She turned and called back to the end of their group. “Lady Frigga! Do you hear that?”
Frigga, though, had already unsheathed her sword and was turning to see what might be making the sound—which was growing louder.
Hilde looked at the mountain side of the path and noticed that the rock of the mountain face was faceted and had plenty of handholds. Without another word, she started climbing.
“What are you doing?” Flosi cried out.
Alaric also yelled, “Hilde, that’s crazy!”
Frigga heard the commotion and turned around to see Hilde clambering up the side of the mountain. “Hilde!”
At this point, however, Hilde had gotten far enough up the rock face to see some distance down the mountain.
Calling out to Frigga, she said, “There’s a giant riding up the path! He’s on a yellow horse!”
Frigga felt her heart grow cold. “Are you sure, Hilde?”
In fact, Hilde was completely sure, but it didn’t do to question the mother of all Asgard, so Hilde squinted and peered down the mountain again.
“Definitely a big giant and definitely a yellow horse. Moving fast, too.”
“Not good,” Frigga muttered. “How far up the mountain has he come?”
“He just passed that weird tree that Kevin and Mick tried to climb.”
Frigga nodded. The two mortal children whom Volstagg and Gudrun had adopted at Thor’s request after their parents died on Midgard had immediately tried to climb the twisted oak near the base of the mountain, and it had taken quite a stern admonition from Gudrun to get them to cease. It had taken them half a day to traverse from that tree to where they were now. Hrungnir’s mount would close that distance in much less time.
“Come down from there, Hilde, and gather everyone!”
“Okay!”
While Frigga wasn’t entirely sure why Hrungnir would be riding alone through these mountains—there were better paths from Asgard to Jotunheim—the best reason she could think of was that Thor and the others had routed the giants, and Hrungnir took advantage of his mount’s famous speed to escape.
It also explained why the giant had come this way. Were he endeavoring to escape her son’s wrath at all costs, he would not have paid close attention to direction.
Sadly, that put the children right in his path. The very fate Odin had sent them into the mountains to avoid was now dangerously close to coming to pass.
“What is going on?” Gudrun asked.
Turning, Frigga saw that Hilde had indeed gotten everyone to stop moving and gather in one place.
“You must all move quickly. Hrungnir is on his way, and he must be stopped. You will all need to move twice as fast and hie yourselves to the Vale of Crystal.”
“I don’t understand,” Gudrun said with a frown. “Hrungnir rides the fastest mount in the Nine Worlds, save only Odin’s horse. Are we to outrun such a beast?”
“You will if I delay him. Go, Gudrun!” she added, holding up a hand to cut off another objection. “The more you speak, the greater chance that the giant catches you. When you enter the Vale of Crystal, you will be protected. But you must get there—now go!”
Gudrun harrumphed, but she was used to not getting a word in edgewise, having been married to Volstagg all these years. “Come, children, let us move quickly!” While Gudrun was a woman of some size, she also could be quite swift afoot when the need called for it—usually chasing one of the little ones around the house when they got into mischief—and so she immediately strode forward up the mountain path.
While she tried to set the pace, several of the children outstripped her, with Hilde naturally in the lead. She was physically the strongest of her children, even more so than the boys, and also the fiercest. Gudrun knew her daughter would not go too far ahead, lest they be separated, but she also felt that they were all a little bit safer with Hilde in the lead.
Behind them, Frigga watched as the children and Gudrun fled. Up to this point, they had been walking at a leisurely pace, not wishing to tire the children out—particularly Kevin and Mick, who were less hardy than Asgardian children, even though they had been dining on the golden apples of immortality since joining the family. But now that there was danger, she doubted anything would stop them from moving at top speed to the Vale of Crystal. Frigga herself had placed the wards upon the Vale that would protect all those who entered from any harm. She also would know when those wards were triggered, no matter where in the Nine Worlds she might be.
Frigga then proceeded back the way they had come. Best to be as far from the children as possible when she confronted Hrungnir. Besides, there was a plateau less than an hour’s walk down the path that would be the perfect place to confront him and delay the giant until her charges were safe.
As she’d hoped, she reached that plateau before encountering Hrungnir, though the hoofbeats of Goldfaxi now echoed loudly through the chill air, signaling that the giant’s arrival was imminent.
When Hrungnir turned ’round the bend and arrived at the plateau, he found himself confronted with fifty women wielding swords.
And all of them looked just like Frigga.
Yanking on the reins, Hrungnir cried, “Whoa!” The action was wholly unnecessary, as the sudden sight of a phalanx of Friggas was enough to spook the horse, and he stopped all on his own.
“Is it not enough that I am tormented by the husband? Now the wife vexes me!”
One of the Friggas said, “You will not pass this plateau, Hrungnir.”
Another added, “We stand before you united.”
A third said, “And we will not allow you through.”
“Ha! First Odin had to disguise himself, then Thor uses that stupid hammer of his, and now you use illusions! You Asgardians are all illusions and shadows and toys with no true power. I will destroy each and every one of you!”
With that, Hrungnir kicked Goldfaxi forward and swung his club at the closest of the Friggas.
The club’s impact caused the simulacrum Frigga had created to dissolve in a puff of light.
Frigga had hidden herself behind a snowdrift. Unfortunately, the illusions required proximity and effort to maintain. All she needed to do was keep throwing images of herself at the giant until Gudrun and the children made it safely to the Vale.
Luckily, Hrungnir had a very direct and deliberate approach. He simply attacked each image of Frigga in turn. It took him some time to wade through all fifty, especially once Frigga had them move about and dodge the giant’s club, making him believe that this was the real one because it put up resistance.
In truth, when there were fifty, Frigga could do little but make them stand in a particular pose and speak with her voice, but once he eliminated a dozen or so, it freed her to manipulate the images more aggressively.
For Hrungnir’s part, he had hoped that fighting fifty versions of Odin’s wife and killing all of them would bring him the satisfaction that his abortive invasion of Asgard had failed to provide. But all it served to do was frustrate him even further.
And so with each image of Frigga he clubbed into nothingness, he got angrier and angrier.
Seeing the giant’s fury, Frigga sent two of her illusory selves toward the edge of the plateau.
One held up her sword. “Face me if you dare, giant.”
“Assuming you are not a coward,” the other said, her sword lowered. “My husband has already defeated you, and it seems my son has done the same—so you come to run and hide in the mountains only to be beaten by me.”
“Your husband tricked me! And you will pay for his perfidy, woman!” Hrungnir shrieked as he kicked Goldfaxi into a gallop, rushing headlong toward the two illusions.
But then the horse pulled up, showing more sense than Hrungnir, skidding to a halt before both mount and rider could go tumbling over the edge.
The snow kicked up by Goldfaxi’s sudden stop was enough to penetrate the spell, and the two Friggas by the edge also disappeared.
Hrungnir patt
ed his noble horse on the side of the head. “Well done, my faithful steed. We would surely both have perished had I assaulted these false images.” He dismounted from the horse and again patted him, this time on the side. “Rest, Goldfaxi, for I have taxed you much this day. I will deal with Odin’s trollop myself.”
A dozen images remained, and Frigga was starting to feel the stress of casting so many illusions at once. Still, she persevered, for the wards in the Vale had not yet been activated. And so the twelve Friggas moved to surround the giant.
Hrungnir held up his club and smiled. “I know you are nearby, witch. Even Loki could not work such magicks from a distance, and you are far from your son’s equal in sorcerous matters.”
“Oh, you believe that, do you?” said one of the Friggas.
Another said, “I taught my son everything he knows.”
“But,” a third said, “that doesn’t mean I taught him everything I know.”
A fourth Frigga moved to attack Hrungnir with her sword, an obvious frontal assault that the giant easily parried, sending another simulacrum to oblivion.
But even as Hrungnir swung his club through the insubstantial form of Odin’s wife, two more illusions attacked him from behind, and while the swords they carried had no physical substance, Frigga had imbued these final eleven images with magickal force that could be transmitted through the blades.
Hrungnir screamed as the swords of the two illusions sliced through his belly, weakening him with eldritch force. Snarling due to the unexpected pain, Hrungnir swung his club blindly behind him to eliminate those two, and then he charged at three more of them, wiping them out before they could raise their swords.
Of the half-dozen remaining, several managed to strike Hrungnir, but none were enough to fell the giant, and soon enough they had all been dispatched, leaving the frost giant to stand, weakened, but alone save for his mount.
“I know you’re nearby, witch!” Hrungnir bellowed. “Do not think you can hide from me! I may not have your gift for spellcraft, but the frost giants are as one with the snow and ice, and none may hide amidst the cold from such as I for long.”
And then Hrungnir upraised his arms, commanding the snow on the ground to move away and blow off the very same cliff’s edge that Frigga tried to trick Hrungnir into going over.
Within moments, Frigga’s cover was blown away, and she was forced to stand and face the giant.
“Your pretty tricks are at an end, wife of the hated All-Father. And without your illusions, you are nothing.”
Frigga raised her sword. “Do you imagine, Hrungnir, that I am helpless before you? After all, you know that the mother of Loki is proficient in the ways of spellcraft. Does it not follow that the mother of Thor is able to fight?”
“Ha!” Hrungnir followed his derisive laugh with a mighty swing of his club.
One that Frigga easily parried with her sword. For while it was hardly the Sword of Frey, the wielder of which could never know defeat, Frigga’s sword was fashioned for her by Eitri, the master smith of the dwarves. And so when the giant’s club—made from the mighty oaks that had grown in Jotunheim since the dawn of time—collided with Frigga’s blade, it echoed throughout the mountains.
Hrungnir expected that the Mother of Asgard would have a powerful blade, but he did not expect her to have the physical strength to withstand even a parried blow from a giant.
Frigga took advantage of the giant’s shock by pressing her attack. Hrungnir parried each of her strikes, but it grew more difficult with each one. The magickal blows from the illusory swords added to the brutal attacks by Thor to wear away at even the frost giant’s mighty constitution.
Unfortunately, Frigga herself was also growing weaker. It had been a very long time since she had cast so many spells at once. But still the wards had not been triggered, and until Gudrun and the children were safe, she dared not let up on her assault.
Frigga swung her sword at Hrungnir’s left side. He blocked it, of course, but she immediately swung the sword over her head and down at the frost giant’s right ankle. Hrungnir was able to dodge the strike by lifting his foot, which prompted Frigga to thrust the hilt of her sword at the giant’s chest. With one foot off the ground, Hrungnir lost his balance and toppled backward, but he managed to shove at Frigga before falling, and she too wound up on her back in the snow.
Both of them quickly got to their feet, one feinting, the other parrying, with neither gaining an advantage.
“You fight well, Frigga,” Hrungnir said, respecting his foe enough to use her name rather than an epithet. “Odin chose his wife well.”
“What makes you think he chose me?” Frigga asked with a sweet smile, and then kicked a pile of snow upward toward the giant’s face.
It only distracted the giant for but a moment, but it was enough for Frigga to come at him with her sword—
—or, rather, attempt to. She slipped on the very snow pile she had just kicked and stumbled forward, right into the grip of the giant.
Hrungnir wrapped both his meaty hands around Frigga’s waist. “You fought well, Frigga. Though I am the victor now, know that—unlike your husband with his tricks and your son with his foolish hammer—I truly believe that you could have beaten Hrungnir the Mighty in a fair fight. Alas, the Nine Worlds are many things, but fair is not among them.”
Barely able to catch her breath from being crushed by the giant, Frigga asked, “Am I to be killed, then?”
“Oh no, my worthy foe. You are of far more use to me alive than dead. No, you are a prisoner of the frost giants.”
Even as consciousness fled from Frigga, she at last felt the activation of the wards that surrounded the Vale of Crystal.
Gudrun and the children were safe.
And then Frigga’s mind went dark.
Chapter Six
The first thing Odin did when Thor returned to the throne room to announce that Hrungnir’s forces were routed was to send his son to the Vale of Crystal to tell Frigga, Gudrun, and the children that they could return home.
“Perhaps I acted in haste to send them from the city,” Odin said, “but I feared the wrath of Hrungnir might lead to the endangering of the innocents of Asgard. It is my sworn duty to protect them.”
Thor smiled. “You need not explain, Father. Evil’s strength is its lack of caring for the fate of those not involved in the conflict. While Hrungnir’s animus is toward you, not the children, it would still be very much in his character to harm them to get to you. It was right that you sent them away.” He knelt respectfully before the All-Father. “I will hie myself to the Vale of Crystal at once!”
After exiting the throne room, Thor whirled his hammer over his head, and then it shot into the air, pulling him along through the skies. He watched as the soldiers of Asgard brought the giants to the dungeon, joining Baugi the troll, who also dared to menace the great city. Then he flew leisurely toward the mountains.
Something caught his eye, and he cut short his flying to alight on a large plateau. The snow was heavily disturbed, and there were many scattered foot- and hoofprints, the former of two different sizes.
There had been a great battle on that spot, and it was recent. And this plateau was on the route Gudrun and Frigga would have taken to the Vale. It was unclear which of the two people walked away from the fight—the only prints that continued onward were those of the horse.
Again Thor twirled his hammer, but now he felt the need for haste. Urging Mjolnir to move at top speed, he flew to the Vale of Crystal. Located in the heart of the Asgard Mountains, the Vale was a dodecahedron made entirely of crystals. Mined millennia ago by the dwarves, the crystals were useful for the channeling of spells. The mages of Vanaheim traded the dwarves for the crystals and constructed this place. It had not had much use in a while, though Thor knew that his mother used to come here quite a bit, and also that she was capable of warding it against attack. No doubt, that was why the All-Father chose it as the place to hide the children of Asgard from the frost gi
ants.
He alighted at the Vale’s entrance—or, rather, where he was fairly certain the entrance was. Frigga had shown him the location of the hidden entrance once, and he recalled that all he needed to do was walk through.
Sure enough, he approached what appeared to be a solid wall of crystal and walked right through it to a large sitting room filled with chairs and tables and cushions.
The first words he heard upon entering were, “Frigga, you finally made it!”
Even as Gudrun said those words, Thor felt the impact of several small bodies on his legs.
“Thor!”
“Yay, it’s Thor!”
“Is Asgard safe?”
“Are all the giants dead?”
Gudrun’s words had given the thunder god pause, but he put on a smile for the benefit of the children. “Yes, Asgard is safe once more. Of the giants who attacked, only their leader Hrungnir got away. Rather than remain to face the consequences of his actions alongside his people, he turned and ran like the craven varlet he is.”
Hilde—one of the few children not currently embracing Thor’s calves—said, “We know, we saw him coming up the mountain. Frigga stayed behind to stop him.”
“We thought you were her,” Gudrun added. “She should have come here by now.”
Anger boiled within Thor’s heart. The mighty battle he saw the aftermath of on the plateau was almost certainly between Frigga and Hrungnir. Frigga, he knew, was on foot, and Hrungnir was riding the speedy Goldfaxi. Which meant that the fact that hoofprints were all that exited the battlefield bespoke a victory for the frost giant.
But he tamped down the anger, not wishing the children, or Gudrun, to worry. “I have come in Frigga’s stead. The battle is won, and Asgard is safe once again. You may all return to your homes.”
Gudrun let out a huge breath. “Thank the Fates. I feared we would be trapped in this crystalline labyrinth for weeks.”
Thor chuckled despite himself. Gudrun hated being away from her own home. She often made excuses not to attend feasts in the great hall of Asgard, preferring to stay behind and keep an eye on the children too small to attend those feasts. While many teased Volstagg about how he went out on adventures with Fandral and Hogun to avoid being stuck at home with Gudrun, the truth, Thor knew, was that Gudrun herself was the one that preferred to remain alone, leaving the adventuring to her husband. A gentle home life was what she preferred.
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