The Descendants of Thor Trilogy Boxset: Forged in Blood and Lightning; Norns of Fate; Wrath of Aten

by S. A. Ashdown

  Worse, Ragnarök is supposedly a fate unavoidable, the destined end-of-the-world. I prayed to my mythical ancestor that this was the part I could take with a pinch of salt.

  My sweater itched against my skin, but I left it on in a vain show of solidarity with the locals suffering because of the weather. Anyway, my discomfort had nothing really to do with my clothes. Even when I sat still, little tremors shot through my body, jolting my nerves into a continual shiver. I looked out the window. A gloomy sky smothered Hellingstead, helping me visualise a three-year winter with a capital ‘W’ with eye-watering clarity.

  I zoned out, lost in apocalyptic daydreams. Suddenly, I became aware of the sun setting over the cliffs, and spotted Uncle Nikolaj sitting on the bench circling the ash tree, waving at me.

  The air outside smelt moist and rich, as if someone had gathered the individual scents of the earth and the flowers and the grasses and the animals, grinding them together in a cosmic mortar and pestle, a delicate blend of spices sprinkled back across the sky. The tension in my shoulders softened, and I joined Nik to admire Hellingstead Hall from the bench. After twenty-one years, I still felt unnerved by the miniature gargoyles living frozen lives on the plinths running along the roof.

  We didn’t speak at first. Uncle Nikolaj whistled under his breath, creaking the old wood as he rocked back and forth a little. A joyous soul, Uncle Nik, that inner zeal for life never far below the surface. As I watched him, he blended into the muted greens and browns, a garden pixie, his contented whistling nothing but birdsong.

  ‘How can I live up to Thor?’ I asked.

  ‘I presume you mean, Thor the man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thor was a Pied Piper of warriors and cunning women…’

  Oh Gods, here we go. I should’ve guessed he would take the opportunity to launch into another story, one he narrated as if he were a witness. He wasn’t that old. It was just his way.

  ‘It’s said he won battles just by walking out onto the plain alone, living glory in golden armour, wooing his enemies into submission. Once his fleet of longships landed on a beach, they never retreated. One might think he grew drunk on his power if you take that Edda about him literally, but as your father said, he was a wise man, and didn’t choose his pride over his people.’

  ‘His people?’

  ‘In those days, Norway was a fractured country, with warring kings and chieftains vying for territory and resources. They invaded their rivals, who promptly counter-invaded, until blood and hatred poisoned the soil. Sick of rule under a brutal king, Thor mustered an army, seizing the southern tip of Norway with its lush fertile valleys and warmer weather. But his predecessor had made many enemies to the north, pillaging their villages and desecrating their hard-toiled crops, and slaughtering their kinsfolk.

  ‘Not long after Thor took power, the clans of the North united under General Tyr, the god of victory as you know. After the hardship they’d endured, vast swathes of men sailed south and landed along the coastline. The invader’s timing couldn’t have been worse for Thor, who’d sent a large portion of his army to stabilise the looting of grain stores and crops on the northern border of his lands. Tyr’s men had arrived near a string of villages devoid of able men, the women and children sitting ducks.

  ‘Thor sent a messenger to request Tyr meet him for peace talks. Tyr’s men, angry at their treatment by the last king, were keen to get on with the raping and pillaging, but Tyr was honourable and decided to give Thor a chance.’

  Nikolaj paused, smiling with satisfaction at the yet unspoken part of his tale, his ear pointing up, betraying his eagerness. To be fair, I was all ears myself, hooked as I’d been the first time he’d recounted – not read – Homer’s Iliad to me, with the ship-launching Helen of Troy and the dashing Paris. As a boy of eleven, his retelling of the epic war following Helen’s abduction kept me riveted for several evenings by the fire when I would’ve otherwise been missing my mum.

  ‘So what happened?’ I prompted. As he spoke, a weird illusion spread across my vision as if I were actually in the tent made of animal skins, with Thor and Tyr thrashing it out. If Nik’s tale was true, the Gatekeeper energy was present when that discussion had happened, an ancient observer within my own mind. In a way, I was there. As was Uncle Nik, once upon a time.

  ‘Thor possessed greater wealth than the average king, using his Gatekeeper gifts to procure great stores of treasure, useful when bartering for favours in a tight spot. Even though magic was an acceptable tenet of faith in those days, Thor favoured as many mortal means as possible to achieve his ends, mainly his wit.

  ‘Instead of bribing Tyr, Thor offered him a share of his treasures and consulship in his kingdom under the condition he convinced his men to spare the women and children of the nearby villages. But what would his men gain from the bargain, he asked Thor, when empty beds and bare crops awaited them at home, thanks to his predecessor? Thor offered Tyr the newly created farmland and villages he’d already cleared and built. It was tough land, much of it up the sides of mountains, but it was fertile, and they could have it if they agreed to integrate with the local clans. To help this along, Thor promised a dozen maidens from each of the villages to marry Tyr’s men and bear their children. All of this if they refrained from plunder, forgave the past – which he could do nothing about – and accepted his leadership.

  ‘Tyr, charismatic and sensible, offered his half-starved forces his own head if Thor reneged on the deal. Begrudgingly, they agreed, and Thor proved true to his word. Unfortunately, some of the promised maidens took umbrage at being carted off to marry the weather-beaten men of the North and ran away. Remembering Tyr’s promise, but also remembering their awful lives before, they cut off his left hand instead of his head. Thus the story of Tyr getting his hand bitten off by the wolf, Fenrir.’

  ‘I guess a militia could be construed as wolf-like. They don’t tell it like that in the Edda though.’

  Nikolaj clapped me on the back so hard I coughed. ‘Poets utter great and wise things, which they do not themselves understand.’

  I recognised the quote from Plato, which Nikolaj had also re-enacted for me in my early teens.

  I never missed an opportunity to impress my uncle because, unlike my father, his esteem seemed achievable. ‘Homo homini lupus est.’ Man is a wolf to man. It wasn’t Plato, but he got the point and treated me to a dazzling grin and a hearty laugh – but thankfully spared me another back-blow.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question though, Onkel. If anything, you’ve given me an inferiority-complex.’

  Nikolaj huffed and picked at the ash tree’s bark with his fingernails. ‘It’s true that it’s good to be descended from great men. But, Theo, the glory belongs to them – we do not partake in it. They earned it through their deeds, the decisions they made day by day. You have some DNA to back you up, a lineage any Pneuma would crave. Try to see that as a help and not a hindrance. You’re a good-hearted lad, and you’re certainly looking the part!’

  ‘Thanks, I guess.’ My cheek twitched as it did whenever I wasn’t monitoring the tic-situation, and Nikolaj must’ve mistaken it for a smile because he flashed back one that was all radiance and familial affection. We sat and basked in the glow of his general optimism, and yet I was slipping into the scenery of his story, seeing through Thor as he watched Tyr’s ships land on the expansive, rugged coastline.

  When I closed my eyes, I stretched into chiselled arms and trunk-sized legs, not my own, wringing brawny hands as I worried about the fate of my defenceless villagers. The sensation of occupying two places in two times made me nauseous. Uncle Nik noticed and gripped my knee, softly talking in my ear, beckoning me to return.

  His voice echoed from far away, pushed back by the blood rushing in my ears. With no warning, I shot off the bench and veered across the meadow, trying to see Hellingstead Hall, trying to smell the damp earth. But as the breeze picked up, blowing in spray from the water, I stayed rooted in the god’s past, greeting the
messenger returning from Tyr’s encampment, his lank, brown hair textured with fine grains of salty sand.

  Nikolaj was shouting, but he was a blur, a vague impression I couldn’t focus on. Bells jangled in my head, the rushing blood turning to a roar. Every cell in my body convulsed as I swayed and staggered, about to faint. Nikolaj encircled my waist, clamping me tight. I struggled, confused and panicked, slipping free like a salmon through a bear’s claws, banking up into the air as if I were that fish propelled upstream, but in reality, I was flying high, all of Hellingstead abruptly far beneath me.

  Only I wasn’t me. Not in the way you’d think. I surveyed the distant ground, my vision funnelled as if through a spyglass. Two distinct blobs, one figure hunched over and slumped onto the grass, and a beanpole sitting next to him, stroking the curly head cushioned in his lap. Hey, who’s down there with Uncle Nik?

  Then, Odin, Thor, and Freyr that’s me!

  Yet here I hovered, loitering over the cliffs, companion to the clouds, casting a mauve glow over Hellingstead Hall and the neighbouring farmland, feeling about as substantial as my fellow clumps of water-vapour.

  As the philosopher Descartes said, I think, therefore I am. And there I was, thinking. Thinking, Am I dead?

  No, I decided, I can’t be. I still felt the tug of my body collapsed in the meadow, and surely if Uncle Nik thought me dead he’d run around like a headless chicken. Instead, he appeared to be waiting as if I’d simply fallen asleep.

  I was very much awake, senses pin-sharp, the landscape undulating in pockets of green and vibrant yellow. I had existed my whole life in standard definition, and everything focused into HD, snap.

  As St. Michael’s stood on a hill overlooking the town, I zoomed in on it without effort, attracted by a moving figure I recognised – Lorenzo, stalking around the churchyard. Am I hallucinating? Dusk, but the sun hadn’t quite retreated, still shedding its amber halo across the water, a final farewell before darkness drew the curtain shut. Weren’t vampires meant to be night-dwellers?

  It didn’t bother me. I existed in a state of fearlessness as if fear itself meant nothing without a body to worry about. Without personal risk, I felt neutral. There’s something about floating, freed from worldly demands and yet fully conscious, which fulfils a permanence yearned for in daily life. Always this, waiting for us no matter what happened on the battlefield, no matter what else we lost. I wondered, did my mother feel released when she died? My destiny knitted me to the fate of the earth. But this me… always free… always survived. I tumbled, living turbulence, over the woodland snaking down from St. Michael’s and onto the Clemensen estate, level with a group of gulls flocking from the cliff face.

  After a while, I tired of the tugging at the back of my head – I had a form of sorts, delicate and wispy, but light, manoeuvrable, and strong as super-engineered carbon fibre – urging unification with the sack of flesh and bone known as Theo Clemensen. I felt revulsion when I looked back at that person collapsed on the earth. How could such a fragile thing hope to be a conduit for the world’s source of life and magic? I scrambled away.

  But as I tumbled down the cliff face, slicing through the roaring sea into its bleak and frigid depths, I thought of my mother’s identical descent. Her violent death sank my icy mental fortress into the fires of hell. I heard the cracks split through my heart as my grief flared, reminding me who I really was. Without the need to breathe, I scoured the muddy bed, hunting for her treasured soul.

  She’s my mother. Even floating around like this, imitating a dead fish, I couldn’t deny it. I’m a mortal man, part of Mother Earth, part of Jörð, part of Thor, part of Espen and Isobel. I think, therefore I am. I think I’m a Clemensen warlock.

  An epiphany, anchored somewhere in the recesses of my mind, closed in, knocking and clanging like sailboats moored together in the waves. An obligation – an agreement – jarred, one older than memory. Our souls are beyond time; we’re the Orlog’s flaked skin. Our human fate may be dictated to us by the Norns, but our essence pre-dates even those gods of destiny. We are part of the primordial consciousness, and we choose who we are. My soul had known what was to come. I chose this life. I chose to be that sack of flesh and bone slumped on the grass.

  It didn’t matter why.

  The revelation acted as a rocket, and with a sonic boom that slammed the foaming crests against the cliff, I smashed into jagged rock, tossed and turned over the grassy ledge before crashing into the trees.

  What was light, airy, and invulnerable, hardened into a heavy casement, phantom limbs setting solid, bruised, battered, and snapping into place. I howled, forcing out a throaty wail, very aware of my blurry vision and bloody, matted hair, my torn clothes. Pitch dark now, except for starlight and the watery lights of civilisation from across the Bristol Channel. Disorientated and feverish, I tried to retain the memories as they slipped away, like a vivid dream allergic to dawn.

  How did my body get here? I gripped my wrist while it healed into a sprain, the ligaments sewing together again, healing because of the Gatekeeper. Shame my nerve endings were blazing nubs of agony.

  ‘Theo!’

  Father? He must be searching for me. I heaved up against a fir tree, shielding my sensitive eyes from the unnatural light beaming out of the wood. He arrived cocooned in white, an angel in a flowing, emerald cloak, Mjölnir clasping the fabric at his chest. A kaleidoscope of red and green twirled over his face, a dermatological Aurora that contrasted with his lips, tinged blue from the self-generated florescent light, but also from the bitter cold netted over the trees.

  ‘Father,’ I choked, as he combed the clearing. He whipped his head to the right and shivered as he examined that precise spot of rock, before rushing over to encase me in his arms, making a guttural sound, pure relief and terror.

  At last, I understood. So close, I saw that nasty slash of rock where my mother had last stood on Earth, before the fall. I winced. I’d so artfully dodged in spirit form the place where she’d been dashed to pieces.

  ‘Why?’ I failed to conceal the bitterness. ‘Why couldn’t you save her? Why does the Gatekeeper only protect us and not our families?’

  He buried his head into my neck, his Adam’s apple digging into my shoulder. Shudders wracked his body. His tears stung my cheek. His voice, when he spoke, sounded desolate. ‘Because power is a selfish creature and doesn’t listen to its servants.’

  9

  The Anchor

  ‘The wind-dancer, the fire-sprite, who is that creature watching, always? The one who sobbed alone in the battlefield, surrounded by horses and those slain by my hand? Which god does he belong to?’

  —Extract from The Book of Gatekeepers, written in runic script by Einarr ‘the Eviscerater’.

  It felt as if we were in a hamster wheel, propelled through the forest in an orb of light. Father hurried us into the meadow at the front of the house, gasping with the effort it took to support me whilst maintaining the human torch effect; he’d later tell me generating the ‘auric flashbulb’ required relocating internal body heat. The pallor in his cheeks was that of a corpse.

  He led me through the side gate and we entered the herb garden at the back of the library. Nikolaj stood by a table holding a blanket and my cloak, which matched my father’s in every detail. ‘Why aren’t we going inside?’ I asked, as my uncle wrapped me in the blanket and pulled out the chair, holding me down by the shoulders as if I might spontaneously drift away.

  ‘Get warm,’ he said, his face stern. ‘I’ll go and fetch some more towels; you’re drenched in salt water. Where in all the Nine Realms did you go?’

  Father answered for me. ‘The same way as his mother.’

  I jerked and glared at him. It must have pained him to say it, and it hurt to hear it. Exhaustion changed his usual terseness into accusation, as if the whole affair had been deliberate on my part. How was I to know this could happen?

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ Nikolaj said as I sat shivering, waiting for an answer
to my question. I wished for the library’s welcoming warmth, not to stay out here with a head full of mothballs.

  ‘Is it National Hypothermia Day? You look as petrified as I feel.’

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Father snapped. ‘I need to know right away. You can’t pop in and out of existence whenever you feel like it!’

  ‘Excuse me? Pot. Kettle. Black? You’re always fizzing in and out as if you’re made of sugar and the air’s hot water.’ I peeled off my sweater, the salt crystals stinging my lacerations as I exposed my chest. Shit, it’s happening again, I’m still Thor! But no, the expansive shoulders and narrow waist were mine, grown in the past hour, despite the fact I hadn’t even been inhabiting my body at the time. If Father noticed, he didn’t show it, and I quickly covered myself with my cloak.

  ‘This is serious, Theo. You’re nothing but a chained animal awaiting termination if you abandon your body outside Hellingstead Hall. My wards may protect you here but my reach isn’t limitless.’

  Did he actually admit he’s not omnipotent? ‘How did you know what happened?’

  ‘Nikolaj told me. He knows the symptoms. Disassociation then collapse. Gatekeepers are prone to losing touch with reality. An ancient beast dwells inside you. It has known countless incarnations, stalking the lives of its hosts like a shadow. It doesn’t take much to stir it.’

  Nikolaj returned with towels, a hot mug of velvety chocolate, and fat slice of carrot cake. The glow of the outdoor heat-lamps finally penetrated the fog clinging around us, and I devoured the cake as soon as it landed in front of me. Between mouthfuls, I said, ‘Don’t you think you should’ve told me this already? Why do I find these things out after the fact? You’ve both spent years being the Gatekeeper, but you’ve hardly prepared me, and then, then, Father, you’ve the cheek to be angry with me as if it’s all my fault!’

  He slammed his fist onto the flowery surface of the table, sending shockwaves through my plate. ‘Hardly prepared you? Are you kidding me, Theodore? I’ve done nothing but prepare you – without endangering you – from the moment you were old enough to talk! And since that moment, you have done nothing but resist my attempts at channelling your education. You are obsessed with the trivialities of youth, always avoiding hard work, complaining about the tests I give you. What would you have me do, ram it down your throat? Your attention span is the width of a hair and as itinerant as your soul!’