He wondered if he could surreptitiously signal to Sif to slip away while Nidhogg was intent on the game, but even in the unlikely event that she could do so successfully, he knew his sister wouldn’t abandon him. Which meant he had to win, but how?
He’d always approached hnefatafl as an exercise in pure reason. It was why he enjoyed it. But he wasn’t going to defeat Nidhogg if his play remained solely on that level, and in fact, a player’s state of mind entered into hnefatafl no less than into a contest of arms. Which was to say, if Heimdall could upset or irritate Nidhogg and make the wyrm lose focus, he might yet defeat the gigantic reptile just as a mediocre swordsman could occasionally best a good one if the latter was distracted.
“Hurry up and move,” Nidhogg said. “I’m getting bored. And peckish.”
Heimdall glanced up at the dragon. “You’re still certain you’re going to win, aren’t you? The Norns said you were arrogant.”
Nidhogg cocked his head. “The Norns? I thought you didn’t know the way to Udarbrunnr.”
“We don’t. The squirrel told us when we ran into her.”
“Ratatoskr?”
“Is that her name?” Heimdall shifted his king.
Nidhogg said nothing more for the next two moves, long enough for the Asgardian to fear that the dragon wasn’t going to take the bait. Finally, however, his clawed extremity hovering over the board but not yet touching a piece, the creature asked, “Did Ratatoskr tell you anything else?”
Hiding a surge of excitement, Heimdall hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t say. I probably shouldn’t have said anything in the first place. Let’s just concentrate on the game.”
“Tell me, mite! I want to hear.”
“Well… apparently the Norns are tired of you. So tired they’re looking into ways to get rid of you.”
“Ridiculous!” Nidhogg said. “Ratatoskr is a liar. Everyone knows it.”
Heimdall shrugged. “If you say so.”
According to all accounts, Ratatoskr was a liar, and Nidhogg likely had ample reason to know it firsthand. But perhaps, like Loki, the squirrel also occasionally told the truth, truth his hearers would have learned nowhere else, for the legends also said they continued to heed him. At any rate, Heimdall hoped the dragon, possessing what appeared to be a suspicious nature, wasn’t truly ready to dismiss tidings that supposedly came from Ratatoskr out of hand.
After another exchange of pieces, that proved to be the case. “The Norns have no reason to wish to be rid of me,” Nidhogg said. “They nourish Yggdrasil, and I eat of its substance. Everything is in balance.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Heimdall said. “But in Asgard, we don’t say the Three Sisters’ duty is to keep any sort of balance. We say they want the World Tree to flourish, and how abundantly might it flourish if you weren’t around to gnaw at it?”
“Absurd! As you say, you know nothing about it.” Nidhogg chose a piece and shifted it.
Play continued, and in due course Heimdall captured a green warrior without losing one of his own in the doing of it. It was a small victory that by no means changed the overall complexion of the game, but it provided the first tangible cause for hope that perhaps the tide was starting to turn.
Minutes later, Nidhogg growled, “Even if the Norns wanted to be rid of me, they couldn’t do it. You’ve seen how strong I am.”
“Of course,” Heimdall said. “I’m sure you’d have nothing to worry about. Although…”
“Although what?”
“Sorcery is mighty too. The Norns are three of the mightiest mages in Asgard, and if they have an ally’s strength to add to their own–”
“What ally?”
“In Asgard, wise folk say an eagle lives near the top of Yggdrasil. Is that true?”
“It is.”
“Well,” Heimdall said, “I assume that to perch on one of the branches, he must be as big as you. As strong as you and with an equally prodigious hunger. If he and the Sisters joined forces, he could make a meal of your carcass, a feast more sumptuous than any he’s known before.”
“The eagle would never dare! Nor would the Norns!”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Heimdall said. “As you told me, Ratatoskr’s a liar. It’s your move, by the way.”
They played on with the endgame now in sight or at least a possibility. Eventually, with an upwelling of elation he once again sought to conceal, Heimdall discerned a genuine weakness in Nidhogg’s position that, assuming the wyrm didn’t make the appropriate countermoves, offered his king a path to safety.
Or maybe it did. After the moment of delight came doubt. Perhaps, Heimdall fretted, the dragon had known all along what his talk of Ratatoskr and his gossip was meant to accomplish and had simply been pretending otherwise for his amusement. Maybe Nidhogg’s play was every bit as cunning as it had been at the beginning, and there was a final snare waiting to enclose the king and give the wyrm the victory.
Maybe, Heimdall thought grimly. But having come this far, there was nothing for him to do but play on to the best of his own ability. He moved a warrior.
After lengthy consideration, Nidhogg responded with a move his opponent hadn’t foreseen. Unless there was something Heimdall was missing, it wasn’t the best possible move, but he tensed to recognize it still might close his own path to victory. It depended on what he did next and on how the dragon followed up.
As he pondered, Nidhogg snarled, “It wouldn’t matter if the Norns did make common cause with the eagle. I have allies of my own.”
Though it seemed like an opening to nettle the wyrm yet again, Heimdall couldn’t see how to exploit it. To his dismay, he was out of ideas, or maybe the anxiety of the moment was preventing them coming to mind.
Sif, however, had evidently understood what he was attempting and stepped in to continue the strategy. She looked up at Nidhogg and asked, “Do you mean your spawn? The serpents swimming in the Roaring Kettle? How sure of their loyalty are you?”
“Completely sure!” the dragon snapped.
“Then no doubt everything’s fine,” said Sif. “I just wondered, how old are they, and none of them grown to be a mighty wyrm like you? Is it your magic that keeps them from maturing into proper drakes? Your will that keeps them nibbling on that one root while you roam all around the foot of the Tree eating as much as you want? Because you don’t want full-grown rivals to contend with? If that was true, I could imagine them betraying you just at the moment you need them.”
“Nonsense!”
Heimdall carried one of his warriors across the oversized board. “There. It’s your move.”
Nidhogg’s wedge-shaped head snapped down to regard the board as if, for a moment, he’d forgotten all about the game. He only briefly considered the positioning of the pieces and then shifted one of his own warriors.
Heimdall felt like letting out a cheer. This was it! Masterful player though he was, Nidhogg had made a fatal mistake.
Or so it appeared. Heimdall pushed eagerness aside and forced himself to study the board anew. Only when he was satisfied he hadn’t missed something critical did he shift his king.
“I win on the next move,” he said. “There’s no move you can make to prevent it.”
Nidhogg peered at the board for a few moments, then swept his forefoot in a backhand blow that knocked pieces tumbling and clattering away. It would have pulped Heimdall’s body as well if he hadn’t jumped backward in time.
Absorbed in the game, Heimdall had assumed victory mattered. Now, though, it came home to him with a flash of self-disgust that he’d really had no reason to assume Nidhogg would abide by the terms of their wager. In light of the dragon’s reaction to losing, it seemed that Nidhogg regarded any promise given to insignificant creatures like common Asgardian warriors as meaningless, and Sif had been right from the start. There was nothing to do but go down fighting.
Heimdall and his sister reached for the hilts of their swords. Golden Mane and Bloodspiller neighed and spread their wings. But after that one instant of naked anger, Nidhogg contained himself.
“Two out of three,” the dragon said.
Heimdall nearly laughed in mingled surprise, relief, and genuine humor but repressed the impulse. Nidhogg might take a show of mirth as disrespectful and yet decide to eat a bite or two of Vanir.
“I’m sorry,” Heimdall replied. “I would, truly, but time presses. Can you please go ahead and tell us how to get to Udarbrunnr and Mimisbrunnr?”
“If you insist,” Nidhogg grumbled. “But I advise you not to cross paths with me again. Looking at the two of you, I really do find myself craving a taste of Vanir.” Using one of his claws, he started scratching a crude map on the surface of the hnefatafl board.
Twenty
It was difficult to measure the passage of time in the realm of Yggdrasil, where there was no day or night. But Heimdall judged that, since leaving Nidhogg, he and Sif had been riding for several hours when the winged stallions came to the divergence of two particular roots. If the dragon could be trusted, the greater led to Mimir’s Well, the lesser – small and seemingly insignificant in relation to the immensity of the other – was the path to Jotunheim. After some discussion, Heimdall and Sif had agreed they should seek the direct path to Jotunheim in preference to the Well of Fate because this route to the world of the frost giants was supposedly always here and open to all. Whereas the Asgardian warriors might need to wait for the Norns to pay a visit to their well. With their food supply exhausted, that could well turn out to be a wait they couldn’t afford. Moreover, even when the Three Sisters did appear, they’d still have to convince them to help alleged traitors avail themselves of their magical means of travel.
Heimdall turned to Sif. “As long as we’re here, why don’t we pay a visit to Mimir’s hut?”
“Why?” she asked. “Why detour when our errand is urgent?”
He realized it was a good question, but thought he had a reasonable answer. “The whole errand is about Mimir. So maybe it would be a good idea to learn all we can about him.”
She snorted. “I think you’re just curious.”
He didn’t think he was only curious, but perhaps after all that was the greater part of it. “If you believe it’s best,” he said, “maybe we should press on to Jotunheim.”
To his surprise, though, Sif said, “No, it’s all right, provided it isn’t far and we don’t dawdle when we get there.” Having gotten him to admit she might be right, she now seemed willing to let him have his way, albeit within limits.
“I promise,” Heimdall said, grateful for her indulgence, “if it’s far, we’ll turn around, and I only want to look around for a moment.”. He tugged on the reins to point Golden Mane down the larger root, and she followed.
In fact, it wasn’t far at all. They soon came within sight of Mimisbrunnr and the habitation Mimir had raised beside it.
As was the case with the Roaring Kettle, the root they were following made nearly a right-angle bend to extend down into a lake suspended like a bubble in the void, with no ground or other visible barriers to set its limits but confined to a certain area nonetheless. There were no serpents in evidence, however, and no prodigious gushing noise, although, Heimdall reflected, if the root drew water from it, some unseen source must likewise be replenishing Mimir’s Well.
Just at the point where the root twisted downward was a bump, and Golden Mane winged his way closer. Smiling at the prospect of satisfying his curiosity, Heimdall made out irregularly shaped openings that might have served for a doorway and windows. It appeared to him that Mimir had used magic comparable to the spell that created the hnefatafl pieces and board to raise a modest dwelling from the substance of Yggdrasil, a dwelling as much like a little cave as a common hut.
Heimdall and Sif set the steeds down on the surface of the root, and the stallions’ hooves clicked and clopped on the wood. The two Asgardians dismounted and entered Mimir’s retreat through the doorway. The opening was higher on one side than the other and rounded overall.
It was gloomy inside, although the openings admitted enough of the light of the stars and nebulae that the darkness wasn’t absolute. Heimdall could make out rumpled blankets on the floor that had apparently served Mimir as a sleeping pallet. Other than that, the space was empty.
Sif peered about. “Well,” she said, “this isn’t much of anything. It doesn’t look like Mimir even cooked or lit a fire to warm himself when he stayed here. Can we go now?”
Heimdall had to admit it seemed as though they might as well. Still, curiosity bolstered by stubbornness wouldn’t let him leave quite yet. Mimir was a figure out of legend, not as awesome as Odin, but mythic in his own right nonetheless. It ought to be possible to discover something here.
“Just one more moment,” Heimdall said. Small as the hut was, it should take no longer than that to thoroughly search the interior.
He paced around the limits of the wooden cave – ducking when the downward-sloping ceiling made it necessary – and, with a thrill of excitement, found a hollow in one wall where the dimness and the many bulges and depressions in the wood had masked the nook hitherto. Inside reposed a writing tablet and the iron stylus used to inscribe the runes marked on its surface of blackened wax.
Heimdall picked up the tablet and squinted to make out the runes and whatever secret lore they might have to impart. The ancient wood crumbled to scraps and dust in his hands, destroying the inscription as it disintegrated.
Sif laughed at her brother’s dismay. For a moment that annoyed him, and then he too saw the humor and ended up laughing along with her.
“Now can we go?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, but just as he was turning to do so, he spied an object sitting even farther back in the darkness of the nook. He pulled it out and, with a surge of amazement, found it was a long curving ox horn with a wide brass fitting around the wide end, a stopper of the same metal in the pointed end, and a leather cord that would allow someone to hang it around his or her body.
“What is it,” asked Sif, “a salt horn?”
“I don’t think so,” Heimdall answered. “If it was, the big end would have a cover. I think it’s a drinking horn.”
“If it was a drinking horn, you wouldn’t want to plug the hole in the little end.”
“Ordinarily, no. But I still think this is the Gjallarhorn. The vessel from which Mimir drank the waters of his well every day he spent here, and from which Odin drank after he traded Mimir his eye for a secret source of wisdom. Waiting here, in this place, it almost has to be.”
Sif frowned. “That would mean it’s a sacred, magical thing. Maybe you should put it back.”
He thought she might be right. But, on the other hand, Mimir was dead even if his head could still whisper wisdom on command, so it wasn’t as if taking the Gjallarhorn would be robbing him, and perhaps there was good reason to take it.
“Asgard’s in trouble,” he said. “Perhaps Frigga or one of the royal mages could turn a lost magical treasure to good use. If so, it would be feckless to leave it behind.”
Sif frowned, “I’m still leery of it. But I admit you’re already touching it and it hasn’t turned you to stone or anything. Bring it, then.”
Heimdall slung the Gjallarhorn over his shoulder, and he and Sif exited the hut. Then, as they were walking toward the horses, an idea struck him. If simply taking the horn had been presumptuous, surely the action he was now contemplating was considerably more so, but now that it had occurred to him, he found he couldn’t dismiss it out of hand.
Sif noticed he’d halted. “What is it now?” she asked.
“I said we should take the Gjallarhorn in the hope it would prove useful in the defense of Asgard. But what if we’re overlooking the obvious? Odin and Mimir u
sed the horn here, in this place. The All-Father traded his eye to Mimir for wisdom, and in exchange Mimir used the horn to give him a drink from his well. So it occurs to me, what if one of us used the horn to drink from it? Maybe we’d acquire wisdom that would help us complete our mission. The wisdom to unmask the traitor in Asgard, if there is one.”
Sif shook her head. “No. I agreed to you taking the horn, but this is surely overstepping. We’re warriors, not mystics, certainly not gods in any true sense. These mysteries are beyond us.”
For a moment, it seemed to him that she must be correct, that what she was saying was only common sense, but then something inside him, the part of him that had always prized independent thought and chafed under the assumption that tradition and obedience to authority were always the proper course, rebelled.
“You could be right,” he said. “But we weren’t supposed to go into the vault of the Odinsleep, either, and yet when we did, we learned something important. On our journey, I’ve had other ideas, notions that seemed unlikely, and while they didn’t all work out as planned, they got us this far. And now my idea is that I should drink. I think it’s worth the risk.”
Sif scowled. “You just prize cleverness so highly that you’re willing to chance anything to sharpen your wits.”
“I admit, that might be a little of it too. But I swear, it isn’t the greater part.”
Sif strode to Bloodspiller and swung herself into the saddle. “All right. If I can’t talk you out of this stupidity, let’s get it done.”
Her grudging acquiescence gave him a twinge of guilt. “If you don’t agree with what I’m doing, you don’t have to be a part of it.”
“Of course I do,” Sif said. “We didn’t see any serpents in this well, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. If you fly too low, something might rise to the surface to gobble you up, and then you’ll need me.”
Heimdall mounted up, and then brother and sister sent the winged stallions flying out over the well. As they swooped downward, Heimdall, mindful of Sif’s concern, studied the surface of the pool but saw nothing rising from the clear quiet depths to menace him.
The Head of Mimir Page 17