Sif led Heimdall to a circle of warriors eating a stew of chicken, peas, cabbage, and leeks ladled from an iron cauldron. He assumed she chose that group because she was hungry and their evening meal was already cooked. The warriors had rye bread, too, and ale to wash everything down.
“Hello, friends,” said Sif. “Is there enough of that to share?” Meanwhile, Heimdall tensed. He’d thought entering the camp was the better option, but now anxiety made him doubt his choice. If anyone in the circle of warriors recognized them, or even simply sensed something suspicious about them, he and Sif were in serious trouble.
But no one seemed to find the newcomers remarkable in any respect, although, sitting on a chunk of wood, a warrior with a forked wheat-colored beard glowered up at Sif. “Eat with your own war band at your own fire.”
“Our thane sent us to the woodworkers to find out where the new spear shafts were,” Heimdall said, “and when we got back, the cursed gluttons had already eaten all the supper.”
An apple-cheeked woman with a battle-axe ready to hand chuckled. “Sit down and eat, then. There’s enough.” She nodded toward the man with the forked beard. “Knud is just in a foul mood because the chieftains haven’t sent us forward to fight.”
“Do you blame me?” Knud replied. “We keep hearing of battles lost. But the Thirsty Spears would push the frost giants back!”
Several of his Thirsty Spear comrades voiced their agreement. Meanwhile, Heimdall glanced at Sif with a look intended to convey I told you they hadn’t fought yet. The sour look she returned bespoke her irritation at being reminded he was right and she was wrong.
“Don’t fret,” said the woman with the apple cheeks. “We’re right on the threshold of Jotunheim. The frost giants are bound to come this way sooner or later. Then there’ll be fighting enough to suit you.”
And you’ll lose, Heimdall thought. He wished them only well, but his desire for their victory didn’t influence his grim appraisal of their chances. They’d stand behind the usual shield wall, the frost giants would do something clever, and that would be that. He was starting to feel more and more keenly that the outcome of the war might really come down to the success or failure of his and Sif’s self-imposed mission. It seemed preposterous that two common warriors could stumble into roles of such importance, but things were as they were.
It was especially daunting to consider what Sif had called his mad plan in its entirety. Most of the time, he found it better to deal with whatever was immediately before him. For the moment, that was eating among a band of warriors and listening to their grousing and their banter.
Actually, despite his edginess, that was pleasant. This moment was a respite between the perils he and Sif had already faced and those that lay before them, and when they finished eating he gave his thanks and rose from the fireside with a twinge of regret.
After that, he and his sister wandered through the camp trying to look like they had some sensible reason to be prowling about until it grew late enough that most of the warriors had retired to their tents and lean-tos. Brother and sister then located several supply tents set up in a row with a guard to watch them. Judging from where he was standing, the sentry reckoned that anyone who did try to steal something would go after the casks of ale just visible in the gloom beyond one of the tent flaps.
Still, the guard might spot Heimdall and Sif if they weren’t careful or simply if their luck deserted them. His pulse ticked faster as he and his sister crept around behind the row of tents and used a dagger to cut peepholes, then long vertical gashes to enter if the contents warranted. First, they found tubular backpacks made of woven birch bark and then, in a different tent, oat bread, cheese, dried apples, and hazelnuts to stuff inside.
As they crammed food into the backpacks, leather creaked and mail clinked just outside the tent. Heimdall tensed to realize the sentry wasn’t content to constantly stand in front of the ale stores after all. Periodically he must wander up and down the line, and who was to say he hadn’t somehow sensed the thieves? Heimdall and Sif froze and remained absolutely silent until they heard the guard move onward.
At that point, Heimdall would have liked to make a quick retreat from the vicinity with what he and his sister had pilfered already, but it seemed to him that they needed to venture into Jotunheim fully equipped. Accordingly, he and Sif found and invaded a third tent, one stocked with yew longbows and quivers of arrows. They were examining the bows as best they could in the dark, each looking for a suitable weapon, when the flap abruptly flew open. The guard stepped through with his spear leveled. Though the intruders had done their best to be quiet, he must have finally heard them nonetheless.
Sif stepped toward the man and gave him a smile as though nothing were amiss. “Hello,” she said.
The guard glowered back at her. “Who are you? Put down the bow and–”
Sif had succeeded in drawing the guard’s attention, and Heimdall lunged in on the fellow’s flank and punched him in the face. The sentry fell.
An instant later, Heimdall was aghast at what instinct had prompted him to do. He dropped to his knees beside the fallen sentry, and the sick, stricken feeling only faded when he found that the man still breathed and his heartbeat was strong.
“Is he out?” Sif whispered.
“Yes,” Heimdall replied, “but, thank goodness, nothing more.”
“Then hurry and find a bow. We need to go before anybody comes looking for him.”
They crept some distance from the supply tents without attracting further notice, but, feeling desperate, Heimdall realized that wasn’t going to be enough. When the guard woke, he’d have the whole camp looking for the thieves.
Heimdall hadn’t thought of a way to exit the camp in the direction of Jotunheim yet. He’d hoped he and Sif might figure something out after a little sleep in some out-of-the-way corner that was nonetheless warmed by a fire. Now, though, they’d have to improvise. He led his sister to the forward edge of the camp, where a string of sentries stood peering out at the night. With no hope of skulking past them unobserved, the two fugitives simply strode between the nearest, much as they’d calmly advanced on the wild trolls in the tunnel.
“You!” barked the closest guard, a big man with a beak of a nose. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“There were wolves,” Heimdall said, remembering the ones he’d glimpsed prowling around the abandoned farms. “They upset the horses in the paddock.” He hoped there was a paddock somewhere in the camp. With one notable exception, mounted troops didn’t play a major role in Asgardian warfare, but the average army included a war band or two.
The guard glanced to the right. “The paddock’s way down that way.”
“And after someone loosed a couple arrows, the wolves ran this way.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“But you haven’t spent your whole life hunting, have you? That’s why the army has people like Thyra and me.”
“All right,” the guard said, “go. But not too far. There are more dangerous things than wolves out there, and not that far ahead by all accounts.”
Heimdall didn’t doubt it.
Fifteen
As Heimdall and Sif tramped forward, the snow deepened, the wind blew harder, and the world grew colder. He hoped that when the sun rose, the day would prove warmer than the night, but when it did, hours later the dark clouds shrouding the sky from horizon to horizon were so thick that he could barely even determine the position of the sun. Certainly its warmth didn’t reach the ground. The sun did, however, provide sufficient light to illuminate the walls of towering peaks ahead.
Sif frowned at them. “That’s not Asgard,” she said.
“No,” Heimdall said. “If not for the conjunction, it would be the edge of this world. As things are, it’s the beginning of Jotunheim.” Which was exactly where he’d been trying to go, but the sight made him feel mor
e apprehension than satisfaction. At this moment, it truly did seem mad that he hoped to survive an incursion without an army at his back, and profoundly selfish to draw his sister into his madness. He drew a long breath and reminded himself that the mission was important and that he and Sif had already overcome formidable obstacles to get this far. With luck, courage, and the exercise of their wits, maybe they could overcome those that still lay before them.
“I can’t say I particularly like the looks of the place,” Sif said. “But at least the wind is covering our tracks.”
In fact, it was doing more than that. Whistling and then howling out of the mountains to the north, it eventually blew the snowfall straight into Heimdall’s eyes. He had layers of clothing and an Asgardian’s natural hardiness to help him withstand the cold but felt the bitter chill anyway and had no doubt Sif was enduring the same. As night fell once again, he looked for another abandoned steading in which he and his sister could shelter for the night.
It came as a relief when he spied a barn and a longhouse in the distance. Warmth and rest, it seemed, were finally at hand. He pointed the buildings out to Sif, and they waded through the snowdrifts in that direction until he noticed a speck flying high in the air.
He doubted it was Lady Amora. It would be insanely bad luck if she’d caught up with the fugitives again. But he felt alarm nonetheless. In these savage, war-ravaged lands, the speck could still be something dangerous. “Get down!” he said.
Sif crouched at once, without asking why, and he knelt beside her. The mote in the air swooped lower, and then he could make it out more clearly. It was a woman in mail with a lance in her hand, a shield on her arm, and long blonde braids and a cloak flying out behind her. She rode a dappled stallion with feathered wings that lashed the air. The horse’s legs worked too, just as if the steed were trotting on solid ground.
“A Valkyrie,” Heimdall said, chagrinned that, even having come this far, he and Sif hadn’t escaped the danger their own people posed after all.
“Bad as the light is,” Sif replied, “I’m still surprised she didn’t see us.”
“My guess,” Heimdall said, “is that she’s already made a circuit or two looking for trouble. Now she’s eager to rejoin her comrades and get out of the cold.”
Sif scowled. “There’s only one place to do that.”
“I know.”
The Valkyrie rode the winged stallion down to the patch of ground in front of the barn. When she swung open the door, light spilled out to illuminate the murky forms of a couple other female warriors moving about.
“What are they doing out here?” Sif asked. Her peevish tone implied the Valkyries were sheltering in the farmstead specifically to inconvenience her.
Heimdall shrugged. “Scouting? Returning from a raid on some frost giant position? The warriors back on the ridge told us there were Asgardians fighting farther to the north.”
“You know,” his sister said, “we spent time back in the camp, and nobody thought anything about it. Well, until we sneaked into the supply tents.”
Heimdall could well understand why she’d said that. He too felt tempted by all the comforts the farmstead had to offer. There would likely even be hot food. Nonetheless, he said, “So you’re thinking we could safely seek shelter with the Valkyries? I’d be afraid to count on it. This is a different situation. We’d have a harder time justifying our presence, and these are elite troops, more likely than the average warrior to have heard about the fugitives Sif and Heimdall.”
Sif sighed. “Why are you never right in a way that makes things look better? But I suppose you are. Come on. We’ll find shelter elsewhere, and, if not, we can survive another night in the snow.”
They stalked on, giving the farm buildings a wide berth and creeping from one bit of cover to the next. As far as Heimdall could see, there were no more sentries on winged steeds flying around in the sky, and he suspected the Valkyries had decided not to subject their tired mounts to any more of the fierce wind and freezing temperatures. Still, stealth was plainly the prudent course, the more so when he glimpsed something moving off to the right. Alarmed, he raised his hand in warning, and he and Sif crouched low again.
The thing he’d seen was a frost giant, but not striding along in the arrogant manner he associated with Jotuns. Rather, the giant was keeping as low as he could and skulking in much the same manner as the two Asgardians. Beyond him, Heimdall could just make out other frost giants creeping in similar fashion. It looked like they were stealing up on the farmstead while employing a tactic possibly recommended by the head of Mimir.
“Maybe they’re only scouting,” whispered Sif. The grim note in her voice told him she doubted it.
He did too and felt worry on the Valkyries’ behalf. “Wait for the giants to pass on by. Then we’ll sneak around behind them and count them.”
It turned out there were seven frost giants. By the time Heimdall and Sif had crept down the line to determine that, the Jotuns had dropped down on their bellies and were crawling, the longhouse and barn in view beyond them. Heimdall realized that even if the Valkyries were maintaining some sort of watch, in the night and at a distance, the Jotuns, despite their hugeness, might easily be mistaken for hillocks in the ground.
He became more worried still when a frost giant in the middle of the line started chanting a prayer of sorts to the snow and the wind, the rumble of his voice inhumanly deep. The other enormous warriors chorused ritual responses, everyone staring at the barn.
Snow began piling up around the building far faster than it was accumulating anywhere else, half burying it in a matter of moments. A glimmering ran through the pile, and although Heimdall couldn’t be certain watching from afar, he suspected it was freezing harder, changing from a covering of snow to a shell of ice.
Now it was plain the frost giants meant to attack and do so with every advantage. The Valkyries were fearsome foes, but they owed many of their victories to their mastery of aerial combat. If the Jotuns denied them access to their flying steeds and then assailed them by surprise, the Asgardian warriors were far less likely to prevail.
Heimdall considered how he and Sif could best intervene. To say the least, it was unlikely they could defeat seven frost giants all by themselves. But if they attacked by surprise, maybe they could interrupt the spell casting and provoke the Jotuns into making enough noise to alert the Valkyries.
Hard on conceiving the plan, such as it was, the thought flashed through his mind that he and Sif could simply go on their way and abandon the Valkyries to fend for themselves. The importance of their errand might serve as justification. But the thought was merely that, with no power to sway him, discounted the moment it occurred to him. As Sif had suggested, some acts were simply inconceivable.
Besides, he thought with a flicker of humor, even if he were inclined to propose such a thing, she’d never go along with it.
He looked over at her and discerned that she was indeed of the same mind as he was. Indeed, she already had an arrow nocked. He readied one of his own, and, doing their best to compensate for the wind, they loosed together.
He felt a moment of satisfaction when the shafts took the shaman or warlock, the frost giant who’d begun the incantation, in the back. They weren’t enough to kill the Jotun, but they did make him break off his chanting and lurch around.
Heimdall and Sif nocked new arrows, drew, and shot again. His shaft plunged into the warlock’s naked chest, and hers pierced him just below the eye. One wound or the other made him bellow.
That’s right, Heimdall thought, roar your heads off!
The warlock giant jerked the arrow out of his face, and blood splashed from the wound. He then scrambled to his feet, and the other Jotuns did the same. They rushed Heimdall and Sif with spears poised to stab and battle-axes and war hammers raised to swing.
Pausing every few steps to loose another arrow, the two Asgardia
ns retreated toward a stand of pines. His heart pounding, Heimdall hoped it would hinder pursuit. He shot again, and the shaft drove in far enough – all the way up to the fletchings – to fell the frost giant closest to him. The Jotun toppled in a splash of snow, and his fellows shouted in fury.
The frost giants spread out to encircle the stand of pines, then worked their way inward. Some squeezed between the trees, snapping off limbs and scraping away bark as they forced their way through. Others cleared their paths with crashing sweeps of their axes and hammers, felling trees with just a blow or two.
Feeling more trapped and vulnerable by the moment, Heimdall glanced toward the barn. Valkyries were chipping at the ice encasing the door but had yet to batter their way through. He told himself they’d free their steeds and join the battle soon. They had to. It would be too late for Sif and him if they didn’t.
Another pine toppled, this one falling straight at Heimdall. He frantically leaped out of the way and looked up at the bald and beardless frost giant who’d smashed it over. The Jotun wore high black boots, a kilt, and massive rings of silver and ivory down the length of his arms. The mace in his right hand had a round iron head bristling with spikes that made it resemble some ugly mockery of the sun. Several arrows that had manifestly done him little harm jutted and flopped from his skin.
Heimdall dropped his longbow and drew his sword, and the huge mace hurtled down. He rushed forward, and the weapon thumped the ground behind him. He swung the two-handed sword, and, to his startled dismay, the blade jarred against the high boot without penetrating. In the gloom, he hadn’t noticed that the leather had squares of black iron bolted on. Which meant the only parts of the Jotun’s body he could reach were well protected. But maybe there was a way to change that.
The mace swept down, and Heimdall dodged. When the mace struck beside him, it jolted the ground under his feet and spattered him with snow and chips of wood from shattered branches. He lunged, grabbed with one hand, and caught hold of the haft of the mace just as the frost giant hoisted it again.
The Head of Mimir Page 11