Þrúðr felt the flush rising in her cheeks. “Forgive me, but your shapes are somewhat strange to me. I had perhaps thought—”
“That we are belched forth from the rock itself?” Uni laughed, the sound deep and loud in the stillness of the garden. “Or perhaps that we must steal Ásgarðr’s women to spawn our sons?”
Þrúðr hunched, shamed to hear her fears so plainly spoken.
“Forgive my humor,” Uni said. “But these things . . . our ways are not the surface’s ways. And so you whisper dark things of us, I think. That we covet your strange dull skin and spindly limbs.”
“You told me I was beautiful!” Þrúðr felt foolish as soon as the words left her mouth, clamping a hand across her lips and wishing for some great beast to rise through the rock and eat her whole.
Uni merely laughed. “What else was I to say! Father tried to tell me what he knows of your courtship, but . . . atch!” A strange, guttural sound of frustration. “Am I instead to ask your skill in smithing? Or compliment the weaving of your clothes? Or the speed with which you can find a vein within the mines?” Another laugh, and then Þrúðr was laughing, too, something strange and light fluttering in her gut.
“I do weave,” she said. “This.” She gestured to the gold embroidery on her hangaroc. “Mother taught me when I was young, to pull strands from—”
“From your hair!” Bright blue-green danced across Uni’s skin. “Of course,” he said, at Þrúðr’s nod. “You weave the threads and lay the stitching. May I?” He held out his hand.
Þrúðr nodded, biting her lip and trying not to giggle as Uni’s fingers ran across the pattern. Across the tops of her breasts, though there was nothing lascivious in the touch. Þrúðr wondered if Uni even knew there should be.
“This is wonderful craft,” Uni said, leaning back again. “You have great skill.”
Þrúðr couldn’t help the smile that split her lips, nor the pride that swelled within her chest. Her own fingers raised to trace the images. Her mother, her father, her brothers. Family. Surrounded by the branches of the Tree and the watchful eyes of ravens and of wolves.
“Þrúðr.” Uni’s voice was serious, colors muting to dull silver. “You do not wish me as your husband, not truly.”
It was not a question. Þrúðr’s joy and pride falling like stones into the void, and she looked away lest she meet Uni’s large, dark eyes. “Truly, I do not wish any as my husband.”
One small, selfish, childish wish. One she’d told no one since the day her father had ridden out to best a dvergar at riddles. Since the day her mother had set her aside and told her to take a man, lest such things happen more often.
“What do you wish?”
Þrúðr blinked, felt the sting in her eyes and willed no more tears to fall. She was a woman, not a child, and she had been asked a woman’s question. To be answered in a woman’s way.
“I wish,” she began, “for peace and prosperity for Ásgarðr.”
It was not a lie. Nor was it what Uni had asked.
“And for yourself?”
“I . . .” Þrúðr’s fists rolled into tight balls against her knees. Somewhere beyond the dark, a stream babbled gently beneath a mountain.
“I wish for freedom.”
Barely a whisper, but Uni heard it.
“Well,” he said. “Soon, I think, your brothers will have their hammer. And you and I? We will make between us treaty for the surface and mountain both. That is two of your three things. As for the third . . .” He paused for a moment. “Things are different beneath the mountain. Perhaps there can have been a . . . cultural misunderstanding, if you take my meaning? And we will have you back beneath the open sky once more, and both our Realms will be closer for it.”
Þrúðr closed her eyes, feeling the cool breeze of the mountain of her cheeks. “Thank you.”
Beside her, she felt Uni stand. “I will have servants bring tools for weaving. You will find much adulation for your art here, I think. It is beautiful.”
Þrúðr nodded, listening to Uni’s snuffling footfalls as he walked out of the garden. She stayed beneath its false moon for longer yet.
Chapter 15
They crashed sometime just before the dawn. Figuratively speaking, even if Sigmund’s dismount from Sleipnir’s back had been less than elegant. He’d been lying on a damp mat of moldering leaves and spine-cracking roots when it’d occurred to him he’d brought absolutely nothing useful for a long hike across the country.
“Fuck.”
They were in some creepy-ass forest. Full of gray, twisted trees more hung with beards of moss than leaves. A low mist rolled along the ground, roots winding and protruding and cracking through the halfhearted path and, all in all, Sigmund thought the placed looked like a film set for a particularly unsubtle horror movie. He half expected zombies or cannibals to come lurching out of the shadows.
If they did, he’d let them come. His ass ached. And his back. And his legs. And his balls. Christ. Fucking hors—er, quadrupedal sentient jötunn. Sigmund just wasn’t a natural at riding, and this was a pretty tough introductory lesson.
“I didn’t bring any gear.” No copper sword, no battered buckler. No hemp rope or torch or mining pick. Not even a kitten. Just his phone, and wallet, and keys, for gods’ sakes. Because obviously.
“I . . . um. I’m going to try and grab some sleep? If that’s okay?” Sigmund peered up, as much as his aching bones would let him, just in time to see Sleipnir nod.
“Cool.”
There didn’t seem to be anywhere more comfortable to lie, so Sigmund wriggled until the minimum number of pointy objects were jutting into his back. Somewhere, down below the pain, his heart began to ache.
“Y’know, the last time I roughed it in the bush was with L—er, your mum.” Back before Sigmund had Known-with-a-capital-K about Lain. Back before they’d been dating, even. When it’d just been Lain flirting, and Sigmund stumbling his way through the attentions, trying to figure out what they meant. What he wanted them to mean.
Then he’d fallen off a cliff, and Lain had saved him, and they’d had their first real heart-to-heart huddled on some rocks in the middle of the Járnviðr Bleed, while giant spiders lurked overhead. (Lain had only confessed to the spiders recently. Sigmund wished he’d never bothered.)
Jesus. Sigmund hoped Lain was okay. Because Sleipnir was nice and all, but he wasn’t Lain. Wouldn’t throw himself down next to Sigmund on the ground, limbs spread out all over Sigmund’s space, feathers tickling Sigmund’s cheeks and nose. Lain, who smelled like loam and woodsmoke, and whose skin was warm and soft and crisscrossed with jagged scars and Jesus, man, that’s Sleipnir’s mother. Think about something else you perv.
Ahem. Right.
Sigmund opened his eyes. And if Sleipnir was standing some distance away, peering out into the forest, surely it was because he was, like, keeping a lookout. Not because he was horribly embarrassed by Sigmund’s inappropriate thoughts.
Stupid Wyrdborn and their stupid mind-reading.
Cheeks flushing, Sigmund pulled off his glasses, rolled onto his side, and tried to get some sleep.
It was some really fucking uncomfortable sleep. But not nearly as uncomfortable as waking up to a face full of arrow.
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
“Ekki hreyfa!” came a voice from somewhere behind the broadhead. Male, but, sans his glasses, the only other things Sigmund could make out in the blur were blobs of brown and gray.
“Um, hi?” His voice was thready, breath racing and heart hammering because holy fuck there was an arrow in his face and he could die, literally die, and, “I come in peace?”
That prompted another barked string of words, coming from somewhere behind. Jesus, where is Sleipnir?
“I, um. I don’t speak Viking, sorry.” Which was only half true, so: “Much Viking, I mean. Um, I’m Sigmund?”
“We know who you are, thief.” The first voice again, switching to Godstongue. “Ásgarðr shows you h
ospitality and this is how you repay it? By taking that which is not yours? May your find your second stay less comfortable than your first.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t steal anything,”
Behind Sigmund, he heard the stamp of a strange-clawed foot.
Horror settled in at the realization. Horror and disgust, because Sigmund may have been a prisoner, but Sleipnir had been in chains.
“Sleipnir is not a—a possession. He doesn’t ‘belong’ to anyone and—”
A third voice: “He is the steed of the House of Odin.”
“He’s a goddamn person! And my bloody stepson. How dare you!” Sigmund scrambled to his feet, or tried to, ending up with a few false starts as yesterday’s cramps and aches reasserted themselves. His glasses were clutched in his hand from where he’d fallen asleep—a skill cultivated after naps on the floor at one too many LAN parties—and he slipped them on, blinking as the world came back into focus.
The arrow was still pointing his way, nocked in a bow and being held by a guy in shiny chain mail,
(“Ullr”)
who looked obnoxiously rosy-cheeked for this time of morning. So an áss then, not one of the einherjar.
(ásshole, more like)
The three other guys were definitely the latter. Two dressed similarly to Ullr, a third wearing what looked suspiciously like a mid-twentieth-century military uniform. Sigmund tried not to look too hard at the insignias. Even if Captain I Hope Not a Nazi currently had a Luger pointed at Sleipnir’s head.
“You are fortunate,” Ullr said, “that Nanna favors you, and wishes you unharmed. There are those of us who’d sooner cut Loki’s rot wherever it is found.” Which, hah! Kind of an ironic thing to say for someone sent to retrieve the guy’s son.
“If Sleipnir wants to go back with you, I won’t stop him. But I will stop you”—no, that was a lie—“will try to stop you if you force him.”
Ullr’s lip drew back. Not in contempt, Sigmund thought, but . . . pity? And his voice was almost soft when he said, “Do not think us fools. We witnessed your flight from Ásgarðr last night, and would have let you run, had you not stolen Forseti’s horse—”
“Jesus, he’s not a fucking horse! He’s a—”
He did, in fact, manage to finish the sentence, even if he got the pronunciation on the last word a little off.
“—jöteeeeeuuuuuaaaaaaaah!”
Sigmund doubted Ullr minded. Not when the forest around them had burst into life and noise and violence in equal measures. One second, Ullr was standing in front of Sigmund; the next, he wasn’t. Was, instead, rolling head over heels, bouncing on the uneven ground, wrestling with something large and brown that scattered green feathers in its wake.
A gunshot had Sigmund diving to the ground, then looking around in panic for Sleipnir. Sleipnir, who was busy trampling Captain I Hope a Nazi After All beneath his Picasso feet. Off to the side, the other two einherjar were facing down a whole handful of what were unmistakably jötnar.
Bigger than Lain, and broader, with skins and feathers selected from the All-Seasons Branch and Foliage Collection. There were more up in the trees, pointing bows, and that was as far as Sigmund got before Sleipnir nearly knocked him flat.
“Run!” Sigmund translated, hauling himself onto Sleipnir like he’d been riding bareback his whole damn life.
(“you’re welcome”)
Sleipnir didn’t need additional encouragement, leaping right over the top of the pinned Ullr. They got as far as the nearest tree before the forest erupted into a madrigal of birdsong Sigmund realized must’ve been their rescuers-slash-new-captors. He didn’t stick around to find out which, fingers wound into Sleipnir’s feathers, leaning forward over his neck and, hey. This wasn’t too hard. With help.
Sleipnir ran. Leaping over roots and ducking under branches, more nimble than a horse (which he wasn’t), claws better than hooves on the uneven terrain.
Even with his speed, they were being followed. Sigmund could hear the hollow thunk of claws on wood and the angry rustling of leaves. He hoped no one got the idea of shooting arrows. Or a bolas. Sleipnir was running mad fast and he didn’t come equipped with seat belts. If Sigmund came off, he might just find himself waking up in Hel’s camp.
The theory almost got tested half a second later, with a crash of splintered wood and an enormous shape blocking the path.
Sleipnir reared, Sigmund squealed, Sigyn made sure his hands and knees were holding tight. They didn’t topple, but it was close. Instead, they ended up nearly horizontal, Sleipnir in a skidding turn, claws gouging wounds into the forest floor.
He was halfway through righting himself when—
“Brother! Wait!”
—Sigmund’s heart stopped. Just for a moment.
“We mean you no harm.”
(“we?”)
Sigmund’s head whipped around, not under his control, eyes scanning the forest.
Sleipnir had stopped, too. Sigmund could feel the tension in him, limbs coiled and ready to leap away in an instant. But his eyes were fixed straight ahead. Straight to where an enormous something was loping out between the trees.
It looked, Sigmund thought, not unlike a werewolf. If werewolves had horns and feathers.
“. . . Vala?” Sigmund heard himself say, a feeling just below his chest like a shook-up can of soda. In the next instant, he’d dismounted from Sleipnir’s back, movements strong and sure and not his own.
The not-wolf looked at Sigmund, then at Sleipnir.
“Vala?” Sigmund said again. “Please. Is . . . is that . . . ?” He was speaking Viking. Or, rather, Sigyn was using him to speak Viking.
Too-familiar eyes seemed to tear his heart in two. Somewhere in the distance, a voice howled in pain. Here, the wolf-bast said, “Who . . . are you?”
And Sigmund, quite inexplicably, burst into tears.
(oh Jesus . . . um . . . there, there?)
It was such a weird feeling, crying out someone else’s grief. Sigmund could move his limbs again, but every time he blinked, salty spray ended up splattered across the inside of his glasses. When he spoke, his voice was a wet mess, stumbling and choked.
“’m s-sorry,” he managed. “S-sor-ry, I—I’m Si-gmund. I, ugh, I used to . . . aah, I—” And then, all out in a rush: “I h-have your mo-other’s soul. She’s, uh—so ve-ry gla-d to see you.”
That was an understatement. Sigmund’s mind was a cacophony of thoughts and memories, none of them his own. Of a copper-haired little boy, playing and laughing, tussling with his father and brother. Of the same kid, now with longer hair and a simple woolen dress, play-swordfighting against shadow monsters and helping her mother grind grain against a stone.
This was Valdís, born as Váli, Loki and Sigyn’s second child. Who’d been cursed by Odin into berserk, and had torn apart her brother so the æsir could use the guts to bind
(Baldr)
Loki in his prison.
(“I thought her dead . . . lost or worse. I feared . . .”)
Feared a mother’s fears.
Outside the jumble of Sigmund’s head, Valdís’s maw split open to reveal rows of jagged teeth as she snarled, “Mother is dead!”
Sigmund did not disagree with this statement, sniffing and wiping tears from his eyes and snot from his nose with a rough woolen sleeve. “I kn-ow. I’m her—her re-reincarnation.”
A pause, then, “Liar!”
“I c-can’t lie,” Sigmund said. “Not re-really. But you kn-now that, from your mu-um.” He pointed a finger at his head, then put his hand over his heart. “I can fe-eel her. Here and here. She lo-loves you. So much.”
For a moment, Valdís stared. Then she looked away. “. . . Perhaps she should not.”
(“no, what happened was not”)
But Sigmund was already all over that one.
“What happened with your brother wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It was Odin’s. Your mum doesn’t blame you for it and, even if she did, it still wouldn�
�t be your fault.” A pause, then, “That’s what I think, anyway.”
Valdís nodded. Then gestured with a lift of her muzzle to something behind and slightly to the left of Sigmund’s skull.
He heard the unmistakable creak of tension being let out of a bow.
“There was someone pointing an arrow at my head, wasn’t there?”
That earned him a grin from Valdís, a huff from Sleipnir, and a voice saying, “Yes. Mother would not be so careless.”
Sigmund got the strong impression that, when he turned around, Sigyn was in for another round of tears.
The bow-wielder turned out to be a young girl. Sigmund would’ve guessed maybe thirteen or so, except for the fact he knew she was over a thousand, by his counting. He also would’ve picked her as ásynja, which would’ve been half right; she had dark bronze skin and bright copper hair, and a huge tattoo scrolling down one arm. Sigmund knew that tattoo. Or at least parts of it. The parts he’d seen dyed deep in Lain’s skin.
The girl was Eisa, Loki and Sigyn’s last child. The one who’d never known her banished parents, and had been instead raised by the jötnar of the forest.
“I am þurs,” she’d told Sigmund, eyes bright as if daring him to challenge it. “One day, I will un-make Odin’s skin curse enough that all should know it.”
That was the tattoo, Sigmund knew as much from Lain. It kept Ásgarðr’s jötnar looking . . . not like themselves. Apparently, it was also hereditary. Because magic.
Sigmund didn’t mention Lain had broken his own wards by obscuring ink beneath a lattice of scars. He was afraid Eisa might see it too much like a dare.
He’d returned to the rest of the jötnar riding Sleipnir, alongside Eisa sitting on Valdís’s shoulders. When they got back to where he’d been so violently awoken, a half dozen or so þursar were standing around, watching two of their fellows loot the corpses of the einherjar, stripping armor and axes and—in the ex-Nazi’s case—a gold pocket watch.
Sigmund couldn’t pretend he didn’t feel a sort of ironic satisfaction at the sight, even if the einheri’s arm was lying, bleeding and severed, on the far side of the clearing.
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