Loki flew bodily through the air, his torso folded and his long flailing limbs reminding me of a squid. He landed fifty yards away, far outside the range of Klaudia’s lips or Malina’s hair or any other charm capable of calming him. His body bloomed in flames and the madness returned.
“Hah? Who?” he cried, then saw Ukko advancing. “Thhhhunder god! G-g-guh, good!”
Malina shouted something in Polish, but Loki and Ukko ignored it, focused as they were on each other. Loki took a deep breath in the way a trained opera singer would, chest rising faintly but lungs filling like a bellows. He threw back his head and roared as his hands flew up and an inferno exploded from him, a burnin’ ring o’ fire that lifted Ukko off his feet and set the field alight. Here, then, was the great conflagration that Malina’s coven had foreseen.
“S-s-set your world on f-f-fire!” Loki spat before launching himself into the air and streaking north, presumably toward Finland. Ukko, having no choice and forced to play defense, followed him without ever acknowledging—or perhaps even realizing—that he had flipped Loki’s switch from “Neutralized” to “Unchained Sociopath.”
Odin’s vision didn’t chase after them but rather panned back to the witches. They had their purple wards up, protected from the flames but clearly feeling the heat. Garm, however, had no such protection. His fur was aflame and he sprinted, howling, for the river that bordered Jasło’s western edge, some two hundred yards away. The witches ran after him, cursing in Polish and sounding far more angry than scared.
Munin broke off the images and squawked at me. I disconnected with him and then switched to Hugin to speak with Odin.
All right, why was Ukko there? I said.
The Gray Wanderer’s voice lacked the casual tone he’d employed when Loki was safely occupied. Even the raven looked a bit more concerned.
Are you suggesting I had something to do with it? Not only would that be against my own interest, but I’ve been a little busy lately.
Well, what about Hel?
Maybe she just told Ukko that Loki was free and Ukko used his own methods.
Oh. Right. Midhir, I said.
I shared my suspicions about Midhir’s motivation to want me dead and his relative ability to do it.
This time I didn’t curb my tongue. The Einherjar can go toast their foreskins.
Odin laughed at me.
Do. What happened to the witches and Garm?
Great. One more thing to worry about.
That reminds me. How is Freyja doing? The Norse goddess of beauty and war had been severely injured in our raid on Hel.
Does she even know we were successful?
I frowned. Is she in a coma or something? I knew that she had lost a lot of blood and had some shattered bones when we evacuated her, but perhaps she’d suffered more head trauma than was immediately evident.
Odin huffed impatiently.
Thanks, I said dryly. We’ve been working on that. Gotta go.
Why?
Like I said, gotta go.
Who?
“On your guard. Dark elves coming,” I said. “And apparently some standard elves and a bonus dude to help us somehow.”
Oberon perked up.
In this case they do.
Granuaile hefted Scáthmhaide. “Going invisible,” she said, before speaking the binding and winking out. I cast camouflage on Oberon but left myself visible.
The Ljósálfar, when they stepped off Bifrost onto Midgard, both disappointed and delighted me. They weren’t wearing leaf-shaped green and gold armor with curlicues or long robes with overlarge embroidered sleeves. They didn’t glow with backlighting or come with their own soundtrack by Enya. Their hair wasn’t long, straight, and silky, and their eyes weren’t limpid pools of oh-my-god straight out of manga. But they were tall and slender and very shiny, and they sounded like wind chimes when they moved.
The sound came from their light-blue enamel armor—that is, glass fused to a metal base. It draped their forms in layered scales so that they reminded me of pangolins, if pangolins could blind you like metal mud flaps on a semitruck. In the center of each enamel scale, a single rune had been etched with acid, and so far as I could tell, it was always the same rune. On a practical level, I couldn’t imagine the benefit to enamel; basic blunt force would shatter it, and the metal backing each scale looked to be either aluminum or a thin wafer of steel. But the runes must offer some protection. Their helmets had no metal backing: Each was a solid piece of shaped glass in light blue, etched with the same rune over and over, lending the impression that someone had found some defective fishbowls at an outlet store and shipped them to Álfheim. A grid of thin holes had been drilled through the glass around the nose, mouth, and ears, which had the effect of blurring out those features, but otherwise I could see that their heads were closely cropped and the tops of their ears did have the famous pointy cartilage. They had swords swinging on their left hips, but I wondered if they weren’t ceremonial. Their primary weapons rested in holsters strapped to their thighs—large flechette pistols.
Two dozen such elves were led by a thick, diminutive fellow in heavy steel plate. His armor was also etched with runes, but these were many and varied and flickered with their own light. Four small axes were strapped to his back, handles peeking over his shoulder. His voice was muffled somewhat by his helmet, but I still recognized the diction.
“I greet you, Druid, Wolf Slayer, Freyr’s Bane, Loki Shepherd. May you walk from battle unbruised and exult in the death songs of the slain.”
There was only one person I knew who would assign me such epithets and string them together. “Fjalar? Is that you? Runeskald of Nidavellir?”
“Yes. I have come with the Glass Knights, the Ljósálfar elite, rune-warded and ready for battle, to meet the Svartálfar who pursue you. Axes have I brought, newly forged and blazoned, to cut the smoky black and tear flesh out of vapor.”
“What? I beg your pardon, but you lost me there.”
Fjalar drew one of the axes fixed to h
is back. It had a barb on the handle that triggered a release on the holder as he pulled it up so that the blade wouldn’t get caught. Clever design. He pointed at the runes seared into the blade of the axe and said, “These are experiments in craft and war, an attempt to cleave through magic mist and wound the flesh, to sunder smoke yet slice through bone and sinew.”
“You’re saying if you hack a dark elf in his smoke form with that, he’ll show the wound when he turns solid?”
“I will not know until I attempt it, but it is my hope. The runes are supposed to end their vaporous state and then the blade cuts them, which binds them to their solid form. Should any of the axes prove successful, more will I make and teach the craft and song to other Runeskalds.”
“That sounds fabulous,” I said, “but what if none of the axes perform the way you hope they do?”
The dwarf’s armor twitched, signaling a shrug underneath all the steel. “I will return to my forge and try anew.”
“No, I mean, the dark elves are not going to allow you to experiment on them.”
“They will have no choice in the matter.”
“I mean they’re going to fight back.”
“And the lamb will cry before it’s slaughtered. There is no difference.” Fjalar’s helmet twitched, indicating his eyes had been drawn elsewhere. “Ah. See where they come. Remain here and do nothing until you are ordered to drop to the ground.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You need do nothing but attract them. Let us take care of this.”
I cast my eyes across the pasture separating the Long Wood from the copse to the east and spied a sizable group of dark elves approaching—equal to the number of elves on our side. Dressed in what appeared to be shimmering white warm-up outfits that basketball teams favor—except with tunics instead of jerseys—they ran in an undisciplined mob until they saw Fjalar step forward, brandishing an axe. Responding to some unseen cue, they formed into a wedge and sped up, moving at double time.
Behind me, the Glass Knights spread themselves into six half squads of four elves each and drew their flechette pistols, one in each hand. Fjalar strode forward a few more paces, until he was perhaps twenty yards in front of us. If anyone had been dressed in modern combat gear, I would have felt a bit silly standing there naked amongst all that armor, but aside from the flechette pistols we were all rocking it old school, and I felt like a proper Celt.
“You seriously don’t want me to do anything?” I called.
“You will ruin our tactics if you do,” the Runeskald replied over his shoulder. On the one hand I felt a tad hurt that they didn’t want my help, but on the other I was happy to let them assume all the risk if they wanted it. I was also curious about how this would unfold. This was the most disciplined bunch of dark elves I had seen to this point, and if I was not mistaken, they were carrying standard steel weapons because they had learned they couldn’t pierce my aura with their magical knives.
Oberon, I’d like you and Granuaile to hang back behind the elves if you’re not already doing so.
With thirty yards to go until they reached Fjalar, the dark elves stopped and drew steel scimitars, holding them above their heads. They paused for a few beats and then charged on a silent signal. Fjalar rushed to meet them, one dwarf against twenty-five dark elves, and he wasn’t silent. He sang something fierce, and a yellow energy began to coalesce around his armor. When he met the point of the phalanx, his axe whiffed through the clothes and smoke of the point man, as the rest of the wedge flowed to either side and flanked him, their swords arcing down onto his armor. Their blades rebounded away from his helmet and pauldrons as if they were rubber and made clunking noises instead of an expected clang; yellow light exploded at each contact. Fjalar swung again with his axe, slicing ineffectually through smoke. I suppose he’d managed to make a few of them drop their standard weapons, and his armor had clearly been enchanted to withstand their blows, but neither side was doing any damage.
Undaunted, Fjalar dropped his first axe and drew another one. While he reached back, the point man solidified, nude, and stabbed at him with the black knife that all Svartálfar carried. This weapon rebounded as well. And when Fjalar hacked at him with his new axe, the villain evaded it again by turning incorporeal.
Some of the dark elves moved beyond Fjalar, reformed a smaller wedge, and charged up the slope at me, their true target. They all still had gleaming steel in their hands. Seeing this, one of the Ljósálfar barked a command in Old Norse and the elves raised their weapons, but no one ordered me to get down. I readied Fragarach and cast a final worried glance at Fjalar. He was drawing his third axe, bellowing his skald and snarling at his opponents, who continued to rain down blows as useless as his own—until he swung at them with the third axe.
As before, the dark elves dissolved to coal-black smoke in advance of his blow, but this time, when the axe passed through, it seemed to pull and rip them into solid form as it moved through the air, the way a zipper will part and reveal something hidden in its journey downward. And the dark elves who had been so torn back into the world were split by the axe, and inky innards slithered out of their torsos onto the earth.
“Victory!” Fjalar shouted, and the Ljósálfar leader behind me commanded that I get down. The dark elves in front of me were awfully close, but I dropped to the earth in curiosity—and so did Fjalar.
The elves began to shoot their flechettes in a prescribed pattern at the dark elves, in set intervals—once every half second, though it took me a couple of seconds to realize it and understand the strategy. The first volley caught some of the dark elves unawares, but most saw it coming and dissolved, dropping their steel in the process. The subsequent shots passed above my head and through them without harm—but that wouldn’t continue. The dark elves could maintain their incorporeal forms for only five seconds, so the Ljósálfar just needed to spray the field with flechettes for six, and they would catch all of them solid at some point.
Four seconds in, one of the Svartálfar materialized at my side with his black knife held high. He was blown away before he could bring it down. Others saw that the Ljósálfar were a threat and took shape behind them, but when the dark elves lunged in for the kill, the runes on the glass armor activated and repulsed them with a blue shock wave that sent them staggering backward. And then, in the fifth second, the ones below in the field all had to beef up, and they were hit by a double volley of flechettes: The first rocked them and anchored them to flesh, and the second mowed them down.
The stragglers behind the line of Glass Knights—only three—melted away and fled.
Fjalar and I rose from the ground and stepped away from the mess of dark-elf corpses, before their inherent instability caused them to melt and turn to an oily goo.
“Did you see that, Druid?” the Runeskald crowed. “The order of runes triumphs over evil!”
“Well, yeah, I guess. What happened there?”
“The third axe worked! Now that I know the proper runes and skald to use, I can create more such weapons and arm the Glass Knights for their mission, honor-bathed and glory-steeped.”
“I’m sorry? What mission?”
“Our kings, Aurvang and Gedelglinn, have decreed it should be so. Deep into Svartálfheim the Glass Knights shall delve, wreaking ruin and smiting those who would oppose us during Ragnarok.”
Something didn’t compute. “Hold on. How do you know who will oppose you during Ragnarok? Have the Svartálfar said they would fight with Hel?”
“Is this not proof enough, Druid?” Fjalar said, gesturing at the field where the dark elves were dissolving into tar.
“No, it’s not. These are clearly assassins or mercenaries in someone’s employ, but they do not represent the hearts of all the Svartálfar. There may be some who would oppose Hel, and, if so, they would be valuable allies.”
Fjalar growled and yanked off
his helmet with his left hand. His chin was still bald and his hair in braids, in accordance with his culture’s mourning practices. He stepped up to me. “Are you such a good judge of character now? You who sent Loki Fire Hands to Nidavellir to kill thousands of my Shield Brothers?”
“I didn’t send him there to kill anyone. He did that without my urging and you know it. But what does Odin say about this plan to invade Svartálfheim?”
“Did he not tell you to wait for our arrival? Did he not send us here on the Bifrost Bridge? Is that not Bifrost, even now, waiting to take us back to Asgard?” he said, pointing behind me. The rainbow bridge shimmered in the late-afternoon sun. “What am I doing, arguing with a nude man?” he groused, stalking past me and attempting to stalk on the rainbow too, except that it wasn’t the sort of surface that allowed stalking. The Glass Knights turned and followed, denying me any more time to discuss the matter. I frowned after them, because it was a disturbing development. I wasn’t a particular fan of dark elves, but that was only because I hadn’t met any nice ones yet. From what Manannan Mac Lir had told me, some of the Svartálfar had nobility in their nature. They tended to be the ones who didn’t take mercenary contracts.
“Odin, are you on board with this?” I shouted. The bridge retracted without an answer, though I hardly expected one.
Interesting. Where are they?
Thanks. Tell Granuaile she can fire at will.
I turned around and raised Fragarach in time to see three dark elves with scimitars loping my way, wearing grim expressions and nothing else. I winced when one of Granuaile’s knives sank into the groin of the leader and he went down screaming and clutching the ruins of his junk.
I’m going to have nightmares.
The remaining two Svartálfar whiffed into the air, anticipating more knives from an invisible assailant, but Granuaile stayed her hand. Their steel dropped to the ground and I pursued one of the clouds, swishing Fragarach through it, thinking I would catch him as he turned solid. I missed high. Sensing what I was up to, his substance dropped to the ground and he solidified, where he promptly swept my legs and blocked the wild swing I made, with his forearm staying my wrist. His right hand poked me in quick sequence along pressure points across my chest and froze up my muscles—where the hell had he learned that? But then it was easy for him to pin my sword arm and wrap his other hand around my throat. His buddy came back, retrieved a scimitar, and took two steps with a mind to finish me, before a throwing knife abruptly sprouted from his chest. It didn’t kill him, but its appearance caused him to focus on prolonging his own life rather than ending mine. Oberon jumped on him and ended it—at least, that’s what I think happened, judging by the growl and the takedown. Granuaile wouldn’t have growled; she would have clocked him upside the head with her staff, which is what she did to the fellow choking me. She put a whole lot of energy behind that swing, because his head exploded like a melon and he slumped on me, leaking black blood.
Hunted (Iron Druid Chronicles) Page 16
