I first drew breath at Orkahaugr, Grimnir began, in the Kjolen Mountains. It was the last days of the Butchering Month, forty-eight years before the strife and shield-breaking that was Mag Tuiredh. Nár! I was still milk-drunk and foolish in those days, so when the ships launched for Èriu, Bálegyr took my wretched brother, Hrungnir, but left me behind with the other whelps and the crones! Grimnir spat into the fire, his saliva crackling among the embers. No matter. The she-Wolf who birthed me, Skríkja Kjallandi’s daughter, stayed to keep an eye on Bálegyr’s throne, and Raðbolg, her kinsman, stayed to keep those thieving little apes down in the fjord-lands in line.
I remember the night before the wolf ships put to sea. It was midsummer’s eve, and there was a great council fire in the Hall of the Nine Fathers, where Bálegyr had his throne. You should have seen it, little bird! You were raised in timber and wattle; I was raised in granite and limestone, our mines, smithies, armories, and dwelling halls hacked from the mountain’s innards by my sire’s hands—the same hands that once fashioned trinkets of gold and iron for the kings of Jötunheimr.
The whole of your stinking village could fit in that hall. Columns of living stone stretched higher than a titan, holding up the mountain itself; shafts cut through the rock let in cold air, and hundreds of lamps hung from the branches of great trees forged from iron and bronze. Trophies dripped from the walls: banners and flayed skins, the shields of fallen foes, the hauberks of heroes slain on the field, the skulls of Jötnar and the thigh bones of trolls. And my sire’s throne, carved from a block of obsidian. Two wolves—Grimnir made an expansive gesture, his eye alight—crouched to make the arms. And at the center of it all, a fire pit so big it could hold a brace of whole steers, spitted and dressed for the feast. Aye, the Hall was the jewel of Orkahaugr, the heart of the kaunar lands of Miðgarðr, and it had been for close to a thousand years.
By this time, Bálegyr was the last of the Nine Fathers—the chiefs of the dvergar clans chosen by the Sly One for the honor of becoming kaunar. Five died when the Æsir came against us in Jötunheimr, ere my people fled to Miðgarðr; two, Lútr and Hrauðnir, died in the Duel of the Four Fathers on the slopes of Orkahaugr, where Bálegyr lost an eye to Kjallandi even as he won the wolf-mantle of the North. Old Kjallandi took the exile Bálegyr offered, and his folk wandered with him. By the time of Mag Tuiredh, he’d been dead a century and more, slain fighting the cursed Romans in the Atlas Mountains, far to the south.
Skríkja was the eldest of Kjallandi’s brood, but she had two brothers—Gífr and Raðbolg—who came back to the North after their father’s death. Bálegyr took them in, treated them like his own stinking sons—better, even, since he had a habit of lopping off his sons’ heads when they displeased him. And why not? I had twenty-two brothers, little bird. Twenty-two! And that’s not counting my sisters, or the dozens of bastards he sired, or the wretched half-breeds he got on captive women. I learned early to keep my head down and toe the line, lest I wound up on the wrong side of Bálegyr’s axe.
But Gífr and Raðbolg … the pair of them Bálegyr treated like the sons he wished he’d had. That night, on the eve of their journey to Èriu, the brothers quarreled over who would go with Bálegyr and who would stay behind. Neither wanted to miss the spear-shattering, but Bálegyr did not trust the fjord-men in the foothills of the Kjolen Mountains to behave themselves in his absence. He wanted a good lad at his back, one he could trust. You should have heard their howling and yammering! Some wretch proposed they wrestle for it, but Gífr refused—Raðbolg was younger and stronger; another threw out the notion that they cast axes, but Raðbolg complained Gífr’s aim was better than his. Both ignored my idiot brother, Hrungnir, when he hollered they should dice for it—dice are sacred to dvergar, and though the bloody feast Loki made from Angrboða’s monstrous afterbirth had left them twisted and scarred kaunar, some habits were too ingrained to break.
It was Skríkja who broke the stalemate: she bid them draw lots. That was her way, simple and direct. She prepared the draw, told them the short lot stays. Raðbolg lost. How he cursed and thundered! But not even he dared defy his sister.
Midsummer’s day, in that year when the dogs of Rome put their wretched crown on four different heads, was the last time I saw my sire. They put to sea at dusk—two score wolf-prowed ships crewed by every black-hearted kaunr throat-slitter Bálegyr could bribe or brow-beat into joining him. He emptied Orkahaugr, leaving only the old, the sick, and the young. Skríkja stood on a tongue of rock overlooking the lake in the shadow of the mountain, a great horn in her hands. Each ship that rowed past, bound for the fjord that led to the open sea, she greeted with a thunderous blast. Bálegyr’s ship came last, its keel black as pitch, its rails thick with shields and bristling with spears. Thrice did Skríkja sound that horn, thrice he answered with a howl that could split the heavens; ere the sun’s last light died away, she rushed to the edge of the rocks and drew her sword—Sárklungr was its name, the dwarf-forged Wound-Thorn. She threw her arms wide and roared: “Así att-Súlfr Bálegyr skiari tar nekumanza!” Bálegyr is the Wolf, and he comes to devour your entrails! That’s how I recall her best—a fell-handed queen girded for war, as dark and wild as the sea, bidding farewell to her king …
Grimnir lapsed into silence, his gaze fixed on the bed of embers. He leaned back in his seat. Memories are a bane, little bird, like a thorn lodged in your eye. Cut them out, if you can, or they’ll do nothing but haunt you in your dotage. He hawked and spat. At any rate, summer faded away and no word reached us from Èriu. Skríkja and the old crones cast a circle and summoned all manner of birds, but none had traveled so far as the Isle of Emerald where the vestálfar—the cursed West-Elves—made their home. There was one night I can recall, on the cusp of the Sere Month ere the trees shed their leaves, when visions assailed her. A storm raged over the mountain. It sounded like a jötunn had hauled an anvil up the slopes of Orkahaugr. Thunder crashed and rang with the fury of a thousand hammers, and lightning set fire to the sky. Witchery was in the air that night. I could smell it.
But it was the screams that drew us, Raðbolg and me, up to the summit of the mountain. Long ago, when the kaunar first crawled up the slopes of Orkahaugr looking for shelter, Bálegyr had them fashion an altar of stone and on it he sacrificed the eldest of his sons to Ymir. Up there, in the wind and the sleet, we found Skríkja huddled over some wretched scrap of a girl—one of the latest thralls we’d taken from the fjord-men. Skríkja had gutted her, had her liver out, and was rooting around for her heart. She was wild-eyed. Kept saying she’d seen Bálegyr’s death in the clouds, a fiery eye wreathed in darkness. Skríkja was like Gífr … cunning in the ways of sorcery; I had more in common with Raðbolg. Even as a pup, I trusted cold iron and what I could grasp with both hands rather than those invisible webs spun by witches and seers. So we left her to it, but I couldn’t shake a sense of unease.
That was the night of the battle at Mag Tuiredh.
Grimnir leaned forward and gestured with one black-nailed finger. See, I knew something was off. I knew something had slipped. I could feel it twisting in my guts, a premonition of doom creeping up on us. But who was I? Just a know-nothing whelp, a fool with milk on his lips, that’s who! But I had a mouth on me and I wasn’t shy about using it. Nár! Even so, Raðbolg laughed when I told him we had to be on guard. He laughed, cuffed me about the head, and sent me off with a few other lads to fetch honey from the hives down by the fjord. But I knew! I knew and I was right … I was right …
Mark this, little bird: you can judge how high you stand in your enemy’s esteem by the weapon he draws against you. By that measure, the one-eyed lord of Ásgarðr must have thought us lords of the earth. For what he drew against us in the days after Mag Tuiredh was a weapon without mercy, as cruel as the grave. Niðhöggr, it was called, the Malice-Striker. Grimnir’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. I saw it, me and the lads Raðbolg sent to fetch the honey. Saw the dragon when it crawled out of the fjord and slithered up the slopes of Orkahaugr. This was no flying wyrm that breathed fire like you miserable Geats like to yammer on about. No, this one was a creeper, half serpent and half lizard. Longer than a wolf ship, it was—longer even than the dragon ships of the Norse—and it pulled itself along on two clawed legs. Scales of bone armored it above and below, pale as man-flesh on its belly but darkening to the colors of moss and lake mud along its back. That monstrous head … Grimnir’s brow furrowed at the memory. He shook, as if to rouse himself.
The bastard paid us no mind. Why should it? We were a half-score of spitless, piss-legged whelps. My mates cowered, but I watched from the shadow of the trees as Malice-Striker scrabbled up the mountainside. That wyrm paused at the gates of Orkahaugr, its chest juddering, and from those jaws came a cloud of vapor that ran before it like storm-rack. It plunged into this froth and fume and clawed its way into the heart of the mountain.
“Up, you louts!” I said to the lads, after the sounds of steel and slaughter reached us. “Up! Were we grumbling and moaning that Bálegyr left us behind? Aye, well here’s our chance to prove our mettle! Up! Put a blade in your hands and follow me!” Like an idiot, I drew my seax and charged up the mountain.
Grimnir sat back in his seat. He rubbed his jaw with the knuckles of his blade-hand. The lot of us, this was our first fight. Our first real fight. Oh, we’d scraped and scrabbled with each other, but this … this was different. We plunged into the wrack like dogs of war, yipping and baying. That fume, it was like breathing the steam rising from a doused forge—scalding hot and reeking of copper and rotting meat. We couldn’t see a damn thing, but we charged on like a gibbering horde of fools.
We nearly tripped over the first raft of bodies. Most were thralls, worn out slatterns we’d taken in raids against the fjord-men or brought back from over the sea. Their minders were among them—a ragtag bunch of lame and crippled wretches led by a half-blooded old hag who had no legs and got herself around on the back of this cow-footed shortwit she called her son. The whole lot of them lay jumbled together, strangled by the fumes or ripped asunder by the beast’s claws. Those miserable thralls bore the brunt of it, though. They couldn’t run fast enough from that scaly bastard’s breath, which was a pestilence to your kind. It boiled them alive or turned them into boneless sacks of flesh that leaked pus and blood.
We rolled on, my mates and me, following the dragon’s wake deeper into Orkahaugr. That filthy lizard was quick for its size, and it seemed … guided, like the point of a spear driven by a will not its own; it knew where the heart of the mountain was and was making straight for it. None of the bodies strewn along the path gave us pause. Nár! We were wolves, hunting for a fresh kill. We passed lads we’d known since we were squalling babes, crushed and riven and drenched in black blood. Their gore-clotted faces cling even now to my mind. They all bore a look of surprise.
The dragon’s stink drew us on. Its reeking breath hung low to the ground, like a fog. It nearly covered the ruin of a hasty barricade others had thrown up at that crossroad we called Einvigi, where we settled disputes among kin with knives and fists. The left-hand road led down to the smithies and the mines; the right took you to the bolt-holes and the lairs. Straight and you’d find yourself on a rising path that led to the Hall of the Nine Fathers and the armories—empty, now that the ships had gone to Èriu.
The bodies strewn left and right, the splintered wood … they told a plain tale any idiot could read: the wretch was making for the Hall.
Grimnir’s nostrils flared, as if recalling a stench from long ago.
And the Hall’s where the lads and me caught up to it.
You’ve never been in a real scrape, have you, little bird? I don’t mean these games we play or the few things you learned from that old wretch, Sigrún. I mean a real fight, where the dogs are baying for your blood and the steel cuts it close to your precious head? Ha! I didn’t think so. I’ve been party to more shield-bitings and spear-shatterings than there are Geats left in the whole of your stinking village. Half of them I can’t even recall, anymore. But this one …
This one I remember like it happened a week gone.
Grimnir planted his feet wide and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he gestured with his hands—an artist painting a portrait from memory and air. We burst out into the Hall, my mates five steps ahead of me—I’d stopped to grab a spear, since it was clear my little pig-sticker would be useless. Snatched one off the wall, and a shield for good measure, and turned back around in time to see Malice-Striker’s tail crush my mates like eggshells. A squalling, spitting knot of little hate-mongers with murder in their eyes one minute, and the next … broken, shredded corpses smeared across the stone floor. I won’t lie. That caught me off guard.
I stood there, gaping like an idiot while that misbegotten wyrm tore Bálegyr’s throne down. Its belly crushed the fire pit. Its clawed feet left furrows in the stone walls as it clawed its way up. Up and up, it went, its nostrils oozing clouds of poison-wrack, until it battered the hard bones of its head into the ceiling. And me, rooted to the spot with my fool mouth hanging open.
I would have died a second time, crushed under the debris raining from the ceiling, if not for Raðbolg. He snatched a handful of my hair and fairly dragged me out of the way. Slung me down, put an arrow on the nock of that great black bow of his, and whipped the cord back to his ear. Twang! Two more he sent after the first—and not a damn one of them did more than shatter on the plates of the bastard’s belly.
But they got its attention. Ha! That thing looked down at us like we were shit-nuggets it had stepped on. And when it opened its jaws—to roar or to boil us alive—I knew there would be no third time. I felt the cold touch of the Norns’ shears on the thread of what would be a wretchedly short life.
But Raðbolg, that mad whoreson, drew and loosed his last arrow. Sent that black-barbed shaft flying right down that stinking wyrm’s cheese-pipe.
Grimnir laughed and sank back in his seat. Were this one of you Geats’ tales, well, that would have been the end of it. Break open the mead and let’s fire the corpse! But this wasn’t some skald’s dream. Nár! I watched that arrow spring off the nock; watched it sail as straight as a hymn-singer’s spine … and watched it splinter against one of Malice-Striker’s teeth! Ymir! All that did was piss it off.
Well, we were done for, weren’t we? That beast came for us in an avalanche of scales and talons; eyes burning like green lamps in that ugly head, its jaws wide and spewing poisoned vapor. “Spear!” Raðbolg screamed at me. I fumbled around, and at the last moment raised the spear to meet Malice-Striker head-on.
Grimnir’s eye smoldered like the banked fires of a forge; his voice dropped, becoming a hoarse whisper. That’s when I saw her. Skríkja Kjallandi’s daughter, the fell-handed Queen of Orkahaugr and she who gave me life. She was on the parapet above that vile wyrm, come from the summit of the mountain.
In her fist, Sárklungr. The Wound-Thorn …
Silence fell. Grimnir sat stock-still. A dozen heartbeats passed, then a dozen more. When once again he spoke, his words were grim and heavy, laden with the doom of his people. More than a queen, she was. She was a warrior! My sire’s name was on her lips as she hurled herself off that parapet, hurled herself onto Malice-Striker’s flank. Our arrows, our spears … useless. But Sárklungr—forged from the heart of a fallen star by the hammers of the dvergar—Sárklungr struck true and pierced the dragon’s hide.
By Ymir! She held that hilt in a white-knuckle grip and rode the blow to the ground. You should have heard the bastard scream! Sárklungr had shorn through its bony armor behind the right shoulder and cut a furrow through its muscle and sinew. Ha! So much for Odin’s vaunted dragon, I thought. Damn my eye, but I was callow and stupid back then—both traits Gífr would beat out of me over the decades to come. I was ready to dance a little jig on the wretch’s grave when it decided it had had enough of our lot.
Quick as a snake, Malice-Striker spun around. Like that—Grimnir snapped his fingers—its tail came whipping at me, scraps of my mates’ bloody flesh still hanging off it. I managed to get my shield up, ducked my head, and braced myself …
Grimnir chuckled. That was the wrong thing to do, little bird. I should have went as limp as a boned fish. Rode with the blow instead of fighting it. That tail … it was like getting hit with a battering ram. Wood splintered. The iron rim of the shield came apart and nearly took my head off; the blow drove the shield-boss into my arm, shattering the bone, and sent me flying into Raðbolg.
Grimnir’s brows drew together.
Must have blacked out, because I only have bits and pieces of what happened next. I heard Raðbolg’s voice like the roar of thunder. He was shouting Skríkja’s name. Saw him grab up my fallen spear and thrust it under the wyrm’s armor, into its wounded flank. And I heard my mother’s death shriek.
Grimnir leaned back in his seat, his face a mask of scorn. He stared at his left arm, at the knots of gristle that marked the places where the bone was broken; raising his hand, he made a fist.
Skríkja’s bleeding out a dozen yards away from me, ripped open from her left shoulder to her right hip, and what do I do? I lay there like a limp rag, crying over this busted arm like it meant something! Faugh! What happened next should have come from me. I came around long enough to realize the dragon was gone, skinned out back the way it had come. I saw Raðbolg kneeling over the slaughtered remains of Skríkja. I saw him lift Sárklungr from her limp grasp, saw him trail his hand through her blood and smear it on the blade. And I heard him howl at the heavens like a cornered wolf. “Hear me, Sly One, Father Loki!” he said, sword raised aloft. “Bear witness, O Ymir, sire of giants and lord of the frost! By this blood, the blood of my kin, I swear! I, Raðbolg Kjallandi’s son, will not rest until I’ve brought that wretched dragon to heel! I will not rest until Niðhöggr is under my blade!”
Grimnir lowered his fist and stared into the heart of the fire pit.
EMBERS CRACKLED AND SPAT; OUTSIDE, a cold wind moaned across the ridges as the first fingers of light crept into the eastern sky. For a long moment, no one spoke. Dísa turned the tale over in her mind, while Halla and Grimnir nursed their private thoughts. Finally, the girl stirred.
“You said you’ve waited for vengeance these many years,” Dísa said. “Did Raðbolg fail?”
Grimnir glanced sidelong at her, his eye gleaming in the ember-light. “Would we be dickering over this cursed prophecy if he had? Nár! For four hundred and nineteen years Raðbolg hunted Odin’s little pet. We were away in the East, Gífr and me, when he finally caught up to it. Back then, the bay you call Skærvík was a peninsula—narrow spit of land rising to a set of great jutting cliffs. Malice-Striker had gone to ground in a cave beneath them. Takes a cursed long time for a wyrm’s scaly hide to mend. Bastard was under there, biding his time, sneaking out by the dark of the moon to seize a few goats or raid some luckless Geat’s herd of cattle. That’s how Raðbolg found him. Followed a trail of gnawed hoof bones and goat horn to Malice-Striker’s lair, snuck inside, and waited for the blasted thing to crawl back home.”
Grimnir took up a long, fire-blackened spear and used it to stir the embers. “What went on there, under the earth, no one knows. Not a soul witnessed the death of Malice-Striker, save Raðbolg—and he died in the wyrm’s death-throes. And after, the whole peninsula just … vanished, like some jötunn’s hand had scooped it from the earth and left a puddle in its wake.”
“Not a jötunn.” Halla tsked. “The Allfather.”
Dísa scowled. “Why would he do that?”
“That wretched, one-eyed wandering tosspot!” Grimnir stabbed savagely at the heart of the fire. “Didn’t like that one of the kaunar—one of us poor plague folk—beat him at his own game! Oh, no! Didn’t like that one of us had shoved a foot of dwarf-steel down the throat of his little pet, so he cheated! Sank the peninsula and sang his cursed prophecy over the ruins!”
“And stole your vengeance.” Dísa understood, after a fashion. As a Geat, she was no stranger to the lure of revenge. And as the daughter of a woman slain in battle, she recognized the driving need for it, the thirst one could only assuage with the blood of a sworn enemy.
“Not for much longer,” Grimnir snarled. “What is it those filthy hymn-singers say? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Well, that dunghill rat stole from me, so I will steal from him, eh? Let old One Eye have his Ragnarök. Let him raise that cursed barrow and resurrect his precious dragon! Aye, I’ve sworn no oaths that might draw the eyes of Ásgarðr, so he’ll be none the wiser when I slip into that stinking hole, take up Sárklungr from the dead hand of my kinsman, and cut that bastard wyrm’s head off!”
Halla thrust an accusing finger at him. “You’d deny us our vengeance for the sake of your own?”
“Aye! And why not?” Grimnir’s chin jutted forward, his manner savage and belligerent. “What do you even know of the world beyond your precious trees? What do you know of the ambitions of Men, their hatreds and their wars? Nothing! You’ve never seen the ramparts of Miklagarðr or the stews of Parisius! You’ve never heard the marching-song of fifty thousand men, or walked the bloody fields where the dead lie in their war rags! By Ymir, you old hag! Thrice have these hymn-singers gathered in their multitudes to carry their war over the sea and lay claim to their Nailed God’s barrow! And a fourth time just so they could put the screws to the lords of Miklagarðr! They are like barley—reap your fill and more will arise with every passing season! Faugh! You could not destroy them even if that wretched wyrm came boiling out of Skærvík with a hundred offspring! So, tell me: why should I pin my hopes on a prophecy of smoke and lies when I can take the vengeance that is my right?”
“We’re not saying vengeance isn’t your right,” Dísa piped up.
Grimnir’s good eye slid to the young woman. “We? I forget: how is this any of your business?”
“The end comes for my world, too, does it not? That gives me a voice. See, what if you but delayed your vengeance? What would this dragon do if loosed upon the Nailed God’s world?”
“Nothing!” Grimnir snapped. “Because, by the…” Lips writhing, he choked back an oath. “By my hand that scaly wretch dies ere its blasted eyes open fully on this world!”
Halla leaned forward and spat into the embers of the fire. “You’re a pig-headed fool, skrælingr, you—”
Suddenly, Grimnir bolted upright in his seat, his good eye ablaze. His nostrils flared; his lips skinned back over his teeth. “Quiet!”
A moment later, Dísa heard it, too: three long blasts of a horn. She had a sinking feeling as she recognized it. “That’s Askr’s horn.”
“One of your lot?”
“Aye,” Dísa replied, reaching for her haubergeon. Her gaze met Halla’s, and in that milky stare she saw a touch of fear reflected—neither of them had told Grimnir of Hreðel’s threats for fear of what he might do. Now, that fear bubbled to the surface. “He’s kinsman to my cousin’s bedmate. I’ll go down to the beach and see what this racket’s all about.”
Dísa shrugged into her mail, twisting and rolling her shoulders as it settled into place; Halla fastened Dísa’s weapons’ belt about her slender hips; the girl hitched at it, adjusting her sheathed seax and the Frankish axe in its leather frog—all the while trying to avoid Grimnir’s suspicious glare. She caught up her helmet, shield, and short spear.
“Expecting trouble, little bird?” he said acidly, settling back in his seat. “Are these not your folk?”
“What was it you said? ‘Blood’s no proof against a jealous blade’?”
There was no humor in Grimnir’s chuckle as she eased open the door and vanished into the rising light. He shot a suspicious glance at Halla, who moved deeper into the longhouse and away from the petrifying gleam of daylight. “I saw that look. What’s she not telling me, eh?”