by Terry Graves
He finished his cup and left it violently on the table. People like Alarr or Loðinn had no thralls waiting to refill their drinks. That was a luxury reserved for better men, the ones seated at the table next to the dais. He glanced at them. They were laughing merrily and unaware of anybody else.
“Are you dreaming about joining the best ones, Nose-bleeder?” said Loðinn, misinterpreting his glance.
“Perhaps you would like to fight me, Loðinn Loðinsson,” grunted a deep voice behind him. “I wonder if you will get out of it with just a broken nose.”
Loðinn raised his head, and found himself looking directly at Ufi’s ugly scarred face. Somehow, he had slipped by and approached their table unnoticed. “I never said such a thing.”
“Of course you didn’t. You talk and talk, and not once do you say anything worth listening to.”
For the first time in his life, Loðinn seemed to have run out of words. Alarr could not believe it. Why was the old man defending him after that had happened? Perhaps he simply despised braggers, and Loðinn was the biggest, loudest bragger of all.
Alarr was about to say something when the doors of the hall burst open and a man ran toward the dais. His horse neighed and bounced behind him outside, as if he had just jumped off it.
“The ships!” he yelled when he reached Hafgrim, but loud enough so everybody could hear. “The whole fleet has burned!”
There was uproar in the hall, and all the men stood up and ran outside. But there was nothing to see there. The night was clear, the sky full of stars. They were too far from Heiðirsalr and the fire would probably be extinguished by now.
“It seems that your wish is granted,” said Havard, leaning behind Alarr. His voice was filled with gloom. “I just hope you were right about your war; for if not, men will start quarrelling among themselves in no time and things will get worse than you think.”
Alarr, too, hoped for this war more than Havard could imagine. Because if he was not mistaken, the burning of the fleet could only have been Solfrid’s idea.
THIRTY-FOUR
The raven-god was looking at Gerda. She turned aside, feeling a soreness in her throat. Her stomach had been hurting badly since the day before. Something in the water, perhaps, in the ice they melted in the small saucepan. She felt weak and feeble and for the first time she skipped her morning exercises and the sword training. “You have to get used to the weight,” Alarr had said, so she had been trying time after time until the sword felt right in her hands.
But there was something else, a more profound discomfort every time the raven fixed its eyes on her. To be spied by a god… that was something she was never going to get used to, not in a million seasons.
“He has taken an interest in you,” said Sigrún. She held her own sword between her legs while she sharpened it, and did not look at her.
“Why?”
“Because he claims he knows what’s going to happen to me, but he does not have a clue about you.”
“What’s going to happen to you?”
“He won’t tell me, and I won’t let him tell me. That’s only fair.”
Gerda thought about this for a while. She believed in fate but also had faith in the fact that things would turn out fine in the end, somehow. “How do you speak with him?”
“I know the language of birds,” Sigrún said, “because I drank the blood of the lindworm once, right from its severed neck.”
It was the beginning of another story, but that morning Gerda was not in the mood to listen to it, so she did not insist. A little further away Runa waited by herself, wrapped in her cloak. Her eyes shone under a scowl while she gazed at the horizon.
From where she was, Gerda could almost see Franang Falls. She had looked at her father’s map many times in the last couple of days. If distances were accurately represented, the walking they covered in a day would be about the width of her thumb on the parchment. Franang Falls was a dot to the east, merely three thumbs away. So she could see it, but it was still far and the terrain was irregular. There were no roads and everything was covered in a thick layer of snow, up to their knees. And to reach it, they would have to wade across the Hrith. So it would not be three days’ marching; it would be four, or five. Then, they would have to go back west. It did not matter how you looked at it, it was a detour. If they followed Sigrún, they would lose several days.
Runa had made up her mind, though. “This is something I have to do,” she had stated in her monotone voice. They had argued about it for a long time and Gerda had threatened her with leaving, at which Runa had simply shrugged, as if she did not mind. “I understand if you do. You need to go after Kai,” she had said. She seemed to have forgotten that the purpose of the journey had been to rescue the boy in the first place. But there was something unfathomable in her expression, and Gerda did not insist. She could not understand her motives, but she did not want to leave her friend alone with Sigrún. She did not trust her in the least, and was convinced she was putting thoughts in Runa’s mind.
The raven cawed and the sound brought her back. Sigrún finished sharpening her sword and threw her the grinding stone. Gerda caught it midair.
“Where is the other one?” she asked, referring to Muninn, the twin raven.
“Somewhere else, I assume,” said Sigrún. “It would not be wise having two sets of eyes and have them both pointing at the same place, don’t you think?”
“So somewhere across Miðgarð…”
“…Óðin is lying and dreaming of ravens. But perhaps not in Miðgarð. Perhaps he has sought refuge in some other realm. Who knows?”
Gerda remembered the stories that were told about the father of gods. Sometimes he was depicted as wise and fair, but he was not always shown in an appealing light. He was also bellicose and untrustworthy, and there were plenty of tales of booze, murder, and rape. She shuddered.
“Why are you willing to go against Óðin?”
“Because I believe I’m right. And because if I’m wrong, then nothing else matters. I don’t believe in fate, remember? If everything has been decided, Loki will be freed no matter what. It does not make the slightest difference if I am the one who unfetters him or if it is someone else.”
Sigrún looked at Runa as if she was expecting something from her, either confirmation or disagreement, but the girl seemed mesmerized, as if in a trance. Her eyes were haggard, her lips pursed. Every scar of pure white on her pale face was clearly visible under the fading sun. Sigrún frowned, showing concern, but then she shook her head and stood up. She walked to the raven and the raven flapped its wings twice and flew onto her shoulder and perched there.
“We should keep going,” Gerda said. She got up as well and put her sword in its scabbard, but her friend remained immutable. “Runa,” she insisted, “it’s time to go.”
Runa raised her head and looked at her. Gerda saw emptiness in her eyes, no sclerae or irises or pupils, but a void, as if they were reflecting Ginnungagap, the primordial nothingness before creation. But it didn’t last. The irises came back, of a sad bright gray, and Runa nodded.
They walked for most of the afternoon, traversing another forest the same as the ones they had left behind, a tangled mess of gnarled trees. The forest was washed in light, but the foliage was dark, with branches bare and long like giant spider-legs. There was a scent of pine saplings and rotten leaves.
Sigrún opened the march, Runa closed it with the horse, and the raven flew above their heads. Weather had been fair for the last couple of days. Only the nights had been unbearable and Gerda had already gotten used to them. But at some point a quirky fog descended from the mountains and curled up around their legs as if it had a life of its own, and it now made the shapes blurry and brought strange sounds from far away.
“Gerda…” Runa’s voice behind her had the consistency of a dream.
Gerda turned around. Runa was approaching her through a veil of mist, still hooded, mysterious and hieratic like a völva sorceress, pulling the rein
s of the horse.
Gerda had convinced herself that the black void she had seen before was only the shadow of the scowl projecting over her face, that her pupils could not possibly appear or disappear. It had been a trick of her mind, and nothing else.
But now she was not so sure.
“I want to apologize to you,” said Runa.
“What for?”
There could be a million reasons, but she was no longer keen to hear an excuse. She had tried to reach out to her so many times and hit a wall instead that she had grown tired and had given up. They were going to Franang Falls, after all.
“For what has happened,” she said, simply. Her face was a mask devoid of expression and, for the first time in many years, Gerda saw her friend in all her ugliness, with the side of the face contorted and covered in wrinkles and scars, and the lip twisted oddly in a perpetual grimace. She was dreadful, she thought, and did not feel bad for thinking such thing. Since Runa had turned her back, Gerda had felt alone, the loneliest person in the world. The thought of Kai was the only thing that kept her going, and Runa had forced her to abandon him to pursue some delusion of a self-proclaiming goddess about stopping the Ragnarök.
He has forgotten you…
Her stomach burned and she felt a sudden anger that she did not know she had in her.
“For what has happened, that is all you have to say?”
“For what has happened,” Runa repeated, monotonously, “and for what has not happened yet. But is about to.”
Gerda stared blankly at her, not knowing what she meant. Then Sigrún’s voice came from afar. “There is something wrong about this fog,” she said. But Gerda saw Runa’s lips moving without making any sound, mimicking Sigrún’s words perfectly at the same time as she was pronouncing them. How could it be? How could Runa know what Sigrún was about to say?
The raven croaked from the heights. Gerda raised her head. The fog was so thick she could barely see two ells in front of her. But she was close enough to capture a quick glint in the fog, to notice the knife in Runa’s hand. She thought she was going to attack her, but the knife hissed in the air and found the horse’s hindquarters. The beast let out a horrible scream and bolted, then it galloped away.
Gerda jumped out of its way and rolled on the snow, avoiding the animal’s hooves.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. She stood up quickly, but Runa had vanished, together with Sigrún and the horse.
There were no discernable shapes in her surroundings; no sounds, not even the distant rattling of the horse or its nervous neighing. The world around her was colorless, pure white. She groped about slowly, then stopped and just stood for a while, squinting her eyes.
A stench followed, as if the fog had turned into smoke from burning hair and bone. It got into her nostrils and made her want to puke. Gerda started to hear noises again, as if things were rushing among the thickets. She tugged at her sword, but there was no time.
A gust of wind cut through the mist and she saw them.
She was surrounded, so she raised her hands, showing her palms, and remained still. They formed a circle around her, fifteen or twenty of them.
Trolls.
They were of every size and shape, but all seemed chunks of mountain and forest, boulders and trees sculpted by time and worn down into vaguely human forms. They were dressed in the guise of warriors, with pieces of armor and leather clothes, and carried spears, axes, and hammers, but no shields. There were wolves among them too, or things that resembled wolves but had been spawned by something far darker and more vicious, the breed of Sköll and Hati. They were called vargs.
The trolls had brought the fog with them. It retreated in their presence and went back to the margins, but kept roaming around, sticking to the bare trees like a cobweb. There was no trace of Runa or Sigrún. They were gone.
“I told you I heard something,” said one of them. He waddled toward Gerda to have a better look. His tail dragged, leaving a sinuous mark in the snow.
“You said a horse, Gríma,” replied another. “This is no horse.”
“Bring it forth,” said the troll chieftain. He had a sort of crown of feathers and the most impressive war paints. The trolls pushed Gerda and kicked her and slapped her until she ended up at his feet. The chieftain had a burlap sack in his hands, soaking wet with whatever was oozing inside. He leaned forward until his long sharp nose was barely an inch away from her face. He smelled like pig dung and sweat and corpses mashed together and left to rot. His skin was dark and his face was covered with moldy patches, but his eyes shone like those of a magpie and Gerda remembered that not all trolls were stupid.
She wanted to hold his gaze, but couldn’t.
“This is no horse… This is a girl,” the chieftain stated. There was a gasp of repulsion and the trolls shivered and stepped back, as if girls were something offensive, disgusting, and perhaps also a bit scary. Even the wolves snarled.
“The wizard’s daughter?” suggested one.
The chieftain scratched his chin with a long, black fingernail. He opened the burlap sack and took out a human head from inside, grabbing it by the gray hair and holding it in front of her. It was still dripping blood, black as tar. “Is this your father?” he asked her. Gerda averted her eyes from the horrible thing and shook her head. “Are you sure? You haven’t looked enough. It’s all musty and bloated now.”
“Yes,” she muttered, and the words came out between her gritted teeth. Tears were seeping, falling down her cheeks, a primal reaction to the stench and the fear.
“She’s lying,” hissed one of the others. “Like the wizard, who said he didn’t know a thing about the stone-heart.”
The chieftain put the head back in the sack. Gerda wished for something to happen, for Sigrún to come to the rescue, for Runa to loose an arrow from the nearby trees, for Óðin to somehow return to human shape and kill these hideous creatures. But nothing happened. She was by herself.
“Are you christened?” The question caught her by surprise. She blinked. “Baptized?” said the thing, pronouncing every syllable with intention, his big rough tongue clicking with every sound. “I’ve heard that Christians cannot lie.”
“Smells like a Christian to me,” said another troll with a body covered in fur. His nostrils opened and closed as he sniffed the cold air around her. He had a hairless face, flat like a cat’s, with an unkempt mane that fell wild over his shoulders. Sticks and old leaves were caught in his hair. His eyes were small and beady. He was the one they had called Gríma and now he grimaced appropriately, as if he had found something disgusting on her. “What’s the thing on your neck? A cross?”
“A hammer,” Gerda replied. She took out the Mjölnir iron amulet and showed it to them, a present from Alarr, who knows how many years ago. It was a coarse, poor thing, two bars welded together and slightly combed, with no decorations or patterns on its surface. He had done it when he had being left alone in the forge for the first time; one for Gerda, one for him, and the other two for Runa and Kai. He had improved a lot since then.
“It looks like a cross,” Gríma insisted, “but it don’t matter, right? We can eat heathen too.”
Even if they had recognized the shape, the trolls would probably not have liked the hammer anyway. It was an amulet for humans, but for them it would only evoke the image of a heated Thor crushing their skulls.
The chieftain ordered the trolls to search her, and she closed her eyes. Her heart pounded loudly in her ears while half a dozen hands with spidery fingers went all over her body, touching her with long sharp fingernails, almost greedily. They unfastened her belt to take her sword, and also took the fish knife she used for oaths, and even the hammer that hung around her neck and looked like a cross. They peered into her sack, shared the scarce food that was inside, and dressed with her spare clothes, putting them on top of their rags and furs and pieces of mail armor.
However, they did not find the crown. That was surprising, and perhaps it was not there a
nymore, but Gerda suspected it had shrunk again, and if that was the case, the creatures missed it.
Still, she did not think much of it at the time. The trolls returned the empty sack to her, tied her hands and feet with sturdy rope, then grabbed her by the arms and legs and dragged her carelessly along the snow. Her body was hit by bumps and rocks. Tree roots went through her clothes and scraped her skin. Meanwhile, the trolls talked among themselves about things too odd and horrible to recall.
Gerda gazed back once again to the wilderness, but the thickets were dark and quiet. She wanted to scream, but fear had stolen her breath.
THIRTY-FIVE
Logi caused the landslide with his feet.
It was not the first time. The wall was almost vertical and the rest were hanging below him. They had been using ropes and pegs for the last two days, and thrusting with hand-axes to break the rock and create grips when there were none. Sometimes they took turns to climb to avoid these accidents, but their strength was diminishing. They had been sleeping among the rocks, huddled together and with no roof over their heads, while the winter spat on them night after night, and they were exhausted.
Logi yelled, and they barely had time to lie flat against the wall before the boulders came down, smashing everything in their way. They landed hundreds of feet below with a low rumbling sound. Hrímnirm closed his eyes and imagined the noise his ribs would make after that fall.
When they resumed the climb, he concluded that this was no different than a battle. They were fighting Thrym, and Thrym was fighting back. And, as in battle, there would be no glory without peril, no honor without risks. The mountain had tried to devour them at every single chance.
But she had failed.
Hrímnirm gathered his strength one final time and reached the end of the wall. He pulled the rope to help the others climb. Then he fell and rolled on the snow, breathing loudly. His arms and legs ached from the effort, but they had managed to get to the top of the mountain. Thrymheim towered in front of them, a colossal mass of dark rock, large as a citadel. For Hrímnirm, every waking thought had been directed towards it, but now he found the stronghold broken and ruinous and covered in snow, a shadow of its former glory. He had been there once before, many years ago, but it had been in the dead of night and Hrímnirm was only another soldier in the army and Thrymheim had been almost invisible to him, a peak in the mountain barely distinguishable as a fortress.