by Matt Larkin
Odin’s glare silenced her before she could mention Valhalla. Not him. Not like that.
Loki had an arm around Sif. “I may know of someone who can help.”
Odin stared imploring at his brother. “Tell me. I’ll do aught you ask.”
Loki glanced back at the Midgard Wall, now already shadowed as night began to fall. “Hrungnir was a king among his kind. With his fall, others will come here. Your chance to pass the wall and find what you seek—”
“What the fuck!” Sif shouted, shoving him away. “What in the freezing gates of Hel mattered enough to be worth this?”
Odin wanted to retch. Or maybe to plead for her understanding. If he failed to stop Ragnarok, everyone, Thor included, would pay the price. And if the well was his chance to be ready … Still kneeling in the snow, Odin clenched his fists beside his thighs. May Thor forgive him …
He stared hard at Loki, knowing what the man had intended. If Odin left now, all this was for naught. Thor would have suffered such a grievous wound and still Odin’s wouldn’t reach the well. Now might prove his one and only chance.
And faced with that …
“Can you save him?” he asked Loki.
“Perhaps. I must hurry and get him to a sorceress who dwells amid these mountains. Time grows short.”
Shit. “Take him! Altvir, Svanhit, go with them. Hrist, with me. We must be through the wall and gone from here before dawn brings more jotunnar.”
“Father,” Freki said. “You cannot go alone.”
Odin grunted. He’d always trusted the varulfur twins to look after his son. But Freki might have a point. Alone, Odin might fail. And the future could not afford that. Moreover, Loki and Sif could surely attend to Odin’s son. “Come then, my wolves. We go to Utgard.”
He cast a last look at Thor’s trembling form.
19
Walking in the lead and carrying Thor’s half-conscious form, Loki led their small party down a narrow pass through the mountains. Sif tromped after him, trusting to the valkyries to keep watch.
Altvir walked by her side, though the other one, Svanhit, had disappeared into the darkness. According to Altvir, her sister had left to scout the way.
There were a thousand questions Sif might have asked of a valkyrie. Every time she opened her mouth to consider asking one, Thor’s moans drew her gaze. So many times she rushed to his side, tried to comfort him. But he spoke in incoherent rambles laced with rage, lashing out at her and anyone else around.
When she’d tried to hold him still, he’d brought both her and Loki tumbling down into a pile atop them.
Meaning she needed to stay away. Whatever the valkyries and Odin had done had stopped Thor from dying, but still he had a shard of flint boring into his brain. Much as his wild wrath stung, she more feared he’d never be himself again. Even if this sorceress managed to remove the stone without killing him.
Altvir’s gaze lingered upon Sif. She could feel the valkyrie staring at her.
“What?”
The valkyrie sighed. “How much do you know about your king?”
Too little or too much, Sif wasn’t sure which. Odin was the mystery all Aesir struggled to unravel. Her parents, who’d known him before he came to Asgard, they had remarked on occasion how much the man had changed. Not now, though. Now, her father had become some student of Odin’s, as if the king trained an apprentice. The very idea of that—the fear of what fathomless depths Odin drew her father into—left a block of ice in Sif’s gut. And Sif’s mother, granted guardianship over Yggdrasil, she would no longer speak or hear aught ill of the king.
“You have no answer?” Altvir asked.
“My answer …” Sif shook her head. “My answer is I cannot begin to fathom how a valkyrie comes into the service of a man. Much less three of you.”
Altvir clucked her tongue. “There are more than two of us, but that is neither here nor there. No, I ask because I see the rise of darkness in him. He has … ensured my loyalty, and further that his urd binds my own. But I have seen darkness lurking deep in souls before. I have seen it rise up, forged into something new and terrible. Given any choice to spare Odin from that path, I’d do so.”
Sif could offer naught but a grunt to that. Such things were beyond her ken.
The sorceress Loki spoke of lived not in a home, but rather, in a cave within the mountains. Vertical logs bounded the edges of it, leaving only a single opening covered by a bearskin flap. Inside, a smoldering fire lent warmth, its light revealing strange runes carved into the walls. Sif had seen such things in dverg ruins as well, places like Halfhaugr. They no doubt had some Otherwordly purpose, but what she could not guess.
Save that Altvir and Svanhit did not deign to enter the cavern, instead standing watch outside.
Did the runes bar the valkyries from coming inside, or did they simply prefer to avoid the sorceress?
Either way, Sif and Loki now knelt by Thor’s feverish body. With a piece of torn linen, Sif mopped his brow, careful lest the cloth draw too nigh to the flint shard sticking from it.
“Can you help him, Groa?” Loki asked the woman.
She was old but not ancient, her face creased by lines and the hint of wrinkles, a few streaks of gray in her otherwise black hair. Scars lined her forearms, marks that might have been something like the runes on the walls, though Sif knew too little to say for certain. Another such mark looked carved into the woman’s forehead, partially concealed by locks of her hair.
The sorceress leaned in close, sniffed Thor’s wound, then wrinkled her nose. “Should’ve come sooner.”
“We came with the utmost haste available to us,” Loki said. “Work your Art and restore the boy.”
Boy? Thor had a great bushy red beard and muscles enough to get mistaken for a bear. Who in Hel’s icy crotch did Loki think he was, calling her husband a boy?
Groa scratched her scalp, sending flakes and loose hairs drifting around. “I can invoke a vaettr to loose the stone, yes. Won’t come cheap though.”
Greedy witch was letting Thor suffer to haggle? “I have silver enough to pay you,” Sif fair spat at her.
The sorceress chortled, shaking her head. “No one pays for sorcery with silver, young one. When it will extract its price from my body, mind, and soul, what shall I do with pretty coins? Least of all, here, alone in the mountains.” She leaned in close and sniffed Sif’s hair. “What shall I ask for then? Your beauty? Your life? Your soul?”
Despite herself, Sif flinched at that. The sorceress’s breath stank of stale air and rotten teeth.
“No …” Groa said. She turned to Loki. “No, I think rather, you Loge, shall tell me the fate of my beloved Aurvandil in the old days. Tell, me Nornslave, where have you hidden the lost soul?”
Loki glowered. “I’ll tell you. First remove the whetstone.”
The sorceress cackled, exposing teeth not only rotten, but several missing. Still shaking with mirth, the woman looked hard at Sif. “You’ll like this.” At once, Groa spun and began to crawl about in a circle. She drew a knife and slit her palm, then painted rune after rune in her blood, forming a perimeter around the fire.
Loki, however, watched not the sorceress, but the flames themselves, as if bespelled by them.
Sif shuddered, hugging herself, then laid a hand upon Thor. His flesh still burned, slick with sweat.
Finally, Groa came back to sit within the circle, just before the fire. She sat with legs folded beneath her, staring into the flame much as Loki did, but holding her hands out to either side.
Then she began a chant. The nonsensical words flowed in a rhythm, though one like no music Sif knew or ever cared to. The sounds seemed to suffuse the air, as if they themselves had a thickness. The hair on Sif’s arms stood on end, charged as with lighting. Her gorge rose, and she wanted to retch, to spew forth the foulness churning in her guts. A profound sense of wrongness settled upon her like a physical weight.
Unable to bear it, she raised her hands to cover her ears, curl
ing up and caring little what Loki thought of her. The whole world rejected whatever the sorceress said. Sif knew little of sorcery, save that it called upon vaettir. And something was in here with them. In the cave, crawling upon her skin. Little pinpricks dotting along her legs. Trying to push its way out from behind her eyes.
“Stop it,” she mumbled.
The whetstone lodged in Thor’s head wobbled. Then slowly, it began to edge outward, as if drawn out by some unseen hand. A chill wracked Sif and she realized that might well be exactly what was happening. Something had hold of it, was drawing it out like poison sucked from a wound.
Bits of flint frayed from the edges, breaking into dust.
The sorceress’s chants had grown more frantic. Sif could not help but look up at her instead of the whetstone. Blood dribbled from Groa’s nose, her ears, even her eyes. It streamed down her face in dark stripes as if she were some vile creature of the mist.
Maybe she was.
The sorceress let out a deep, shuddering breath. “Where is my husband, fire priest?”
“Finish the spell.” His words, through grated teeth, sounded to Sif as if they had come from far away, across a chasm.
“Where is he? I find him not among the living nor the dead … his soul does not answer.”
“Because Audr Nottson consumed it for his own dark sorcery. Finish the spell.”
All at once, Groa’s chanting faltered. The foul, thunderous energy washing over Sif broke as if it had never been there. And the whetstone snapped in half, most of it dropping free, while a tiny shard remained lodged inside Thor’s skull.
Sif’s husband sat up, screaming, clutching at his head in wretched agony.
Loki lunged across the fire and had Groa up in an instant, hefted by her rotting clothes. “Finish it!”
The cackle that followed did not sound like those before. Rather it echoed like a draug’s moans of despair, hollow and hateful, the voice of the damned, assaulting Sif even over Thor’s screams. Her lover convulsed, thrashing so hard Sif couldn’t control him, even with the apple’s might. His flailing weight threw her down.
Loki flew through air, colliding with the cavern wall and fell in a heap.
“Altvir!” Sif screamed.
Already, the valkyries were charging in, swords glinting in the firelight.
“Snow maiden!” Svanhit shouted.
She and Altvir began circling around Groa, neither closing the distance, holding the possessed sorceress at bay with their swords. And why didn’t they move in? Because they were frightened? What manner of vaettr turned even a valkyrie craven?
Sif didn’t care. She’d left her spear at the cave’s entrance. So she snatched up a smoldering brand from the fire and lunged at Groa.
The sorceress—or the thing inside her—shrieked, the same hollow, damned voice vibrating inside Sif’s skull.
“Save Thor!” Sif screamed at her, waving the brand in front of the woman’s face.
The sorceress lunged, catching the edge of the brand in her hand. At once, the wood froze, turning so cold it burned Sif’s hand. She dropped the freezing stick and fell, clutching her damaged hand and wailing in the pain of it.
A valkyrie lunged in, sword raised in intent to cleave through the creature.
The sorceress moved more quickly, spun. Closed her fist before the valkyrie’s mouth. Svanhit.
The witched jerked her fist backward. A stream of gore spewed from Svanhit’s mouth and landed with a crash, her innards shattering as though made of ice as they landed before Sif.
Sif’s stomach lurched. Trying to scream, she instead choked on her own bile. Coughing and sputtering, she fell over, her face landing on stone beside Svanhit’s shattered heart.
An instant later, the sorceress’s severed head dropped down in front of Sif’s eyes.
Still gagging, she managed to roll over. Thor had grabbed the woman by her knees. A bloody sword dropped from Altvir’s hand and clattered onto the rocks. The valkyrie clutched her forearm where the frozen brand was now jammed in the top and jutting out the back like the point of a spear.
Hel’s gate … Must’ve passed between the bones.
The valkyrie stared at the wound. And then she screamed, a long, bloody cry that echoed off the cavern. On and on, the scream went, until Altvir finally collapsed to her knees, gasping.
Sif pulled herself over to Altvir.
Thor had already risen to help her. Blood and spit dribbled down Sif’s husband’s face. He gripped the brand with one hand and heaved.
Altvir managed another shriek as the brand tore free of her flesh, further shredding her arm.
At a shadow, Sif turned to see Loki stumbling toward them. He jammed both hands in the remains of the fire, then withdrew them—spraying embers everywhere. Flames now leapt up around his fingers, dancing in mesmerizing motion, seeming not to burn him in the least.
He slapped those hands on either side of Altvir’s arm, drawing another scream out from her.
The scent of burning skin hit Sif all at once, noxiously sweet, acrid enough to draw up another surge of bile. As Altvir’s screams died out, the only sound remaining was the sizzle of her flesh.
Now Sif did retch.
Loki released the valkyrie of a sudden and flexed his fingers. Like that, the flames extinguished themselves.
Altvir pitched over sideways, moaning faintly, arm tucked under her body.
Sif crawled to Thor, who’d begun prodding at his skull. The shard still stuck from it, and Sif could see no way to pull it free save by cutting out the bone in his head. Hardly prudent.
Weeping, Altvir crawled toward Svanhit’s sprawled out corpse. Sif had always known vaettir were fell creatures. Never before had she heard of one freezing the heart inside someone’s chest. The other valkyrie moaned again, a wordless defiance.
A denial of the bitter hand of urd.
Gingerly, almost reverently, Altvir slipped a red-gold ring from her sister’s finger. Sif had wrapped fresh linens around the valkyrie’s arm and Loki had prepared a poultice from some herbs he had in his satchel. Since Sif had no idea if valkyries healed like normal women or like those who’d had apples or somewhere in between, she couldn’t guess whether Altvir would ever get full use of that arm back. For now, it lay in a sling bound against the valkyrie’s chest.
“I have to take her from here,” Altvir said, looking up at Sif.
“To burn her body?”
“You can attend to that. I must take her soul to Valhalla before it becomes lost in the shadow.”
Thor stood abruptly at that, hand still pressed against his head. “You’ve seen Valhalla?”
That drew a bitter chuckle from the valkyrie, but no answer. Instead, the woman stepped back into the recesses of the cave, seeming to blend with the darkness.
Sif blinked, and Altvir was gone. Well then. She turned to Thor. “Are you all right?”
“I …” He growled, snarling like a wolfhound. The only other answer he offered was bared teeth as he stumbled from the cave.
20
Barnstokkr scraped the rafters of the Volsung hall. The great tree had once housed the runeblade that Sigmund now bore, Gramr, placed there—according to legend—by Odin himself as a gift for the worthy. And Sigmund had drawn her when all others had failed. She sang to him, a quiet voice in his mind, relishing their victories and craving more. Always more.
He leaned back on his throne, chin resting on his fist, staring at the tree, as he so oft did since returning to these shores.
The tree represented the strength of his family. A grace from Odin, and, as long as it stood, whatever travails should befall the Volsungs, surely they would endure.
Still, Sigmund worried for Helgi. How could a father not? The boy had insisted on raiding lands held by warriors, not common herders or fishermen.
“He should not have gone,” Borghild said, as if reading his thoughts while she sat beside him. She did that sometimes. Maybe all women did. Borghild was the daughter of Prince
Hildebrand of Menzlin. It had been Fitela’s idea Sigmund marry her and thus secure the friendship of her grandfather. King Garth of Menzlin had agreed to serve under Sigmund’s authority in the bargain, rather than risk being slain by Sigmund’s army.
How long now? Sixteen winters?
And Helgi had to cross his great grandfather’s lands to reach Baia. Well, Fitela was clever, and might even manage to draw some of the ancient king’s men into his retinue. It was not like the old man was leading too many raids himself. Prince Hildebrand did, though, and maybe Fitela could convince him to join forces.
Sigmund glanced at his wife. “Helgi will be perfectly fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We are beloved by Odin.”
She snorted. “You’ve suffered rather a great deal for those beloved by the king of the gods.”
Sigmund could only glower at that.
His thegns threw open the great doors of the hall, and men and women came in to air their grievances. A king’s first duty was to his subjects, but still, Sigmund did not much welcome these sessions.
He let his sheep graze in my field.
He stole all the fish in the river.
She gave birth to four daughters and no sons.
How odd, to live as a king and yet somehow miss—even a little bit—his days as hermit in the woods, preying upon Wolfsblood’s men. Hunting for his food. Living free and answering to no one. But he’d wanted all this. He’d fought for years to reclaim Father’s legacy. He’d bled and he’d murdered. He’d let his love of honor slowly slip away as the needs of battle demanded more and more deceitful tactics.
Until, sometimes, in bouts of melancholy, he wondered if he were truly so different from Siggeir Wolfsblood. Perhaps all kings must become villains.
The first man through the doors—escorted by Sigmund’s thegn Keld—did not look like a fisherman or herdsman. Rather, he wore gambeson and had an axe strapped to his side. A warrior, and one coated in enough sweat to have come from a hard run or a hard ride.