by Matt Larkin
There, on the far bank, the woman was pressed up against a tree, eyes closed, arms above her head as a blond man thrust into her with ever increasing speed. And she was Freyja.
Odin’s stomach dropped out from under him, unable to tear his gaze away from the sight of his beloved, writhing in ecstasy as someone else pounded into her.
Fuck. What was he doing? If this was another time, of course she’d had other lovers before him. She’d lived thousands of years. Shit, the Aesir used to worship her as the Goddess of Sex, among other things. Clearly, she’d enjoyed a good many—
The man flung his head around wildly, groaning in release, giving Odin a bare glimpse of his face …
No.
No.
Frey?
Gaping in horror, Odin stumbled away. Blinked. Tried desperately to believe he had not just seen his beloved fucking her twin brother.
Hand to his mouth—not sure whether to scream or retch—Odin spun, stumbling randomly through the woods of Vanaheim.
18
Beside him, Flosshilde clucked her tongue at the slaughter of another village, this one in the south of Reidgotaland. Varulf pack had swept in, killed everyone. Torn them to pieces, fed on some. From the look of it, maybe had their way with the women first, some of them. Hard to be sure, with the bodies ripped apart, though.
Like a wind of chaos had swept down through the whole valley.
Flosshilde, she mostly stuck to the rivers, streams. Consulted with other nixes from time to time, just to be sure they were on the right track. Seemed like Fenrir headed for the Myrkvidr. Rumor had always placed varulfur in there, so maybe he was recruiting more of his kind.
Tyr shook his head in disgust at the scene all around. It wasn’t the first village they’d seen thus. Always, too late.
And here he was, working with Flosshilde. Once, he’d let himself half-trust her. Forget what she was.
A vaettr. A thing from the Otherworlds.
Well, no forgetting that now.
Not with her inside that new host. He’d brought her a girl—fifteen winters, he figured—young and scared. Not half so scared as when Flosshilde had grabbed her and drowned her. Dying, he supposed she’d made a deal or just got so weak the nix could take her. Or maybe Tyr didn’t even want to know how it worked.
Just, he’d seen Flosshilde’s old, graying body floating downstream. Empty.
And the nix had complained she’d liked her blonde host more than this redhead. Then stripped the girl naked in front of him. Asked him to fuck her.
He’d refused. Hard as that was, what with her rubbing the red fuzz between her legs.
Vaettr, they liked to discomfit mortals. Play with their minds so they didn’t know up from down anymore. She was like that. Sensual and gut-wrenching all at once, and Tyr hated her.
Needed her, too.
Alone, he might never succeed. True to her word, she’d reclaimed Mistilteinn and restored the runeblade to Tyr. Then helped him track Fenrir.
Always too late, though. Always like this.
Macabre charnel and desolation and guilt, for not doing more, faster.
“We move for the Myrkvidr now.”
“I should consult with my brothers and sisters to be certain.”
Tyr shook his head. “No. I’m fair certain the wolf heads for the dark wood.” And not just for recruiting. No, it connected Hunaland, and formed the border of Valland. And maybe Fenrir made for Valland, where Idavollir and the last of the Aesir lay.
Wolf had wanted Odin back then. He’d be going for the king again. And if he hadn’t found the king, well, he’d be going for those who knew where to look.
“For the Myrkvidr,” he repeated.
Flosshilde shrugged. “I have to follow the streams, regardless, but I’ll find one to take me there and meet you in the marshlands if need be. I dare not cross openly into the Gandvik. Rán holds sway there.”
Just as well. Tyr would prefer solitude to having to look at her. Having to look at the girl he’d all but murdered. Maybe worse than murdered. Her fear, it was his crime. Back when Flosshilde had her old host, Tyr hadn’t considered it. Hadn’t thought about what it meant, considering her an ally.
But having seen the host before, having damned her to this …
Well, maybe Tyr deserved to rot behind the gates of Hel. Deserved it many times over.
He did not make the Myrkvidr. Long before that, the ground began to tremble. Tremors that grew so violent, Tyr dropped into a crouch, one knee down in the snows just to steady himself.
Only, it kept getting worse.
Like the whole mountain range thought to rip itself apart. Whole world, maybe, caught in its death throes.
Tyr tried to rise.
Then a mountain detonated, out to the north. Flames so bright they burned away the mist in an instant. Lava flung so high, even without the sun, Tyr could see it. Glowing hot, mixed with dark stone and ash from the depths below. For that bare instant, he could make out the great plumes of black smoke, too. Before the glow dimmed.
Before darkness settled in once more.
Then another blast, farther out from the first. Took a moment to even hear it, strange as that sounded. Maybe since his head still rang from the first explosion.
More tremors shook the land, sending Tyr skidding lower on the slope.
The mountain range cracked, split, and revealed a river of lava, bright, rushing through a far-off valley.
Tyr scrambled to his feet—or tried, the damn ground kept shaking, sending him banging shins and knees—and tried to press on south. Only, ahead, the valley split, like palms pressed together then slid apart. A chasm opened, jets of steam shooting out from it.
Couldn’t make much out, save the hiss of gasses. Snows melting in an instant.
No way he’d press on in that direction, it seemed.
Desperate now, he turned west. Meant doubling back a bit, moving too close to that lava river, too. But since Reidgotaland seemed poised to come apart at the seams, he didn’t have much choice.
The volcanoes sparked wildfires that spread through the woodlands in waves. Sometimes, the flames jumped to villages, what few Fenrir had missed or spared. Tyr had seen people running from the collapse of their homes, fleeing out into the mists they’d feared their whole lives.
Screaming, begging for succor. Begging even vaettir. Men and women, offering tribute. Some promising their very souls, if something would cross over and spare them.
Maybe they’d find something willing to deal.
If so, Tyr would pity them all the more. And he himself couldn’t do a damn thing to help refugees.
He had a mission, though, one that would make things better for some folk, whether they knew it or not. Killing Fenrir.
Sure, the lava had swept away whole villages, too. Tyr didn’t see it as much different, getting buried in ash and burned to death, or getting torn apart and eaten by varulfur. Still dead, either way.
One difference, though.
He could ram Mistilteinn straight through Fenrir’s chest. Didn’t figure stabbing a volcano would do much good.
So he pushed on, even if the quakes and flames and chasms had cut him off.
He’d find a way to put an end to that varulf.
He swore it.
19
The armies of the Sons of Muspel didn’t fight like those from Serkland. Thor had spent decades, on and off, fighting against the Serks. They had order, discipline. Here, in Reidgotaland, they called their foes by the same name—Sons—but they weren’t the same. More like a swarm of insects, sweeping over the world.
Burning everything.
They burned what few crops and livestock had survived the Fimbulvinter.
They burned the forests.
They burned people.
Great, smoldering piles of people, the reek of them sickly sweet, ashes carried on the wind, thick as the mist.
From a hilltop, he watched the Sons, eldjotunnar standing a full head taller than the
rest, but, all of them, seeming to shimmer with heat as they marauded through the land. It should have been welcome, another force engaging the Deathless with such fervor.
Oh, they were happy to immolate the Miklagardians. The draugar, too.
The native Reidgotalanders, as well, and therein lay the problem.
Hel’s frost jotunnar and human minions had sieged Vermund’s town, but that was better than this.
Thor watched as a sea of flame-bearing marauders crashed into the shield walls of Miklagardian legions. Watched, and hardly knew which side to aid, if either. The Sons came at the Deathless fuckers with such ferocity, Thor almost admired them. They came, arms aflame, flinging their own bodies like weapons. Kicking shields with enough force to send men—even men bracing one another—tumbling backward. They’d leap bodily over the wall to land, shrieking, flinging fire and death all around, and hardly seem to care when the Deathless finally cut them down.
Oh, they’d have made fine allies. Had even—effectively—broken the siege trapping Thor’s people.
Trouble was, these Sons were fucking mist-mad savages that seemed more intent to engulf all Midgard in fire than to actually win wars.
Wave after wave of flaming, snarling, vaettr-possessed trollfuckers. A pyre for the world.
Hour after hour, he watched the armies … ugh, what was that word? Annihilate! They annihilated each other. Thor couldn’t well get scouts into the north, to see how the draugar fared. A strange thought, that his hopes now lay in the Sons causing as much damage to Hel’s ranks as they caused to Thor’s.
These fires, they didn’t burn out.
More and more possessed men came. Not dark-skinned like Serks. No, these were North Realmers, given over to the power of Muspelheim.
Thor could feel its power, rumbling beneath the earth. Angry.
And they just kept coming. He could guess why. Those they burned, those who would’ve died, some of them, let those things inside their bodies rather than surrender to death. So the fires spread themselves.
Mjölnir had drank in the souls of some such foes. Powerful souls, emboldened by the flames in their breasts. But there were too many of them. Always too many.
The fighting had gone poorly. That went without saying, considering Thor now sat amid a band of refugees, huddled in the Myrkvidr. Went without saying, true, but he felt like fucking saying it anyway.
The Deathless legions had come, mostly in ships, landing on the southern shores of Reidgotaland all while invading the islands. They held Sjaelland for now, but Thor didn’t expect that to last.
Not with what had come next.
Even while the draugar began conquering everything to the north and the vampire-worshipping death-fuckers taking over in the south, of a sudden the mountains decided to have a shitting contest. Damn things started spewing smoke and lava every which way imaginable.
Bad enough, that.
Then, well then, the fucking Sons of Muspel showed up. Which might have almost been welcome, had they been on Thor’s side. Only, instead, they started attacking everyone.
They burned draugar. They burned Deathless soldiers. They burned vampires. They burned aught and anyone they came across. For all Thor knew, they probably sat around burning each other when they had no other victims.
What did you get when you took a bunch of possessed, fire-crazy trollfuckers? You got chaos and ashes, that’s what. He’d tried. Oh, he’d fucking tried to stem their advance. Thor had rained death and destruction among the Sons and the Deathless alike.
It hadn’t changed aught.
And somewhere along the way, the Sons of Muspel had joined up with eldjotunnar—where the fuck had fire jotunnar been hiding anyway?—just to set some more stuff on fire.
So Thor had spent the better part of the past fortnight smiting so many men, undead, and jotunnar he’d lost count. So many his arm hurt, and Gefjon had kindly offered to massage it for him, so they sat, watching the camp in the dark, cold wood.
“I’m tired of smiting,” he said, breaking the silence. “I never thought I’d say that, but I’m actually tired of smiting. Do you have any idea how many skulls I had to crack to get tired of it? Because I don’t even fucking know. That’s like … like the ocean saying it’s tired of being wet.”
Gefjon snorted. “Your way with analogies is rather stunning.”
“Sure. Thanks. I mean, me, sick of breaking bones and killing trollfuckers. Did you ever think we’d get here?”
“I’m not really certain you’re interested in my opinion.”
Thor ignored her foolery. It was best that way. “Of course you didn’t think it. Mjölnir’s already crackling with lightning again. No.” He held up his other hand to forestall any questions. “No, I’ll tell you what that means. It means I’ve fed the hammer more souls since we left Asgard than I did in decades before that. Even the damn hammer has to be full by now. If it had a mouth, I bet it would complain about being overfed.”
“Uh, huh.”
Now he fixed with her a level glare. “Put some pressure on those muscles, all right? That’s my smiting arm, and I imagine I’ll be needing that again soon.”
“I imagine so.”
Thor huffed, shaking his head. He couldn’t see how things could get any worse.
“Well,” Frey said, leaning against a twisted trunk, “I’m afraid things have grown direr to the south.”
With Vermund’s lands lost to the approaching draugar—or possibly now in the hands of the Sons, Thor couldn’t say which—he’d sent Frey to scout if there were gaps in the Deathless lines. Gaps big enough to lead a kingdom’s worth of refugees through.
“No gaps?”
“Oh.” Frey cleared his throat. “Yes. There are gaps now. Perhaps woken by the quakes, but it appears as if a horde of …” He cleared his throat again.
“All right, man,” Thor chided. “Out with it already. The forest is dark and cold and wet, and those three things don’t go well together.
“A small army of linnorms have overrun Hunaland and perhaps Valland. They’ve devastated the Deathless lines and even managed to disrupt the Sons of Muspel. I cannot be certain, but rumor claims there’s seven of the dragons.”
Thor snorted. “Not really in the mood for jests. Especially stupid jests.”
Frey glanced to Nehalennia, who stood nearby with Gefjon. They’d all agreed to keep King Vermund and his men out of the strategy talks for fear of further disheartening the almost broken refugees.
Every so often, parties of hunters vanished into the Myrkvidr, and now men had begun carrying on about the curse of the dark forest. Claiming retreating in here was a mistake. Thor, had he been patient, might have pointed out that draugar and vampires and fucking fire jotunnar were outside the forest all trying to kill pretty much everything.
Since Thor—when he was honest with himself—knew he had the patience of a boy of three winters with a spider down his trousers and his hair lit on fire, he’d decided to leave such explanations to Gefjon, who had a way of talking that didn’t involve Thor’s fist connecting with anyone’s face.
“I don’t think he speaks in jest,” Nehalennia said. “Something has shifted in the world. Something ancient, violent. It had volcanoes erupting all over, even in places where none should have been. Little surprise if it woke dragons slumbering in deep places. Vanir legend claimed nine great linnorms dwelt in the deep places, under land or under sea. Some believed them all the spawn of Jörmungandr.”
Thor folded his arms over his chest. “Seven linnorms running around. That’s more than all the linnorms I’ve heard tale of combined, and now all loose. Fuck, not so long ago, I’d have given one of my stones for the chance to slay a dragon. And I never saw one. Now you’re telling me there’s seven in one land.”
“Eh,” Frey said. “Maybe two lands. Not that much remains of either. Wastelands, I suspect. It’s like none of the forces even know what they’re fighting for anymore. Just, everywhere you turn, battle and death. Someone has dr
iven these armies to fits of madness.”
“And thrown in dragons,” Gefjon pointed out. “Sure to cut down on the chaos.”
“We cannot take the refugees into a land dominated by rampaging linnorms,” Frey said. Maybe the Vanr thought Thor couldn’t figure out something that fucking obvious.
Thor shrugged. “So then we have to get to slaying them. I’ll head southwest, toward Valland, and Frey’ll go southeast. We’ll meet in the middle.”
Frey groaned. “How would we possibly meet in the middle if we head in opposite—”
“Look!” Thor said before the Vanr could further underestimate his wits. “I’m not going to explain every bit of strategy to you. I’ve got a splitting headache, there are spots swimming before my eyes, and I need to slay a fucking dragon. In fact, it seems like I need to slay several. And so do you, so get to it. Gefjon and Nehalennia will stay with the refugees to keep them safe and organized. Last thing we need is for them to go tromping off back into the armies of Muspelheim.”
Frey massaged his temples like he was the one with a damn whetstone digging into his brain. Finally, he sighed. “So be it, Odinson.”
Dragons!
Damn, but Thor had always wanted to kill a dragon. What tales skalds would tell of such a feat. Fucking Sigurd Sigmundson had to go and kill the only dragon Thor had ever heard of, denying him the chance. Well, only dragon excepting the one Father had slain, but Thor couldn’t much begrudge him that one, considering Thor hadn’t finished teething at the time.
Right. If skalds called the man Sigurd Fafnirsbane for killing one dragon, what would they tell of Thor when he killed a half dozen of the beasts? Something good, that’s what. Something really … uh … good.