by Vasich, Mike
They did not laugh, but instead felt their lips curl up in sudden enmity for this brazen human who arrogantly strode into their land expecting to survive. Still, most were unsure if they should simply rush forward and stomp him into the ground, or wait till their chief had made a decision. A few brash, younger giants made the decision for them, striding forward with fists clenched and prepared to crush the life from this foolish human.
Gungnir flew from Odin’s hand and skewered one of the giants through the chest. He fell to the ground forcefully, clutching the shaft of the spear with both hands while blood spouted from the wound and his gaping mouth. The other giants who had moved forward paused, mouths wide in surprise, before looking back at Odin. Gungnir was in his hand once more, clean and poised to inflict more damage, the shaft of it still sticking from the chest of the now-dead giant on the ground.
There was first an interminable silence, followed by a roar of fury and a sudden onrushing mass of giant flesh charging forward to kill the old man, without any thought as to how he had so easily slain one of them or how the spear could be in two places at once.
At the center of the mass, Gungnir flashed out again and again, spearing one giant through the eye and slashing open the throat of another, drawing blood and life from every victim it struck, sending the towering creatures tumbling to the ground in bloody heaps around him. Each time it left his hands and opened the innards of another foe, it was inexplicably back in his hands, being let loose again to skewer another.
As the intensity of the slaughter increased, the houses in the village emptied themselves of their occupants, and a slew of giants witnessed the battle at its center. Brandishing whatever weapons they held or their bare fists, they joined the fray, not even certain who the enemy was, only knowing that someone or something was slaying their kind. The blood haze hung in the air, obscuring all but a fury of movement and violence, blood, and death.
When the carnage was finished, nearly all lay gutted and bloody on the ground around him. The piles of bodies obscured the thin figure in gray mail at the center of the scene. The village was devoid of almost all other life; a few had fled, but nearly all had joined the fray and fallen under Odin’s spear.
He had left nine giants alive. They were injured and in agony, but they would survive. They had fallen neatly near each other and were wheezing or moaning in pain. He approached them, navigating the maze of massive corpses.
They stared up at him, the anger pulsating on their faces, punctuated by biting stabs of agony from numerous wounds. Odin had chosen these nine to survive, and had tempered Gungnir’s attacks so they would do so. He had swung the spear like a staff on some, breaking legs and sending them to the ground, had pierced shoulders on others, ripping muscle from bone, crippling without killing.
“You want my name,” he said, a statement more than a question. They did not respond, but stared at him with undisguised loathing. “You want to know who could do this to you.”
He stabbed Gungnir into the ground next to him and took off his helmet. It faded into nothingness as he pulled it off, as did his armor. He was left with his gray cloak, hanging loosely on his thin frame as it had when he first entered the village.
“I was old when the mountains were new. I created the lands you tread on, the clouds in the sky, the oceans surrounding Midgard. I carved them from the giant, Ymir, the first of your foul kind, after my brothers and I slew him.
“I am the Allfather, the High One, the Hanged God. I am the Lord of the Gallows, One Eye, the Master of Poetry. I am the Feeder of Ravens and Wolves, He Who Sits Above, the Gray Traveler. I am Eternal Wisdom and the Bringer of Death, the Lord of the Valkyries and the Einherjar. I am father to your greatest enemy, the World Shaker, the Thunderer, the Giant Slayer.”
There was a mixture of hatred and fear on their faces, but he did not relish it. He said what must be said, not for the sake of ego or arrogance, but for pure necessity that could never be explained or understood. None could fathom his burden.
“You have been spared to spread the message of my coming to others of your kind. I will not rest until the giants have been expunged from the Nine Worlds. I will lead an army of the Aesir to destroy you, to burn any trace of your existence. I will slaughter your women, your children, your infirm and elderly. I will create from your bodies a carrion feast for the ravens and wolves to devour.
“Limp from this place and curse yourselves for having survived, for having to deliver this message throughout Jotunheim: Odin comes for the giants.”
They blinked and he was gone, left with their white-hot anger and humiliation, their simultaneous loathing and passion to deliver his message hot in their bellies.
Mounted on Sleipnir once again, he urged the steed forward. His preparations were nearly complete; there was only one more task.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The time had come. Perhaps it had been inevitable, but Heimdall could not say for certain. For ages it had hung over all of their heads, a distant yet unavoidable threat that colored all of their actions, all of their words. While he had always been able to fulfill his role as the guardian of Bifrost regardless of what came to pass, Ragnarok lingered somewhere in his head; an ever-present, if hazy, reminder of mortality.
It could not be denied now. As he stared down the multicolored arc of Bifrost to Midgard below, a cloud of dust rose up in the wake of a many-legged mass moving toward the base of the bridge. The mass was wide—wider than any army he had ever seen—and unstoppable. As it moved forward, it lay waste to everything in its path.
He expected such power from the mass of Jotunheim, although it was still striking to see. Despite its distance from Bifrost—it would take several days before it reached the foot of the bridge—its size was daunting, both in numbers and in the sheer size of those who constituted its bulk. At the very least, their ears brushed the tops of the trees they passed by. But there were many among them, at least in the first rank, who dwarfed even these giants. The tallest rivalled the size of the mason, and Heimdall recalled the destruction wrought by that monstrous creature. How much more devastating would dozens or hundreds of them be?
As he brought Gjall to his lips, he ignored all thoughts of the upcoming battle and focused his entire attention on letting his clarion call cry out across the Nine Worlds. This would be the final time alerting all with its warning of impending battle and, perhaps, doom. Its cry was clear and piercing, and he relished the unerring simplicity of the sound. One single note from a horn intended to forewarn all who heard it of the end, and yet it caused inspiration to well up in his breast, inspired confidence and defiance, a denial of the fate the gods were saddled with.
It took little effort to blow the horn. His lungs exhaled only the barest hint of breath, but still Gjall’s cry sent a wave that spread across the entirety of Asgard and beyond. It was as if the horn itself originated the sound and he was merely the instrument of its delivery, rather than the other way around. When he finally pulled the horn from his lips, the sound ceased issuing forth, but continued to reverberate throughout the Nine Worlds and returned to his ears in echoes that bespoke of the power of the original blast.
Despite the impending death that Gjall foretold, Heimdall would not have been afraid of the coming conflict, but he might have gone to the final battle with resignation. As Gjall’s cries faded, he was suddenly hopeful, emboldened and eager to face the threat, imposing as it might be.
They had dreaded Ragnarok for as long as he could remember, but he wondered if the constant threat that hung over all of their heads made them more pessimistic, more willing to accept the prediction of doom that supposedly awaited them. It was true that the Allfather was wise beyond reckoning, but he was not infallible. Perhaps in this one thing, this event of such overwhelming magnitude, he was wrong. Or maybe he simply chose to let the rest of the gods interpret his prophecies—had the High One ever actually said that Ragnarok would be the doom of them all? He could not remember.
It did n
ot matter. What would happen, would happen, and that fate could not be changed. He would meet it as they all would, with cold steel in his hands and fire in his heart. He might fall—they all might fall—but they would bring the mass of Jotunheim with them when they did.
Tyr heard the wolf’s howls of triumph and felt the dwarfen fetter snap long before he had been alerted by Gjall. The chill sound had woken him from a troubled sleep, jarring him and setting his nerves on edge. In the cold darkness of his keep there was an accompanying presence, a maliciousness that pervaded the chambers of his large hall. He recognized it. Its malingering aura had haunted him ever since Fenrir had sunk his teeth into his forearm and ripped away his hand. He could not do the simplest tasks without the echo of the incident surfacing in his mind.
Tyr’s preoccupation with his missing hand was more than simply an aching loss of flesh. Instead, he felt the wolf haunt his every waking—and sleeping—moment, as if there was a venom in his bite that had spread throughout Tyr’s body and poisoned him with the remembrance of that single incident.
It angered and frustrated him that he could not remove the wolf from his thoughts. He had suffered injuries before, but never had an enemy so intruded upon his every breath. The harder he pushed the beast from his thoughts, the more persistently he returned, always taunting. Sometimes there were images: jagged teeth and dripping blood, the feral almost-smile, his hand dissolving in an acidic gut.
Tyr rose from his bed and walked to the window. Looking out on the pre-dawn darkness, Gjall’s warning call still ringing throughout Asgard, he felt the presence of the wolf even more. He knew that Fenrir would come, along with all the other enemies of the gods.
He had pondered this day, as had all of the Aesir, for countless ages. Although he held scant hope that the High One was wrong, he had wondered if it would come in truth, and what it might look like to see all of their enemies gathered together, storming Asgard. He had always felt sure that Ragnarok would visit its doom on Asgard, and had made sure that he was prepared for the battle.
But Tyr had never considered that his thoughts would be so single-minded, that his entire focus would be on one lone foe. In his mind’s eye, he had seen himself at the center of multitudes, his sword cleaving and dismembering. He had seen a mound of victims growing ever higher, his bloodlust growing more intense with each enemy that met his steel. He had even imagined how he might fall. It would be a wave, a mass of enemies that overtook him as he stood firm and dropped dozens before he was finally overcome by sheer weight of numbers and the exhaustion of continual fighting. He did not fear this death, but merely expected that it would occur in some similar way.
When he thought of the final battle now, he was fixated on one thing only: killing the beast. He imagined facing Fenrir across the corpse-strewn field, the two knowing that there was an inevitability to their conflict. They would engage, but he would not seek glory in this battle, would not fight as if skalds would sing of this conflict for ages. He would fight only to slay this creature, to destroy the beast who had taken his hand.
Out beyond the arc of Bifrost the giants moved inexorably towards Asgard. Every step brought Ragnarok closer. It might mean the death of them all, but Tyr could only think of his own personal demon, the beast who haunted him every moment.
He turned and walked to a large chest near his bed, where he had laid his sword belt. It was difficult to buckle with only one hand, yet another reminder of what he had lost, but he was by now accustomed to it. He could have summoned servants to help him, and he would do so to don his armor, but he would have no other touch his steel. It would remain unblemished till it was drawn in anticipation of the bloodletting to come, when the forces of chaos would desecrate the holy ground of Asgard.
Despite the vastness of those forces, despite the crushing weight of giants, monsters, and demons they might face, he would find the wolf. He would find the wolf and would not rest till he had let his blade carve a bloody trail into the beast’s flesh.
Odin’s journey to Niflheim had been quick. On Sleipnir he had no need to cross the true distance between places; he could instead slip between them, exit the Nine Worlds in one place and reenter them in another, without having actually traveled the distance between those two places. And Sleipnir needed no guidance to take him where he wanted; the horse simply knew his whims and took Odin to his next destination.
Treading on the hard rock of Niflheim, Sleipnir retreating back into the darkness, he stared up at Hel's towering hall. He could feel the cold presence of the dead, even if he could not yet see them. They hovered on the edges of the mist, sensing the power he emanated, fearful of this being who radiated death in such a way that even they feared it.
Among their fetid masses he did not sense the one he had come to see, but he knew that he would not. That spirit was just inside, and he had been deposited at Hel's gate so he could enter directly.
He walked forward slowly, all necessity of disguise gone. He was well-known here, and no veil he could construct would hide his identity. Nor was Gungnir masked; the cruel head of the spear was visible and threatening, a visual reminder of the death that Odin wielded.
The tall, black gates to the narrow bridge opened wide as he approached, although there were none to actually open them. The doors to the hall did likewise, and he passed through. Countless premonitions of this very scene had unfolded before his eye since he had hung on Yggdrasil, and he could have navigated the hallways and stairwells even without his one good eye.
He reached two large doors leading to a throne room beyond. Unbidden, the doors opened wide and he stepped through, knowing who waited for him beyond.
Black shimmering curtains hung, maze-like, throughout the chamber, giving the room the illusion of being broken into smaller rooms. Vague shapes and shadows danced within the folds of the curtains, some human-like, others not. He did not see the shadow he sought, but he knew it was there. His attention was drawn to the throne and its grotesque occupant.
“Welcome to my realm, Allfather,” Hel said. Half of her face and body were beautiful: delicate porcelain skin, raven hair, perfect features. The other half was corpse-like and rotten, fetid, and shrunken, with only wisps of leftover hair sprouting out from the raw, green-black scalp, trailing down in uneven strands.
“Expelling you was wise on my part. You are a foul creature.”
She looked at him strangely, cocking her head to the side. As she did, the dead side of her expanded in tendrils to the living side, sending meandering tributaries of putrescence across her face. “You did not expel me. I was sent here by your son, the murderer.”
“Were you? That is not how I recall it,” he said.
The expression on her face made it clear that she did not like his response. “I stared up into his eyes as he stabbed me with his sword. He can verify his crime.” She turned her head and said quietly, “Come forth.”
The shade flowed through the shimmering black curtain, not parting it, but rather walking through. It was unclear whether the curtain or the man was more insubstantial. Odin had not seen his son since his death, and the shade that faced him now was both like and unlike Balder.
In form he looked the same: The eyes, the face, the lean musculature, the youthful features. At a glance it was Balder, just as he had been in life. And yet there were differences, difficult to name, but still there. There was a sense of dimness about him, a lack of fire or light in his eyes. His skin color was tinged with gray, and his motions were just the slightest bit hesitant, as if his body was reluctant to obey his commands.
“Greetings, father,” he said, bowing his head slightly as he had done in life, but with a curious lack of animation. Odin knew it would be so, but still it was difficult to see. He had been used to seeing his son full of life, sometimes to a fault, but always with boundless spirit. He spoke now to a shadow of what his son had been, the form of Balder without the essence. This was what it meant to reside in Niflheim. Those pitiable souls who came here became shad
es, and all ties to life were extinguished.
“My son, it is good to see you again.” And it was. Despite Balder’s current state Odin could feel the emotion stir within him. He had not felt this for countless ages, and had not anticipated it here, but found himself full with a mixture of happiness and regret, sadness and anger. And also hopefulness.
“Tell him,” Hel said. “Tell him how you drove your blade into my throat as a babe and sent me here, robbing me of my life.”
Balder cast his eyes down. It was clear to Odin that she had him in thrall and was relishing her power over him. And over Odin, as well, at least at the moment.
“I came across an infant. I held my sword poised over it for a moment before running it through. It had committed no crime, yet I slew it without hesitation.” His voice was somewhat halting, as if he forced the words to come. Yet there was no doubting the truth behind the words, as Odin well knew. He had seen it happen dozens, perhaps hundreds of times, and he knew also that he would not have lifted a finger to stop it. This event, as all others like it, was necessary.
“The words come straight from the mouth of the fiend himself. You cannot shrive this one. His guilt is clear, and his penance as my slave has only just begun.”
Odin’s eye grew hazy, as if he was seeing things beyond the immediate time and place. He chanted, “The spawn of Angrboda and the Sly One were brought before me. Sensing their threat, I cast the snake Jormungand into the ocean surrounding Midgard. There he grew till he encircled the world and bit his own tail. The wolf Fenrir was spared through the pleas of he who would soon be known as One Handed Tyr—to his regret—and was allowed to roam the fields of Asgard till the time of his binding. The monstrous Hel, half living and half dead, was cast by Odin into the darkness of Niflheim, there to rule over the dead till the time of Ragnarok.” His eye cleared, and he looked at Hel directly.