Jarnvidr

by Fynn F Gunnarson

  Chapter Fifteen

  Reckless

  Loki was not laughing anymore. He had not been laughing, in fact, for some time now, having rather lost his sense of humour in the light of recent events. Angrboda, too, had lost hers, though for slightly different reasons.

  ‘My... poor... Jarnvidjur!’ wailed the Chief Jarnvidja, head in hands and rocking back and forth mournfully, on the ground where she sat cross-legged.

  ‘Oh... they’ll survive!’ snapped Loki, who had never been particularly fond of his mistress’s protégées and was certainly in no mood to show any sympathy towards them now. ‘Which is more than might be the case with the list... it might have gone up in flames, for all we know, thanks to them!’

  ‘But they’re hurt!’ protested Angrboda, peering out from her parted hands and not even trying to disguise her shock at Loki’s heartless reaction. ‘Don’t you care about them?’

  ‘I – do – not!’ spat Loki, spelling it out, so as to remove any possible doubt surrounding the matter. He was gazing into the far distance and biting on his lower lip, clearly concerned about something, if not Angrboda’s precious Jarnvidjur. ‘We gave them one task to do: one – little – task: kill Sharp Axe and all his men and bring... oh, wait... two – little – tasks... kill Sharp Axe and all his men and bring back the list. That’s all! Nothing more! And they couldn’t even manage that!’

  Angrboda was horrified by the display of cold-blooded callousness she was witnessing from her beloved.

  ‘Have you seen what those dreadful Vikings did to them? The burns? The sword wounds?’

  ‘Yes, yes, terrible, terrible,’ replied Loki dismissively, his mind elsewhere. ‘We need to find Sharp Axe and company and get that list from them before they get out of Jarnvidr. Now... who can we trust with that little errand?’

  ‘You just don’t care!’ pouted Angrboda, moodily.

  ‘Oh, my darling... ’ returned Loki, ‘... of course I care... ’

  ‘Ohhh… thank you… ’ began Angrboda, with the early signs of a smile, ‘… I knew – ’

  ‘I care,’ continued Loki, ‘about my list!’

  ‘Ohhh!’ grunted Angrboda, angrily. ‘You are so... evil!’

  ‘But of course I’m evil,’ replied Loki, a puzzled look on his face. ‘That’s why you love me… remember?’

  Angrboda did not look very convinced. ‘Well... ’ she eventually conceded, grudgingly, ‘... I... suppose... ’

  ‘Right, well, now we’ve cleared that up, my dear... you can help me decide how we’re going to dispose of Sharp Axe and his merry men... and retrieve that list, safely... assuming, of course, that it’s still in one piece.’

  *

  Receiving a series shocks to his system in quick succession – discovering that Loki had been masquerading as the King of Norway, being attacked by a large group of vicious, blind witches and unexpectedly seeing Mithrén in the last place in the Nine Worlds he wanted her to be – had taken its toll on Sharp Axe. Loki’s list had completely slipped his mind and the only reason he came to remember it now was because Fynn asked him where it was.

  ‘Where’s the list?’ asked Fynn. Sharp Axe’s body was gripped by a feeling of sudden panic. The men had fled from Loki and Angrboda with thoughts only of their own survival; the list had not been uppermost in anyone’s mind. Then, when they had fought with the Jarnvidjur, there had been a lot of fire around, thanks to Hodbrodd and his thought-spell. Sharp Axe feared that, even if the list had not been lost in the wood, somewhere between where the men had escaped from Loki and Angrboda and where they were now, it might well have been burned beyond recognition during the recent altercation with the Jarnvidjur.

  The answer to Fynn’s question, however, came quickly from another quarter.

  ‘I’ve still got it,’ replied Fearless, in a matter-of-fact way. He then calmly removed the small wooden casket containing the list from the inside of his tunic and gave it a couple of gentle pats. ‘Safe and sound,’ he confirmed, a little smugly.

  ‘Er... right,’ said Sharp Axe, surprised and relieved but, at the same time, unable to feel pleased that Fearless should be the list’s guardian.

  Mithrén looked as though she had just remembered something.

  ‘The list!’ Oh, thank Freyr you’ve still got it!’ she exclaimed with what, to Sharp Axe, seemed a disproportionately-high level of relief coming from someone who, as far as he was aware, did not even know of the list’s existence.

  ‘How do you know about the list?’ frowned Sharp Axe, both intrigued and, at the same time, slightly irritated that Mithrén, who had joined the group only a few minutes earlier, should appear so familiar with the subject of all their present troubles.

  ‘Er, yes… ’ sighed Mithrén, looking around at the men, at the centre of whose attention she now found herself, before continuing a little awkwardly, ‘… I should probably tell you about that.’

  ‘Wait, wait,’ cut in Aldaron, with some degree of urgency. ‘Those witches must have been sent by Loki and Angrboda to take the list from us.’

  [General noises of agreement from the men.]

  ‘And they failed... ’ continued Aldaron.

  [More noises of agreement from the men.]

  ‘So we’d better get out of this forest quickly before he sends something else after us,’ concluded the Light Elf.

  [Uproar.]

  ‘Yes, yes, Aldaron... good point,’ conceded Sharp Axe above the noise, despite being very keen to hear Mithrén’s explanation.

  ‘Or... ’ began Hodbrodd, ‘... someone could volunteer to be a look-out, to see what’s happening out there,’ and his eyes were drawn to the nearest of many tall trees in the immediate vicinity. Mithrén and the men also looked at the tree and a period of awkward silence settled uneasily on the group, as they pondered Hodbrodd’s suggestion.

  ‘Well, don’t look at me,’ shrugged Randver Woodenleg pre-emptively, whose tree-climbing days were long gone.

  ‘Or me!’ said several of the other men, all of whom had two legs, but no stomach for climbing trees.

  ‘I’ll do it!’ came a voice, which everyone was staggered to find belonged to Fearless.

  ‘Yes, very amusing, Fearless,’ replied Sharp Axe, cynically. ‘I’ll do it. Just – ’

  ‘No, no,’ insisted Fearless, rolling up his sleeves and passing the casket to his brother. ‘Keep hold of

  this,’ he said, as if issuing a command, then spat into the palms of his own hands, rubbed them together and proceeded to shin up the tree.

  ‘Fearless,’ reasoned Sharp Axe, ‘it’s a very tall tree... it could be dangerous... you might fall off it… ’

  But Fearless was already half-way up the trunk.

  ‘He could get killed,’ pointed out Mithrén who, not knowing Fearless very well, actually seemed to be concerned by this possibility.

  ‘We can but live in hope,’ muttered Randver wistfully, under his breath.

  ‘No sign of anything interesting!’ announced Fearless, from a position which, when viewed from the ground, appeared to be somewhere up in the clouds. ‘Just lots of trees, really.’

  This behaviour was most unlike Fearless and something suddenly occurred to Sharp Axe. He turned to face Hodbrodd and gave him a meaningful, enquiring look. In reply, Hodbrodd shrugged his shoulders, non-committally and most unhelpfully.

  ‘Perhaps I could see more if I moved out along this branch,’ suggested Fearless, indicating a long, slender, fragile-looking branch above his head, which grew out at right angles from the trunk.

  Some of the men protested, declaring it would be suicide for Fearless to attempt such a move. None of them protested anywhere near loudly enough, however, for Fearless to be able to hear their protestations.

  ‘What’s got into him?’ gasped Fynn who, like everyone except Sharp Axe and Hodbrodd, was completely unaware that Fearless had recently and inadvertently received a large helping of a courage-enhancing potion.

  ‘Odin only knows,’ said Sharp Axe, shrugg
ing his shoulders and shaking his head, innocently.

  From his already-insecure position, with his limbs wrapped tightly around the tree trunk to hold him in place, Fearless reached out with one hand, took a firm grip on the branch he had selected, grasped it with his other hand, unwound his legs from the tree trunk and began to ease his way out along the branch, hand over hand, his feet dangling beneath him as he hung, suspended, in the sky.

  ‘Oh, wait!’ piped up Fynn, with a concerned expression which suggested he had suddenly found a rather large flaw in Hodbrodd’s otherwise-brilliant plan. ‘What if Loki sees Fearless up there...? I mean... it will give away our position, won’t it?’

  The men looked at one another, silently; they looked up at Fearless, dangling from the branch; they looked at one another again.

  ‘Fearless!’ hissed Sharp Axe, as loudly as he dared, up at the place where his brother hung from the branch. ‘Get down!’

  ‘What?’ shouted Fearless loudly and in an unconcerned manner, despite the rather ominous creaking sound which had started to come from the branch currently supporting his entire weight.

  ‘Get down!’ repeated Sharp Axe, slightly less quietly than before. ‘You’ll be seen up there!’

  ‘What?’ shouted Fearless again; this time, the creaking sound which accompanied his words was much louder. ‘Speak up!’

  ‘Get – ’

  At that precise moment, however, the branch split noisily at the point where it joined the trunk. Had the men on the ground been close enough to observe Fearless’s face, they would have seen his expression change from one of grim determination, to one of mild concern, to one of wild panic and, finally, to one of serene acceptance, all within a fraction of a second, before Fearless’s only means of support finally gave up the ghost. The branch, with Fearless still clinging to it, immediately swung downwards and rapidly inwards, taking Fearless with it and reuniting him with the trunk at a far greater speed than he would have liked, given the choice. The men, watching events from the ground, winced in perfect unison as their comrade slammed painfully into the trunk, cheered encouragingly (though quietly) as he made a commendable, but entirely unsuccessful, attempt to preserve his current altitude by wrapping his arms around the tree, then cringed together as he accelerated earthwards, still embracing the largely-branchless lower section of the trunk, eventually hitting the cold, hard forest floor with a sickening crunch.

  ‘ – down,’ concluded Sharp Axe, pulling a face which displayed some sympathy but, mostly, relief that it was his brother and not he who was lying in a heap at the base of the tree in front of him.

  ‘Odin’s eye-patch!’ exclaimed Randver. ‘Are you all right, Fearless?’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ replied Fearless, jumping back to his feet immediately and moving around slowly in a tight circle, with only the slightest of limps, trying not to look too badly injured.

  ‘Oh... ’ muttered Randver, with quiet disappointment, ‘… pity.’

  ‘Wait!’ said Mithrén, realising that Fearless was returning to the tree, with the intention of repeating his recent ascent into the stratosphere. ‘Don’t go back up there! That was a nasty fall. Let me – ’

  Fearless, however, would not hear of it.

  ‘No time!’ he shouted down at Mithrén as he was, once again, shinning up the tall tree trunk.

  ‘What in Helheimr is wrong with him?’ asked a bewildered Fynn.

  ‘He’s mad!’ declared Alfgeir.

  ‘Not... mad… ’ said Sharp Axe, guiltily, ‘… just... courageous... fearless, even.’

  ‘Reckless more like, if you ask me,’ remarked Randver, although no one had.

  [General comments of agreement from the men.]

  ‘I see them!’ shouted Fearless triumphantly, from his new vantage point.

  ‘Shhhhhhhhh!!!’ hissed everybody on the ground.

  ‘I’m coming down!’ announced Fearless, no less noisily than before, then he slid down the trunk in a reasonably controlled fashion, though still rather faster than was absolutely necessary, jumped from a rather higher position than was strictly advisable and casually allowed his knees to bend as he reached the ground, to absorb the shock of the landing, in a way he had been completely unable to do the first time he had made the journey, a few moments earlier.

  ‘Loki and Angrboda were with a pack of wolves,’ Fearless informed the members of his audience, who were looking at him with a mixture of awe, wonder and, in the cases of Sharp Axe and Hodbrodd, a fair degree of guilt.

  ‘Pack of wolves?’ repeated Sharp Axe, puzzled.

  ‘Well... three wolves,’ admitted Fearless, in a rare display of honesty, ‘but large ones... and Angrboda was pointing them in this direction.’

  ‘The Varns… ’ said Sharp Axe sombrely, recalling the relevant section of Angrboda’s snarling, introductory speech.

  ‘They’ll be on the look-out for a bit of visitors’ bone marrow, then,’ contributed Fynn, remembering the same section of the speech.

  ‘I say we take them by surprise!’ declared Fearless defiantly, drawing his sword and raising it high, by way of enforcing his point. Ignoring the response of total silence which met his proposal, Fearless then approached his brother, looked him straight in the eye and said in a cold whisper, ‘Attack them now – when they aren’t expecting it!’ Without taking his eyes from Sharp Axe’s, Fearless removed his brother’s sword from his side with his free hand and crossed the blades of both weapons in the narrow space between their noses, probably for no reason other than for pure, dramatic effect.

  ‘Well, I think we should be – ’ began Sharp Axe, finally breaking the tense, lengthy period of silence, but he found himself talking only to the void which Fearless had recently occupied because Fearless had already set off, in search of the Varns.

  ‘Cautious?’ suggested Aldaron, sensibly.

  ‘Setting off for home, now?’ ventured Jormunrek, optimistically.

  ‘Grateful Fearless has gone?’ proposed Randver, popularly.

  ‘I was going to say, I think we should be trying to work out a plan first,’ frowned Sharp Axe, ‘but I suppose we had better follow Fearless, to try to stop him from getting himself killed.’

  ‘Can we put that to the vote?’ asked Fynn, only half-jokingly.

  [Interested noises, in support of Fynn’s suggestion, from the men.]

  ‘No,’ replied Sharp Axe flatly, knowing that the outcome would have been spectacularly unfavourable for his brother. ‘Mithrén,’ he went on, handing her the casket, ‘take the list. Hide yourself amongst the trees. If you can find your way out of this forest, that might be the best thing to do.’

  Sharp Axe quickly drew Mithrén to him in what he had intended to be a farewell embrace; Mithrén pulled away from him roughly, with a look of disbelief on her face.

  ‘I’m not leaving you… ’ she said and she meant it, ‘… either of you,’ she continued, looking now at Aldaron.

  ‘Mithrén,’ said Aldaron urgently, conscious that Sharp Axe was eager to try to save Fearless sooner rather than later, ‘it’s too dangerous for – ’

  ‘For what?’ demanded Mithrén, clearly stung by her brother’s stance. ‘For an elf maiden? Do you know what that list really is?’

  ‘Er... w-well... ’ stammered Aldaron, ‘... I was always dubious about the “Kings of Norway” explanation.’

  ‘“Kings of Norway”?’ scoffed Mithrén, her anger rising. ‘It most certainly is not! Let me tell you something, little brother... this – ’ and, here, she jabbed her index finger sharply into her own chest, ‘ – elf maiden has risked her life to find out what you really went all the way to Helheimr to pick up for Loki – and why it’s so precious to him!’

  ‘Mithrén,’ interrupted Sharp Axe, though he would dearly have loved to hear what she had to say, ‘we need to go – now. Please get out of here: find somewhere safe and wait for us there. My brother is going to get himself killed and it’s all my fault – ’

  ‘And mine,’ confessed Hodbrodd
miserably, head bowed in shame.

  [Puzzled looks all round from the men but, otherwise, awkward silence.]

  ‘ – so,’ continued Sharp Axe, ‘the explanation about the list will have to wait – I’m sorry.’

  With that, Sharp Axe went to draw his sword, found it was no longer by his side, remembered that Fearless had relieved him of it, hoped no one had noticed his lapse of memory, then took his axe in both hands and set off after his brother, as fast as he could.

  The men looked at one another, drew their own weapons and took off after their leader, leaving Mithrén standing alone amongst the trees, wearing an open-mouthed, pained expression and cradling the precious casket.

  ‘Men!’ she muttered under her breath and without a shred of fondness in her voice.

  *

  Fearless had a head start on Sharp Axe and the rest of the men and, in his present state of mind, this suited him perfectly. He felt, although he had no idea why, that if the others were to catch up with him, they would merely get in his way. He was convinced that their only hope of defeating Angrboda’s Varns was for him to take them all on, single-handedly. Whilst this was, literally, the very last approach he would normally have adopted, somehow, in this case, it seemed to him to be absolutely the right one.

  On ran Fearless, heading towards the place where he had seen Loki and Angrboda with the Varns, knowing he could kill them all, if only he could get to them before that useless brother of his arrived, with his equally-useless bunch of losers in tow. Sharp Axe would probably feel sorry for the Varns and order mercy to be shown to them, but mercy was the last thing on Fearless’s mind: fame and glory were much further up his list of personal priorities.

  *

  ‘You’re absolutely sure that your Varns can be trusted to kill the men and retrieve the list?’ pressed Loki, sceptically. ‘I mean, they aren’t liable just to eat the list, then be chased away, are they?’

  Not for the first time that evening, Angrboda looked wounded.

  ‘The Varns are my own grandchildren!’ she hissed. ‘I have nurtured them myself and taught them well... they will not let you down!’