by Lentz, P. K.
Warning delivered, Heimdall casts down the Gjallarhorn, draws his sword and resumes his run. I run by his side, wielding my own blade in left hand. We run for some minutes, then crest some hills, and we behold the second battle of Ragnarok.
Medea's sorcerous wind must be weakening, for the long stretch of land along the chasm lies swathed in a light green mist. It is not the thick cloak of fog inside which I battled in Hades, but enough to make the battle appear to us as a vast, greenish mass inside which insubstantial shadows on the ground, some of them as tall as trees, clash with more amorphous shadows flitting and swooping above. The sound that fills our ears is a cacophony built upon the steady base of the Myriad's shriek but containing also the screams and battle cries of men and women.
As we race for the nearest part of the cloud to join the Host, the land over which we run becomes littered with the corpses of both sides. We leap over them and press on, reaching the outskirts of the mist, where tentacled Myriad fly at us singly or in pairs. We slay them without stopping. When we come upon a band of Einherjar fighting back-to-back in a ring, we know we have reached the battle proper. They make way so that we may join them.
"Where is Odinn?" Heimdall shouts in the ear of an Einheri.
"Near the edge!" the man returns. "Seek the light!"
In the brief spaces between hacking left-handed at bulging eyes and overlong appendages, I search the green mist in what I think is the direction of the chasm. Before long, I see a glimmer, then another, and I know it is Baldr. I feel a strong urge to go to him and resume the place I abandoned in the last battle.
More creatures come, and I resume the slaughter, with Heimdall close on my right doing the same. When three fresh carcasses have fallen at our feet, joining a growing mountain, I have the chance to locate Baldr's light again. I nudge Heimdall and point it out. His two keen eyes turn in its direction, and he nods: at the next opportunity, we will go.
We butcher two more who come within blades' reach, and then there is a pause and a gap in the solid wall of brightly colored skins and limbs and spines. Through the gap, I set my eye on the light and break into a run. I cannot look back to see whether Heimdall follows, but I hear him behind me, shouting to the Einherjar by way of excuse, "I go to Odinn's side!"
On our way we must pause and slay a dozen of the creatures. Heimdall's two eyes and unhurt right arm serve us both well, such that by the time Baldr's beacon shines directly in front of us, I am certain I would not have made it without him. The swarm seems thicker here, the fighting fiercer, and the dead are piled deeper. A few hard-fought steps further, over land blanketed in the dead, the mist-cloaked forms before us resolve into the remnants of Baldr's chosen guard, battling the swarm in the bright glow shed by Baldr's own right arm and swiftly moving blade. Near the edge of the light is Odinn himself, ringed by a band of Einherjar, but still doing his part with furious two-handed strokes of a broad-headed ax. His white beard drips black with Myriad gore.
Ever slashing and stabbing, wading through dead flesh up to my knees, with Heimdall by my side, I push toward the light. Baldr and his guard and Odinn are moving too, I realize, making their way inch-by-inch toward—what?
The chasm. Before we can join up with the All-Father and his son, Heimdall and I find ourselves beset by a solid wall of Myriad. We kill and kill, but they keep coming as if a fresh wave of them has just risen up from the depths. Through the gaps, which are brief and narrow, I search again for Baldr's light. When my eye finds it, I redouble my already frenzied left-handed attacks; the light is obscured. Though no less bright, it pours out now from the cracks between a half-dozen or more creatures that adhere to Baldr, assaulting him, overwhelming him. His guards—as I watch, one's head is separated from his body—do all they can, but for every beast they kill, another swoops in to take its place. Have the Myriad understood, in whatever serves as their collective mind, that Baldr is important? Have they decided, if they are capable of decision, that his light must be extinguished?
A creature that is a single, nightmarish, fang-filled mouth confronts me, and for the time it takes me to ensure that I survive and it does not, I lose sight again of Baldr's light. I climb over the newly-dead thing and go forward, searching the misty battlefield. There! I see his glowing blade, slashing and slashing, taking its toll of motley creatures thrown into stark shadow by the weapon's brilliance. Some fall, but more come, and still more. I press forward, glad to see Heimdall when I risk a glance to my side, but I know. I know that Baldr is doomed.
As I watch, helpless to intervene, the creatures who were upon him scatter and choose new targets, leaving Baldr another lifeless lump in this sea of flesh and bone and blade and horn, his light shining no more. I cry out in grief and rage, and so do Heimdall and those few of Baldr's picked men of the Aesir. There are enough voices raised to pierce, briefly, the swarm's accursed, unceasing shriek.
With Baldr's loss, every Aesir in sight rallies to Odinn, who bears his grief in silence, expressing it only with his ax, even though his pain must dwarf ours,. Heimdall and I fight our way to the Einherjar guarding him, and we join them in carving a path for Odinn through the swarm. Hacking at the wall of inhuman enemies surrounding us, there is no way to know how close we are to our goal, the chasm's edge. I learn how close we are only when an Einherjar to my left takes a step forward, stumbles—and vanishes. He is lost to the abyss below, but in his sacrifice, he saves the rest of us. The call goes up to halt, and our slow forward progress ends.
When there is enough of a break in the swarm in front of me, I see it ahead, past the ridge formed of arm and leg and tentacle: the great rent in the ground from which Myriad by the thousands shoot skyward before descending upon our diminishing Host. Once the peaceful boundary between allied realms, this gap today is a fountain of horrors, a wellspring of destruction. I fear that we cannot last long this near to it. But having reached it, we fight to hold our place, slaying creatures which tumble back down whence they came. For every one we send back, many more fly out. It is simple to see how the Chrysioi lost their world to this invader, and how folk unknown to us in other worlds surely have lost theirs. This world is sure to follow—unless—
Through the swarm's shriek, a sound reaches my ears. I know it. I have just heard it. It is the roar of Jormungand.
Heimdall shouts, "The Serpent! The Serpent comes!"
The All-Father at once stops fighting, lowers his ax and looks to a sky half blacked-out by the swarm. There is tranquility in the look on his cracked lips and single eye. I know what he intends, for I have seen it. I have known since he put the Gjallarhorn in Heimdall's hands. The flight of Jormungand fulfilled the third of my visions from Mimir's Well. Odinn means to fulfill the fourth and last.
The air around me crackles, and in a flash of sorcerous fire, the space in front of us and sky above is cleared of Myriad, which blacken and fall. I can see the chasm's edge. Odinn strides toward it and turns, putting his back to it. He throws down his weapon. His gaze goes upward. So does mine and a thousand others, if a thousand of us still live. All witness the same sight: the great black wings of Jormungand, throwing Host and swarm deep into shadow.
The Serpent roars again, wheels and dives, its neck and tail arrow-straight, two hate-filled golden eyes fixed on the enemy whose blood it craves, Odinn, who stands fearless in wait.
Jormungand is fast. So must be his prey if the day is to be won. Odinn has no time for final words, if he had thought to give any. In silence, he takes a single backward step into nothing.
He falls. I do not move closer to the edge to watch his form grow smaller and smaller until it becomes invisible among the darting horned, spined and tentacled shapes. I already have seen Odinn's fall. It is the last of my visions.
My eye remains on Jormungand, who keeps on coming, filling more and more of my halved sight. It looses another ear-splitting roar, venom flying from its teeth. A drop passes not far away, obliterating five or more floating Myriad before landing on a mound of corpses. The pi
led flesh smokes and melts away like a burning candle left forgotten for days.
With every second, the Serpent looms larger and larger, appearing to head straight for us. The swarm near me thins as its component creatures realize the threat posed by the Serpent and as one soar upward to meet it. So small are they compared to Jormungand that even a thousand of them vanish like so many gnats against its bulk. But the strength of the swarm lies in its numbers, and as the Serpent descends, a greater and greater number of Myriad abandon the battle against our Host to stream skyward.
On the ground, where the last of the green mist swiftly dissipates, even the bravest of Aesir and Vanir, now bereft of an enemy, scatter to ensure they are not in Jormungand's way. I am one of few who stands fast, looking up, for I know the Serpent's path.
I stand watching as the Serpent comes nearer and nearer, gathering around it an expanding cloud of Myriad which it ignores as it flies arrow-straight on the course it chose the moment it scented Odinn's blood. Onward it comes, until its body is all that I can see, just black scales and talons and teeth and leathern wings—amid a halo of misshapen blots of red and green and yellow, the enemy which would spell doom for us, yet proves hardly a nuisance to the risen Serpent. Onward it comes, gathering the swarm—and passes me by without slowing to plunge instead straight into the chasm in pursuit of the one on whom it would have its vengeance, he who has sacrificed himself that his people, and even his enemies, might live. Down the Serpent flies, buffeting my borrowed body with the winds of its passage.
The last part of it to vanish is the snake-like tail, and behind it flies the swarm in its countless numbers, giving chase to the beast which could devour them all in a few gulps if it were to divert for but a moment from its single-minded purpose.
It will gorge itself upon them, I know. Either it will swallow Odinn and then turn its fury on the swarm, or the Myriad will make of itself enough of a hindrance that Jormungand must face it first. Whatever transpires deep inside that crack in the world, I know that Asgard and Vanaheim and all the realms except for already-conquered Niflheim are safe, at least for a time. Mimir's Well must have told Odinn that, else he would not have chosen this course.
Jormungand roars one last time. The sound races up the chasm walls and fades to nothing. The shriek of the Myriad fades, too, as swarm follows Serpent and All-Father to unknown depths and unknown fates. Odinn wore the Aegis. Perhaps it will protect him even in the belly of the great beast, or wherever he may wind up. Perhaps it will not.
The mist vanishes, and those who live, among whom I am lucky enough to count myself, behold carnage stretching from horizon to horizon. Odinn has saved us, but it is instantly plain to anyone possessed of at least one eye that the cost has been terrible.
The air is still and quiet. I turn from the chasm and trudge through piles of the dead to learn if those whom I hold dear are yet among the living.
56. Pyres
Crow is unharmed. So is Ayessa, whose lover Sigrid also lives, though she cannot stand or walk. I greet them with held breath. Only when I glimpse Gaeira among the survivors do I heave a sigh and resume breathing. Seeing us, no observer would think the two of us closer than any pair of strangers who caught one another's eye, for we share no smile, no wave, no embrace, only a brief stare to say without words, I am glad.
Exhausted, the warriors of the Host shuffle over the battlefield as ghosts, doing as I do, seeking to learn the fates of friends. If any had the strength left to celebrate our victory, Odinn's sacrifice banishes any thought of it. His heir apparent, Baldr, lies among the fallen. Two of four Odinnsons live, and one of them is blind and an exile. No one questions that Tyr will rule. Indeed, even before the toll is counted, various leaders including the Vanir chiefs, the commanders of the Einherjar and Valkyriar—the latter a deputy for absent Freya—and others unknown to me gather to pledge loyalty to Odinn's grim-faced successor. The giant king Thrym does not come himself, but while standing by Tyr waiting to pledge my own loyalty, I overhear it conveyed that the giants plan to honor indefinitely the pact struck with Odinn.
I do not know whether to feel relief or disappointment at that. I have no wish for another war to begin in the wake of this one, but I know how greatly Gaeira longs to turn her ax once more upon the foe against which she is more accustomed to using it. And I long to hear her speak.
Also present in the gathering of leaders is the false Ares—unharmed, I am displeased to learn. Or maybe I should be pleased, for it means that I will have the privilege of personally bringing about Loki's downfall. Somehow, someday. But not today. My vengeance, like Gaeira's, will have to wait.
For the rest of the day, we clean the battlefield and measure the toll of the two battles, dumping monster carcasses into the chasm and laying out the bodies of our own fallen so that the living might put names to faces. For some, funerals are quickly held, the bodies burned on pyres while the dead's praises are sung. Others are shrouded to be carried back to their homes. The last and largest funeral of the evening is for Baldr. I stand in somber silence in the heat of the blazing pyre. It was mischief Baldr's that ended up costing me my eye, but I bear no grudge. I would change nothing. Baldr was good to me, and I shall miss him.
For Odinn, there is no body to burn. There is just his ax, which Tyr takes into his possession. There will be ten days of mourning in Asgard and every other place where Odinn was hailed as highlord.
Many thousands of others who stood with the Host have met their ends, including a third of the Einherjar and a quarter of the Valkyriar. The Vanir fared similarly. The giants suffered the fewest losses, with only eight frost giants felled. How that bodes on the likelihood and outcome of future wars, no one can say, save perhaps old Mimir.
Darkness sets. Gaeira's farm is not far, but we will not walk there in the dark, and anyway there is more work yet to be done sorting the dead. Gaeira and I find a spot for the night far from the stench of red and black blood, and we sleep. Nothing else, just sleep, with arms round each other, for we are exhausted, and too many have died this day for us to begin celebrating life again. Come morning, we do our part dragging Myriad and tipping them into the chasm, and by afternoon, the remnants of the Great Host begin to disperse. Gaeira and I are among those who leave for home. Her home. I have none, as such, but hers feels more like one to me now than Neolympus or any other place.
I bid Crow farewell, promising to share drink with him in the very near future, and Gaeira and I depart. We go on foot, having no idea what has become of the horses on which we arrived; someone will take good care of them.
We have not walked long before we encounter the first scar on the landscape. It is a wide circle of desolation in which trees are reduced to ashen stumps and grass burned away to bare, blackened dirt. The cause is clear: this is the landing place of a drop of venom that fell from the maw of Jormungand during his passage over Vanaheim.
We skirt the burned land and carry on. When later we pass another such spot, although Gaeira's face gives up nothing, her pace quickens just slightly, and I understand the cause. Two more such patches lie along our path, and after each of them, Gaeira moves that much faster. By the time we surmount the last rise beyond which lies her farm, she is running. She reaches the crest before me and passes over it. I reach it behind her and find Gaeira stopped just a few paces down the slope, and I see what she sees.
Her farm is a circle of gray and black and brown, of devastation, of things once living, now dead. The family home lies half collapsed, its beams burned and stones charred. The smaller, separate dwelling on the grounds, Afi and Dalla's cottage, is a pile of cinder barely higher than the gray field on which it sat.
Nothing anywhere stirs.
Words of hope spring to mind, but I do not speak them. I have all but dispensed with words when it comes to Gaeira. I say by clasping her hand, They may yet live.
She shrugs off her pack and her ax, letting them fall where they may, and she starts forward slowly, stiffly. I stay by her side, clutching a h
and which does not curl around mine in return. It seems forever before we cross the threshold from green to gray, from life to death. It is longer still before we finally reach the razed square where sat the dwelling of Afi and Dalla. At the very edge of that square are two blackened lumps. Only barely, if at all, are they recognizable as having once been living, breathing beings who walked on two legs and laughed and wept and loved.
I shift my eye from the bodies to Gaeira and am in time to see agony fill her eyes. Her lips press tightly together, then part to bare grit teeth. She snatches her hand from mine and hunches suddenly as though struck in the stomach. Her hands ball into fists. I hear the hiss of a sharp breath through her teeth, a sound I have never heard from her. Her arms twitch, her head shivers, her knees buckle, and she doubles over. I catch her as she starts to fall and I ease her to the ground and kneel next to her. Her look is one of intolerable pain, near to madness.
Yet she does not cry out. All I have heard is that one sharp breath. Looking at her face, at the limbs so tense it seems a wonder their skin does not burst, I comprehend the titanic struggle underway inside of her, within her very blood and flesh and bone. I lean close and speak into her ear. However strong the silent rapport between us, there are times when only words will do.
"You must scream," I urge her gently. "Scream. Cease fighting it. Let it out. It will not break your vow. It is in you, and it will stay there until you release it. You must, Gaeira. Do it. Scream, I beg you."
She does not yield. The battle waged by her mind and tongue and every fiber of her flesh to contain the immense wail of grief welling up inside of her rages on. On her knees, curled in a ball, she hammers the gray, devastated earth with bloodless knuckles. Her eyes are wide and wild, but tearless, lips drawn back on teeth that refuse to part.