by Matt Larkin
Men came charging in, and Fenrir released Mani, spun around. His backhand sent a man flying past Tyr. Then the varulf disappeared into the mist.
Mani dropped to his knees, hands to his temples.
“Find him!” Tyr roared. His feet wouldn’t answer his command. Too fucking slow. Too useless now.
Screams.
All around, screams.
His men dying. Snapped in half like kindling. Fenrir would pick them off, one by one, with ease. Invisible in the damn mist.
Oh, shit.
“Stop!” Tyr shouted. “Fall back to me! Form a circle! To me! To me!”
More screams.
And then a few torches racing toward him, even as he fell back toward the closest fire.
Mani shook himself, fair leapt to his feet, and took off at a dead run into the wood.
“Mani!” Tyr bellowed.
But the Vanr wasn’t listening.
Tyr stared hard at the Tarnhelm in his hands. Damned thing had sat in Frigg’s vaults for ages. Narfi … Fenrir, he must’ve claimed it when he fled Asgard. Cursed thing had cost Saule her life now. Way Tyr heard it, it had caused no end of grief before that too.
Still grimacing, he shoved it in his travel sack.
All told, Fenrir had slaughtered fourteen, counting Saule. Not counting Mani, who was still missing. Stupid Vanr.
Sunna, she’d recovered, and now knelt beside Tyr. Looking almost so grim as he felt.
Way he saw it, they had two options. Continue north. Try to stem the jotunn advance.
Or break away. Hunt down Fenrir. Before the damn varulf picked them off one by one.
No choice at all.
With a grunt, he rose. Took in the men. Problem was, Fenrir would slaughter these bastards like sheep. Worse, if they did take him down, the wolf vaettr would just shift to a new host. Any of them except maybe Sunna. She was a liosalf, so she probably couldn’t get possessed. Sun vaettr ought to have protected her from that.
Far from a perfect plan. Fenrir might still well kill Tyr and Sunna both. But she’d want to find her brother, and Tyr had no idea where Mani had fled to. None, save an inkling the man hunted the same prey as them.
Of course, all this meant abandoning Jamtla to the jotunnar, same as they’d lost Lappmarken. Harsh truth, true. But wasn’t Fenrir worse? More of a threat?
A man shouldn’t have to make that kind of choice. It tasted foul, like either way, he was choosing evil. Maybe Odin felt like that a lot. Maybe it didn’t bother the king anymore.
“Listen,” Tyr finally said to the gathered men. “Turn around and head back south. We sent word to Thrúd. Thor’s daughter, mind. Meet up with her.” And damn well hope she’d managed to enlist Vidfamne. “Find a place to stem the jotunn tide. Myself, I have to go after the varulf. None of you want to be going where I’m headed.”
“Fuck no,” someone mumbled.
“I know I promised you plunder. Maybe there will be. Right now, I’m more worried about making sure Sviarland survives. That men have anywhere to live left when this is done. It’s a hard thing, but it’s what we’ve come to.” Tyr grimaced. Cracked his neck. Just wasn’t good with words.
So, with a last nod at his men, he turned out for the woods.
Didn’t need to tell Sunna to follow. Liosalf was desperate for her brother. Probably pissed for Saule, too. Tyr could just dare to hope they’d find Mani before Fenrir did.
Varulf needed to die. Permanent, this time.
And Tyr had to find a way to make that happen.
7
In the end, Odin had decided silver represented a rather universal language, and had trod down into the strange city now built where Asgard should have been, and traded for roasted fowl and a room to stay. After all, he had no way of knowing how long he might be stuck in a given time.
He spent the night there, and the next morning set to exploring more of the bazaar. At least until the tides began to tug on his mind. Rather than risk being jerked out of time in the midst of a crowd, he made his way into an alley and slumped down behind a barrel.
The alley stank of stale piss.
That thought didn’t last long, though, before the crashing waves of time drowned out all sounds and blurred his senses in their cacophony. The currents of time ripped him apart, and Odin could not even say whether he was screaming or not. Maybe someone heard him crying out and came to see what had befallen the old man in the alley. If so, would they see him break apart? Would they see him vanish, like a man stepping into the Penumbra?
For he did feel as though he was being drawn into shadow. And when at last his vision focused again, he found the only source of light a flickering fire pit in a windowless stone room. While Odin lay on the floor, in the back of the room, four figures sat around the fire pit.
In the hand of one of those people, a flame danced, as though he held a large candle.
The Art of Fire.
Odin forced himself to utter stillness. More Serks?
“To control the flame is become both master and slave,” Loki said. The man had his back to Odin, but Odin would know that voice anywhere. “And to look into it, to see beyond our clouded perceptions of linear reality, presents both a greater gift, and a greater danger. You will be tempted to rely heavily on the insights hidden within the patterns. Tempted, and compelled, for our world grows direr than ever. Fire is life.”
“Fire is life,” the others repeated in unison.
Loki nodded, closing his hand and allowing the flame he held to wink out. With his other hand, he beckoned to a woman at his side.
At his command, she reached toward the flame. Hesitating. Fingers trembling. Odin could not blame her.
“It is in you already,” Loki said. “But you will not be able to harness it if you cannot accept that, at times, you will be burned. You have already suffered burns. You will suffer some few more while you learn to control this.”
The angle of her back concealed her face, but from the set of her shoulders, surely she must have turned grim. The woman reached into the flame and hissed, whimpering, as she jerked her singed hand back.
“You can do this,” Loki said. “If you wish to become the guides of your people, you must do this. You know what power Naefil and his heirs wield. Have you the strength to combat them?”
The woman clenched her fist a moment, then shoved her hand back into the flame. When she withdrew it, a tiny speck of fire leapt and danced around her fingers. A candle so faint a sigh could have blown it out. But it lived there, on her fingertips. A beginning.
“Fire is life,” Loki repeated, and then the others chanted it after him.
One by one, each of the other two had their own test. All suffered burns, but all came out, in the end, holding a fragile flame in their hands.
These weren’t Serks, and this place, this temple … Odin had seen structures like this. In the ruins of the Lofdar. These were Odin’s own ancestors, the heirs of Lofdi and predecessors to Loridi himself.
“You have taken the first steps now,” Loki said, “and there is no turning back. You must become the bulwark against the darkness, against the cold. You are the Firewalkers of Midgard.”
Midgard, yes. Though, in an earlier era, Prometheus had first given the Art of Fire to man, before the world was split into Midgard and Utgard by Mundilfari.
Odin waited in silence until Loki’s disciples had at last departed. Then he shifted, allowing himself to rise and crawl over to the fire pit where his future blood brother awaited him.
“I suspected it was you,” Loki said, fire glinting off his crystal blue eyes. “It’s been so long since I saw you …”
“You didn’t know I’d be here.”
Loki’s faint smile was his only answer.
“It’s … what, Loge, at the moment, right? Not Loki. Not Prometheus.”
“Huh. Well, that last one I haven’t used in many eras. Was that the last you saw me, from your perspective? I suspect it must have been.” Loge folded his hands atop h
is knees, staring at Odin as if trying to file all his thoughts away.
“What do you do, when you stare like that?” Odin asked.
Loge sighed. “Calculations of probability in accordance with information gathered over a long period of time, supplemented by prescient insights drawn from the flames.”
Odin folded his arms. “Is that all?”
Another of those damn smiles. “You and I, we are on constantly intersecting voyages through time and fate, in some ways quite alike. One of us, effectively damned to live a life forever, while the other is damned to live innumerable lives that so oft find themselves drawn in similar patterns.”
Audr cackled. Fate’s jaws are upon your throat … You will die … as you have died … over and over …
With a groan, Odin leaned forward and grabbed Loge’s wrist. “Once, we were brothers. In that vein I ask you now, give me what answers you can. I implore you, Loge. If I … If I finally make it back to my time, I don’t think the world has long left, and I have this terrible feeling we shall not have many more chances. If there remains aught you need to tell me, then tell me now. Tell me, without the riddles or obfuscation.”
For a moment, the man looked almost forlorn. “Where you see riddles, I see attempts to distill complex topics into comprehensible metaphors, or at least into the simplest possible explanations that do not lose crucial aspects of meaning, especially during lifetimes in which you lack certain academic foundations that might allow me to explain in other terms.”
Odin released the man’s wrist with a groan. Even his answers as to why he couldn’t give straight answers seemed convoluted. Worse, perhaps, because Odin could begin to understand them. “I understand now that Ragnarok will continue despite my efforts. I think … I think I even understand why you started this cycle. I guess … I guess I’m just left with one, terrible, lingering question, Loki. How do I protect those I love?”
“Are your loved ones not part of mankind, and, if they are, does not preserving mankind effectively serve those loved ones, as well?”
Odin glowered, now looking into the flame. “You mean that, even if it leads to their death, it’s better than the alternative? To let Nidhogg bring down Yggdrasil? That is what this is about, isn’t it?”
Loki’s tight smile made Odin want to squirm. Years back, he would have, uncomfortable in the man’s utter certainty about the twisting paths of urd.
An avalanche of urd, Odin had once thought it, these forces driving him ever toward a future he would not have chosen for himself. The web of urd held time together, yes, and perhaps he could not allow a paradox to creep in if doing so meant risking all he cared about it. But he’d already seen those he loved die. How could he allow this?
“Because there could be fates worse than death,” Loge said, apparently having read Odin’s hesitation off his features. A rather vexing talent, that one.
But … even if Odin could not break the cycle of destruction and creation, it did not mean he could not affect it in any way. Solve one problem, even if he could not solve them all. Was that possible? To fix one error and allow himself more freedom—even if in future incarnations—to later attend to others?
He opened his mouth to say so, but the temporal currents swept in and bowled him over, left him lying on the fire temple floor, gasping for air. Struggling to hold on to aught. Just a little more … A little more … a few more questions for Loki … A chance to say that, even if he could not forgive what the man had done, he could at least understand it now.
Loki leaned over him, grasped his wrists. He was speaking, but his voice was above the waters, distant and muffled. The man leaned closer, desperately speaking.
“… control this, brother! Not so different from how you have learned to harness your visions with the Sight. No stronger oracle … Because you can … Odin! Focus. Narrow your focus to a pinpoint, to what you need, in order to reach the …”
Focus.
He’d said that before. Focus on what he needed to get back to.
On what mattered most.
Freyja.
He needed Freyja. He had to reach her.
He pictured her in his mind, her soft cheeks, her golden hair. Her crooked smile. A torrent of waves rushed over him, tearing him apart, but Odin refused to let go of that picture in his mind. Refused to allow that darkness take him this time.
He was screaming, without doubt this time.
Screaming, then groaning, kneeling in snow. Hoarse. His throat hurt.
Outside, it was night, and the mist was thick, chilling, leaving no doubt as to what era he’d made his way to now.
Finally able to catch a painful breath, he pushed himself up. Wobbled as he gained his feet. Stumbled a few steps, shaking his head. Snow crunched beneath his heels, tugged on them, and made him feel even clumsier than the sudden change in location—and time—had already done. Yes, he was weak. Weary, too.
But had he made it back to his own time? Back to his love that would now so need him?
Back, to whatever small amount of time was left to them before the end he now knew he could not avert.
Give in …
No. He would not surrender to death and despair. He would fight Ragnarok, as he had fought it before. Yes, the world would end. Yes, few if any of mankind would survive this. But a new world would rise, and this time, this time, he swore man would never again have to suffer under Hel’s chilling shadow. He would destroy her, once and for all.
Death alone is real … We are all dead …
“Silence,” Odin grumbled under his breath. He had no interest in debating Audr’s nihilism or despondency.
He’d appeared inside an evergreen grove, the trees seeming whispering shadows beyond the mist, hidden and strange. Chanting carried on the wind, and Odin followed the sound of it, until he reached a hollow.
She sat there, around a tiny fire with three other women. Freyja’s skin did not glow, though her golden hair held a luster in the darkness. The chanting had stopped and now she spoke in Old Northern, talking to the women of the Otherworlds.
After a moment more, Freyja threw runes before her, and her students leaned in to peer at them.
Odin wanted to cry out to her, to embrace her. Or to bemoan urd for having placed him, once more, outside his own time. This was not the Freyja he knew. No, and those fur-clad women with strange patterns painted on their faces, they were not his people. Rather, these were the seidkonur—the first völvur, whom Freyja had trained in the Art some time after she’d helped Mundilfari raise the Midgard Wall.
In his desperation to find his lost love, Odin had pulled himself to her, but not to her as he needed her. Rather, some part of him must have been thinking still about the past, about the rise of pyromancers among the Lofdar, or the foundations of his era.
In silence, he crouched and watched their lesson. This was not for him, of course, and did him no good, and yet, he could not tear his gaze from her. Watching her as she was, long before his birth, a teacher, still filled with hope that she could aid the beleaguered mankind. Before they would take her gifts to the Old Kingdoms and give rise to nations of sorcerers who would invite far more dangerous, chaotic beings into the world than those jotunnar Freyja had so long fought to overcome.
Yes, Odin pitied her for her plight, as it would soon unfold. But the misdeeds of the past meant naught, really. He knew enough, now.
Knew what role was left to him. Knew what he must do.
Careful not to attract attention, Odin crawled away from the women’s circle, until he managed to find a sheltered tree within the grove. Beneath the evergreen, he folded his legs, closed his eye, and embraced the Sight.
Loge had promised him he could control his movements through time. The Norns had sparked something within Odin, his blood brother had told him, something that had allowed him to see the things he most needed to see. Well now, all that remained was the end.
And he would focus himself to get back there. Focus his Sight inward, first, then fi
nd the threads of the web of urd, and trace it back to the last days of this era. He would control this. He had to.
One last fight lay before him.
8
Reality was governed by necessity. To the undiscerning eye, the causal chains appeared to run linearly, the future predicated entirely upon the past. Loki, however, knew all too well that those chains formed not lines, but webs of infinite complexity. The web of urd, others called it, these chains of fate. It was enough to make a man like him feel helpless before the procession of history. Damned to know so many of the dark futures ahead of him and the darker still truths that underlay reality.
Of course, he’d always known he would one day lose Sigyn. And when she had begun to delve into the Art he’d looked on with horror as she wrought her own undoing and, with it, the downfall of all mankind.
Inevitable necessity, without the barest hint of mercy.
What did fate know of morality? The Norns could not have understood the subject had he spent centuries trying to explain it to them, any more than most men could begin to grasp the scope of their duties in holding together this fragile reality while outside forces gnawed on the fringes.
Bundled in furs, he trudged through the snows on the northern shore of Valland, where the Naglfar would soon land. Hel knew the Aesir’s great stronghold had become Idavollir, and she would not brook delays in sieging that place. She was intent, no doubt, on depriving Odin of all his allies, while wondering where the man had gone.
Loki could guess, of course. So little time remained to Odin, and Loki had always known his blood brother would sooner or later have to begin his last, farthest trek. The one that would serve to crystalize urd before his gaze, almost as much as these chains had become clear before Loki’s own.
It was effectively meaningless to ask where Odin was in the timeline, given his flitting between the past and future would not line up with aught in Loki’s perspective of the present. Time travel, even more than prescience, must naturally unravel absolute conceptions of now and replace them with relative ones.