Twilight of the Gods

by Scott Oden

  5

  Though Hrafnhaugr was only a little more than two miles distant, across the dark waters of Skærvík, Dísa had neither wings nor a boat. She followed the shoreline of the bay, along game trails and through tangled copses of spruce and birch. It was a six-mile journey that should have taken her only a couple of hours despite the rocky and forested terrain; instead, it took the better part of the day.

  Excitement had given way to a bone-aching weariness. She stopped by a small stream to clean the blood from her face and to drink handfuls of water—the Mjöð Grimnir forced into her had left her throat raw; she stopped again as spasms of overexertion racked her limbs. Dísa found a thicket near the trail where deer bedded down, the bracken underfoot warm and dry despite the rain. She limped into the nest. And with the cloak Halla had given her wrapped around her like a swaddling cloth, Dísa drifted off to sleep …

  … a figure waits. It bears the shape of a man, though hunched and as twisted as the staff he leans upon; he is clad in a voluminous cloak with a slouch hat pulled low. A single malevolent eye gleams from beneath the brim.

  “Niðing,” the stranger says in a voice deeper than Vänern’s heart. “I am coming. Tell your folk to choose, and choose well. No man can serve two masters.”

  And with a sound like the rattle of immense bones, the stranger’s cloak is borne up as by a hot breath of wind. There is only darkness beneath. And that darkness grows and spreads, becoming monstrous wings that blot out the burning sky …

  Dísa woke with a gasp. Her seax was in her hand, its trembling blade leveled at nothing. Outside, the day had waned into late afternoon. Water dripped from leaves, and she could hear the soft splash of waves striking the rocky shore of Skærvík. No darkness loomed over her; no figure in a slouch hat with a single burning eye. Slowly, Dísa relaxed. Prophetic dreams were not unheard of among the Daughters of the Raven, and some—like Kolgríma—even sought out herbs and barks that, when burned, would bring on such a state. For Dísa, though, the experience was unique. She wondered what it meant. Was it truly as dire a warning as it seemed? Or did it owe something to the influence of the Hooded One? With more questions than answers, she sheathed her seax and made ready to leave.

  Dísa clambered out of her warm nest. The rain had given way to a fine mist, like a drifting fog, and the air was even colder than it had been. Cursing, she caught up her basket and trudged on her way. Before the hour was up, she knew she was nearing home. She passed a handful of outlying steadings—solitary longhouses surrounded by fallow fields and wattle hurdles woven from hazel branches that served as fences for livestock. Smoke drifted from chimney holes to join the icy mist. Dísa walked on, an unaccountable sense of unease stealing over her …

  … in the wreckage of Hrafnhaugr, pale and bloody-limbed Geats intertwine with bearded Danes and dark-eyed Swedes, their ragged surcoats emblazoned with the Nailed God’s cross.

  Dísa lengthened her stride, suddenly desperate. The game trails she followed fed into a rutted track that was the only road to Hrafnhaugr, wide enough to accommodate log wains though overgrown now, and rarely traveled. As far as Dísa knew no prince or king laid claim to this corner of Geatland, or if they did they left it well enough alone. A few Norsemen had tried, of course, as had a handful of enterprising Swedes over the years. One even made it as far as the inlet called the Horn, at the mouth of the Hveðrungr River, where he laid the foundations for a fortified town. Since the Geats claimed the Horn as their southern border this incursion could not stand. Flóki told the tale best, for he was quick-witted and blessed with a skald’s sense of the dramatic. He would act out the parts of the aggrieved Geats, led by an old chief called Hugleikr, who rose up, burned the Swede’s ill-fated ring-fort to the ground, and sent its master back in pieces. That—according to Flóki—was the Hooded One’s doing. “Though the Norse and their Dane allies still raid into Geatland and prey upon our folk,” he would say, nodding respectfully to Sigrún and Dísa in remembrance of the latter’s mother, “no cursed Swede has dared step foot over the Horn since.”

  And Dísa hoped that would hold true for many years to come.

  Approaching from its landward side, one came upon Hrafnhaugr almost without warning. The road plunged into a thickly tangled belt of ash and willow, and emerged at the lip of that deep ravine, the Scar—hewn through the ages by the endless struggle of the landvættir against the vatnavættir who lived in its depths, the spirits of the earth against the spirits of the water. Twenty yards at its widest, the Scar made an island of Hrafnhaugr. A bridge of thick ropes and planks traversed the Scar; at its edge, Dísa touched the base of a spirit pole her ancestors had erected, its upper carvings cracked and weathered, its lower carvings worn smooth from countless hands. The echo of water surging and lapping in the Scar’s lightless deeps sounded like ghostly laughter—Kolgríma’s laughter, she was sure—as she crossed the bridge. But on the far side the ground underfoot grew steep, the trees vanished, and there it was—limned against a cloud-racked sky: a rocky bluff of shale and black limestone that commanded the throat of Skærvík, crowned by a fortress with earthen walls reinforced by a timber palisade.

  Thrice the road zigzagged before reaching the gates of Hrafnhaugr, heavy oaken timbers banded in rust-spotted iron set between a pair of thirty-foot-high square wooden towers. Dísa could not recall a day or night when the Jarl had ordered the gates closed, and this evening was no exception. They stood open a dozen feet, wide enough to allow a wagon to pass; above them, on the parapet that ran between the thatch-roofed towers, a single sentry leaned on his spear, wrapped in a thick sealskin cloak with its hood pulled forward so that only the beaked nose of his helmet and his bushy beard showed. He watched her, his weight shifting as he moved his spear from off hand to blade hand. At first Dísa thought it might be Hrútr, her cousin’s bedmate, but in the twilight she could barely discern the silver in his beard—she knew, then, that it was Askr, Hrútr’s kinsman.

  Dísa drew her hood back and raised a hand in greeting.

  “God’s teeth, girl!” he bellowed in reply, leaning out over the serrated wooden bulwark. “We thought you were done for!”

  “I will be if I don’t get out of this blasted weather,” she replied. “Do you have your horn, Askr?” The man nodded, holding up a silver-bound horn on a fine leather baldric. “Wake them up, then. It is time to send Kolgríma on her way. She’s lingered in this world for too long.”

  Dísa passed beneath the gate as Askr sounded the horn. Its deep-throated roar echoed among the scores of buildings. Hrafnhaugr spread upward across three shallow terraces. The first, level with the gates, held the clustered houses and workshops of the hundred-odd families who called the village home. All had wooden walls on foundations of local stone with steeply pitched roofs of thatch or shingle; deep carvings decorated their corner posts, and the beams that crossed to form the peaks of their roofs bore snarling wolves, dragons, sharp-beaked ravens, and trolls—every manner of beast from the legends of their folk.

  Dísa threaded between the houses on streets cobbled with smooth lake stone and ascended the rock-cut steps that led to the second terrace. Here, the ground was open, dominated by an ancient upright stone—the Raven Stone, black and glossy and carved with age-worn runes. A pyre lay prepared before the Raven Stone, topped by a linen-swaddled corpse. Kolgríma. Dísa did not know much about her duties, but she knew this: only a priestess of the Hooded One could light the fire that would consume her predecessor’s mortal remains.

  Beyond, the longhouse called Gautheimr, the Geat-home, occupied the smaller third terrace. Though larger than the houses below, it followed the same pattern, with a steep-pitched roof of age-darkened thatch and corner posts that curled like dragons; beyond its intricately carved doors, countless thegns and skjaldmeyjar had passed their days, plotting and scheming, drinking and brawling. Light spilled out now, as the doors burst open. A second blast from Askr’s horn brought two-score men and women out onto the terrace, all armed and hastily ar
mored. Dísa saw Jarl Hreðel flanked by his rawboned son, Flóki; the two Bjorns were there—Bjorn Hvítr, the White, whose hair and beard were like snow despite him being in his prime, and Bjorn Svarti, the Black, whose face and hair were as saturnine as Grimnir’s—as well as the Manx-Geat, Íomhar, and Kjartan Sigurdsson—snake-eyed Kjartan—who spent more time among the Norse reavers than among his own people. She saw the gentle face of Berkano, who claimed kinship with the birch and the rowan; beside her, her younger sister, Laufeya, stern of mouth and quiet—both sisters had fled the land of the Otter-Geats after the Norse razed their village. The Daughters of the Raven came last, twenty-three in number, led by Auða and Sigrún, her eyes burning with a fey light.

  Upon seeing Dísa beside the Raven Stone, the assembled men and women fell silent. Others joined them from the houses of the first terrace, until it seemed every last man, woman, and child was jammed cheek by jowl around the black stone. Someone kindled torches, and by their orange light shadows danced. Dísa heard her name muttered time and again. Finally, Jarl Hreðel raised a hand for silence before directing his gaze to Sigrún.

  “Dísa Dagrúnsdottir!” she said after a moment. “The Fates sent you forth from us. They charged you with finding your rightful place in the shadow of the Hooded One. Do you return to us now, in favor or in disgrace?”

  Dísa put the basket down, straightened, and squared her shoulders—a hint of defiance in her stance. “I return in favor,” she replied. “And I claim what is mine by right, as chosen priestess of the Hooded One.”

  “Let the Gods bear witness.” Sigrún nodded to Auða, who fetched the torch that Bjorn Hvítr held aloft and carried it to Dísa. The older woman crinkled her brow at the state of Dísa’s face as she handed the flaming brand over. In answer to her cousin’s unspoken question, Dísa gave a barely perceptible shrug. She turned to face the pyre, its oil-soaked logs beaded with moisture; the body that lay atop it looked so small, almost childlike. “Kolgríma Guðrúnardottir!” she said. “What was yours in life, I, Dísa Dagrúnsdottir, now claim as my own! What debts you owed are now my own! What was owed to you now is owed to me!” The torch guttered as she held it aloft. “Hear me, Tangled One, O cunning-wise Loki! Bear witness, O Ymir, sire of giants and lord of the frost! I free Kolgríma Guðrúnardottir from the prison of her flesh and send her unto you! She is Daughter of the Raven, priestess of the Hooded One … let her name be spoken from the walls of Ásgarðr to the fences of Helheimr!”

  Dísa thrust her torch into the heart of the pyre. The wood, though saturated with oil, was slow to light. It crackled and popped, blue flames dancing in its depths. Dísa glanced about, unsure of what to do. Auða came to her rescue. She snatched a torch from one of the onlookers and carried it to the pyre. “Kolgríma Guðrúnardottir!” she said, adding more flame to the pyre.

  Still it guttered and spat.

  It was Flóki who fetched more torches, and who passed them to the Daughters of the Raven, while Black Bjorn brought forth a brazier of coals from Gautheimr. Then, one by one, the women with their raven tattoos stepped forward, kindled their torches in the coals, and carried them to the pyre. Each one added her voice to the growing conflagration. “Kolgríma Guðrúnardottir!”

  Sigrún came last.

  The pyre was a proper blaze now, as flames greedily consumed the wood and its earthly burden. Smoke rose into the nighted sky. Sigrún kindled her torch. She walked slowly to the edge of the inferno. Jags of light reflected off the pommel of her sword, off the silver wire of its hilt and the silver chasings adorning its scabbard, off the dull rings of the mail she wore; the silver beads woven through her gray locks gave back the fire’s ruddy glow as she stepped up and tossed her torch into the heart of the pyre.

  “Kolgríma Guðrúnardottir,” she said, her voice pitched low and full of grief. “I will see you soon, my sister.” Sigrún spoke something else, then, too low for others to catch. Even Dísa, who stood close at hand, could not be certain what it was she said, as the words were lost to an explosion of crackling resin. But when she looked up again, Sigrún transfixed Dísa with her dark and feral stare—a gaze known to make even the most seasoned warriors tremble. Dísa felt her scorn, though she knew not where it came from; she felt her rage, her jealousy, and her disgust. And Dísa knew for certain, then, something she had always guessed: given the opportunity, Sigrún would go back to the hour of her birth and plunge the mewling thing from her daughter’s womb into a bucket of water until it ceased to move.

  But Dísa Dagrúnsdottir was no longer a mewling thing. She was no longer a motherless orphan; no longer a spare mouth to feed. The Gods had singled her out. The cloak of the Hooded One’s favor stoked the fire in her belly. And the weight of the seax he had given her lent steel to her spine. She met Sigrún’s gaze, her blue eyes as bright and hard as ice.

  “Tell me,” Dísa said as Sigrún leaned close to her. “Tell me, woman to woman, why do you hate me so?”

  Sigrún’s smile was the smile of a predator. She clasped her granddaughter’s hand hard enough to crush bone and peered into the bruised depths of her eyes. Dísa did not flinch; instead, she conjured Grimnir’s snarl and curled her lips in the same manner.

  “You are no woman,” Sigrún replied. “Not yet. Still a foolish child. Enjoy this night, for it was well-earned, and your words well-spoken. Tomorrow, your real trial begins.” The old woman pulled Dísa into an embrace that was without warmth; as the village looked on, she kissed her granddaughter’s cheek.

  “Let none say I did not offer you a chance,” Dísa hissed. “I see you for what you are, hag, and rest assured he sees you, too.”

  Sigrún broke their embrace, her face an unreadable mask. “I hope he does,” she replied. “After all I’ve done for him, all I’ve sacrificed for him … I hope the Hooded One sees me as clearly as his master, the Tangled God, does.”

  And with that, Sigrún turned and walked away. Dísa lost sight of her grandmother as a swell of villagers converged on the Raven Stone, leaving the young woman to puzzle over the meaning behind her words.

  * * *

  THE BALANCE OF THE EVENING passed in a blur. There were songs and toasts, words of congratulations and questions. Dísa recalled being raised on the broad shoulders of Bjorn Hvítr, so she might place the jar Halla had given her in its niche atop the Raven Stone; she remembered handing over the bundle of parchments to Jarl Hreðel, who was already deep in his cups. The sharp pain of Auða setting her broken nose contrasted with the mellow, numbing taste of Berkano’s bark-infused mead. Exhaustion left her snappish, though even she grew silent as a long-simmering argument between Jarl Hreðel and Flóki erupted into blows. The two Bjorns hauled father and son apart; Hreðel went back to drinking among his sworn men while Flóki left with Eirik Viðarrson and his brother, Ulff.

  “What was that about?” Dísa said. She sat with Auða and Hrútr, watching as sure-handed Askr tattooed the kenaz rune on the shoulder of his daughter, Káta, who would take her rightful place among the Daughters of the Raven, bringing their number back up to twenty-four. She cursed and drank horn after horn of mead, despite being a year younger than Dísa. “I’ve never heard Hreðel or Flóki say a cross word to the other.”

  It was Hrútr who answered. He took a long draught of ale, wiped the foam from his mustache with the forearm of his tunic. “Boy’s itching to go off and earn his beard,” he said. “And who can blame him? He’s old enough, by Ymir.”

  Askr paused, wiping blood from the ivory needle he was using to prick the design in his daughter’s skin before smearing it with a paste of black ash, verdigris, and oak gall.

  “Soon, it will not matter,” he said, adding to his daughter: “Sit still, girl. It’s almost done.”

  Dísa frowned. “Why not?”

  “Fimbulvetr.”

  “Here he goes,” Hrútr said, shaking his head. Auða smiled.

  Fimbulvetr, Dísa knew, was the endless winter that would herald the coming of Ragnarök and the breaking of the
world. “You think this is the Great Winter?”

  Askr paused; he gestured with the point of his ink-stained needle. “Laugh all you want, brother, but this is the third year with no spring thaw. The end is coming, I tell you! A time of fire and blood! The Wolf-age, the poets called it—brothers shall fight and fell each other, ere the world ends.” Even Káta looked askance at her father.

  Hrútr and Auða glanced at one another, and both shrugged. “Does it matter?” Auða said. “The Norns, those weird sisters who weave the fates of all, have measured and cut our lives. Every good or ill the Gods saddle us with, the Norns draw these things upon the loom at our birth. Why worry? If it is our fate to witness the Twilight of the Gods, no hand-wringing or hymn-singing can change it.”

  “Besides,” Hrútr said. “She’d know, wouldn’t she?”

  Dísa glanced up; saw all four of them looking at her. “Would I?”

  “Surely the Hooded One would reveal such a thing to you,” Auða said.

  Dísa frowned. Something Halla had said bubbled up from the soup of her memory, something that fit with a deeper recollection—that of a hard voice, crooning softly …

  The endless winter is drawing to a close. The Wolf whose name is Mockery nips at the heels of Sól, who guides the Chariot of the Sun! Soon, the Serpent will writhe! The Dragon—

  Dísa closed her eyes.

  “Hard blows Gjallarhorn | over Miðgarðr’s shores,

  And Jörmungandr | twists in mighty wrath;

  Yggðrasil trembles | to its Fate-washed roots;

  The dread Wolf howls | and slips its chains.

  “Now from the East, | over the sea-waves,

  Naglfari comes, | the Ship of the Dead;

  And from the South, | the jötunn are loosed;