Confident that she would get her way, Hilda marched towards Valhalla. Her father had taught her all about the Alfather. She knew all his sayings by heart. For days of travel she had argued with Odin in her mind, and she was confident now that she could get her way.
Light shone out of the grand hall, through the tree-trunk-thick spear and axe handles that marked the outer walls of Valhalla. The night was bright with snow, and voices echoed from outside the hall. A snowball fight had broken out by the gates, and warriors ran around squealing like children.
Amused, Hilda marched through the crowd without minding the snowballs flying around her. Three years of winter had passed and although the winter had been long, Hilda hadn’t done any of the usual things of snow and winter. The nornir weren’t really ones to start a snowball fight, and they certainly didn’t have skating bones lying around, or a sled.
Back in Ash-hill, Torstein had owned a sled, Hilda remembered. Thick snow was rare, but whenever there was snow, all the kids had fought over who got to use Torstein’s sled. Of course, Einer had usually won that fight, and always ensured that everyone got to ride it.
The wind pushed at Hilda’s back with whispers and visions of past and future, all of which Hilda ignored. She had spent too long dwelling on the nornir’s whispers. Confident, she marched up the twisted arm-ring steps to Valhalla. The snow had been trodden to brown slush and the steps were slippery. Her snow fox bounded up in three great leaps and disappeared into the tangle of warriors inside the hall.
The crowd was thick. Some were seated, but many were moving around, and none of them stopped to question why Hilda was there. She looked like a shieldmaiden, and she fit right in. It was good to be back among true fighters.
There were too many fires and too much smoke to see far down the hall, so Hilda stared up at the ceiling of gold shields, held up by the long branches of Valhalla’s oak tree. The branches grew thicker to her right, which meant that the oak tree and the Alfather’s high tables were that way. Hilda and her snow fox set out towards it.
She had only been inside Valhalla twice before—once when it had been empty, and once right after the start of winter to demand a seat in the great hall—but it was a place that felt familiar in every way. It felt right.
The smell of roasted meat and honeyed stew mingled with the smoke from the fires and the stench of thousands. All about her, Odin’s chosen combatants were laughing and enjoying this night. As she passed them by, Hilda caught conversations about battles, sailing trips and women. The same sort of conversations she might have overheard in the tavern at home. From now on and until the end came, she decided, this would be her home.
The night stretched on as Hilda marched towards the great oak tree under which the Alfather and the best of his warriors feasted.
She saw the Alfather’s two ravens before she saw him. The ravens swirled over the crowd and right over Hilda. One of them cocked its head at her, and she knew that her arrival had been announced.
With that assurance, she walked on.
The Alfather’s high tables spanned the width of the hall, to mark the status of those seated there. With the puffy snow fox at her side, Hilda marched out of the crowd and down the length of the high tables until she found the Alfather.
His single eye was fixed on her from afar. Her approach had indeed been announced, exactly as she had thought. Yet the Alfather didn’t meet her halfway, as Freya once had; he waited for her to come all the way up to him.
He was seated on a bench with his supporters, listening to their stories, but his single eye did not stray from Hilda. The ends of his long blue robes lay bundled on the floor behind him, but even the corners were sparkling perfect, as if they had been washed a heartbeat ago.
Hilda stopped by the Alfather. Even seated, he was taller than her. Her eyes were level with his neck, around which a loose gold ring hung.
The warriors at the Alfather’s table fell silent and turned to look at Hilda. They expected her to speak and tell them why she was there, but Hilda said nothing. Since she had entered Asgard, she had learned to appreciate the wisdom of her father’s lessons. Her father had always advised her to let others speak first. That way their motives lay bare.
With runes Hilda protected her own mind and thoughts from the Alfather, so that he had to ask if he wanted to know why she was there. Her runes made her thoughts blank to him.
‘The girl with bloody tears,’ the Alfather eventually mused, when the silence had stretched long enough for half the warriors at his table to turn back to their horns of mead. ‘You’ve been here before. At the beginning of the three-year winter. You wanted a seat in my hall.’
‘That was then,’ said Hilda. ‘Now I won’t settle for so little.’
The Alfather burst out laughing, a warm laughter that felt like home in the same way his grand hall did. It did not feel like mockery, but praise.
Again, Hilda waited for him to speak first. She expected him to ask her what she wanted, then, if it was not merely a seat in his hall, but that was not his first question. ‘Who are you?’
‘A warrior fighting for your cause,’ answered Hilda, for she had learned that the truth wouldn’t be trusted. Not when she had no destiny to confirm her story.
‘Then I shall have your name and lineage,’ demanded the Alfather.
She had to answer, but she could not give her father’s name: the threads of destinies in the nornir’s hall made it clear that Ragnar Erikson had only ever had a son. ‘I am Hilda,’ she said. ‘And I have no lineage.’
One of Odin’s two ravens flapped down to sit on his shoulder. It was a terrifyingly big bird, and its black eyes seemed to look straight into Hilda’s heart and recognise that she spoke the truth, or at least a version of it.
‘Yet, without kinsmen at your side who can speak for you and attest your worth, you come to demand a seat in my hall.’
‘Nej,’ said Hilda. ‘I don’t just want a seat in your hall, I want a seat at your high table.’
Fierce fighters all around them began to laugh. They thought her presumptuous and unworthy, but they didn’t know anything about her, and Hilda knew where she belonged.
The Alfather didn’t laugh with his warriors. Any hint of a smile had disappeared from his thin lips, half-hidden behind his silver beard. ‘You left before you could prove your worth last time,’ the Alfather correctly remembered.
Hilda smiled wickedly. ‘Cattle know when it’s time to go home, and then they leave the pasture,’ she quoted. They were the Alfather’s own words, a speech delivered centuries ago and famed through all of Midgard.
The Alfather mused on that for a moment. A simpler man might have stroked his long beard as he mused, but the Alfather was a god and he looked wiser by doing nothing at all. For his beard was perfectly combed silver as it was, and his single eye only needed to narrow to show his guarded interest. ‘Why have you returned to the pasture now?’
‘To demand my rightful place. Right there.’ Hilda pointed to the bench at Odin’s right side.
‘Why should I give you anything at all?’ the Alfather asked, and he seemed amused. Easily he could have dismissed her, but he didn’t. The mystery of her was enough to keep him asking, as she had hoped.
‘No man is so good that he has no blemishes, and none so bad that he has no use.’ Once more Hilda used the Alfather’s own famed words against him.
Odin matched her smile. The longer Hilda was allowed to stand in his presence, the more confident she felt that the Alfather might decide to keep her around; if for nothing else, then for her wits.
‘Yet…’ the Alfather began, the smile on his lips spreading. ‘A bad man may only be useful at the dark corner of my hall. I have no reason to seat him at my side.’
‘Then I will gladly prove my worth.’
The Alfather chuckled, a long growl of a sound that reminded Hilda of wolves, telling her that despite his grey beard and hair, and the perfect wrinkles on his face, the Alfather was perhaps the most dangerous being in all the nine worlds.
‘Often, when he comes among the wise, the greedy man’s stomach is laughed at.’ Odin too knew how to quote his own words.
Before Hilda could find the right response, Odin pushed away from the table and rose to his feet. At his full height, his perfection was devastating. Lesser warriors would have stumbled over their words at the sight of him, but Hilda knew her own worth. She pushed the intimidation to the back of her mind and focused on the task ahead.
‘Let me fight on Ida’s plain tomorrow and you will see that I am worthy,’ Hilda pleaded.
‘There is only one way to prove that,’ the Alfather said dismissively. ‘Follow me.’
The Alfather had not yet granted her what she wanted, yet even this honour made her dizzy. The Alfather was considering her request, and he had asked her to follow him.
His strides were long, and Hilda struggled to follow his pace down the width of the hall. Warriors and shieldmaiden stared and parted for them as they passed by. All the way to the nearest gate, they rushed. It felt like they walked for half the night.
The Alfather neither looked over his shoulder to make certain that Hilda followed, nor said anything more. He exited the hall, down the nine arm-ring steps into the crisp snow outside. It had stopped snowing while Hilda had been inside, and the air was all the colder for it. The ground was slippery too. Even Hilda’s snow fox was struggling, but the Alfather never slowed his walk.
At their backs, warriors stared out of the hall after them.
Dawn was near. The horizon had begun to brighten. Soon the day’s battle would begin.
A few good strides from Valhalla’s gates, the Alfather finally stopped. Hilda hurried to catch up the last of the way. ‘How do I prove my worth?’ she asked.
Before the Alfather could answer, a loud horn was blown inside Valhalla. Hilda twirled around to look at the bright hall. The walls were made from huge weapons, and the thick branches of Valhalla’s oak tree stretched out over it all. A loud crash and roar followed, and birds took flight from the roof of Valhalla. The first sunlight hit the top of the gates, and then came the rumble.
Shoulder to shoulder came nine hundred and ninety-nine fighters out of each gate. Gold shields in hands, roaring for blood and murder, and headed straight for Hilda.
‘It’s simple,’ the Alfather told Hilda. ‘Kill nine hundred and ninety-nine of my best and you will have earned a seat at my side, with them.’
Warriors were rushing at her, gold shields raised. Men and women twice her size, who had fought for centuries before Hilda had even been born.
Hilda clenched her teeth hard and brought out her axe. Her heart beat fast in her chest as she raised the axe in both hands. She had no helmet and no shield to protect herself. She hadn’t trained all winter, not like she had used to do, and she had never had to fight such fierce foes either, but she would win. She would prove her worth as she had always dreamt of doing. Finally, the day had come.
The Alfather might have given her an impossible task, but if this was what it would take to accomplish her dreams, then Hilda had no other choice but to succeed.
‘For a seat at the high table,’ Hilda said to confirm. She glanced over her shoulder at Odin, but the Alfather had disappeared.
Alone with her snow fox, Hilda stood on Ida’s snowy plain, with Valhalla’s fiercest defenders rushing at her. Her knuckles were white where she clenched her axe. Her snow fox howled.
‘Shieldmaiden die, and snow foxes die,’ Hilda sang to her fox and to the nornir through the wind.
The song calmed her speeding heart, reminded her to breathe, and reminded her of her training. She could do this. She knew that she could.
The whole of Asgard seemed to slow.
The warriors bounded closer. Their chainmail rang in the wind.
‘They must die likewise.
I know one thing that will never die.
Our glory in the Alfather’s eye.’