Trapped

Chapter 26

Abruptly cut off from Bacchus, the maenads stopped caring about Granuaile and began wondering where the hell they were and why they were wearing white nighties.

“Oh, my God, what happened to your teeth?” one said.

“My teeth? What’s up with yours?”

“My teeth are fine! Wait.” She put fingers with torn nails up to her lips and discovered she had a mouthful of fangs. “Oh, Jesus, they’re all pointy and shit!”

The screams, once they began, were contagious. Part of it was the terror of sheer confusion; part of it was terror at their future dental bills. I actually was happy for them: We’d discovered a way to free them from their thrall, and they could be human again.

Granuaile appeared, Scáthmhaide in hand, and looked worried about my dangling left arm.

“Yes, you do get to shove it back in,” I said.

“I was afraid of that,” she said.

“Thanks for the assist. Normally I would chew you out for leaving open a portal that long, but this time I’ll let it slide.”

She grinned and gave me a quick kiss. “Thanks.”

Letting an amateur shove your arm back into its socket is unpleasant, but when you have magic at your disposal, it’s better than getting insurance and waiting five hours for a professional to do it. Jogging north together until we found a tethered tree without an annoyed dryad inside, we shifted to our cabin near Camp Bird Mine to greet our happy hound.

Oberon said as he bounded toward us, fresh from getting a drink in the Uncompahgre River. First Blood, remember them? They were hanging out, no visible nests, just waiting deep in this abandoned mine for a tortured Vietnam veteran to pass by in his attempt to escape a brutal small-town sheriff with the ability to boss around the state police and the National Guard.>

“Oberon, did you go into the mine?”

“Oberon?”

“What two ravens?”

Casting my eyes toward the mine foreman’s house, I saw the ravens he was talking about. They weren’t the normal kind. They were a bit bigger than usual, and each had one eye that gleamed white.

“That’s Hugin and Munin,” I said.

Granuaile tensed. “Odin’s ravens?”

“Yep.”

She began to scan the area. “He’s here somewhere?”

“I doubt it. He won’t get within striking distance of me again if he can help it. He probably has backup ravens and everything. I bet this is a call to arms from Frigg. She’ll be wanting me to kill Fenris now that you’re bound to the earth. But stay on your guard in case I’m wrong.”

We began walking toward the foreman’s house, our eyes never resting but searching for threats. None appeared, though Hugin and Munin did their best to serve us up some turbo-grim memento mori action.

As we neared the front porch, Frigg floated from the backyard to meet us. She was wearing another of her Dalek dresses, but this one was blue and green with white swirls reminiscent of marshmallows melting in chocolate. She smiled and greeted us, the very picture of hospitality, her sour expression from months ago now gone. An arm appeared from underneath her hair and waved gracefully at the door to the abandoned house. “Shall we go in?”

I winced. “It’s probably not a good idea,” I said. “It’s been vacant for years, and the last time I was in there it was full of rodent droppings.”

“Oh, I am well aware. But that is no longer true.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “A dwarf owed me a favor, and I permitted him to clean the place for our use. He has been very industrious; I am sure you won’t recognize it. But I should warn you—he is in mourning.”

“I’m sorry to hear,” Granuaile said. “But why does that require warning?”

“Well.” Frigg pulled at imaginary tufts of hair on her chin—or else it was a sign language of some sort. “He’s … you know. In mourning.”

“No, we don’t know,” I said. “We’ve never seen a real Norse dwarf before.”

“Oh. Well, you’re probably expecting the beard, but it won’t be there, you see. They shave them off to express their grief.”

“Instead of crying?”

“Precisely.”

“Would it be rude to ask why he’s in mourning?” Granuaile asked.

Frigg smiled. “You won’t have to ask. He will tell you all about it. That’s part of their process. And in truth, Druids, his story is why I’m here. If this doesn’t convince you to help us against Fenris, nothing will. Oh, one more word of caution,” she said, pausing before the door. “He is a Runeskald, so please forgive his unusual speech. Even in English, he tends to wax poetic.”

She preceded us into the house, understanding that we’d want to have no one at our backs, and waited for us to enter. The interior had been utterly transformed.

Where an old chewed-up beige carpet had rested, riddled with the piss and shit of untold numbers of rats, a gleaming hardwood floor awaited instead. The peeling wallpaper had been replaced with something new and warm.

Well, that was probably a lie. The colors were actually cool, but I had once spent a purgatorial week forced to watch HGTV, and during that time I noticed that the hosts and designers described everything they wanted to do as “warm.” Even if they were working with ice blues, they were warm ice blues. I learned that warm was the best possible all-purpose adjective to use when remodeling; home owners couldn’t hear the word enough. A designer could tell a couple that she was going to place a warm steel sculpture of Beira’s frigid tits on top of a white marble pedestal in a walk-in freezer and the couple would nod enthusiastically, blocking out everything except the warm. Let it be known, therefore, that the entire miraculous remodel of the foreman’s manse was warm. Even the dwarf responsible for it, who was introduced to us as Fjalar, greeted us warmly.

Fjalar was very clearly in mourning. His red-rimmed eyes regarded us tragically, and I did my best not to laugh at his sad little chin, a white pocked moonlet gleaming underneath a pouting lower lip and the cantilevered overhang of his epic mustache. The reason dwarfs grow beards became obvious as he spoke: Their chins are too emotionally expressive, capable of quivering and frowning and lending the dwarf an air of vulnerability that they no doubt feel would attract unwelcome advances.

His voice was a lusty, sonorous baritone, bereft of Scottish accent and thick with a Norse one, and he used it to invite us to a place at the table. I noticed that all his dark hair was braided into multiple lengths, not like dreadlocks but not like any fashion I had seen before on males. Each length had something clasped or tied around it, usually gold or silver, but I saw colored strips of ribbon as well. He saw that I was curious about it and pointed to his braids with a thick finger.

“You spy my braids, to be worn for a year and a day. Signs of mourning, brother-memories, friendship flags, and rings of clan and craft.”

“Yes, Frigg told us. I’m very sorry.”

“All will I tell you, speaking fulsome, time in hand,” he said. “For now, bread and mead call us, appetites whetted, to witness what I have been nursing, encased in iron, licked by flame, and tended with relish.”

He waved grandly to a cook pot over a fire. The hearth looked good as new, and in front of it was a long wooden table with benches and candles. Pitchers of mead waited to be poured into drinking horns, and loaves of crusty bread waited in wooden bowls. Crossed axes and shields hung on the walls. Fjalar had done his best to turn the living room into a mead hall. A warm one.

He ladled out a bowl for each of us, including Oberon once we requested it. Fjalar looked to Frigg first to see if she was okay with it, and she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Druids.” Fjalar shrugged back and filled up a bowl for the hound.

Oberon had nothing but praise for his meal.

Okay, Oberon, I hear you.

“This is fabulous, Fjalar. I wish we could enjoy the hospitality of dwarfs more often,” she said.

Oberon made this last comment as Granuaile was taking a sip of mead, listening to Fjalar’s gracious reply. She managed both to spit mead and choke at the same time.

Fjalar and Frigg looked alarmed, and I looked like an ass because I laughed. Oberon chuffed.

“You’d better get used to it,” I said, pounding her on the back a couple of times, “because that’s the way it’s going to be. He’s like that all the time.”

“Thanks for the timely heads-up,” she wheezed. We then had to spend a few moments apologizing to our hosts for our terrible manners.

After dinner was finished and we had showered Fjalar with another round of compliments and thanks, he cleared away the dishes and brought us cups of Irish coffee.

“Many thanks, Fjalar,” I said. “You’ve researched your guests’ preferences well.”

“Glad I am that I could so satiate you, for I have a tale long in the telling to share, if your leisure serves.”

“No doubt this has something to do with Loki,” I said.

The dwarf nodded. “It does.”

“We know some of it,” I said. “We saved Perun from Loki in Arizona.”

Frigg’s brows rose in surprise, and so did the impressive hedgerows above Fjalar’s eyes.

“Perun lives?” Frigg asked.

“Aye, but his realm is indeed destroyed. He is now a guest of the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

Frigg leaned closer. “Did he say why Loki pursued him?”

“He said Loki had wanted to kill Thor, and since that option had been taken away from him, Perun would have to do.”

Frigg made no comment but shook her head to communicate her disapproval. Fjalar turned to her. “Then why in the nine realms did he come to us, fire-wreathed, rash, and wanton, screaming after someone named Eldhár?”

“Um, that would be my fault,” I said.

“Your fault?” Fjalar said. His eyes widened. “You sent Loki Truthslayer to Nidavellir?”

Granuaile twitched but didn’t follow through. “I’m afraid so,” I said. “Sorry.”

“You are responsible!” Fjalar began to rise from the table and Frigg placed a soothing hand on his shoulder.

“Fjalar, he is our guest,” Frigg said.

“He is our enemy!” the dwarf roared. Despite her attempt to make him sit, he rose, pointing at me. “Thoughtless tongue of a tiny mind! Seven times seven hundred Shield Brothers dead—”

“What?” I said.

“Have patience, you see he is unaware!” Frigg said. “He could not have known what Loki and Hel would do.”

“What did they do?” I asked. “Fjalar, please, I do not know what happened. Tell me what they did.”

The dwarf glared at me, his fingers itching for an axe. Frigg never removed her hand from his shoulder. He took several deep breaths, his chin mottled with blood-lust, until he finally mustered the will to take his seat calmly.

“I suppose it is meet and proper,” he said, “that you should hear first why I mourn, beardless and braided. And then your woman and hound will know I have just cause, am truly honor-bound, to cut you down.”

Oberon growled at his words.

Stop that this instant!

“Please,” I said to him. “Say on.”

Perhaps if we had warning, horns sounded with alarm, we could have mustered a stronger defense, offered tapestries of wards and fire-tested stone. As it was, our defense faltered, heat-ravaged, and our stone doors melted, slagged to ruin by the sulfur breath of volcanoes, Loki’s fury unchained. Nidavellir opened to him, he gave vent to his spleen, gall and bitterness churning in his eyes, madness made plain, spewing the venom he had choked down for so long in his bondage, deep in the darkness of that sepulchral cave. Our guards he set aflame and then bellowed above their screaming, demanding that we produce the wretched construct, dwarf-crafted, known as Eldhár. He paused for our answer, and we bore him honest tidings that nothing did we know of such a construct, but this he refused to believe, heart hardened against the truth, he who trades in lies like the winds trade in rumors of storms. Awash in fire, orange and yellow, he shot through tunnels and the noble caverns of Nidavellir, ancient dwarf-home, solid sanctuary until that day. Deeper and deeper he delved, past our cities and into rough-hewn mines, and even past these until he burned the raw, untouched rock, the virgin flesh of the earth. We lost him somewhere in the dark, his flames extinguished, his shrill demands for Eldhár fallen silent, grave-still, not even a whisper of misplaced anger in the abyss.

Then we wondered, and we sent out queries to Asgard, Vanaheim, and elsewhere: How had Loki won free? Was Ragnarok begun? Who was Eldhár? There are many dwarfs who hold that name, but none of the king’s smiths had crafted a construct of that calling.

We heard first from Odin Allfather, far-seeing, wise-ruling. He warned us to beware of Hel, cold and cunning, and to look for her spies in our realm; she must not learn that Loki was in Nidavellir. Straightaway we searched, seized, and questioned; her minions, death rattlers, stringy shadows of the eternal forlorn, we found in abundance, and held them captive. But our prudence came too late, availed us not!

Too open had we been about Loki’s arrival, too free with our questions and messages. Hel could not fail to hear that Loki Giantborn had come to Nidavellir, losing flame and voice and pain-racked visage in the black of some pit, far beyond where we feast and work and dwell.

To my shoulders fell the weight of the mountain, for such is the weight of my king’s command. King Aurvang, son of Vestri, golden-maned, mighty-thewed, many-wived, bold in battle, spake unto the king’s smith, who in turn spake unto me, and my task was made plain: The Stonearms, the king’s own hammers, needed armor to withstand Loki, proof against fire, wards against his wrath.

I am a Runeskald, one of seven, seniormost and filled with lore, who emblazons armor with the truth of runes, elemental forms, matched to thought and deed and purpose; weapons too, carved with kennings both old and new that I sing betwixt my workshop walls, always imbuing steel and stone with the poetry of life, the songs of war.

It had never been done before, warding armor so well against fire that a dwarf could withstand the implacable malice of Loki Kinslayer, flame-haired cruelty, molten-tempered mischief. But I was not asked if it could be done; I was told to make it so.

I sang to the steel and struggled with the runes for a sevenday, yet could not find the form and song that would keep steel cool in fire. In perversity, desperation driven, I plied my craft on leather and surprisingly found a measure of success. Pursuing it further, doubly determined, I sang of skin-sealed moisture, sinews hardened with courage, tanned hide of taut resolve that deflects danger, and of surfaces chapped instead of burned. And the runes I crafted were oblong and rounded, heat-shedding shapes of domed protection, sigils of steadiness in the face of fury, waves of quenching water to drown licking fingers of fire.

Into the smithy’s flames I tossed two shields of leather, one of my skaldic craft and one bereft of my attention. The standard shield burned, while the skaldic shield only charred and blackened around the edges. Heart-swollen and pride-puffed, I applied my hard-won skills to a set of armor, and it was during this time that Hel’s army came to Nidavellir.

News of her father had reached her pestilent ears, cold with patient malice. Swiftly, she assembled legions of draugar to invade our mountain, defile our homes, stain the beauty of our axe-hewn halls. They came with weapons drawn, modern rifles like our smiths now make, shooting into our tunnels but never spreading out, always marching deeper, past our treasures and warrens of riches. Many thousands were they, yet so were we and determined to stop them, for now we thought Ragnarok had begun.

The hammer horn sounded throughout Nidavellir, and the Stonearms assembled, and with them the Black Axes, the Shield Brothers, the Maidens of Wrath, and the Guardians of Lore. Miners and craftsmen, merchants and millers, all were called to martial arms, all of them answered, abandoning the day’s cares for the defense of the realm, save for myself and the Runeskalds by especial command of King Aurvang. “You must remain in your workshops, ever diligent,” he said, “and continue crafting the armor to slay the father of lies, whensoever we find him.”

And so battle was joined without my hammer, and the king’s skalds will never sing of my valor around the hearths of my people.

Here is what they sing instead:

Grim-visaged and stouthearted, dwarfs young and old, yet Shield Brothers all, marched to meet the shambling blue draugar of Hel, detested queen of frosted twilight. Her army, unbreathing, steeped in the attar of woe, unleashed a hail of bullets, stolen weapons from the mines of Midgard. Deafening thunder roared through Nidavellir that day, rattling teeth and rifle fire and ringing shields and battle cries. Forearmed, skaldic runes on shields and helmets, the front line advanced undaunted, metal pieces flying back at the foe, ragged soldiers who knew no honor in life. They, heedless of any harm below the neck, bore the ricochets in silence.

The Shield Brothers pressed forward, unwitting of their coming doom.

Cunning Hel, bride of ice and despair, gave commands in tombstone whispers to her soldiers, who raised their weapons and fired at the ceiling above the Shield Brothers, bullets whipping off rocks, tearing through flesh from above, felling many who never struck a blow for their clans, never hewed a head from its shoulders.

The front line marched on, and behind them quickwitted Shield Brothers raised their skaldic wards, redirected ricochets, foiled the efforts of Hel. And finally, when the armies met, the draugar learned of the strength of dwarfs! Rotted skulls flew from rotted bodies as axes swept the air over shields, while others were trampled under the vanguard and hewn apart by subsequent ranks.

The draugar shrank back at first, their orderly advance exploded, but then they swelled as corpses will with blowflies and maggots, filled the tunnel with their unholy bodies, halted our advance and held their line, while their back ranks emptied magazines above the Shield Brothers’ heads, ceaseless ammunition thrown up to tear us down, and some found targets after two, three, or four ricochets.

Slowly, by attrition, the draugar took their toll, slaying noble dwarfs in heat and noise and close rock walls with cowardly attacks. The dead soldiers of Hel pushed back, advanced again despite the best efforts of the valiant Shield Brothers, courageous warriors to the last.

Bodies of their dwarven brethren, slick with blood, impeded both retreat and advance. The wounded, no matter how they cried for help, could not be tended in that close tunnel with so many enemies to fight; naught but enduring agony, desperate breaths, and despair was their lot, until their honorable deaths brought them peace and immortal glory.

Back, back, beneath the onslaught, the Shield Brothers gave ground, slowly yet inexorably, pushed by the juggernaut of Hel’s army. Yet every footstep was dearly won, for it took hours for the draugar to travel the distance a dwarf may walk in five minutes, crawling over the massed dead.

And in that time, assembling in the Grand Cavern, a mighty force of Shield Brothers awaited, ready to protect the market and residences and streets there. Ricochets would not be so effective in the Grand Cavern, and the Shield Brothers had firearms of their own. So when the tunnel forces were pushed back to the cavern, they abruptly retreated on a signal from their general, fell behind the lines, and allowed the draugar to walk into an ambush.

Thousands of shambling soldiers were mown down by a fusillade from dwarf-made guns, and a furious cry of victory echoed in the cavern! Blue and twitching, heads shattered by bullets, the draugar fell in ranks, turned to foul dust, leaving their weapons behind.

Yet still they came, innumerable as ants or the swarms of summer bees, and after we had slain a thousand with unremitting fire, they paused, and we entertained hopes that our resolve had taught Hel to reconsider her rash invasion of Nidavellir. But then they flooded once again through the opening, yet with this cruel difference: They held the bulletproof skaldic shields of our fallen brothers in front of their heads, and thus we could not slay them, only poke holes in their rotted flesh, slow them for a time with a shattered thighbone, a pulverized ankle, nothing more. And then the chill craft of Hel manifested itself, and we shuddered in horror at her plan, for every piece of it represented the death of a Shield Brother in the tunnel: The draugar began to make a wall of shields, three high, linking them together and then creating another column, by which method they created a corridor that would allow them to maneuver in safety.

And it was, indeed, a corridor. Strangely, the draugar made no attempt to advance in the cavern, to advance on our treasures, to reach for our lives or destroy our homes. Putting aside their modern weapons, the Shield Brothers charged with axes and hammers to break the wall, and the resultant clash of arms thundered in the great cavern, as draugar were beheaded and dwarfs were shot by the defiant minions of Hel. Reports came back that the draugar were advancing through and past the cavern as fast as they could move, their objective elsewhere, their purpose unclear.

And then in the court of King Aurvang a Svartálf bowed, ambassador of the dark elves, longtime resident of our realm, and announced he brought a message from Hel, she having no other way to speak to us in safety.

“Speak,” King Aurvang said, his fury palpable, “and then begone from my realm! We will have no traffic with Svartálfheim henceforth for this betryal!”

“My people should not be punished for bearing you a message,” the ambassador said, “especially since it may save the lives of many dwarfs. Will you hear me in patience, rashness reined, ire checked with prudence?”

Our king made no promises. “Speak your part, Svartálf,” he said.

The dark elf simpered and bowed again. “Hel wishes me to say she has no designs on your realm and wishes no more harm to the noble dwarfs of Nidavellir. She simply searches for her father, Loki, whom she has heard is currently visiting. Her army will not attack dwarfs except in self-defense or if their progress is impeded.”

“And when she finds her father, what then?” King Aurvang roared, wrath awakened, patience fled. “Will she reduce my tunnels to rubble, set my caverns aflame, slaughter my people?”

“Nay, noble king,” the Svartálf replied. “She will leave with him if she can, containing his madness so far as she is able. Her quarrel is with Asgard and Vanaheim, not the honorable people of Nidavellir.”

“Have you aught else to say?” the king asked.

“My message is complete, sire.”

“Then remove yourself from my presence and my realm! I never wish to see you more!”

When the Svartálf had gone, chastised yet unrepentant, the king sent for me. I rushed to answer his summons on bended knee.

“Runeskald Fjalar,” he said, “long have you labored for our greater good as a poet and enchanter of armor. Now I must ask of you a service befitting a hero. Retrieve the Deadman’s Shroud and wear it yourself. Follow Hel’s hordes and discover what they intend, then report back to me. Slay none except in the utmost extremity. You must live to return the shroud and speak of her plans.”

“It shall be done, sire,” I said, and wept as I bowed deeply to him. Never had I been asked for so weighty a service.

The Deadman’s Shroud was crafted centuries before my time by the greatest of all Runeskalds, Mjotvangir son of Rathsvith, nimble-fingered, honey-throated, unmatched scion of clever craft. The shroud may be worn only by Runeskalds, but, once worn, it convinces the dead that the wearer is also dead. There is no copy, for none have ever duplicated the skald of Mjotvangir; his runes exist for all to see, but the dread words he sang while crafting the shroud are forever lost.

Orders given, I was led to the king’s treasury and presented the Deadman’s Shroud, sacred relic of my forebear’s skill. I collected my skaldic shield, fire-tested, then was ushered to the front lines of the Shield Brothers, where battle still raged. Rather than try to break through the wall, where I would be exposed to gunfire, I was vaulted bodily over it on the premise that I would draw no fire once I landed, shroud-wrapped, disguised from dead eyes.

I landed heavily but intact, drew stares but no fire. Identity concealed, purpose hidden, I joined the stream of dead forward through my own realm, an invader of my own home.

What a wonder Runeskald Mjotvangir had made! I marched unremarked in the midst of putrefaction, cold malice, and unknown intention. Past warrens and neighborhoods and then past mines and pockets of wealth, I followed the stream of dead ever downward. And then, after seemingly interminable hours of this journey, so far down I knew not where I was, the draugar before and behind me stopped and pressed themselves against the wall of the tunnel we traversed. I did likewise, waiting, breath heaving in a passage where no other breath heaved, until a giant of a dog rushed past: Hel’s own hound, named Garm, of yellow eyes and unmatched determination, nose following a trail I could not smell, doubtless made of malignance and the acrid trace of sulfur.

The dead, and I as well, continued after him, always coursing down, into the unlit depths where no dwarf had roamed for years. When the darkness became too much for my eyes to pierce, the shroud did me a service and lit my way, alarming none in the process.

After another hour of peregrination, I entered a vast chamber already full of draugar. There, high up on a ledge, glowed the resting form of Loki Firebreath, supine on the rocks, slumbering in peace, only his bare skin revealing a blue aura of simmering flames.

Garm sat beside him, stalwart sentinel, ever vigilant. The legions of Hel made no move to wake him but rather faced outward, ready to face any threat, and there they still wait at this very moment, protecting the sleep of Loki, Hel’s father, lord of mischief.

I hurried back to tell my king of this news, and grimly he sent word to Asgard of Hel’s doings in Nidavellir.

Her father found, Hel’s goal was accomplished, and the dead stopped flowing into Nidavellir, but still they wait silently far below our cities for Loki, robed in wrath, to waken again.

More than ten thousand draugar fell that day to dwarf weapons. Seven times seven hundred Shield Brothers fell defending their homes, their children left fatherless, their women widowed. And for what? For a selfish god’s nap in the deep! For a Druid’s foolish tongue! You see me here, beardless and braided, for the loss of an uncle and a nephew in that battle! Why should I not now, in justice draped, exact a measure of the blood shed for a careless word three months ago? My fallen family demands it, as do the families of all the dwarfs who died that day!

“You will not move,” Frigg said to Fjalar, her voice as cold as his was hot with rage. “Do not stir to shepherd violence here. These are your guests and mine.”

The dwarf looked apoplexed. “But my honor—”

“Will restrain itself for a while longer,” Frigg finished. “Odin has a plan that will pay your people properly and tax the Druid heavily.”

“What plan is that?” I asked.

“You already know it well. Now is the time,” Frigg said, “while Loki and Hel are occupied, while Garm is stationed elsewhere, to cripple their efforts to bring about Ragnarok. Hel’s realm is half empty. There you must go to slay Loki’s spawn, Fenris, Odin’s bane, devourer of gods.”

“You want me to go to Hel and kill Fenris?”

“Yes.”

“I thought he was supposed to be tied up on an island in the middle of a black lake.”

Frigg rolled her eyes and waved this away. “Snorri Sturluson made that up. He was bound in Hel and there he remains, tended by her minions.”

“I can’t get into Hel.” I knew the shift points to get to the planes of Nidavellir and Jötunheim—the first was in Iceland and the other in Siberia—but I’d never tracked down the shift point that would take me to the third root of Yggdrasil, which would lead me all the way down to the spring of Hvergelmir and the lower realms of the Norse.

“Untrue. None other than the goddess Freyja will lead you there. She is your guide and your surety of return.”

I snorted. “Forgive me, Frigg, but Freyja is no surety of my return. Not after what happened in Oslo six years ago. Say rather that you’re holding a shotgun to my head and Freyja will pull the trigger.”

“She besmirched the honor of the Æsir that day, but none more so than her own. This is her penance. Only by your safe return can she restore her good name.”

“And once I’m returned from Hel? Will she attack me then, her oath fulfilled?”

“No, of course not. But you are not going alone. In addition, good King Aurvang has already promised the services of the Black Axes.”

“The Black Axes!” Fjalar exclaimed. “How many of them?”

“All of them. You will lead an army to kill a single wolf.”

“He’s not an average wolf, and you know it,” I said. “What is Loki up to?”

“It is something akin to the Odinsleep,” Frigg said. “He is healing. He has not had a decent night’s rest in centuries. He is drained, and now he heals for an indeterminate time.”

“So he’ll be even stronger when he wakes?”

“Yes.”

“Will he still be batshit insane?”

“His sanity has always been doubtful. He once tied a rope to the beard of a nanny goat and the other end to his testicles just to make Skadi laugh. It was an extremely high-pitched tug-o’-war, and his idea of kindness. If you are wondering if he will be less likely to pursue malevolent impulses than in the past, my guess would be no.”

“Can Freyja get us into Hel without having to fight through legions of draugar?”

“Yes. You will take the path that the Æsir use.”

For a while, no one spoke. Eyes shifted around the table, measuring expressions, and wood popped and crackled in the hearth.

This was precisely the sort of thing that Odin had requested of me some years before. Since I had been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of many of those tasked to fight in Ragnarok, I had to take on some of their responsibilities. Fenris had to be slain, and we would find no better opportunity than this, while he was still bound in Hel and many of her forces were absent.

“My hound stays here,” I said, “safe and unmolested.”

No. We are not arguing about this. I need you to be safe.

You wouldn’t be in Hel.

“And your apprentice?” Frigg asked.

“She’s not my apprentice anymore. She is a full Druid and may make her own decisions,” I said. I turned to Granuaile and spoke softly: “You are not under any obligation to accompany me. You should remain here and do something heinous to your stepfather’s oil business. Take Oberon with you.”

Granuaile’s green eyes bored into mine. Her head shook minutely and she brought up her left hand to caress my beard. “Idiot. I’m going with you. My decision.”

“Okay.”

No.

Oberon whined.

One of us has to live through this. I always want you to be the one who lives.

Go down to Ouray and find someone there who likes big friendly dogs.

all of them. Atticus, don’t go. Just send a poisoned box of doggie treats to this wolf and forget about it. He hasn’t seen any heist movies.>

That’s actually not a bad idea.