Stormbringer (9 page)

“Brother, he is—”

But Magni has no time for the reason of his soft-spoken sibling. Instead, he scoffs and rolls his eyes, reaching into pocket in his tunic and throwing something at my feet. A small loop of metal, and it's been so long since I've encountered one, it takes me a few moments to recognize it as a fire steel.

Jesus H. Christ, why was everything in the tenth century so fucking
difficult
? Where's a fucking Zippo lighter when you fucking need one?

I don't bend down to pick up the device. I don't even look at it, instead just raise a brow.

“Light your own fucking fire,” I say. Somewhere to the side, I can feel Þrúðr and Móði hold their breath.

Magni stands. He's not quite taller than me, but he's closer than any
æsir
should be. “Light. The. Fire,” he says.

“Brother, perhaps—” Þrúðr starts, but a raised hand makes her fall silent.

“Do not forget your place,
jötunn,
” Magni growls. “
Níðingr
and
útlagi.
You will do as you are commanded.”

I roll my eyes, turning back to fiddle with Gluestick's bridle. “I'm ‘commanded' to help you retrieve your daddy's lost property, which I'm doing. And lighting a fire won't help with the name-calling.” I tug on Gluestick's reins, leading it toward the runestone. We're not the first to use this as a camp, and some kind soul has drilled an enormous iron ring into the rock.

I get about three feet before I hear a clink of metal, which turns out to be my only warning as I'm jerked backward by my own leash so violently I end up sprawled across the grass.

Both Þrúðr and Móði cry for their brother to stop, and Gluestick bucks and whinnies, but Magni ignores them all. A moment later, I'm hauled to my feet by a fist wrapped through my collar.

“Do not tempt me,
níðingr,
” he says. “Obey, and I will be merciful.”

Not two paces behind their brother, Magni's siblings clutch each other, eyes wide. The sight of it pulls the stitches in my lips and sends a grin crawling across my face.

“Mate,” I say, “how about you lick my feathery
jötunn
cloaca instead, huh?”

Magni doesn't know the word, but after a moment he processes the sentiment.

He lets me go with a shove that sends me stumbling. The last thing I hear is the sound of him spitting. Then things get hazy for a while.

In the end, the fire does get lit. And moral victory never felt so painful.

I spend the rest of the night sulking behind the runestone, with the horses. Tied to the same iron ring, in fact. My nose itches, I have a rash, and my throat is dry and scratchy from the screaming.

All in all, I've had better days.

It's almost worth it to hear the cold silence Magni's siblings give him in return. There's a dynamic there I can use. Þrúðr, the eldest, but a daughter, limited in power. Magni, the middle child aching to fill his father's enormous boots. And Móði, youngest and heir to nothing. So many cracks just waiting for a set of clever fingers to prise them all apart.

In the meantime, however, I'm itchy, bored, and hungry. I rest my back on the rock and close my eyes, wishing I had my phone or a book or Sigmund with me to pass the time. Hell, even that stack of financial reports I've been avoiding for a few weeks would be an improvement, and in the end I combine these tangents into a nice scenario involving Sigmund blowing me covertly under the desk while I present the latest P&L statements to the board.

As night falls, the Thunderbrats work out a watch schedule. We're still technically in Ásgarðr, but I guess they're worried about yours truly more than raids from across the border, which is why I don't bother mentioning I don't sleep.

Þrúðr offers to take first watch. Magni flat-out laughs at her for the suggestion, giving her the equivalent of Viking teasing over beauty sleep. She doesn't speak again after that, just lies stiff and silent and furious on her blankets while Magni's snores begin rumbling in yet another piss-poor attempt to emulate his father.

It's not long after that I hear footsteps approaching through the grass.

“Lo—Lain?” Móði corrects the name as he approaches, and I open my eyes and fix him with their dimly glowing poison.

Móði's holding a half-chewed loaf of bread and a blackened haunch of rabbit. He's within grabbing distance, were that a thing I'd want to try.

“Food,” Móði adds when I say nothing. “For you. I…” He stops, visibly straightening himself and forcing the next words out with stronger voice. “We have a long ride ahead tomorrow. You must eat.”

I say nothing. Jesus, I'm hungry. But not enough to beg for scraps from Ásgarðr's table. I'll eat one of the horses in the night if I have to. Magni's, probably.

Móði falters at my silence, just a little, and he puts the food down on the grass not too far from where I sit. “I will leave this here,” he says. “Eat.” The he turns to go.

I start counting down inside my head:
One…Two…Thre—

Móði turns. “Lain,” he says. “Magni is…he is a good man, with much to live up to. But he has a temper. Do not provoke him and things will be easier for you. Do you understand?”

Jesus fucking Christ.

This time, I do my own countdown. Then:

“Good cop, bad cop.”

Móði turns. “What?”

I gesture, between the two of us. “Good cop, bad cop. That's what the humans call this, in their sagas. You got two guys—the cops—and a prisoner. One cop is angry, aggressive. Maybe beats the prisoner around a little. Prisoner gets scared, feels desperate, whatever. Then Good Cop comes in, offers sympathy, kindness. Food.” One pointed look. “The prisoner cracks, babbles to the good cop in return for protection against the bad. Bingo, the cops get what they want. Problem solved. It's called psychology.”

“ ‘Sálfræði'?”
Móði tries out the word. Or the equivalent that he hears.

“Right,” I say. “And, see, here's the thing. You can try all the Good Cop bullshit you want, but it's not gonna work. You wanna fuckin' know why?”

“Why?” Móði's gentle façade is peeling back. Beneath it, he's getting angry. Angry and scared, the stink leaking out of him like piss, all yellow and acid.

I lean forward, tilt my head down and my eyes up. “Because you wrote the
fucking
runes. Magni holds the whip, but you're the one who cut the leather. Don't think I'm gonna forget that just because you bring me some stale motherfucking bread. And don't think I'm gonna forget you've turned your own sister into a whore for—”

“Enough!”

Móði's voice isn't loud, exactly, but he does back it up with a gesture that sends my head flying backward, cracking against the runestone hard enough to bleed.

“Enough!” Móði hisses again. “You were Father's friend once, and I have argued mercy for you on that account. Do not make me regret my kindness.”

When I laugh, blood dribbles from my lips. “And how
fucking
proud he'd be of both of you right now.”

Móði's jaw works back and forth, teeth grinding. “Well,” he says after a moment. “Father was far from perfect. And never much renowned for his wisdom.” Then he's gone, and that's that.

Or, well. Not exactly. Because, just beyond the runestone, a second set of ears are listening, and by the Wyrdsight's strange synesthesia I see a tiny shard of pain and sorrow chip away and into hope.

Sigmund never did manage to figure out the logistics of their flight, not really. Because the Earth was round, and huge, and hung in the vast black void of space. Not to mention Sigmund had been on airplanes before and he knew—empirically
knew
—that everything above the clouds was cold and bright and empty.

It certainly wasn't full of leaves. Or branches. Or…was that a herd of deer?

“Where the bloody hell are we?” he asked, hands gripping the edge of the gondola window as he peered out beyond Hrímgrímnir's feathers.

“Passing between the boughs of the World Tree,” Hel replied.

“Oh. Right.”

The drop below was…long. Oddly, Sigmund wasn't frightened of it. Yeah, falling would suck, but a dragon wasn't an airplane. It was alive, and thinking, and it would catch them if they fell.

Maybe. Probably.

“Dooder, this is so cool,” Wayne was telling Em. “I'm filming it for you.” She was leaning halfway out of the gondola, phone held with both hands, trying to keep the camera steady as she pointed it alternately at their surroundings and the enormous dragon above them. “Oh!” she said, as if an idea had suddenly occurred. “I can upload this to YouTube!” She pulled herself back inside the gondola, eyes bright with excitement and phone pointed straight at Hel. “I can, right?”

Hel tilted her head, and Sigmund felt a stiffness in her. “You…Tube?”

But Wayne just said, “Oh! Right, duh, Wayne!” Then smacked her palm against her forehead, and proceeded to spend the next fifteen minutes introducing Hel to modern technology.

Hel ended up with Wayne's Flame in her hands, turning it over and over. Her sleeves made the touchscreen useless, so Sigmund helped with the button-pressing.

“And this is…Father's magic?” she asked.

“I guess,” said Sigmund. “I mean, he owns the company. Other people make the phones.”

“He just gives them the endless litany of uninspired product names.” Em still had her eyes closed, but she may have been peeking under her lashes. Just a little.

“So much has happened in Midgard,” Hel said, voice quiet and thoughtful. “The dead tell stories and bring strange grave goods. But the Realms have stayed separate for many years. When they turned from our worship, Odin outlawed travel among the humans, and was merciless with enforcing his decree.”

“Why?” Wayne asked. “That seems…counterproductive?”

Em scoffed. “To punish the puny mortals for their pride,” she said, voice exaggerated and arms miming divine wrath vigorously enough that Wayne had to dodge out of the way.

Hel just gave one of her cheek-twitching un-smiles. “Perhaps,” she said. “Or perhaps it was fear of Ragnarøkkr. If the humans told no more stories of our deeds, then his plots for the end could be no more disrupted.”

No more disrupted than Hel and Sigyn already had, Sigmund didn't say. Instead, he looked back out the window. Far down below, the edge of the world curved like a too-close horizon, an endless waterfall plummeting into the void.

“Well,” Wayne was saying, “Odin's dead and Ragnarok's over. So you should come and visit Midgard more often.”

Hel looked at the phone in her hand once more, then returned it to Wayne. “Perhaps I shall,” she said.

The edge of the world was beautiful, if both scientifically nonsensical and difficult to talk near, what with the constant roaring crash of water dropping off into nowhere. Sigmund got his head and his glasses soaked from sticking them out of the gondola, trying to peer up underneath the world-plate. Hrímgrímnir's presence turned the water to sleet and Sigmund was shivering by the time he pulled himself back inside. Frozen, but satisfied after catching a glimpse of the immense tangle of branches that made up Miðgarðr's underside. Real fantasy special-effects stuff, but running on its own kind of illogical logic. A physical metaphor for the solar system, described by people without telescopes or complex mathematics or even basic literacy, for the most part. The models may have changed over the years, but the poetry was beautiful, whether it was song or numbers.

There were stars out here, too. Cascades of glimmering light that floated around the gondola like fireflies. Sigmund wondered which one was the original Lokabrenna, the flame Loki had once thrown into the sky, whose bright light drove men mad on midsummer nights, even as it now comforted them from little glass screens pressed close to faces beneath the bedsheets.

Sigmund's own phone was heavy and solid in the pocket of his jeans. A tangible reminder of Lain, and for a moment Sigmund felt a strange ache that when he turned it wouldn't be poison-burned eyes and a stitched-up grin that looked his way. His first real proper trip outside of Miðgarðr, and it hadn't been with Lain. Sigmund had never thought of himself as the traveling type—too many strangers, not enough Internet—but, maybe, when this was all over he'd ask Lain if they could go somewhere. Just the two of them, outside of Miðgarðr maybe, trekking on their very own MMO adventure.

Then again, maybe not. Sigmund liked hot showers and gourmet burgers. He wondered if they could find some kind of compromise between the two.

Hrímgrímnir began to descend, soaring in big, wide, easy spirals. Down through the waterfall and into the shadow of the Tree, to the place where leaves gave way to roots, and the only light came from the dust-mote stars and a bleeding red slash somewhere far off in the distance: the endless sunset of the burning realm of Múspell.

Outside, the air grew thicker, choked with greasy ash Sigmund remembered from his time stuck in the Helbleed. Wayne was still filming, but Sigmund wasn't sure what she'd be able to pick up on her phone in the gloom. It must've been something, because after a few minutes he heard her say, “Are we, like…following the Yellow Brick Road?”

Sigmund looked out the window, craning his neck to see through the ash and fog, and yes, there. Somewhere far beneath them, a yellow-gold highway running like a molten river through jagged shale.

“Gjallarbru,” said Em, before adding, “Um. I'm probably saying it wrong…”

“Well enough,” said Hel. It was a lie, but Sigmund decided not to mention it. “It is the road to my domain, made from the grave goods of an eternity of fallen kings.”

“The Highway to Hel is literally paved with gold?” Wayne asked, leaning far enough out of the gondola that the whole thing swayed. “That is
so
cool!”

Em swallowed hard, fingers clenched against her knees and eyes jammed shut. “Bro, can you not? You're rocking…”

Wayne stammered an apology, pulling herself back inside with one last shudder of the gondola. “Sorry!” she said. “Sorry, I was just trying to get you a good video!”

“I know,” said Em, trying for a queasy smile. “It's just I don't wanna hurl all over the Goddess of Death's feet, y'know?”

Hel lifted a sleeve to cover her mouth, but Sigmund heard the snicker underneath.

“Whoa. There's like an army down there!”

A little while later, not too long, Sigmund opened his eyes, glancing over to where Wayne had gone back to looking out the window.

“They are my people,” Hel said. “The living once called them
náir.
To me, they are
Heljar-sinnar.
Not an army, an escort.”

Honestly, Sigmund thought they looked like an army: a great mass of people, swarming around the huge, feathered shapes of a handful of
drekar.

“They're coming with us?” Sigmund asked. “To Asgard?” Hel hadn't been lying about the escort, but
escort
could have a lot of meanings, some more martial than others.

“Yes,” said Hel.

“Oh. Right.” That was…something, Sigmund supposed. He wondered if Hel meant to start a war if she was denied her place in New Valhalla. He wondered if he cared whether she did.

It occurred to him he probably cared if he was
there
when she did.

They circled three more times before Sigmund could start to make out some of the faces in the crowd below. He was relieved to see features—human features, eyes and mouths and noses—looking upward. So. Not like the things he'd encountered last time in the Helbleed, then. Lain had called those
draugar,
and even thinking of them made Sigmund shudder.

When Hrímgrímnir landed, Sigmund felt the jolt in his teeth.

“We're here!” Wayne shook Em's shoulder, and the latter opened her eyes, blinking behind thick glasses.

They stepped out of the gondola, stretching and groaning from the time spent on the ride. Sigmund had to double-take at the sound of flapping and the feel of wind, when what he'd assumed to be a black-featured shawl draped across Hel's shoulders turned out to, in fact, be a pair of small, stumpy wings.

Sigmund didn't see Lain's wings very often, since Lain's wings were fifteen feet wide and tended to knock things over. He tried not to stare at Hel's, either, mostly by concentrating on the ground instead.

Grave goods, Hel had said. Sigmund could see plates and goblets, brooches and torques. Plus about a million coins and something that might even have been a crown, once. Now it was distorted and crushed flat, embedded beneath their feet along with everything else.

Maybe the saying was wrong, and you really could take it with you. Apparently, that didn't mean you wouldn't lose it along the way.

“
Psst,
dude. What do we do now?”

Sigmund looked up to find Em standing by his side, Wayne just beyond her. They were both hanging back, barely beyond the gondola, watching as Hel strode forward to greet the surging throng of
náir.

They were definitely dead, Sigmund thought. Pale and shriveled, or dark and bloated. Some had wounds, some were missing bits or obviously rotting. Fashions ranged from chain mail and hauberks to jeans and sundresses and, in at least one instance, a three-piece business suit. They cheered riotously as Hel approached them, then fell silent when she raised her hands and began to speak.

The speech was in Old Norse. At least, Sigmund thought so: lots of languid vowels and snapped consonants, plus words he almost knew but didn't.
Valkyrjur
and
Ásgarðr,
ásynja
and
einherjar.
Sometimes even whole sentences that sounded almost,
almost,
like English. He must've looked like he was listening, because, after a moment, Em elbowed him in the ribs and asked, “What's she saying?”

“How do I know?” Sigmund hissed, voice low beneath Hel's. “I don't speak Viking any more than you do!”

Em scowled. “I've heard you—”

“Ssh! Guys!” from Wayne, phone raised and pointed at Hel. “I'm trying to film here!”

They could translate it later. Whatever Hel was saying, the assembled crowd approved, the mood rising from grim and hushed reverence to ecstatic cheering when Hel turned to gesture toward Em and Wayne. Sigmund heard the names Hlökk and Hrist, the Screamer and the Shaker, the
valkyrjur
his friends had once been.

“Dooder,” Wayne said to Em. “She's talking about us.”

“Smile and wave, bro,” replied Em, taking her own advice.

Sigmund, meanwhile, tried to press himself into the shadow of the gondola and disappear.

They didn't get to do any more flying after that. Most of the escort was on foot, but Hel had a wagon waiting for her three mortals. It was pulled by two things Hel called
fíflmegir
and that looked, Sigmund thought, not unlike a cross between a
drekar
and a horse. About the size of the latter, but heavyset, with dark green skin and glossy black feathers. Stumpy little wings, too, and Sigmund couldn't help but see the evolutionary themes. Something related to the
jötnar.
He added it to his list of things to ask Lain about later.

For her part, Hel had her own transport: an ornate litter on top of another huge dragon thing. More of a mobile throne, really, hung with gold and silks and feather and bone. Lots of the latter two in particular, but that was a definite theme running through the entire ar—
escort.

Sigmund spent a good deal of the ride hanging over the side of their wagon, watching the road roll by beneath and the zombies and monsters march along beside.

People smiled at him when they caught his eye, or waved, or nodded in respect. The march's mood was serious but positive. The participants determined, motivated in the way only a righteous cause could motivate.

Time passed. Em and Wayne spent ten or so minutes enthusing over everything within visible range and then, when that got to be too much, opened their bags to pull out a sketchbook and a Flash, respectively. Then it was all the sound of pencil on paper and the crab-leg scuttle of Em's fingers as they flew across her tablet's screen. That just left Sigmund, who'd never been very creative, feeling the aches of a day's worth of sitting catching up to him.

“I'm gonna go for a walk,” he declared at one point.

“ 'Kay, bro,” said Em, not looking up. “Have fun. Take a photo if you see anything cool.”

The wagon wasn't moving much faster than walking pace, but jumping down off the back was still terrifying. Sigmund stumbled from the inertia and found himself caught around the arm by a guy who said,
“Varlega, drengr,”
and turned out to be an enormous six-foot-something Viking in rusted chain mail. A ring of dark bruises circled the guy's neck. Like from a noose. Sigmund tried not to stare.

(the dishonored dead)

“Uh, thanks,” he said instead. Then, “Um. I mean,
þakka þér
?” Somewhere deep inside, Sigmund could feel Sigyn cringe at his pronunciation.

(well you could
help
!)

(“I do, by allowing you victory on your own. but…until then, use your lips more, boy. your words slur”)