The Mists of Niflheim (The Ragnarok Era Book 2)

by Matt Larkin

  Tyr’s battlecry drew Odin’s gaze. His warrior leapt upon the troll’s back and rained ineffective blows with his sword. As the troll reached for him, Tyr drew a dagger and slid it through the monster’s eye socket. It fell with a crash. Tyr shook himself, tossed aside his own sword, and drew the runeblade Odin had given him from his back.

  Odin turned at another bellow, as yet another troll killed more of his people. In a single motion Odin reversed his grip on Gungnir and flung it. The dragon spear soared through the air like an arrow from a bow and punched right through the troll’s rocky chest.

  The others had no magic spears to aid them. And the trolls were tearing his people apart. One troll stomped up and down on a corpse while another swung a man around like a flail. More and more of the monstrosities charged into the camp from the southwest. The same direction they had wanted to head. There were too many to fight—an army of trolls. And too many for this to be coincidence. Somehow this had to be connected to the draugar.

  Could the Odling ghost’s curse have meant this? Every vaettir across Midgard was converging on Odin. Or was this the Niflungar, still seeking revenge for what he’d done among them? Too much to hope killing Guthorm would have ended this. No, it would have only further incensed them against him.

  Odin yanked Fulla to her feet, shoved the twins into her arms, and pushed her into a run. “Fulla! Go to Frigg. She will protect you.”

  He couldn’t watch over her now—he had to retrieve his spear. Odin dashed for it, snatched it up, and spun to take in the carnage. The battlefield was littered with hundreds of dead—men and shieldmaidens giving their lives to protect their loved ones, and, more oft than not, to little avail.

  Tyr whirled back to face another rampaging troll. He leapt into the air, sword first. It punched through the beast’s hide as easily as Gungnir had. Tyr’s momentum and weight bore the troll down. Before it had even finished falling, Tyr leapt off and rushed another, cutting its legs out from beneath it. Whatever price that runeblade might exact for its power—and Gungnir affected Odin, he knew it did—it would be worth it to save as many people as they could.

  Odin whipped his spear around to hunt down another target. More trolls closed in on Frigg and Thor. Odin once again flung his spear, ending the fiend that would threaten his family.

  He closed the distance to them at a sprint, then wrapped both in his arms. “You have to flee this.”

  “There is nowhere to go,” Frigg said. “The trolls are ahead of us and the draugar behind.”

  Gods, they truly had been outmaneuvered. These trolls were raiders, but their attacks would demoralize and weaken his people, cost lives. If Ve was here, if Odin could only stop this … He shook himself. The visions were driving him mad, weren’t they? Even if Ve was here, there was naught Odin could do now to reason with him.

  “There!” Odin shouted, pointing to a hilltop where warriors had begun to form a protective ring, trying to guard the weak.

  As Frigg ran off, Odin called to his jarls, shouting at the top of his lungs for a retreat. He would cover them, he and Tyr. Even if it cost his life, he’d protect his people. That was his duty.

  One look at Tyr’s face and Odin knew the man understood it as well. Together, they fought troll after troll as men and women and children rushed past them.

  “Ve!” Odin shouted.

  None of the trolls answered.

  “He is not here, my lord,” Tyr said. The man’s sword cut down troll after troll.

  For at least an hour Odin fought, his muscles burning, time blurring. Odin drew upon his supernatural stamina just to keep moving. Ás warriors fell by the dozens to the onslaught, until at long last, the rays of dawn peeked through the mists. And with those rays, the trolls began to retreat, disappearing back into the woods and burrows. No sign of Ve.

  Odin slumped to the ground. As soon as he let go of his supernatural power, his exhaustion hit him tenfold. For a moment, all he could do was breathe. Try to think through the haze of fatigue and lost blood.

  There were far too many of these creatures for this to be a mere raid.

  Father forgive him. This had all been for naught. He’d lost Ve, and this was his punishment. What a fool he’d been to think to challenge the gods—he couldn’t even reach the damned gods! The Niflungar were hemming him in, because they knew exactly where he was going. They could not fight the seemingly endless horde of trolls.

  Now he had to do whatever it took to protect his people. It’s what his father would have done. Protect the tribe and protect his son.

  This had to be the Niflungar. What else could have summoned an entire army of trolls?

  Odin waded through his people, laying a comforting hand on each as he passed. A shallow, empty comfort as they wept and wailed for stolen wives and slain husbands.

  Gods above, he’d thought he’d learned to move past his pride. Instead, he had continued this vain quest to overthrow the Vanir, to return the world to spring. Because he could not bear what had happened to Ve. No, not just Ve, but their father, and Heidr, and all the others. Lost because the Vanir had left mankind out in the mist to suffer.

  Odin shook his head. It was not vanity, and more than just his oath to Idunn bound him. It was necessity. It was urd. He knew that, and he had no time to doubt himself, least of all in front of his people. They needed his strength now. He had chosen to embrace his urd, and now, because of that, he had take whatever steps urd required of him.

  He worked his way forward to find Frigg, and laid a hand upon Thor’s head. Frigg didn’t speak, but she must have seen the decision in his eyes. He would give his son a better birthright than this. Thor was his blood, as Ve was his blood. As they were all the blood of Borr. There had to be a way to save them all. To reach Ve through the madness that had crept so deep inside his brother.

  Idunn stood nearby, apparently trying to comfort Fulla.

  “We cannot continue south,” Odin said. “The trolls block our way.”

  “You have to,” Idunn said. “Vanaheim is southwest of Valland, beyond the Straits of Herakles.”

  “Did you not see what just happened?” Odin roared. “Hundreds of our people are dead, Idunn! Is this the future you want for the Aesir? Is this the future I have brought my son to?” Before he knew what he was doing, he had her by the shoulders, shaking her. “Is this your dream, Vanr?”

  “Odin!” Frigg protested.

  For a heartbeat, the gravity of Odin’s arrogance settled on him, accosting this goddess. But only for that heartbeat—he planned to make war on her people. Why should he not manhandle one mere Vanr woman?

  “I will not lose my son! I will not lose my people!” He had started this quest to make his father proud, and continued it in some hope to save Ve. And for what? To lead all the Aesir to ruination? “We cannot defend against the trolls like this.”

  Idunn’s face fell, and she stammered. “I … I’m sorry, I … I didn’t expect this. Trolls don’t normally act like that. But, but … Running away to the north only takes you farther from your goal. And if these trolls and draugar truly hunt you, they will catch you. They are relentless, especially if someone is driving them forward. And that does seem to be the case. So … so you have that hard choice that’s not even really a choice at all. I think that’s kind of like what my grandmother said my grandfather faced.”

  Odin released her at last. “What are you talking about, Idunn?”

  Idunn took a step back, clearly shaken. “Well, you can fight a losing battle, or you can run from it and wait for it to find you, right? And by then, you may risk losing even more.”

  “Are you saying I should stand my ground against the hordes of the mists?” Fight a battle sure to claim innumerable Ás lives before they even reached Vanaheim to challenge their real opponents?

  She shrugged. “Odin … I don’t think they’re going to give you a choice about that. Your choice is where you fight, and when.”

  A wise warrior choses his battleground, Tyr had taught hi
m as a child. Hel, if only Loki and his woman had not wandered off. Odin needed his blood brother now more than ever. Loki always seemed to have options no one else saw. But Idunn was ancient and had to know Midgard as well as Loki did.

  “Give me an alternative, Vanr,” Odin demanded. “If we must make a stand, we must have a place to keep the defenseless safe—or safer, at the least.”

  Idunn shook her head, looking around, then up at the sky as though it might hold some answer. “I … I don’t … There’s Idavollir, it’s northwest of here, I think. But Odin, that’s in the wrong—”

  “What is it?”

  “An ancient castle of the jotunnar, back before the Vanir drove them from these lands. Maybe you could defend it, I suppose.”

  Jotunnar. The thought soured Odin’s stomach, and he reached for Frigg’s sword’s comforting weight, though, of course, it still lay by the fire. The dwellers of Utgard. Ymir’s people, the very being that had come down from his mountain abode and destroyed Odin’s world. And now a castle built by those monsters was their only hope?

  A fragile, shallow hope. But it was a hope, and that was all they had to cling to.

  And if they fled, if they turned away, it meant making a stand against the Niflungar. But Idunn was right—they would never reach Vanaheim without doing so. First, he had to protect his people. Then he would hunt down Gjuki and make the Raven Lord pay for all that had been stolen from the Aesir, from Odin himself.

  “Prepare the people,” Odin told Frigg, then grabbed her arm as she turned to go. “Wait.” He placed a hand on Thor’s head. The redheaded child had Borr’s hair, his eyes, his nose. Odin’s blood.

  “Odin,” Frigg said. “We have to use the daylight.”

  Yes, they did.

  And there was precious little of that.

  18

  The Hunalander king had no way of knowing who Gudrun was, but he’d been kind enough to avail her and Hljod of his hall. Gudrun would have liked to think it was hospitality, but it probably had more to do with the Niflung gold she’d offered as tribute. And while Gudrun might have been just as comfortable camping in some old ruin, Hljod needed proper clothes and proper food. And Hel would likely forgive the girl for warming herself by the hearth fire. This time.

  She could have returned to Volsung’s lands, of course, and called upon a true ally, but she needed to head toward Valland with all swiftness—and she would not risk those troll burrows. Not alone, and certainly not with Hljod.

  For certain, these locals had eyed two women traveling alone—one barely clad—with suspicion and, in some cases, undisguised lust. But no one turned away travelers. After all, no one wanted it to be their turn to be caught out alone in the mists. What would it have been like to grow up in their world? Afraid of what lurked out there?

  Gudrun snorted over her rabbit stew. She was what lurked out there, wasn’t she? So far from the shores of the Morimarusa, these people probably didn’t even remember the Niflungar. They would, though; one day soon, all the North Realms would fall under Niflung sway. Maybe with Odin’s help—the man had undeniable power within, the spark of greatness that came along once in a thousand years.

  And while her father seemed more than inclined to let Gudrun control that spark, Grimhild now seemed utterly bent on extinguishing it. If the queen had her way, Odin and all the Aesir would fall to the draugar or perhaps the trolls. Fall before Gudrun had even had the chance to show him the true wonders of her world. The Aesir were but children compared to the Niflungar—children staring up at the stars and thinking them mere holes in the sky.

  But Odin was … Odin. Gudrun had never known a man with such passion in his heart. Beautiful, in the way fire was both beautiful and horrifying. The Children of the Mist hated and feared the flame, enemy of Mist, but still they needed it. Odin was like that, she supposed—a flame she loved and feared and tried desperately to control, even as he burned her.

  Gudrun would not dare go against Grimhild. Never again. Only her father could even think of such a thing, and he didn’t seem to want Odin dead, or at least Gudrun wasn’t so sure. He alone might aid her, buy her the time she needed to help Odin see the truth.

  Hljod moaned, rubbing her foot. The poor child had lost her small toe to frostbite, and the only comfort Gudrun could offer—save a draught against the pain—was that she could have lost more than that. Well, one other comfort too—she had inspected the child’s aura with the Sight, and Hljod did not carry any troll spawn in her belly.

  Gudrun rose and clucked her tongue, then drifted over to where Hljod sat by the fire, careful not to draw too close. She’d told Hljod they didn’t build fires, but that was a bit overstated. Of course the Niflungar had to cook their food and required flame to see in the darkness. But the smaller the fire, the better. The mists were a part of them, and all fires were born of Muspelheim, the World of Fire. The flames drove off the mists. Not the best way to please her goddess.

  And still they needed fire. As she needed Odin.

  “Hljod, come to my room. Bring a bowl of water.”

  The girl jerked at her voice, but calmed quickly and nodded. Gudrun could forgive the child for being skittish after all she’d been through.

  The king had given her a small chamber at the back of his hall. A fur skin served as a flimsy door, but it was enough. They’d offered Hljod a place to sleep among the other servants, but Gudrun expected she’d probably keep Hljod in her own room. The girl was prone to night terrors, and Gudrun didn’t want to see any fresh abuses laden on her, not even from other serving girls.

  Gudrun retired to her chamber. The tiny room housed only a straw mat covered by a bearskin—a far cry from her comforts at Castle Niflung, but still better than she’d have found in the wild. From her bag she pulled a paint of smashed berries and traced a spirit glyph on the ground before her.

  Then she folded her legs beneath her and sat on the bearskin, allowing her eyes to shift into Sight, revealing the Penumbra while turning the real world hazy.

  Hljod came in and set the bowl before her.

  Gudrun reached a hand over the bowl, palm a hairsbreadth above the water. She could feel the flow of the water. Even in the still bowl it had motion, movement, energy. She moved her hand with the motion, tracing slow, steady circles above the bowl.

  “You’re a vӧlva?” Hljod asked.

  The sudden break in her concentration caused Gudrun’s vision to shift back to normal, revealing the slight tremble in the girl across from her. A child, really, wrapping her arms around her legs, fearful of the night.

  Gudrun smiled, hoping it came across as warm. “I am a sorceress.”

  Hljod nodded, so Gudrun allowed her eyes to relax again, embracing the Sight.

  “What’s the difference?” the girl asked after a moment.

  Gudrun snorted. “The same as the difference between an apprentice and a master.”

  “Oh. That was illuminating.”

  Gudrun chuckled. The girl had a bit of a mouth, but then, so had Gudrun at her age. Hljod was so much like her—more than the girl could possibly realize. Gudrun almost wanted to look away. In Hljod’s eyes, she could see so much, like looking into memories she wanted to bury in the snow. Hel, maybe she ought to just leave the girl here among the king’s court. The man would likely take her in. Hljod would find work as a maid, marry some hunter, have a few brats … And spend the rest of her life haunted by nightmares of what had been done to her. Assuming the king didn’t make her a slave and force her to share his bed.

  Or … Or Gudrun could bring her to the Niflungar, make her one of them. Give her the power to never again fear. To heal, to be saved.

  And if she was going to truly bring Hljod among her people, to keep her as her own, the girl would have to understand. She blew out a long breath and removed her hand from the bowl. Father could wait.

  “Men call any woman who knows secrets of the Otherworlds a vӧlva, a witch. Most of those witches know naught of the true Art, but they fake it with herb
s and poultices, with knowledge that seems frightening to simple men. Others possess a hint of the Art, a control of their life force, or a semblance of the Sight. But sorcery goes beyond this—sorcery is the evocation of spirits, beings of the Spirit Realm, which we can bend to our will or bond to our bodies. A sorceress uses spirits and ghosts to enact her will.”

  At a price. Spirits marked their own glyphs on your body, a constant reminder of a bond not easily broken. A spirit would always require payment for its services, feeding on the life force or the very soul of a sorceress who tried to master it. Push your limits too far and you’d wind up a vessel for beings of terrible nature. Gudrun shifted, enjoying the stare of wonder—and perhaps even the fear—on Hljod’s face.

  “Like what you did to that … that fucker who …”

  So more than a bit of a mouth, then. Gudrun nodded, trying not to smile. Hljod would need to learn to guard her tongue before they came among the Niflungar. “I called a wraith, a ghost—a very angry, ancient ghost. Trolls are horrors of this world, but they have naught on the horrors of the worlds beyond our own.”

  Hljod scooted forward a little. “Worlds?”

  “Tell me what you know of the Spirit Realm.”

  “Like Niflheim?”

  “Niflheim is one of the nine worlds of the Spirit Realm, specifically the World of Mist. It is ruled by our queen, Hel, and there is none greater than she. And do you know why?”

  The girl shook her head, predictably frightened to silence at the mention of Hel. The great queen was a name of fear, a curse among the common people of Midgard. She was the darkness they—justifiably—blamed for the state of their world and the horrors they faced.

  “Hel is here with us,” Gudrun said. “Even though her essence remains bound in Niflheim, she is among us, out in the mist. She is the queen of death, the mistress of the cold. The Vanir, the so-called gods of your people, are naught before her.”

  Hljod bit her lip a moment, then cocked her head. “And the other worlds? Do they have mighty rulers?”