Hammered tidc-3

by Kevin Hearne

  I had a single glimpse of Thor before I had to direct my attention elsewhere. He was not the clean-shaven man Americans were used to seeing in comic books. A gnarly blond beard covered his jaw but did not extend down to his neck. There was no winged helmet, or any helmet at all. He had a thin strip of rawhide tied around his forehead to keep his long hair out of his eyes. He wore a mail shirt and a red tunic over it, belted with Megingjörd, which doubled his already prodigious strength. Járngreiper, his iron gloves, clutched the reins of his chariot as if he imagined they were our wee, stringy necks. His face was so red it practically matched his tunic; it was scrunched into constipated fury. He could not believe I was still alive and bringing a friend to the battle. As he watched us approach, he dropped the reins and hoisted a shield from the side of his chariot and secured it to his left arm.

  My time was up. If Leif was to have a decent shot at Thor, he couldn’t have me hanging on to his leg. The Valkyries were riding behind Thor and below him to his right, as Leif had described. The steep ascent of Mjöllnir to Thor’s hand was bringing us to eye level with them. Once we reached that level, I tossed Fragarach high into the air and triggered my owl charm. I let go of Leif’s leg and shifted, flapping madly after my sword. Leif continued on toward Thor, and the Valkyries were now on course to fly underneath me. I saw gravity taking hold of Fragarach and slowing its ascent, allowing me to close the gap between us at the zenith of its journey. I switched back to human form, snatched the hilt out of the air, and fell naked and screaming onto the Valkyries below.

  The shouted warning from the trailing riders was too late to save the second Valkryie on the near side of the V. I sliced through her skull and spine with nothing more than the force of gravity, Fragarach sliding through armor and flesh like scissors through silk. The halves of her body sheared away to either side and showered me in blood. When my feet landed on the flanks of her horse, I knelt and launched myself back up, somersaulting backward and twisting to meet the next Valkyrie in the formation. Thinking it might protect her, she’d raised her shield, but she hadn’t had enough time to process what my sword could do. I slashed through both it and her torso, again springing off her horse’s back to meet the next opponent. This one was far smarter. She just got out of the way, yanking her mount up and to her left, past my reach. I began to fall, and I twisted around to assess the situation. Two down, ten to go, formation broken and pursuing me. Whoops, make that nine! A thunderous impact and a flash of steel across my vision showed me a Valkyrie hurtling to earth with a vampire latched on to her neck, her horse plunging fatally to earth with a broken wing. Somehow, Thor had tossed Leif away to let the shieldmaidens of Valhalla tangle with him. But they were no better equipped to deal with an ancient vampire than the god of thunder was.

  Twisting again to face the approaching earth, I let go of Fragarach and shape-shifted once more to an owl, breaking my fall and landing safely next to my sword in the snow. Leif and his victim impacted sickeningly fifty yards away, and he immediately leapt defiantly to his feet and roared at the sky. Four Valkyries dove in his direction, five in mine. I shifted back to human form and retrieved Fragarach, drawing on my bear charm to quicken my speed and magnify my strength. The charm was nearing empty; all the shifting had taken its toll.

  The first Valkyrie came at me in an airborne cavalry charge, thinking to ride me down, but I sprang out of the path of her blade to take on the one who would inevitably follow, because it’s always the two in the old one–two you have to worry about. The second one was bearing down hard and descending to snow level, counting on her horse to trample me to fleshy bits of mincemeat. Well, I had my Irish up, so I wasn’t going to dodge this one. I bellowed incoherently, charged directly at the steed, and led with my left shoulder. My magically boosted strength slammed into it at the base of its neck and stopped it cold, flinging the astonished Valkyrie ass over teakettle to land awkwardly in the snow. The horse staggered backward, flapping its wings to keep upright. My left shoulder popped painfully out of its socket, and my collarbone shattered on impact, but my right arm—the arm with Fragarach clutched at the end of it—still worked just fine. I turned and chopped off the Valkyrie’s arms before she could rise from the snow, Fragarach’s power to cut through armor again aiding the process. She shrieked and writhed as her lifeblood squirted from her shorn shoulders, and it was precisely the music I needed. Her companions would rush in, their need to render aid and pay me back giving them a sort of tunnel vision.

  Four cursing Valkyries landed and dismounted, spreading themselves to surround me, swords drawn and shields raised. One of them pointed at my naughty bits and laughed.

  “Hey, you know what?” I said. “It’s damn cold out here. And those wings on your helmet look fucking stupid.”

  Leif, I saw, was beset by three more of them, having ripped out the throat of the fourth. He was probably in better shape than I; both his arms still worked. As my adversaries gathered themselves to charge me, I shouted in Russian, “Perun! Help now!” and prayed to Brighid that he heard me.

  The Russian thunder god could not have revealed himself earlier and allowed the Valkyries to lay a death curse on him. I wasn’t sure this would work, because Thor might have given them some sort of protection, but it was worth a try. Now that all their attention was fully engaged by a Druid and a vampire, Perun could let loose. Seven thunderbolts lanced down from the sky to slay the remaining Valkyries, and as their smoking corpses fell limply into the snow, Väinämöinen laughed again, a creepy Vincent Price job that echoed under the ceiling of clouds. He banished his seeming and revealed our entire force to the pompous Æsir asspudding floating in the sky.

  We gave Thor a few seconds to absorb it all. The Valkyries were all dead, wiped out in less than a minute by three members of a strange, unforetold force that numbered two dozen. And, by virtue of being the first on the scene, he now had no help whatsoever.

  “Perun, fry his goats,” I called. Two more thunderbolts cracked in the sky, and Thor howled in rage and surprise as his ruined chariot plunged down onto the Plain of Idavoll, led by the charred black carcasses of his rams.

  Chapter 26

  “Last one there’s a rotten egg!” I said, and the boys were off. It was an interesting footrace. I think Leif would normally have won on a flat surface, but Gunnar in wolf form was able to bound nimbly across the snow while Leif had to fight it with every step. Väinämöinen, Perun, and Zhang Guo Lao didn’t stand a chance, though the latter did his best with some superhuman leaps that would require wire work in the movies. The frost giants just stood there and watched the tiny people go after Thor. Aside from losing two of their number at the very start, they’d been very entertained by the visit to Asgard so far.

  If Thor had been smart, he would have thrown his hammer at someone else. Nobody else could avoid the tracking spell on Mjöllnir, and he’d instantly regain his confidence. But his beloved goats were dead, and even his dim bulb of a brain could figure out that, if he resurrected them, Perun would simply strike them again. For an instant I thought he was going to let his hammer fly at Gunnar, because he whirled it around impressively as a precursor to a throw, but what he did instead was throw it without letting go—he targeted some point far in the distance and let Mjöllnir drag him through the air by the handle, the same way it had borne Leif and me to his position in the sky.

  “Mrrh-hugh-huuaaagh!” Hrym laughed and pointed. “He’s flying away to go get his daddy.” The frost Jötnar all joined in the laugh and began to speculate about when or if he’d come back for more and whom he’d bring with him next time.

  The only one of us that could chase him at this point was Perun, who couldn’t hope to overtake Thor before he reached help. The remaining flying mounts of the Valkyries, having nothing better to do, flew back toward Asgard without their riders.

  “Coward!” Leif shouted after the diminishing god in the sky. Gunnar howled.

  “Hey, Leif, a little help here, maybe?” I said in a normal tone. �
��Shove this back into its socket?” The vampire had no trouble hearing me from fifty yards away. He turned, located me, and ran to my aid. The adrenaline was wearing off, and my body was thinking about going into shock.

  “Hmm,” he said, braking abruptly in front of me and examining my arm. “You’ve broken a bone as well.”

  “Right. Socket first, then set the bones, and I’ll knit from the inside.”

  “Ready?”

  “No, wait. I need to touch the earth before we do this. I need more juice.”

  Leif efficiently cleared away a hole in the snow and I stepped into it, drawing on the earth’s power and dulling the nerves in my shoulder.

  “Okay, do it,” I said. He grabbed my arm and shoved it back into its socket with an audible, crunchy pop. Then he took hold of my splintered collarbone at the first break—there were three—and held the pieces together until I could get a rudimentary binding in place. “Next,” I said, and he moved on to the next break, and then the last. “Good enough,” I said, placing Fragarach down carefully and then lying on my right side so that the maximum surface area of my tattoos could touch the earth.

  Leif watched me in silence for a full minute to make sure that lying down wasn’t a prelude to performing something tactically brilliant. Then he said, “You’re just going to lie there until he comes back?”

  “Hey, you’re pretty smart for a dead guy. What happened up there? I got you your shot and you blew it.”

  Leif grimaced. “No denying that. I shattered his shield, but he knocked me away with a hammer blow before I could take another swing.”

  “That must have given you an ouchie.”

  “He crushed my ribs,” he replied, grinning. “But that Valkyrie healed me up nicely. Their blood is powerful. First full meal I’ve had in days.”

  “Good. You’re going to need it.” I sighed. “Our surprises are all spent now, Leif. Nothing will be easy when Thor returns, and our best chance to get out of here unscathed is gone.” Leif nodded but said nothing.

  Gunnar joined us, barked once by way of greeting, and lay down against my back. He was trying to keep me warm, and it made me smile. Though he’d never admit it, Gunnar was treating me like a surrogate pack member. I could tell he missed them. I hoped he’d make it back. He would if we left now; we all would.

  “Leif.”

  “Hmm?” He kept his eyes on the skies for Thor’s return.

  “I need to tell you something. Complete candor.”

  He looked down at me, interested. “What is it?”

  “I’ve been visited by two different gods. You saw the Morrigan, and the other one was Jesus. They tend to be pretty fucking good at seeing the future.”

  “Yes?”

  “They both said killing Thor would be an extraordinarily bad idea.”

  The vampire’s expression hardened. “So?”

  “So let’s get the hell out of here and call it a victory.”

  “Victory? We have won nothing!”

  “Heimdall is dead, plus twelve Valkyries. That’s the blood price of your family times four. You’ve made your point and we’re all still alive. Let’s quit while we’re ahead.”

  “We are not ahead. You do not keep score properly. The only death that counts is Thor’s.”

  “What about my death? Or Gunnar’s, or the rest of us? Will those count? Because the odds of us dying are pretty high if we wait for Thor to come back with the rest of the Æsir.”

  “Go, then, if you want, but leave me here.”

  “You know I won’t do that.” Hal would never speak to me again if I left Leif behind. “We all need to go.”

  Leif knelt next to me in the snow and said in low, intense tones, “A thousand years, Atticus. I have been waiting for this, needing it and wanting it, for a thousand years of sunless existence. Against that you put the ten years I have known you. Friend that you are to me, there is no argument you can make that will swerve me from my course. And I doubt seriously that you could sway any of the others with this talk of the future. If they have a fraction of the feeling I have, then the only future they care about is the one where Thor is dead. Nothing else matters.”

  Gunnar whuffed a small breath of agreement and nodded his head. I sighed, defeated. Revenge and rational thought never sleep together.

  “Surviving matters,” I said, my last salvo in a lost battle.

  “Right,” Leif said, happy to agree to anything that did not involve leaving. “So use that head of yours and help us out with that. Ought we to do anything while we wait? What if he does not come back at all?”

  “Oh, he’ll come. The frost giants can send ice storms toward Fólkvangr as we planned. And Perun can do his thing too if he wants. Maybe draw straws to see who’s going to take on Týr, because he’ll show up for sure.” The Norse god of single combat might have only one hand (the great wolf Fenris having chewed the other off ages ago), but he could still wreak plenty of ruin with it. “And have Väinämöinen put us under a seeming again. We don’t want Hugin and Munin to scout things out and give Odin a chance to war-game us. Let him deal only with Thor’s verbal report.”

  I got almost a full hour of healing in before a cry went up that the Æsir approached. The collarbone was still fragile, but the shoulder joint worked fine and the muscles around it were solid, if a bit bruised and stiff. When I rose to my feet, the stars were gone from the western sky, blotted out by thunderheads that roiled with the barely contained fury of Thor. Gunnar rose too and stretched.

  The massive trunk of Yggdrasil still loomed to the north, a gray wall that secured our right flank, though it was a football field away from where I stood. Gunnar and I were on the far right of our company, and the rest of the group was spread out to the south, scanning the western sky.

  Even with night vision, there wasn’t much for me to see except for a bright point of light that was probably the boar Gullinbursti. Forced to rely on Leif, I asked him what he saw.

  “Odin and Freyr for certain. The lady with the cat chariot must be Freyja.”

  Saying that in hearing of the frost Jötnar was a mistake; they became extremely animated and repeated her name like fanboys, some of them even jamming their hands down their furs.

  Leif continued, raising his voice to drown out the randy chorus of the giants. “I count three others.”

  “Including Thor?”

  “No. I do not see Thor.”

  “Six of the Æsir but no Thor? Something’s up.”

  “I should like to take this opportunity to name you Sherlock and point out that there is no shit.”

  “What? Leif, no. You said that completely wrong. You’re supposed to say, ‘No shit, Sher—’ ”

  “Incoming!” Leif interrupted me. “Odin’s spear! I cannot tell who has been targeted from this distance.”

  “Gods Below,” I breathed. “How can he target any of us? Aren’t we under a seeming right now?”

  “Aye, we are,” Väinämöinen confirmed.

  “It might be proof against Hugin and Munin but apparently not against Odin himself.” I shape-shifted to a hound, then back again in case it was aimed at me. Taking Fragarach with me, I drifted to the left and watched the phosphorus glow of Gullinbursti grow brighter. He was so bright that he was lighting up the puffed blanket of clouds above.

  “Oh, bugger, the clouds!” I said. “Thor’s above the clouds!” I got no response, for that’s when Odin’s plan hit us. The long flight of his spear ended through Väinämöinen’s chest, throwing the Finn backward ten yards and spilling him dead into the snow. His seeming dissipated with his death, and now our exact positions were revealed to the Æsir. How Odin had known to target Väinämöinen was anyone’s guess, but it was clearly the linchpin of his plan.

  “One of the Æsir is an archer,” Leif said. “Arrows incoming. That must be Ullr.”

  “Take him out, Perun!”

  “Da!” The happy hairy thunder god grinned, and lightning lanced down from the sky, but nothing happened except
for a frost giant taking an arrow in the throat.

  “They’re ready for it this time,” I said. “They learned from their mistakes. They’re protected like we are. You’ll have to make do with your axe. If you see either of Odin’s ravens, take a shot.” I hurried over to the frost Jötnar as another arrow found its mark, albeit not fatally. “Hrym! Suttung! Can you do anything about that archer? Wind or ice or something to throw off his aim? He’ll just pick us off otherwise.”

  “Graah,” Hrym said. “Hrrrrgh,” he added, and a long ice club grew from the palm of his right hand, sort of like an extreme beardcicle. The other frost giants followed suit, condensing and freezing their own clubs, then they pointed them in concert in the direction of the Æsir. Shortly thereafter, a curtain of snow was thrown up perhaps a hundred yards in front of us, violent tempests in miniature that were sure to throw off anything flying in our direction—including winged horses and chariots and giant shiny dwarf-made pigs, as well as arrows.

  “That’s good,” I said, “but keep an eye on the sky above. Thor is up there above the clouds, and he’ll try to drop in on us soon.” I moved back to the body of Väinämöinen to retrieve Odin’s spear. The cold iron touch of my hand on its shaft did nothing to deactivate the targeting runes on the spearhead, so I had a surefire kill shot here. But using it would mean giving the Æsir a chance to throw it at us again.

  The Finnish wizard looked surprised, his eyes open in an unblinking stare, focused on the spear sprouting from his chest. I closed his eyes and hoped that his soul, wherever it was, felt content with his brief contribution to the battle. I was not content, I would have liked to hear more of his stories, and more of his songs. I would have liked for him to feel he’d done right by the sea serpent he championed. And I would have liked time to mourn him properly, but the demands of battle meant I had to move on quickly if I wanted to live through it.