by Matt Larkin
Hödr cocked his head to the side. The air had grown more stale, tasting of decay. The woods seemed eerily quiet, otherwise. It was hard to make it out over the band’s inane squabbling, but … had he heard movement? “Quiet,” he snapped.
All at once, all six mercenaries fell silent, staring at him.
There it was again. The faint crunch of snow in the distance. Not like a man walking. Something lighter, or at least adept at moving without sinking below the surface. Several such stalkers, in fact.
Hödr’s hand went to his sword.
“Oh, arse blisters!” Gudbrand snapped, drawing one of his axes and grabbing his shield.
The others readied their weapons as well.
“What is it?” Kasmira asked. “Can’t see aught out there in the mist. So what the—”
Hödr raised a hand to silence her. Their torches were still crackling, but Hödr could filter that out. Footfalls light on snow. And the croaking of frogs? Here? Hödr turned his head to the side, trying to focus on the source, but it seemed to come from all around. There was marshland in the valleys, but the snows should have made it much too cold for frogs.
The stench had grown stronger, the faint croaking a little louder. Whatever made the sounds drew nigh.
Hödr eased his sword free. There was something Otherworldly about this place.
“What the fuck is that?” Gudbrand asked. “Is that godsdamned frogs? Who in the gates of Hel let—”
“Frogs?” Andrik asked. “Shit! Kobolds.”
“No such things as kobolds,” Brynjar objected.
Hödr would’ve said the same.
One of the dogs howled, then another and another. Without so much as a command, they took off running through the woods.
“Godsdamn it!” Gudbrand shouted. “We have to catch those hairy shitters.”
A shudder ran through tree branches overhead, as if something climbed up there. Then Hödr caught its aura. The creature was roughly shaped like a man, yes, but warped as a dverg, shortened and twisted, with bulging eyes. He couldn’t make out much more of it.
“What is it?” Kasmira whispered. “I don’t see aught.”
“Tales what I heard—” Andrik began.
That twisted form leapt from the tree branch and onto Andrik. The man’s screams cut off his words, bloodcurdling screams of agony as vicious claws shredded through flesh and mail, the creature croaking in wild abandon, drawing out geysers of blood.
“What the fuck?” Gudbrand bellowed. “All I see is a fucking blur.” The man swung his axe, but the creature on Andrik easily evaded it. The axe cleaved into the captain’s skull and split it in half.
Oh, trollshit. The others couldn’t see these creatures.
Desperate, he lunged forward, swiping his blade upward. The edge caught the kobold under the chin. Putrid ichor erupted from its wound and the creature flipped over backward. The thing hadn’t even tried to dodge. Maybe it had no idea Hödr could see it.
The kobold landed on its feet and sprang at Hödr. It was all he could do to jerk his sword up. The flying creature impaled itself on his blade. Still its oversized jaws came snapping down at him. The creature was smaller than Hödr, but almost as strong, even with him drawing his apple-enhanced pneuma. Even with it dying all over him.
Its hands were too big for its body, fingers ending in knife-like claws. Hödr kicked it off his sword and it fell, gurgling. Slime covered the creature and made his boot sticky.
More of the fell bastards had swarmed over his party, tearing through shields and mail, leaping in and out of the trees, croaking hideously all the while. One of the creatures had latched onto Sture’s back.
Hödr surged to his feet and came in swinging, bellowing a war cry. His blade squelched into the kobold’s warty skull. Hödr grabbed the sword with both hands and yanked the kobold off of Sture as he jerked it free.
“By the Aesir!” Kasmira shrieked, suddenly backing away from one of them.
Must’ve become visible. An instant later, Gudbrand’s axe slapped down into the kobold’s spine.
Hödr spun at a rustling, and the last of the creatures leapt up into the trees. Branches bent and shook as it—and at least one more, Hödr realized—scrambled along in the boughs, out of reach.
Brynjar fumbled with his bow, but the kobolds had disappeared even from Hödr’s senses before the man could even nock an arrow.
Sture pitched forward, moaning, and Kasmira raced to his side.
“Fuck,” she said as she pulled back the mercenary’s mail to inspect his wounds. Sture whimpered at her prodding. “Odin save us.”
“What is it?” Hödr asked.
“It …” Kasmira swallowed. “He’s losing too much blood. Lots of gouges.”
Sture spasmed, gurgling.
At the same moment, Ingfred slumped down, hand to his leg.
Trollshit. “Brynjar,” Hödr said. “Forget the bow. Heat a blade in a torch flame and sear Ingfred’s wound closed.”
“What about Sture?” the woodsman demanded. “His wounds are worse.
“Kasmira?” Hödr asked. “Can we save him?”
“I don’t …” The shieldmaiden was panicking.
And Hödr couldn’t see the damn wounds. Sture’s aura grew weak, though. If he had any chance left, it wasn’t much of one. “Gudbrand, help Kasmira with Sture!”
They couldn’t afford to linger here, either. If those kobolds returned with more of their kind …
Sture convulsed, vomiting up blood. Then he lay still. Kasmira fell back on her arse, moaning, gaping at him.
“Lucky Sture …” Gudbrand said. “Arse-munching invisible toads!” The man swung his axe into a tree root with a thwack.
Ingfred’s scream resounded through the wood an instant later, punctuated by the acrid stench of his sizzling flesh. The man flung Brynjar off him and the woodsman landed against a root with a groan.
Hödr slowly turned about, sword in hand, searching the trees for any further sign of these foul abominations. Everything seemed too still. “Can you walk, Ingfred?”
“Bastard just burned my godsdamned leg!”
“We have to move,” Hödr insisted. “We cannot be here if they return. Gudbrand, help him walk. Brynjar, lead us forward now.”
“Forward?” Kasmira’s voice was almost a moan. “We have to go back.”
No. No, he couldn’t let them do that. He had to find Rutto. “We’re probably closer to Kalevala than we are to Lappmarken.” Hödr had no idea if that was true, though he hoped it was. “Kasmira, get the dogs.”
“They’re long gone,” Brynjar objected. “And run off in the wrong direction. If you’re really intent to press on to Kalevala.”
Trollshit. Hödr sheathed his sword and unshouldered his bow, nocking an arrow. Next time one of those bastards came sneaking along in the trees, he’d give them a reason to think twice. “Just get us out of this wood.”
15
The svartalfar offered no answers as they guided Odin and Idunn onward, save to say they were being taken to Amsvartnir. Odin wasn’t sure whether that was a person or a place.
His captors led them toward a city, one rimmed with an obsidian-looking wall with massive spikes jutting from the top of it. It rose up at least five times Odin’s height, a shimmering barrier under the eternal night sky. Shadowed forms patrolled behind crenelations, and every so often the wall was broken by hexagonal towers lined with more spikes.
“What are they defending against?” Odin whispered to Idunn.
“Each other. And us.”
One of the svartalf females jabbed him in the back with a cudgel, sending him stumbling forward.
The alfar seemed a match for his strength.
They guided him forward further, up to a portcullis. Rather than a gate that drew up into a gap above, the portcullis was warded by a pair of rounded grates with metal prongs jutting out the ends like spokes on a wheel. The two grates were closed, one in front of the other, but as they drew close, both rolled
sideways into the walls, creating an opening—one that still left those sharpened prongs jutting free to either side.
Lovely place.
Darkness festers …
Audr was too at home here for Odin’s liking. The wraith sounded almost … festive. A poor sound for it.
Idunn’s hand closed around Odin’s wrist, tight. Very tight. Her breaths were short and too quick. She was panicking. Odin patted her hand as the svartalfar ushered them through the gate house and past several other guards.
Also all female.
The city itself, while substantial, didn’t resemble any city of men he’d ever seen. He saw no market, no main street, no sense of order to any of the designs. Rather, the place seemed more like a beehive, with every structure connected to those around it by various enclosed hallways that ran through the sky at perverse angles.
The street was often broken by metal grating, below which he could make out naught. Streams of water and filth continually ran down from gaps in the hive-like buildings strategically placed to send refuse flowing into the grates. On the underside of numerous of the bridges grew diverse collections of mushrooms, practically bursting out on top of one another.
Everything reeked.
“Amsvartnir,” Idunn said, her voice seeming close to breaking. She was truly frightened of this place, more so than Odin would have suspected.
They passed numerous other svartalfar, some working forges, others hauling ore in carts, while others seemed to harvest the mushrooms. All were female.
His captors marched him up a slope and into a building. From there, he was guided deeper and deeper, through several of those sky corridors. Eventually, they came to another gate like the one to the city only smaller, again warded by rotating spiked wheels. The doors drew open, and the svartalfar shoved him inside, into a large chamber.
The roof was supported by numerous columns, each lined with a razor-like edge that rotated around the circumference in an ascending spiral. Buttresses connected the columns in their upper reaches, both to each other, and to the walls.
Torches hung on those columns, offering paltry light and only serving to enhance the shadows.
At the center of this perverse chamber rose a dais at least fifteen feet in the air, upon which sat the first male svartalf Odin had seen thus far. He wore no shirt, exposing his ash-colored skin, though he had leather trousers and steel-plated boots.
One of Odin’s captors spoke to the male in Supernal, but before Odin could interpret the meaning, the male had already risen from his throne.
“A mortal and a liosalf.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Glorious.” His voice seemed to hiss and writhe, not so very unlike that of Audr’s. Or perhaps Volund’s, from long ago. “Tell me, human, how did you come to this realm? And alive.”
Odin frowned, uncertain how to answer that question. He’d used Andvaranaut to reach Alfheim, but Frey had taken the ring long ago. “We came by a nether river.”
The svartalf descended the stairs, flexing his fingers. He wore steel claws over them, fitted together with bands across his hand. Not an effective weapon against an armed and armored warrior, but probably vicious in other circumstances. “Your answer fails to explain how you got into the river.”
“We fell into it after jumping over the Radiant Falls in Alfheim,” Idunn said.
The svartalf raised a clawed finger up to Idunn’s face. She tried to back away, but at once, Odin’s captors were there, two females holding each of them by the arms. The male svartalf raised the claw until it stood a hair away from one of Idunn’s eyes. She froze, trembling ever so slightly. Finally, he pulled the finger back.
Then he moved so quickly Odin didn’t even have time to tense up. That finger tore into Idunn’s face and gouged it from the edge of her jaw out to the end of her cheek, tearing a bloody gap into her mouth. She wailed in agony, thrashing in the arms of her captors.
Odin surged pneuma into his limbs and flung one of the females off him. Before he could dislodge the other, several more impossibly strong hands drove him down to his knees.
The male svartalf turned and began pacing, hands clasped behind his back like naught had transpired. “Perhaps we should start again. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Prince Fjalar, Lord of Amsvartnir, son of Ivaldi himself. Who are you?”
Odin growled. Impossibly, the women seemed almost as strong as he was, and with at least three of them holding him, he couldn’t rise. “Odin Borrson. Of Asgard.”
Fjalar paced back around before Odin and paused. “Somewhere in the Mortal Realm, I assume. And her?”
“Idunn. Of … Vanaheim.”
“Of Alfheim, you mean.”
Odin glowered. “Lately.”
“Good. Now, allow me to speak plainly with you, Odin Borrson. If you fail to cooperate with me, I may just feed your souls to Nott. I might anyway, of course, but if you don’t want me to hand you over to the Wild Hunt, I suggest you grovel and answer my every question to the best of your ability.”
“Go to Hel.”
Fjalar leaned in close to Odin’s face and tapped a clawed finger against his brow, just hard enough to draw blood. Hot liquid began to run down between his eyes. “You say that like you think I ought to fear the so-called Queen of Mist. But I imagine, were she here, she’d be the one in trepidation of me. You see, I don’t think you understand quite where you are or what you now face, mortal.”
“Enlighten me.”
The prince flashed a wicked grin. “No. I relish your ignorance. It tastes of honey. I could easily have you interrogated by the caballos who captured you, but why deprive myself of such entertainment? You and I, we shall spend long hours together.”
His smile spoke of feverish glee.
Barbed chains dug into Odin’s wrists and ankles, binding him in place and stretching his arms and legs out too far. They’d taken him alone into a cell beneath Fjalar’s palace, where a single dwindling candle provided his only source of light.
Odin had tried to look into the Penumbra for starlight but found it impossible from this realm. His abilities let him see through the Veil, but the Veil wasn’t here. He’d truly trod into darkness far beyond the ken of any who had gone before.
All is darkness … We are born of the dark … and to darkness we are inevitably drawn back … All knowledge is a shadow, an illusion born of hubris … the arrogance of thinking we can understand …
Audr’s voice grew in strength the longer Odin remained in Svartalfheim, reverberating in his skull. The wraith’s long torpor had ended, and it woke with fresh ambition, stirring like a nest of vipers in the back of Odin’s mind. Slithering, ever seeking control once more.
He’d wondered if the wraith’s power might let him slip these bonds, though he doubted it, given it seemed to stem from stepping across the Veil. Beyond which, there was no forgetting what had happened last time he called on Audr’s gifts. The wraith had possessed him and left a trail of suffering in his wake that Odin shuddered to think on.
So he remained bound here, blood trickling down his arms, welling in his armpits, and running on over his ribs. His eye hurt from staring so desperately at that fading flame. Perhaps that was a part of the torture, the knowledge that utter darkness impended.
Darkness is always gathering … Light must fade …
Fjalar had stripped him naked and used that claw to slice spiraling ribbons along Odin’s back. Now his sweat stung those cuts, and he shivered in fevers. Each such shiver jiggled his wrists and caused the barbs to dig deeper.
It had become painful to so much as breathe. Leading to the temptation to delve into the Sight and escape the present by losing himself in the future.
Because a future remained. This was not his end.
No, his end would come at the jaws of Fenrir, tearing out his throat. Odin had never found a way to kill the varulf, and maybe he should have devoted more effort to doing so.
Surrender to the darkness … Embrace death …
No. Odin, would find a
way to change his urd, destroy Fenrir, and win Ragnarok. Sooner or later, he’d get free of these chains. For now, it was easier to let the sea of prescient memories wash over him.
“We will call a council,” he said after a moment more. “And it needs to include not only the Aesir and Vanir. We need the liosalfar and … the jotunnar.”
Freyja grimaced at him, shifting in obvious discomfort. “I don’t know that I can convince anyone from the Summer Court to attend. Besides, even with the bridge, they’d still need hosts.”
“We’ll find those.”
“You mean you’ll force captives to serve as vessels.”
Odin shrugged. When compared to the fate of the entire world, the suffering of a few meant very little. After all, if he failed, if he lost Ragnarok, they’d all be dead. “I’ve reason to believe Hel herself will make another move on our world. Before that happens, we need every possible ally. Which is why I’m sending Tyr to call even the jotunnar to the council. And you, I implore you to return to Alfheim and convince as many of the liosalfar as possible to join us.”
Fjalar moved about the darkness around Odin. The candle had burned down to a tiny flicker, so dim Odin half feared to breathe, though the shudders of his pain—when he returned to the present—made it difficult to control.
“I know what you are,” Fjalar said at last. “You, who walk upon the web of urd, who think to challenge the weave of the Norns, but yet remain their slave. Are you a pawn, or a more valuable piece, though? For me, I think the latter. You are not the only mortal with such a gift, nor even the first to have crossed beyond the Mortal Realm, though none have come so far in eons.”
The svartalf tapped his claw on Odin’s waist, drawing a slight cut as he moved, while shaking his head.
Odin let his mind go, drifting into the tide of visions, escaping the pain—
Fjalar dug his claw deeper. “Stay with me.”
The sudden gouging, the feeling of that blade scraping his hip bone, it jolted Odin back into the present.