Nothingness, shot through with jags of green light, and then … voices, distant and muffled as though heard from under the earth—one is harsh and grating, the other smooth and silky:
“Nár! What do those rootlings know?” says the harsh voice. A name floats from the aether, flirts at the edges of her consciousness, and is gone before she can grasp it. Anger percolates through the darkness; hate and loathing that stretches back an eternity.
“The vættir don’t lie,” hisses the silky voice. Halla, the green-shot void around her says, trembling. Her name is Halla. “He is probably already here, in Miðgarðr.”
“Then find him! If some mortal bears that one-eyed bastard’s luck, then how hard could it be?”
The silky voice, as smooth and cold as a fresh coverlet of snow, curses in a language she does not comprehend. Then: “Impossible, if he chooses not to be discovered. I think he’s been sent to stop whatever it is you’ve got planned. To protect the prophecy. He’ll be drawn to you…”
“Let him come, then!” The harsh voice laughs, and the void convulses with barely contained rage. “God or no, I’ll send him back to Ásgarðr in pieces. That dragon is mine!”
Dragon. The dragon. The bones of the dragon …
The nothingness rustles; light seeps in from beyond the veil—green and gold, red like flames; by its wan illumination she can see a figure. It bears the shape of a man, though hunched and as twisted as the staff he leans upon. A single malevolent eye gleams from beneath the brim of his hat.
But he is no god.
Her voice profanes the silence. “What is the dragon?”
The stranger smiles.
“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.”
And with a sound like the rattle of immense bones, the stranger’s cloak is borne up as by a hot breath of wind. There is only darkness beneath. And that darkness grows and spreads, becoming monstrous wings that blot out the pale light between worlds. The darkness crawls like a serpent. It robs the air of its breath; it slays the living with a pestilence that rots the blood in their veins. It crushes and destroys.
She does not flee as the darkness engulfs her. And in its hideous embrace, she opens her mouth to curse …
DÍSA DID NOT AWAKEN BY fits and starts, nor did she bolt upright and thrash about as though trapped by her dreams. No, she simply opened her eyes. She knew where she was; the beams overhead, the furs beneath, the smells of oiled iron and rust, incense and old blood, the smoke coiling through shafts of gray daylight that stabbed down from the clerestory—all of this was familiar to her. The Hooded One’s longhouse. Thus it came as no surprise, as she looked around, to see Halla sitting cross-legged nearby, a mail hauberk draped over her lap and a wooden bucket of tools and scrap mail beside her.
Dísa stretched, tendons cracking and joints popping. “I was dreaming,” she said. “I died and went into the earth—but not my body. Just … me. The earth was like water and I swam through it. Deeper, I went. Always deeper, to where I heard the roots of trees singing. They told me stories. Stories of dragons…”
“A fine dream.” Halla nodded, cutting her eyes sharply at the younger woman.
“How long was I out?”
The troll-woman put down the tool she’d been using to remove links from the hem of the hauberk. “Nine days,” Halla replied.
“Nine? Ymir’s blood!” Dísa said. “Has anyone from Hrafnhaugr come looking for me?”
Halla shook her head. She did not rise and come to check Dísa’s injuries; indeed, as Dísa took stock of herself she realized she had none—no pain in her face or her head, no swelling in her nostrils and cheeks that would have made breathing a labor. Halla asked, “What do you remember?”
Dísa frowned. “I remember … I remember it was my fault. I nearly had him, but my concentration slipped—I let my guard down—and he dealt me a crack to the skull.” She touched her hairline by her temple, feeling … nothing. No lumps or lacerations. No contusions or bruises. She should have been a mass of aching muscles, her skull on fire and her every breath like a fish gasping its last on the bank. But she felt fine … better than she had in many days. “Or did I dream that, as well?”
“That was real enough.” Halla took up the mail hauberk once more. She used an awl and pliers to remove rings, drawing up the garment’s hem. Those she removed went into the bucket with a metallic clink. “The old fool nearly sent you on to the next world.”
“Remind me to return the favor someday,” Dísa replied, half in jest. “Where is he?”
“Gone hunting.” Halla gestured with the awl. “Tell me of this wager of yours.”
Dísa rolled onto her side, her legs drawn up; she raised herself up on one elbow with her head propped on her right hand. She tried with her other hand to untangle the beads and disks in her hair. She told Halla of Flóki, the Jarl’s son—whom she’d known since they were children; she recounted the falling out between father and son, Flóki’s departure from Hrafnhaugr, and Hreðel’s desperation to see his son returned. “Though he’s a horse’s arse, and a fool to boot, Hreðel has been loyal to the Hooded One. To fulfill this boon would not have taxed him overmuch. But he’s made his decision. He’ll help, but only after I draw blood from him.” Dísa’s brows knitted. She muttered, “And this is proving more difficult than I imagined.”
“Because you’re wriggling around like a worm on a hook, that’s why,” Halla said. She opened a mail link, prized it free, and dropped it into the bucket. Clink. “You rise to his taunts, allow your anger to get the better of you, and put your inexperience on display for all to see.” Clink. “Think, child. Has your Jarl not men aplenty? More than enough to fetch his wayward son back to him? Of course he has.” Clink. “This is a test of your loyalty, to see how far you will go for him. To see what you will risk.” Clink. “Grimnir’s no fool. He knows what your Jarl is about, making threats, testing the limits of the Hooded One’s patronage to see if things have changed.” Clink. “What seems a small matter to you, a reasonable request balanced against a lifetime of fealty, is nothing less than an attempt to break an ancient compact that limits the Jarl’s power.” Clink. “And you are right in the middle of it, flailing about like you know the score.”
A long silence passed between them. Dísa lay back and closed her eyes. She wanted to hear again the ethereal singing of the trees, the hum of root and bole, the shiver of limb and leaf, the thrum of the heartwood and the rasp of the bark. Instead, she heard only the patter of a cold rain, the rustle of a breeze, and the distant rumble of thunder in the mountains to the north. “Am I to be nothing but their pawn, then?” Dísa said, finally. “Some useless piece in this game they play?”
Halla shrugged. “That choice is yours.”
“Choice?” Dísa’s cheeks grew hot with pent-up rage. “What choice? Unless I can convince Grimnir to help, Flóki risks death or worse. But if I ignore my Jarl and leave Flóki to rise or fall on his own merit, I risk losing everything if Hreðel decides to rebel against the Hooded One.”
Clink. “That is their game, child. What is yours?”
“Mine?”
“Aye.” Clink. “Yours. You can be the pawn in their game or the queen in your own. You need only decide what rules you play by, if any, and what your endgame is.”
Dísa hesitated. “I … I want to be a shieldmaiden. That is my endgame.”
“Good,” Halla replied. She put her tools aside, took up a cloth, and polished the hem of the hauberk, feeling for burrs in the metal. When she found one, Halla drew an iron rasp from the bucket and filed the burr down. “Then how do you get there? By bending to your Jarl’s demands? By shadowing Grimnir? By recklessly attacking him every chance you get in hopes of scoring his hide and drawing blood?”
“I want to learn his war-art,” Dísa said. “And I’d probably learn it faster if I were conscious and not always trying to sneak up on his blind side. But Flóki…”
“You fancy this lad?”
Dísa nodded.
“And you want to see him succeed, be his own man, and earn the praise and respect of the Raven-Geats?”
“I do.”
“Then he must be left to his own devices. You do not make steel by plucking iron from the fire ere the heat burns it. It must taste the flames and either master them or be destroyed by them. None of you lot get out of this world alive and unscathed. Your Hreðel has forgotten this, I think.” Halla held up the mail shirt. It was mid-thigh rather than knee-length now—a haubergeon rather than a hauberk—its butted rings of dark iron interspersed with rings of copper and silver. The troll-woman nodded.
Dísa sat up. “How do I begin? I can’t imagine the Hooded One will want me tagging along after him as he goes about his day.”
“Do precisely what you are doing now, child, but do it smarter.” Halla tossed her the mail shirt. “Protect yourself. Become accustomed to the weight and wear of mail.” She waved at the interior of the longhouse, which was equal parts treasure hoard and armory. “Root through this and find yourself a good gambeson, a helmet, greaves, a shield … enough armor where you can take a blow from Grimnir’s blade without risking your neck. Find yourself an axe and a spear, as well. Then go, try and draw your blood—but be conscious of how he moves, how he attacks, how he taunts you first. Understand why he does this. And emulate him. Become him.”
“Make the game my own,” Dísa said, as a new resolve kindled in her eyes. “Be the queen, rather than the pawn.”
GRIMNIR RETURNED TO THE LONGHOUSE with the setting of the sun. Wary, he emerged from the deep twilight of the forest and into the open only after he was certain no one followed him. All day, after Halla’s warnings about that wretched Grey Wanderer, he’d borne the sensation of scrutiny—the crawling of his scalp, the flicker of movement glimpsed from the corner of his eye. It was enough that he came back from the hunt through the heart of the bog, laying traps in his wake. Now, mud fouled his boots; grime and blood mucked his limbs. His hair hung sweat-damp across his saturnine brow. Over his shoulders, he carried the gutted carcass of a roe deer as though its weight were nothing. One hand held the scrawny beast’s leg; the other cradled a hunting spear.
Grimnir reached the foot of the stairs and turned back the way he had come; nostrils flared as he snuffled at the air. His good eye, gleaming in the darkness like an ember, swept across his back-trail.
Nár! Look at you! Grimnir snarled at himself. Starting at shadows like that old git who raised you! Gífr’d laugh to see you now! He hawked and spat. Then, dropping any pretense at stealth, he ascended the steps with the swagger of a conquering king. Grimnir reached the head of the stairs; from there, he could see that the doors to the longhouse stood ajar. Light seeped out, a glow that striped the gathering dark with a broad swatch of orange. He smelled the smoke of his hearth, the warmth, the ancient stink of soot-stained beams.
And he heard an intermittent thock, like a stick striking a wooden post.
Scowling, he sidled close and nudged the door with one booted foot. Hinges squealed in protest. Grimnir shifted his weight. What he saw, however, only deepened his scowl.
Halla sat to one side, a helmet of blackened iron in her lap and a bucket of smith’s tools at her elbow. She was busy repairing the leather liner, where it met the drape of mail at the neck and the cheek guards. Grimnir recognized it by the silver-inlaid half-face guard—he’d taken it from a dead Norse prince barely older than the girl.
He saw Halla’s eyebrows arch, apprehending that she’d seen him in return. With subtlety to spare, she glanced from him to the girl. Dísa stood with her back to the door, her attention riveted on the post in front of her. On it, Halla had hung three iron rings from nails. The tallest stood at the height of a tall man’s face, a good twelve inches above the crown of Dísa’s own head; the second was at heart level, while the third was gut or groin level.
The girl was clad now in a haubergeon of good mail over a gambeson of padded leather that reached to mid-thigh; an apron of leather and bronze scale protected her hips, and she had wrapped her lower legs, between knee and boot, in old leather belts with plaques of hammered copper and bronze decorating them. She wore her hair pulled back and tied beneath a thick wool arming cap. Dísa held a shield in her left hand, while in her right she balanced a blunt-headed spear—its shaft cut down to where it was barely longer than Grimnir was tall.
As he watched, Dísa dropped to a crouch and shuffled into range of the iron rings. She feinted at the middle ring with her shield rim—striking the wooden pole with a dull crack—and thrust over-hand at the uppermost ring. Thock. She backed up, stood upright, rolled a kink from her shoulder, and then repeated the movement. Thock.
Grimnir grunted and tossed the deer carcass off to one side. Turning, he stepped back into the chilly night and stripped off his filthy boots, his war-belt, his armor, and his kilt; soon he was naked but for a loincloth. Grimnir shattered the thin skin of ice covering the surface of a butt of rainwater and used a leather bucket to draw and sluice the grime and blood from his limbs, from his face, and from his stringy hair.
Thock.
He heard Halla rise and rummage among the drifts of coin and gear. A few minutes later, the troll-woman brought him a fresh tunic, trousers, thick-soled boots, and a sleeveless leather coat that buckled across the chest—a brigandine, heavily embroidered and reinforced with rings of bronze and iron. Grimnir dried himself off with the tunic before tossing it aside, heedless of Halla’s disdainful snort. The rest he donned quickly. He left the coat open, securing it with his war-belt and hitching the hilt of his seax around until it rested in easy reach.
Thock.
Halla hoisted the deer’s carcass as effortlessly as he had. She would skin it, joint it, and cut it from the bone before salting it and hanging it in the smoke shed at the rear of the longhouse. Grimnir’s stomach growled as he thought of the savory stew the troll-woman would make from the deer’s marrow-rich bones.
“What’s that one about?” Grimnir gestured with his sharp chin, indicating Dísa.
“She’s seen the light.”
Grimnir snorted. “Guess that crack on the head did the little wretch some good, then.”
Halla remained silent. She fixed Grimnir with a withering stare before turning and stumping off to the rear of the longhouse. Still chuckling, he followed the troll-woman inside.
Dísa barely glanced in his direction as he passed her and took up his accustomed seat. She had donned the helmet Halla had been repairing, cinched the chinstrap tight, and turned her head from side to side, looking up and down and rolling her neck around to test the fit. Satisfied, she dropped back into a fighting crouch. Dísa feinted low with her spear then cracked her shield rim across the highest ring.
Grimnir eyed her with grim amusement as she repeated the movement. Finally, she straightened and looked at him with an exasperated sigh.
“What?”
“You fight like one of them.” Grimnir jerked his head in the direction of Hrafnhaugr.
Dísa frowned. “I am one of them.”
“No, little fool!” He jabbed one black-nailed finger at her. “Forget what that hag of a grandmother taught you! You’re too slight for it. A shield wall? Bah! Those louts would roll right over you and not look back. Be like the wolf that prowls at the edges of the battlefield, or be dead.” Grimnir shrugged and sat back. “The choice is yours.”
Dísa stood for a moment, head bowed as she measured the weight of Grimnir’s words. Finally, she glanced up. “Show me.”
The son of Bálegyr’s lips peeled back in a jagged yellow smile.
EVEN BEFORE SUNRISE THE NEXT morning, Grimnir drove Dísa from her bed with kicks and curses. Her complaints fell on deaf ears as he led her through a series of stretches, loosening muscle and sinew in preparation for the day’s exertions. “You’re going to run, little bird,” he growled. “Up into the hills, around the valley, and back again. And I’ll be at your heels with a whip, if that’s what it takes. Run until your sweat turns to blood! Until your lungs burn and your leg bones crack!”
But as she nodded in stoic silence and made to set out, Grimnir jabbed one finger into her sternum.
“Do we fight in naught but our skins, wretch?”
Dísa stammered. “I thought … we’re just running, aren’t we?”
“You want to learn the war-art of the kaunar? Here is the first lesson: we live as we fight. We are hated, and we hate in return, so every wretched breath we draw is drawn under a promise of death. Old Gífr taught us to make that death as hard as nails. We live in this, in our war garb!” Grimnir slapped his brigandine-covered breast. “It is the iron blanket that keeps us warm at night, and the iron shroud that will cover our axe-hewn corpses. If you take a piss, little bird, you take it in your war rags! Fetch them—and your weapons!—and stop your dawdling!”
Dísa did. And they ran. Grimnir pushed her at a punishing pace, through the woods to the edge of his territory, then along the ridgelines to the promontory overlooking the dark waters of the Skærvík, then down the steep, rock-strewn incline to the lake shore. From there, they followed the shore until they reached the small creek that drained the bog. Scrambling up rocks and through tight clefts, over islands of peat and through shallow meres of black water, they came once more to the longhouse.
At the end, Dísa could barely breathe. She lay on her back for a time, gasping like a fish; her chest burned. Every joint in her body ached, and the spasms twisting her guts forced her to roll over and dry heave. She tried to spit, to clear her throat, but her tongue felt like a strip of dried-out leather.
But Grimnir did not give her much respite. Using the same tactics as before—nudges from a booted foot peppered with curses—he chivvied her inside where Halla waited with a flask of water and the morning repast.
“Not hungry,” Dísa muttered around mouthfuls of water. The troll-woman was adamant, however, and soon she had the girl gnawing smoked venison slices and slabs of a dense bread baked with seeds, nuts, and dried fruit. Finally, Halla poured her a measure of Mjöð, that harsh herb-infused liquor that gagged her going down but soon turned to a hot fierce glow that lent new vigor to her limbs.
And she would need it, for the rest of the day Grimnir—in his own inimitable style—taught her the intricacies of the long-seax, of the Frankish axe, of the short thrusting spear, and of the shield. Nor did he spare any wisdom. “Slice that sticker of yours across some whoreson’s thigh, right up by his bollocks, and if you get it just right he won’t last a dozen heartbeats.”
“And if I miss?”
“Ha! Go after some bastard’s jewels and he’ll go after your damn fool head if you miss! So make sure you don’t, little bird!”
Before sunset, they returned to the longhouse where Halla had a bite of sup prepared—meat pies spiced with cumin and garlic, or stew made from pork or venison with carrots, mushrooms, onions, and cabbage; even simpler fare was Grimnir’s favorite, such as skewers of roasted meat, a bowl of beans and hard barley bread, or baggi, a thick porridge of barley and organ meats mixed with parsnip and onion. After they ate, Grimnir would break out the ale and regale Dísa and Halla with tales as they mended armor or repaired weapons.
This became their daily routine: run and fight. When meat ran low they hunted, using the same skills to kill a deer as to kill a man; Grimnir taught her the art of the ambush—the hard, fast strike designed to cripple an enemy and leave him ripe for the picking. She learned the rudiments of Sarmatian archery, a skill Grimnir himself learned during his sojourn in the East with Gífr, his mother’s brother. She was no crack shot, but her aim was steady enough to at least nick the target. “You’ll make the wretches duck, at least,” Grimnir snarled as one of her arrows whizzed past the target’s head. And by night, she stared into the fire and listened as Grimnir related threads from the long tapestry of his life. She heard the tale of how he came to be at the Battle of Chluain Tarbh outside Dubhlinn, some two hundred years ago; how he’d hunted Bjarki Half-Dane from the grinding ice of the far north to the pleasant valleys and vineyards of the Franks. “I chased that wretched maggot for nigh upon five hundred years! Faugh! Always a step behind him. Then, I lost all reckoning of him for fifty years or so, until a blasted Christ-Dane and his little foundling put me back on his scent.” Grimnir continued on, telling Dísa how he’d snagged himself a Christian hostage in a cave on Sjælland in the Danemark, walked the perilous branches of Yggðrasil to reach England, and bartered with the lord of the landvættir to break the walls of Badon after they’d stolen his hostage. He paused, then, to drain a horn of ale.
“So, you found this hymn-singer in a cave,” Dísa said. “What was her name?”
“Étaín,” Halla murmured. There was a mischievous twinkle in the troll-woman’s milky eyes.
“Aye, you found this Étaín in a cave, snatched her up, and dragged her along … you say because she knew the lay of the land and could speak the tongue of the English?”
Grimnir lowered the empty horn and wiped foam from his lips. His nostrils flared. “What’s your point, little bird?”
Dísa motioned with her hand, hoping to stave off Grimnir’s ire. “Don’t be cross. I’m just trying to understand, is all.”
“She knew their wretched land!” Grimnir punctuated each syllable with a short, fierce rap of his knuckles against the wooden armrest of his seat. “She spoke their wretched tongue! Which of these is too much for that empty space between your ears?”
Dísa risked a sidelong glance at Halla, seeking support. The troll-woman, though, gave her nothing; her seamed and wrinkled face remained impassive as she worked her embroidery needle through the hem of a tunic. “Well.” Dísa licked her lips and swallowed hard. “Both, to be honest. You say you needed this Étaín, but you also spoke the language well enough, in a pinch. You knew enough to find your way around, and you’d have twisted the head off any Norse swine that crossed your path to get the information you needed. And yet, on a lark you snatch some kneeler from a cave and drag her across the branches of Yggðrasil for … for no good reason?”
Hearing this, Grimnir’s single eye blazed with wrathful fire. “No good reason, eh? You’re a precious sort of fool, little bird. No good reason, is it? It’s the same reason I plucked a wretch like you out of the muck! Why I decided—against my gut, mind you—to show you the war-art of the kaunar!”
“What reason?”
Grimnir leaned forward. The shadow and light rising from the embers lent his sharp, wolflike face a decidedly sinister cast. He slowly enunciated each word of his reply, fangs bared in a jagged yellow snarl. “Because I can!”
In that moment, the tension in the air felt murderous, like a strangler’s cord looped around Dísa’s throat. It would have made good sense to simply keep her mouth shut, to accept Grimnir’s answer with a silent nod and let it be. But she could not deny the unspoken taunt in his harsh voice—he was daring her to speak her mind. Dísa licked her lips. Good sense be damned! But even as she rose to meet his taunting, Halla interrupted.
“And that,” said the troll-woman, “is the lesson for this eve. Rejoice, child, for you have learned a truth few mortals are privy to.”
Suddenly, Dísa felt a slackening of the tension; its knots loosened, and she found her breath. She watched Grimnir sit back in his seat, lips thinning with barely suppressed derision. He snorted. Dísa frowned as she turned to Halla. “What truth is that?”
“There are three words inscribed on the grave stone of every kaunar. Three words that sum up the breadth of their existence. Three words passed down from the lips of the Tangled God, himself, Father Loki. Question a kaunr’s motives, child, peel back the layers and you will see these three words burned upon their black hearts: because I can!”
At this, Grimnir only nodded. He remained silent for the rest of the night. And as Dísa fell asleep, her last waking image was of Grimnir’s silhouette—hunched and immobile, brooding over a landscape of ash and embers like a defeated king over the remnants of his domain.