In the cellar beneath Grimnir’s longhouse, surrounded by walls of rune-cut stone, Halla crouched over a black iron basin filled with steaming water and sought to divine the future. Wrought in the time before recorded history, the basin had come to Miðgarðr when Grimnir’s folk fled from Jötunheimr—but whether as spoils of war or stolen from their master, Gífr never said. The old kaunr had called it the Eye of Mimir, and he’d showed her how to harness it in order to catch a glimpse of what was yet to come.
“Bastard likes to speak in riddles,” he’d said, eyeing the basin as though it were a living thing. “And its answers are as clear as a slag puddle until you come to see it in hindsight. But maybe you have more patience for its bollocks than I.”
Halla used the Eye sparingly over the centuries, and only when other avenues were exhausted. This night, she had to know; she had to see … “The Grey Wanderer walks abroad,” she breathed, her words rippling the steam. “Show me.”
She leaned over the Eye of Mimir and peered into its ink-black water. Halla breathed the steam, which was acrid and smelled of smoke, blood, and churned earth—the stenches of the battlefield. The smell of Vígríðr, the blood-plain where gods and giants strove and slew.
The steam wafting up from the water’s surface coiled and danced, forming images in the air. Fragments of prophecy drawn in oak gall and iron, traceries of black against a fragile tapestry of air. Halla concentrated and saw …
… eyes of hateful red glaring from stark white fur; from the black fur, eyes as blue and cold as mountain ice. Two wolves pad in circles—one black, one white—hackles raised; slaver drips from bared fangs. Their low growls promise no mercy. From above, Raven watches, head cocked. Its voice is harsh against an empty sky.
The wolves surge together. Fangs rip; claws rend. Blood drips like rubies, jewels of life staining the snow. Raven watches. They fight, but for what? What is their prize? Is it dominance? Is it territory? Raven knows. Their prize is an illusion, a Lie driven under their skins. It is the Lie that makes them kill. It is the Lie they die for.
A silhouette watches. It is vaguely man-shaped, but it is no man; it wears the slouch hat and cloak of a wanderer, but it is no wanderer; it is one-eyed, but not Ein-eygdr. Its smile is malice; its laugh, hate. It watches.
The white wolf kills the black. The black wolf kills the white. Hearts beating, hot blood soaking the earth, they drag themselves toward the Lie. Howling, moaning. The Lie beckons. Raven screams the truth, but they do not hear. Raven takes wing; it tries to stem the red tide of blood as it cools and turns to an avalanche of rubies. Raven gathers them in its talons, secrets them in its feathers and protects them. But the silhouette cannot abide Raven’s interference. With its wooden staff, it drives Raven away. Rubies of blood spill from Raven’s wings to shatter as they strike the earth.
The ground shakes. The wolves howl their last. The silhouette waits.
Raven soars into the sun, wheels, and returns for vengeance. Black-winged, razor-beaked, it flies as true as an arrow. It pierces the figure, slicing through muscle and bone to seize its prize: the silhouette of a heart, black and beating. The man that is no man, the God that is no god, laughs, and its laughter is hatred. Its smile is malice. Its heart is doom. The silhouette crumbles like ash.
Its heart grows. It becomes vast and winged. Raven screams as a monstrous shadow devours the earth …
Halla shifted, suddenly aware of a tremor running deep under the earth. Dust filtered down from the roof of the cellar; ripples disturbed the surface of the water, breaking the spell cast by the Eye of Mimir. She rocked back on her haunches and waited for the trembling to subside.
Gífr had spoken the truth: the Eye of Mimir made riddles of the future. She recognized the imagery, or thought she did, of the wolves and the raven … these were spoken of in the prophecy. She’d expected to see the face of the dragon, the destruction of the Nailed God’s world. She hoped to see the fires of Ragnarök kindled and well-burning.
And the shadows. The silhouette of a figure who was a man but not a man; a god but not a god. This was the Grey Wanderer, she reckoned, though his mortal identity remained a mystery. Lines of concern creased Halla’s ancient brow as she rocked to her feet. Her limbs creaked as she climbed the steps. With each one, she felt as though she was diminishing—becoming a gnarled thing good for nursery tales, that children might take fright at but their parents would dismiss as a figment of feverish imagination.
Halla stopped at the head of the cellar steps. What if Grimnir was right? What if this feeling meant the prophecy would not change the world in any measurable way and the scourge of the Nailed God could not be stopped? Could she live in a world like that, a world bereft of the mystery and magic of her youth?
Slowly, she shuffled through the longhouse, her shoulders bowed by the weight of her years. She paid no heed to the trophies of long-forgotten triumphs, to the drifts of coin and weapons taken from dead foes, to Grimnir’s throne or the banked fire in its pit. She shuffled out the door and onto the columned porch, where she stood and stared up at the nighted sky.
A full moon hung over the earth. Its bright silvery glow dimmed the other lights of heaven. But as Halla peered up at the moon, her breath caught in her throat. There was a shadow on its edge, a reddish tinge. A tremble of anticipation ran through the troll-woman’s hunched frame. “Can it be?”
A voice, soft and menacing, answered her from the shadows:
“Sköll bays aloud | after Dvalin’s toy.”
Halla turned as a figure emerged from the darkness, a twisted silhouette leaning upon a staff of carved yew, cloak-wrapped, a low-brimmed hat drawn over its face. From beneath it, a single eye burned with the fires of Ásgarðr.
“Will you not offer hospitality to a stranger, daughter of Járnviðja?”
GRIMNIR AROSE FROM THE BENCH where he’d spent the last hours feigning sleep and crept among the warriors of Gautheimr. The hearth-fire was a bed of smoldering embers; by that ruddy glow, he moved soundlessly—though mailed and bearing arms—his body bent low to the ground, his nostrils flaring and snuffling like some beast of old, come to slake an unholy thirst. As he passed, the ground underfoot rumbled, a shudder that trembled through the bones of the earth. He stopped, listening. The men did not waken, but their snores became groans as dreams turned to nightmares of blood and slaughter.
He scrithed through the benches of the sworn men and down among the sleeping pallets of the Daughters of the Raven. A dozen of them, the eldest of the war-hags, slept fitfully among the men. He ghosted past Auða, who lay curled in a tight ball, and Geira, whose ripping snores echoed like any man’s; he stepped over Thyra, who was Old Hygge’s eldest daughter. Grimnir’s eye gleamed with a feral light, narrowing as he caught sight of the one he was after.
Sigrún.
The old wolf-bitch lay on a rug of bear skin, her head pillowed by one lean-muscled arm. A cloak lay draped over her body from shoulder to ankle; unlike the others, she slept fully clothed in a loose tunic of russet wool and cross-gaitered linen trousers the color of cream. A naked sword rested near her blade hand, her fingers barely touching its acorn-shaped pommel. Her shield leaned against the rough wall of the longhouse, and her hauberk was close at hand, ready to snatch up and shimmy into at a moment’s notice.
Grimnir, however, gave her no such moment.
Black-nailed fingers clamped over her mouth. The old woman’s eyes flew open; her hand clawed for the hilt of her sword even as she came up off the bear fur. She was nearly upright when Grimnir dealt her a sharp buffet with his forearm, under her left ear. And like that, Sigrún went as limp as a boned fish.
Grimnir wasted no time. He snatched her up, threw her over his shoulder like a manikin made of twine and dry wood, and darted out the door of the longhouse. Nor did he pause there. Like a drifting shadow, he spirited her from Hrafnhaugr through the postern gate. He loped down the forested trail to the dock, skirted past it, and followed the rocky shore until they came abreast of the Skærvík mouth of the Scar—the moat-like ravine that cut the peninsula of Hrafnhaugr off from the mainland.
Here, Grimnir slung Sigrún to the ground. The moon overhead, as full and fat as a spring lamb, sported a bloody edge as a shadow slipped over it. The Wolf, Grimnir reckoned, devouring Mani, goddess of the Moon. That meant a turning of the glass—a last trickle of sand before the world shook and oceans boiled and the herald of Ragnarök emerged from its death-like slumber, or so the doggerel ran. Grimnir snarled at the harbinger of destruction and drew his seax.
It was not the same blade as the one Skríkja had given him, in the days of Bálegyr’s reign over the North; the blade he’d carried on his murderous quest to avenge himself on Bjarki Half-Dane, though it was close. He had reforged it himself; its core was that ancient blade, hammered by Kjallandi from the heart of a star that had fallen on the dwarf-realm of Niðavellir. Grimnir had added steel to it, dusted it with ground scales from the wyrm’s own hide—fetched from the ruin of Orkahaugr over a hundred years before—and woven into it spells of destruction. “Hatr,” he said. “Hate is your name.”
“What?” The old shieldmaiden at his feet groaned from where she had fetched up against a damp and moss-grown boulder. She struggled to rise, but then satisfied herself by dragging her body into a sitting position. The light of the darkening moon touched with ruddy fire her gray locks, and they fell over her scarred face as she fixed Grimnir with a deadly glare. “By what right—” she started to say, but Grimnir cut her off with a sharp bark of laughter. He crouched just out of reach, an eerie figure in his horned headdress and wolf-skull mask. His good eye gleamed like an ember in the murk.
“By what right?” he mocked her. “Useless hag! I have been a raider, a throat-slitter, aye, and a slayer of men; I have terrorized a dozen lands, given birth to a score of wretched folk tales, and killed hundreds of your so-called heroes who’d come looking for vengeance, for glory, or just for a storied death. You dogs used to whisper my name for fear that saying it aloud might summon me, and not a bastard among you would dare question my right as your lord.” With one black-nailed hand, Grimnir stripped off his headdress and mask. Sweat-heavy hair fell like a veil across his cheeks; he tossed his head back, bone and silver fetishes ticking together. To her credit, the old shieldmaiden did not blench at the sight of him. Grimnir leaned to one side and spat. “You do not scream and call me out as a monster?”
Sigrún wiped her hands on the thighs of her trousers. Abraded palms left swatches of blood behind. The old woman winced. “You are the Tangled God’s herald. You carried the serpent banner of Angrboða in Jötunheimr, or so the legend goes. When the lords of Ásgarðr came against the children of Father Loki—mighty Fenrir, the world-encircling serpent Jörmungandr, and blessed Hel—they say it was you, lord, who led the Tangled God’s armies into battle. Why should I think you’d be a blond-haired and blue-eyed son of Miðgarðr?”
Grimnir nodded, wiping his nose on his forearm and grunting to hide his sudden fit of humor. None of what she’d said was true, but he did not gainsay her. Let them reckon him older than Gífr if it kept them in line. “Those days are long gone, aren’t they?” he said, after a moment. “What am I now, but a wretched shepherd, keeping a flock of prattling fools safe from the Nailed God’s folk? Well, it’s high time you lot remember that you live on at my pleasure! And my pleasure, now, is answers!”
“Answers to what? Why bring me out here if all you want are answers?”
“You recognize this place?”
Sigrún’s eyes shifted from side to side. “It’s where we found Kolgríma’s body. She’d slipped and fell, yonder.” The old woman indicated a place near the edge of the turgid water, slick with greenish moss.
“Oh, aye. Slipped and fell, is it?” Grimnir’s lip curled in contempt. “You did her in, didn’t you, you sly wretch?”
“Why would I do that? She was like a sister to me!”
“And so? Dagrún was your daughter, but that didn’t stop you from sticking a knife in her gizzard, did it?”
Color drained from Sigrún’s face.
“Yes,” Grimnir hissed. “I already know about that little bit of wickedness. And I know it was Kolgríma who helped you get rid of the body. Is that why you dropped her over the edge of the Scar? To tie up your loose ends? Nár! You know it, and I know it, so don’t try to play the fool and deny it!” But she did. Even as Sigrún opened her mouth to frame her innocence, Grimnir’s seax flicked out. The razor-edged tip of the blade sliced through the thin cartilage of her left nostril. Sigrún hissed and flinched away, clutching at the side of her nose as blood dribbled over her lips and down her chin. “Hatr can taste your lies, hag,” he said. “Think hard, ere you speak again. Think hard, for every lie you spool will cost you, and Hatr means to take its payment in blood.”
Sigrún’s chin jutted in defiance. “Aye, I killed Dagrún … that idiot wanted your head, and the glory that went along with it! She’d listened to one too many of Kolgríma’s drunken yarns. I did what I had to do, back then, to keep the peace—but I did not kill Kolgríma! Why would I? What do I care if that useless sack of bones Dagrún whelped finds out what happened to her mother? You may have trained Dísa to cut throats, but I raised her! I know her limits better than you, lord!”
“Think you can take her, eh?”
“That you think I can’t insults me,” Sigrún said, rage thick in her voice.
“We’ll see.” Grimnir rocked back on his haunches. “So, if you didn’t do her in, what in Hel’s name was Kolgríma doing out here, at night?”
“Was she not skulking about on some errand for you? By her spoor, Bjorn Svarti thought she was looking for something.”
Grimnir rose to his feet and slunk to the edge of the ravine. He moved in a low crouch, his head in motion as he swept the ground with his good eye, and stopping from time to time to snuffle at the stones and the moss. There was a sharp current in the water of the lake, here; wavelets splashed against half-submerged boulders and a breeze whistled between the sheer walls of the Scar. Grimnir straightened, a curse forming on his lips. He was about to admit defeat when he caught a ghostly scent, a whiff of something like iron boiled in brine—the Nailed God’s stench.
He glanced over his shoulder at the old shieldmaiden, who had clambered to her feet. She watched him with curious intensity. “I brought you out here, away from those other swine, expecting to smell the Nailed God’s reek on you, but all that sweats from your cursed pores is hatred. Hatred, and now…” Grimnir inhaled. “And now, fear. What are you afraid of, eh?” He gave her an opening to speak, but Sigrún remained silent. “Afraid I’d find this?”
Grimnir crept close to the wall of the ravine. He took a deep, snuffling breath; by the dim ruddy light of the eclipsing moon, he noticed a rock out of place, its edges scraped clean. He clawed at it, and it fell out easily. Grimnir cursed and flinched away from the reek rising from the niche; covering his nose and mouth with his forearm, he speared something inside it with his seax and dragged it out into the open. Burlap ripped; a thing both bright and metallic clattered to the stony floor of the ravine.
It was a standing crucifix.
Grimnir snarled and spat. He turned his head to glare at Sigrún. “Yours?” he growled.
The old woman gave a long, pent-up sigh before shaking her head. “She was curious about it, she said. Curious how something like that could have conquered the world. She was curious about its power.”
“Who?”
“Kolgríma,” Sigrún replied.
Grimnir exploded. Two swift steps brought him face-to-face with the old shieldmaiden; he snatched her up in one black-nailed fist, spun, and slammed her against the wall of the ravine. “You wretched hag!” Spittle flew from his lips. “Kolgríma? Kolgríma was no blasted hymn-singer! I would have known!”
Sigrún clawed at his arm. She coughed. “S-She was curious, I said! She kept it hidden away.”
“How’d you find out about it?”
“She was like a sister to me. Kolgríma wanted someone to confide in. Someone close…”
“So she told you she was flirting at the edges of the Nailed God’s creed?” Grimnir scoffed. He turned Sigrún loose; the old woman slumped against the ravine wall, rubbing her throat. “And, what? You killed her?”
“What if I did?” Sigrún glared at him. “You’re an ungrateful bastard, do you know this? Kolgríma—aye, precious Kolgríma!—wanted to send an envoy off to the King of the Swedes! Did you know that? She wanted him to send a priest by boat, so you’d be none the wiser! She said there was change on the wind! The days of hiding would soon be over, and we’d best prepare. And the best thing we could do, she said … was kneel before the Nailed God!”
Grimnir said nothing for a moment. He stared hard at the crucifix—an altar piece as long as his forearm and wrought of heavy gold, the Nailed God’s pain-racked image taunting him. Then, with a sulphurous oath, he snagged it on the point of his seax and flung it out into the dark waters of Skærvík. “Who else knows?” he said, after the splashing echo died away.
“No one. I made sure of it.” Sigrún stooped and picked up Grimnir’s headdress and mask. These, she held out to him.
He raised an eyebrow, chuckled darkly. “A bastard, I may be,” he said, taking the items from her. “But I am not ungrateful. And Kolgríma, that hymn-singing old bat, she wasn’t wrong.” He gestured into the night sky with his chin, gestured at the blood-tinged moon. “The end comes. Sit, and let me tell you a tale…”
DÍSA CRIED IN HER SLEEP, dreaming of Flóki, until the trembling of the earth woke her. She opened her eyes, instantly alert, and listened as the vibrations faded away. She took it for what it surely was—a harbinger, an omen of the strife-filled days ahead, when the earth would split and disgorge the bones of Niðhöggr. Around her, the men of Úlfrún’s war band did not stir. They slept where they dropped, wrapped in their cloaks, pressed together for warmth. Their snores came like a chorus of ripping cloth. None of them seemed to notice the reverberations deep in the bones of the earth, the rousing of a giant.
Quietly, Dísa came to her feet. She wiped her eyes. Something else disturbed her, something she could not put her finger on. She walked the perimeter of their makeshift camp, creeping past bleary-eyed sentries, as noiseless as the wind. The army of that wretched hymn-singer, Konraðr the White, was half a day and more behind them. At Dísa’s urging, they made for Hrafnhaugr with all haste. “My people need time,” she’d said to Úlfrún. “Time to gather provisions and reinforce the walls. Time to come to grips with a battle on their doorstep.” And Úlfrún had agreed, though her men were not happy with her decision. They wanted to strike at Konraðr’s column, make them pay for every inch of their advance in blood. Forne even suggested they send Dísa on alone.
“No,” Úlfrún had said. “She will need our presence to convince her people this threat is real.” Nor did she want to split her forces. The old wolf-warrior had cursed and stormed off, but he did as his Jarl commanded.
Dísa came to a small glade, a tear in the forest canopy caused by a felled tree. Its rotting trunk lay at the center, surrounded by weeds and bramble. The girl was surprised to see Úlfrún sitting on that fallen log. The older woman stared at the heavens, her face bathed in the light of the full moon.
Dísa came and sat beside her.
“You felt it?” Úlfrún said.
Dísa nodded. “It was Jörmungandr, the Miðgarðr Serpent, wasn’t it?”
“It smells blood and strife, and it stirs,” Úlfrún replied. “It is almost time.”
“How can you know?” Dísa said. She followed Úlfrún’s gaze and saw the ominous red shadows staining the moon’s bright face. Úlfrún closed her eyes. She wore a look of soul-weary exhaustion as she massaged the stump of her missing hand.
“It is almost at an end.”
Dísa looked from the moon to the silver-edged glade. She noted how the trees strained skyward, their limbs washed in moonlight; they were like the suppliants of a merciful goddess. She heard the hum of their roots, and felt their anticipation rising through the soil. They were eager for … what? For destruction? But their hum was not bloodthirsty, nor did she sense hatred behind their anticipation. Like an oak shedding its leaves, they were ready for the world to shed its blight, and for a new world to rise in its place.
“How long do we have?”
When Úlfrún did not answer, Dísa looked to the older woman—poised to repeat the question—and saw she’d leaned back against a thick branch. Her good hand still clutched the stump of the other, but now there was a beatific smile on her face that smoothed the lines of concern from her brow and lent her the aspect of youth. Dísa remained by her side and watched over the older woman as she slept.
“NINE TIMES NINE,” KONRAÐR MUTTERED.
Sweat dripped from the lord of Skara’s brow; his pale skin was splotched and ruddy, and his reddish eyes glassy as the recurring fever dug its talons into him. He reeled from his pavilion on unsteady legs, barefoot, sword in hand, clad only in breeches and a tunic. Outside, the guard snapped to attention. Konraðr waved him off as he went out into the night, shivering, his eyes wildly searching the heavens. For a moment, the warrior, one of his sworn men, made to follow, alarmed by his lord’s behavior; instead, he hurried to the chapel tent, where he hoped to find Father Nikulas.
“Times nine again,” Konraðr said, his breath steaming. “Nine times nine times nine again.” He staggered down the line of tents where his men slept. Most were too exhausted to notice the faint trembling of the earth much less their lord’s fevered rambling. The army had stopped half a day’s march from the bridge and set up camp in column—a great snake of weary men, small fires, and hastily erected tents. Some of the soldiers simply crawled into tree boles or bedded down in small groups, sharing blankets and cloaks for warmth. Sentries walked the perimeter between well-stoked fires, whose feeble light was barely enough to illuminate the wall of trees hemming them in.
Arngrim’s men formed the vanguard, all experienced woodsmen who picked up the faint trail left by their attackers. But for that they would have been traveling blind, lost in the heart of Raven-Geat territory.
“What is nine?” Konraðr hissed. He was delirious with fever. “Why nine?” He moved up the column toward the head of the snake. A few men watched him pass; one, an older soldier who’d served with Konraðr at Constantinople, nodded for his young tent-mate to go and fetch Arngrim.
The lord of Skara came to a break in the forest. Through naked branches of oak, ash, and elm; through the green arms of spruce and fir and giant pine, moonlight lanced from the heavens and turned the remaining crusts of snow to drifts of silver and ivory.
Here, his ghosts gathered. Pale wraiths in tattered rags still wet with the blood of their deaths. They called for Konraðr to join them. They looked up at the moon, shining above them, its light lending their siege-wasted bodies some semblance of life. A child-soldier, a boy of twelve who had died under Konraðr’s blade when they breached the walls of Constantinople, laughed and clapped.
Konraðr wanted to shake him. “Boy, what is nine times nine times nine again? What does nine mean?”
The boy pointed to the moon, to the ruddy shadow consuming its bright face and turning silver to blood. When the boy spoke, his voice was legion—male, female, old and young:
“When the years tally | nine times nine times nine,
again, and war-reek | wafts like dragon breath;
when Fimbulvetr | hides the pallid sun,
the monstrous Serpent | shall writhe in fury.”
Konraðr swayed and fell to his knees. “Yes. Yes:
“Sköll bays aloud | after Dvalin’s toy.
The fetter shall break | and the wolf run free;
Dark-jawed devourer | of light-bringer’s steed.
And in Vänern’s embrace | the earth splits asunder.”
This was how Father Nikulas found him: kneeling, shivering, muttering out of his head as the fever racked his thin frame. The bearded priest turned as Arngrim joined him. The rawboned engineer had a blanket in his fists.
“What happened to him, Father?”
“God tests him,” Nikulas replied. “Tests his resolve with fevers and madness and apparitions from his days in the East.”
“Will the bones of the blessed saint cure him of this affliction?”
The priest shrugged. “Perhaps. Come, help me. Let’s get him back to his tent.”
Arngrim started forward, and then stopped. “Father,” he hissed, looking up through the interlaced branches. Nikulas followed his gaze. The priest crossed himself. In the night sky, they watched as a sinister shadow consumed the moon, like the jaws of a wolf closing on its prey.
“Do not look at it,” Nikulas said. He grasped Konraðr’s arm and helped the lord of Skara to his feet. “It is the Devil’s moon. The great Adversary wants us to fail.” Arngrim averted his eyes and looked, instead, at his lord. He wrapped the blanket around Konraðr’s trembling shoulders.
“Nine times nine times nine again,” he muttered, clutching Arngrim’s forearm. “What is it?”
“Nine times nine times nine again?” Arngrim met Konraðr’s ruddy gaze, his eyes the same hue as the blood moon. “That’s seven hundred and twenty-nine, my lord.”
“Wrong,” Konraðr replied, pointing at the eclipsed moon. “It’s now.”
HALLA HEATED WINE AND SPICES in a copper pot, then poured the steaming concoction into a pair of horn cups. She handed one to the cloaked stranger, who sat now by the door of the longhouse. His good eye flitted over the treasures and trophies scattered haphazardly around the room; his gaze lingered over Grimnir’s throne. Halla thought she saw a gleam of contempt.
The troll-woman sat in her accustomed place. She drank sparingly, listening as the stranger regaled her with news from faraway lands, fulfilling the customs of hospitality that called for the guest to help pass a cold winter’s night by being congenial company. He told of the defeat of the German crusaders at Otepää in Estonia, and their subsequent call for help; he spoke of a great arming by the followers of the White Christ in the south, who were intent on recapturing the lands called Outremer. “I do not understand their ways,” the stranger said, shaking his head. “They will journey halfway around the world to die on a barren rock because their Nailed God might have trod upon it, but they refuse to help a broken man at their feet.”
Halla nodded. “The world is nothing like I remember it.”
“Aye, the trackless forest,” the stranger replied, his eye gleaming. “Myrkviðr, the Dark-wood, stretching from dawn to dusk. I remember well that world. It is lost now, and forgotten by all save you and I.” For an hour and more, the stranger and Halla traded stories, remembrances of the songs of the trees, of the laughing spirits, and of dark deeds done by moonless night when the sons of Man dared trespass under the emerald boughs of Myrkviðr.
Finally, after three cups of wine, the stranger lapsed into silence. Time passed without any accounting, then: “Do you know me, daughter of Járnviðja?” he said, placing his empty cup beside him.
“I’ve had word of your coming, and I know the guise you wear,” Halla replied. “The Grey Wanderer; the Raven-God; Lord of the Gallows; the shield-worshipped kinsman of the Æsir. Your names are without number. But I also know that the guise you wear, those names … they are not your own. They were chosen for you.”
“You think me some puppet, then? Some wretched niðingr?”
“We are all puppets, in some way.” Halla, too, put her cup aside. “We dance and caper about this stage, playing out the roles we’ve been given for the grim amusement of the Gods. Playing until they see fit to cut our strings. Then, we are puppets no longer. I have watched many such plays unfold, stranger, but I am not familiar with yours.”
“Are you not?” he replied. “Though you are but a bit player in it, you’ve seen fit to add your voice to the chorus often enough:
“When the years tally | nine times nine times nine,
again, and war-reek | wafts like dragon breath;
when Fimbulvetr | hides the pallid sun,
the monstrous Serpent | shall writhe in fury.
“Sköll bays aloud | after Dvalin’s toy.
The fetter shall break | and the wolf run free;
Dark-jawed devourer | of light-bringer’s steed.
And in Vänern’s embrace | the earth splits asunder.
“From the depths a barrow | rises through the water,
the stone-girdled hall | of Aranæs, where dwells
Jörmungandr’s spawn, | the Malice-Striker.
Its dread bones rattle | and herald an end.
“Wolf shall fight she-Wolf | in Raven’s shadow;
an axe age, a sword age, | as Day gives way to Night.
And Ymir’s sons dance | as the Gjallarhorn
kindles the doom | of the Nailed God’s folk.”
Halla’s milky eyes narrowed. “That’s not your composition, though, is it? Nor is this a play of your devising. What are you, under that mask you wear, but some poor fool caught in a snare and made to dance?”
The stranger laughed. “Caught, indeed. I was left like offal along the Ash-Road, where the tangled branches of Yggðrasil pierce the Nine Worlds. There my master found me, broken and near death. He gave me a new purpose, lent me his hamingja, his luck. He has entrusted me with the plot of his play and I will see it performed.” The stranger rose to his feet and came nearer to the fire. He extended his hands, warming his fingers. “But I have a thorny problem. The time for bit players is at an end. The principals are ready to take the stage. I have my Wolf, my she-Wolf, my precious little Day who gives way to Night.” He glanced around the longhouse. “I even have Ymir’s sons poised to dance, and Malice-Striker waiting in the wings.” He turned his head and fixed Halla in his malevolent gaze. “But I seem to have one puppet too many, niðingr.”
“Perhaps,” Halla said, clambering to her feet. “Perhaps it is my lot to join your audience.”
The stranger considered this, but shook his head after a moment. “I think not. The audience should not know quite so much about the play. And you know more than you let on, don’t you? Yes, I can tell from that gleam of recognition in your eyes, child of Myrkviðr. You know from whence I come. And with a well-timed word in the wrong ear you could ruin my surprise.”
“Not if our purposes are aligned,” Halla said. “Do we not want the same thing? To see the prophecy fulfilled? To see the Nailed God’s dominion ended and the Elder World restored? Unless…” she looked up sharply, her milky eyes thinning to slits, “… unless that’s not what this play is about.” She recalled the Eye of Mimir; the prize the two wolves fought over, it was a lie. “The prophecy,” she said slowly, backing away from the stranger. “The prophecy is a lie, isn’t it?”
The stranger tsked. “Not a lie so much as a diversion. But come. Do not be afraid.” He loomed over Halla as she moved farther from him. She came up against something unyielding—Grimnir’s throne—and stopped. Still, the cloaked silhouette grew; she smelled the cold stench of Ásgarðr flowing from under the folds of his mantle as it closed over her.
Darkness. The sensation of being wrenched from her feet, stomach churning and disorienting. She can discern no up or down; neither ground below nor sky above. She has the impression of roiling smoke, flashes of fire. A howling gale pummels her ears. Through the smoke, she beholds a crucified titan. He hangs from a tree whose boughs cradle nine worlds—mighty Yggðrasil. The titan is one-eyed and fey-bearded, with a pair of giant ravens perched on his naked shoulders. She averts her gaze. Her nostrils fill with the scent of iron and blood and smoke—the fume and wrack of war. She tumbles, plummets back into darkness.
Halla fell to her knees, clutching the leaf mold as she fought against a roaring in her skull. It came from all around her; its deep intonation vibrated her diaphragm. And it only stopped when she realized it was the sound of her own scream.
Panting like a dog, she opened her eyes and glanced about. The longhouse was gone, its fire and its warmth replaced by bone-chilling cold and the damp stench of the nearby bog. The stranger’s sorcery had brought her here, to the middle of the forest. She looked for the stranger but could not see him—though she felt his malignant gaze.
“If you mean to kill me,” Halla’s voice quavered, “do it and have done. I’ll not beg.”
She heard him laugh—a wheezing, humorless sound like iron scraping flint. “You think me so base as to betray the laws of hospitality? No, you’ll not die by my hand. Not when I can simply let the blood of Járnviðja do the deed for me.”
Instantly, she apprehended his meaning. Her head swiveled; she looked to the east, where fire touched the velvet sky, heralding the coming of dawn. Fear gibbered through Halla’s brain, but the old troll-woman wasted no time. She scrambled to her feet, still unsteady, and lumbered south, toward the growing bog-reek. Halla did not know precisely where she was, but she trusted her gut; she trusted she was near enough to reach the shelter of the longhouse before the inevitable rising of the sun. Otherwise, why would that cruel bastard give her a chance?
“Hurry, child!” he said, his voice accompanied by the sudden rush of wings. “Hurry! Ere bright Álfröðull, the Elf-beam, casts her gaze upon you!”
Halla ran.
Through the rising light, through the graying of night into day, she ran; she ran till she thought her heart would burst, till her lungs burned. Down slopes carpeted in drifts of leaves, through copses and tangled webs of briar and thorn, she ran. Halla skidded around boulders and tripped over root boles; she caught herself against the rough trunks of trees, oblivious to the patches of abraded skin these collisions caused. All the while, her mind sought the touch of the landvættir. Against a mammoth chestnut tree—easily a century old—she felt the fleeting sensation of pity, then silence.
The old troll-woman snarled and spat. So be it, she said to herself, a mantra of resolve. So be it. She paused a moment, panting, her breath steaming in the chill air. She scanned the ground, kicked leaves aside. There, under the mold, she saw a layer of old chestnut mast, the husks and seeds gone black with rot. She snatched up a handful of weathered chestnuts and sorted them with quick flicks of her fingers until only four remained.
Just in case, she told herself, glancing up. The top of the chestnut tree gleamed with the sun’s golden light. Halla licked her lips, cursed, and pushed off the craggy trunk. As she ran, her hard thumbnail scratched a symbol in each chestnut. A rune. And she prayed to Father Ymir she had the right answer—for she could feel a heaviness spreading through her legs. Her feet tingled, and her hands felt stony and hard.
Squinting against the painful light, she could just make out the path of split logs leading to the longhouse, through the trees. She was at the edge of the bog, and the house, itself, was just there. Safety. Home. So close.
Halla forced her limbs to move faster. Her breath came in gulps and wheezes as she hopped through the cold mud to clamber onto the corduroy of logs; she struggled and limped to the base of the stairs, past half-submerged skeletons and decaying corpses, spears driven upright in the bog-filth. She clawed her way up. But as she reached the head of the stairs—just a short sprint to the open door of the longhouse—the sun crested the eastern horizon.
Its unbearable light struck her full in the face.
“Ymir!” she cried, closing her eyes against the hateful glare. “Father of Frost, let my vengeance bear fruit!” And Halla, last daughter of Járnviðja, who had tasted the songs of creation under the limitless boughs of Myrkviðr, let fall the rune-etched chestnuts she’d clutched in her palm. Tendons rasped and creaked; her spine grew rigid. Her skin took on a grayish cast, like fine granite. And soundlessly, she returned to the stone from which her kind was fashioned.