Sword of Secrets (Heroes of Asgard Book 1)

by S. M. Schmitz

  I heard Tyr snort but when I looked up at him, he kept his eyes closed as if he were still sleeping. Coward.

  But Keira had no intention of letting me sit with Hunter, so I stayed sandwiched between the beast of a man with one hand and the unbelievably gorgeous woman who was deceptively strong. And every time I looked away from the damn iPad, Keira poked me in the ribs until I started reading again. I really didn’t like this woman.

  By the time the pilot announced we were about to descend over Reykjavik, I’d at least finished their book of absurd myths. I’d even read the explanations in the back that tried to make sense out of the nonsense I’d just read. Keira was the only one besides me who hadn’t slept on the flight and as I turned the iPad off and disconnected the external battery so Tyr could package it all back up, Keira finally spoke to me again.

  “What did you think of the last story?” she asked.

  “The Armageddon thing? Sounds familiar actually.” And to continue my trend of annoying the hell out of her, I eyed her seriously and asked, “Did you look up if kittens could drown?”

  Her bright blue eyes studied me just as seriously. “Yes, and one drowns every time a man is being an obnoxious asshole.”

  Even if I were buying her I’m-thousands-of-years-old and some sort of divine creature story, there was no way she was beating me at being a smartass. So I shook my head and told her, “If that were true, there wouldn’t be any kittens left on the planet.”

  The seatbelt light flashed on and the pilot told us we were beginning our descent into Reykjavik now. I tried to look past Keira to see out the window but it was still dark outside. I looked down at my watch. I knew they were taking us to Hell. “It’s past 8:00 a.m. Where is the sun?” I asked her.

  For the record, I’m really not this stupid. I just tend to have a problem with being kidnapped along with my best friend and hauled off to a tiny, freezing cold country by a bunch of freaks claiming they’re gods or sort-of-gods. By now, Keira must have caught on to my act because she wasn’t letting it annoy her the way it used to.

  “This late in the year, the sun won’t rise for another hour,” she answered. She packed her books and headphones away in her purse without even looking up at me.

  “After finishing Tyr’s book, I’m kinda glad you didn’t drag me to Asgard. Odin’s a real bastard. He’s all like, ‘Look at all these women I convinced to sleep with me,’ even though he has a wife, and then he’s proud of the fact he gets people fighting and ripping each other’s throats out. And what the hell kind of gods can lose eyes and limbs and be killed by a mistletoe dart? Dude, that’s the lamest death I’ve ever heard of.”

  I was watching Keira, but I noticed Tyr shift in his seat. I wasn’t about to turn toward him so he could smash my face in though. Like I said, I’m really not that stupid. Keira finished repacking her belongings and finally glanced up at me. “Take your issues about Odin’s behavior up with him. And the story about Balder’s death is meant to convey that not even the gods can escape their fates. Does it matter how he died? The moral of the story is the same.”

  “He could have died a manlier death,” I argued. I didn’t even know what that was supposed to mean.

  “You’re hard to please, Gavyn,” Tyr joined in. I risked looking in his direction just long enough to see if he was going to crush my skull with his one good, massive hand. But he didn’t even look pissed off, which meant they were making my job of pissing them off far more difficult. “You accuse Balder of dying an effeminate death, and accuse me of being an idiot for sticking my hand in a wolf’s mouth so it could be restrained. So tell me, Mr. Hero, what is an honorable death to you?”

  I wouldn’t meet his eyes or Keira’s anymore. I stared at the back of the seat in front of me and slouched lower, crossing my arms over my chest in both anger and defiance, but I wasn’t really sure who or what I was so angry at. “Try fighting cancer,” I mumbled.

  Neither Tyr nor Keira had a response for that.

  After our plane landed, Tyr and Keira walked beside me while Agnes and Cadros kept Hunter sandwiched between them. I kept looking over my shoulder to watch my best friend as the old woman repeatedly poked him and told him to walk faster. “Cut that out,” I warned her. I had no idea what I would actually do about it, considering I was pretty sure she really was a witch, but they’d already admitted he was only here because of me, so I felt even guiltier about what was happening to him. Agnes smiled her gaping smile and was about to poke Hunter again, just to spite me, but Keira stopped her. “Badb, enough. Leave him alone.”

  Agnes shrugged her off. “He’s one of ours. I won’t hurt him. Just teaching him some manners.”

  I froze in the middle of the airport and spun around to face the old witch. She hadn’t been far behind me and almost walked into me. “Touch him again,” I growled, “and I don’t care if you’re a woman or a hundred and fifty years old. I will kill you.”

  I expected Keira and Tyr to defend her, to manhandle me some more now and drag me out of the airport, but neither of them moved. They stood by my side and watched us. And Agnes just smiled at me. “Much older, Gavyn. But you’re finally acting like the man you’re supposed to be. It’s about time.”

  Then she grabbed Hunter’s elbow and walked around me, and Cadros followed her. Tyr leaned closer to my ear and murmured, “For the record, she wouldn’t be easy to kill. Might want to read up on Irish mythology next. Not that I’m advocating you kill off our allies. We’re going to need them.”

  And Tyr followed the retreating backs of a crazy old witch, a bizarre young man who seemed to think he was some sort of Irish god, and my best friend. Keira nudged me gently with her elbow. “Come on. I’ve got a coat for you in my bags. Let’s get my luggage and go to our hotel. I’m exhausted.”

  And because I was in Reykjavik, Iceland, I had no choice but to follow her and hope that somehow, law enforcement back home had discovered a trail across the Atlantic and was coming to rescue us.

  I Dream about a Huge Dick

  (Not that kind, you pervs.)

  I rode up to the small, thatched farmhouse and dismounted from my horse. It was late in the year, and the sky was as black and slippery as an eel. I could smell the fire burning from inside the house, but it didn’t smell like they were cooking anything—at least nothing substantial. It was no secret to me, though, that this farmer was poor. I’d been riding most of the day and evening to reach his house and I was famished, but I wasn’t planning on staying long anyway.

  I paused briefly at his door but decided not to knock. After all, I was here because I was outraged. I was here for revenge. I blew the door open and the farmer rose quickly from his table where he’d been sitting sharpening a scythe. His wife backed away from the fire where she’d been about to dip a ladle into whatever watery soup they were having for dinner. The farmer must have recognized me because his fingers trembled and he dropped to his knees.

  “My lord,” he begged, “it was an accident. Please.”

  I shook my head at him and pulled my sword from its sheath, the sharpest and finest sword in all the nine worlds. It was a sword of secrets, of infinite power, and it began to emit its characteristic light in anticipation of battle. This sword had been a gift, a present upon my birth, and this man’s head wouldn’t be the first I’d taken with it.

  “Please,” he begged again, “I’ll make any tribute. Pay any ransom. What will happen to my wife and children without me?”

  I exhaled angrily. “What do you think you have that you could possibly offer me? You recognized me so you must know I don’t care about gold, even if you had it. You have two thin goats and a sickly looking horse. You think I’d want those?”

  “But I can work for you. For the rest of my life, I swear it. Anything you ask.”

  The farmer was still on his knees and his wife stood immobile by the fire, waiting for me to behead her husband for killing my favorite stallion. I gripped the hilt and told him again he had nothing he could offer me. I
raised my sword but a woman’s voice shouted at me from the back of the house, and her figure, a blur of gray and brown wool, rushed into the room and fell by his side. She threw her arms around him and fixed her dark blue eyes on me.

  “What kind of a cowardly god kills an unarmed man?” she demanded.

  Her father tried to push her away from him and scolded her. “Hush, girl. Get away from me.” His dark eyes turned up to me again and he tried to plead with me once more. “She’s just a girl. I’m so sorry, my lord—”

  But I wasn’t listening to him. I lowered my arm but my eyes were on her, only on her now. I tried to swallow but my throat didn’t seem to remember how. There was nothing as beautiful as this girl in any of the worlds, including my own, and I was sure of it.

  “Get up,” I told the farmer. He rose unsteadily to his feet, his daughter, who had refused to leave his side, helping him stand but he tried to push her back to the rear of the house again. He risked a brief glance toward his wife and admonished her. “Get your daughter out of here, woman! What is wrong with you?”

  “No.” I stopped any of them from moving. “I was mistaken. You have something you can offer me, after all. And we will consider the death of my favorite stallion settled.”

  The farmer waited apprehensively. After all, I was a god of war; it wasn’t in my nature to make compromises or forgive man’s stupidity. I can only assume he suspected I was going to behead his progeny instead of him now. “I will take her.”

  Her mother inhaled sharply and dropped the ladle she’d been holding, and her father stopped trying to push his daughter to the rear of the house. He held onto her wrists and watched me like I was only joking. He finally shook his head slowly. “No, my lord, I’ll give you anything that is mine to give. But I cannot give my child.”

  And I couldn’t imagine leaving this house without her. But I couldn’t let him know that I was completely spellbound by her either, that he had unexpectedly gained the upper hand on me. I shrugged and lifted my sword again. “Those were my terms. If you don’t want her hurt, get her away from you.”

  “Wait!” she called out to me. I let myself look at her again, even though she mesmerized me, and I was afraid of doing something foolish if I looked at her too long. “For how many nights?” she asked.

  “Arnbjorg,” her father hissed. “You’re not a whore. And neither man nor god will treat you like one.”

  Admittedly, I admired her father’s bravery and his willingness to die to protect her virtue. The story that had reached me about the death of Magni, my horse, had been one of a man in Midgard acting irresponsibly, imprudently; he’d tried to restrain and mount my stallion that usually could only be ridden by me. It took a great deal of coaxing to convince Magni to let others ride him. When Magni had refused to allow the man to mount him, the man had struck him with his scythe and killed him. But this man didn’t seem to be so reckless. My horse was dead though and he had admitted to it being an accident; if I asked him now the truth of what happened and determined it was, in fact, an accident, then I’d have no leverage to convince his daughter to return to Asgard with me.

  “You’ve misunderstood me,” I told her instead. “You would return to Asgard with me and live with me. It is your life for your father’s.”

  “No,” her father repeated, louder this time in case I hadn’t heard him perfectly clearly before. But I could see the indecision in her eyes.

  “You’re young,” she told me. “What makes you think the other gods will let you walk into Asgard with a human mistress?”

  I smiled at her. She’d clearly never been anywhere near Asgard. “You’d be surprised at the mistresses kept there. And the men.”

  “But they’ll expect you to marry eventually. And then what? I’ll be abused by your goddess wife until I grow old enough that you’ve lost interest in me anyway, but not before she curses me and my children.”

  I put my sword back in its sheath and sighed at her. Where did humans get these ideas? “No one will abuse you, and you won’t grow old. You will eat Idun’s apples and be young forever.”

  She was running out of arguments, and her father sensed it, too. He gripped her wrists tighter and scowled at me. “I’d rather die than give my daughter to someone who would take her against her will.”

  And I would rather die than leave Midgard without her. But I was young and, at times, still impetuous. It was a flaw most of us gods shared, but made worse by our youth. I had no idea how to win her affection. But I knew that she was rejecting me and trying to find a way to save her father’s life without becoming my lover, and his head no longer seemed a fitting price for the insults this family had inflicted. I would destroy his entire farm. I would allow only her to live and she could do so with the knowledge that the misfortune of her family had been her doing. She had been the one to curse them all.

  But Arnbjorg was as smart as she was beautiful, and she pulled her wrists free from her father’s hands and stood up straighter, those deep blue eyes fierce and determined. “You swear to me if I accept that no matter what, even if you change your mind tomorrow, you will never return to this house? You will never harass my father again?”

  “I will swear it if you promise you have no intention of purposefully giving me reason to change my mind.”

  Arnbjorg shook her head slowly and a few loose strands of golden hair fell around her smooth, ivory face. “I promise you I’ll never intentionally give you reason to hate me.”

  “Arnbjorg,” her father whispered.

  But the girl was already walking away from her father and grabbed her cloak hanging by the door. She wrapped it tightly around her and braved one last glance at her mother and father before following me out of their house, where I helped her onto my second-favorite stallion and we began the long journey back to Asgard.

  Chapter Five

  I awoke in the dark hotel room in Reykjavik, sweating despite the cool air in the room around us. I felt like I was gasping for air and as I turned on my side, I noticed I must have been making some kind of noise in my sleep, because Tyr was awake and he was watching me. He reached over with his good hand and switched on the lamp and I squinted against the onslaught of the bright yellow incandescent light.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I shook my head and ran my hand through my hair and noticed my head was wet. “Why would you even ask that, Tyr? My best friend and I have been kidnapped by a bunch of crazy people, one of whom is most likely a witch, and now I’m having nightmares. No, I’m not okay.”

  I also wanted to turn the lamp off but part of me didn’t want the room to descend into that darkness again. I couldn’t shake the dream I’d just had, the tarry blackness of the night as a horse almost as dark as the night itself galloped away from a small, thatched farmhouse with a nameless young god and a beautiful young woman on its back. And even though it had only been a dream, I was pretty sure her fate was far worse than whatever was going to happen to me now.

  But instead of turning off the lamp, Tyr sat up, his pale gray eyes both concerned and curious. I wasn’t sure what to make of this man. “What kind of nightmare?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled. I lay back down and pulled one of the hotel pillows over my face. The light still didn’t switch off.

  “Different kind of nightmare than you’ve ever had before?”

  I tried to sigh into the pillow, but that’s probably one of the most pointless wastes of energy imaginable. Nobody can hear you sighing through a pillow, and if they can’t hear you, then why the hell even bother sighing? “Yes, Tyr. Probably has something to do with my whole abduction then being forced to read all that stupid mythology on the airplane.”

  I heard Tyr scratching at his beard. I just hoped he wasn’t trying to decide whether or not to get Agnes. After that particular dream, the last thing I wanted to deal with was an-honest-to-some-god witch.

  “Well, I’m sure none of that makes for good sleeping,” Tyr agreed. “But i
f you keep having these dreams, let me know. I know someone who can decipher them for you. Maybe they mean something.”

  I tossed the pillow off my face and glared at him. “The only thing it means is that I’m in Iceland against my will.” I cringed as I said those last three words and remembered Arnbjorg’s father saying the same phrase. I also had no clue where I’d heard that name before. It must have been somewhere in that damn book he’d made me read.

  Tyr’s gray eyes had never left me, and he finally just nodded and reached over to my bed and patted my foot. “I’m sorry, Gavyn. You just don’t understand yet how badly we need you. I think when you do, you’ll forgive us. And don’t worry about Hunter. You said on the plane you didn’t know about his ancestry because he’s British. He’s mostly Celtic. That’s what Badb meant when she said he was one of them. She wouldn’t actually hurt one of her own.”

  I propped myself up on my elbows and wondered if I was going to get patted on the head next time. I was starting to feel like this giant of a man’s puppy. I supposed it was better than having my face smashed in though. “I read that whole book, Tyr. I mean, there weren’t any Celtic people in it, but the Norse gods apparently didn’t have any misgivings about hurting Scandinavian people.”

  Tyr scratched his beard again and had the same look on his face he’d had before patting my foot. I braced myself for whatever he decided to pat next. But he let his hand fall into his lap instead. “Did you skip the introduction? About where people today get their information on Norse mythology? Most of it comes from an Icelandic poet who wrote around 1200. By then, most of the people who once believed in us had converted to Christianity. I think a lot of the stories make us out to be worse than we are. We certainly aren’t perfect, but hundreds of years before those stories were written down, when men would gather to tell them, they spoke of Odin helping those in battle who believed in him, not turning princes against each other. And he never asked Freyja to stir up hatred in the hearts of men. Men never needed our help for that.”