Gods of the Ragnarok Era Omnibus 3: Books 7-9

by Matt Larkin

  He shifted his weight to one leg, creating a deliberate opening. Baldr lunged in with such fury Hödr almost instinctively fell. His body wanted to protect itself. But Hödr was past caring. He parried at the last instant, letting the flames scorch his face even as he jerked his knee up into Baldr’s groin.

  Baldr snickered and shoved Hödr back with one hand.

  That should have felled him. Even with the apple, it should have at least had him reeling for an instant. Pain washed over Hödr, his flesh feeling like it was melting.

  “Hödr!” Mother shrieked, coming up the hill, panting.

  Others followed not so far behind her. He didn’t have much time left. He had to finish Baldr before someone decided to step in, despite Baldr’s assurances otherwise. And what did it even matter if he took wounds, now? Mirroring the prince’s wild aggression, Hödr lunged in, launching into attack after attack that finally had Baldr retreating, struggling to parry. Mistilteinn nicked the prince’s face, tore open his shin, and took a finger from his off-hand.

  All minor injuries, though the last had Baldr screaming and laughing at the same time.

  Hödr dared to hope the cumulative effect of so much blood loss would slow the prince, but the man came in again, cleaving through the air with that flaming runeblade, still wild with his attacks.

  Hödr caught one on Mistilteinn’s pommel again, wending and bending with the flow of the sword. Couldn’t afford to care that burns blistered and popped on his hand, his arm, his face. Didn’t matter. Naught mattered save ending this. He drove Laevateinn’s point down until it snared in the ground. Then he jerked Mistilteinn back up at an angle. Doing so freed the prince’s sword and it plunged into Hödr’s thigh, even as his own blade cleaved so deep in Baldr’s side it hit his spine.

  With a glorious snap, Mistilteinn tore through Baldr’s spinal column. The prince’s strength left him at once and he pitched over. Hödr too toppled, screaming as Laevateinn jerked free from his leg. His flesh had become a charred ruin, melted down to muscle and oozing blood faster than he’d ever recover from.

  “Baldr!” the queen shrieked, cresting the hill. “Baldr!”

  “It was a fair duel,” Sigyn shouted.

  Thor came tromping along behind his mother, and Tyr with him. While the one-handed warrior paused at the ring, Thor kept on charging forward. He hefted Hödr up by the throat. A meaty fist smacked into Hödr’s face. His nose exploded. His senses dropped into a blur of white. It took him several breaths to even realize he lay on the ground.

  “Leave him!” Was that Mother?

  Thor stomped toward him again while Hödr’s senses came back into focus. Father interposed himself. Thor swung at him. Father blocked that on his forearm, knocking away a punch that could’ve cracked solid stone. Thor again swung at Father, and again Father deflected the attack like he was parrying a sword, using fighting maneuvers Hödr had never seen. Father’s counters now came lightning fast, a fist to Thor’s side, an open palm to his face. Then he had Thor in a hold and flipped him over his shoulder, slamming him into the ground.

  Hödr couldn’t stand. Couldn’t do aught save clutch his mess of a leg and wail, and watch.

  “Kill the traitor!” Frigg wailed. “Kill him for Baldr!”

  A murmur of hesitation ran through the ring of men and women. Yes. He’d fought Baldr in an acknowledged duel. That wasn’t murder, and if they attacked him now, they’d be the guilty ones.

  “As your queen, I command you—tear the traitor limb from limb!”

  “No!” Mother shrieked.

  But it did no good. As if a dam had broken, men began to close in around Hödr. So be it. He’d avenged Nanna. All else was urd.

  Father caught the arm of the first man who tried to close in, twisted it around behind his back, and snapped it. The warrior fell, screaming. Others broke into a run, rushing at Father. He whirled from one to the next, blocking attempts to grab him with a flurry of limbs. His foot kicked out a man’s knee, the joint popped so loudly Hödr winced despite his own pain. An instant later, Father felled a man with a palm to his nose.

  Another he flipped over his shoulder and hurled into his fellows. He was a storm of blows, dislocating joints, breaking limbs, and leaving a sea of groaning bodies in his wake.

  Tyr stepped in, and Father’s boot clipped him on the side of the head, sending him spinning around.

  Rough hands seized Hödr’s wrist then. He twisted over to catch Thor’s aura before the elder prince’s boot drove Hödr’s shoulders into the mud.

  “Loki!” Mother shrieked.

  Hödr had no idea where Father was, but he clearly couldn’t get to him.

  Drawing his pneuma, he tried to shove himself up. But with his sole hand held by Thor, he had no leverage, and the prince was much stronger than him. Thor roared, yanking Hödr’s arm from the socket, even with Hödr’s pneuma drawn. Pain lanced through his arm, his shoulder, his neck. A throbbing built in it.

  Hödr screamed but his face buried in the mud. Thor kept pulling. Hödr wailed, but, even with his pneuma, he was helpless against the weight driving him downward.

  He felt it, as his flesh began to tear. Tendons ripping. Muscle shredding. An ocean of agony bombarded him, pain beyond aught he’d ever imagined. All-consuming, thought-devouring torment.

  And the sick, awful popping sound as his arm tore free from his shoulder.

  And then darkness.

  38

  Odin fixed Andvaranaut into the center of the orrery, set into the new arms he’d built for it.

  “You’re not going to wear it?” Frey asked. Freyja’s brother had insisted on watching these final moments along with his sister.

  They would be the first ones to accompany him back to Asgard, along with Hermod, Bragi, and Ullr. They had once been lords among the Vanir and now held some authority in the queen’s court. A fitting expedition back to their former home, he supposed.

  Odin spared Frey a glance. “That was part of your mistake, actually. Wearing it would allow you to traverse. But imbedding it in the machine allows us to create a more stable bridge. I still need to recreate the machine back in the Mortal Realm, but this should hold for now.” He looked back to the ring. He’d sacrificed so much for this moment, and yet, part of him wanted to remain here. To turn away from the pain he knew awaited him back on Asgard.

  But that had never been his bargain with the Vanir.

  It had never been part of urd, either. No, urd demanded he go and face what must unfold. If he was ever to subvert the web of urd, it would not be by hiding here and pretending the future was better off without him. Ragnarok impended. Or … maybe it had already begun. Not everything was crystalized in his Sight yet.

  Freyja knelt by his side. “You’re afraid.” Terrified, though not of what they would assume. “Do you … do you fear you’ve attuned it wrongly? That we might bridge the gap to another spirit world?”

  “No. It’s ready. And it connects to the Mortal Realm.” And there was no point in delaying. The future impended regardless. Odin turned a crank that set the gears spinning. The ring, too, began to revolve, slowly at first, but picking up speed.

  In distant eras, men had built a similar device, one that could warp reality and defy the normal perceptions of space and time. It had not ended well for them, and, in the end, had allowed the mists of Niflheim into the Mortal Realm.

  The irony that he now created a variant of that same abominable device was not lost on him.

  He rose and stepped back, guiding the others out onto the circular platform. Already, the air had begun to shimmer, currents of light forming into an iridescent arc that would transcend the layers of reality and allow them to traverse from etheric realms into physical ones.

  Energy coruscated along the length of the arc like tiny bolts of lightning, power that set Odin’s hair tingling, standing on end.

  “Fuck me …” Hermod said.

  Freyja’s hand closed around Odin’s. “This is really happening. We’re … g
oing back?”

  It was easy to blame urd for all that had transpired, and all that would. Certainly, strands he could neither see nor control tugged on every life in every realm. The Norns touched everything. But … but so many of the tragedies still fell at Odin’s feet. His mistakes, his arrogance, his obsessions and his desperation. His … and those of the other Aesir. And Loki. Why had his brother wanted this? Or had he not wanted it, and yet found himself powerless to avert the course?

  The bridge stabilized, ceasing its flickering.

  Odin blew out a breath. There was no denying what lay ahead. “Let’s go.”

  The others, they followed mutely behind Odin and Freyja, and even she said naught, walking by his side, though he could feel her looking about the glittering city his people had built. Wondering, no doubt, what had become of the glories the Vanir had built over the course of millennia.

  While Asgard had changed much in his absence, the city could not hold his interest now. Not knowing what was unfolding before Baldr’s hall. Much as he tried to drive the visions out, they bombarded his mind now, fitting into place with terrifying efficacy. Urd would not be denied.

  All hope is a lie … Oblivion impends …

  A great throng had gathered before the hall, gasping, cursing, and most simply gawking at the unfolding spectacle.

  No.

  No.

  He refused to believe he was too late.

  He’d always been too late. Back, before he was born, he was too late for this moment. From the dawn of time, perhaps. No … his son … his brother … Not this …

  Odin shoved onlookers aside to behold: there, lying almost severed in half, his beloved son. Beautiful, radiant Baldr. The last hope for the future. Beside him, Hödr lay, one arm severed and the other ripped off in a mess that had strewn gore all over.

  Beyond, Loki pummeling Thor and Tyr to bloody pulps, shrieking in rage, whilst more than a dozen warriors lay broken at his feet. The man’s palm repeatedly slammed in Thor’s face.

  He’d known.

  He’d always fucking known, hadn’t he?

  Because … because the foreknowledge of it didn’t blunt the rage when the moment at last unfolded. Odin’s fists clinched at his sides. No. That impotent awareness of the terrible end only stoked the fires within.

  Oh, he knew Loki’s rage.

  Roaring, Odin shoved another onlooker aside with enough force to take him off his feet.

  Loki half glanced in his direction, caught Tyr’s shoulder, and sent the man flipping through the air such that his legs slapped into Thor’s face. The way his blood brother looked at him, then … oh, he knew.

  Odin launched himself at Loki, pneuma flooded to his limbs as strongly as he’d ever done. He led with a fist. Loki blocked. Odin was already punching once more. To the others, it must have seemed blinding, the dizzying array of attack, block, counter, in an endless stream.

  Odin roared defiance at his blood brother.

  A thousand lifetimes of warrior instinct came to him. A kick, aimed at the man’s shin. Loki hopped over it, both palms surging for Odin’s chest. Odin slapped his own palms into Loki’s, sending the man flying back several feet.

  “My son!”

  “And mine.” Loki was panting. Exhausted.

  Oh, but Odin had only just gotten started. “You knew this would happen! You did naught to avert it, Nornslave! You never even tried!”

  “I didn’t want this.”

  “You wanted Ragnarok!” The very words he’d heard in prescient memory, revealed to him the future as it unfolded.

  Loki shook his head. “It was needful. Some things cannot be changed, Odin.”

  Odin lunged in, reaching low with one hand. Loki blocked, and they fell into the rhythm once more.

  Fuck! Damn the Norns! Damn Loki! Damn … everyone! All he had done meant naught. Because the one he’d loved best had seen further. Had seen it, and guided things to this end.

  Loki swung. Odin caught his wrist and twisted, bending the man backward.

  “Mistilteinn was lost!” And Odin should never have sent Starkad after it in the first place. “It was gone! Only you could have told the boy where to find it!”

  Loki’s elbow caught him in the mouth and jerked his head backward, sending him stumbling. “You cannot loathe me more than I do myself. But I realize, even as you have, that sometimes the future does not allow us to be the people we wish we were.”

  Odin’s blood brother came in again, lunging with a knife hand that Odin easily turned aside.

  The man gave him a pause, a chance to back away and wipe the blood from his face. “You’ve had millennia of practice, I know. Trained in every form of combat in history, haven’t you? Were you always here? Were you ever a man?”

  “You are so quick to curse me, blame me, when I gave you so many opportunities to rethink your course. But urd holds its sway, regardless. Have you forgotten, in days you must think long gone, that we mixed our blood and you swore you’d never take ale unless it was brought to me as well?”

  “I never forgot. Our families were always destined to tear each other to pieces. Hel has tormented my steps since the beginning, since before I ever tasted of that apple. The boon I should have cast aside, lived and died like a normal man. Did you know, even then, when we shared our blood, this would be our end?”

  Loki panted, hands on his knees, shaking his head. “Not everything is clear in the distant future.”

  “Not an answer.”

  “The only one I can give you.”

  “They won’t let you, you mean. Your visions … mine, they gave them to us, didn’t they? A lie! A trick, to show us the things we cannot change whilst setting us on a course from which we could never return! If you would ever have told me all you knew, Baldr might still be alive! Hödr, too! And how many others, brother?”

  “You still refuse to understand.” Loki rose, hands up before him in warding. “I have been chained over the black walls of Tartarus itself. I have buried wives and children. I watched everything I knew die, over and over. Because the cycle must continue! If any man in history matches your suffering, I do. But you see only your own pain.”

  “I’ll see yours soon enough.” Odin shrieked at him, lunging in.

  Loki blocked his punches, his kicks. Ducked, dodged. Countered. Odin pulled even harder on his pneuma. The flood of prescient memories tugged at him, pulled him under its sway, the bombarding of waves grasping at him.

  His fist came up under Loki’s guard, memory and perception blending in a blurred amalgamation. The now became eternity. Loki’s blows hit empty air, for Odin had already moved. His palm slammed into the man’s face, hefted him off his feet, and sent him stumbling to the ground. Odin’s hook caught him on the jaw and sent him onto his arse.

  Odin dropped down, his knees on Loki’s chest, and wrapped his hands around his brother’s throat. Squeezed. “It was always coming to this. I saw it, hundreds of years ago.” His brother’s eyes bulged as Odin strained. “I wanted to evade this end. But I was a fool to think that prescience allowed me to change the future. It bound me to it. Made me a veritable slave to …”

  To the Norns? A Nornslave?

  “No!” Sigyn’s wail shrieked out over all the other noise of the chaos, and Odin could not help but glance at her, held down by Tyr, though even he seemed to struggle to keep her under control.

  When he looked back, Loki’s face had begun to turn blue.

  Odin eased his grip, and Loki gulped down a choking breath. Odin shook his head. “Naught you can say changes what has transpired. Your son killed mine, with your help. Even could I absolve you of guilt when it comes to Hel, still you sided against my kin.” He leaned in close to his former brother. “Some things cannot be forgiven, even if they were fated. You have been chained before, yes. And so shall you be again. Left to watch, powerless as ever, as the world ends around you.”

  As Odin sought so desperately to find a way to stop that end.

  The tunnels lay
far beneath Asgard, beneath its soaring mountains and glorious valleys. In dark passages scarcely lit by the flickering torch Odin now carried, he walked ahead of Loki and Sigyn. Tyr walked behind, holding a link to the chains that bound Loki, and trailed by a few of his most trusted warriors.

  Odin might have spared Loki’s wife, but she’d insisted on coming, and somehow it seemed fitting. Their child had wrought this. Or maybe she had, in casting Eldr into Hödr so long ago. Or Loki had, years before any of them were born.

  Or the Norns had, somewhere in a place that was not a place, an existence outside of time. And Odin was left with the awful realization that his visions were given to him solely to serve as self-fulfilling prophecies. The Norns must have chosen—or even now still were choosing—to reveal those same things which would cause him to fall into their web, time after time.

  How did a man win against such foes? Perhaps no victory was possible against fate itself. If one were … would it not then lie in refusing to look at the future? Turning aside from the visions they had used to manipulate him?

  If he were honest with himself, he pitied Loki, at least a little. It changed naught. However the Nornslave had gotten himself embroiled with those creatures, he was still serving their ends.

  The tunnels led to the underground lake, beyond which lay a few rocky islands. Guards stood watch here, as they had for four hundred years, over the one prisoner Odin had no means of killing. And now, another he was unwilling to let die, assuming the man could perish after so long a life.

  Above, water dripped from stalactites, mostly into the lake, but also into smaller pools around it.

  “I will grant you one mercy, and not have you bound on Fenrir’s island.” He pointed at a stalagmite jutting from a shallow pool of water.

  Tyr jerked on Loki’s chain and pulled him into the pool, threading the orichalcum bonds around it. He wrapped the chain around Odin’s former brother, drawing him tight to the stalagmite. Loki blinked his crystal eyes. Drops of water fell from above at irregular intervals.