by Matt Larkin
“I’m not going to—”
Vili’s roar cut him off. The berserk hefted the jarl of the Bjars off his feet and drove him against the broken gate with one hand. “Dig the fucking trench before I shove a spear up yours.” With that, he pitched the man through the breach.
Tyr cringed. As if Moda had not wanted to leave before.
He moved to Frigg’s side, hand on Gramr’s hilt.
She waved him back. “Once the trench is dug, line it with oil. We’ll use flame as a barrier to hold the trolls back.”
“We’ll burn through half our oil in one night,” Arnbjorn said. “Then what do we burn against the mists?”
“Use the troll corpses,” Lodur said. Odin’s childhood friend had rarely joined in any of the arguments. Hard to judge his mind most of the time. “Coat them with just a little oil to get a blaze going. Should prove doubly effective in driving back their kin.”
“Do it,” Frigg said. “Jarl Lodur, have your men help Moda.”
“Maybe Lodur should be king,” Bedvig mumbled.
Gramr growled at that. Begged Tyr to draw her. Idunn had counseled him otherwise but … Idunn. He had not even checked to make certain she was unharmed.
Damn it.
Tyr rushed away from the jarls.
He found Idunn tending to the wounded and mercifully uninjured herself. Blood soaked her arms up to the elbows as she rose from a man with his guts exposed. He’d not see sunset, no matter what she did.
“I feared for your safety,” Tyr said.
Idunn murmured something under her breath, then shook her head. “Our defense does not go well.”
“To say the least.”
He moved closer so none of the wounded would hear him. “I no longer know what to do. The jarls question Frigg at every turn. I could strike them down, but …”
“But you don’t want to be a murderer.”
Oh, he already was, whether he wished so or not.
Kill them all.
He would not.
Coward. Weakling.
Could Gramr truly speak to him? No, it was just fatigue that made him hear her voice so clearly. Ever since Idunn had told him someone’s soul had been forged into the blade. That didn’t mean it actually had a mind.
Craven.
No!
“Tell me what to do.”
“I wish I knew, Tyr.”
“You are a Vanr!” Several others looked at them at his harsh outburst.
“I am a woman made immortal, but I’m neither warrior nor general, Tyr. I looked to Odin for both roles, and now he is lost to us—at least at present. I am as adrift as the rest of you. But you, at least, are a warrior. Men will follow your command if you but take up the mantle of leadership.”
Tyr groaned. Gods, Zisa had said something similar so many winters ago. He could not. Not then, not now. He was no leader of men. But Arnbjorn was … and he was going to lead them away from Odin’s wife. If Idunn could offer him no other course, then maybe the only course was Gramr’s.
Tonight, the trolls would come again. If they breached, there would be chaos, melee. And in such chaos, a man could fall, even to a friendly blade.
With Arnbjorn dead, the other jarls would have to look to Frigg for guidance. They’d have to.
30
Sigyn loved flying. The air currents washing over her, lifting her skyward, the sun warming her feathers. Every breath an exhilaration. Soaring above the mists was like a living dream. Like making love and being carried away to new worlds.
On and on they flew, and though exhaustion slowed the beat of her wings and strained her shoulders, she didn’t want to stop. She didn’t ever want to stop. And yet, Loki descended toward the mountaintop. Its peak was covered in snow, but it still rose above the mists. From up here the world was pure. Sigyn settled on the mountain beside him and removed her cloak’s hood as he pulled off his. She tossed her pack aside. In truth, she hadn’t expected it to take so long to find their king.
The moment she retook her human form the cold set her shivering. Loki wrapped her in an embrace and pulled her down with him. From the rapid rise and fall of his chest, even he was drained from the long flight over the Sudurberks. They sank down in the snow, and it began to soak through her dress. Damn, but sometimes she wished for leather trousers like the men favored.
“How much farther is it?” she asked, leaning against Loki’s shoulder.
“It depends on which ruin they’ve taken up in. I doubt they’ve brought him all the way back to their castle in the islands.”
“Samsey, right? In Reidgotaland?”
Loki grunted in acknowledgement. He wouldn’t answer a question she already knew the answer to. But then, there were plenty of other questions to ask anyway.
“What are they doing out there?”
“Plotting, most likely.”
“Do you know that’s vexing?”
“Do you think it should be?”
Sigyn laughed. “Don’t you think?”
“I don’t think you’re terribly irked.”
In answer, she pulled away so she could look into his eyes—startlingly crystal blue, and deep as the sky. How much had they seen through the centuries? How old was Loki, really? He had to be one of the Vanir if he’d known Idunn’s grandparents. The only other explanation would be if he’d become immortal in some other way. And what other way could there be?
“You may never again have such a pristine landscape to ask your questions.”
“Is that a prescient vision?”
Loki waved a hand as if to take in all the Sudurberks and the blue sky above. “Do I need a vision to recognize beauty?” He brushed a hand across her cheek and ran his fingers through her hair, the motion leaving her warm despite the chill wind atop the mountain.
“If you can see the future, why don’t you just know which ruin they’re in?”
“Do your sister’s visions work with such acuity?”
No—even Frigg herself rarely seemed to understand what she saw. Not that Sigyn missed that Loki had, once again, evaded the damned question. Maybe she needed a different approach. Loki made her work for every answer, but then, that only made the uncovering of those answers that much more satisfying. If he wasn’t so inclined to reveal details about himself, he did seem to understand their opponents, and approaching a puzzle from a new angle often yielded better results than staring at the thing endlessly.
“The Niflungar are an ancient people, older than the Aesir.”
Technically it wasn’t a question, but still he shook his head. “People are people, and people have been around a long, long time. So many times humanity has faltered like a dying flame, only to be once again rekindled. The Aesir, at least as you are now, didn’t really arise until after the fall of the Old Kingdoms eight centuries ago.”
“What happened? How did the Niflungar fall?”
“Why does any kingdom fall? War, corruption, enemies within and without.”
Sigyn fell back and stared up at the clouds. Before gaining the swan cloak, she’d never really seen clouds, not clearly. Loki still hadn’t really given an answer, but she was willing to work for it. “War with who?”
“Everyone.”
Everyone? “What, all of mankind? The Vanir? Themselves?”
“Yes.”
All right, fine. Bastard. “They fought the Vanir? So the Vanir were the ones who defeated them?”
“The Niflungar skirmishes with the Vanir were minor compared to their wars with the other descendants of Halfdan.”
Now they were getting somewhere. Sigyn rolled over, trying to ignore the growing shivers building across her body. Her wet clothes were going to bring her to deathchill, but she could not let this opportunity pass. “Who was Halfdan?”
Loki pointed down at the mists. “What do you see?”
Sigyn shrugged. “The world? Midgard?”
“And the world was changed. All people across the world feared that change. Some turned to any source of su
ccor against the mist, no matter the cost. Halfdan the Old bought three hundred years of life through a pact with a vaettr. In those three hundred years, he sired nine sons. As the Vanir withdrew more and more from the world, each of those nine sons used the treasures of his father to build a kingdom. Among them, Naefil, whom his father had named for Niflheim. Little surprise, then, that Naefil himself made a pact with the queen of Niflheim.”
The man had founded the Niflungar, given rise to the Children of the Mist. By embracing Hel herself, by making all his descendants sorcerers. “Are they immortal too?”
“No. But using their sorcery, the heirs of Naefil have lived even longer than Halfdan himself. And now Naefil’s great-great-grandson rules the Niflungar.”
“And he wants Odin because he is the Destroyer?”
Loki shook his head. “You do not understand.”
“Then help me to.”
“We’ve tarried too long here already. We have to find Odin.”
Dammit. She was getting somewhere. She wanted answers to the questions, and even knowing she had all eternity didn’t bide her over. She was going to understand their world, and he was going to reveal it. One way or another.
Loki started to rise, and Sigyn threw herself on top of him, bearing him down.
“Ever made love on a mountaintop?” She kissed his neck.
“Romance, Sigyn? Or do you think you’ll get your answers like this? Isn’t it cheating?”
She continued kissing his face, fumbling with his trousers. “Stop me if you want to.”
Despite the freezing cold air, she was probably warmer without her wet dress. She yanked it off in a jumble and settled down onto him, clinging to him for warmth.
“Show me,” she mumbled between kisses. “Show me everything.”
With one hand he clutched her shoulders, pulling her closer, the other clenched on her arse. “It doesn’t work like that.”
Sigyn cried out as he rolled atop her. Freezing snow crunched under her back. Gods, she was making love on top of a mountain. Her voice echoed off the peaks, driving her to further excitement. She had never, never felt so alive.
“Show me!”
His release hit her like a wave, the mix of visions as confusing as always. Bits and pieces she was forced to string together through countless nights of lovemaking. Islands covered in greenery, a battle against the undead, creatures like draugar but somehow different. A war against Hel. And the coming of the mists. Loki had watched it all, and visions from long before that.
She clung to his shoulders to keep from sliding down in the snow, weakened by the impact of so much information. She had seen some of these things before, but maybe it was enough to begin to understand. Loki had been there when the mists came, had tried to help Idunn’s grandparents stop it. And he had been there long before that. Long, long before that, in flying cities.
“You don’t know what you’re digging into,” he mumbled, panting.
There was no way Loki was a Vanr. The Vanir had become immortal when Idunn’s grandmother had led them to Yggdrasil, years after her battle with Hel. And Loki had been immortal before that. But he had eaten an apple, she had felt that the first time they made love. A lifetime ago, it seemed now, though it had been just about a year.
“Who are you?”
“I am yours.”
The same answer as before. Sigyn trembled in his arms. She had been wrong. That answer was not enough after all.
31
“You should have taken my daughter’s offer,” Gjuki said
Odin once again lay bound to the gods-damned altar, again painted by spirit glyphs. “I thought this would be more enjoyable.”
Gjuki slashed a knife over Odin’s stomach, opening a shallow cut. Then he dug a finger in that cut.
Odin grunted against the pain, keeping his gaze locked on Gjuki’s face. Maybe he should have taken the potion Gudrun had given him, but he could not trust her, much as his heart longed to. He could never trust her. She had seduced him with her tonics once already, and he would not willingly drink another.
The Raven Lord next traced blood across Odin’s forehead, marking some unseen symbol there too. “You are a fool, King of the Aesir.”
“I’ve heard that before. Do your worst, troll-spawn. When it’s done, I’ll be the one standing over your corpse.”
Gjuki’s hand tightened around his throat. “There will be no mercy, Odin Borrson.”
Odin gasped for air, sucking down none. His vision blurred at the edges and began to seep into the Sight. Shadows shifted around him. Shadows that waited for Gjuki to break him, to open him up to them. The Penumbra was home to unfathomable horrors, all eager to use mortals as a vessel. Most men never saw the liminal place, never saw the other side and the terrors that lurked just out of sight. Most men were lucky.
At last, Gjuki released his grip.
Odin coughed, trying to fill his lungs. They burned like fire, every breath stinging his swollen throat. “No need … for mercy …” he said, a clear rasp in his voice.
Gjuki chuckled. “I admire your tenacity. I can see why the goddess wants you. The choice is yours, whether you find yourself under her thumb or under her heel.” Once again, he dug a finger into Odin’s cut, then painted more glyphs in blood.
From what Odin could remember of his lessons with Gudrun, there was no actual need to paint the glyphs in blood. Any rendition of a spirit’s name would draw its attention. The Niflungar no doubt favored these blood glyphs as a means of intimidating their foes. Or perhaps some of the darkest vaettir fed on pain, on suffering. As Odin bled out, they’d be drawn to him. He probably should have taken that potion after all. It wouldn’t be the first time pride had cost him.
“Your … mistress … took my father. Took my brother. I’m going … to kill you. And then I’m … going to fucking kill her, too.”
“You’re going to kill the goddess Hel?” Gjuki rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I was wrong, Odin. You’re not a fool. You’re a madman.”
“Madmen are dangerous,” Odin spat, then jerked against his chains.
Sadly, Gjuki didn’t even recoil. Bastard had faith in these fetters, Odin had to give him that.
“You are correct, Ás,” Gjuki said. “Madmen are dangerous. Most of all to themselves.” The Raven Lord drew a long, black dagger and held it before Odin’s eyes.
Was that supposed to intimidate him? What was he going to do, cut him some more? Odin would heal. Pain was just pain. These bastards served Hel, and Hel had taken everything from him already. She had taken his father, his brother. They were all he had. She had taken nigh unto all he loved. Odin gritted his teeth. He was going to enjoy returning the favor. He was going to burn the Niflungar to the ground and—
Gjuki slammed the dagger through Odin’s palm and embedded it into the obsidian altar.
Odin screamed, wailed at the pain. Almost immediately lances of ice began to jolt outward from the dagger, shooting through his veins. Odin couldn’t make out Gjuki’s chant over the sound of his own agonized cries.
His confinement had given Odin ample chance to practice slipping back into his father’s memories. Odin dove in, seeking any solace, any chance to escape the pain. Any reprieve from agony, no matter how temporary.
“I can’t get him to stop crying,” Bestla said, offering the newborn babe to Borr. “What kind of mother can’t comfort her son?”
“Hush now,” Borr said. “You have done naught wrong. Boy just needs some time with his father. Isn’t that right, Odin? I’ll just take him for a little walk.”
Borr stepped out into the afternoon sun as, for once, it seemed to cut through the mist and offer a clear view of the woods. The moment he began to stroll the babe quieted, slept. Borr smiled. He walked out of the Wodanar camp and through the woods, walked for an hour before sitting on a rock by the river.
As soon as he stopped walking, little Odin woke and began wailing again.
“Oh, really?” Borr asked, chuckling. “You
think I have the stamina of a berserk, it appears.” And still he rose and walked again, walked for hours and hours, until at last twilight forced him to return to the safety of the bonfires.
It was just the motion lulling the babe to peace, of course. Borr knew that. Still, he liked to think it was something about him, some connection he had with his son.
Odin jerked as pain snatched him back to his own mind and body. He moaned, not caring if Gjuki thought it for the torture. His father had loved him so much, had walked for hours and hours and … And Odin just wanted to go back there.
Chilling claws snatched at Odin’s neck, his arms, his legs. His vision flickered between Sight and normal vision, revealing glimpses of the Penumbra, of the unutterable monstrosities answering Gjuki’s call. A shade lingered over him, its black-gray form hazy in the starlight of the Penumbra. Though roughly humanoid, its fingers ended in claws reaching out from a tattered shroud within which all light vanished, like the fathomless expanse of a starless night.
No mere ancestor shade, this, but a wraith, the vilest and direst of all ghosts, festering in hatred for uncounted centuries. Gudrun had bound one such vaettr, though she admitted she feared it and feared to call upon its power as it slowly consumed her from the inside out.
The wraith straddled Odin, and pressure built in his chest. It sank a claw into his left shoulder, then another into his right. He shrieked, squirming in a futile attempt to dislodge the ghastly presence now writhing atop him like some perverse lover in the throes of forbidden passions. The figure pulled itself forward, crawling up his body until its face—or lack thereof—rested inches above his own. Forcing him to look into the absolute blackness of its eyes, of its broken soul. And the deeper he looked, the more he realized beyond the blackness lurked a glow, though not one born of light, but rather an opalescence spawned from hatred in its most undiluted form.
The entity wailed and dove into Odin, seeping through his eyes and mouth and nose and ears. Odin jerked at the awful pressure spreading through his body. He tried to scream but only managed a choking gasp. An alien presence built in his mind, like another person’s thoughts, a whispered conversation where he could make out intent, but not words. And it was growing louder. Became a cacophony of madness and despair.
