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

by Matt Larkin

  The day had dragged on, and at last the Miklagardians allowed the Hunalanders to pull back.

  They wouldn’t attack at night. Not with the army. But the fall of darkness would bring other, more terrible woes upon Odin’s people.

  As Hermod had advised, Odin had found Bergljot and her varulf protector, Didrik, on his arrival in Rijnland. The pair had greeted him with awe, then, and—in the days since—it had only partially faded. Under other circumstances, Odin would have concealed his identity. Now, with the end of the world upon them, such games seemed pointless, or even self-defeating. If he could not save the Hunalanders, at least he could let them see him, there among them, while the Age of Man died.

  Now, they sat around a campfire, watching the sun set with palpable dread. Every night, the mist thickened, and death stalked the camp.

  Oh, the vampires avoided varulfur and liosalfar, for the most part, preferring to seek out prey that could neither detect them nor fight back. Sadly, the Hunalanders had less than a dozen varulfur left to them, and maybe twice as many liosalfar.

  One among the varulfur, Vebiorg, was a gray-haired, weathered shieldmaiden the rest seemed to defer to. Odin had said she seemed too old to fight anymore.

  “Coming from you, old man,” Vebiorg had retorted, “that claim means very little.”

  To see a varulf so old, she must have lived for centuries. Vaettir could sustain human hosts much longer than a normal human lifespan, but not forever. Vebiorg had reached her last days and probably sought a means of dying with glory. She had not denied it, when Odin implied such a thing.

  Maybe, though, death with glory was all any of them had left to hope for.

  “We saw this in Gardariki,” Vebiorg said, staring into the night as if the vampires already stalked the mists, though Odin suspected they’d wait until the last rays of sunlight had vanished.

  Sunlight stripped their powers, and thus, they rarely chose to walk beneath it. Varulfur were stronger in moonlight, as well, though not so powerful as vampires. And liosalfar … well, they could not replenish their powers in darkness.

  You will die … accept it …

  “I’d still be there, maybe,” Vebiorg said after a moment more. “If Gevarus hadn’t bled out in Sviarland, I’d be there, prowling the night, trying and failing to protect the people. The armies came every morning, and every night, those vampires would …”

  A low growl built in Didrik’s chest, the only answer to Vebiorg’s musings. Nor did she seem to expect or want an answer. Melancholy had seized the whole valley. All these people, they knew they had a few days left of life, at most. This would be their last stand.

  Here, Hunaland would fall to the Deathless legions of the Patriarchs.

  Freyja’s hand fell on Odin’s knee. “You can find the answer.”

  Only by inviting yet worse urd upon them. Odin said naught, staring into the campfire while deliberately avoiding looking for patterns. Were he not careful, it would draw in his mind, and force the visions upon him.

  Didrik doffed his shirt and tossed it aside. Preparing to shift. The moon was rising.

  Ironic … you embrace the varulfur … even knowing their kind will end you …

  Fenrir.

  No. Odin would change it all.

  “I fought vampires even before this,” Vebiorg said. “I went to Miklagard … the city, itself, back before we knew what the Patriarchs were. The vampires were horrors I’d not have dreamed of, but the Patriarchs …” She shuddered.

  Few things frightened a varulf. Did she know Odin had been the one to arrange her ill-fated trip to Miklagard back then? He’d thought to claim Mistilteinn from the Patriarchs. How poorly he’d planned that, never even imagining the runeblade would be turned against his own son.

  Indeed, every time Odin had contended with Miklagard, it had brought woe to him and those he favored. He’d lost Gungnir. He’d brought the instrument of Baldr’s death to the North Realms. He’d even lost Starkad to them.

  “Why did Hermod not come himself?” Bergljot asked. She had asked as much before, and Odin had evaded the question.

  What answer could he give? That he’d sent Hermod to the gates of Hel in a last, desperate gambit to reclaim his son and somehow forestall Ragnarok? In truth, while he knew Baldr’s death had begun Ragnarok, he could not say with any certainty that his return would end it. Still, how he longed to look upon his son once more.

  The boy’s death had opened a terrible void in Odin’s chest.

  Even knowing it would come, having seen it from way back, it crushed him.

  With a groan, Vebiorg rose, pulling off her own shirt to reveal wrinkled breasts Odin studiously avoided looking at. She and Didrik stalked from the camp as the last of the sunlight dipped behind the hills.

  With the Sight, he might have found vampires, stalking the camp. The problem, however, remained the overwhelming press of dead souls that would descend upon him. And the vampires were yet a few more ghosts among the many.

  Freyja squeezed his knee. “Look into the future and find a way to save us.”

  “The Norns are not interested in saving lives.”

  “Then what do they want?”

  Naught good. Odin had tired of their game. He’d make his own, no matter how grim it turned things.

  The scream shot through the camp, making Odin cringe, despite him knowing it would come sooner or later. The screams always came. Men found the bodies of their comrades exsanguinated, or torn to shreds by something beyond inhuman.

  He shared a glance with Freyja, then the two of them took off at a run, racing toward the sound.

  Sunna met them halfway there. The liosalf’s skin had become a lantern in the darkness, a beacon to vampires—one they always seemed to avoid. Odin had tried to use this to his advantage, posting a liosalf from Saule or Frey’s contingents with every major group of the Hunalander army. But he had not nigh enough of such warriors to go around, and besides which, it meant they had to conserve their sunlight for use at night, meaning by the time the thick of the fighting had settled in during the day, his greatest weapons could not join the fray.

  Together with the two liosalfar, he blundered toward one of the other campfires, and there came to an abrupt stop.

  He smelled it, even before he saw it. The stench of death. Blood and viscera and shit—ruptured bowels. The creature that had attacked here had strewn the intestines of a dozen or more men about in a twenty feet radius from the fire. Guts lay tossed atop the tents. Splatters of blood formed twisted patterns in the shadows, as if created by some mist-mad painter. An arm—ripped off, not severed—lay before Odin’s feet.

  A leg crackled and sizzled in the fire, the stench of burning flesh nauseating.

  Every living man in the camp was dead long before he’d arrived.

  No single vampire could have so annihilated a band of soldiers in so short a time. A group of them, at least two or three, must have descended on a fire unprotected by liosalfar, and utterly slaughtered everyone.

  Grim-faced, Odin trod among macabre wreckage where his warriors had once rested. Or tried to rest, rather, given everyone now knew nachzehrer—as the Hunalanders named them—stalked the night. Legends come to horrifying unlife. Embodiments of the worst nightmares of all men. Something somehow worse than draugar.

  Other warriors had begun to cluster around the perimeter, none daring to tread within. Whispers of the land being cursed, damned. Men made signs of warding, invoking the Aesir, perhaps unaware one already trod among them and found himself nigh as sickened as they did.

  “Why do this?” Sunna asked.

  Odin cocked his head at a cluster of warriors backing away, mumbling prayers—to him, no less. In their midst, someone retched. “They think to destroy our morale and make it easier for their soldiers to break our shield wall.”

  He left it unsaid that this was probably retribution for Freyja seizing control of the horses during the day. A painful retribution. Now, the Miklagardians would be afraid to use
their cavalry or mounted archers.

  The vampires’ answer to that—make the Hunalanders afraid to even take the field.

  As if it were not bad enough. A loose war band of Hunalanders, even a levy, they had ferocity, but not the discipline of a Miklagardian army. In a small cluster of men, they could fight like mad. Fifty, sixty men, maybe a few more. A Miklagardian legion comprised a thousand men, so far as Odin could tell. Facing one required the Hunalanders to smash together any number of war bands who had no experience coordinating their efforts like that.

  The Valls might have, maybe, from their days fighting the Serks. But the Valls seemed to worship some version of the Miklagardians’ Deathless god-emperor, even if they didn’t quite realize it.

  “Whatever the cost,” Sunna said, “if you want to survive this, we’re going to have to—”

  The mist coalesced behind her. Mist, or a cloud of dust that had melded with it. A feral roar broke through the night an instant before an undulating blade burst through Sunna’s chest, hefting her off the ground. The liosalf flailed, an explosion of blood bursting from her mouth.

  The vampire behind her snarled and flung its blade, hurling her body into one of the tents so hard it toppled over.

  That was Gungnir. The vampire held Odin’s spear.

  All at once, more vampires appeared amid the gathering warriors. One heaved a man into the air then brought him down upon its knee, breaking the man’s spine with an audible crack.

  Freyja instantly appeared beside the vampire holding Gungnir, swinging her mace. The vampire melted into dust, then reformed behind her.

  “No!” Odin shrieked, driving forward. “No!”

  The vampire caught Freyja’s neck with one hand and flung her through the air. She vanished before landing, though, and Odin couldn’t see where.

  He thrust with his own spear, but the vampire knocked the attack aside as if Odin moved in slow motion, despite him pulling on his pneuma. Snarling, it lunged forward, intent on impaling Odin with his own damn spear. He blocked, again and again, but the vampire was stronger and faster. Furiously fast.

  A Patriarch.

  The dark closes in …

  Growling himself, Odin whipped his spear at the vampire’s legs. The Patriarch melted into dust for an instant, shifting his position just to Odin’s side. His elbow took the snarling creature in the face. The blow stunned the vampire, if only for a bare instant, enough for Odin to get his own spear back into position. To knock aside another vicious lunge.

  He’d never keep this up.

  Freyja appeared at his side once more, this time the sword in one hand and mace in the other. The vampire whirled Gungnir so fast she couldn’t close in though.

  Dimly, Odin heard the screams all around him. The vampires slaughtering their way through every last human nearby. He could not help them, though. Not with the Patriarch here. Surely this vampire commanded all four Miklagardian legions. Now was his chance.

  Odin lunged again, as aggressive as he could be. His spear gouged the vampire’s side.

  Gungnir slashed through Odin’s throat.

  He collapsed in a heap, hot blood bubbling up through his fingers.

  A snarling wolf launched itself through the air at the Patriarch. The vampire caught it by the throat, then vanished into dust, reappearing an instant later ten feet back.

  Odin could scarcely make them out. Everything going dim …

  The vampire grabbed the wolf’s jaws and ripped them apart, tearing off half the wolf’s skull.

  The varulf fell to the ground, slowly turning back into a gray old woman.

  Gurgling, Odin tried so furiously to staunch the bleeding in his neck. Warm hands were on him.

  But still, all went dark.

  “Od. Can you hear me, my love? I pushed more of my pneuma into you.”

  “He’ll live. Unlike so many others.”

  Odin couldn’t make his eyes focus. Everything writhed and twisted about him.

  Freyja.

  Freyja.

  She was there.

  Trying to reach him.

  But his mind kept slipping … pulled out as if on the tides … pulled under …

  A smoke-filled hall. Aflame, burning to the ground.

  He knew this place. Valaskjalf. His hall. The royal hall of Asgard.

  The thrones empty.

  No, not empty, Odin realized, as he blundered through the smoke. Upon a burning throne sat Frigg’s head, empty eyes staring accusation back at him. He had failed her. He had failed Asgard and Midgard, both. Everywhere, the world died.

  “You said we’d do better than the Vanir,” Frigg said, her voice broken, hollow.

  Not real. Odin shook his head, backing away.

  This was a nightmare.

  In the darkness, a massive jotunn stalked through Odin’s home, chuckling, knowing Thor would come there.

  His son!

  No, not merely a nightmare, much though he wished to believe it. In his weakness, the visions had flooded into his mind like crashing waves, pulling him back under the surface. Ready to drown him for denying them for so long.

  Odin lurched up, gasping, his breaths painful, throat raw and feeling apt to burst apart from the force of the air he sucked down into his lungs.

  Freyja held his hand in both of hers. “Easy. You almost didn’t make it. I had to give you so much pneuma …” She’d grown so pale.

  So weak.

  Doomed … like Frigg … like Thor … like everyone you love …

  No! Odin tried to scream the word, but only managed a painful rasp.

  All you build will turn to ash, your children shall die, and your dreams shall burn.

  No … the Odling ghost had cursed him … Or the Norns had …

  Had to stop the visions. If he didn’t look, maybe he could still …

  Freyja was there, standing in the snow, the dead all around her, staring at him, a mixture of hatred and love and fear and hope. Maybe none of those things, for Odin could not read her eyes.

  Except for the fear. Maybe that was certain.

  Her face was beaten bloody, and no hint of sunlight remained in her skin.

  And Odin rammed Gungnir straight through her heart. Not even a liosalf could survive without head or heart.

  He held the spear tight, as her eyes grew cold and died. As she slipped away from him once more.

  Dream of one who dreams of you, never the two dreams to meet. Still you wait for the one to hold your heart.

  All a dream. And now he must wake.

  Another painful rasp, as Freyja drew him into her embrace.

  “It’s all right. Stay with me, Od. I’ve got you.”

  No. No. No. No.

  This was not happening.

  Just a nightmare. It wasn’t the truth. He would never, ever strike down Freyja.

  You know better by now … Urd cannot be changed … You have seen the future … The Mad Vanr walked from his throne … he claimed an oracle had shown him things he could not endure …

  No. No!

  You know how this ends … With the wolf tearing out your throat …

  “Od?” Freyja asked. “Od, you’ll be all right.”

  He realized he was squeezing her so tight—even drawing pneuma to do it. Maybe she couldn’t scarcely breathe.

  Fuck.

  Fuck!

  He pulled her back to arms’ length, staring into her face, trying to form words, but unable. Just wheezing.

  “Shhh. Don’t try to talk. Not even an immortal could have lived through that, but I poured all the pneuma I could give and still live into you. Between that and the apple, you’ve pulled through, but I doubt you’ll be able to speak for several days, if not longer.”

  Sunna came to settle beside Freyja, patting her on the shoulder. The liosalf had lived? Gungnir must have missed her heart. Now, she wore no shirt, rather most of her torso was wrapped in bloodstained bandages.

  “We had to bring you away from the front,” Freyja said. “Saule
has command, and she’s decided to unleash the liosalfar upon the Miklagardians. They set upon their shield wall in a torrent of slaughter. It’s not enough to break them, but it certainly ended their assault for the day.”

  The words washed over him, hardly making sense.

  Frigg was dead, or would be soon. And he’d seen himself kill Freyja. He’d seen Fenrir kill him. He’d seen Thor dead, slain by some sea serpent. Everything he’d ever loved destroyed. Turned to ash, even as the Odling ghost had promised him long ago.

  First, the burning child ignites a pyre you cannot staunch.

  The Norns had said that to him, before all this. Child … Loki’s child. Hödr, once possessed by a Fire vaettr, burning. Hödr had started this. A pyre for the world.

  The Norns had orchestrated every moment, hadn’t they? They’d set the prophecy before Odin four hundred years ago, and he’d played into it. Even Loki, the Nornslave, seemed powerless to do aught save play his role in their schemes.

  Refusing to play the game had not stopped it from unfolding around him.

  Because maybe he had not yet made a desperate enough gambit.

  He stared into Freyja’s beautiful, bright green eyes. His soul mate. She’d been torn from him, oh, so many times. Not this time.

  No, whatever it took, Odin would break the Norns’ plans. He would end the cycle of destruction. He would ensure Hel would never rise again, never take Freyja from him again. And most of all, he’d protect those he loved, no matter the cost.

  Had his gambit not yet been desperate enough?

  Well, then it left him one choice.

  He would destroy the web of urd. By destroying the Norns who had created it.

  The bandages around his throat itched. Rubbing at them, he stared at Freyja across the large tent. Outside, the skirmishes were already beginning, and Saule had left to hold back the Miklagardian army.

  “The vampire raids were worse last night,” Frey said. He rubbed his arms. “I should get back out there.”