,’ confirmed Knut nonchalantly, just beating his grandson to reply to the elf maiden’s question by no more than a wild boar’s whisker. ‘He gets killed, cooked and eaten every night… then comes back to life again every morning… very convenient little arrangement, really. Oh – and the pot’s called Eldhrimnir,’ concluded Knut, confirming what Surtr had told Sharp Axe and the men in Helheimr.
‘Yes, of course it is,’ muttered Mithrén quietly. ‘Why does nothing surprise me in Asgard?’
*
After several minutes, which Knut had spent dragging three sacks of potatoes into the corner of the kitchen to serve as seats for his two visitors and himself and, more importantly, locating a medium-sized barrel of ale which had been residing on the other side of one of several doors leading out of the kitchen, the three of them sat down to speak. Knut picked up three drinking-horns from a shelf and prised the lid from the barrel with a trusty knife, which he kept in his leather belt. Then, he plunged the first drinking-horn into the foaming contents of the barrel, pulled it out and handed it, dripping, to Mithrén, who accepted it graciously, if rather uncertainly.
‘Don’t worry… this is really good!’ enthused Knut, misunderstanding Mithrén’s reticence. ‘Nothing like that dishwater the Valkyries serve up in the great hall!’
‘Are you allowed to… ?’ began Sharp Axe, but paused in order to take the second horn of ale carefully from Knut, which the old man was handing to him.
‘Andhrimnir doesn’t mind, do you?’ barked Knut with a chuckle, turning round to look at the cook.
Andhrimnir did, indeed, look as though he could not have cared less, being so pre-occupied as he was with his culinary duties, although he did manage to look away briefly from the blood-soaked boar’s carcass on the kitchen table under his nose in order to give Knut a half-smile, by way of response.
‘So… ’ grinned Knut, clearly pleased with himself, as he plunged the third horn into the ale and raised it to Sharp Axe and Mithrén, ‘… let’s drink… to life… and death!’ and, after letting out a sharp, bellow of laughter at his own dubious joke, he downed his ale in one draught, sighed contentedly, smacked his lips approvingly, dragged his sleeve across his mouth and plunged his drinking-horn back into the barrel, to refill it.
Sharp Axe took a long draught from his own drinking-horn; Mithrén hesitated before tasting, looking closely at the ale and sniffing it suspiciously, before giving in to Knut’s encouraging nods and raised eye-brows, by taking the smallest of sips. She swallowed the tiny measure of ale only after pulling a face, screwing up her eyes, shaking her head from side to side and turning an unhealthy-looking shade of dark red. Once Mithrén had succumbed to the inevitable and the ale had disappeared down her throat, she began the coughing-fit to end all coughing-fits. The shade of red that her face had recently adopted did not lighten and her eyes streamed with tears.
Knut politely waited for the elf maiden’s coughing-fit to subside, before he asked her, eagerly, ‘Well? What do you think?’
‘It’s… very… nice,’ gasped Mithrén with a shudder, once she was able to respond, in between desperate gulps of air.
Knut looked at Sharp Axe, approvingly. ‘I like her!’ he laughed. Sharp Axe looked at Mithrén, shook his head affectionately and smiled. Mithrén was too preoccupied, trying to regain control of her breathing, to notice.
A few rather awkward moments followed, during which Knut drained and refilled his drinking-horn with ale, raised a toast to the Light Elf race and, in particular, its maidens, despatched the contents of the horn, refilled it again, raised a toast to whoever had brewed the ale, drank the ale, wiped his mouth and decided it might be time to hold a proper conversation with the grandson to whom he owed his continuing existence.
The two looked at each other for a time, until Sharp Axe had plucked up the courage to ask the question he had wanted to ask for so long.
‘What was it like to die, Granddad?’
Knut thought briefly about another refill but, seeing the sincerity and concern in his grandson’s eyes, thought better of it and carefully placed his precious drinking-vessel on the floor in front of him.
‘Well… ’ he began and sighed heavily, ‘... I can’t deny that I was in a lot of pain, at first.’ He glanced at Mithrén who had, by now, managed to restore her oxygen levels, breathing pattern and facial colour back to something approaching normal and was looking up at him, intently. ‘I mean… that tree was heavy!’ and he laughed, in a doomed attempt to lighten the mood. He immediately conceded defeat, cleared his throat and continued.
‘I remember… ’ whispered Knut, narrowing his eyes and gazing off into the distance, as he tried to recall the events leading up to his demise, ‘… I remember the feeling of helplessness under the weight of that tree… not being able to move it… not being able to breathe… I remember not even being able to call for help… then, after a time, I felt something being put into my hand… seeing your face, Erik… realising you had given me my sword… and my right of passage into Valhalla – if it existed, of course! I had no idea, at the time.’
Sharp Axe was surprised, to say the least, to hear that his grandfather had ever doubted Valhalla’s existence, after all the stories about the gods and heroes of old that Knut had told him and his brother, but did not interrupt.
‘Then,’ went on Knut, still barely above a whisper, ‘the pain… gradually started to leave me – that was a relief, I can tell you… I began to feel light-headed… and the light slowly… disappeared… everything was dark… but, soon, I found myself walking through a kind of swirling mist… it was still quite dark at that time… eventually, though, I could just make out this huge structure ahead of me in the distance, through the darkness and mist – some kind of building, I assumed, but it was… so… big… I didn’t really know what it could have been. I didn’t know where I was – or even whether I was alive or dead – but I felt as though I should walk to the building… there was nowhere else to go.’
Sharp Axe licked his dry lips and held Knut in his gaze. ‘What happened next?’ he breathed, tensely.
‘Well,’ continued Knut, ‘it began to get lighter and I walked towards the building which, I could see, was still a long way off… I couldn’t get over the size of it – I’d never seen anything nearly so big!’
Sharp Axe nodded; there was nothing else, he was sure, in all the Nine Worlds which could measure up to Valhalla’s colossal proportions!
‘After a while, I came to one of the doors… ’ went on Knut, ‘… vast, it was – well, you’ve seen them!’ and Sharp Axe and Mithrén nodded in agreement with the old warrior. ‘I didn’t know whether I should knock… didn’t know whether or not I’d be welcome in… well, wherever and whatever it was.’
‘But… you did knock?’ suggested Sharp Axe.
‘Well, no,’ replied Knut, looking a little puzzled, ‘there was no need… as I approached the door, I heard movement behind it… and, after a while… it just opened up in front of me.’
‘Then, what happened?’ asked Mithrén, every bit as fascinated as Sharp Axe.
‘There were two rather splendid-looking warrior-ladies inside, who introduced themselves to me as Hildr and Hløkk,’ explained Knut, looking at Mithrén. ‘Very impressive, they were!’ he added, turning his attention to his grandson and offering him a wry grin. ‘Then, someone else appeared in the doorway, checked I was holding my sword in my hand, greeted me warmly, said his name was Bragi, welcomed me to Valhalla and... well, I tell you... you could have knocked me down with a feather!’
Knut picked up his drinking-horn, plunged it back into
the barrel of ale, raised it to his lips and quickly permitted himself several more mouthfuls of the contents.
‘And I’ve been here ever since,’ sighed Knut. ‘It’s not a bad life – or, death, rather… if you know how to play the system and make the right connections,’ at which point, he raised his horn of ale in gratitude to Andhrimnir who, completely absorbed as he was, filling Eldhrimnir with rather large, roughly-sliced portions of Saehrimnir, did not seem to have noticed the gesture.
Knut turned his attention back to Sharp Axe. ‘So,’ he said with a proud smile, ‘you have been busy, my young friend!’ to which Sharp Axe merely gave a modest shrug. ‘Oh, I know all about your finding Mjøllnir for Thor – ’
‘Well, actually, I didn’t personally find… ’ began Sharp Axe in protest, but Knut waved his hand, dismissively.
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