by D. N. Hoxa
“We’re really not that special,” I pointed out. He could see that for himself. I began to look around for an exit, but the buildings lining the street didn’t give much away. I had no idea what lay behind them or how far the borders of Kall were.
“Of course you are. You’re from Midgard, Odin’s special creation.” He sounded proud of himself for whatever reason.
“I’ll have to disagree with you on that, Reddar. Midgardians are weak—much weaker than Diviners,” said Sim. My suspicion had been right—these guys were Diviners.
“I’d listen to him. He knows what he’s talking about.” I pointed at Sim. “He’s been with us for quite some time now.”
The pointers of my internal clock ticked loudly, filling my head. I never moved my eyes from Reddar’s face as he contemplated my words, looking between Sim and me, his brows slightly narrowed.
Then he and his friends laughed a throaty, terrifying laugh. “I’ll tell you this much—had you not been Midgardians, we would have surrendered you to the Timokeans in that river gladly.”
What the hell? I looked at Sim, hoping he’d have something to say. Millie’s eyes had already filled with tears. But Sim was just as pale as I probably was, and he had no idea what to say to Reddar, either.
“Odin the Terrible loved Midgardians!” shouted Reddar, as if he was hoping to be heard by everyone. And in fact, a few people had already gathered on the other side of Odin’s statue to see what was happening. By the looks of it, they were all Diviners. I tried for one last time to find an exit, somewhere we could hide and run from this awful place, but I came up empty-handed, and the audience around us was getting bigger and bigger.
“Who are we to question Him?” Reddar continued, raising his very sharp spear to the grey sky. “It is our privilege to keep his memory alive and to honor what he held dear. It is the greatest purpose in the universe to bring him back among us.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. What the hell was it with these people and bringing back dead gods? They were dead! Why couldn’t they just get over it already?
I reached for my bag with my left hand to grab some knives. Any damage I could cause was better than going down without a fight. Goddamn it. I thought we were finally catching a break in that river, but I should have known. Maybe it hadn’t been smart to turn down that Fossegrim. Maybe if I’d accepted his help, we wouldn’t be here right now, about to die at the hands of delusional fucking Diviners.
“Easy there, fellas,” I said, showing them two of my pathetic knives. The sight didn’t concern them, but it did amuse them. “We don’t want trouble, okay? We just want to get going.”
Slowly, Sim and Millie stepped closer to me, looking around at the crowd—people who would no doubt help Reddar against us if we so much as breathed the wrong way. Hope slipped from my fingers until I no longer felt it. We were really fucked.
“We don’t want trouble, either,” said Reddar, as if he was surprised by what I’d said. “We saved you, and now we offer you the privilege to serve The Allfather as He intended for you to serve Him. We offer you the greatest honor in the Nine Worlds right here in the Town of Kall.”
I forced myself to smile. “Thank you, Reddar. Really, we appreciate it, but there are far worthier people for whatever honor you want to give us.” I hopped on one leg to get a little closer to him, and the pain didn’t even register. All of Reddar’s friends came closer to him, and I remembered that I still had the knives in my hand, so I lowered my arms to my sides. “Listen to me, Reddar. We’re useless.” He must have seen the desperation in my eyes, but he just didn’t give a shit.
Looking offended, he raised his brow at me. “We saved you from the Timokeans,” he spit. “Do you know what they do to their prey?” His eyes narrowed as he leaned closer to me. “Do you?”
“We thank you for saving us but—” He didn’t let me finish.
“They cook them alive!” he shouted. “Their prey’s scream is their first serving. Their flesh, the second.”
Cold shivers washed down my back. “Jeez, thanks,” I muttered. I could have done without that image in my head. “But we still are worthless to you. You don’t hunt down innocents and eat them alive, do you?”
“There’s no reason to get mad here,” Sim said, raising his hands at Reddar. “We can work something out. We can pay you.”
“Pay me?” He sounded confused. I remembered the money I had in my bag—all the silver coins I’d beat people up for. All my savings could maybe save us this time.
“Yes, we have money. Lots of money.” I tried to reach for my bag. I didn’t know what lots of money meant to them, but all I had saved had to be enough.
Unfortunately for us, money wasn’t going to buy us our freedom this time. Reddar no longer looked confused—he only looked offended. He took a step back and waved his spear at us. “Take them.”
The words came straight out of my darkest nightmare.
Trying to run was out of the question. There were too many people around us, and I couldn’t take two steps without stopping to take a breath. So when Reddar’s friends grabbed me by my right arm, I couldn’t even jerk it away from the pain.
“This is a mistake,” I repeated, over and over again, but Reddar wouldn’t hear it. He led his friends, who were dragging us forward with the crowd following close behind, down the cobblestone street like he was a man on a mission. I was shaking with fear, my nerves almost fried while I tried to come up with a plan to avoid whatever it was these people had in store for us.
“If you can, grab Millie and run,” I said to Sim, who was being dragged right next to me. He, too, was looking for ways out, but we both were failing miserably.
When he looked at me, his wide, dark eyes were full of panic, and I realized that he didn’t know what waited for us, either. It only made my panic worse.
I almost didn’t see that Reddar had stopped when we reached another statue, this one twice the size of the first one I’d seen. This, too, was of Odin. The Allfather, the carving below it said, and this Odin’s expression was considerably more pissed off compared to the last.
But it was what we saw behind the statue that freaked us out.
“No,” I whispered when I took in the cages. All ten of them.
And the people inside them.
“No!”
“It is an honor to sacrifice oneself to The Allfather. Should he choose to come back to us through you”—Reddar stopped for a second to point his massive finger at my face—“your soul shall bathe in glory for the rest of eternity in Valhalla.”
He had a screw or three loose in his head, but now was not the time to tell him that. I tried to keep my cool though I was losing it and hearing Millie’s cries wasn’t helping.
“If it’s such a great honor, why not do it yourself? You don’t want us to bathe in glory when you could be the one, do you? Come on, Reddar. This is nonsense!”
“I’ve given myself over to Odin more than once, but I am no human,” he said through gritted teeth, and I could make out the envy in his eyes perfectly. He wanted to be me. Just peachy. Then he turned to his men, holding us by the arms. “Put them in.”
“No!” I shouted again, the panic squeezing my lungs as if I didn’t have enough trouble breathing already. “You’re out of your minds! Odin isn’t coming back!” Neither of them acknowledged me. “He’s dead, do you hear me? He isn’t coming back!”
But the Diviners didn’t care. Instead, the one holding me by the arm took my bag and all my weapons and threw them on the ground close to the statue. Others from the crowd that had followed us were already opening the first three cages and escorting the people inside them out. It didn’t escape my attention how thin they were and how they could barely move—like they hadn’t been fed in a very, very long time. Their clothes told the same story, and the smell…
“You asshole, let us go!” I shouted, fighting with all the energy I had left in my body against his hold, but it was no use. “Odin isn’t coming back! He’s
not coming back, you fool! He’s dead! Dead, dead, dead!”
Reddar’s face suddenly appeared in front of me. He muttered something that sounded a lot like ungrateful whore, but I didn’t have time to properly register the words before his fist hit me straight in the nose. This time, I didn’t slip slowly into unconsciousness. The darkness grabbed me as if it were death itself.
Seven
The cage wasn’t built like Sennan’s fighting cages in the basement of his bar. On the contrary—this one was made of wood and rope—rope I could easily cut through had I only had one knife with me. Just one. Which made me wonder, why had none of the ten people in those cages tried to escape? It was probably because of the Diviners standing guard—two of them, right next to Odin’s statue, their spears a perfectly visible threat to anyone who dared to oppose them.
“Welcome to Odin’s Square. May your souls be blessed,” someone called, and when I looked up, still dizzy from Reddar’s fist to my face, I saw the man in the cage right after Millie’s standing, looking at us.
And then the rest of the caged people did the same. They stood and watched us, and said the same thing as the first, one after the other, making it sound like an echo.
Maybe it wasn’t the guards who stopped these people from trying to escape.
Maybe they didn’t want to, and that scared me a thousand times more.
“Glory is upon us!” said the first guy again, and the others echoed the same after him. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing my mind to calm down. What did my father always say?
Act first, panic later.
Easier said than done, but he was right. Panic wasn’t going to help me, but a plan of action just might. Taking in deep breaths, I slowly opened my eyes again. All I needed to do was find a knot so I could untie the ropes holding the cage together, and we would be out of there in no time. To my left was Sim in the first cage, and to my right was Millie. They were both looking around at the townspeople, wide-eyed and panicked, while our audience analyzed us. I ignored them as best as I could. They weren’t going to help us.
“Hey,” I whispered, but Sim didn’t look at me until the third try. People were watching us so I tried to be as silent as possible, but our cages were about three feet apart. “Check the ropes.”
Sim raised his brows and looked down at the corners of his cage, as if he just realized where he was. Then, he smiled.
“It’s useless. The guards will see us,” he said, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he sounded amused.
I rolled my eyes. “Check the fucking ropes, dickhead. Do it while it’s still daylight. Find a weak spot or a knot and wait for nightfall.” The probability that others could hear us was high, but at that point I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“They’ll still be here at nightfall,” Sim said, that same smile on his face.
“Excuse me, but I have to ask, why are you smiling? Does anything about this situation seem funny to you?” He had to have mental issues. It was the only explanation that made sense.
“Plenty of things, actually. The fact that this whole town is full of Diviners who speak in Odin’s disastrous poetry lines. Then, there’s the statues, which have got to be the worst pieces of art I’ve ever seen,” said Sim. “And how can you not find funny that these people believe the gods will come back to us—in humans, no less?” At that, he laughed.
My God, he really did have mental issues.
I could pick a fight with him, but the only benefit of that would be that I’d feel slightly better. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time. Sim could be a fucking psycho all he liked—I was going to get to work.
Turning to Millie, I asked her to examine her cage as discreetly as she could, and then wait for nightfall. It didn’t matter that she was crying, shaking like it was minus degrees outside. She nodded her head and got to it because she knew that this couldn’t be it.
This was not how we died. This was not how I died. I survived three years worth of fights with people stronger and smarter than me, so this cage simply couldn’t be the end of me. We were going to make it to Mount Arkanda, and we were going to make the asshole dragon god take us back home.
Millie had been right all along. Until just a few days ago, I’d given up on trying to find my way back home.
Not anymore.
Night came running and I still hadn’t found a way to cut through the ropes or break the pieces of wood holding me captive. All the knots were outside, too far for my hands to reach, and there was no sharp object in sight. I was trying hard not to think about the smell and the dirty hay and the fact that nobody had asked us if we needed to use the bathroom yet. That meant that the people in the cages either shat themselves, or they did their business right there on the cage’s bed.
Every time I wanted to throw my guts out, which happened once every two minutes, I refocused my mind on the mission—getting out of there. The audience had disappeared and except for three guards by Odin’s statue, not a soul was in sight. The strange thing was, the pain in my arm and leg had lessened considerably. Whatever these people had put on my wounds, it was healing me faster than anything I’d ever seen.
Night had fallen for quite some time now, but I hadn’t lost hope yet. Sim had given up on smiling stupidly, and he was looking for a weak spot, too. Unfortunately, neither he nor Millie had had any luck, but we were still trying.
“What do you think she meant?” Millie whispered long after complete silence had fallen in the Town of Kall. The houses were far enough away from us that their lights didn’t reach us. The only light close to us was coming from the five torches placed in a perfect circle around the statue.
“Who?” I asked, following the very dirty rope in the third line, which was thinner than the rest I’d analyzed so far. God, I could use a break right about now.
“That woman at the stadium.” I froze in place. “She said there was blood on you. What did she mean?”
I definitely didn’t need that reminder.
“She was blind, remember? She was probably mentally ill, too.” I’d checked a thousand times, and there wasn’t a drop of blood on me. Well, then, because now, my clothes were soaked in it, no matter that I’d taken that swim on the river.
“No, she wasn’t,” said Sim from my other side. “She just saw blood on you.” He wouldn’t even meet my eyes when he said this. The orange light of the torches made him look like a freaking ghost, which didn’t help.
“She was blind!” I repeated. “She couldn’t see anything on me.” How hard was that to understand?
“But she seemed so sure,” Millie said, looking in the distance. “Maybe she knew what was coming. Maybe she knew we’d run into the shifters.”
Shivers washed over my back. Nobody could predict the future, but now that Millie had put the idea in my head, I wondered…
“Maybe,” Sim said. “Or maybe she meant something else.”
I’d have loved to punch him if we weren’t caged. Taking in a deep breath, I cleared my throat because I didn’t want to get pissed off now. “What does that mean?” I asked like a civilized person would.
“It means whatever it means, beast. I guess now we’ll never know because there is no way out of this place, away from these Diviners.”
I slammed my palm on the wood of the cage, unable to help myself. “Yes, there is. We’ll find a way out even if it takes us days.”
“But we don’t have days,” said Millie. “These people are starving.” She waved at the other cages. “They won’t feed us. They won’t even give us water, and I really need to pee!” I could see the tears in her eyes from my cage and could hear the fear in her shaking voice.
“Millie, it’s okay. We’ll get out of here, you hear me? We’ll make it back home, you’ll see.”
Why did my words sound so empty?
“How?” she breathed. “How are we going to do that, Morgan?” I opened my mouth, but I had no answer. I didn’t want to lie to her like I kept lying to myself. “My God, we’re going to die in h
ere!”
Sim laughed. “God? Take a look around you. There is no god here. There never will be.”
“Shut up,” I spit, trying to drown out the sound of my heartbeat in my ears. I was panicking, and it was exactly what I needed to avoid.
“It must be a human trait to lie to oneself,” Sim said with a shrug. The asshole. “If there was a god out there somewhere, these people wouldn’t need to cage us to bring them back, don’t you think?” He smiled. “Common sense.”
Millie cried harder.
“You’re right—there are no gods here because you people are monsters. Who knows? Maybe your gods caused Ragnarok by killing themselves, and it’s pretty obvious why they’d do that. But we’re not you!” I spit, then turned to Millie. “We’re not them, Millie.”
“No, you’re weaker,” Sim said. Finally, he’d dropped the smile and was beginning to look a little pissed off. “Smaller. Magicless. Pathetic.”
“If you’re so strong and big and full of magic, why don’t you get us out of here then? Come on, do something,” I urged him.
But he shook his head. “There’s nothing that can be done here, even if we break out of these cages.” His eyes moved to the guards.
Damn him, he was right. The guards and everybody else in Kall was a Diviner, and they were better than us—and Sim—in every way. We couldn’t outrun them, not without at least a head start like the shifters had given us. And that river had been pure luck—a miracle.
We were going to need another one of those to get out of here, and I didn’t believe in two miracles within the same day. Maybe that’s why there were tears in my eyes, sliding down my cheeks even before I realized it.
And just as I was thinking that, something ahead moved.
My breath caught in my throat, my eyes on the guards, who were looking behind them. They seemed to be just as surprised as us. The one in the middle stepped back and to the side of the giant statue.