Hammered [3]
Authors: Kevin Hearne
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Contemporary, #Urban Life
Hammered
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2011 by Kevin Hearne
Excerpt from
Hounded
by Kevin Hearne copyright © 2011 by Kevin Hearne
Excerpt from
Hexed
by Kevin Hearne copyright © 2011 by Kevin Hearne
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
D
EL
R
EY
is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52254-2
Cover illustration: Gene Mollica
v3.1
One of the problems you run into when using Norse mythology is that you’re messing with the languages of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland—plus Old Norse. Old Norse hasn’t been spoken aloud by the hoi polloi in seven centuries or so, but scholarly folks like to think they have a decent clue about how things might have sounded. I’ve used Anglicized spellings for Odin and Thor so that English speakers will have a pretty decent shot at saying them correctly by getting hooked on phonics. And though I use the Icelandic spelling and pronunciation for
most
things, it’s not universal. Sometimes I use what the Old Norse pronunciation would be, and here and there I mess with the vowel sounds merely because I want to. You’re free to do the same; this guide is not intended to be prescriptive but rather
descriptive
of the way the author would say things, and you are welcome to adopt them or to make fun of me on language bulletin boards.
The Norse Gods
Baldr = BALL dur
Bragi = BRAH gi (I use a hard
g
sound so that the last syllable rhymes with
key
. In Icelandic, the
g
is pronounced like a
y
when it’s between a vowel on the left and the letters
i
or
y
on the right—but I’m doing the Old Norse thing here. God of poetry)
Freyja = FRAY ya (goddess of beauty and war, twin to Freyr)
Freyr = FRAYr (I’m using an Old Norse/Icelandic spelling. There’s a rolling of the first
r
, which makes the
f
sound like its own syllable, sort of like a musical grace note. Sometimes the last
r
is dropped in spelling and pronunciation and it’s simply FRAY. God of fertility)
Heimdall = HAME dadl (Icelandic looks at a double
l
and pronounces it like a clicking
dl
sound, much like the English word
battle
. Heimdall is kind of like a watchdog god, amazing senses.)
Idunn = ih DOON (goddess of youth, keeper of golden apples)
Odin = OH din (allfather, runecrafter. You’d actually say the
d
like a
th
if you wanted to get old school, but most English speakers say it with the
d
sound.)
Thor = thor (god of thunder)
Týr = teer (god of single combat)
Ullr = OODL er (god of archery)
Vidar = VIH dar (god of vengeance, Odin’s son)
Adorable Animals of the Norse
Gullinbursti = GOODL in BUR stih (This is Freyr’s golden boar; the name translates to
golden bristles
. Technically it’s a construct of the dwarfs, not an animal, but indistinguishable from a boar by sight—except for the size and the shining mane o’ gold.)
Hugin = HOO gin (Thought, one of Odin’s ravens. Not following the Icelandic rule about the
g
on this one either; this is an Old Norse name with an Anglicized spelling, because I’ve dropped the second
n
you see in the
Prose Edda
and the
Poetic Edda
, the sources of most Norse mythology.)
Jörmungandr = yor MOON gan dur (the world serpent that will kill us all!)
Munin = MOO nin (Memory, another of Odin’s ravens)
Ratatosk = RAT a tosk (squirrel who lives on/in the World Tree)
Sleipnir = SLAPE neer (eight-legged steed of Odin, spawn of Loki and a stallion)
Cool Norse Weapons
Gungnir = GOONG neer (magic spear of Odin)
Mjöllnir = meYOL neer (first syllable rhymes with
roll;
that
me
is almost like a grace note)
Sweet Norse Halls and Furnishings
Bilskirnir = BEEL skeer neer (Thor’s hall)
Gladsheim = GLADS hame (hall of the Norse gods)
Hlidskjálf = HLID skyalf (silver throne of Odin)
Valaskjálf = VAL as skyalf (Odin’s hall)
Valhalla = Vahl HALL ah (lots of ways to say this one, but I’m going with the easy one for English speakers. Not doing the
dl
sound here for the double
l
, nor for Idavoll)
Place-names in Asgard and Iceland
Alfheim = AHLF hame (translates to
elf home
)
Hnappavellir = NAH pah VEDL er
Húsavík = HOO sah week
Idavoll = IH dah vahl
Jötunheim = YOT un hame (the first syllable rhymes with
boat
. That translates to
giant home
. A single giant is a
Jötunn
, and the plural is
Jötnar.
)
Muspellheim = MUS pel hame (realm of fire)
Mývatn = ME vat n (translates to
Midge Lake
)
Nidavellir = NIH dah VEDL ir (realm of the dwarfs)
Niflheim = NIV uhl hame (translates to
mist home
, often equated with Hel and the land of the dead)
Reykjavík = RAY kya week
Svartálfheim = SVART ahlf hame (translates to
dark elf home
)
Vanaheim = VAHN ah hame (I’d like to say this translates to
home of the vans
, but no, it’s
home of the Vanir
.)
Vigrid = VIH grid
Yggdrasil = ig DRAH sil (try to roll or trill the r, it’s more fun. Name of the World Tree)
Icelandic Town Name with Which You Can Win a Bar Bet
Kirkjubæjarklaustur = Kir kyu BYE yar KLOW stur (Watch all the English speakers try to pronounce the
j
the way they’re used to; it’s a good time. If they get that right, they’ll still screw up the æ sound and pronounce it like a long
a
or long
e
instead of a long
i
. You can win a beer or two with this, guaranteed, and drink all night for free if the bar is full of suckers.)
Chapter 1
According to popular imagination, squirrels are supposed to be adorable. As they scurry about on this tree branch or that trunk, people point at them and say, “Awww, how
cuuuuute
!” with their voices turning sugary and spiraling up into falsetto ecstasy. But I’m here to tell you that they’re cute only so long as they’re small enough to step on. Once you’re facing a giant bloody squirrel the size of a cement truck, they lose the majority of their charm.
I wasn’t especially surprised to be staring up at a set of choppers as tall as my fridge, twitching whiskers like bullwhips, and tractor-tire eyes staring me down like volcanic bubbles of India ink: I was simply horrified at being proven so spectacularly right.
My apprentice, Granuaile, had argued I was imagining the impossible before I left her back in Arizona. “No, Atticus,” she’d said, “all the literature says the only way you can get into Asgard is the Bifrost Bridge. The
Eddas
, the skaldic poems, everything agrees that Bifrost is it.”
“Of course that’s what the literature
says
,” I replied, “but that’s just the propaganda of the gods. The
Eddas
also tell you the truth of the matter if you read carefully. Ratatosk is the key to the back door of Asgard.”
Granuaile gazed at me, bemused, unsure that she’d
heard me correctly. “The squirrel that lives on the World Tree?” she asked.
“Precisely. He manically scrambles back and forth between the eagle in the canopy and the great wyrm at the roots, ferrying messages of slander and vitriol between them, yadda yadda yadda. Now ask yourself how it is that he manages to do that.”
Granuaile took a moment to think it through. “Well, according to what the literature
says
, there are two roots of Yggdrasil that drop below Asgard: One rests in the Well of Mimir in Jötunheim, and one falls to the Spring of Hvergelmir in Niflheim, beneath which the wyrm Nidhogg lies. So I assume he’s got himself a little squirrelly hole in there somewhere that he uses.” She shook her head, dismissing the point. “But you won’t be able to use that.”
“I’ll bet you dinner I can. A nice homemade dinner, with wine and candles and fancy modern things like Caesar salad.”
“Salad isn’t modern.”
“It is on my personal time scale. Caesar salad was invented in 1924.”
Granuaile’s eyes bugged. “How do you
know
these things?” She waved off the question as soon as she asked it. “No, you’re not going to distract me this time. You’re on; I bet you dinner. Now prove it or start cooking.”
“The proof will have to come when I climb Yggdrasil’s root, but,” I said, raising a finger to forestall her objection, “I’ll dazzle you now with what I think so that I’ll seem fantastically prescient later. The way I figure it, Ratatosk has to be an utter badass. Consider: Eagles normally eat squirrels, and malevolent wyrms named Nidhogg are generally expected to eat anything—yet neither of them ever tries to take a bite of Ratatosk. They just talk to him, never give him any guff at all, but ask him nicely if he’d be so kind as to tell their enemy far, far
away such-and-such. And they say, ‘Hey, Ratatosk, you don’t have to hurry. Take your time. Please.’ ”
“Okay, so you’re saying he’s a burly squirrel.”
“No, I’m saying he’s turbo-burly. Paul Bunyan proportions, because his size is proportionate to the World Tree. He’s bigger than you and I put together, big enough that Nidhogg thinks of him as an equal instead of as a snack. The only reason we’ve never heard of anyone climbing Yggdrasil’s roots to get to Asgard is because you’d have to be nuts to try it.”
“Right,” she said with a smirk. “And Ratatosk eats nuts.”
“That’s right.” I bobbed my head once with a sardonic grin of my own.
“Well then,” Granuaile wondered aloud, “exactly where are the roots of Yggdrasil, anyway? I assume they’re somewhere in Scandinavia, but you’d think they would have shown up on satellite by now.”
“The roots of Yggdrasil are on an entirely different plane, and that’s really why no one has tried to climb them. But they’re tethered to the earth, just like Tír na nÓg is, or the Elysian Fields, or Tartarus, or what have you. And, coincidentally, a certain Druid you know is also tethered to the earth, through his tattoos,” I said, holding up my inked right arm.
Granuaile’s mouth opened in astonishment as the import of my words sank in, quick to follow the implication to its logical conclusion. “So you’re saying you can go anywhere.”