Ravens' Will

by Terry Graves

  Kâri seemed surprised to see Hrímnirm siding with Logi, or perhaps that someone with such a brutish appearance would talk about beauty as if it mattered. Those doubts were not new to Hrímnirm and they had nothing to do with battles, war, or slaves. Or not only.

  “There are, of course. But there is a time for everything, and the time to enjoy the beauty of this world, the time to fly up high and almost touch the sun, to feel the wind caressing your skin and singing the oldest music of the earth, is coming to an end. Fate cannot be changed, and only fools fight against it. You don’t have to fear the future, Hrímnirm, for we will all be one with Ymir, and we will be reunited with our ancestors and our family and this will be better than happiness. And if you’re worried about the end of the world, I say worry no more. For, in the same way that every beginning has an end, it is no less true that every end is shortly followed by a new beginning. The world will keep going and we will be here somehow, in another way.”

  “I did not know you were so religious,” Logi replied, scornfully.

  Hrímnirm found Kâri’s words hardly comforting, but he did not insist. One thing was true, and it was that everything had been decided by the norns already and Hrímnirm’s life was another thread on their fingers, a thread the length and knots of which had been established beforehand. Only fools would fight against fate, that was true, and Hrímnirm was no fool. Bad things always came from thinking too much and battle frenzy was always better than battle paralysis.

  He retreated back against the rock and rummaged through his things until he found the arrow that was destined to fulfill their destiny, and he examined it under the light of the fire. The head was made from jasper, and the wood from the shaft came from a cutting of the Laerad tree. Black as the abyss, as Angrboða had said. The vane had been perfectly carved and sanded, and Kâri had given four feathers from his head for the fletching. Still, no matter how much care had been put into its making, an arrow was not a sword. Arrows had no names, nor did stories talk much about them.

  Until then, Hrímnirm had tried not to think about what he would have to do when they reached Thrymheim, but now he was becoming painfully aware of the responsibility Vafthrúðnir had laid upon his shoulders.

  At daybreak they were all awake and ready to go. They had breakfast and started marching again. The path was much more challenging than the day before, and the snow was treacherous and covered holes and crevices that ended up thousands of feet below. A false step and they would find their demise.

  They made a line. Hrímnirm went first, trying to secure a foot before stepping forward, and everybody else followed his trail. When unsure, he asked Logi to melt the snow, but he grew tired fast, as if fire burned less easily on the mountain than in the valley. So they started using the thralls. They picked one of the women, the one that looked weaker, and made her walk in front of them. But soon, tendrils of mist gathered around them, obstructing their view, and they had to stop for they could not even see the footsteps in the snow.

  They sat on a big rock and waited for the fog to break. From there, Hrímnirm gazed up, saw a cave in one of the ridges, and pointed it out to the group.

  “It is very close,” said Kâri. He covered his eyes from the sun with his hand. “We will have to find another place or we will never get to the top.”

  “No, it is not, Lord,” Hrímnirm replied. “It is quite far, actually. And it will get much worse. Remember that, if this was simple, we frost giants would have done it years ago. Before the Fimbulvetr there were ways to get to the top; Jötnar armies have attacked Ásgarð in the past. But since the winter spell, many have tried to climb these mountains, and who knows if some have succeeded, but there is no doubt that most of them have perished. Paths will disappear soon and we will have to use cords and axes to climb. And the mountain will fight against us at every step.”

  “You say ‘fight’ as if you were talking about a sentient being,” said Bára.

  “Mountains have a soul. They have character, you see. I’ve spent my whole life listening, and I know that Thrymfell is one of the worst. It must have made a very angry giantess when she was alive.”

  “She?”

  “Of course. Thrym is a woman.”

  She laughed. “I see.”

  “So how long, then, to the top?” Kâri asked him.

  Hrímnirm leaned back and was able to see the summit. Thrymheim lay at the top, dwarfed by the mountains around. Above the fortress, the thin line of Bifröst glinted with the sunrays like a thread of gold. “Four days with their nights,” he reckoned. “If we’re fortunate.”

  “When we reach it,” said Mögthrasir, “I want to sit for a while and look at Miðgarð.”

  “It will be night. There will be nothing for you to see.” Hrímnirm imagined himself at the top of the mountain, gazing at Miðgarð, the marshlands and the green pastures full of beasts, of cows grazing with udders dripping milk over the fresh grass. It had been a long time since he was last in the human realm and he pictured all this without a trace of snow, which was probably a misconception. But he was tired of snow and wanted his dreams to be free of it.

  “I can see through darkness,” Mögthrasir said, and perhaps it was true or perhaps not, like the time he had said he could smell a bird dropping on the roof of the house.

  That day, they managed to reach the cave that Hrímnirm had spotted, but not in daylight, and not before the Fimbulvetr had started. They entered and shook off the snow from their shoulders. The cave was unoccupied and deep enough to offer them some comfort.

  “I will kill the frost witch with my own hands,” said Logi, his teeth chattering, “and I will see her burn and when she begs me to spare her life I will gut her with my sword, and then I will cut off her stupid head and break her neck.”

  He kept going and going in the same manner for a while, not minding one bit the inconsistency of how many times he killed her, until even he grew too tired for rage. Hrímnirm ignored him while he tried to build the fire himself. He took his time doing it right, shaving splinters with his knife for kindling. Wood had to breathe.

  “You’re more skillful than it seems,” said Bára.

  “Don’t you know how to build a fire?” he said, surprised, but then he thought about the place where she lived and laughed. “Apologies, Lady. Apparently, I may have many skills, but thinking before speaking is not one of them.”

  Bára waved her hand. He finished the fire and walked toward the end of the cave, where the slaves had left the sacks with the food. They dined and, despite the cold and the discomfort, he was soon asleep with the longbow cradled between his arms.

  That night, one of the thralls died. She was stiff in the morning, her lips were blue and her eyes were closed, as if she had gone peacefully while sleeping. They ate her for breakfast, filled their bellies with her raw flesh while the remaining thralls looked the other way and sobbed.

  “Won’t you eat?” Mögthrasir asked Hrímnirm.

  “I don’t like the flavor of things that speak,” he replied. But that was an excuse, because on occasion he had filled his mouth with crows, and crows sometimes speak, imitating the voices they hear. In truth, he remembered the gaze of the woman, her pale brown eyes, and that made him apprehensive.

  “We must carry on,” said Kâri, and his voice sounded detached, as if someone else was pronouncing the words. They buried what was left of the woman in the cave entrance, just in case they stopped again on the same spot on their way down, then divided the tools and food and blankets she was carrying between the remaining slaves and resumed the march. They left all the kindling they had not used inside the cave. That would be the last time they could build a fire. From that moment onwards, the risk that the Snow Queen would see the lights in the night was too high.

  There were wispy clouds gathering at the end of the valley in Jötunheim, remainders of the Fimbulvetr from the night before. They looked like puny little things and not a cause for concern, but by midday the clouds had turned into clusters
and were traveling fast with the wind.

  Hrímnirm tried to convince the others to stop and wait, but they would hear none of it. They were exhausted from the ascent and were all becoming quirky and belligerent, especially Logi, so they kept advancing until the clouds reached them and covered the sky above their heads. A light rain soaked them through, which quickly turned to sleet, and at that point Logi finally agreed to stop, but by then there was no place around to shelter in. Hrímnirm threw him a scornful look and told him that they had to keep going; and they did, with the cold working its way through their clothes and the sleet stinging against their skin.

  The light was quickly waning, but it was difficult to ascertain if that was a sign of twilight or a consequence of the storm. Hrímnirm focused on walking. There was no place to hide and nothing else to do. He heard the noise soon, a low murmur, as if the mountain was humming a song. Hrímnirm had learnt that when the mountain speaks, you must listen to what she has to say, so he stopped. The noise came from above and, when he raised his head, he saw a mass of snow sliding fast over the ridge right above them, breaking the trunks of pines, battering and dragging them down.

  “Avalanche!” he yelled, and somehow he managed to make his voice heard over the deafening racket.

  He ran and soon lost sight of the others in a cloud of powdered snow, then the avalanche reached him. It raised him in the air and he rolled and rolled until he fell into a hole in the ground. It was one of the cracks they had been trying to avoid all day long, but now it had saved his life. Mögthrasir came after him and they squeezed together in the narrow space and waited for the noise above their heads to stop.

  Then they waited some more, in silence.

  “Is it gone?” Mögthrasir asked him at last.

  Hrímnirm nodded. There could be others, though; aftershocks, new avalanches triggered by the one that had just ended. Once the mountain had started to shake there was no way to know when she would finish. Thrym was furious because of their trespassing and, despite Hrímnirm praying to Ymir and to the ancient mountains of the earth before their departure, he must have failed to provide a sacrifice good enough to appease them. But he did not say any of these things to Mögthrasir. He crouched in the small orifice and crawled toward the exit, which was buried in snow. It was impossible to know how much or how many tons were blocking their way out.

  “We’re trapped,” he said, and leaned back.

  “Good thing that I have my claws to save you,” Mögthrasir said proudly.

  They worked for the whole night and took turns to sleep. There was no point in leaving the crevice before dawn anyway. They could hear the noise that the wind made above their heads. The storm kept going for a while, and then was replaced by the witch’s spell, so it snowed and rained without pause. When it stopped, they assumed that day had come and kept working feverishly until they dug their way out.

  Hrímnirm and Mögthrasir crawled out of the hole and leaned on the fallen snow, breathing heavily. They stayed there for a while. The sky was gray and promised miserable weather for the whole day, but it soothed them nonetheless. They were neither dwarves nor lindworms, and they were not used to living in holes underground.

  “Now I know what I have been training for my whole life,” said Mögthrasir. His snout was covered in snow and half his fingernails had broken. “So many years pointlessly digging in the ice, trying to break a hole. All for this moment of accomplishment.”

  Mögthrasir seemed pleased so Hrímnirm said nothing about the mission. There was an eerie silver glint in the snow that made him shudder.

  In the end, it was his friend who put the thought into words first.

  “Do you think they’re dead?”

  Hrímnirm shrugged. If they were dead, they would never find their bodies.

  “We will have to find out.”

  They got up and started walking around, seeking for any trace of them. It was cold, colder than any of the preceding mornings, and the wind had teeth and bit them. At one point, Hrímnirm saw a dark spot on the snow and pulled it to reveal one of the sack-bags the thralls had been carrying. Below there was a corpse, facing downwards. He took the sack-bag, shouldered it, and started walking again. Mögthrasir pointed to a promontory above their heads, a good place to spot them if they were still around. It took them a while, but they crowned it. Then they peeked at the slopes of the mountain below and at the white peaks above. Hrímnirm could see no one around, no sign of their presence.

  Mögthrasir held his hands to his mouth and yelled: “Logi! Kâri! Bára!”

  “Don’t,” Hrímnirm said, and put a hand on his shoulder, trying to avoid the long black spikes on his back. “You’ll wake up the mountain again.”

  Mögthrasir stopped and looked at him with tired eyes. “Hrímnirm, what are we doing here?”

  Hrímnirm did not know. Vafthrúðnir was the one who had insisted on them going, two giants with no father or mother worthy of mention, nor a name on the battlefield. He had been the one who had paired them with the daughter of a sea king and a son of the wind, even with Surt’s right arm, who reigned in the land of fire.

  Still, Vafthrúðnir was very smart and must have known something that they didn’t. Hrímnirm had heard that, a long time ago, the old giant had been the brightest among the Jötnar, and it may be true, as his name meant “mighty in riddles”. Some had told him that once, Óðin himself had paid Vafthrúðnir a visit to put his wisdom to the test. He had traveled to Jötunheim disguised as a wanderer, and under the name of Gagnrad he had asked him several questions about the world; how it started and how it would end. And Vafthrúðnir in turn had questioned him about the gods and their affairs, about the horses that brought the day and the night, about the Ífingr River and about the name of the plain where the last battle of the Ragnarök would be fought. They had replied to one another and the thing had soon become a contest. And Vafthrúðnir would have won if it had not been for Óðin’s trickeries. Because at the end, the father of gods had asked him what words he had whispered into the ear of his son Baldr at his funeral pyre. That was something only Óðin could possibly know, so at that point he had revealed his true nature and Vafthrúðnir had admitted his defeat.

  Vafthrúðnir may had been smart in the past, but now he was very old and probably had lost his mind. His brain had petrified inside his skull and he was not “mighty in riddles” anymore, but riddled with madness. Hrímnirm looked at the serrated peaks of Thrym and chose, once again, to trust the spinners.

  “They’re not around,” he said. “Let’s get down. We’ll look for footsteps in the snow.”

  They did that during the afternoon, and only stopped with the onset of darkness, taking refuge again in a place where two large boulders leaned one over the other, creating a precarious roof. The first snowflakes were already fluttering in the air and Hrímnirm could listen to the Vindsval song, softly spoken in the grim cold air. They were nearer now, so close he could see the silhouette of Thrymheim, the ruinous wall and the cusps of the towers behind. But everything seemed lost. The arrow would never find its purpose without help from Logi, Bára, and Kâri.

  “I brought something to placate the rage and sadness.” Mögthrasir produced a leather flask from his bag. “I would have preferred to wait for after… you know, for the celebration. But never mind.”

  “There’s always something to celebrate. We’re alive, and those who are dead are part of the mountain now, grass and mud and, in time, rock.”

  “I’ll drink to your grim thoughts, my good Hrímnirm,” Mögthrasir took a long gulp of whatever was inside the flask, “but I will also drink for the friendship and for the bonds that should be never broken.”

  “So to us,” Hrímnirm clarified, while Mögthrasir handed him the flask. He sipped from it. It was strong and nasty as he had expected, but also comforting, so he drank more and more. “To Hrímnirm and Mögthrasir.”

  “I know we’re not family; I’ve got no family. But we’re close.”

 
“Whatever happens, I won’t let you die on the mountain.”

  He shrugged, as if death would not matter to him. He was speaking about something else.

  They watched the storm getting worse and worse and they drank until they fell asleep and Hrímnirm did not hear the Fimbulvetr that night, and the voice of the witch did not make its way into his dreams.

  They found them in the morning. At first, Hrímnirm thought they were a mirage or an illusion. Ghosts from the snow, as they were sometimes called. But then Kâri smiled and Logi grimaced and he knew they were not a figment of his imagination, because Mögthrasir squeaked like a giant rat and ran toward them, not minding where he put his feet.

  “We thought you were dead,” said Bára, curtly.

  “We thought the same of you. It is a good thing that we were both wrong.”

  They had spent the night in the open, and the cold and the avalanche had not left them unscathed. They were a sorry sight. No thralls had made it and the provisions they carried were lost. They were wounded and their skin was covered in scratches. Kâri limped when he walked and no longer seemed to be floating over the snow, because his foot was dragging and left a sinuous trail behind him. Logi did not look like a son of Muspell, as the fire that he held inside seemed extinguished and, when he talked, only wisps of smoke came out from his lips. But they were alive and they still had a chance.

  “So what now, Lords?” Mögthrasir asked. He was happy again because he knew the answer. All of them raised their heads to look at the stronghold and the bridge. They were not far, not far at all. The time to end things once and for all had come.