The Grove of Thórr
The whirler began its precipitous descent, a dark spinning, like a sycamore key come spiralling out of the murk, turning the locks of the future.
Iðunn felt herself flinch, startled by the suddenness of the evacuation. She groped distractedly through the dark for a knee to squeeze, a reassuring hand to hold, more out of habit than hope, but of course, there was nothing. Whirlers didn’t even merit a pilot to yell at—the Imperials just strapped you in and hurled you into the ionosphere. Stupid fuckers. Only an empire born of pirates would make walking the plank a principle of design. Still, with the greenways in collapse, there was no safer way of conveying her thread-riders to the surface.
She pushed the small of her back firmly into the seat, trying to find reassurance in the contours of her airborne cauldron as it gyred through the heavens. Her cabin had sixteen round, reinforced hollows, positioned to provide a view of the horizon at all stages of flight. They were small compared to the gaps between them, and some were fuzzed with a sheen of ochrous mold, but she could patch together a moderately good view when she dared to open her eyes.
Her eyes. That was some consolation. Her garlanded body had been delivered like a bouquet of fresh flowers by Imperial courier, a brocade of Verðandi by way of cortege. The þráðriða had sewn her mind back into familiar muscles and membranes, healing the overlong decoherence—and now here she was, clenching her refugee organs for dear life. She tapped her feet anxiously, much preferring when they were firmly attached to the ground.
Nine more whirlers dropped alongside her, sailing the solar wind: her companions, each pod paired in symmetrical clusters like partners in a folk dance. She half expected the Imperials to blare “Ride of the Valkyrja,” just as they did when they brought their revenges over Gastropnir, but they remained blissfully silent. Perhaps Trumba felt her little mercy dash didn’t deserve the fanfare, or that the upcoming fireworks needed no accompaniment.
Sprites arced briefly across the pods’ Mímameiðr limbs, and then vanished, leaving only luminous red haloes in the backscatter of sunlight. She winced again—and then upbraided herself for the foolishness. The Skuld might have been decimated by the explosion at Mímisbrunnr, but their ingenuity lived on. Nanotech, the Grikkir might have called it. Dvergr-tækni claimed the purists. Either way, the infusion of heartwood and white copper was nigh on indestructible. Mjölnir itself couldn’t have made a dent.
More Sprites flocked around the crown, the dissonant dance of their tendrils suggesting a thunderstorm below. The name was a whimsical acronym for Stratospheric Perturbations Resulting from Intense Thunderstorm Electrification. Ljósalfar as beautiful as the sun, or the excitation of nitrogen molecules due to electron collisions—it made no difference whether you were a skald or a vísdómsmaðr, the effect was the same: sheer, jaw-dropping majesty. Iðunn opened her eyes wide in wonder, keenly aware that, despite their beauty, these alfar were just outriders, heralds for the celestial pageant to come.
They plummeted on, the world revolving brighter still, forcing Iðunn to fumble for her sun-goggles. The main event was said to be nothing short of miraculous, and she didn’t want to blink and miss it. Imperial propagandists once contrived that lights in the night sky were the reflections of Valkyrjur armour as they led the fallen past the doorpost of Gjöll—a fetishistic vision, the carnal discipline of a metal bodice designed to motivate the soldiery.
That was before the Skuld roused the Western Dawn. With the temerity of idle children, the maestari had redrawn the world, compelling a new horizon to stir—and Óðinn’s Wish Maids were trampled in the rush to congratulate them.
Seen close up, the Svalinn shield was little more elaborate than a copper wire, a receiver, and a sail, snatching elf beams and funnelling them to the ground below—a satellite capable of generating billions upon billions of gigawatts of energy—but that was to ignore the bobbing, dancing, weaving bands of aurorae it created, as the flow of solar particles fluctuated around its magnetic boss, the sky igniting in bands of colours where the great sunshield faced his shining god. The Skuld’s flamboyance was so large and virile, the people of Midgard nicknamed it the dayspring.
Once, when their campaign was young, Father had told her a fanciful tale, no doubt to ease her abiding fear of leaping into the dark. It was one she still cherished. He said the aurorae were caused by firefoxes, creatures so fleet of foot that they sprinted through the sky. When their large, furry tails brushed against the mountains, they created sparks that lit up the world. Of course, it was childish, they both knew that, but it was so much brighter, so much more alive with possibility, than the compulsive need most Norse felt to romanticise the dead. Iðunn often wondered whether that one story had inspired her to devise her Apples. Telomerase not only kept the Læknir away, it halted the conversation around death through the simple expedient of removing the full stop from the end of the sentence.
There had once been a hundred other tales, the ethereal lights woven into the fabric of a thousand vanquished cultures, a magnet for reminiscence. For the peoples of Markland, the lights had been the spirits of the dead playing ball with a walrus head or lost children who danced round and round twisting streamers in the sky; fires over which the great medicine men simmered their dead enemies in enormous pots, or torches used by a tribe of dvergr, half the length of a canoe paddle in height and yet so strong they caught whales with their hands.
But that was then, in the days when she had worn her laughter lines like a veil, before the decades of war had bound her every flight of fancy, before the relentless march of Norsification trampled away any vestiges of foreign thinking. These days, the inconstant polar lights were eclipsed, a mere sideshow compared to the ingenuity of the truculent ringmasters. Like all trusted shields, Svalinn was part sentinel, part canvas, richly decorated with a myriad of patterns and poems. The Vesturljós were the crowning glory of an Empire, and the false dawns of faded kingdoms were buried with their ghosts.
She tumbled through a burst of carmine, a great bloom of green, then iridescent purple fronds. The scientist in her knew the colours corresponded to different quantum transitions, excited oxygen and vibrant nitrogen atoms, but it was still wondrous to behold—like falling through a rainbow or being shrunk down and placed in a neon sign. Or being caressed by a firefox tail, nuzzled by an old flame.
Then… no sooner had the light show begun than it was over. Iðunn was dumped back into her decrepit and mildew-powdered pod, the reverie cut short. She fought for focus against a welling tear, then blinked it away, redshifting back to the darkness with practiced efficiency. This was where she lived now, with nothing to offer the cosmos but bitter determination and mordant drudgery.
Her companions were moving slower now, she noticed, snared in the downdraft of the onrushing storm, turning with the vorticity of new winds. She adjusted her own craft’s fluidics and felt the whirler stiffen, then sweep past the turbulence, affording her an excellent, if bumpy view of the thunderclouds, silver-grey anvils waiting to spark. The other ships did the same, adjusting for the syncopated rhythm, before resuming their silent reel.
They were still dizzyingly high, but not so far that she couldn’t make out the receptor complex glistening on the ground, surrounded by a misty, brooding forest, with ash and pine trees over a hundred ells tall, their huge canopies shading a tangled understory of hornbeams, ferns, and fungi the size of tables. From Ilbláland to Morguneyjar, half the world had been wiped clean, yet here life had survived, an emerald redoubt in a sea of chaos. The skjaldborg had clearly absorbed the worst of the blow, leaving the land untouched by Surtr’s scathe of branches. Such was the caprice of heaven.
Iðunn kept her eyes firmly on the ground as it shuttled towards her—just in case there were any last-minute surprises—but her landing was feathered, with very little sideslip considering the wind. The drone chamber automatically depressurised and opened, releasing the Verðandi like a carefully nurtured seed. Now safely planted, she couldn’t begrudge the Imperials their due—they had always had a way with ergonomics, with getting people from Fehu to Othala as quickly as possible. She made a mental note to punch in the schematics prior to the return, and then unwound herself from her seat, wiping herself free of a film of protective webbing. She walked down the bow ramp to heave her pack onto a waiting vagn, quickly assizing the rest of the advance preparations.
The air was thick and cool, draped with a silence that parted only briefly—for a hrafn’s croak, a barn ugla’s screech, or an úlfr’s wail—before returning to stillness. She took a moment to rummage through her pack, to reassure herself that she had everything she needed. Trumba had been generous. There was plenty in the way of rations, sampling dredges, sounding leads and liming tools, plus extra layers of útsól protective clothing.
The other whirlers landed, accompanied by a static squall from the Imperial loudhailers. There was no further bulletin or reprimand, so Iðunn ignored the noise, chalking it up to the usual Imperial incompetence. An aborted announcement perhaps, because no sooner had Iðunn turned back to her work than her companions duly emerged in solemn procession, taking it in turns to stow their own gear.
The Grandmother of Dawn stepped out first, as befitted her seniority. She swayed as she descended, the tassels of her headdress bobbing and weaving, her back bending like an ear of corn in a piteraq. Her face was painted white with ground shells and gypsum, a mask of mourning. Ulfrun Barkfoot had always been the first to heed any summons—the Women of the First Light always greeted a challenge head on—although her brightest days were behind her and her eyes were rheumy with fatigue. The byname Barkfoot was a twisted joke—Ulfrun had lost her leg during the war, and now sported a neuro-prosthetic grown from ironwood. Alterations were common enough practice across the whole Empire, but Skræling midew were known for growing artificial limbs that were better than new.
“That was quite the ride. You know, I realize now why I never warmed to ballet as a girl.”
The old woman fussed the last few steps, shifting her distress to her native tongue. When she reached the forest floor, she knelt and pressed her temple to the half-frozen soil, mingling her hair with the dirt.
“All that pirouetting. They teach you to keep the head still but never mention the stomach…” she lamented. Iðunn placed an affectionate hand on her shoulder, glad of all the help she knew the woman would provide in the hours ahead. Ulfrun, she knew, was strong and uncompromising, used to the hard scrabble of reclamation.
“More incentive for us to make sure our graft takes,” Iðunn said. “I’ll tell you, though: if we don’t manage to fix the greenways, I’ll strap on hel-shoes and we’ll walk back to Elvidnir together.”
Ulfrun smiled queasily and sat upright. “Smells like rain.” She sniffed, wrinkling her nose, pockmarking her makeup with fresh crescents.
“You do know where we are?” asked another voice, waspishly. A shock of searing scarlet hair burst from one of the pods, so vivid it might have belonged to the Lady of the Isles herself, were it not for the pallet jigger trundling behind her. “The Írar invented fecking rain,” the woman said. “Who would have laid odds on a fecking slave-port being the only safe harbour left? That there is the Norns pissing themselves with laughter.”
Angeyja Dufgall was an initiate, not that rank counted for much within the sisterhood. She fairly buzzed out of the landing craft, stumbling and raging with a mountain of equipment.
“The patterns are holding, that’s all I meant, sweetling,” said the midew with a shrug, burying her discomfort in her medicine bag.
Angeyja aimed a swift kick at the jigger, which rolled to a halt.
“Fair enough. Well, heim again, heim again, jiggety-jig. Welcome to the Grove of Thórr.”
The skalds called it the Isle of Ørlög—the land of destiny, the well of a hundred lays and laments. Had it not been here, the poets cried, that Thórr’s divine hammer had first forged the spirit of Empire, irrepressible and relentless? The great slave-port of Dyflinn was described in courtly metre, likened to a furnace fuelled by the whip and the wage, its riven timber dragons spewing molten fire across the length and breadth of Midgard.
Even as eulogies went, it was bull-scutter. The skalds had always been full of shit. That was the only thing you could be sure about with destiny: nobody ever saw it coming.
For over nine hundred years the Írar were shackled to the fate of the Norse, their native land a grove of fetters. They were a devout people, and when their stone monasteries and basilicas were swept away by northern tides, they fashioned new chapels deep in the forests. In time, they came to call their home Caill Tomair, the Grove of Thórr.
But the hammer meant something different to them. It was not just a tool, or a symbol of destruction and protection, of the making of oaths and the imparting of fertility. In the hands of the vengeful, it represented something stronger. The hammer was justice.
The land itself seemed to call upon its sons to strike for freedom, inciting every generation from Brján Bóruma onwards to continue the struggle. Then, at the beginning of the Time of Travels, the Írar thralls finally found their voice. Almost overnight, they melted into the trees, disappearing from the destitute fields and black Óðinnic mills with patient discipline. The only trace that they’d ever existed: countless shattered chains, left to rust in the rain.
To hear the exiles tell it—the only skalds worth listening to in Iðunn’s book—Thórr had decided enough was enough. So much for feckin’ örlög, they sang, for one drunken, celebratory decade after another. They named the whole affair the Rupture, because they were funny bastards as well as devout ones. Dyflinn itself was recollected back into the memory of the trees, its spinning mules and pudding furnaces lost to the friction of time; the Írar diaspora took the steppingstones of the Fomhóraigh to Jötunheim.
The Skuld, never ones to respect virginity or abide a vacuum, were the next inhabitants of the forest, shaping its potential to act as a reservoir for the great electrick shield they planned to build above. Seiðrmenn like Giselbjartr and Frankeleyn had long plotted to harness the bright bride of the heavens. Overnight, their mechanical dvergr turned the Grove near Dyflinn to embers, illuminated the Black Pool with wreaths of fire. In its stead, they erected Brísingamen, a glowing city of steel pylons, toroidal cores, and porcelain bushings dedicated to Freyja, whose pale gold potency now flowed freely through the Empire—and to her twin, Freyr, whose alfar swirled and fluxed around the shield, delivering the vitality of Álfröðull.
The amber river never ceased, never subsided. Thórr could only rail, flashing his impotent anger from the sky, his thunder stolen, his people scattered. The price of penance, the Fylkir had said, for a god of sound and fury, who dealt in petty revenge. An outmoded god, without the wit to move with the times, the cult of the loud rider fell from grace. Odin had other sons.
But not everyone had broken faith with the Thunderer. Iðunn fervently hoped he was watching over them. This was the eye of his storm—there was no better place to get his attention. Jörð was his fucking mother, after all.
There was a glacial rumble in the air. Just as the Skræling had predicted, the first rains began to tumble out of the heavens, great baubles that burst on the hardened soil, dissolving the hoarfrost into muddy streaks. The odor of the forest immediately changed, a redolent combination of plant oils, bacterial spores, and errant ozone. An earthy, musty scent, the perfume of the primeval mother Jörð. All three women stooped, fishing great handfuls of soil that they smeared across their faces and clothes, a ritual connecting body and land.
“So, here we are,” Iðunn said, with a grim certitude. She pulled her shawl tight to fend off the downpour and deaden the patter of leafy drumskins. “It’s the weather of weapons all right…”
“Thórr’s pretty PO’d with someone,” said Angeyja. Iðunn had always been drawn to a defiant spirit, and there was no shortage of them among the Muintir Tomar—Thórr’s exiles had thronged to Father’s rebellion. None of them had Angeyja’s talents, though—when roused, the young woman boasted the voice of a valkyrja.
“Not much damage, though. Considering,” Ulfrun said, scanning the treeline. She held her frame oddly, lopsided, as if she were knitting her bones together through sheer force of will.
“Svalinn took the brunt of the blow, I expect,” Iðunn said, already feeling the rain seeping through her outer layers. “There is clearly some remanence at the shield.”
“Oh, you mean those lights. I was awhirl in a sluagh’s tresses.” The Írar swooned theatrically. “I thought I’d died and gone to Sessrúmnir.”
“Hush, girl. You might as well book passage if you keep hollering like that. Don’t you know to whisper under the dance of the alfar?” Ulfrun said, fretfully.
“What? In case they take offence and reach down to slice off my head? You’ve been too long among the Finnar, Grandma Dawn. Besides—” She gestured grandly above them. “—clouds. They can’t see a thing.” Angeyja chuckled conspiratorially. They all knew that, alarming as it was, there was some truth to the folklore. When the Institute of Northern Industrial Ecology in Kønugarðr reported that geomagnetic activity caused an increased incidence of anxiety, depression, and suicide in Brísingamen, there had been a crackle of outrage. Father had been quick to convert it into a current of crisis. A single spark that led to conflagration.
“Bit dark for a power station, isn’t it?” the novice asked.
“If it was working, believe me, you’d notice. This place used to turn night into day. The particles that were captured by the shield above, they were directed down here, towards Brísingamen, by a huge leysir. That’s what made the place so… combustible,” Iðunn explained.
“The explosion heard round the worlds, that was here?” Angeyja asked, incredulous. The young greenseer had been birthed in Patreksfjörður, on a reserve far from the frontlines. The Termagant there must have presumed what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Least said, soonest mended. Still, Iðunn felt it a little disconcerting that the younger generations were oblivious to the origins of the struggle.
Ulfrun looked skyward, to where the clouds writhed with agitation. “I can scarcely remember how they got it working in the first place. Such a shadow it cast, stealing our tomorrows,” she murmured.
“The challenge was always down to the technological constraints, devising a lens powerful enough to direct the leysir towards the surface without it being diffracted,” Iðunn said. “The Skuld turned to ancient solarsteinn to solve that problem. We tried for years to disrupt their shipments, as well as the mining efforts. They eventually pulled the plug after the Fenrian Uprising back in ’40.” She’d had the dubious benefit of the show trials to jog her memory.
“So long ago! I’ve got some old cigarette cards and hieroglyphics somewhere,” Angeyja said, a sprite of insouciance—until the moment she was startled by an unexpected voice inside her head.
I’ll be delighted to give you a firsthand account, to see if it matches your imagination.
The last of Iðunn’s félagi sloughed onto his gangplank, the sound echoing across the airdock until the ship’s morphic cells yielded, sighing in pliant protest. Last but not least; Iðunn smiled.
The jötunn Grábakr had been Father’s pride and joy—a ten-foot-tall serpent-savant, maned with the grey fur that gave him his name, his genetic circuits, computational organs, and recombinant plasmids specifically designed to make him one of the greatest minds in the Níu Heimar. Even after all this time, Iðunn found it hard not to look at him in awe and wonder: he was a true child of the Ash, as pallid as the lignin infused in his scales.
Ljósmóðir, he beamed, his mind touching hers. His brood had been hand-reared, borrowing polite, unassuming tones from the sisterhood. Grábakr had held onto them through his long confinement. She was delighted to see him, though, the prodigal son returned at last.
Welcome! You have been well treated?
The linnorm was flanked by a constable of six Varangians, their Valravn masks snapped closed. Trumba had demanded the escort, to do what all ravens did: watch and listen. It must have taken them a while to charm the linnorm out of his cage. They were already reporting back, if the incessant clacking of their visors was anything to go by.
As might be expected. And you’ve grown your hair?
They clinched hurriedly; the embrace starved of affection by the Imperial presence. Letting Grábakr slide freely on Midgard was controversial, to say the least. For her Order, science and art weren’t mechanistic, they were as natural and wild as creation. Grábakr was the mightiest of their galdrkind, the living embodiment of life’s songs, a creature weaned on the roots of Yggdrasil. For the Empire, he was a beast from beyond. At her arraignment, the Verðandi had been accused of falling out of Nature into a pool of artifice. Iðunn had—personally, singlehandedly—misshapen the beauteous form of things. Arranging his place on the expedition had involved more than pulling a few strings.
The dreki scanned his surroundings, his eyes bright with enthusiasm.
“Ah, the Empire’s sylvan larder. And why, might I enquire, are we here? Am I to presume second helpings?”
“We’re here for Thórr’s Oak,” Iðunn explained. The great oak was a knútr, a doorway between realms. During the war, Father had smuggled rebels through here, right under Imperial noses, a campaign of terror that tipped the balance for emancipation.
“I see. A fishing expedition. I distinctly remember Father calling it the Skuld’s Back Passage. The Jörmunsûl let us get up to all kinds of shenanigans. Speaking of which, my brothers…?”
“Heroes all. Their deeds eclipse those of even your father.”
“I am gladdened to hear. Perhaps we will meet again in the Opheim.… I hope the price for my release was tolerable.”
“Thórr’s Oak is old growth, older than the Ages of Ice. It will answer all our questions.”
And that was all she needed. Answers. There was no tactical advantage to be gained in preserving the Oak, not anymore. No price was too high for her children, she thought, least of all a secret passage and a defunct murder hole.
“And if it is occluded too? Like Uppsala?” asked Angeyja. The novice was all nerves and anticipation.
“There are other doors. Gaismar. Nametvik.” In truth, Iðunn didn’t know the exact extent of the damage to the greenways, but Angeyja would be key to finding out. There were precious few seiðr-workers left now that Surtr’s fire was slaked, and belonging helped when reaching out to the ancestors. The Muintir Tomar were known to be hostile to strangers, even among the Verðandi.
The soldiers took up a perimeter around the vagn, no doubt expecting the jötunn to shoulder the burden. It occurred to Iðunn that none of her Verðandi had seen their faces: gods alone knew what brittle men hid under the armour.
“The harvester pilot is hailing,” the troop leader said, his voice detached and mechanical.
“We’ve come this far. No sense in turning back now,” Iðunn said, answering for them all.
The larger ship would collect the whirlers—they were designed for entry only. It brushed down alongside them, lobed blades scooping up each pod, before moving on to the next one. The Varangian paused to brush aside some of the bloated, viscous droplets of liquid that had begun beading on its crown, then tapped a friendly salute on the hull, signalling the all-clear.
Iðunn turned to the task at hand, already feeling stretched and weary. Angeyja was the only one buoyed by the rain. What she might give for a snippet of that DNA, the inheritance of the indefatigable Írar.
“I need you attuned to Manheimr quickly please, Grá.”
“Of course; where to start, where to begin. Ozone depletion is localised but averages at 65 percent,” the jötunn said, evidently needing no reminders, his own outsized visor making his calibrations visible to his immediate custodians, and probably to a kvaðrilljón more unseen Urðr watching in orbit. “There will be constant genetic damage from irradiance here on the surface, for you at least.”
“Nothing that can’t be easily repaired,” said Ulfrun, a sly smile playing round her lips. “Dawnland has been mending the Old World since the ravens first croaked ruin.”
“Let’s not make work for ourselves. Masks on,” Iðunn instructed, now recognising the sharp smell in the air. Each of them wore a thin reed respirator and sun-goggles—the Verðandi stored large reserves of oxygen in their blood and muscle thanks to enhanced levels of hemoglobin and myoglobin, but without a mask, the ground-level ozone would ultimately damage their lungs beyond repair. Their clothing was otherwise as identical as it was practical—unassuming beige suits, tightly woven from jute fiber with Val-hemp for extra protection from the ultraviolet light now cascading through the atmosphere.
“The Grove has been fortunate,” Iðunn said. “That will change. Suffocating blankets of volcanic ash. Walls of impregnable of ice grinding from the north. Years without summer. Ague-stricken survivors. Hailstorms and sea floods. The polar jet stream will follow, and the cycle will repeat.”
“Balor Béimnech bedamned. I need a drink,” sighed Angeyja.
“There won’t be enough wine to fill a nutshell,” mourned Ulfrun. “The vineyards of the Wonderstrands are stilled, the sun above my home is nothing more than a suggestion.” The Dawnlanders had been among the first peoples to treat with Snorri Thorfinnsson and the men of Leifsbuðir, and the last to leave their shores when the Guldrstein turned their home to a wasteland. It was small wonder they all felt charred and shrivelled.
“Forget the fucking Fringes,” said a trooper in a menacing rash of static. He paused, shaking his head, then snapped the seal on his helmet. Iðunn hesitated, waiting for the big reveal. The Varangian didn’t disappoint: his cheek muscles shivered with rage, curling his upper lip into an ascetic’s sneer, demonstrating why he merited a mask in the first place. He was obviously monitoring everything they said and didn’t feel obliged to pretend any different. “I don’t have an ôrtug of sympathy for the bloody colonies. What about the heartlands? What about the Doggerland reclamation? The Langahaf dam crumbled, all the new—Loyalist—colonies are under thirty fathoms of saltwater.”
Her companions did their best to stifle their sniggers. The huge jötunn spread his arms guilelessly wide, framing the whole treeline. “The race of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling vanish,” he crooned to his disbelieving guards, his poetry repaid with a stipend of snarling rifle muzzles.
Grábakr was nonplussed, and simply continued his soil analysis. “Go ahead. I hear divinity helps those who dare. Unless you think this flame-food”—he gestured to the still-standing forest—“is going to be saved by the luck of the Írar?” He grinned; his needle teeth embroidered with venom.
Iðunn was amused by the comment, admiring even. The Jötnar had been born of desperation and defiance, an imitation of Norse nightmares, designed to despise the mythos of Empire. She’d often debated with herself, asking if her creations had agency in shaping what they became. Grábakr had transcended her wildest dreams—even now, he exuded reason rather than rancour, despite his long captivity.
She bustled between her ward and the Varangians, hurriedly extending her arm by way of both introduction and injection. Diplomacy wasn’t her strong suit, but she had little choice but to leaven the mood with whatever charm she could muster. “Sorry, I haven’t had the pleasure?” she lied, addressing the bare-faced captain.
“No, you haven’t,” the soldier answered with practiced contempt, his rifle remaining locked in place. “Fucking trolls. You people couldn’t just roll over and die. You had to take the whole Nine Worlds with you.” His voice crackled with hatred.
“We are on the same side. We always were. My friends here are simple grœðari,” she said, using the old word for a healer. Pleading with a Varangian was beneath her, but she didn’t have time for his kind of maladaptive thinking. Iðunn shifted her weight, leaning against the ruminating giant for support. The other two Vǫlur stepped nimbly to her side in a show of solidarity.
“Tell that to the poor bastards your knucker slaughtered in their beds at Austmannatún.” Strands of spittle gummed the soldier’s words together like projectiles, joining the snap and spatter of the rain. His eyes were targeted malevolence; his rifle barrel was etched with a running tally of enemies he had dispatched.
Iðunn noted that Ulfrun had cycled her releasers, flushing enough messengers to flood the soldier’s normal endocrine response. It was a standard tactic for cognitive diffusion. The appeasement was coded, designed to be imperceptible, but the Varangian’s eyes widened in recognition.
“Don’t try and play your mind tricks on me, seidrkona. Pick up the cart and move out,” he said, touching the totems round his neck, a medley of Finnar wards and talismans. “Let’s not keep the Empress waiting.”
The implication was obvious—in all likelihood, and despite all her feigned indifference, Trumba was following one of the Varangians directly. This was a high-stakes game, after all. Secret doors, hidey-holes, and skulduggery were the Empress’s stock in trade. Iðunn tilted her head, letting the torrent of rain disguise her admission of defeat just in case—the confrontation was pointless, and tensions were unnecessarily inflamed. Still, she’d be damned if she was going to fetch and carry like an ironed gang from a prison hulk.
Forget these Chenoo, Ulfrun whispered with the wind. We should begin, before Lox puts more thorns on our plants.
Grandmother Dawn was right, but then she always was.
“We’ll travel light. Make better time. Grá has all the instrumentation we need. How far to the Back Door?” Iðunn asked, shouldering a daypack and starting out before the Varangian could register any complaint. She just hoped she was going in the right direction—she had never ventured through the Grove from this direction and didn’t have her bearings.
Angeyja looked especially relieved. “Not far,” she said, pointing into the forest, and then curling her finger to the right by way of course correction. She shoved her dolly with both hands and a satisfied grunt, launching it into the undergrowth.
The initiate led them along a stony ridge, presumably what passed for a path. They were soon surrounded by the hues of northern forests: blue-green shades of fir needles, flashes of bright silver birch, broad crowns of Wych elms, somber oaks. There were gaps in the canopy over the stunted trees of bogs, and thickets of young evergreens where wind had leveled older stands, but in some places, the growth was so dense that the Varangians were obliged to move ahead and cut their way through. Birds rummaged among the branches, their incessant hammering calling to their flocks, spreading word of abundant seed, the last before the unexpected frosts. Occasionally, the travellers saw the fleet hooves of a goat, bleating reminders that the ancestral spirits would suffer no trespassers in Thrúdheim.
Iðunn kept a stiff pace, accustomed to the more punishing gravity of Útgarð, and only belatedly realized that it might be grueling for the other exiles. Ulfrun, especially, took to loitering in clearings, listening to the percussion of the rain and catching her breath.
The Lector backtracked, detouring to the other side of the thicket to disguise her approach and spare the Grandmother her blushes.
“Kind of you. But no need to go out of your way,” the Skræling called, sensing the nature of the deception. “It’s the damn damp. Gets into the joints.”
Ulfrun ran her hands along the river of leaves, feeling their tensile thoughts. “Good craftmanship. Hard to believe they aren’t all real. They turned the whole Grove over to this?” she asked.
“Most of it,” Iðunn said. “I seem to recall a naval base in the north, but the rest of the island is what you might call trammelled wilderness. One big energy park.”
Most of what surrounded them was a living battery. The Verðandi had discovered that plants could generate, leaf by leaf, enough voltage to light up a street. The grove was full of hybrid trees, comprised of both natural and artificial leaves, the latter acting as electrical generators converting wind into electricity, the plant tissue acting like a cable. The Urðr had purloined the technology early in the war; before the schism took root. By simply connecting a “plug” to the plant stem, they harvested enough energy to power the whole home front.
“I can attest to the former nature of the naval base,” Grábakr said. He was lying unblinking in the corroded foliage, invisible amongst the wisps and specks of the forest, digesting a catch. “I did give them fair warning.”
Iðunn could only hope it wasn’t one of his guards. A cursory scan quickly accounted for all of them, two in close proximity, the others giving the linnorm a wider berth—enough rope to hang himself with poor taste in jokes. He had clearly inherited Father’s more imbrued sensibilities.
She walked on, turning her ear to the trees. Much of their song dwelt under the acoustic surface. Listening to them was like touching a stethoscope to the skin of a landscape, hearing what stirred below. She knew Mother Jörð got fucked, she just didn’t know why. She wanted a diagnosis. But beyond the all-pervasive rain and touches of tar spot, there was nothing in the tenebrous tangle that seemed… fatal.
“Grá, any predictive models?” she asked.
“I’m still ingesting,” the hybrid said, uncoiling his tongue for emphasis. “Suffice to say, a reduction of only 0.35 percent in solar flux caused the Little Ice Age, and who doesn’t like to ice skate to Spann? What else? Mortality for marine-based microorganisms will be significant. Lots and lots of dead fish. Caustic rains, biting wit. Trophic cascades through the food web. Standard doomsday fare.”
“Then we are all gone to Rán and ruination,” Angeyja lamented, with mock horror. She covered her breast with both hands and began to keen. “Oh Danr boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.”
“It will rain out eventually. It’s one of the primary ways the atmosphere heals, especially in this godsforsaken bog,” Grábakr continued, immune to the allure of the ballad. “The forest will help wash the wound.”
They muttered thanks to the greenseer, their appreciation muted by the enormity of the ordeal. Trumba had warned her—there was nothing here but windblown mementos of a bygone age.
The whole setting felt out of time. They joined a timber trackway, constructed of long ash planks, with lime and hazel posts spaced at intervals, half swallowed by the soil. Iðunn could readily imagine that a congregation might have passed through here, Kristins envisioning some kind of harmony between the old and new, their faiths intertwining like the foliage. Or Ostmen warriors on horseback, bringing cattle with them for a feast, having forded the river near Dyflinn.
Now it was just her ragtag band of healers, first into the breach; a forlorn hope, desperate to find a salve for the dying.
After an hour, they reached their destination: a lone oak, shrouded with a half millennium of moss. It jutted from a clover-covered mound, like a huge, twisted spear. The tree marked an ancient burial site, drawing its nourishment from the ashes of long-dead warriors entombed below. Here and there, scattered at the base of the tree were granite runestones, worn so smooth, and half-tumbled by roots, they’d begun to resemble the stacked pebbles left by mourning relatives. The spreading frosts had clamped windblown seeds onto the bare soil revealing what might germinate if spring ever returned.
There were carvings, of course, on the Great Oak itself. Rune-staves and glyphs, the greenways beckoning them all home, as well as marks of shielding, keeping the door from prying eyes.
“This is it?” Ulfrun asked.
Iðunn nodded and smiled, happy to find the portal intact.
The Dawnlander drew in a great quantity of smog and blew it slowly into her hands, which she kept rubbing together. Suddenly she spread her arms in a broad, sweeping motion and, reaching over, picked up her medicine bag and hung it there on the mist. “Then I will prepare the ancestors for our arrival.”
“Not bad for someone born in a canoe,” Iðunn teased, grinning.
Nearby, there were nine postholes, each bearing a heavy log angled inward. The winds had unmasked any weaknesses in whatever structure had once been here, and the forest had exploited it without mercy, toppling it to the ground. The remaining beams were ore-pine, the heartwood of old growth; the trees had their branches removed and had been left to stand, so that their resins bled upward and out through the cut branches making the pillar more resinous. She imagined thralls, lined up in order of size, tied to the beams and whipped with a stinging branch to test their mettle. Not just Írar, but Serkir, Skrælingar, and Blamenn. Dyflinn had been an equal opportunity enslaver. She knew from bitter experience that those who did not cry—or faint—fetched a higher price at market.
“We’ve all seen better days,” mused the old woman. “Ironic, isn’t it? After all, we have been through in the name of freedom, we are right back here, where it all began.”
“And we even brought our own shackles,” Iðunn growled, glancing at her escort. The soldiers had fanned out, forming a perimeter where a woodhenge formed a rudimentary ward against the encroaching forest.
“Could have been worse. They’ve been quite circumspect for tittle-tales,” Ulfrun said. “Ah, can you hear that?” She cupped her hand to a bedizened ear. “The Wa-Wa-Ba-Nal. The voice of dawn.”
There was a low whistling that faltered through the opening clouds. Svalinn was aflame in the sky, waging his cosmic war, the battle manifest not just in his green gown, but the sudden clangs and cracks that popped and penetrated the air. In the still of twilight, the world wavered, becoming as transparent as the sky.
Iðunn turned her attention to the initiate, hoping to impart some words of wisdom, but the young woman was already scaling the mound, headed for the oak.
Remember, be polite. We must always whisper to the trees.
“I know the drill,” Angeyja shouted over her shoulder. She was obviously enjoying herself, singing to Symeon and Glorfinkel playing in her earpods, blatantly ignoring what she had just been told.
Nearby saplings seemed to bow as they guttered in the rising wind, offering leafy hands to their new dance partner.
Iðunn raised an eyebrow in concern.
You are getting old, Ljósmóðir. It’s not all fimbulsongs, runes, and incantations.
Grábakr winked, a slither behind her on the ascent.
I’ve always been old, Iðunn thought. Old and scared and tired. Grábakr was the only connection she had to feeling, to being alive. The dreki was all sinew, his moonlit mane a mercurial torrent along his spine.
“He’s a handsome boy. I hope you are proud of what you have accomplished,” Ulfrun said behind her, intuiting the maternal impulse. “And the revolution is over. I would have given up the knot too. We’re too old for games now.”
“Thank you, my friend. I used to think he was Father’s last laugh, but now…” She trailed off, unable to bring herself to finish the sentence. She started after them, eager not to be separated…
And ran straight into the back of a bedraggled trooper, his plasteel carapace puddling moisture like a leaking hulk. The two of them slipped and slid, grappling for purchase on each other and the muddy hill, before spilling into a heap.
“Watch where you are going, why don’t you?” the Varangian cursed, his tongue flickering under his lancing beak. Iðunn wondered who was really in there, clinging to the cortex of the trooper as he trudged through the Grove. She felt like rapping on the helmet to call them out.
The troop-leader sauntered over to see what the commotion was, receiving an attentive salute for his troubles. There was a silent exchange through their visors, then without further comment, the muddy Varangian sloped off.
“Hardly a pleasure garden, is it?” the captain said. “Does your mighty oak meet expectation?”
“Tell the Empress—all in good time.”
“I’m sure she’ll watch the replays avidly,” the captain purred, as sweet as pollen. “Catch up on anything she misses firsthand.”
“You’re transmitting?” Iðunn asked, aghast. She could have kicked herself for her mulishness. It wasn’t just Trumba watching, it was the full Nine Worlds. The whole empire was obsessed with legacy, with achieving interlaced, high-definition immortality through their navel-gazing broadcasts. Ragnarök was little more than a snuff movie for the sightbands, encoded for maximum retention. You didn’t need to rewrite history if you could annex the hippocampus.
“Of course. For posterity. It’s not every day we save the world.”
That made it sound official. An Imperial network then. So much for lack of fanfare. She scanned his uniform for signs of rank, or any insignia that might give her some insight as to his unit, but the vargdropi was cloaked in anonymity.
He began probing the roots with his rifle to better glimpse the bones interred underneath. The incessant wind and rain had forced Mother Jörð to disgorge her secrets. “Shallow…” he mused.
“The profusion of life owes much to that which is dead.”
“Who is buried here?”
“Does it matter?”
She wanted to tell him that, in the forests, there were no heroes, no great men around whom history pivots. Instead, the trees shared their memories, manifest in their songs, telling of life’s community, its net of relations. But she doubted she would make any converts today—the only way to change a Varangian mind was by hitting it with a rock. Instead, she pushed aside some briars and knelt by the nearest stone, hoping his viewers might learn something.
“Freði raised this stone in memory of Ólafr, his kinsman-by-marriage, a very valiant man, who fought the Mamlukar. He died in Egiptaland,” she read, puzzling together the fragments that remained into a coherent whole. “Maybe one of Botulfr the Black’s warriors… Did you know the Fylkir himself would travel here? He’d be crowned on the Meadows of Mora, then sail here to place his feet on the Singing Stone. It would roar with joy if the ancestors thought he was worthy.” She pointed to where his men had formed the perimeter. “If you look closely, you can make out the shape of a longship. Symbolic, of course. Part of the rite of passage.”
The henge stones were small and nondescript, more like rough concrete than natural stone, but if you squinted, the intent was clear. The troop-leader looked distinctly unimpressed. “I didn’t ask for a bedtime story.”
“As you wish,” she said, distantly, waiting for the Varangian to get bored and track back the way he came.
“So, how old is all this? A thousand years—and it’s never been excavated?”
Iðunn fixed him with a stare like a bayonet. “Older than that, much older. The bandruí tended this oak long before even the Kristins came. Eochaid Ollathair and his sister-brides, the three Morrígna, ruled over life and death. It was said that, when the Norse took the world above, the Tuath Dé took to the world below and entered the sídhe, the burial mounds that dotted the ancient Laithlind.”
The Varangian scratched at his bristled chin with a heavy gloved hand, clearly weighing his options. It didn’t take a mind reader to see what plans he was hatching.
“I wouldn’t touch his treasure if I were you,” she warned. “Ollathair is an aspect of Odin himself. He is said to own a magic staff which can kill with one end and bring to life with the other, an hourglass which never runs empty, not to mention a magic harp which can control men’s emotions and change the seasons.”
“More of your Verðandi demons,” the Varangian said, dismissively. “I’m not afraid of haugbui and kattakyn.” He paused, as if convincing himself of the fact, then decided discretion was the better part of valour. “Runestones. What use are they? You can barely read them,” he grumbled, stalking back to the perimeter.
And who needs fairy tales when there are real wolves nearby? Iðunn thought.
She watched him go, glad that she had dissuaded the uppity vámr. The whole empire needed an enema, to remove clogged arseholes like that.
Ljósmóði.
An interruption to her train of thought. There was something in Grábakr’s tone that suggested urgency. Ulfrun sensed it too and quickly put away her charms, then the two women climbed the hill together. It wasn’t far or steep, little more than a stone’s throw, but the climb felt interminable in the haze of rain. The cold had become suddenly animate, no longer a mere sensation but a presence. The grip strengthened, the grasp of a boreal wrestler.
Grábakr and Angeyja were standing just aside from the tree.
“What’s wrong?” Iðunn called up to them, her heart pounding in her ears. The answer became immediately obvious. The great oak had called the Vesturljós. Lights rose from the branches like a coronal flare, an inexorable lure for the shoals of the sky, cajoling the aurora earthward.
Grábakr held out his hand and pulled her toward him, then did the same for Ulfrun. “Mundilferi is he who began the moon, And fathered the flaming sun; The round of heaven each day they run, To tell the time for men,” he said portentously. Then he added in a more normal tone, “The tree is a clock of sorts. Its rings count the days, its betrothal to the stars.”
The linnorm caressed the furrowed bark, motioning for them both to listen.
Kolefni. Carbon. Star-stuff. Seized by the wood and stored for a reckoning. Ever since they installed Svalinn, the Jörmunsûl has been marking time…
Iðunn touched the Great Oak in the same way, dissolved her sense of self for a moment, feeling the cooperation and conflict, the struggle that permeated the Grove. She reached into the crevice and ravel of wood, calling the birds, who looped their own song through the mazed branches. The winged thrum of insects joined them; percussionists as loud as a hive. The tree of life surrounded by the clamour of the world. She had been worried that the scathe had frayed, rewired, or even severed Yggdrasil’s connections, but here was only recognition and welcome. She felt the delight of the womb, the immediacy of life.
And then it was gone. The door slammed shut in her face.
She watched in horror as the greenways bent in on themselves, occulted, making it impossible to tell up from down, to orient yourself for travel. It was as if the continuum was looping back on itself, a transformation worthy of Lector Möbius.
There was something else. Death was always part of a tree, genetically pre-programmed, like an unpickable embroiderer’s knot. But this was new: the weave tightened, a thousand microbial interactions forming a pattern. Níðhöggr, the eater of the dead, the devourer of corpses, and countless other serpents writhed in the wound, twisting into the shape of a hangman’s noose.
“It’s a warning,” Grábakr said. “Our guard, I can taste his name—Perfect Váli Heidumhær. You might have seen some of his earlier work from the Chancellery at Nornborg.”
Iðunn returned a rictus grin, trying to keep her composure. Heidumhær was the Maestari of Propagation himself. She’d heard of him during the war, they all had. The ancient Rómverjar had once posted prefects as overseers, and praetorians as elite guards—that mutt bitch Trumba had taken her latest toga fetish and wrapped it around a group of fanatics. Perfects regarded themselves as a kind of invasive surgery, scissoring out the gene tainted. The Wicked Witch of What-the-Fuck had really done it this time!
It was only then that she saw the truth. The Perfect’s resentment was more than skin-deep. As far as he was concerned, the Verðandi were heretics, impure of thought and body. The men were a death squad.
“What does it mean?” Angeyja hissed, not understanding the panic. The young woman grabbed at Iðunn’s arm, reaching for reassurance she could not provide.
They are coming.
It was too late to answer. Heidumhær strode stepped right up to quartet, belching righteousness, thudding his fist onto the bark skin behind them. Iðunn made a point of ignoring the Varangian; she was trying to think, to second-guess the machinations of state, to find a way out. She exchanged apprehensive glances with Ulfrun. They were both old enough to know full well that none outlive the night when the Norns have spoken. Fucking destiny, she fumed.
“So?” The captain was nothing if not persistent.
“We can’t open it. There is a binding. A seal I don’t know how to break,” Iðunn said, stalling. It wasn’t far from the truth. She hadn’t seen such galdarcraft before. Rather than being bartered away, the knot had willed itself shut, Thórr’s stern rebuke.
“I’m not sure you are hearing me,” the soldier screeched. He balled up his fist and, this time, slammed it into her chin. Iðunn rocked backward, the trees suddenly at all the wrong angles.
Before she fell, a choke of grey loomed into view. Grábakr seized her in his uplifted limbs and set her down in the crook of the oak.
“I always forget your meat minds have expiration dates.” The jötunn rose to his full height, towering over the Ministry troopers, his skin growing darker, sclerotized with ironwood.
The Varangian didn’t budge a thumb-ell. “What did you say, thurse? I don’t speak fucking knucker,” he spat.
If Iðunn ever saw what happened, she only recollected fragments. Grábakr springing forward, his hands like battering rams, scattering the ravens before they could take wing. His tail swiping left, a trooper falling to his knees, his preening finery tattered and abraded.
But it was never an even fight, and the Varangyar had long since learned to fell their nightmares.
“Stop this!” Ulfrun cried, but the rifles had already stuttered their reply. Grábakr lurched to the ground, shuddering with each bullet.
A harsh silence followed, perforated only by the wheezing alfar, whistling in their abandon.
“Now, open the door so we can all go home,” the Perfect yelled, reinforcing his threat with bare teeth and gunmetal. “Honestly, I deserve a fucking medal for babysitting you lot. I think I’ll ask for the bantling as a bed-thrall. Fair compensation, wouldn’t you say?”
The Perfect eyed Angeyja with a lascivious grin. “Luck of the Írar and all,” he spat, scuffing his soles on the jötunn’s dimming finery.
“Get your pecker up, does it, Valravn?” the girl hissed in retort, running to the far side of the tree.
Iðunn felt nothing. Was nothing. An automaton, a childless mother, beyond the limits of desperation, her breath cascading from her body in one long, low ululation. Grief chewed into her breast like a canker.
“From place to place the homeless Verðandi wander, in ever-shifting exile, outlaws since the time when they were torn from their Father’s abode, stained with the blood of the Norsemen they betrayed.” The Perfect strutted forward, leering his monologue while his squadron circled, their beady red eyes recording the carnage. One began a perfunctory search of the jötunn’s body, perhaps trying to siphon some of his exquisite DNA.
“How do you explain such profanity, on a holy site? Is that what passes for glory now, among the blood swans?” Ulfrun howled, swaddling her demolished friend in her gnarled hands. “Gunning down women and children in cold blood?”
“You know why we are here? We’re the fucking Ítreksjóð, the sons of Óðinn. We carried the Blood Banner, drank the raven’s wine at Utangard. We survived all the shit you whore-cunts have ever thrown at us and spat it right back in your faces. And this—this is a ratings winner! Shutting down a secret terrorist cell, slaying fucking dragons. It’s election time, after all, although, when isn’t it? Go on quicker, you old hag! Go on quicker! Why are you loitering? Proud men of the Ash? Children of the fucking ashes more like!”
“Thórr will have something to say,” Angeyja said, twisting away from his grasping hands.
“Thórr will have something to say,” he whined, his voice an imbecilic imitation. “You are sinners in the hands of a peasant god. Talk back to me again, woman, and I’ll have your Dawnland bitch shot where she shits.”
Iðunn sat back on her haunches and clawed for a response, disoriented by both the force of the blow and the sheer savagery that impelled it. She pulled at the fog with her hands, fighting for consciousness. Trumba had arranged all of this—who knew how long in advance. As flies to wanton girls are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.
“Angeyja, you should try,” Ulfrun said, answering for her. “The Thunderer might listen to you. That was always the hope.”
“If you think I am ready.”
“Æfingin skapar meistarann,” Iðunn said, her voice hoarse. Practice makes perfect. She said that to all her children.
Angeyja made a long exhalation, then began the chant, its melody accenting the dusk. The sound was like silver, pure tones that melted into the lingering dark, until she was wholly suffused, wearing the raiment of the grace-shine.
Practice makes perfect. All of them, shaped from nothing. Plaiting tendons and arteries, lashing bone and skin, in sure and certain hope of growing life. All that forged promise, all that stolen hope. It was gone forever.
Angeyja yawned into the chasma, her breathing snagged, the alfar whistling around her in penetrating bursts. Iðunn watched her distantly, too dazed and absent to add anything to the chorus.
It didn’t appear to matter. The initiate was rattling her ancestral rights, channeling the anger of the Írar.
“I see Glasir, before the doors of the hall of Valhalla, all of its foliage red-gold, the most beautiful tree among gods and men. Glasir’s glowing foliage. Twelve women riding from the wood. All in red, on red horses, all their trappings glittering with gold.”
“What the actual fuck?” one of the troopers barked. The alfar were incandescent now, soaring between branches, as if the dead had dooms to give. Angeyja stood amongst them all, her hips swaying as she fought for balance. The air around the tree coagulated with the song, calling, climbing, reaching.
“It is bright… so very bright. The Asbrú burns all with flames. Now do I see the earth anew, rise all green from the waves again; the cataracts fall, and the eagle flies, And fish he catches beneath the cliffs.”
For a moment, she was embalmed in plasma, soaring on the stellar winds. And then she was gone, sunk down into the earth. There was no hedge magician’s puff of smoke, no broken shackles, just the lambent orbs of the aurora, flickering lanterns held aloft by dusky shadows.
“Where has she gone? The greenways are meant to be on lock down!” The Perfect squawked in his rage, his surprise only matched by his petulance.
“Not on my watch! Not with the Empress watching!” he ranted, thrashing his arms. “This is preposterous. Shoot the rest and send for the Urðr. Shut this shit down.”
Ljósmóði. You must follow. Take my hand.
Grábakr’s mind was harsh with iron and decay, but still active.
There is no time for the galdr. The door is shut to me, the greenways are tangled.
“What do you mean, looped? What are we broadcasting, fucking colour bars?” The Perfect was too busy castigating his men and gesticulating at the auroral disturbance to notice. The Varangians hadn’t registered the thoughtspeak.
There is another path, where only the alfar travel. You must take the Raven road.
Iðunn looked across to where Grábakr lay, his blood pooling in the bowl of roots, a limp grin lolling on his ruined face, then up at Ulfrun. Grandmother Dawn gazed back fondly, then stood, slowly, elegantly, demanding her migrant limbs to obey her and ignore the tide of damp.
“Go. I shall stand and rest awhile.”
She smiled ruefully, like a wasted morning, then walked over and tapped Heidumhær on the shoulder with an arthritic forefinger. “Let me tell you a story, Maestari.”
“What is it with these tree-huggers? They are bursting with bedtime rhymes,” he said, playing to his gallery of rogues.
“Humour me, before my long goodnight. You might learn something of value. I mean to tell you about the squirrel. Meeko, he was called. When the world was young, Meeko was as large and ferocious as a wolf. He killed right and left, from pure lust for blood. So it was decided to save the woods-people, Meeko would have to be cut down to size.”
The Grandmother of Dawn told a compelling story, especially when she jacked the feed and commandeered the Varangian visors.
“Except, we all forgot Meeko’s disposition; that remained as big and as bad as before. So now the squirrel goes about the woods with a small body and a big temper, barking, scolding, quarrelling and, since he cannot destroy and rage as before, he sets other animals by the ears to destroy each other.”
The Varangians cast off their helmets like they were filled with fire ants, rasping their heads against the great oak.
“Seems to me like you Ministrymen are not ravens at all, just angry squirrels, making all this noise. It’s just plain disrespectful. Didn’t anyone teach you to whisper when the spirits are near?”
One by one their minds burst, leaving shattered skulls and hollowed-out eyes, and shells of armour wreathed in foxfire. The Perfect Ulfrun saved for last, dizzying him into a rainswept grave, unmarked and unmentioned in dispatches to come. Hidden from eternity.
The old woman wandered to the foot of the hill and rested her bones on the Singing Stone. The relief crews would arrive soon and finish what Surtr started. Trumba wasn’t one to delay gratification.
Iðunn watched her go.
Goodbye, old friend. May the sunshine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields.
Then she leapt through the whorl and went out of memory.