Odin's Game

by Tim Hodkinson

  ODIN’S GAME

  TIM HODKINSON was born in 1971 in Northern Ireland. He studied Medieval English and Old Norse Literature at University with a subsidiary in Medieval European History. He has been writing all his life and has a strong interest in the historical, the mystical and the mysterious. After several happy years living in New Castle, New Hampshire, USA, he and his wife Trudy and three lovely daughters have returned to a village in Ireland called Moira.

  Odin’s Game

  Tim Hodkinson

  www.ariafiction.com

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Tim Hodkinson, 2019

  The moral right of Tim Hodkinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (E) 9781788549950

  Aria

  an imprint of Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  www.headofzeus.com

  To my lovely wife, Trudy, and my own three little valkyries, Emily, Clara and Alice

  At berserkja reiðu vilk spyrja, bergir hræsævar,

  hversu es fengit þeims í folk vaða

  vígdjǫrfum verum?

  Ulfheðnar heita, þeirs í orrostum

  blóðgar randir bera;

  vigrar rjóða, es til vígs koma;

  Tell me, blood drinker, about the berserkers

  Those fearsome heroes, how do they fare,

  They who wade out into the battle?

  Wolf-coats they are called. In battle

  They bear bloody shields.

  Red with blood are their spears when they come to fight

  From the ‘Raven Song’ (9th Century Old Norse poem)

  The Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland the fighting spirit which Thor and Woden gave them, which their berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of Europe… til the peoples thought that the very were-wolves themselves had come.

  From Dracula, by Bram Stoker

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Hello from Aria

  Prologue

  Orkney – ad 916

  She woke up with a start, breath gasping, chest heaving as if her head had been held under water until her lungs were bursting. The familiar dream had returned, except this time some parts were different.

  As all times before, she dreamed she was deep in the forest. It was night. The ancient, moss covered trees were tall ash, pine and spruce. Their pointed tops stood against a full moon that shone silver light strong enough to cast shadows among their branches and onto the forest floor. Somehow she knew she was being hunted. Deep within the darkness of the forest there was something – someone – searching for her. Now and again there came crashes, as if some huge troll or jötunn was smashing a path through the trees. At first they were distant but they grew ever closer.

  She turned to run, suddenly aware of her heavy, swollen belly. She knew then that this was a dream as she had only visited the wise woman that morning. The crone had confirmed what she already suspected: She was expecting a child. It would be many moons before her time came, though. She did not even show.

  As she stumbled through the trees, a movement on her right made her stop and spin around. She saw a figure standing beside a mighty ash tree, not far off, silhouetted against the moonlight. He was tall and wore a long cloak that reached to the ground. In one hand he carried a staff. He wore a wide-brimmed hat that cast his face into shadow. She heard her breath heaving in and out. It rose in clouds into the cold night air.

  The stranger gestured to her. Then he turned and walked away. As he turned, she saw a gleam deep within the shadow beneath the hat where the man’s right eye would have been. There was no matching gleam from the left side of his face. Then he passed behind the tree and was gone. Through the trees came the mournful howling of wolves.

  As in times before, she followed where he had gone. When she reached the tree he had disappeared behind, there was no sign of him. She found herself on the edge of a clearing.

  Dread began to build in her as she remembered what awaited there. At the centre of the clearing was another mighty ash tree, one that bore horrible fruit. From nearly all branches twisted corpses, hung by their necks and twisting in the wind. There were bodies of every sort of creature imaginable, from dogs to deer, from a horse to geese. There were men too. Some were fresh, some were rotting and falling apart, the darkness and shadow of the night covering all manner of horror from sight.

  The crashing in the trees behind her was not far away now. Then a new sound reached her ears. From the undergrowth all around came a low growling. Yellow eyes, close to the ground appeared. This had not happened before. There were wolves all around. They slunk into the clearing, the moonlight shimmering on their grey fur.

  Then the thing which pursued her was at the edge of the clearing too. She still could not see what it was but could make out a huge figure standing amid the trees. A feeling of intense dread clutched at her heart.

  ‘What do you wa
nt?’ she shouted.

  There was no reply, but somehow she knew. It was not her it sought.

  It was her child.

  Then she woke, leaving the frightening world of the dream, back to the waking nightmare that was her real life. For a few moments she lay, gasping, trying to catch her breath.

  As her heart slowed its frantic beating to a more normal beat and the sweat cooled to chill damp on her skin, she lay staring up at the thatch of the roof above, both hands clutched across her lower belly. The words of the wise woman from earlier came back to her.

  You’ll have to get rid of it, the old crone had gloated. He won’t want a bed-slave with a child.

  She did not know where this dream had come from, but its message was clear. It was time she started running for real.

  One

  Iceland – ad 934 – Feast of Dísablót

  Unn stepped towards the witch then hesitated. Her top teeth bit into the flesh of her lower lip. Her fingernails dug into her palms. Her right forefinger, the nail chewed ragged, cut a red crescent in the heel of her hand, breaking through even the leather-hard skin years of toil had grafted. Her question burned in her breast like she had swallowed too-hot soup but yet she dared not speak.

  In the gathering gloom the witch looked terrifying. The orange glow of the embers in the hearth cast long black shadows up her craggy, age-lined face. Her long white hair straggled around her shoulders, brushed straight and held away from her face by a comb on either side of her head like she was an unmarried maiden. Her long black dress seemed to merge with the shadows that stole from all corners to claim the longhouse of Unn Kjartinsdottir. Here and there the firelight glittered on little gems, seashells and other trinkets sewn into the material so it twinkled like the night sky. The skin of her face and forearms was covered in red-brown splatters of dried blood.

  What are you scared of? Unn chided herself. She was no slip of a girl, nervous that the fortune teller would predict she would never find a good husband. She was well past that, husband and all. She was Unn. She had arrived in this foreign, harsh island at the edge of the world with nothing much more than a bag of gold and her son Einar, then just a newborn baby, in her arms. She had claimed the land her longhouse now stood on. She had built her own farmstead in the bleak soil, surrounded by the heathens whose pagan Gods seemed to still hide in the burial mounds and the black rocks of the mountain crags. She had spent eighteen winters in this strange land where hot water boiled up from the ground, rivers of ice ground their way down from the mountains, the sun shone all day in summer and never rose in winter, when the sky was haunted by weird, flowing, shimmering lights. Now she was a woman of substance. She owned land, a farm and beasts. She had raised a fine son. She had survived against all that Fate had thrown at her so far, and so far Fate had been vicious. Why then was she now scared to ask what Fate was about to hurl at her next?

  She glanced around at the others, her friends and neighbours, who lay snoring on the benches and around the long fire that stretched from one end of the longhouse to the other. Like most Icelandic longhouses, Unn’s was, as the name suggested, much longer than it was wide. The roof arched along the middle and reached almost to the ground at the walls, as if the building was crouching into the landscape for shelter from the brutal climate.

  Tonight it had been filled with warmth and the folk from the surrounding farmsteads in the Midfjord district, who had made it their custom to gather at Unnsstaðir – Unn's farmstead – to celebrate the festival of Dísablót, the first day of winter, ever since she had arrived among them eighteen winters before. They had welcomed her, and when she had told them she was a widow, alone in the world, they had banded together to help her establish her farmstead. They knew she was not of their people but still they had helped her. Iceland was still a very young country. They were all settlers here. Many were fugitives. They needed to band together if they were to survive. It was not just the climate that was out to get them. Coming to her farmstead for Dísablót had just been another way of them showing their acceptance of her and Unn had reciprocated. She did not approve of their religion but Unn had always been a hospitable host. They all had to get on, after all.

  Like the witch, her neighbours’ skins were speckled with dried blood. To Unn these were the marks of false Gods but she knew these were important, holy even, to them. Earlier in the day, in celebration of the Dísablót, the witch had killed the beasts who would not make it through the winter. She had pulled the sharp blade across their throats. She called out to the Dísir, the spirits of the land, to accept the souls of the animals as their flesh parted and their warm blood dribbled out into a deep wooden bowl. After dipping a branch into the bowl and singing prayers to their Thunder God, the witch had flicked the branch over the congregation, sprinkling them with a gory shower that they let dry, wearing the splatters as badges of their faith.

  Feasting followed. With so many slaughtered animals there was much meat and Unn had provided enough ale along with it to drown a giant. Then, as the last night of autumn drew in, they had settled around the fire to hear the songs of a skald, Snorri Thorketelsson, who Unn had paid for. Then the witch had been called on to tell fortunes. One by one Unn’s friends and neighbours had sat before the old woman, listening agog to her predictions and rantings, her whispers and her gulders. Now they all lay in the darkness, their stomachs gorged, their thirsts drowned by ale and their hearts warmed by tales of old, sung well into the night.

  Unn had waited until the last guest fell asleep and the thralls had gone to their beds before daring to approach the witch. If the vǫlva had an answer for her she wanted no one else to hear it. The last flames in the hearth guttered, as if the bitter wind outside was reaching cold fingers into the longhouse, eager to stifle any warmth. It buffeted against the turf that covered the roof, making strange thumping sounds like someone was walking over the house. Unn’s shoulders shivered like a rat had scurried down her spine.

  Taking a deep breath, Unn sat down facing the witch across the dying embers.

  The time for her to ask her question had come.

  Two

  ‘I see you, Kjartinsdottir.’

  Unn started as the witch spoke. The old woman’s upper lip was curled and she seemed to sneer as she said the second name the Icelanders called Unn. A moment before she had seemed on the verge of sleep, sitting cross-legged before the fire with her fingers barely closed around the shaft of her iron wand. Unn’s eyes flicked down to the wooden bowl that sat on the floor beside the witch. It still contained some dregs of the potion she had made earlier in the evening, a concoction of seeds, herbs and dried twigs steeped in warm water. The more the witch had drunk of it, Unn noticed, the wilder her predictions had become, the vaguer her mutterings, the more unfocused her eyes. All that now seemed to have vanished in an instant.

  ‘The way you speak my name,’ Unn said, keeping her voice low, conscious as she was of the many sleepers around her in the darkened longhouse, ‘it sounds as though it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.’

  The older woman shrugged and looked away as if she did not care. ‘I know it isn’t your real name,’ she said. ‘I know it isn’t the name you call yourself.’

  Both women were past their prime, though while the witch was ancient and grizzled, Unn still held onto some of her looks. Her cheeks were starting to sag and crows had left their footprints around the edges of her dark eyes, but it was still plain to see that in her younger days she had been stunning.

  The witch, or vǫlva as the Icelanders called her, had arrived the day before. She was a wanderer who moved from farmstead to farmstead, sustained by the generous hospitality of the people. She had been in Iceland for some years now. Before that she had been in Norway and before that who knew where. Unlike some of the magic-weaving seidhr – women who liked to travel with a retinue of young girls who helped in the rituals by beating drums, burning scented herbs, singing holy songs and chanting spells, Heid travelled alone. Her reputation preceded her th
ough, and every self-respecting homestead in Iceland wished for a visit from her. The arrival of the vǫlva at your door was a sign that you were judged important enough to warrant her visitation and wealthy enough to pay her fees. Her predictions were impressive in their accuracy, her charms unfailing in their effectiveness and, besides all that, who would dare to turn away one so practised in magic? Her curses were as effective as her cures.

  Unn knew all about curses.

  ‘I’ve finished my work,’ the old witch said, tilting her head back and peering down her nose at Unn. ‘The spirits have gone. There is nothing more to say. You should have come earlier like the rest.’

  Unn nodded and was about to get up again. Then she stopped and took a deep breath. She had to ask her question.

  ‘I've given you food and shelter for the night. I paid you well with silver to entertain my guests,’ she said, her voice shaky but determined. ‘They also gave you many gifts. I am owed my turn.’

  ‘Entertainment?’ the witch said with a sniff. ‘Is that how you regard my gift?’

  Unn bit her lip. Perhaps she had gone too far? She did not share her neighbours’ faith but she had been brought up to believe that it was never a good idea to insult anyone who could talk with spirits of the otherworld. Even demons and devils sometimes spoke truth. Also, while her neighbours acknowledged her different faith, the Laws of the Land said she must not be seen worshipping her own God outside her own house. Tolerance only stretched as far as those who knew her, she was well aware.

  The witch looked at her for a moment. Then, quick as a hunting cat striking for a mouse, her blood-splattered arm flashed out across the dying fire. Unn, not expecting such speed from a decrepit old woman, had no time to move. The old woman's fingers clawed past the neck of Unn’s dress, probing and seeking like a bony spider. A finger hooked the leather thong around Unn's neck. With a flick she pulled out from under Unn’s dress the amulet that hung from a thong.