by Matt Larkin
He shook himself. Odin had given him but one task. Hold this bridge for nine days. A little over four had passed. He could not break his oath and could not afford to become distracted. Whatever fate the others met, he could not help them. All he could do save as many of this tribe as possible.
When he looked up, Idunn hovered nearby, staring down at him.
“I should look at your wounds. Vedrfolnir tore into your back.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“The hawk.”
Tyr shrugged, the motion send fresh lances of pain over his muscles. “Armor took the worst of it. It’ll heal soon.”
“Not soon enough. What will you do if Frey returns before your strength? Take off your shirt. No one has time for your stubbornness.”
Tyr grunted and yanked off his blood-soaked tunic. He’d already removed his chain—rent as it was and nigh to useless from behind now. His shirt, too, was shredded by the bird’s talons. Tyr tossed it aside. Some washerwoman might have cleaned and repaired it under other circumstances, but not here. It was well then, that Tyr owned two other shirts. He was a thegn to the king, after all.
Idunn knelt behind him, applying a cooling poultice that stank like bear piss. Tyr ground his teeth to keep from making any complaint at her ministrations.
“I said things … I wish I had not.”
Idunn snorted. “You called me a wanton enchantress.”
“You said neither term insulted you.”
“You still meant both as insults.”
Bitter truth in that. But in the days since she had ridden here with Odin, leaving Tyr alone, he had missed her. Hard as it had been to admit it. “I was a fool.”
“You were an arsehole.” She jammed poultice into a wound with more force than necessary, finally eliciting a groan.
“Be that as it may, I realized the truth. I care for you, deeply. But I swore to myself not to cuckold another man. But if you would perhaps … I mean if you would consider leaving this Bragi …”
Idunn crawled around in front of him and cocked her head to the side. “You mean do to him what Zisa did to you?”
Oh. Well, fuck. She giggled, no doubt enjoying him squirming. “By the Tree, you’re downright adorable some times.” She shook herself, and her face fell. “But I cannot think of such things now. Not like this.”
“Before the battle, when you said—”
She waved it away. “I said not to die. I don’t want you to die, Tyr. But that doesn’t mean I can think about romance while those dearest to me are dying, either. Did you know it was Bragi who sent Vedrfolnir after you? Had you succeeded in provoking him, I’d have lost my husband. A man I have known, have loved—off and on—for thousands of years. How am I to feel about that?”
Tyr knew his mouth hung open, but he could think of naught to say. So that was the poet god. And Idunn did still love him, or felt something for him. And Tyr was still a fool.
He rose stiffly, shaking his head. “Forgive me. Again I wrong you.”
“Tyr, that’s not what I—”
He walked away. She was right. About everything. He was here to kill her people. Given the chance, he would even kill her husband. And either way, there could probably never be anything between himself and Idunn.
Maybe Odin was right, too. Maybe all this was urd. And despite the madness of Odin’s actions, some part of Tyr still wanted to believe. If his lord survived, somehow rose, at least there may have been a point to all that had gone. To the past two years of blood and loss and war.
Because if not, if Odin was wrong, they had all thrown their lives away.
54
The root tunnel led into a cavern, this one lit by a faint blue mist. Perhaps he had passed back from whatever vile world Nidhogg dwelt in, back into the Astral Realm. The mist was chill against his skin, raising goose pimples and leaving him shivering. The cold bothered him little since he’d tasted of the first apple—or at least the cold of Midgard did. Perhaps the apple had no power here, or perhaps the cold was deeper in these dark realms.
He walked a long time, until fatigue took him, forcing him to sit. He did so, then pulled off a chunk of bread and bit deeply. The moment it touched his tongue it turned to dust. Odin spit. Foulness. Food of the Mortal Realm had no substance here, just as denizens of the Spirit Realm had no forms on the other side of the Veil. Which made his provisions worthless. He tossed the remaining bread aside. Perhaps the real bread was still back with his body … his hanging body. His corpse? He could not be certain if he was living or dead or … something in between.
We are all dead …
He had known, of course, that the in-between was where secrets lay. If he was not yet dead, every moment he spent here pitched him closer and closer to it. And yet, his mind felt … clearer. Understanding came unbidden. Understanding about so, so many things. All of Freyja’s lessons, even the truths and lies spoken by the Niflungar and by Audr, they began to snap into sharp relief. Grimhild was a sorceress worthy of legend, but even now, Odin began to understand more of the cosmos than she could dream. Because he was willing to walk where she would not, where even Freyja, despite her millennia of study, had never dared look. They did not look here, because they knew, or they feared, something would be looking back.
And there was.
Always … watching …
Down below, he could feel Nidhogg stirring, writhing in rage at his escape. Just as he knew without explanation or guide that somewhere, down below those roots, lay a path to Niflheim and to the iron gates of Hel’s stronghold.
Light flickered above him, and he looked up. A great pool spread out over the uneven ceiling, held aloft by uncertain means. It stretched on and on, upward. Was it … was he somehow beneath the Well of Urd? Yes. He stood at the bottom of the well, and that distant shadow above … that was his own hanging body.
Odin rose. Something else lurked in the darkness of the waters. Symbols carved into the sides, the walls. What were those markings? Runes, like those on Gungnir’s shaft, like those the ghost had branded into his skin. Runes he had never been able to make sense of. Some part of the ghost’s curse on his soul, yes, but what? The answer must lie inside the well.
He craned his neck, staring deeper. Deeper.
Like falling into the sky, embraced by the goddess Nott. Embraced by darkness and eternity, just as Audr had been.
Odin stumbled forward, catching himself on a root. As he did so, a sudden warmth exploded in his chest. Life surged through that root, coursing through him as well. The life of a fallen soldier, a Vanr man slain by … by Vili. In Odin’s mind’s eye, the man’s final moments played out, the werebear tearing him down. Before that, the man had not wanted to charge the beach, had not wanted to fight anymore. Frey had commanded him. What was his name, this dead man?
The man … was just a soul. And a soul did not have a name, not exactly. It had a sound, an intonation that vibrated through creation. And a mark, a glyph to represented it. That soul now pulsed through Yggdrasil, passed round and round. It would be spit out into one of the worlds.
Eostre was wrong. Souls did not end. They returned to the World Tree. Returned … for eternal rest? No. There was no rest, either. Souls were born again and again. Vaettir were ghosts of those trapped in the Spirit Realm.
We are all dead …
Even the spirits, the gods of beyond, were but the dead. But given enough time … a soul would again be drawn back into the World Tree.
Drawn back into the World Tree. And then?
Odin broke contact with the root. Then what? His mind was surging faster than anything the Sight had ever inflicting upon him. His temples throbbed, his eyes ached. He fell, lying on his back and staring up at the runes above him.
He was inside Yggdrasil. Inside the center of creation.
We called it the Wheel of Life.
Not Audr speaking—the voice was soft, feminine. And everywhere. In his head, in his heart, echoing through the chamber.
We believed th
e dead would return to the Wheel only to be spun out again. Given another chance at life, another chance to make better choices.
Born again. Reincarnated … another chance to get life right.
Figures danced in the mists until Odin was not certain whether his Sight played tricks on him or Yggdrasil itself revealed further visions. It no longer mattered which, for he had come to this place, this state in search of truth. And now it was there before him.
In the ruins of some foreign temple, a black-haired man with eyes like sunlight fought against Hel. That was Naresh, fighting a battle that ended the world. That began this world, the world covered in the mists of Niflheim.
A battle ending the world. That was his Ragnarok, even if he had never called it that.
“The battle never ended. It only changed forms.”
He turned to the dark-skinned woman who spoke. “You are Eostre’s mother, Chandi.”
“He never saw our child.” Her voice sounded on the edge of breaking, her eyes cloudy, as she reached a hand toward Naresh. And the man grabbed Hel and vanished, up into the sky. Somehow, he knew the man had carried Hel away.
Chandi spun on Odin. “You never saw her!”
Odin reeled back, not certain how he had gained his feet. Or how this phantom had even seen him. Did he speak to a ghost now? The foreign woman reached out to grab him. Odin moved to knock her hands aside. She snared his wrist, flipped him over her shoulder and pinned him to the ground in a single fluid move. He hit the ground hard, lying on his back. What the fuck had just happened?
Chandi ripped open his shirt and thumped a finger into a rune over his chest. “You never saw her!”
“I …”
From the mists, Naresh walked toward him. As he drew near, vertigo swallowed Odin, and the whole chamber began to spin. He wanted to retch, though he knew his stomach was empty; regardless, Chandi still held him pinned. More figures drifted out of the shadows, a dozen men. A hundred. A thousand hidden forms advancing as Naresh advanced, converging on him.
Each one jerked away his shirt to reveal a glyph over his heart. A rune. The same rune as Chandi had touched on Odin’s chest. Each subtly different, and yet, always the same lines, the same arcs. Only the flourishes changed. Names and memories and lifetimes changing. But something deeper, the underlying soul remaining ever intact. Always, always fighting against the encroaching urd, against the inevitable return of utter chaos.
Souls. Souls of a thousand men. A thousand lifetimes.
Odin’s lifetimes.
Souls born into a life. And in death, returned to the Tree of Life. To be born again, time after time. Given the chance to set right the most terrible wrongs in all the realms. To stand against the encroaching chaos.
Odin was on his knees, tearing at his hair, his cheeks, his chest. His flesh burned. A thousand lifetimes of memories cascaded through his mind, beating away his senses and his self and binding him to a cycle of destruction stretching back more millennia than even the Vanir had ever imagined.
He was—had been—Naresh. And Matsya and Herakles and Suiren and so, so many more. And he had defeated Hel. Had won victory for mankind, defeated chaos, even if the cost was the annihilation of an era. The end of one era birthed the dawn of the next.
“You didn’t even see her,” Chandi wailed, shaking him.
“I died?” Odin wasn’t certain whether he was asking her or telling her. He had used the power of the sun god to carry Rangda—Hel—so far away she could not reach any other host. And lacking a host, she had been forced back to Niflheim. Simmering in icy rage until … until she began to suspect the mortal soul who dared defy her had been born again. And she had sent Ymir to kill him. Or, if Gudrun was right, to test him. To see if he was her nemesis walking Midgard once more. And he was. So she sent the Niflungar to try to control him. Grimhild had demanded Gudrun seduce him. Gjuki had tried to bind him with sorcery. And when those efforts failed, they had sought to kill him.
“We all died.” Chandi’s face and voice gave way to Freyja’s. “Everyone dies.”
Odin slapped a hand to his mouth to try to keep from crying out. Tears welled in his eyes.
“A long time ago … someone promised me I would see you again. In every lifetime.”
But Freyja—the real Freyja—didn’t know him now. Didn’t remember the life they had shared. The countless lives they had shared as so many different men and women. Because … because even urd was not so cruel as to expect him to stand against chaos alone. He always had someone by his side, walking through the ages together. A mate, to his own soul.
Odin wept then, embracing his image of Freyja. Oh. But he had seen his and Chandi’s daughter. He had met Eostre and liked her immediately. And Idunn … was his soul’s granddaughter. Odin laughed through the tears, for once glad he had never lain with the Vanr woman.
He wiped his eyes, suddenly alone in the chamber. Alone, as he always had been down here, save for a wraith left speechless. He had stared deep into the well and seen naught but his own soul. And within it, his soulmate.
Now he looked up at the runes. And with the ineffable clarity born of lifetimes united, he understood. Through the tree he understood and saw the sorcery Freyja had wrought to protect Vanaheim. Saw the winding roads that bound the worlds together through the roots. Saw the Art the Vanir had used to banish the First Ones who had lost themselves. At long last, he understood everything.
And he knew what he had to do.
55
Carnage covered the beaches—vast stretches of them, strewn with viscera and stained with blood, littered with hundreds upon hundreds of bodies. Sigyn had seen Frigg while she flew overhead and had wanted to go to her. Her sister held a last desperate defense against the Vanir. A fair number of those warriors seemed as mortal as the Aesir, but not all. Too many moved with the speed of wind and strength of falling waves, crashing over the Aesir as relentlessly as the tide, cutting down Sigyn’s people with each press forward.
By nightfall, the Aesir would lose the beach and, having nowhere left to retreat, would be crushed, annihilated. The end of her entire race loomed on the horizon. And Sigyn could have landed and joined the doomed defense, maybe helped buy them a moment. But Loki had begged her to get the chain to Odin, and the king was not among those defending the beach. That meant he had gone deeper into one of the two islands. Sigyn prayed this one, but she could not well track him in either case.
Instead she flew low, sneaking glances between the canopy. Other skirmishes dotted the island, and more and more Vanr war parties continued to converge on the beach or toward the mighty tree. That, she had seen long ago, in a vision carried from Loki’s memories into her own. Yggdrasil, which he had stood before in some forgotten era and become immortal long before the Vanir. The puzzle pieces of his enigmatic past had begun to fall into place, but she had no time to savor the mystery this day.
Perhaps Odin was with the other group, by the tree, and Sigyn needed to—
An arrow shrieked through the sky and pierced her wing. A red flash of agony hit her the moment the shock wore off. Her wing refused to beat, and she plummeted, crashing through tree branches that stripped her feathers, scraped her arms and legs. One branch snagged her cloak and tore it from her. It caught her, jerking her to a sudden stop by her neck.
Couldn’t breathe.
That lasted enough time for a single thought—thank Freyja her neck hadn’t broken—and then the clasp broke. Sigyn pitched down, hit her ankle on a lower branch. She heard the joint snap an instant before she felt the blinding agony of it. Her vision blurred as she fell. Her spine slammed against a lower branch, then she toppled off that one, too.
Leaves and branches scraped her face and arms raw, but she almost didn’t feel those after the other wounds. And then she hit the roots below. And all thought fled.
Sigyn woke to torment. Her ankle was broken. Every movement sent fresh ripples of pain through her. Several broken ribs, for certain. And she was damned lucky if her spine was
n’t broken. Most breaks would heal in a few days, thanks to the apple. A broken spine? Who knew.
She tried to sit and only managed to groan in pain.
The chain beneath her was digging into her back. The chain she was supposed to get to Odin.
Well, fuck.
She grasped the pneuma, using it to block the pain. Which was like the difference between drowning in a lake and drowning in the ocean. Everything hurt … especially …
She retched as she saw what remained of the arrow shaft sticking from her left upper arm. It must have broken in her fall, but a section as long as her arm remained there, crusted with her blood.
“Damned archer.”
She grabbed the shaft and pulled. And screamed, immediately giving that over.
Would it have done the slightest bit of good, she’d have wept. How was she to do aught for Odin when she was more than half dead herself?
He would have to make do without the chain for now. She could do naught else until she managed to get the arrow out. She was still losing blood … It was hard to think. A normal person … one had to cauterize the wound. But the apple might let her heal without that.
So.
The shaft had to go.
She gritted her teeth. And she yanked.
A scream tore from her throat at the same time the shaft ripped free. Sigyn let it fall, even as she too, collapsed back to the ground.
For a long time she lay there.
And then she forced herself to rise, limping and pathetic though she was. Odin, Loki, Tyr—they had all forced themselves to fight through injury and torment to do what needed to be done. She could do no less.
Mundilfari had said Loki was lucky to have found her. Well, Sigyn would earn that.
56
Of its own accord, the vine around his neck loosed, dropping him. Odin slipped free, colliding with the lip of the well and rolling onto the dirt floor, moaning. His crushed windpipe hardly let any air in, despite his gasping. A long time he lay, trying to suck down a full lung of air and failing.
