Stormbringer

by Alis Franklin

  That’s a fine strategy for her but not so much for me, so I turn to him and say, “Yeah. Clipped right down to the shaft. See?” And I open my wings.

  They aren’t small, and Munin squarks and jumps aside, lest it get a face full of feathers. Valdís just shifts to peer around me, and Þrúðr pretends not to be startled by the show.

  Behind me, I can hear the grin in Valdís’s voice as she says, “Odin is dead, and his edicts are fraying. Much jötunn blood was spilt to make this so. We will not allow things to go back to how they were.”

  Meanwhile, Sigmund’s fingers are poking beneath the covert on my wing. “Damn,” he says. “They cut these down to nubs. Will they grow back?”

  “I, er. I think I have to molt first.”

  Sigmund makes a startled exclamation, mind suddenly offering him up a variety of images of enormous orange and gray feathers littered all over our apartment. Because, yeah. That’ll be fun. What on earth am I going to tell the cleaner?

  “Mjölnir is mine,” Þrúðr says. Then corrects herself just as quickly, “Ours. I will not allow my brother’s sacrifice to be in vain.”

  “And what ‘sacrifice’ is that?” Valdís snarls. “The knowledge that he is the very thing he has been told to fight against? That you all are?”

  Þrúðr sits up very straight. “I am ásynja,” she snaps. “My brothers are æsir.”

  “An áss with horns and feathers?” Valdís says. “We all saw it. Soon, all of Þrymheimr will know the shame and hypocrisy that Ásgarðr holds.”

  “No! How dare you. I will not allow you to sully the name of my family.”

  “‘Sully’ it with what? The truth?”

  “I am ásynja!” Þrúðr’s fists slam down on the table. Hard enough that Uni winces.

  “You are jötunn,” Valdís counters. “Beneath the false and frail skin. Beneath the rune curse Odin laid. You are as we are. As was your father.”

  “No!”

  Sigmund’s fingers in my feathers are nice, but the fight is getting sort of heated. So I say, “Actually, he was.”

  Þrúðr falls silent, and I look up, shifting and folding my wings back into nothing.

  “You remember I told you I was there for the birth?” I ask. She nods, just a fraction. I know she remembers. “So I saw him, fresh and bloodied and covered in down. Little tail twitching.”

  Valdís snaps, “Hah!” even as Þrúðr whispers a denial under her breath.

  “Vala, please,” I say. Then, back to Þrúðr, “His mother, Jörð. That just means Earth. You’ve never met her because she isn’t real. Just a story, as if Odin wanked off onto the dirt and, bam! Suddenly, Thor. So think. Þrúðr. Why would Odin be so keen on hiding the legacy of his giant-killer son?”

  “. . . No,” Þrúðr breathes.

  “She was a jötunn. A risi, actually. Like me.” That’s one way of explaining it. Þrúðr doesn’t need to know the other. Not after all these years. “That makes your dad a þurs, same as Valdís.”

  Jötunn genetics are complicated and nonsensical enough to make a biologist weep. Needless to say, the þursar are who they are—and are where they are—because they have æsir blood. All of them.

  Þrúðr is silent, shoulders hunched and eyes fixed on where her hands now wring beneath the table. Uni reaches out as if to offer comfort, then pulls back, unsure. Even Munin isn’t smirking any longer. Inasmuch as a bird can smirk.

  “You know it’s true,” I say.

  One long, drawn out moment. Then Þrúðr says, “Father . . . had a tattoo. Like yours. Like—like Magni’s.” She takes a deep and shuddering breath and adds, “Like mine.”

  “Yeah.” And the worst part? That tattoo, that blood link? That’s what allowed Móði’s binding spell to work. It broke when Magni’s tattoo did the same. Good for me, bad for him. Irony all round.

  Þrúðr is a smart girl. She can see where all this is headed. She asks, “Who knows this?”

  I shrug. “Don’t know, really. Me. Odin. Honestly, I’m not sure anyone else did. Not even your dad.” Ásgarðr’s best kept secret.

  “And now all will know the truth. That . . . that the children of Thor are”—I can feel herself forcing the word—jötnar.

  “Well, not really.” And then all eyes turn to Sigmund. “I mean,” he adds, “you have jötunn ancestry, I guess. But you said it yourself, you’re ásynja. Like, my parents are from all over the shop, but me? I’m an Aussie, mate.” He tries a grin. “It’s about more than just your blood.”

  Þrúðr nods, eyes downcast. She’s had a long few days. One thousand years as a teenager followed by a crash course in adulthood. “Yet blood matters,” she says. “Else Odin would not have sought to hide it.”

  Sigmund nods. “Yeah. Yeah, it does.”

  I feel Þrúðr make her decision, muddied whirl of emotion snapping into one single bright point of clarity. “There will be no war,” she says. “And Mjölnir will return to Ásgarðr.” Before Valdís can protest, Þrúðr turns to her. “Valdís of Þrymheimr, to you I entrust Járngreipr. You and your people have seen the price my brother paid for wielding Mjölnir without the gauntlets’ grasp. No others will try the same. The hammer is my father’s, and I will have it. But it will no longer be used to shed the blood of jötnar. Will this be enough for peace?”

  Valdís narrows her eyes. For a while, she says nothing, and Þrúðr, to her credit, doesn’t shy from the baleful stare.

  It’s Valdís who backs down, snorting and looking away. “We shall see. I will take your message to Þrymheimr, tell our warriors to stay their claws.”

  Þrúðr nods. “Thank you,” she says. “There has been too much bloodshed. I will not make the mistakes my father made.”

  “Nor I,” says Valdís, looking everywhere but at me.

  I just grin, leaning back into the tiny, uncomfortable stone chair. Sigmund is a cool and solid presence at my side, Loki a proud beat within my chest.

  Viva la future.

  Not long after, we’re riding out from beneath the mountain. Riding Sleipnir is only slightly less uncomfortable than riding a horse but, on the other hand, is significantly more fun than running. Besides, I have Sigmund’s waist to wrap my arms around and his neck to nuzzle into, and, all in all, leaving is much more pleasant than our arrival.

  Þrúðr rides beside us, on the horse she brought from Ásgarðr. Her brothers don’t accompany us on the journey. Uni promised to take care of Magni in recompense for Tóki’s betrayal, and Móði stayed to comfort his brother.

  Eisa and Valdís, meanwhile, take both their army and Járngreipr—the true Járngreipr—back the Myrkviðr, to try to persuade the þursar to stay their collective hands.

  Overhead, in the sky, Munin caws mirth into the breeze.

  On the ground, we ride, soil churned by a thunder of hoof and claw.

  Meanwhile, over the horizon, a bunch of idiots prepare themselves for war.

  Chapter 26

  “How long till their arrival?”

  Munin clicked its beak, hopping from foot to foot, exhaustion eating at its bones. Two days it’d been flying, ahead of the kids coming back from Sindri. It was a long trip, and Munin was about ready for a soft nest and a good nap, followed by a fresh corpse and a birdbath full of mead.

  Forseti, however, wasn’t coughing up any of it.

  “A day,” Munin said. “Maybe less.” It hopped backward again as Forseti paced. The kid didn’t look well. Sort of gaunt and pale. Haggard and washed out. And Munin would’ve sworn he was favoring a single eye.

  Not to mention he was still holding Gungnir. Munin wondered if the kid even put it down to sleep.

  Come to think of it, was Forseti even sleeping? Munin would’ve suggested a massage and a day off if it would’ve earned any response other than a glare and potential slap.

  “And they have Mjölnir?” Forseti was giving that one-eyed stare again. The one that made Munin shiver. The one that should’ve died a long, long time ago.

  “Yeah
, see,” it started. “About the hammer . . .”

  “Tell me!”

  “Of course, of course.” Munin hopped back, definitely out of reach. “It’s just . . . I’ve been flying a long time. Pretty tired, y’know? Hungry. If you could bring up a bit of meat, maybe it’d help with the memo—”

  “No!” Forseti’s fist slammed down on the table, hard enough to rattle cups and send Munin stumbling backward with a squark. “First you will speak.”

  “Boy, enough.”

  Forseti’s head turned, a sneer curving over his lips. Munin, meanwhile, felt relief. And not all of it because Nanna was approaching, carrying a tray of offal and a bowl of water.

  “Mother, get out. We have no time for your coddling.”

  Nanna, to her eternal credit, shouldered past her son, placing the tray down in front of Munin.

  “Please excuse Forseti’s . . . inhospitality,” she said. “He has had a trying time of late. You have served Ásgarðr well. Some comforts are the least we can provide.”

  Keeping Nanna between itself and Forseti, Munin obliged her on her offer, eyeing off the stinking pile. Liver, lungs. Kidneys and a heart. All the good stuff.

  It bowed, wings spread. “Thank you, ma’am.” Then hopped forward, beak plunging into flesh.

  Nanna took a seat, patiently watching, back straight and arms folded. Forseti beside her, looking one sharp jolt from catching fire.

  “The hammer,” he growled.

  “Right, right.” Munin gulped down a piece of lung, blood smeared over its beak and claws. “It’s coming back, don’t worry about that. But the other stuff isn’t.”

  “What?” snapped Forseti, even as Nanna’s eyes widened and she said, “Þrúðr?”

  “Is fine. She’s got the hammer.”

  “What of Magni?” From Forseti.

  “He’s, uh . . . indisposed. Injured. The dvergar are looking after him.” Munin tore off another piece of meat, stomach a riot of growling. “Look, it’s a long story. The short version is Þrúðr isn’t married, she gave her dad’s belt back to the dvergar, and the gloves to the þursar.”

  “What!”

  Yeah, Munin had been afraid of that reaction. Even the normally serene Nanna looked perturbed.

  “There would’ve been war, otherwise,” it said.

  “There is war now!” Forseti really did love slamming Gungnir down against the floor. The wood made a real solid thwack when he did it. Munin remembered that thwack. Odin had been a fan of it as well, once upon a time. “Armies on two fronts,” Forseti continued. “Duplicitous, cowardly beasts. Let them come. Ásgarðr will not fall.”

  “Forseti!” Nanna half turned to her son, voice and eyebrows high.

  “He’s right,” Munin said. “Ásgarðr won’t fall, at least not to Þrymheimr. Þrúðr gave them the gloves as a peace offering. No gloves, no one uses the hammer. No one uses the hammer, the þursar sleep easy in their nests at night.”

  Nanna looked grim, but she was nodding. Forseti was livid.

  “No! No no no no no!” being the gist of his reaction. “I sent that fool girl to buy our future, not barter it away on softhearted sentiment!”

  Nanna pursed her lips, disdainful of the outburst. “It would seem she bartered it on peace.”

  “She makes us weak before the Realms. Before the þursar, no less. She dishonors us and her father both.”

  That did earn a scowl. “Boy, perhaps you—”

  But Forseti wasn’t listening to his mother. Instead, he rounded on Munin. “And Magni? Where was Magni? Why did he not stop this?”

  Munin inched across the table, making sure the plate of offal was between it and Forseti. And that a window was in easy reach. Magni’s . . . predicament was a no-go. Everyone had been pretty clear on that. Somewhere, between the threats and bribes, Munin had gotten the message. If Forseti was going to learn Ásgarðr’s hottest secret, it would be from the people it affected. Not Munin. So:

  “Like I said, he was hurt pretty bad trying to get the hammer back. I don’t think he’ll be stopping anyone from anything for a while.”

  Even from the air, Munin had heard the mournful howling. Gossip was gossip, but there were limits.

  Forseti was well past his, knuckles white against Gungnir’s wood.

  Nanna didn’t fail to notice.

  “I don’t see why you fret so,” she said. “Mjölnir is returned and relations with Þrymheimr have improved.”

  “Ásgarðr does not have ‘relations’ with the jötnar!”

  That outburst earned Forseti a dubious look from Munin and Nanna both.

  Forseti noticed, his eyebrows colliding like angry lions bickering over a kill. “Do not think I am ignorant of your plans, mother. Þrúðr’s folly is not precedent for you to make the same mistake with Hel.”

  “They wish peace, Forseti,” Nanna said. “Peace and freedom.”

  “No! They wish to make mockery of everything Ásgarðr stands for, pervert everything we are. I will not allow it.”

  Nanna stood, the scrape of her chair loud against the stone. “The decision is not yours,” she said. “You are not king, and if you father were here he—”

  “Father is dead!”

  Munin wasn’t sure what stung the most: the words, or the slap Nanna delivered to her son as soon as he spoke them. Either way: ouch.

  Munin hunkered down behind the offal plate, doing its best imitation of invisibility.

  Forseti and Nanna, staring each other down, stiff and still but for where Munin could see the breath come as fast and heavy as if they’d just done dash at the Olympics.

  It was Nanna who walked away first, silent and furious. Forseti making a disgusted noise once she was out of earshot, before storming off himself. Not in the same direction. Both seemed to have forgotten Munin’s presence.

  Munin, who looked at the plate in front of it and then to the window. The plate. The window. The plate, the door. Food, gossip.

  In the end, gossip won out. With one last gulp of water and carrying a chunk of liver in its beak, Munin hopped up onto the windowsill and left the building.

  The Wall was empty, Forseti had ensured it. No one was permitted to scale it, bar Ullr and Rígr. They would keep watch in place of simpering einherjar who had proven they could not be trusted.

  Meanwhile, beneath the sunset, the writhing mass of Hel’s army wailed on. And endless maelstrom of madness, set to the tune of skalds and grinding music. Ásgarðr’s men were bred for war, not for this. This attrition of monsters, taunting Forseti’s warriors with perverted visions of dead loved ones. With howls that promised peace even as their very presence withered the land around.

  This thing could not be borne. Not with Forseti’s mother brewing dissent from within. Not with Þrúðr showing weakness from without.

  No rain had lashed on Ásgarðr’s eaves since Mjölnir had been lost. Now, the hammer was returning and with it, Forseti felt the storm.

  Men could not fight corruption with poetry and song, and Ásgarðr was corrupt indeed. Weak. They had forgotten their purpose. War and glory. Honor. Forseti felt it, all of it. Carved in the runes that marred Gungnir’s surface, worn smooth by centuries of Odin’s steady hand.

  Grandfather had not been an honorable man. But he had been a necessary one, his deceptions keeping Ásgarðr strong against its foes. He, Forseti knew, would not stand by idle while monsters snarled before the gates. Nor would he sue for peace.

  He would have war instead. Would show the quarrelsome Realms what price was had to disobey the gods.

  As the sun lowered, Forseti heard the men below begin to file into their halls. To feast and sleep. To gossip. To whisper cowards’ words.

  Forseti would have them do a different thing instead. He would have them remember whence they came. To remind them of the men they had once been.

  And so, alone atop the Wall, Forseti raised his arm.

  And threw Gungnir across the Line.

  Chapter 27

  We’re ba
rely out of the forest when we hear it.

  “What is that?” Þrúðr catches it first, sitting up straighter on her horse, eyes squinting into the dawn.

  “What’s what?” I say. In my arms, Sigmund’s head keeps dropping to my chest and jerking back. If I weren’t holding on to him, he’d have fallen off miles ago. It’s been a long couple of days.

  “Shouting,” Þrúðr says. “In the distance. And . . . a horn?”

  I tilt my head, trying to catch the sound. Jötnar don’t have great hearing but, even still, I think I can just about make out what Þrúðr means.

  “It’s coming from Ásgarðr,” I say.

  Þrúðr doesn’t respond, just spurs her exhausted horse onward.

  “Shit,” I say. Then, to Sleipnir, “Well. Feel up to a bit of a race?”

  Stupid question, I know. An instant later Þrúðr is eating dust, and I have my arms full of a suddenly very awake and very startled Sigmund.

  Sleipnir isn’t a horse, but he’s still the fastest thing in all the Realms. We make it to the Wall in no time.

  And just as quickly wish we hadn’t.

  Chaos. Utter chaos.

  “What the hell happened!” Sigmund yells, twisting to try to face me.

  Sleipnir is still running, but it’s getting difficult now that we’ve passed the Wall. In through the hole at the back, Sleipnir leaping the crumbling stone with ease.

  The shouting gets closer with every step. Male voices, mostly, yelling in a mixture of Old Norse and English. Norwegian and Dutch. Some other things I don’t recognize, syllables lost above the clash of swords and what are undeniably the roars of jötnar.

  Ásgarðr isn’t a big place, and soon the collection of halls comes into view. Men stand on rooftops with arrows, run between doorways holding axes. On a balcony, a woman hacks at the talons of a jötunn that tries to use its sharp claws and stumpy wings to run up a building’s wall. Beneath her is a zombie-on-zombie melee, as an endless tide of nár on einheri action.

  Hel’s army is attacking Ásgarðr.

  “This shouldn’t be happening!” Sigmund yells. Before I can respond, I’ve had to press him flat against Sleipnir’s neck, the three of us lurching sideways to avoid a volley of arrows that rain down from above.