by Matt Larkin
“I’m sorry. I have to stop the spread of whatever this is.”
Hermod groaned.
Until it became too much, and he passed out.
His arm was a bubbling well of agony. From the feel of it, Bergljot had seared the wound closed as best she was able. She’d wrapped it in linens, with a foul-smelling poultice inside of that. Hermod could guess at a few of the herbs she’d used by the stench. She knew what she was about, at least.
Beneath that same oak tree, he moaned, and shivered.
A moment later, Didrik came and knelt beside him. “We have to move as soon as you’re able. Deathless soldiers are combing these woods.”
“Give me … a moment to catch my breath.”
The varulf nodded, face grim. “I’ve no idea how it happened, but I do have an idea what you fought. No man ought to have lived through such a fight, much less the wound or its treatment. Bergljot thinks you’ve got Odin’s own blessing to survive it. Is that true?”
“After a fashion.”
The varulf glowered. “You’ve got your secrets, I get that. But I have to know …”
Hermod blew out a long breath.
“You’re an Ás?”
Damn it. “We have not forgotten about you. But it won’t help them to know I’m here.”
“Why have you let the Deathless spread so far?” Didrik seemed torn between grabbing him and worshipping him.
“Our resources are not unlimited. I … I can’t tell you more than that. But the Aesir are still out there, still trying to make the world right.”
“We burned the damn temple, so that’s a start.” The varulf grunted to himself. “It would ease the others’ minds to know you were here with us.”
“It won’t. They’ll be left with doubts, same as you. Wondering why we can’t do more, and I cannot give you those answers.”
Didrik nodded, then slipped an arm under Hermod’s shoulders to help him rise. “You’ve helped us already, twice now. I suppose that has to do.”
“Didrik?” Hermod found his throat uncomfortably dry. “Don’t give in to these Deathless. You do not want what they offer.”
“That much I know. But without Odin’s help, I don’t know how much longer we can hold out.”
The varulf was right. And Hermod had run out of places to look. He’d have to return to Asgard and seek allies in his quest. No other option remained before him. Because the world could not be lost to the Deathless.
And Odin alone might be able to stop that.
7
Odin climbed over another massive tree root, then sat on it, catching his breath. Idunn glanced back at him, sighed, and then joined him sitting.
“What about Freyja?” Odin asked. He had to find her. Whatever terrible mistakes he’d made … everything he’d done had been for her. He had to get back to her.
Idunn rubbed her face. “We have to go around the perimeter, then we can double back and return to Redwood Grove. Freyja couldn’t come into the city. Once we find her, we’ll have to make for the Blessed Isles of Tír na nÓg.”
“Should we not leave Alfheim and return to Midgard?”
Idunn shook her head. “You really don’t understand aught, Odin. We can leave Alfheim by the nether rivers or the liminal spaces, but there’s no way back to Midgard. Not for us, and I assume, not for you either. Not without the ring you used to get here.”
“Frey took it.”
Idunn nodded. They’d had that conversation before, hadn’t they? Yes, she’d said whatever Frey had claimed, he’d either hadn’t given it to the queen, or she’d allowed him to keep it. “The truth is, I don’t know all that much about what goes on in the court, and I wouldn’t go to the isles if I had a choice. I’m an outcast.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that we get to Freyja.”
“She … forgave me?”
Idunn scoffed. “What do you think, Odin?”
A high-pitched howl erupted from the forest, strange and too trilling to be either wolf or dog. “What?”
“Ullr.” Idunn leapt off the branch. “His hounds. We have to go, now! They can move very, very fast.”
Odin jumped to his own feet and chased after her as she ran, her fatigue at once seeming forgotten. Indeed, the pounding of his blood beat down Odin’s weariness as well, though it only enhanced his headache. He was weak from too long with little activity, too long lost in meditation, wandering the breadth of time.
But if Ullr caught them … Well, Odin had no intention of going back to that damn tower.
The truth was, Odin was old. His encounters with Audr and Valravn had sapped the youth from his otherwise immortal body even as they ravaged his soul. Everything ached unless he drew on pneuma to suppress such things. His back hurt, his knees were stiff, and his neck popped when he turned his head. Plus, it was hard to catch his breath when running through a rainforest in fear for his life.
A peal of thunder rang out overhead an instant before the sky rent asunder and water came crashing down once more. Twice in one day. Huh. That didn’t happen too oft … though he did have a hard time telling one day from the next without the sun ever setting, so maybe it did happen and he hadn’t realized it.
The ground beneath their feet turned to mud, squelching with every step they took and slowing their progress to a crawl while not affording them any rest. It was the first time since coming here he actually minded the pouring rain.
Idunn slipped, scraped her knee on a root, and then leapt over it with enough force she had to be relying on pneuma. And Odin needed to, as well.
The howls were irregular, but growing closer. Hard to say how close when they seemed to issue from all sides, as if the trees themselves stalked him.
Grunting with the effort, Odin pushed on. A slight break in the woods opened out into a marshy plain.
Idunn growled in obvious frustration, glanced at him, then pushed forward. Her feet sank deeper in an instant, and Odin grabbed her wrist and hefted her up onto a patch of drier ground. He thought he remembered this … if only the exact memory were clearer he could know where to step to avoid …
Wait.
Wasn’t something else entirely supposed to happen here? They came to the marsh and then—
A tremendous roar like that of a dragon rang out through the wood, so loud Odin feared his ears would bleed.
Idunn was screaming something, but he couldn’t make it out.
An instant later, two trees got blown out to either side as a giant bipedal lizard burst through. The creature had to stand thirty feet tall, and its neck was rimmed by brilliant plumage in a rainbow of orange, red, and white. Other feathers jutted from its tiny elbows. While its forelegs were underdeveloped, its hind legs were massively muscled, and its maw had teeth like those of a linnorm.
A moment of glorious terror melded with sudden recognition shot through Odin.
Oh. That was it. He’d thought he’d dreamed this.
“A dragon.”
Idunn grabbed his arm and jerked him to the side. “Run!”
Odin flooded as much pneuma as he could to his limbs and dashed off after Idunn, trusting to instinct to guide him through the twisted forest.
The dragon squelched down in the mud behind them, roaring once more.
Bipedal, feathered dragons! Odin leapt over a root. His feet caught in the wet soil, skidded, and sent him tumbling down on his arse. His momentum carried him forward, under an arching root. Idunn yanked him to his feet and they skidded off in a new direction.
Trees and branches cracked and snapped behind them in the wake of the bellowing monster.
Odin glanced back but couldn’t make the creature out through the dense forest. He could only hope that it lacked any sort of maneuverability under such circumstances.
When he turned forward once more, the ground in front of him had given way to a steep mudslide. Odin flailed, trying to stop, crashed into Idunn, and sent them both tumbling down the slope. Everyt
hing spun and his head cracked on the ground then splashed under the mud as they tumbled overtop of one another. The mud sucked him under and he couldn’t see or breathe. That lasted but an instant before his momentum carried him sloshing into a river.
A swift current caught him and yanked him into the undertow. A shadow—Idunn?—shot past him underwater. Odin burst through the surface, gasping for air, struggling to swim in the tumult. Just ahead, the waters crashed against rocks, turning into white rapids. All his flailing didn’t manage to stop him from getting sucked under once more.
Even his pneuma-enhanced lungs felt apt to burst, desperate for air, and everything spun round and round. Something hard slammed into his thigh with such force he gasped, sucking down water. The impact twisted him round and further blurred his vision.
Idunn snared his wrist and jerked him to a stop.
Odin choked, retching up mud and water, even as the river continuously pounded against him. He could scarcely breathe or see, but Idunn seemed to have caught a vine.
“Catch your breath!” she shouted, her voice almost lost over the sound of crashing rapids and the crack of thunder overhead. “But I have to let us go. The river may carry us away from the dogs and the dinosaur, both!”
Catch his breath? How was he supposed to catch his breath when the water kept trying to drive him under—
Idunn let go and the current seized Odin once more.
8
Most oft, weddings came in the summer, and the women would decorate wooden arches with flowers and vines, to the sound of lyrists’ gentle music. Since summer didn’t seem like to arrive this year, Asa and Guthruthr were married standing ankle deep in snow, shivering as they made their promises to each other.
Baldr didn’t feel the cold half so much as the mortals did, but he was still just as glad when the guests all moved inside Guthruthr’s warm hall. Despite the prolonged winter, the king of Skane still managed to host a fair feast for his wedding. His hunters had managed to find a herd of aurochs that hadn’t moved on yet, and slaughtered the better part of that herd.
Capturing and corralling the herd might’ve served Skane better for the future, but Guthruthr wasn’t one to skimp on his hospitality or risk the mockery of his guests. Even if it cost him later.
Smoke from a dozen braziers billowed up to the hall’s rafters, mingling with the stench of so many people close together and the more pleasant aroma of roasted meat. Baldr picked at his food, watching the guests mill about.
The wedding was much smaller than it would have been, given Ingjald’s recent treachery and aggression. By agreeing to marry Asa, Guthruthr had sided with Ingjald, earning him few friends but probably securing the future of his kingdom and of his own rule over it, even as a subordinate king to Ingjald.
Asa, meanwhile, seemed to delight in making ever more outrageous demands of Guthruthr’s slaves. First, she’d ordered two women to wrestle for her amusement. Then she’d insisted a slave boy get uproariously drunk on mead while guests egged him on. When she’d told one slave to fuck another in the arse, Guthruthr had stepped in and claimed she jested.
Baldr had his doubts.
Still, Ingjald’s daughter had not pressed the issue, just laughed as if Guthruthr had the right of it.
Guthruthr’s brother, Halfdan Snjalli, raised a toast to the king. “Skol!” The man had a reputation as a pirate, though the long winter no doubt had him bored and distracted. Last summer, Snjalli had sacked towns along Sjaelland and returned to Skane with so much plunder Guthruthr offered him any prize he could name.
Snjalli had claimed jarldom over Hälsingborg to the north, a claim that had forced Guthruthr to oust the then-current jarl Herleifr. The king had refused when Snjalli wanted to claim Herleifr’s wife, too.
Tove settled down across from him. Guthruthr trusted the shieldmaiden above even his own thegns. Baldr suspected they’d been sleeping together for years, though of course the king couldn’t marry someone with no bloodline. Probably, it would continue once Asa was with child. Hardly a concern, really. These things happened. “You don’t seem festive, my prince.”
“I am just deep in thought.” Perhaps a little maudlin, though.
“You’ve heard the Deathless priests have begun spreading their lies in Arus?”
Baldr grunted in acknowledgment. Reidgotaland might well be the next to fall to that insidious faith. Father had once told him he never stayed long in Asgard because so many places required his attention. The intervening centuries had told Baldr just how the man must’ve felt.
“If you like, we could …”
Baldr smiled at her, reaching over to pat her hand. “You’re bitter about the wedding, if only a little. Not that I wouldn’t want to, but my heart lies elsewhere these days.”
Tove scoffed as if to say it was his loss—probably it was—and left him alone.
Baldr sighed and let his head slump into his palms. He’d had enough imported Hunaland ale to feel a bit woozy, and almost enough to let his burdens go. The truth was, the fate of Midgard fell into his hands. Father was long gone and Mother trusted Baldr to see to things out in the world while she ruled Asgard. As for Thor, who should have had this task, the man had neither the patience nor the cunning for it. No, Thor spent his time trekking through the wilds alone, hunting trolls. His forays into civilization amounted to little more than bouts of drunken stupor and unending melancholy that seemed to have deepened over the centuries.
Mother never said it, but she was disappointed in Baldr’s brother. How could she not be? The man was an unmatched warrior, yes, but he resolutely refused to be more than that, to even try.
So who else was there to keep Midgard from falling entirely to the Deathless faith and thus coming under the sway of the Patriarchs? Baldr, Prince of Asgard. No one else could, or would, take the steps necessary to hold the world together. He held back the Patriarchs. He kept the tenuous peace with the jotunnar through Narfi. He met with emissaries from the caliphs, checking their ambitions.
But the truth was, he had no one with whom he could truly share those burdens. Which made them heavier.
Baldr sniffed and rubbed this face. Well. A wedding was no place for such melancholy. What he needed was another drink, and then maybe a walk in the brisk night air. That would do for him.
Three days after the wedding feast, when Baldr had planned to leave for Agnafit and return to Nanna, he was awakened to the sound of screaming. Baldr stumbled from his bed wearing naught save trousers and blundered into the main hall.
It was still night, he suddenly realized.
And Guthruthr stood over Snjalli’s body, hands around the man’s throat. His brother’s skull had been broken on the table behind him, leaving a bloody mess of brains on its corner.
“What in the gates of Hel?” Baldr demanded.
Panting, Guthruthr turned on him. “Bastard tried to seduce my wife!” The king’s breath stank of mead and rotting meat. Blood had splattered his face and shirt.
All the slaves around the hall, as well as thegns and other warriors stood around, gaping. No man would interfere with a husband making such a claim, especially if that husband was the king. Still, Baldr couldn’t help but glower at the macabre mess of Guthruthr’s hall.
Brothers killing brothers did not serve his goal of a united Sviarland. Not in the least.
“Clean this mess up,” he snapped at no one in particular, then stormed all the way back to his room, slamming the door behind himself.
Once inside, he slumped down on the bed.
What a steaming pile of trollshit. Herleifr had already fled to Ostergotland, understandably turning his back on Guthruthr, and now Hälsingborg had no jarl. Maybe Skane could still hold together while Ingjald conquered the rest of Sviarland, but all it took was an opportunist in Ostergotland to decide Hälsingborg worth plundering, and the wars would stretch on.
Trying to bring peace and unity to the North Realms was like bailing water out of a sinking ship while everyone around him bore
d fresh holes in the hull. As if men no longer even wanted peace. For that matter, things kept heating up in the South Realms, too. The Valls barely tolerated Baldr anymore, and Miklagard had finally broken through Hymir’s kingdom in Kiovia. The jotunn lord was dead, leaving Gardariki ripe for absorption into Miklagard.
Father said that he’d overthrown the Vanir because they’d given up on Midgard and isolated themselves. Baldr would never do that, but he understood the temptation. It was so very tempting.
Just after dawn, another shrill scream sounded through Guthruthr’s hall. Baldr had woken with the sun, but refused to get up thanks to the pounding in his head. Too much ale, for certain. When the cry went out, he sat up and groaned. Someone was having a jest at his expense. He knew it.
This time, he did slip on a shirt and boots, and slung Laevateinn over his shoulder. Whatever it was now, it could wait until he was fully dressed. These petty kingdoms ought to be able to attend to themselves for one damn night. Now, instead of setting out on the road well rested, he’d be walking all day half asleep. Because the locals couldn’t treat one another like civilized men.
Once clad, he flung his door open and stalked the corridor until he found Tove.
“What happened?” he asked her.
Her eyes were red, her expression like a bear woken from hibernation. “Slaves found Guthruthr dead, murdered in his own bed. The knife was stuck in his belly, though it had slit his throat before that.”
Oh, by the damn Tree. “Where’s Asa?” If she was dead, too, Ingjald would burn all Skane to the ground.
“Fled from her crime. The twisted bitch cut off his cock and stones.”
“She what? She did this?”
“I’d say so. She shoved his stones in his mouth. Odin alone knows what she did with his cock.”
The girl was fully mist-mad. Baldr could do naught save gape at Tove. Asa, barely more than a girl, had murdered her husband three days into their marriage. Not only murdered, but defaced his body for no apparent reason.