by Terry Graves
“I don’t know about that,” replied Hrímnir.
“Hope, my friend, is what you lack and what you need.” Mögthrasir stood and scratched his back against the bark of a tree, which bent back and almost broke in two. Hrímnir had always wondered about him. It was difficult to deduce his parentage from his appearance, but he was too warm, too active and hairy to be a frost giant. Perhaps he had troll blood. Some days, despite the cold that blocked most scents, he smelled like a troll too.
Hrímnir left the hammer and turned around. Light was fading fast.
“Perhaps a bad wind has killed the witch,” he said, unsure.
“A bad wind.” Mögthrasir laughed, as if he had just remembered an old joke.
Last night, a blood moon had shone in the sky and no blizzard had battered against Jötunheim. It was the first time in years that the witch had failed to attend, so some Jötnar had started to speculate. There were those who said she was dead, and those who said she had lost her powers; that she had finally run out of them. It was also voiced that Bergelmir had summoned the princes and kings of the Jötnar race all across the Nine Realms.
With this blood moon, some argued, things would finally get in motion. What kinds of things, things of what nature, that was not clear yet. And still, the mere prospect made Hrímnir excited.
“It’s time to come back anyway,” he said. He picked up the hammer, took a last glance at the ice covering the passage, so thick that its surface was black and opaque, and started walking down the mountain. Mögthrasir rushed behind him. Perhaps the creature was stronger, but his legs were much shorter than Hrímnir’s.
Dusk had not yet given way to night, but the temperature had dropped, and Hrímnir shuddered. He may still be a frost giant, but since he had lost his heart, the cold was no longer as enjoyable as he remembered. All around them, other Jötnar were walking toward Útgarð. They had their shoulders drooped, their heads low. A night devoid of Fimbulvetr had made nothing to soften the ice, to ease the labor.
Hrímnir and Mögthrasir walked by the colossal shape of Vafthrúðnir. A human would have mistaken it for an old dead tree, for his skin was gray and hard and wrinkled, and his arms and legs were long and full of knots and had the shape of branches. He was seated on a boulder with his hands on his knees, roughly at the spot where, on clear days, Ásgarð was visible far up in the sky. Quietly gazing straight into the night.
Vafthrúðnir had been there that morning, and he would also be there the morning after, buried under several inches of snow. Hrímnir and Mögthrasir had got into the habit of pushing the snow off of him on their way up to the mountain, and perhaps that was the only reason why he had not yet been completely buried under it.
“Another day in the open, aye?”
“Sssh,” hissed Vafthrúðnir. His voice was slow and deep, even for his size. “I’m thinking.”
When he spoke, a bit of snow that had got in the wiry hair of his beard fell on their heads. Mögthrasir smiled good-humoredly, as if that routine pleased him day after day.
“Tomorrow I will stick my whole head into the hole,” he said, “and soon enough I will be on the other side, and I am going to look for some fat goats and I am going to eat them whole, hooves and horns and eyes and tongues.” He paused, thinking. “And then I’m going to eat the dog as well, and the shepherd, and the shepherd’s wife, and their children. Nails and hair and beaks and everything.”
Hrímnir shook his head and laughed. “Humans don’t have beaks.”
“Not even little ones?”
There were human thralls in Útgarð, but most of them lived inside the castle. Hrímnir tried to remember the last time he had seen one. It had been a while ago, when he had found a man in the forest with his guts out and his legs half-devoured by vermin. He was in pain but still had many hours of suffering ahead before dying, so Hrímnir had given him water and then he had crushed his skull with a big rock, but he had not tried to eat him. Perhaps he should have.
“No. Not even little ones,” he said, although he failed to remember the man’s face. “They’re made in the image of the Æsir, I think. On the outside, they don’t look much different from me.”
“It’s been such a long time,” Mögthrasir complained, “I’m starting to forget.”
Hrímnir fantasized about the idea of returning to Miðgarð. The middle-world was rich in pastures and there was plenty of food and not much to bother about, because there were not many beings strong enough to harm a giant there. He could build a house in a forest, maybe take a young maiden as his wife and spend a hundred years as a herder, or cutting wood, or taking care of creatures more vulnerable than himself: rabbits and deer and thickets and shrubs.
He shook his head again. Dreams would take him nowhere. He fixed his gaze on the city, with its thousands of houses built into the rock, and shrank back from the idea. If the paths finally cleared it meant Jötnar would go to Miðgarð not for pleasure, but to retrieve the stone-heart. They would go to war. And after battling the humans, they would battle the gods, and then the world would end. So, from a certain point of view, Hrímnir was already as good as he was ever going to be.
They were not far away from Útgarð when it started.
A gentle breeze engulfed them, stroking their hair. A voice whispered in that wind too, but it was not like the ones they heard from the mountains.
She was not dead after all, Hrímnir concluded. She had just missed a night.
They called her the Snow Queen, but that name would never stick in these lands. In Jötunheim they knew where she truly came from. She was not a queen, just a witch and a traitor to her race, the daughter of the old lord of Thrymheim, king of the mountain, a title that he had claimed for himself for a kingdom with no subjects or army.
Hrímnir felt his stomach retorting. The way she twisted winter, the manner in which she used the words of Vindsval against her brothers and sisters, her parents and grandparents, made him feel the urge to puke.
The voice grew more and more angered, and the blizzard followed.
Not three sounds but four, Hrímnir decided, marked life in Útgarð now. The first three were the howling of the wind, the cries of Angrboða, and the constant hammering; and those were the kind ones. But the last one was the witch’s vicious voice, dragging poisonous words through the landscape in the winter-tongue.
He glanced at Mögthrasir, but he had fallen silent and stopped mid-step. He looked tired, as if he was going to sit down and let the snow bury him as it would eventually bury Vafthrúðnir. But Mögthrasir was not a frost giant and he could die from freezing.
“Come on,” Hrímnir yelled, to make his voice heard over the strong gale. He pushed Mögthrasir, pressing both hands against the big wooly creature to force him to start moving again. “I still have some mutton left. We can share.”
SIXTEEN
They burned.
When the whole thing was finished, they barely had enough dried firewood left in Veraheim. For the next few weeks the houses that still stood would be dark and cold, and people would have to sleep in the byres next to the beasts to get some warmth. But they burned alright. Twenty-odd corpses, the tallest pyre anyone had witnessed in their lives. And if there were any gods left to see it, they would have marveled at the size of it.
Alarr stared at the pyre and squinted at the smoke is if he expected to see a ghost, the soul of his father, howling into the wind. The man had fallen, not in battle but shortly afterwards, with a wound in the back which very much resembled the lashed marks in Alarr’s skin. Alarr did not know how to feel about it or if he would find him again in Valhalla, feasting with a smile on his lips. It was a wound in the back, after all. It meant that he died while he was fleeing.
“It’s over already,” said his mother, and put a hand on his shoulder. All that was left was cinders. “And we have plenty of work to do.”
“To do? What is there to do on an ill-omened day like this?”
“We have to open the forge.”
“No one
will come, Mother. They’re grieving.”
But Eirný pressed her lips together and buried her chin in her furs. “They will come.”
They left the main square, the pyre, and the people gathered around. The corpse of Fyrnir stood next to the dilapidated hall, big and dark and partially covered in snow. By now it had turned into solid rock and his features were hardly recognizable. Perhaps that was what mountains were after all, thought Alarr, giants who died a long time ago. Sveinn had said that he would break it to bits to build a landmark for the fallen. But it was too soon yet, and there were plenty of things to build before that.
They walked in silence. Alarr’s pace was very slow because of his wounds. They got lost a couple of times. Most of the streets did not exist anymore now that the buildings had been stripped away, and Veraheim looked like a different place. His mother kept her eyes low. Her hair was disheveled by the wind.
They went into their house and opened the forge, got the tools ready and made a fire, as they would do any other day. With surprise, Alarr discovered that he was finding some solace in those familiar and repetitive tasks.
He wasn’t expecting customers but, soon, someone put her head around the door. It was Nefja, a woman who spent most of the year in Heiðirsalr, but who came to Veraheim from time to time because she had rented her farm to a family of peasants. She carried a dozen axe heads in a sack on her back which she left on the workbench.
“We need new shafts,” she said. “We have to go to the forest and cut wood or we’ll freeze to death.”
“I think I have some spares.”
Alarr was about to walk to the back of the house, but Eirný stopped him.
“Let me. I know where they are.”
She left, and Alarr and Nefja gazed at each other. After a while, she simply said: “Sorry for your loss.”
She was squeezing her hands, which were peeled and red after carrying the sack in the cold.
“You’re the woman,” said Alarr, struggling to find the right words. She was much older than him and they had never talked before, “the one with the brother.”
“And you’re the one with the friend,” she replied.
Nefja had lost her older brother many years ago and it was believed that Skaði had been the one who took him. A snowstorm followed, and there had been celebrations in Veraheim for a week.
“Do you know about the Snow Queen?” Alarr asked her.
“Some saw her, yes; and I got word of this. She slayed the giant and Kairan was taken. A good omen for some, I’m sure. But bad news for you, if you held him in high regard.”
“I did. But I wonder—”
“Let’s not talk here,” Nefja cut him off midsentence, but she immediately softened the tone and added: “Ask me later if you want to discuss these matters further. I’ll come back for the axes in the afternoon.”
Alarr nodded and Nefja left before Eirný returned with the shafts.
“You were right, Mother. People are coming after all.”
Eirný left the wood on the workbench next to the axe heads. “See if any of these fit and don’t let her leave again without paying us. I will tend to the hearth and go get something ready for dinner. We will have to share. Many people have lost everything.”
She drew back the curtain that divided the shop from the rest of the house, but Alarr touched her shoulder gently for her to turn back. “Don’t you want to talk about Father?”
“Never, ever else in my life,” she said, not crossing eyes with her son, and left.
Alarr sat on a chair to rest. It was always warm in that room, and he had got used to it. Gerda joked sometimes and said that he had grown cold-natured and that he never stopped complaining about the weather.
He wondered where Gerda and Runa would be now and if they would be alright. Every time he pictured Gerda’s face he felt ashamed, angry and sad. Those were too many emotions for him to experience at once, so he shook his head and tried to get her off his mind. He deserved to be angry at her, he decided, at least for a while; but he could not stop loving her. Even after what she had done. Even when she had said that she did not love him back. Even if she had said it right before risking her life by going after Kai.
Love. What a stupid useless feeling.
Alarr got up, paced toward the workbench and lined up the shafts with the axe heads, trying to decide which ones would fit. Ironwork was much simpler than love and a blacksmith always knew when something was broken beyond repair.
He picked up the hammer and was about to start when three men entered at once. Alarr recognized them, as they were Hafgrim and two warriors from his hird. The slender one was Eigil, who had eyes like a fox and red hair to match. The other, strong and sturdy, was Ingolf; he was of the scary, silent type. He carried a big sack on his back. An ugly cut crossed his left eyebrow and his right cheekbone was swollen and purple. Alarr lowered his head, nervous again in their presence.
“Here he is, alive and well and already back at work,” said Hafgrim with a smile sincere enough to trick him. “Diligent as any good soldier must be. Didn’t I tell you that he was still alive? That the giant had not crushed him?”
“Well,” Eigil threw a meaningful look at Alarr’s bandages, which covered his belly and his forehead. “It seems like he crushed him a bit.”
Hafgrim ignored Eigil. “How are you feeling, son?”
“I’m fine,” Alarr responded, trying to play down the facts. “I will be well soon enough.”
“That’s good to hear, because we’re leaving soon as well. You work for me now. I hope you’ve not forgotten.”
“But…” Alarr hesitated. He remembered that horrid night. The orange glow of the moon, Hafgrim holding his sword, and the sweetness of mead on his lips. He had not thought about this once. His dreams of leaving Veraheim seemed unimportant in the light of that morning, with the smoke from the corpses still clouding the sky. “Things have changed since the attack. My father is dead and someone has to attend the smithy or my mother will starve.”
Hafgrim took off one of his bracelets, with twisted coils and two wolf heads on each end, and let it fall on the workbench with a thud. “Gold for your mum. This should keep her going for a dozen winters. Now sit; there are important matters to discuss.”
His voice was still kind, but did not leave much space for reply. Alarr took a last look at the workbench’s surface, the axes, the shafts. Firewood was important as well, he thought, but he sheepishly paced back to the chair and sat.
“So?” said Ingolf. “What happened when you found the giant?”
They seemed to have heard that Alarr and the others had found him in the lake. He tried to remember what Gerda had told the elders exactly, but that conversation had taken place weeks ago. Besides, he would never lie to Hafgrim and the warriors of his hird.
“If I speak the truth, I would like this to remain a secret, Lord,” he said, “just in Veraheim, I mean.”
“Agreed,” Hafgrim replied with a wave of his hand, as if he could not care less about the village. “Go on.”
“He spoke to us, Lord. He tricked us with a golden crown. He wanted to be free to return to Jötunheim. That is what he said.”
“Did you?” Ingolf asked him. Alarr raised his eyebrows, confused. “Did you free him?”
“I did not,” said Alarr. Then, after a slight pause, he added: “But I helped.”
“You son of a…” Ingolf started, but Hafgrim took his arm and pushed the warrior back.
“Who did it? And don’t lie to me or I will know.”
“Gerda Hallbjornsdóttir.” Alarr’s face reddened. “But she’s not here. She left.”
“Wise girl.” Eigil smiled and turned to Hafgrim. “Should we go after her? She cannot be far.”
“It would be a waste of time and I don’t see the point.” Hafgrim closed his eyes, thinking. When he opened them, he fixed his gaze on Alarr again. “But you said you talked with the giant, so you may have heard other things. Tell us now, and don’t leave
anything out, even if it seems unimportant.”
So Alarr told them about the giant: his name, the name of his father and of his grandfather, and how he had claimed to have battled with the gods, to have fallen from the sky just to be attacked by men afterward and left for dead in the lake to freeze.
When he finished, there was silence. Outside, the gritty wind howled and blew against the roofs, but Alarr could still hear the noise his mother made in the kitchen. He was expecting Hafgrim to ask him about the Snow Queen, but he did not. The man stroked his beard, pensive. “Is that all?”
“All I can think of, Lord.”
“Very well,” he said, and he stood straight and walked to the door. “Take care of those wounds, though. We’re leaving in a week.”
“And in the meantime,” Eigil made a gesture to Ingolf, who dropped the bag, spreading spearheads, dented swords, and byrnies full of holes all over the smith’s floor, “try to keep yourself busy.”
When Nefja came back all the axes were fixed and the scent of food filled the smithy.
“We will talk this one time,” she said. “And then we won’t talk ever again.”
“Alright,” said Alarr. “But my mother said you have to pay me first.”
Nefja threw a look at the gold bracelet, which stood in the same spot where Hafgrim had left it. Alarr had not dare to touch it yet, as if by picking it up he was also accepting his fate. It scared him; so much gold, and so solid. It looked like an object he could not possess, and therefore made him feel like a robber.
“It seems that someone has paid for a million axe heads already.”
“This is not mine,” said Alarr. “Not yet.”
Nefja nodded, and paid. Alarr took the bag with the axes and they walked outside together. Sleet had turned into a soft drizzle and it stopped after a while. By then, they were out of Veraheim, walking down one of the minor paths that surrounded the village. Nefja marched resolutely, as if she had a place in mind, and Alarr walked behind her and tried to keep up with the pace. All he saw was her back and her hair falling down in braids. The wound still hurt more than he would dare to admit.
