by Matt Larkin
The trail turned north then, leading up to a lake and another shattered town, this one even larger than the last. Buildings had toppled, others burned down, and still others stood with half their walls torn away, skeletons of the shelter they once represented.
Sword in one hand and torch in another, Sif eased her way through a new breach in the town wall. Geri and Freki each took off in opposite directions, sniffing out survivors. With any luck they had arrived in time to save someone this time. Always appearing in the aftermath of …
Sif faltered, almost tripping over a body lying in the mud. A little girl, no more than seven winters, her hair splayed, limbs twisted the wrong way. The sight of it hit Sif like a blow and drove her to her knees. Knowing what she’d find and still unable to stop herself, she turned the girl over. Her ashen face was a mask of pain and terror.
And something clenched around Sif’s gut, leaving her convulsing. She wanted to weep, but the tears wouldn’t come. So instead she screamed at the sky.
“Fucking jotunnar!”
“Sif,” Itreksjod said, “not the best rallying cry, I’m afraid. What are you—”
The adjacent house exploded as a jotunn stood from within, shattering the roof and sending thatch and beam splinters flying in all directions. It reached over ten feet high, towering above them and bellowing for an instant that froze her.
Itreksjod moved faster, racing forward to land an axe blow on the jotunn’s side.
Its shriek of pain and rage shocked Sif into motion, and rising, she charged forward, sword swinging. The jotunn swiped a club at Itreksjod. Her friend leapt backward, falling, but avoiding the blow. Sif raced into the gap, her blade sheering along the jotunn’s wrist and forearm. She’d meant to sever the limb but instead only drew a long deep gouge into it. It served however—the jotunn’s club fell from his hand as he bellowed again, clutching his arm.
It gave her the chance to swing again, this time cleaving into its knee. Her sword wedged into the joint, drawing forth a geyser of blue blood and toppling the jotunn. As it fell, the sword ripped from her hand. Itreksjod jumped atop the jotunn and buried his axe in the beast’s skull.
More roars and bellows and crashing weapons echoed all around the town. Sif turned, taking in the carnage. Five jotunnar remained, engaging Thor and Geri and Freki. All must have lain in wait in the buildings … knowing they were being followed.
Fuck. Didn’t matter now.
Sif jerked her sword free and dashed toward her friends. Three of the jotunnar had surrounded Thor, focusing all their efforts on him. The prince fell back, unable to get room to even swing his mighty hammer, so fast did the clubs and axes of the jotunnar swing in. Sif shrieked a battle cry and sprinted toward the melee.
Thor ducked one club, twisted out of the way of an axe, and swung his hammer at a third jotunn. The giant dodged with shocking agility, leaping backward. And nearly into Sif. She whipped her sword up, catching him between the shoulder blades. Her blade struck the heavy hide of some beast, barely managing to draw blue blood from the jotunn. Roaring, it spun, swinging at her with its club. She rolled sideways out of the way and came up to sound the Mjölnir crashing into the distracted jotunn’s skull. The creature fell in a heap.
Thor turned back, trying to fend off the axe-wielding jotunn. And not seeming to see the other club-bearing one gearing up for a swing that would turn his bones to pulp. Before she knew what she was doing, Sif ran for him, tackling Thor and driving them both to the ground. The club whooshed over her with the force of a gale. She rolled over, trying to rise—
The club’s backswing caught her full in the chest. All wind blew from her lungs, all thought from her mind. All light from her eyes.
“Half her ribs are broken. She’s lucky none pierced her lungs.” Geri?
Someone was poking her, sending bolts of lightning coursing through her. Every breath felt like wrestling a volcano, trying to hold back the eruption of her insides. Sif blinked, then gagged as the sensation of the light only worsened the overwhelming pain.
“Shhh,” Geri said. “Lie still and let your body heal.”
Sif opened her mouth, tried to ask what had happened, but speaking was a fresh agony, and she only managed a groan. She shut her eyes again.
The dreams came and went. A fever pitch of marauding jotunnar, crushing the life from her and Thor and everyone else she held dear while Meili and Hildolf and a dead little girl stared at her with accusing eyes. They watched, as Asgard itself crumbled beneath the assault of chaos. The Midgard Wall broke in half and from the breach stormed ten thousand jotunnar, all fury and destruction made flesh.
And crackling flame …
A fire beside her, warming her face. She opened her eyes. She lay on her back, inside a house and indeed, beside a fire pit. A good sign?
Sif drew in a tentative breath. Almost no pain. She sat up. Someone had removed her armor, but otherwise she wore what she had during the battle.
In the shadows of a corner, someone stirred. Thor, who had sat against the wall, hands on his knees. He rose now, his flame-red hair dancing as he shook his head. “What in Hel’s frozen underworld were you thinking?”
“I was …”
“A mortal would have been dead twice over, Sif. Even you are lucky to have lived through that. Geri said that if any of those ribs had broken differently you’d have been …” He shook his head and grumbled something under his breath.
She spread her hands, not sure what to say.
“So why?” Thor demanded. “Do you not think I can take care of myself?”
“There were three of them …”
“We have already lost two brothers in the past moons. I do not aim to lose a sister as well!”
“I am not your fucking sister!” The words erupted before she realized she intended to say them.
Thor raised an eyebrow.
Well shit. Not much for it now. “I … I … How could I be your sister, Thor? How when I … When it’s you? And I just … I’ve always wanted us to …”
Thor sighed and nodded slowly. Then he shook his head. “Sif … get some rest.”
Her mouth slowly dropped opened. No. No, he couldn’t have. He couldn’t.
But she had said it, and he had barely reacted. Because he’d known. Fuck. Of course he’d known. He was the man who’d seduced as many women as there were drops of water in the ocean. And she’d thought he wouldn’t know when one wanted him?
Thor shook his head again and ducked out of the house.
It hit her with all the force of the jotunn’s club. Stole her breath. Sent her collapsing onto her hands.
He had known.
He had known and had said naught. And that meant … it meant there was naught left to be said.
She slumped down and stared at the fire.
Unable to move or think or hope.
Hollow.
41
The wind tugged at Odin’s beard as their ship drew into the Miklagardian harbor. A river split the city, though the ship did not enter it, rather weighing anchor at a pier. The city itself exceeded aught Odin had ever witnessed in his long years wandering Midgard. Surely so many people could not live in one place, least of all peacefully. The buildings seemed to grow atop one another like barnacles, spreading out until every last foot of space was filled with stone. Drab stone, painted stone, mottled stone.
In the distance, great towers rose along with stunning columns topped with statues, and too, mighty domes to what must have been palaces or centers of worship. Here though, the place looked haphazard, as if a hundred different stone carvers had worked in competition, unable to agree on a single building, much less a street.
And that gods-damned stench! Shit and piss and vomit and sweat, saturating the whole fucking street such that he could smell it even before he took his first step off the ship. The heat here—almost as warm as Vanaheim—only exacerbated the reek.
Odin glanced at Loki.
His blood brother’s face remained impassiv
e, though his eyes offered the barest hint of distaste. So even Loki thought such a place repugnant.
A massive stonewall encompassed the entire city, great braziers evenly spaced every dozen feet atop it. And it worked, for Odin saw little hint of the mist within the city. Perhaps the locals considered wallowing in their own filth and living atop one another like dogs worth the price if it meant breathing air untainted by the mists of Niflheim. Odin had his doubts.
People shouted at him in what sounded to be several different languages as they wended their way beyond the harbor and into a market. And if the city had not seemed strange enough at a distance, now it grew nauseatingly vibrant. Men and women hawked clothing and fabrics of every color imaginable, jamming bits of it in his face even as he waved them off and cleared his path with Gungnir—disguised as a staff. Even the vendors themselves came in many colors, from fair-skinned North Realmers to deep-skinned men like Eostre, to those even darker, nigh to black. Odin had no idea where the latter must have hailed from. Beyond the Midgard Wall, for certain, and that meant humanity did somehow live there. Perhaps these people fell under the Serkland Caliphate’s … protection.
“We ought to seek shelter for the night before it grows dark,” Loki said, smoothly guiding Odin around a trio of whores. “We are not familiar enough with the customs here to risk wandering the city once the sun sets.”
Odin grunted. If these vampires were aught like draugar, sunset would endow them with their powers and encourage them to leave their domains. Perhaps Loki spoke truth, though Odin suspected he would have to confront the Patriarchs sooner or later.
“When was the last time you were here?” he asked.
“Long enough for things to have changed. Not long enough for them to have changed for the better.” Loki ducked down an alley off the market, forcing Odin to follow.
His blood brother led him around another bend. Here, cracking white paint covered the buildings. The structures abutted one another such that it became hard to tell one from the next, save for the multiple doors. Above one such door hung a wooden signpost depicting an eagle or some similar bird. This one Loki opened, revealing a tiny entry room in which sat an aging man.
“Does Batzas still run this house?” Loki asked, speaking the South tongue.
The man shook his head. “Grandfather passed more than ten winters back.”
“My condolences. I am relieved to hear the establishment remains to his kin, though.” Loki produced a pair of silver coins—no doubt excessive for this place—and offered them to the man. Odin could not see them well, but they did not look like Vallander coins. So Loki still had Miklagardian currency. “We need shelter, perhaps for several nights.”
The Miklagardian’s eyes lit, and he all but launched himself from the chair, snatching up the coins. “Of course. Of course. I have only one room to let at the moment—I hope that will do—but I assure you, it’s the finest room this side of the palaces.”
That seemed exceedingly unlikely.
Nevertheless, Odin followed as the man led them down a hall. He pushed on a door. It stuck. He shouldered it, revealing a windowless room small for one man, much less two. Instead of bed shelves like a Ás house, the room had a straw mat on the floor, with a dirty wool covering barely wrapping it.
“Stunning,” Odin muttered.
“So … uh …” The Miklagardian wrung his hands, then cleared his throat. “If you need aught at all—companionship or food or such, that can be arranged.”
Considering the man’s whores were like to be as clean as the room, Odin wouldn’t want to touch them with Gungnir, much less his flesh. Before he could chastise the owner, however, Loki just shook his head. And so the local man ducked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
Prelude …
To what?
The depredations of darkness … to what lays behind the Veil …
Odin snorted. Audr was right. If this was living, it well prepared these people for the horrors of death. In their fear of the mist, they had somehow welcomed an existence yet worse.
Loki was staring at him. “Do you know what the advantage of such modest accommodations are?”
“No. But surely for what you paid the man we could have had better than this.”
“What is better? You insisted we come here for a reason and, as such, I would think better qualifies as that which allows us to accomplish your ends with the greatest chance of success. In a city infamous for its labyrinthine politics, we dwell in a place beneath the notice of the great and grand and thus avoid becoming enmeshed in games we have neither time nor desire to play. As such, you are free to pursue your own ends in relative obscurity, at least for the moment.”
Corruption … on scale heretofore unknown in Midgard …
Maybe Loki was right. Odin groaned. “We have a few hours before dark, yes? Then let us figure out where to find the Ordrerir so we can leave this place. I do not fancy remaining here any longer than we must.”
Loki nodded. “Nor I.”
Lacking a better option, Odin wandered the city, letting the Sight tug at his senses and draw him into a trance-like state until he must have seemed a man sleepwalking. He had to trust Loki to keep watch over him as he did so, looking at domed spires and great palaces and trying to catch insight about any one of them.
Until at last, staring at a tower large enough to put the wonders of the Old Kingdom to shame, intuition brought him to a standstill.
“There.”
Smooth, white-painted stone formed the tower, with the lowest window at least forty feet in the air. A single doorway offered entrance, and that stood an easy ten feet up, with no obvious way to reach that landing. From tower’s sides jutted carvings of wicked, dragon-like monsters, staring down at them. Most locals they saw did not pass close to the tower, nor did they seem to give it much mind, as if they had somehow forgotten it was even there. A place so rarely opened, it had become like a part of the background to them, a giant tree one simply walked around.
“Do not stare at it,” Loki said and drew him away. “We cannot do aught now. Darkness will settle in soon, and we had best be back within doors before that happens.”
Odin nodded, forcing himself to look away. So very, very close. It did not seem likely many guards waited inside either, for who would they think could enter, even if someone wished to?
Still, Loki spoke wisdom, as oft seemed to be the case. Odin followed him back to their room, then sunk down on the floor. He leaned against the wall, head in his hands.
“The goblet is in the tower,” he said.
“They do not need to access it very often. Still, you cannot expect to simply climb the tower unnoticed.”
The thought had occurred to him, though he dismissed it for much the reason Loki said. In broad daylight, every passerby would see him. At night, they had to worry about these undying lords of the city. So what did that leave?
Darkness …
Odin glowered. Audr, as usual, had little usefulness to offer.
Or perhaps the mighty king simply does not listen well enough …
What now?
Pass the dark …
Pass the … What? The Astral Realm?
Yes …
Oh. Oh, well fuck. Odin shifted, trying to find a position where his back did not ache.
“Lay down on the mat if you wish,” Loki said.
Odin snorted. “The floor is no doubt cleaner and with fewer fleas.”
“Perhaps.”
“I can see but one way in.”
“Oh?”
“Audr.”
Loki shook his head. “Only a fool would trust a wraith. Besides which, every time you call upon his power—”
“I know.” Every time Odin used Audr’s power, Audr’s hold on him tightened. Odin had prevented the wraith from taking control by burning away his own life, aging his body. To use Audr to enter the tower, he’d either have to give up more of his life or more of his soul.
Is either trul
y so valuable to you?
“Can you suggest an alternative?” Odin asked, ignoring Audr.
“Just because I do not yet have another plan does not make this one wise.”
Odin grunted. “Nor do I count remaining in this cesspool wise or even practical. You have until tomorrow morn to offer me another plan. Failing that, I will enter the tower through the Astral Realm.”
“You make compromise after compromise, brother. One day, you may open your eyes and not like the place you find yourself.”
“I already dislike the place I am in.” With that, Odin rolled down onto his side to sleep.
42
Eighteen Years Ago
Water cascaded down the mountains in southern Nidavellir, pitching over ledge after ledge in a tumult that defied the frozen landscape. It flowed into a river too swift to freeze and from there, down into the fjord they had traveled up to get here.
This night lacked the dancing lights found farther north, and, as such, Odin could not see far through the mist. Beneath millennia of snow and ice, rocky crags rose up precipitously. Loki had led Odin to this desolate place, insisting the flames guided their passage toward Andvari, a fugitive even from his own kind.
Odin paused before the crumbling ruins of some dvergar outpost, no doubt abandoned during the rise of the Old Kingdoms. Even an immortal might break his neck trying to climb such slopes, nor did he see sign of anywhere a person might live. True though, the dvergar were not people exactly. They were vaettir-possessing men, twisting them into warped images of the tormented Earth spirits themselves. And as Earth vaettir, a dverg would live beneath the ground, shunning even the paltry sunlight that would have pierced the mists in day. But where?
Odin glanced at Loki who frowned, sweeping his torch to dispel mist while he went to examine the ruin. Using Gungnir as a walking stick, Odin pressed on, toward the cascade. It was beautiful, in an odd way, much as his visions of Niflheim held an empty beauty. If one could forget the shades lost in the mist, one might, for a moment, appreciate the stillness and see it as a wonder. Only for a moment, of course, before the reality would set in.