I Bring the Fire Part IV: Fates: The Hunt for Loki Is On

by C. Gockel

  “Come, Mademoiselle” says Pascal. “This is no place for a lady…”

  Amy doesn’t stop struggling. “He needs medical attention and I can—”

  The sound of a whip cuts through the air, and then the sound of chains hitting the floor. Spinning around, Amy stills and a sob comes to her lips. Bohdi turns and sees the Fire Giant hit the floor with a soft thud. One of the guards winds up his leg—

  “No!” Amy screams, and Bohdi hisses.

  The guard’s foot connects with the Fire Giant’s head, and there is the sickening sound of breaking bone and squish of flesh. The other guard screams at the kicker, and he shouts something back.

  Amy’s body sags. “Oh, no…”

  Bohdi just stares. It’s as though his brain has gone off-line, and he can’t think or react or even believe what he’s just seen.

  Pascal and Gabbar push them down the hallway. Neither protests, but as they cross through a courtyard that leads them back to their rooms, Amy’s feet still. Staring hard at the ground, she says, “I need some air…Please…I’ve heard so much about the gardens. Can we go there?”

  Bohdi stifles a sniff at the lie.

  Gabbar and Pascal exchange worried glances, and then Gabbar says, “That is fine.”

  Is it an escape plan? Because Bohdi’s ready to leave, with or without Thor, or knowing the melting point of plasma.

  …And is Amy ready to leave, with or without the “new Loki”? His heart rate quickens, and he feels a flush of relief. He doesn’t have to tell her… He doesn’t have to lie. Bohdi is not Loki. He thinks of the tortured Fire Giant and the arrogant captain of the guard. This place is pretty but shitty, and if Bohdi were Loki, he would have ditched this fucked-up place centuries ago.

  x x x x

  Amy’s feet crunch along the gravel of the garden path as she tries to lead them in the direction of Hoenir’s hut without looking like she’s leading them in the direction of Hoenir’s hut.

  She’s vaguely aware of Bohdi beside her, saying, “Hmmm…it’s warm out.”

  …even though it isn’t particularly.

  “Whatcha think the temperature is?” he asks, wiping his neck. “About twenty-two degrees Celsius?”

  “I suppose…” says Pascal.

  “But what would that be in Asgardian?” Bohdi asks. “I mean you guys don’t use Celsius here.”

  “About one hundred candles,” Gabbar says.

  “You use candles as a measurement of heat?” says Bohdi.

  “Mmmmm…” grunts Gabbar.

  “Yes,” says Pascal.

  “Huh. Excellent,” says Bohdi, and the smile is so clear in his voice, Amy looks over at him. Grinning like a shark, he meets her gaze. She can’t even wonder what the joke is. She’s ready to leave. She knows everything she needs to know…and the most important among them is that Asgard hasn’t found the new Loki. He’s gone…whether on his own power, or captured by Fire Giants no one knows.

  She shudders, the image of the fallen Fire Giant filling her mind. The guards’ argument afterward in Asgardian makes her blood go cold. “Why did you kill him—now we can’t interrogate him!” The guard who kicked the Fire Giant had responded, “He was too weak to withstand torture anyway!”

  They have to get out of here.

  She blinks and clears her vision, remembering what Gabbar said. “The Fire Giants do the same to their enemies.” And the thing is, it’s true.

  She shudders.

  Just off the path, among some mottled ivy, a gilt statue of Baldur on bended knee before a swooning Nanna catches her attention. She scowls. Baldur’s attentions to Nanna hadn’t been so courtly. She has the urge to kick some dirt at the statue’s face—and then she stops, a dark stain at the bottom catching her attention.

  Leaving the path, she crosses through the undergrowth.

  “Mademoiselle?” says Pascal.

  “Amy?” says Bohdi.

  Amy swallows and bends down. The “stain” isn’t a stain at all. It’s just rough stone. She traces the stone up to where the golden color begins. The texture beneath her fingers doesn’t change.

  Bohdi’s next to her a moment later. He sniffs, maybe at the smell of rotten vegetation. “What is it?” he asks, tracing the same trail with his fingers.

  “The illusion is fading,” Amy says.

  “Ah,” says Pascal. “That happens sometimes.”

  Amy turns. She can see the Vanir-style spires of Asgard beyond the garden’s trees towering above her head. If she squints, the spires shimmer like the mirage they are.

  Odin is losing control. She ducks her eyes. He has been for centuries.

  x x x x

  Loki is kneeling before Odin in the throne room. They are alone. His heart feels cold in his chest.

  “Why—” he starts to say.

  Odin says wearily, “Stand up, Loki, and walk with me.”

  Loki climbs to his feet. Odin pushes himself from the throne and steps down from the raised dais it stands upon.

  Pressing a hand to his eye patch, Odin says, “Come.” His voice is almost a sigh.

  As Loki walks beside him, Odin says, “The ring Andvaranaut has been hidden in the realm of the Black Dwarves for many centuries—so long even they don’t know where it is. It poisons their land. Their crops are not as good as they could be. Their children not as strong…”

  “Yes, I understand that,” says Loki, trying to bite back his frustration.

  “To secure more favorable weapons contracts, I need you to find it and destroy it,” says Odin. “It shouldn’t affect you much, if at all. It’s magic is so close to your own—”

  “All that I understand,” Loki says. “What I don’t understand is why Nari and Valli should come with me.”

  Odin lets loose a long breath. “All the young men of Asgard are being called into service.”

  Loki lets out a huff of frustration. Not that all were answering the call…

  Odin continues. “The Fire Giants’ raids at the edges of Vanaheim, Alfheim, and Asgard—”

  “I would rather them fight beside Thor, even against Fire Giants, than have them journey with me to the realm of the Dark Elves!” Loki says. The damn ring has to be dumped into an even more damnable volcano. It’s a suicide mission, but he’s come to realize the more ridiculous a task is, the more likely he’ll succeed. Still, dropping the ring in lava is one thing—keeping his children alive?

  Odin drops his head. “I thought you’d prefer them with you.”

  There is no lie in his words. Loki turns to the Allfather.

  Odin sighs and then says, “I am reinstating War Rites.”

  Loki’s breath catches. Long ago, the Vanir had ruled the Nine Realms. They raped the enemies they vanquished—men, women, and children. Men and boys were systematically castrated. When he marched against the Vanir, Odin ended that last cruel practice and nearly ended the rape of children, if not their parents.

  The Allfather’s jaw goes tight. “I know what you think of me, Loki, but although I may use deception on a woman…I have never hurt a woman.”

  Loki’s lips tighten into a thin line. Rind, the Frost Giantess Odin raped, lived only nine days after the birth of their child. The child himself lived only seven days. Odin mourned them both and threw them grand funerals…but Rind might disagree that she’d not been wounded.

  Shaking his head, the Allfather says, “And I’ve never taken a woman in the heat of battle. In the rage of war, it would be too easy—” His jaw becomes tight. “Nor have I ever, a child.”

  Odin isn’t lying. It is testament to his disillusionment with the Allfather that the truth makes Loki reel back a bit in shock. But hadn’t Odin always cared for his children, and their mothers, willing or not, even if they were human? And Odin always insisted Thor and Loki do the same—not that Loki ever had unexpected children.

  Odin’s voice is almost a sigh when he speaks. “I thought you’d like to keep your sons away from it… It isn’t…healthy.”

  Loki duc
ks his head, grateful…but confused. “Why reinstate War Rites? After all this time?” They are logical; keep your enemies from breeding. And compared to what he suffered in Geirod’s castle, it’s quicker, maybe not even as painful. Still, there’s a finality to it that makes his gut clench. And that children aren’t spared…

  Odin snorts. “Because we don’t have enough young men and women willing to go out to the dark corners of their realms to honorably fight a merciless foe they somehow believe will never come to their capitals. The Fire Giants themselves utilize the practice…and the soldiers I do have are asking for the same. I can barely pay my forces, the Fire Giants have nothing we can plunder, and so I must cede to the demands of the least honorable of my men, no matter how I think it spells the end of everything we fight for.”

  The last comes out in a rush of barked words.

  Loki murmurs. “The end?”

  Something in his voice makes Odin halt his steps. He turns to face Loki. The mighty Allfather’s lip trembles slightly. “It isn’t what you want…” Closing his single eye, Odin lays a hand on Loki’s shoulder.

  Loki’s eyes slide to the Allfather’s fingers. Once, he would have reached across and clasped Odin’s shoulder in return. Now, he feels like a maid with an unwelcome suitor.

  Odin’s eye flutters open. Barely containing a bitter smile, Loki meets his gaze.

  “Fight with me, Loki. Fight for me, and we will hold the end at bay.” Odin’s hand falls away. He looks older, sadder, and more exhausted than Loki’s ever seen him.

  Loki can’t care. Where there might have once been feeling, there is only emptiness.

  x x x x

  Amy reels from the reminiscence, the sadness and fear in Odin’s face etched in her mind—and the gratitude and relief when he realized Loki wasn’t yet dead set against him.

  Behind her, Bohdi is saying, “So plasma fire…hot enough to melt lead?”

  “Well, it tends to cool in the air—but it’s still hot enough to melt skin at three hundred paces,” says Pascal.

  “Hmmm…” says Bohdi.

  He seems genuinely interested. Maybe he won’t mind what the Einherjar are planning for him…too much.

  Amy finds a mirthless laugh rising in her throat, Loki’s memory still sharp in her mind. Odin didn’t rape women in the heat of battle…or children.

  Her feet skid across the gravel as she increases her pace. She takes a sharp left, no longer concerned if her path isn’t indirect. Behind her, Gabbar says, “Miss—you don’t want to go that way.”

  Amy starts to run deeper into the trees. Her feet fly over roots that seem to writhe beneath her steps. Around her the light is dappled and many colored.

  “It’s dangerous!” shouts Gabbar.

  But Amy keeps going. She plunges through a hedge and comes to a halt.

  She stands in a clearing sparsely covered with short, scraggly grass. But where Hoenir’s hut used to stand is a roughly rectangular patch of lush, waist high grasses and wildflowers. From it rises the buzz of insects. Sharp chirps of birds fill the air, and she sees insects, birds, and small animals flitting over the tops of the grasses.

  But her pathway is not clear. Around the former site of Hoenir’s home stand Einherjar in tight rectangular formation. Half of them face inward. Half face outward. All hold spears. None acknowledge her as she walks forward, but a flock of small birds suddenly launches from the long grasses. On their tails rise snakes with butterfly wings.

  Hoenir’s creatures. Amy bites her lip, in joy, wonder, and relief. The patch of grass may be all that’s left of his hut, but in Amy’s mind, she sees the home glowing golden, the same color as Hoenir’s aura. Once, this place was so alive with magic, Loki had to avert his eyes, as though he was staring at the sun. Magic doesn’t exist linearly in time…and Hoenir’s hut was a maze of World Gates.

  One of the soldiers facing inward hacks in half a snake that flutters in the direction of Amy, Bohdi, and their two guards.

  Amy gasps.

  Pascal, or maybe Gabbar, grabs her arm, but releases it as another snake hisses and lunges through the air in their direction. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Amy grabs Bohdi’s arm and pulls him forward. Bless him, he doesn’t ask questions, just runs with her, darting toward a space between two Einherjar. The one facing outward drops his sword, holds out his hands, and shouts in Asgardian, “No, you’ll be hurt!”

  Bohdi yanks her right, away from his outstretched arms. Amy lunges forward. Her foot pushes off the ground, she leaps—the Einherjar catches her around the waist and somehow her wrist slips from Bohdi’s grasp—but her momentum is already carrying her into the former foundation of Hoenir’s home. And suddenly she is wading in the grass and wildflowers, gasping for air because the Einherjar, still holding onto her waist, had knocked the wind out of her. She lifts her head… There is no flash of rainbow.

  The Einherjar holding her shouts. She turns with a gasp to see him wincing in pain. He falls forward and Amy catches him, slumping under his weight. A butterfly snake slips from his neck and into the grass. She feels it pass over her feet.

  “Amy!” shouts Bohdi, from the edge of the grass. Pascal and another Einherjar are holding him back.

  She hears the guards speaking in Asgardian around her. “Was she attempting suicide?”

  “Think she knows she has the Allfather’s eye?”

  “She can’t have known it would be dangerous—”

  “Did the fool just want to pick the pretty flowers?”

  Craning her neck, Amy tries frantically to track each voice. And then her shoulders slump, and not just from the weight of the Einherjar she holds barely aloft. She was sure Hoenir would be here—or at least open a gate here—but if he was going to open a gate for her, he would open one anywhere he wished unless…

  Pain flashes behind her eyes, so great it almost blinds her. She gasps and winces, nearly falling under the weight of the nearly unconscious guard.

  “Get out of there, Mademoiselle,” Pascal shouts. “The animals will kill you!”

  She doesn’t move. She doesn't want to leave this place, even though the brush is so rough it scratches her skin through her clothes and shadows slither and creep at her feet.

  “Amy?” says Bohdi.

  The man leaning on her groans. One of the Einherjar says, “Someone should go in and fetch her.”

  Stepping forward, Pascal says, “Mademoiselle, I am coming.”

  “No!” she says. She swallows. Carefully avoiding the shadows slipping among the stalks, she pulls the arm of the Einherjar up and round her neck and leads him to his comrades.

  x x x x

  Bohdi casts a worried look in Amy’s direction. Several men approach and relieve her of the Einherjar she lugged from the briar patch. Still she walks heavily, staring intently at the ground, feet shuffling over the tiny gravel stones on the garden path. He isn’t sure what she was trying back there, but he knows it didn’t go as expected, and he’s worried.

  “This way,” says Pascal, guiding them right, a hand on Amy’s shoulder. She follows meekly.

  Pulling out his lighter, Bohdi spins the thumbwheel and glares at Pascal.

  They pass under some enormous trees and then into what looks like maybe an orchard of baby trees. They only come to about his hip. Amy suddenly lifts her head. “What’s this?”

  “Apple trees,” says Pascal.

  “Idunn’s apple trees?” says Amy.

  Pascal smiles. “Oui, Mademoiselle. Odin has ordered that the orchard be expanded.”

  Amy jerks to a stop, and she spins on her feet. Bohdi follows her gaze. To him, it looks like the orchard extends for about a quarter mile straight ahead, but miles to his left, up to the base of a mountain that shimmers a little in the midmorning light.

  Amy bites her lip. And then her face hardens.

  “Come,” says Gabbar. “Perhaps you would like some tea?”

  Amy replies, “Yes, thank you.”

  Pascal’s hand ghosts dow
n her back. “There is a veranda that is—”

  “No,” says Bohdi, eyes on Pascal’s hand. He lifts his head and sees Gabbar’s gaze on him, an eyebrow raised. Bohdi feels his skin heat.

  “That would be nice,” says Amy, voice tired.

  The back of Bohdi’s neck prickles and his jaw goes tight, but he doesn’t protest.

  It takes about twenty-five minutes to reach “the veranda.” It is nice. But not for the picturesque view of the gardens, or the cool shade of the shadow of the palace-castle-bed-and-breakfast-whatever that they had spent the night in.

  It’s nice because, after they’ve sat down, Gabbar abruptly suggests to Pascal, “Let’s give them some privacy,” and the two guards move to a station out of earshot. With the distance, and the gentle breeze whistling through the building’s spires, once the maid-waitressy-people laying out tea and bread-stick thingies leave, they won’t be overheard.

  As soon as Amy and Bohdi are alone, he leans forward and whispers, “What the hell is happening?”

  Amy, whose expression has been carefully blank since the orchard, erupts in a muffled, bitter laugh.

  Not meeting his gaze, she says, “From what I gathered back in the guard room, in Hel, Asgardian forces are clashing with the forces of Sutr.”

  Before Bohdi can ask, she says, “King of the Fire Giants. Besides King Utgard of the Frost Giants, the only credible threat to Odin’s rule.”

  “The guns?” says Bohdi.

  Amy gives a tight smile. “Supplied by the Dark Elves, who got them from—”

  “Former Soviet Block countries,” Bohdi says.

  Amy nods. “Right. And somewhere in between, the bullets have been reinforced with—”

  “Promethean wire,” says Bohdi. Leaning forward, he whispers, “If the Fire Giants got their hands on some Kevlar armor, the Asgardians would really be fucked…and if Asgard’s got forces on Earth, I think we actually have a chance.” He smiles and lets out a breath of relief.

  Amy’s face becomes tight. “Maybe…but Asgard attacked the Dark Elves’ trading partners on Earth. So I doubt the Fire Giants will be getting Kevlar anytime soon. And from what I’ve gathered, Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine won’t be able to route Asgard from the new stronghold Asgard’s established on Earth.”