by Scott Oden
“Yes, but—”
Grimnir stopped circling. One sinewy hand rested on the hilt of his seax. Dísa heard the tick-tick-tick of his black-nailed finger tapping the pommel. “Here is the wager, little bird: you want me to fetch your precious Flóki? I’ll do it … but only if you can draw blood on me, first.”
“I drew blood on you yesterday,” she replied. Even so, her off hand drifted down toward the scabbard of her seax.
“That? That was luck,” Grimnir snarled. “Let’s see you do it for real, this time!”
“And what happens to Flóki if I kill you by accident?”
At this, Grimnir threw back his head and roared with laughter. He coughed and spluttered, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “What a tender little fool! I see why you like this wretch, Flóki—he’s as full of himself as you are. Do not worry about me. If after twelve centuries I can’t defend myself from some lickspittle whelp like you, I’m not fit to live.”
“So, one cut,” Dísa said. Subtly, she shifted her weight onto her lead foot. “One cut is your fee for helping my friend, my Jarl’s son? The son of a man who has served you without fail?”
“Draw blood and he is as good as back home, snug in his bed,” Grimnir replied. He held up a cautioning finger. “But you’d best not hold back, little bird. If I sense even a shred of hesitation, I’ll take that sticker from you—”
And before Grimnir could finish, Dísa attacked. With scabbard held steady by her off hand, she drew her seax in a single fluid motion and slashed up and out. The tip of the blade streaked for the point of Grimnir’s chin. He did not move his body; Grimnir merely swayed his head back out of reach as her blow swept by. Before she could recover, though, he stepped into her guard and punched her in the face.
Dísa went down, doubled over, her seax clattering from nerveless fingers. She clutched at her face. Hot blood ran from her already-broken nose—blood she choked on as she drew breath to scream. The young woman spat and cursed; blinded by the rush of tears, she scrabbled for her fallen seax.
Whereupon Grimnir kicked her in the ribs for good measure.
The blow of his booted foot caused a bloody froth to explode from her lungs; she gagged and writhed, gasping for breath.
Grimnir leaned over her. “I want my pound of flesh, little bird. I want every drop of blood, every ounce of sweat, every tear you shed. Show me your mettle, daughter of swine. You want your darling Flóki spared? Prove it! Come after me. Draw my blood, if you can.” And with that, Grimnir bounded over and caught up her knapsack. With a derisive chuckle, he loped off down the trail toward the longhouse.
Dísa lay there a moment. Then, gritting her teeth against a wave of nausea, she rolled to her knees. She fished her seax from the leaf mold, sheathed it, and struggled to her feet. The world swam. Her head felt like someone had struck her in the face with the flat of an axe. But she stayed upright. The young woman spat blood then scrubbed her mouth with the sleeve of her tunic.
And with a murderous light dancing in her eyes, Dísa followed in Grimnir’s wake.
7
Grimnir reached the top step leading to the longhouse—where they’d had their little altercation the night before last—even as Dísa emerged from the trees at the crest of the ridgeline. He grinned, watching as she slowly made her way down into the valley.
He sat. While he waited, Grimnir rooted through her knapsack. The little bird had nothing of any value to him. No coin hidden in among her spare tunics; no jewelry tucked into the coarse linen bag holding a loaf of bread and hard cheese; no ivory or silver hiding in a small purse that held her combs and bone hair pins, bronze needles and bobbins of thread. Only her woolen socks held promise. These Grimnir hefted, feeling their weight and hearing the slosh of liquid. He smacked his lips as he tugged down the wool to reveal two crockery bottles sealed with cork.
Grimnir worked the cork free and inhaled the musty reek of fermented honey. With a nod of his head, he toasted the girl as she reached the level of the bog and the corduroy of logs that led to the longhouse, then raised the bottle and drained off half its contents in three long swallows.
He grimaced. Their mead wasn’t what it used to be. Back when Gífr ruled this roost, after the battle in the Jutland fen that left Grimnir’s brother dead and the fortunes of his people broken, the Geats round about had more freedom to travel and to trade—not surrounded, as they were now, by the Nailed God’s wretched lapdogs. Geats ventured out into the world, back then, and brought home honey from the west of England, from the vales of the River Rhône, and from as far afield as Árheimar on the banks of the Dnieper. More than honey, Grimnir recalled, they also fetched home incense and silver, glittering gems and gold, steel and fine leather. And from it all, they made proper gifts to the Tangled God’s herald, Hrafnhaugr’s protector, who kept their homes safe and their women unspoiled while the men fared forth.
Those Geats of old, they knew how to brew a proper mead—and how to show reverence for their betters. But this lot? Grimnir hawked and spat. Nár! All this lot knew how to do was whine and moan. And what do they offer for his troubles? Draughts of this honeyed dog’s piss they called mead! Grimnir considered upending it, pouring the swill out where it might kill his weeds and poison the soil. But this was likely to be the best he’d get, and the son of Bálegyr was no wastrel. He tossed his head back and drained the bottle without letting it linger on his tongue.
Things changed, Grimnir reckoned as he cradled the now-empty bottle. Nothing now was as it had been. The Elder Days were a memory; less than a memory. They were the stuff of legend—heathen tales ripe for plunder at the hands of the Nailed God’s folk. Fools, the lot of them! Oh, they wanted their White Christ’s salvation! They panted for it like curs after a bitch in heat! But when it came time to teach their children the Nailed God’s traditions, to recount his deeds and the deeds of his sworn men, they came up empty-handed. Did that stop them? No, they just stole what they needed from the Elder Days, changed the names, and made saints from swine.
With a snarl, Grimnir shied the empty bottle down the steps as Dísa reached the bottom. The crockery struck, shattered, peppering her with dregs and shards. Her curses were as salty as any of his lads of old.
What will they steal from me to recast into this world of theirs? A monster they’ll make of me, no doubt; a beast of moor and fen. Good only for blunting the blade of some milk-blooded, cross-kissing hero. Faugh! Him they’ll make a saint and sing his death-song for a hundred generations to come.
But who will sing mine?
That question vexed the son of Bálegyr. Who would sing his deeds? Not old Gífr, his mother’s brother. He was four hundred years in the grave, slain fighting alongside a band of pagan Saxons against that Frankish dog-king, Karl Magnus. Grimnir made his death-song in a burned-out village at the mouth of the Elbe River. Its crescendo was the sacrifice of the local priest, a wiry man with weather-beaten features and a salt-brown beard; his throttled corpse was the last to go atop Gífr’s pyre. The sweet smoke of burned flesh drew the shades of the dead from dark Nástrond—that forsaken hall where the Nine Fathers of the kaunar schemed and plotted their revenge against the cursed Æsir. They heard Grimnir’s song and knew who it was that came among them.
But he was the last of his people. The last of the kaunar left to plague Miðgarðr. Who will sing mine? Étaín? No, the foundling he’d left in Èriu had long since gone on to her Nailed God’s halls. Would Halla summon the shades of his kin from Nástrond, or this wretched little scrap, here? He eyed Dísa, who was coming hard up the stairs, hot for his blood. Perhaps, Grimnir thought, rolling to his feet, perhaps I will sing my own song.
Grimnir came up in a fighting crouch; steel rasped against the iron throat of his scabbard as he aired the edge of his long-seax.
Dísa reached the level of the longhouse; she was out of breath, still bleeding from her twice-broken nose. Even so, she did not pause. The moment her foot touched the top step, the young woman launched herself at
Grimnir.
And Grimnir met her blade to blade.
Steel scraped and whispered, grinding together then ringing apart like murderous chimes. Dísa came on like a tempest—though she hesitated to let herself get caught wrong-footed within reach of Grimnir’s long arms. She danced in, hacked at his blind side or thrust for his belly, and danced back again.
Grimnir sneered. The little rat had played with a blade before; she knew enough to parry and recover, to not leave herself open, but she had no art. Fighting her was like fighting a willow branch in a gale. She was quick and unpredictable, but her blows lacked weight.
And she was slowing. Dísa made a wild cut across her body, fairly flinging the blade at him in hopes it might connect. Grimnir parried it hard. Their cross-guards met, and the impact all but jarred Dísa’s blade from her hand. She stumbled back, eyes wide.
“Fool!” he hissed. “Quit your cursed flailing. You’re not chopping wood! And stop all this dancing about. Move with purpose.” Grimnir swayed from side to side, each step bringing him closer. He tossed his seax from hand to hand; the movement drew Dísa’s gaze. The moment she took her eyes off him, Grimnir feinted—his posture and movement that of a deep thrust. Dísa leaped back, parrying nothing. Grimnir chuckled. “Make the wretch you’re about to kill see what isn’t there.”
Dísa nodded, brow crinkling. She drew breath …
And quick as a snake, she stabbed something on the ground and flung it up at Grimnir. He recoiled as a woolen sock bounced off his chest; a heartbeat later, he felt the tip of her seax skitter across his mail-clad belly.
Close. The little wretch almost had me.
Dísa exhaled, her breath wrapped around a sulphurous curse. Her eyes flickered over his frame, searching.
Almost.
Grimnir used that slight pause, that wavering loss of concentration she exhibited when she sought any trickle of blood her blows might have caused; he exploited it, and he did so without mercy.
Flipping his grip so that he led with the heavy blunt spine of his seax, Grimnir feinted left; Dísa moved her blade out of line with her center, to parry what she thought would be a high backhand slash. Instead, Grimnir batted her blade hand farther left with his open palm even as he struck her across her right temple, above her ear. There came an audible crack; Dísa gasped. She dropped her seax as her eyes rolled back into her skull. The young woman swayed and toppled to the left, face-first into the grassy sward before the longhouse porch. There she lay, still as death.
Grimnir sucked his teeth. “Soft-skulled little fool,” he muttered, sheathing his seax. Going to her side, he seized her by the arm and roughly flipped her onto her back. Dísa lay like a rag doll, eyes half-open and blood drooling from her hairline. He hadn’t hit her that hard, and then the thick mass of her hair had taken some of the impact, or so he thought; even still, he knew the sound of a broken skull when he heard one.
Grimnir straightened. He hawked and spat, then called over his shoulder, into the longhouse.
“Halla!”
He heard the shuffle of the troll-woman’s bare feet as she came to the door but did not emerge. Though hidden by a veil of clouds, the sun still had the power to turn her back to the stone from whence her kind came. Grimnir heard her pause as she peered out, then: “What have you done?”
Grimnir snorted. “She’s weak, old hag! Like all their kind. Weak and useless.”
Halla made a scornful hissing sound. “Bring her inside, and be quick about it.”
* * *
BENEATH THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE longhouse, down twenty-seven steps of damp stone carved from its earthen mound, lay a cellar. No storeroom, this; nor was it some ragged and lightless hole where a lifetime’s worth of detritus was left to molder, out of sight and out of mind. No, this cellar’s measurements were precise: eighteen slabs of rune-carved stone, each a foot wide, lined the length of its walls; nine more lined its width at either end. Beams of fire-hardened ash formed a vaulted ceiling, with heavy posts carved from the same wood at each corner. A single stone slab rested flat in the dirt floor of the cellar. All of this was Gífr’s handiwork—Gífr, who was the eldest son of Kjallandi and brother of Skríkja, Grimnir’s mother; Gífr, who had been wise in the ways of seers and of sorcerers.
Here was where Grimnir brought Dísa. He placed the girl on the stone slab. Her body trembled, wracked by convulsions, and the whites of her eyes showed through half-open lids. “Faugh!” he muttered. “I didn’t hit her that hard, I tell you.”
“You fool,” Halla snarled. Her tone brooked no argument. “Go. I will do what I can, and pray it will be enough. Go, I said!” The troll-woman sucked her teeth; she dismissed Grimnir with a terse wave as she hurried about, collecting the things she might need. She heard the cellar door snick shut, then went to Dísa’s side and sat with her knees folded under her. The blow to the girl’s temple had cracked her skull; healing such an injury was beyond Halla’s art. She would linger in this state and be dead by nightfall, unless …
Unless …
Around them, a constellation of deeply-cut runes, silver-wrought and glowing, provided an unearthly light. By this faint radiance, the troll-woman sang in a lilting voice:
“Under the eaves sat | an old woman of Myrkviðr,
Who nurtured there | the offspring of fruit and bole.”
And as she sang, she used a stone pestle to crush together ingredients in a skull-sized mortar. Hemp seed and amber, first …
“They nurtured her | in exchange,
Shielding her from | Sól’s hateful light.”
Then, waxy green verdigris scraped from a bronze ingot soaked in vinegar …
“Remember this compact, | landvættir of yore,
Who gave me succor | in the days gone by.”
And filings of iron from fiery black rocks the Gods themselves hurled down from the heavens …
“Nine worlds I know, | the nine in the tree
With mighty roots | beneath the mold.”
Finally, Halla poured a measure of raw, uncut wine from an ancient pottery jar, brought over land and sea from the vineyards of the Greeks, and stirred the concoction together with a wand of rune-carved ash.
“Hear me, spirit of this land, vættr of root and bole,” she said, raising the mortar over a patch of bare earth. “I seek your help. Come forth. Partake of the Wine of Gunnlöð and let us speak together.” Halla decanted half of the potion into the earth and waited.
At first, nothing happened. The mixture of wine and arcane sediments dampened the soil; it pooled in divots and ran from furrow to furrow until slowly the earth drank it in.
Halla watched. Her brows met in an impatient scowl. She poured out just a bit more …
There! A pale, wriggling thing broke through the mantle of soil—like a worm, only fibrous. It sought out the dampness, questing through the loam until it reached the wine-soaked earth. Another followed. Then another. Halla knew them for what they were: tree roots.
“Yes,” the troll-witch said. “Come forth, great vættr. Come and drink.”
Suddenly, the ground around the stone slab writhed. Hundreds of roots—ash and oak, willow and rowan—boiled up from the earth. They knit themselves together, twisting and creaking, cracking and rubbing, until an eerie shape took form … a homunculus, a manikin wrought in parody of the human form and suspended fetus-like in a bier of tangled roots. Halla recognized the suggestion of a spine, the braided rootlets that hinted at ribs, the knotted skull-like protuberance atop narrow shoulders. The cellar smelled of damp earth and rich sap as the vættr opened its hollow eyes.
When it spoke, its voice was the rustle of leaves:
“Why do you vex us | daughter of Járnviðja?
The land is cursed | that lies hard by;
And we shall ever | in deep Miðgarðr dwell,
Till the Dragon answers his master’s call.”
“I seek your help, great vættr,” Halla replied. She put the mortar down in the soil at the edge of the slab. �
�And the Wine of Gunnlöð is my gift to you. Will you hear me?”
Tendrils of root crawled up the sides of the mortar and into the slurry of wine and sediment. The homunculus creaked and swayed in its bier.
“Speak.”
“Through root and bole, stock and stone, you feel the shifting of the earth. You taste the wind on leaves beyond number and feel the rain on countless limbs. You know the time of the Dragon nears. This child of Man who lies here”—Halla placed Dísa’s limp hand on the earth, where tendrils of root caressed it—“is a Daughter of the Raven. The prophecy speaks of her. She is the Day who gives way to Night. But she is wounded, great vættr, wounded unto death. The healing of this hurt is beyond me. Can you save her?”
There was a long silence, punctuated by creaks and sighs, by the rustle of unseen branches. The homunculus rocked as though buffeted by a phantom wind. When it finally spoke, its rustling voice bore the crackle of autumn and impending frost.
“No measure of hurt | is beyond our ken,
Troll-born child of Myrkviðr;
Well we remember | the ancient compacts
Twixt spirits of bole and stone.
“But a carrion-reek | hangs about you
And its seed is hate eternal;
Too long have you dwelt | in the Wolf’s shadow,
Who soon must be brought to heel.”
Halla understood the vættr’s reluctance. Long and deep was the feud between Grimnir’s folk and the spirits of Miðgarðr; the skraelingar honored none of the ancient pacts, kept none of the ancient strictures. Men at least could plead ignorance. Not so the bastard sons of Loki.
“She is not part of that feud, great vættr,” Halla said. “She bears your kind no malice. What’s more: if she dies, we are all lost. The axes of the Cross-men will seek out every last root and bulb of the Elder World.”
“Bough will burn | and root will burn,
And even stones turn to ash;