The forefathers chanted within Einer and made his skin pulsate. Not just his heart, but all of him. His skin was trembling to the same drum as his heartbeat. It matched the beat of giant drums in the distance. It matched the chants of the forefathers. Through blood, they were connected on the battlefield. Their hearts were one heart, reinforced by the chanting of giants.
The battle had already begun. The sun had been swallowed. Asgard lay dark, but Loki steered the way through the waters with conjured lights. The wind was steady, and Loki let the helmsmen on the Naglfar steer, for once. They were already in their battle gear, and Einer’s heart made him feel like he was already in battle. His forefathers were in battle: his kinsmen were fighting, and dying, becoming forefathers in turn and joining the rage.
Even Loki had slipped on battle gear. For all his skills with runes, the giant still required armour in battle. Perhaps he didn’t, for his choice of armour was unusual. Loki was a famed giant. He had lived with gods and traded with dwarfs. For centuries he had prepared for Ragnarok. He could have prepared expensive armour while he had lived in Asgard and stashed it away before he was captured by the aesir, tied up in a cave and sentenced to centuries of punishment for the murder of Baldur. What Loki had instead chosen to wear made even the poorest farmer aboard the Naglfar look and feel rich, and perhaps that was why he had chosen his armour. Some final mockery of the gods. Even in padded armour and leather straps, he would survive their attacks and kill them.
‘It’s all about appearance,’ Loki whispered. He sat down on the stack of oars next to Einer, amidships. Those whose forefathers weren’t rising within them, who weren’t deafened by the drums of battle, were sleeping. Their full armour was out and ready. Most even slept in their armour, this close to battle, but they could still sleep. To them, the battle hadn’t yet begun. Only Einer and Loki knew that the first sword clashes had already rung out over Ida’s plain and that the Alfather’s warriors were already fighting with gold shields in their hands.
‘We need to talk about your plan, Einer,’ Loki whispered. The night was so dark that Einer could hardly see Loki’s lips move, although he could feel the warm breath on his face. ‘Your thoughts are going to get you into trouble. The Alfather will hear you halfway across the battlefield and know what you’re planning.’
‘I know,’ Einer sighed, and he did. He had thought about it and he knew that the biggest risk for their shield-wall in facing the Alfather was Einer’s own thoughts. They would give their task away. Perhaps the others he had chosen were loud thinkers too.
‘You’ve tried runes?’ Loki asked.
‘I’ve got no talent for it,’ Einer said. ‘And I don’t have time to keep trying. It’s too close.’
Loki laughed a little, and Einer didn’t quite know why. ‘Sometimes you talk like your mother. All gloom at the prospect of leaving something imperfect.’
Thinking of his mother, Einer listened a little more carefully to the forefathers’ rage and sorrow. They were eager and hopeful, but they were sad as well. They came with thousands of feelings and emotions, and sometimes listening to them became difficult. They gathered around the sound of beating battle drums, and in their frenzy it united them, and Einer struggled to think of his mother as one of them. One of hundreds of thousands of raging forefathers.
‘Can you shield my thoughts for me?’ asked Einer.
Loki was skilled with runes like no one else he had ever met. Although the Alfather had once hung himself from Yggdrasil to learn the runes, even grand Odin did not strike Einer as being superior to Loki when it came to conjuring runes. If anyone could do it, it had to be Loki.
‘Even if I was standing next to you, I fear that some things are simply impossible, Einer,’ said the giant, who could conjure thousands of flames and stay warm in summer clothes in Jotunheim’s frost. ‘I don’t think your thoughts want to be silenced.’
‘Then what do we do?’
‘We use that to our advantage,’ Loki said. ‘The Alfather also knows how loud your thoughts are. He will find it suspicious if they were to go quiet. He wouldn’t trust you, then.’
Earning the Alfather’s trust again was not exactly what Einer had planned, and he was about to say so, and tell Loki everything he had planned, but the giant stopped him with a hand on the shoulder, and then he tilted his head to the side and whispered, ‘I know. I’ve been listening, Einer. For days.’
The wind picked up and beat around them, though the sail didn’t flap and their course stayed true. Loki had conjured a breeze around them to muffle their whispers so that no half-sleeping sailor with sharp ears would hear.
‘You know your plan so well now that it’s in your bones. You’re a warrior. You’ve gone over the moves. You’ve practised them. You’ve certainly thought about them. You will move by instinct when the opportunity comes. Your body will know what to do. Don’t let your thoughts tell you when to act,’ Loki advised. ‘Instead, let your thoughts wander and search for what else you might do. Use your thoughts to explore other possibilities. Search for openings, and chances to act, but let your body act, not your mind.’
Einer twisted further back on the stack of oars and leaned against the edge of the ship. He had to think about that proposition. Perhaps Loki was right, and his body had memorised the plan, as once it had learned shield-wall manoeuvres so he could move into formation reflexively, without command given. If that was the case, he wouldn’t have to think about it. It was embedded in him, and he could focus on other opportunities on the battlefield. It was like taking a decisive step to the right to confuse his opponent before darting the opposite way. A useful move against less practised opponents.
‘The Alfather will know,’ Einer eventually said. Odin was not a lesser warrior, he was skilled and he knew every move of tafl.
‘That’s exactly why it’ll work.’
Loki leaned in close. The wind whipped his dark hair around in the night, and in that moment, Einer was reminded of something distant. A wind rising. It stirred something familiar within him, or perhaps it was merely the forefathers agreeing with Loki. They drummed through Einer, his fingertips pulsing with their call. They were eager, as if to say that they too would help. They would lead him to a warriors’ oblivion. At any moment, he could let them take over his body and drive all thoughts from his mind.
‘Last resort,’ said Loki, in a rhythm that matched the forefathers’ call. ‘This will work. The Alfather has met you. He knows the simplicity of your mind. You expect him to be superior to you. My blood-brother too knows that, so he will not expect you to try to deceive him.’
This time, Einer was the one to snicker, for Loki was right. Of course he was right, and in that moment, Einer was gladder than ever to have been given the chance to fight for Loki’s cause.
‘It’ll work,’ Einer said, and he actually believed it.
Einer was kept awake, the rest of the journey, by the call of the forefathers. Their rage grew louder the closer they came to the battlefield. In the distance a storm raged in the night, and lightning struck where Thor rode his goat-carriage.
They were gradually sailing closer to the storm, where the battle had to be happening.
A sailor sat up at Einer’s feet. He had been sleeping under a blanket, which he quietly packed away before sitting up on the oars next to Einer, where Loki had sat earlier in the night. ‘Is that the sound of the battle drums?’ he asked in a whisper.
Einer strained to hear what the man did. He had been so lost in the forefathers calling him that he had thought that was all there was, combined with Thor’s rumbling thunder, but then he heard it. The battle drums were without, now, as well as within. They were faint, out on the river, but they were within earshot.
‘Ja,’ Einer replied. His forefathers and kinsmen must already have been fighting for a while. Einer was eager to join the battle and defend his own. He hoped that they would not arrive too late, to find only dead giants and triumphant gods.
‘Can I ask you something?’ the man eventually said, after they had been sitting there both staring off at the sky and Thor’s distant lightning.
Einer grunted in agreement, and the warrior sat further back on the oars to better see past the sail.
‘Do you trust Loki? You know him better than us.’
Einer didn’t blame the crew for being wary. For although Loki’s charm was easy to fall to, when he was away and out of sight, one always ended up thinking back to those many stories told in Midgard about how Loki always had hidden plans and couldn’t be trusted. Einer had been the same, at first.
‘Before the three winters, I lay injured in the Alfather’s hall,’ said Einer. ‘I lay there for a long time, perhaps moons, and while I lay there, staring up at the gold shields, the Alfather came to me. Sometimes he simply sat at my side, sometimes he would tell me stories. Other times we spoke. When my wounds were as good as healed, the Alfather seated me at his high table and told me of his plans, and yet I sit here today, on Loki’s famed ship, with you and the other corpses.’
The warrior said nothing.
Lightning lit the sky with pretty colours as Einer spoke. The ship cut steadily through the water, and occasionally, they heard the splashing of the Midgard Worm’s tail. It seemed, as they sat there, feeling the soft rocking of the ship, that they had all the time in the nine worlds to sit and talk before the deadly lightning would strike at their feet, and they would face their end.
‘I trust Loki more than anyone else I’ve met,’ Einer said. ‘My mother lied to me in life.’ He had often thought about it. In life he had trusted his mother more than anyone, and he still looked up to her, but she had told him nothing of his lineage, or of the anger he carried inside. ‘She did it to save me pain, but still, she lied. My father often made questionable decisions.’
Once his father had declared that no one in Ash-hill should pay for mead and ale, and not only had their reserves all been drunk within a week, five warriors had nearly died from it.
‘He was good too, but you couldn’t always trust his word,’ Einer said with a fond smile, remembering. ‘The Alfather… The Alfather was grand. Beautiful, even, and standing across from him, I wanted nothing more than to please him, but his tales were robed in shadows, and there was much he never spoke about.’
Once, Einer had expected all his questions to be answered by his gods, and more specifically by the Alfather, but after meeting Odin, Einer had been left with twice as many questions.
‘Loki answers my questions, and in all the time I have known him, I don’t think he has lied, even once.’
‘But the stories,’ the warrior said.
‘Even in the stories, I don’t think he lied. He was always frank, and often got blamed for doing exactly as everyone asked of him.’
The other sailor, too, must have thought of that, for in the faint light from Loki’s floating flames Einer saw him nod. ‘Even being honest, I don’t know. He had Baldur killed, and now the Alfather. Are we sailing on a quest of jealousy?’
This time, Einer was the one to nod slowly, thinking.
He looked down the length of the ship, trying to find Loki, but the giant was gone, as he often was. Loki tended to disappear, and Einer was half-convinced that he was swimming in the river with his son, the Midgard Worm. Nothing seemed below or above Loki, except perhaps lies.
‘Nej,’ Einer eventually said, after having thought about the question for a good while. Jealous was not a word Einer would have thought of to describe Loki. The giant was rash, full of ruse, and trickery. He had a true love for the unexpected and liked to surprise, but he did not strike Einer as a jealous man. ‘We are here for many reasons, but Loki being jealous of his blood-brother is not one of them. I doubt jealousy is why he killed Baldur.’
Truly Einer didn’t know, neither why Loki had brought on Baldur’s death, nor what motivated him to bring about this battle, if it wasn’t revenge or jealousy, as this man suggested. Yet, listening to the steady drum of the battle Einer’s forefathers were fighting elsewhere in Asgard, and their controlled anger and whispers, he knew that he was right.
‘There’s an imbalance in the nine worlds,’ Einer said, letting the forefathers guide his words. ‘We’re here to fix that.’
The forefathers were stronger than he had ever felt them before. They made his heart gallop and steadied his breathing. It felt like he was already in a fight. In the battle it would be an advantage to have the forefathers keeping him steady. A taste spread through his mouth, too: iron and blood, like he was already fighting and pushing himself.
The wind disappeared, then. The sail fluttered once, then flopped down uselessly.
‘Loki’s ships are here,’ a voice echoed out over the river. It came from somewhere inland.
‘Who is there?’ Einer heard the outlook shout, but there was no response.
Naglfar sailed at the head of Helheim’s fleet, although now, without wind, it merely drifted forth. Another ship knocked them softly from behind. Sailors at the aft were laughing at the unskilful manoeuvre.
‘Lower the sail! Prepare to row,’ commanded their steersman.
The shouter at the middle of the ship passed on the order, and sailors wrestled themselves out of their blankets, woken by the loud commands. The man next to Einer helped them pack the blankets under the deck. Einer got up to help, but he did not know where the blankets belonged under deck. What he did know, and thought about, as he cornered aft on the ship, was what would happen once they docked and marched inland. That was Einer’s responsibility.
When thousands upon thousands of his people launched themselves into the deadliest battle in the nine worlds, he needed to ensure that they did as had been asked of them. He needed to ensure that none would abandon hope upon seeing the murderous battlefield.
The sailors began to undo the ropes and pull their oars out of the stack Einer had been sitting on. There was a tension in the night air that Einer was certain was not just due to them having to row through dark waters towards a shore they could not see, or due to Loki not being there to guide them.
‘No need to tire your arms by rowing,’ said the person who had spoken earlier. The ship groaned, twisting sideways through the waters. Sailors gasped and held on so as not to lose their balance. A giant hand had wrapped itself around the fore ship and was dragging them through the river.
The giant was larger than any Einer had seen in Jotunheim. During his three long winters living among giants, he had learned that not all giants were equal in ability and size. The giants found in the old tales were mountain giants: their skills with the runes were limited, although not as much as that of a valley giant, but valley giants had incredible strength to compensate.
The ship dunked into something on the starboard side.
‘Forgive,’ said the giant in his slow voice. ‘Is everyone alive?’
No one answered but sailors rushed to the side of the ship where the sound had come from. It didn’t seem that the ship had been pierced. Einer saw no water flooding in, and no sailor yelled alarm.
Something splashed out of the water to their starboard side. From the depths of the river came the Midgard Worm, with a blood-curdling shriek. Clinging onto its smooth back with seaweed for reins was Loki, laughing and howling. His chin, and the soles of his leather shoes, were lit by his flames. His son stopped its terrible wail that drowned out Thor’s thunder.
‘Let us ride into battle!’ Loki yelled. He was small compared to the mountain giant’s hands, but no less frightening for it. Sailors cheered, and the large giant laughed in a deep voice that made the ship planks tremble.
‘They are waiting for you inland,’ said the giant, whose hand was still tight around their ship. Giants had snuck into Asgard through an old passage, and now waited by the river front for Helheim’s ships to arrive. The Midgard Worm gave a parting salute to the sailors of the Naglfar by splashing its tail at the waters. The wave rocked the ship and beat against the shore. Water rushed through the oar-holes.
‘See you in battle,’ shouted Loki to his Helheim army, but already he had moved out of sight from his conjured flames, and all they heard from aboard the ship was the splashing of the Midgard Worm slithering out of the waters, and Loki’s happy snickering.
The rest was up to Einer now. They wouldn’t see Loki again unless they met on the battlefield.
The mountain giant’s hand was still wrapped tight around the Naglfar. Sailors had sprung onto land, and through the dark they searched for a place to moor the ship.
Staring at the vast hand that kept them tight, Einer got an idea, and hurried to the part of the ship where he had stored away his helmet, food pack and water sack. He strapped it all on, so he was ready for war; he had decided he would carry no shield in battle. He checked his weapon belt, felt the hilts of both of his swords, content that he had all he would need.
Another ship bumped into them on the port side. The giant’s hands were tight around both vessels, as the sailors climbed up to tie the ships together so they wouldn’t drift and securing them to land as well. The flames Loki had conjured lit the giant’s hands and a part of his lower arms.
Einer took a deep breath. ‘I’m the kinsman of Grythak and Fraktir, from the edge of Niflheim,’ he announced loud enough for the giant to hear him, if only through his thoughts.
The giant’s grip around the Naglfar tightened a little, and the ship groaned under the pressure. Something appeared out of the dark of night: a face descending upon them. A round nose nearly struck the mast. Cold eyes narrowed at them, searching through their midst for the one who had spoken.
At last, the giant’s eyes fell on Einer and immediately he seemed to know. ‘Glumbruck…’ he muttered, but even that short speech spilled from him like a howling wind, making both ship and sailors tremble.
‘She was my mother,’ Einer said. He didn’t raise his voice above a whisper, but his thoughts spoke as loud as ever. No matter what any giant thought of his mother, Einer had found that the name gained him respect.
The giant released the Naglfar. The ship rocked, and then the giant’s hand reached past the rigging and mast. Einer was picked up in the giant hand, as once he had been picked up by Loki, and thrown into Niflheim’s cold sea.
The giant clenched Einer’s chest, but didn’t squeeze as hard as Loki once had. Einer could breathe as he was hauled up through the air. The jotun’s face was scarcely outlined by Loki’s low hanging flame at the fore-ship. He was an older giant, his face faintly wrinkled, especially around the mouth. His forehead was hidden in the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat. Einer had expected a helmet.
‘If Valhalla’s spearmen can throw this high, then I’ll let them,’ the giant whispered, and even his whisper was a roar. ‘Their weapons are small like needles anyway.’
‘What’s your name?’ asked Einer.
The giant sighed. Einer struggled to keep his eyes open against the gale the sigh unleashed on him. ‘Names don’t matter, so close to the end,’ said the giant. ‘Soon I’ll be a forefather. We both will.’
Einer struggled to think of himself as a forefather, with all that rage and no voice of his own, but the giant was right. Nothing else waited for him in the afterlife, and for three entire winters, he had tried to accept that.
Nestled in the giant’s grip, Einer tried to find the right words for his request. Truly it was something he should have prepared earlier, because he knew that all his attempts at forming his question were heard as clearly as if he’d uttered them aloud.
‘What do you want?’ asked the giant, listening to Einer’s thoughts like giants always did.
‘A ride,’ Einer said. He would need the help of giants to get his shield-wall through the worst of the battle, and the taller a giant he could find, the better. This giant was the perfect candidate.
‘You’re going to get me killed, aren’t you?’ The giant’s breath was so hot and close that it nearly made Einer sweat through his armour.
‘You’ll die anyway.’ Einer put on his widest smile.
‘Ha! That’s what Loki said.’ They both laughed at that, the giant more than Einer, who was shaken in the jotnar’s palm like a doll, and was holding onto the giant’s little finger, to make sure he wouldn’t fall to his death before he set foot on the battlefield.
He knew that was not quite what the giant had meant by getting killed. The warriors of Valhalla had told Einer that after centuries of battle, it was not so much about not dying as it was about the manner in which you died.
Their deaths would be terrible, Einer knew it. Even a death at Thor’s hammer would be preferable to what awaited Einer and his shield-wall on their quest, yet there was no worthier way to die either.
Einer looked into the glint of the giant’s black eyes, and as loud as he could, he thought about the task Loki had given them. They had to ensure that the Alfather would die, ripped apart by Fenrir’s teeth, and no one else could do it.
‘Keep dangerous thoughts like that to yourself,’ the giant hissed and closed his fingers a little around Einer. ‘How many of you?’
‘Five.’
The giant considered that. He would say yes, and they both knew it. After what Einer had revealed, there was nothing else for him to do. So, without further word, the giant deposited him on land.
Einer was about to say that he would be at the front of the army when they had all arrived on land and were ready to move out, but the giant spoke first. ‘I’ll find you, loud thinker. Easily.’ And then he was off.
Warriors were already moving food crates and armour and shields onto land. The Naglfar had been both anchored and moored; no one would need to make a quick escape. This was not a raid, and there would be no journey home.
The shore was busy with activity. Einer’s eyes had begun to adjust to the near complete dark. With no sun or moon, there was so little light coming from the stars that he stumbled through the crowd.
Other giants had arrived to help the ships. He heard the crush of their feet, and hoped that giants could see better than him, and wouldn’t accidentally crush someone with a careless step.
Einer positioned himself far into land, where he had told his senior commanders he would be. He found moss and fire strike in a crate a great giant deposited at his feet, but no matter how hard he struck, no fire came, and it wasn’t because of the wind, for although Thor’s thunder rumbled closer with every heartbeat, there was no wind.
Even without the fire he had promised, the senior commanders found their way to him. They came in small groups, and he gave them the same advice: to remind their warriors of the skills they had acquired in death and life and use those in battle. They went over the list of equipment each person had to carry and Einer reminded them of where the water barrels and food crates would be deposited by giants for warriors to use when their pouches ran out. He wanted everyone to be as prepared as possible, but there was no time to teach them anything more.
Eventually, all the ships docked, and the last three commanders announced that their groups were ready. Einer struggled to get to the front of the crowd where his shield-wall would be waiting for him.
Thor’s lightning hit hard. So close was it that Einer had to shield his ears from the terrible thunder that followed, and he heard gasps of mixed wonder and terror around him.
Brannar, robed in full bearskin armour; Sigismund, with the worried frown on his face and his blond curls tied away under his helmet; and Tassi, tall and skinny with nothing but leather armour, all waited for Einer. There was no glorious welcome, only an acknowledgement from each of them, that he was there, alive, and that they were too. Before Einer could ask about Bogi and Nar, the two large warriors burst out of the crowd carrying Sigismund’s anvil between them.
‘What in all of Helheim are we going to do with this?’ Bogi complained when they plopped it down onto the mushy ground at their feet. His red hair was glistening wet with sweat already, and Nar did not look any happier.
‘I got us a ride,’ Einer said, and he watched their faces settle with relief.
With a thunderous crash, a giant foot smacked down next to Einer. Nar and Sigismund both yelped at the sudden appearance, and Bogi seemed to have gotten hiccups from it all, but Brannar and Tassi merely watched the giant, and neither one of them could have looked more unimpressed with Einer’s choice of a ride.
‘The anvil too?’ asked the giant so the earth trembled under their feet.
Einer nodded. The giant swept the anvil into his belt pouch, and then grabbed all five of them in one hand. Einer was pressed up against Nar’s elbow, and Sigismund’s foot was hitting his shin, but quickly enough the hand opened around them and deposited them on the giant’s shoulder.
Thor’s lightning had drawn so close that it lit the plain of giants and corpse-warriors all the way to the ships. Swarms of warriors had begun their march inland.
Storm clouds gathered above them, and somewhere in the distance Einer heard the familiar screech of the Midgard Worm. Again, Thor’s lightning struck. They had to be readying for their final fight, out there, Thor and the worm. Soon, hopefully, they would both perish, and none would have to fear dying under the weight of Thor’s hammer.
Lightning struck again, flashing across the faces of Helheim’s people staring up at Einer and his shield-wall. Thor was coming for them. His thunder already rumbled loud above them. As far as Einer could see, his people looked to him, and in that moment, he was reminded, once more, that they were not truly warriors. Helheim’s corpses were here of their own choice, to stand up for their own and for what ought to be right in the nine worlds, but they were not used to war, as he was. Their faces peered up at him, lit by the constant lightning that struck all over the plain, burning giants and trees and fighters.
Einer didn’t know what to say. In life, before heading into battle, he had used to tell his comrades that they would meet again in Valhalla, but they wouldn’t. Not this time. If they did, it meant that they had failed.
‘To glory?’ Brannar suggested, feeling Einer’s hesitation, but even that felt hollow and worthless before Ragnarok.
Einer looked out towards the battlefield, where he saw giants marching. Out there, somewhere, Loki was riding into battle on his son’s back, and suddenly Einer knew exactly what he wanted to say. Mimicking the famed giant’s wicked smile, Einer faced his thousands upon thousands of followers. He called upon the forefathers’ strength, raised his Ulfberht sword in the air, and bellowed: ‘Death to all gods!’
Thousands of merchants and fishers and farmers looked up at him. The words settled into the silence around them, and then, as one, unified as all giants were through the anger of their forefathers, thousands of first-time warriors raised their weapons into the darkness and roared the words back to him.
‘DEATH TO ALL GODS!’
Ragnar stared across the fields of Ragnarok. The Darkness was pushed away through his distaff. Gods were dying, giants were dying. Despite everything Ragnar had done, nothing had changed. Ragnarok was still happening.
‘Why is Ragnarok still happening?’ Ragnar cried, no longer caring that the shadow warriors would come. ‘I killed the Alfather.’
A sword sliced through Ragnar’s neck.
Death, pain, and fear.
Ragnar came back to his senses in the complete dark. A quick death, for once. Even the shadow warriors in his Darkness were taking pity on him now and finishing him quickly. Ragnar had done so much. He had tried everything, even killed his god. Despite all he had done, Ragnarok was still happening. He couldn’t stop it.
Ragnarok. Gods’ twilight. Their twilight and their darkness had come for them. Their end. There was no escaping it. The tears ran hot down Ragnar’s cheeks in the Darkness where no one could see. He himself had been named after the gods. Ragnar—gods. To see the end like this, and not be able to stop it… It was too cruel a fate.
Especially for a skald who had used to tell countless stories about the gods in their glory days, before the terrible end he had doomed them to.
Ragnarok. The Darkness of the Gods. Perhaps that was what it meant, more so than the Twilight of the Gods, Ragnar thought. Perhaps it meant that all the gods would come here, in the end, when they died, just like Ragnar had been sentenced to this afterlife. Perhaps his gods, too, would arrive here, after their final deaths.
A daunting thought entered Ragnar’s mind, and his tears abruptly stopped.
What if Ragnarok didn’t mean the twilight of gods, as everyone in Midgard believed? What if it wasn’t the Gods’ Darkness either? What if it was simply what it said: Ragnar’s Rok? Ragnar’s Darkness?
He had made it happen, after all. He had ensured the Alfather’s death. He had freed Loki from the shackles. He had made it all happen, stuck in his Darkness.
Ragnar stared through the pitch-black dark that surrounded him with a new fear.
Ragnar’s Darkness. That was what Ragnarok was.
He had done this. It was his fault, and only his, that the gods were dying on Asgard’s green plains.