The Songweaver's Vow

by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

  Fenrir nodded once. “This is acceptable surety to me.”

  Tyr nodded in return. Euthalia thought he was the most gloriously brave and stupid man she had ever seen.

  Tyr stepped close to the enormous wolf and extended his left arm.

  Fenrir lifted a lip. “The other.”

  Tyr took a breath and then raised his right arm to the wolf, who lowered his head to take his hand and forearm in his jaws. They disappeared behind the glistening teeth.

  “Bind him,” Tyr said, and his voice was nearly steady.

  The dwarfs began to wrap the fluid chain about the wolf. Fenrir’s eyes followed them over Tyr’s head and shoulders, watching them wrap Gleipnir about his forelegs, his shoulders, and then back to his flanks and rear legs. Fenrir growled at this, but the dwarfs continued, their hands trembling only slightly.

  Fenrir turned his head, his teeth dragging Tyr with him. His question was muffled by his fixed jaws and the forearm in his mouth, but the meaning was clear enough.

  “We are securing it now,” said Brokk, stepping back. “You will have more leverage against it.”

  Fenrir growled again and flexed his forelegs. Then he shifted his weight and tested his rear legs against the chain. Then he took a long breath through his bared teeth and flexed, pushing outward against all of Gleipnir all at once.

  Gleipnir held.

  Fenrir’s growl became a snarl, fierce and furious, and the dwarfs scattered with no pretense of fearlessness. Tyr set his free hand against Fenrir’s jaw, whether to brace himself or to attempt to pull his arm free, Euthalia was not sure. He stumbled back and forth with Fenrir’s massive head as the wolf flexed and twisted.

  The slim chain held.

  Fenrir’s eyes widened, white-rimmed, and then he paused and looked at the watching gods and dwarfs. The unspoken question hung heavy and suffocating in the air.

  Freyja laughed.

  Fenrir’s snarl became a roar of rage as his eyes narrowed and turned down to Tyr. Tyr looked back, desperate courage in his face. Fenrir’s jaws closed.

  Tyr cried out despite his courage as the bones all through his forearm and hand were crushed. Fenrir lashed his head from side to side, shaking Tyr as a dog shakes a rabbit, and Tyr was flung back and forth. He screamed as his broken body tore and gave way.

  Euthalia screamed with him and then shrank back with the others as Fenrir began to thrash in earnest. He reared up on his hind legs, straining against the chain winding about his torso, and then fell on his side, kicking against the loops. Nothing shifted, and tiny lines began to appear where the thin cable cut his shaggy hair. Fenrir snarled and snapped at the air.

  Euthalia felt tears on her cheeks. No. She needed him, needed his help, needed him in order to find and help Vidar, and he was going to be bound just as Loki was.

  Vidar.

  Desperation overwhelmed her and she started forward, her hands already reaching for the dark chain.

  “No!” Gefjun pulled her back as two enormous linked paws scythed the air. Fenrir bit at his own legs, blood flecking his teeth. Euthalia could not guess if it were Tyr’s blood or his own.

  “You can see from here,” Gefjun said, and Euthalia realized she had not guessed her intention. That was just as well; they would never let her finish, not when they finally had Fenrir as they wanted.

  The dwarfs were moving again, and she watched them gather about the thrashing wolf. When Fenrir twisted his head to snap at one of them, another leapt forward and slipped another chain through the binding on his forelegs. When Fenrir lunged at this one, another threw a chain over him to a dwarf on the far side.

  Fenrir realized what was happening and tried to roll to his feet, but the dwarfs were quick and coordinated. He got his bound legs beneath him and tried to stand, pulling stout dwarfs up with him, but the Æsir rushed to their aid, bracing themselves and using their strength against the trapped wolf.

  “Hurry!” shouted Ullr.

  Thor stepped forward and took one end of the dwarfs’ chain. He passed it through the hole in the great boulder and a dwarf fastened it again to itself.

  Euthalia shook her head, crying in earnest now.

  Thor reached beneath his shirt and took out a small hammer, which seemed to enlarge as he swung it high overhead and then drove it full-sized against the great boulder. The ground shuddered and earth heaved on all sides as the boulder sank into the ground.

  Thor struck it again and again, so that the boulder sank from view and the wolf was dragged across the ground to the pit. Euthalia seized Gefjun’s hand and squeezed it as the wolf was pushed into the pit after the boulder, snarling horribly. He twisted in the hole, his forelegs scraping together at the edge, and snapped viciously at his tormentors out of reach.

  Someone threw a sword. It tumbled end over end and flew into Fenrir’s open mouth, lodging at the rear with hilt against his tongue and point wedged against the roof of his mouth. Fenrir’s eyes widened and his snarl rose in pitch, but his snapping jaws stilled.

  “Well done!” cheered a host of voices. “That’s the best of gags and muzzles!”

  Freyr stepped forward, feigning bravery but flinching with each of the wolf’s movements, and finally he drew near enough to reach out and touch the dark muzzle. Fenrir roared but could not bite down, and Freyr turned to posture for the spectators.

  Euthalia’s knees went weak. Saliva ran from the wolf’s frozen jaws, like endless streams of serpent’s venom. She wrapped her arms about herself and cried, but her sobs were drowned in the general cheers and merriment of victory.

  There was another sound which did not fit, and it drew her like one lodestone to another. She followed it to the side, away from the jeering crowd, to where Tyr lay folded on the ground around what remained of his arm.

  Euthalia rushed to him and knelt, trying to make sense of the pulpy red and the too-pale bone and the blood pooling atop the marshy ground too saturated to receive it. She pushed away his remaining hand and pressed her pinafore hard over the mushy stump, making him cry out again.

  “It worked,” he breathed between moans, his breath fast and ragged. “It worked.”

  Euthalia looked over her shoulder at the crowd shouting and taunting the great wolf, brave in their cruelty now that he was helpless. “At what cost?” she asked. None of them seemed to remember Tyr or his gruesome sacrifice even as he lay bleeding behind them.

  Tyr’s eyes were closed. “Victory is everything.”

  Euthalia stared at him, pale from bleeding, and she remembered Vidar talking about fighting courageously for lost causes, proving valor not in victory but honorable combat. She turned and looked at the crowd surrounding the trapped wolf, throwing and slapping and jeering.

  No, the heroes of your tales are not heroes, they are bullies who use their strength against opponents who cannot hope to resist, cowards who attack only those they are certain to defeat without risk to themselves.

  Insight came blazing to her with nearly painful intensity. The great gods and goddesses, the mighty ones of Asgard, were corrupted. What they had been was not what they were, and they were too near to see it in themselves. It was not only Vidar who was cursed; they were all monsters and did not know it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  She’d said nothing.

  She had said nothing.

  She had watched as the people she relied upon to survive together lied to a searching son and sacrificed the hand of one of their own, to avoid facing the consequences of what they had done in murdering his half-brothers and binding his father.

  And yes, both father and son were monsters in their own way—but how could they be more monstrous than those who killed innocent children? Who promised safety in knowing lies? Who let a brave man have his arm torn away so that they did not have to explain themselves to the son seeking his missing father?

  And she had let it happen, just as she had done nothing to stop the murders of Nari and Narfi and the torture of Loki. And she had done nothing for the same r
eason then and now: she needed their good wishes to survive.

  Or she’d thought she did.

  She had asked for help in finding Vidar, and little had been given. She had traded her freedom for the promise of aid and had received none. She had been bound with false promises just as Fenrir had, and she had let it be done to him.

  She would break her own binding first.

  Freyja and the others did not return from the marshy prison until the sun had fallen too low to light their mockery. They would celebrate the next day, once they had rested for their feast. Euthalia felt as if her determination were humming within her, surely audible to the other thralls around her and to her mistress. But Freyja showed no sign of interest in Euthalia’s tense movements or frequent glances, an inattention which both enraged and relieved Euthalia.

  When the last lights were extinguished, Euthalia curled her knees to her chest and began counting. But her thoughts ran uncomfortably over one another, tangles of Vidar’s rich laugh and Freyja’s fallen promise and Odin half-blind to his own son and terror for what she was about to do, so instead she told herself the story of how Ariadne had aided Theseus when he was doomed to the Minotaur’s maze. She would tell this story one day to Vidar, she promised herself—her heart caught—later, she promised, when his curse was broken and when the tale of a man-monster could not offend him. One day, she would tell him.

  When she had finished the story, even to Theseus abandoning Ariadne in the night on the island of Naxos—I will tell this story to him one day when it can no longer hurt us—she got to her feet and stretched her hands into the dark.

  No light came into the hall, and the darkness was perfect. But Euthalia had served in this hall, had cleaned it and cared for it, and she knew it as well as anyone. Her eyes picked out the faint orange lines of the ash-banked embers deep in the hearth oven. They gave no illumination, but she knew by them the oven’s location and was able to orient herself.

  Freyja slept at the far end, in a sleeping nook well-padded with skins and furs. Sometimes she stayed here in Sessrúmnir, sometimes in her hall Folkvang, and Euthalia was glad she had chosen to bed here tonight. Euthalia crept toward the nook, breathing as softly as possible, fingertips questing urgently for any furniture or item which might jostle and betray her.

  It must have taken her an hour to reach Freyja’s sleeping place. She felt exhausted, as if she had walked much further than the length of a longhouse. But the greatest task lay before her still. She tucked her fingers into her armpits to warm them to flexibility, and then she slid back the panel to Freyja’s bed.

  She needed a light to find the brooch quickly, but something in her recoiled at the thought. Though her lighting of Vidar’s face had nothing to do with her theft of Freyja’s brooch, the feeling was too near. And if a light should wake Freyja…! No, she had to do this in the dark. She leaned closer and stretched out her fingers, moving them too gently to prod a sleeper to wake, waiting to feel the soft brush of wool or fur.

  A hand closed about her wrist.

  Euthalia jerked back, banging her head into the panel’s frame, but the grip was firm. Another hand seized her hair. “Who is it?”

  “Stop!” gasped Euthalia.

  Freyja hesitated, then laughed, squeezing her fingers against Euthalia’s scalp. “You! And what did you think you could do? Only one person has ever stolen the Brisingr from me, and he’s no danger to anyone now.”

  “You killed for it?”

  “What? No, girl, I coupled for it. But if you mean what happened to the thief, he’s shaking the earth with his agonies in Midgard.”

  Loki. Of course it had been Loki.

  But none of this helped Euthalia. “I wasn’t taking it to keep.” She winced against the grip on her head. “I don’t want it.”

  “Then why come for it?”

  “Because you want it.” Euthalia swallowed. “I would have held it as collateral for your half of our agreement.”

  She had surprised Freyja, she could feel it. “Tenacious little thing,” the goddess said at last. “And what makes you say I must be motivated by collateral?”

  “You have done nothing to find Vidar, and you—”

  “And already you are wrong,” interrupted Freyja. “I know exactly where he is.”

  “But—but then—why have you not said anything?”

  The cat-smile was audible in Freyja’s voice. “What was the wording of our agreement, merchant girl?”

  “That I would be your servant until you found Vidar and—”

  “No, no, oh, no. The agreement, little fishmonger, was that I would find Vidar, and you would be my servant until you and he were reconciled. I never agreed to tell you where to find him.”

  Euthalia stared into the dark, her thoughts spinning with this caustic betrayal. Odin had not been able to find Vidar, had said he was concealed by strong magic. Odin had also admitted that Freyja had magic to rival or even surpass his own. All this time, she had been keeping Vidar from Euthalia.

  She shrieked in fury and lunged at the prone goddess.

  Freyja caught her easily and slammed her with the hair-grip into the sliding panel. “No, little fishmonger, that is no way to conduct business. If you did not like the terms of the contract, you should not have agreed to them.”

  “You lied—you kept him—”

  “Hush, girl, and listen. Yes, I have hidden him, as he wished to be hidden. You wounded him greatly, you heartless bride, and I have been comforting him.”

  Fire burned through Euthalia’s blood, and she trembled with rage.

  “But I am not so heartless as you,” Freyja continued, her voice weightless in the dark. “I will be flexible with the terms of our agreement. Continue to serve me well, and I will tell you where to find him.”

  “You lie.”

  “Little fishmonger, I have no need to lie. Let me be perfectly clear: I will keep you as my thrall while I keep Vidar protected as he wishes. I will comfort him and win him, and when he loves me, I will let you see one another. And he will be shamed by his former love for a wretched thrall and will love me all the more, and you will still see him as a monster, and you will never, never be reconciled.” Her breath warmed Euthalia’s cheek. “See? I do not lie. I do not need to lie.”

  Euthalia felt alternately cold with horror and hot with rage. “And you think I will serve you in this?”

  “Of course you will.” Freyja’s cat-smile returned. “What choice do you have? I am the only one who knows where Vidar is, and I have promised to take you to him.”

  She was right. Even Odin could not find Vidar, not through Freyja’s charms, and so Euthalia had no chance of finding him herself. She would be Freyja’s slave until she reconciled with Vidar, and so she must serve Freyja in the hope of speaking with him once again and trying to rekindle his love, even when he had been poisoned against her.

  Freyja was right. Euthalia had no choice.

  Freyja laughed and released Euthalia. “You understand.” She slapped her hard across the face. “That’s for the idea of stealing my brooch. It’s not enough, but I’m tired and in bed, and I think I’ve pained you far worse than any more material blow I might give you.” She lay back upon the skins and furs. “Good night, girl.”

  Euthalia stumbled away from the sleeping nook and dropped to the floor, shaking. She grasped her knees to her chest and rocked, burying her face into her skirt to keep the sound from the monstrous woman lying just paces away.

  “Little Greek!”

  Euthalia clenched her fists.

  “Little Greek!” Freyja swept into the house, her hands wrapped in her gleaming hair. It was not the shining pure gold of Sif’s unnatural hair, but it was beautiful enough, especially beside Euthalia’s tangled mop, uncombed since the drama of the Midgard serpent.

  “Freyr is coming to walk with me. There is a great feast to celebrate the binding of the wolf,” Freyja said, “and I must look my best.” She picked up the comb of carved antler and smoothed her hair. �
�Would Vidar prefer my hair braided into a tail or hanging loose, I wonder?” She looked at Euthalia, lip curved in the faintest of cruel smiles. “What do you think?”

  Euthalia tightened her jaw. “I will not help you to win my husband.”

  “No? Even if I am your mistress and I command you?”

  “He is my husband. I love him, and you do not.”

  “Which means,” Freyja answered smoothly, “that I can enjoy him as you cannot.”

  Heat burned Euthalia’s skin, but she could not argue. Vidar’s curse made Freyja’s words true; the woman who loved him would never appreciate his physical aesthetic.

  “You are a serpent,” she breathed, clenching her hands into fists. “You slip around the fences and the walls and you take what is good and corrupt it.”

  “A serpent?” repeated Freyja. “Those are the words of jealousy, little Greek. They are not becoming for a philosopher or songweaver like you. Slip around walls? I enter openly, little Greek, and with eager invitation. I sleep where I want, with whom I want, and who are you, puny human, to judge me?” She pinned her hair in place and then turned arch eyes on Euthalia, scornful and proud. “Men desire me, men strive for me, and that is more than you can say.”

  “Men desire you,” snapped Euthalia, “and that is all you can say. Does that golden necklace you prize have power itself among the Æsir because you wanted it? Or isn’t it true instead that you consider yourself more powerful when you wear it? You do not love the necklace for itself, but for what it makes you in your possession of it.” She pointed at Freyja, not caring what beating the words would earn her if she could but once strike down the goddess with truth. “Songs are sung of the great deeds of great men who made great names for themselves, but of all the most desired women in history and legend, it is said only that men fought over them, and it is the men who are praised and admired for their winning. We have thousands upon thousands of stanzas on the men who fought for Helen of Troy, but what was ever written of her after their fighting? Not a word. Not one word.”