The Wolf Hammer, page 22
part #1 of Odin's Bastard Series
“I cannot…I would not break oaths to my father and house. Ever. I did not—”
“You did,” she assured me. “If you had done what you promised, if you had taken over and forced your father out? If you had not been so weak? There would not have been a war. Just a coup. And we would have been fast. Instead, we had to push the entirety of Midgard into chaos, to destroy an Aesir, and elves, nations, and still, you failed.”
I lay there, half delirious with pain. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you need Morag?” I asked her. “I could have taken that book. Why Morag?”
She pressed her lips together into a thin line.
“What happened to Mother?” I tried, spitting blood, nearly choking. It seemed something was inside me, gnawing my guts.
“When you failed to act, Narfi the Shadow didn’t,” she finally said. “He decided it was time to take a risk. He decided that to succeed, that book had to be pried from your father’s fingers. It would have to be taken in war. So, he made war. He told the Aesir that your father was failing in his duty, had, in fact, found what he was seeking and that Issan, your mother, was driving him mad. He told the Aesir he had heard Issan speaking Lok’s name in prayer.”
“You—"
She caressed her face, shaking her head. “Shh. Hildr, who protected the land, took your mother and made her talk. She made her sing, and she told her everything, except the part about Narfi and Vali, and I. The Shadow had put a spell on her, which strangled her when she tried to mention his name, or mine, or Vali’s. So, the Aesir was preparing for war. Graymoor, my brother, sent your father lies about it. Filthy ones.”
“Eglin did too,” I whispered. “He lied to me on the galley. Just like that. He is with you. Has been…”
“Eglin worships Lok,” she said. “He was always like you. Least of the lot, downtrodden and bitter. Lok is a natural choice for him. He made this possible, as much as you. He is a great actor too. He suffered for years Yggra’s foolishness. And you? When your father executed everyone in Aeginhamn, and you watched his madness, still you hesitated and refused to help us. You were too angry for your mother to aid us, and instead, you marched off with your father, and I marched with you. I saved you in that battle.”
“Your plan was flawed. What could I do,” I asked, “if I tried to push my father down? I didn’t have his hammer. I was just a man. He would have killed me had I told him he must step down. I do not understand.”
Outside, I heard the sound of dying men.
“You could have,” she said softly. “Narfi would have given you the power. It was yours, just locked away. You sampled it just now.”
I blinked.
She came forward and tapped the bracer on my wrist, the one no Hardhand was supposed to remove. “You all have this. And yet, this one is special. It is called the Sorrowspinner and is an artifact Narfi found a long time ago. It is magical, like your hammer, and the Black Tales.”
I looked at it. The eye and the flame were there, staring from the bronze. It looked ordinary.
“He is a thing of the night,” she said with a shivering voice. “And this is an artifact of the night. With this, he blocked you from your born power, the powers that you have, and the powers he designed for you. With the hammer in your hand, you were twice a man, though it hurt you for that part that you are missing. Had you moved against your father, had you actually done it, we would have given you the tools. A reward. Your true heritage. We would have removed this. But you refused and stayed a mortal. You failed so terribly!” she shouted, and for a moment, fangs flashed as she snarled. “How could you! When your mother died, and your father suffered, and you did too, you doubted us. I was with you in that war. I saw you. The death of Issan was Narfi’s ploy to move us forth to gain the book, to put your father against the Aesir, to steal his book in battle, but you had another chance in Aeginhamn. I asked you. I begged you. You turned away, horrified by the carnage and Issan’s fate. You were weak. So very weak. You pushed me away, mourned your mother, and followed the man you knew wasn’t even your father.”
I stared at her in shock.
She snarled. “I just told you. You were blocked from your true heritage, and you might have received it, had you just had the courage to obey, to keep a promise. I told you back then. He wasn’t your father.”
I shook my head.
She laughed and kneeled next to me, suddenly calm “Love, my poor fool, is a weakness. Alas that I have it for you, especially now, when you butchered that bitch. It was tasty, delicious. Understand this. You are no simple man. You are a demi-god, a thing of Lok, like we are, only less, for Issan was just a human. You are made of Narfi. The third son he turned his eyes on was you, even before you were alive. He took Issan over a table, and gave you powers you have tasted, and still, he kept you in check, until the time was right.”
She knocked the metal bracer with her fingernail. “He risked much, just now. Releasing you on the Aesir’s face, facing the great power for the first time? You might have died there. You should have.” She put her finger on my wound and I shivered and cried. “You did. But not totally. You are mighty. You just do not know it. Narfi’s powers are also vast. He can die seven times, you know, and come back alive. He can create wonderful, insidious spells of disease and poison, and he commands shadows, illusions, and night, and nightmares, and the darkest, most fierce fire is his ally. He has Vali, a fighter and slayer, on his side, but in you, he gave the power of a jotun, and fire of the night, a massive being of fire and speed, an unstoppable juggernaut. He was proud of the thing you were, things opposite to him. Alas, that you had the heart of a human. He was very disappointed.”
“I am sorry for his loss,” I snarled.
She touched my forehead. “That was his punishment. And do not mourn your death love. You betrayed Lok so the jotuns will hate you. They see the scar on your face, and they know a mark of failure. And the Aesir, they will hunt you like an animal, for you killed one of theirs. No god would aid you.”
“I could aid myself,” I choked, weeping, the emptiness in me a scorching grave of despair. “I die empty.”
“You will die empty,” she agreed. “And that is the way of it. But you will have something else, and gods help you. We have the book, finally. That Yggra stole it…well. Imagine. The worm thwarted all our plans. We sorted him and the others too. We know where to go, and Morag will hold the hammer if we get lost, just to show us the way. And now that the Aesir is defeated, we shall leave Borin to fester Midgard with our curse. Let it be the price it must pay for our long years of hiding.”
“Reignhelm, Vittar—” I began.
“They are dead,” she said. “See?”
She stepped to the door and opened it slightly.
And I was thinking about the lost part of me.
A life I couldn’t remember. Oaths I had made, failures, and love I had lost.
Narfi.
Lok-spawn. My father. Who gave, who took away, and who used what was left.
“I will kill him, seven times, and eight, if I must,” I said as I tried to see outside, where the day was coming to an end.
“No, you will not.”
“What is happening out there?” I hissed.
“We will take over Midgard,” she said. “We’ll take the armies away to war after the city falls, and Borin, who is not named Borin, by the way, will disease the land.”
“What is he?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “He will come for you. I will miss you,” she said. “But now? Now, we shall go to war. It is not a terrible thing not to remember. It is far harder to remember your failures, and that I still love you. Excuse me. I have an army to lead.”
Her face shifted, and an illusion replaced her beauty.
A male, robust, cleanshaven and beautiful, took her place.
The High King. Then, she changed, and took the sour face of Tarl Vittar.
“Here,” said the man’s voice. “Here is what you desired, though it might be disappointing now.” She lifted something out of the corner and tossed it to me. She walked out of the doorway, and I heard her mounting a horse.
She pulled something from the horse, and grinned.
“The Wolf Hammer will be Narfi’s now,” she said. “Fare as well as you can, husband. I do love you.”
She rode away.
Reignhelm would be carrying my hammer.
Near me was a sack and heads had rolled out. There, Tarl Vittar’s and Reignhelm’s heads, and I suddenly guessed both had actually been proper rulers, where Lok had poisoned mine.
I stayed there and wept.
She had left the doorway open. I leveled myself off the bench, falling to the ground and passing out from the pain. I then crawled forward to the doorway, the chains around me clanking. There, the chains caught on a nail, and stopped me.
I saw a terrible battle.
I looked out of the city towards the castle, the hillside seething with men, attacking the crumbled gates. I saw Reignhelm, with Tarl Vittar, riding to a party of officers, and there, my father, Graymoor, sat on his horse. He looked like Graymoor, but inside that skin, sat a thing of darkness.
And I? His design. A failure.
With him were the twins, Lok’s servants also, and the emissary of the north, looking over the attack. Naera, his supposed daughter, another filth, was speaking to the emissary.
Eglin was near a mass of men, howling orders, and I felt a twitch of anger.
Bastard.
I bet she had been sleeping with him, the whore.
I laughed hysterically at the notion, and that I cared. Around Eglin, I saw riders. And Morag was amid them, his small body latched on a horse.
Lok worshippers the lot, the Black Swans. Some twenty still alive.
I wanted to run there and murder them.
The crow croaked and hopped to land near me.
I nodded. “Wait. Not yet. Soon. Your feast is nearly served.”
It settled back and seemed content to do so.
My powers. I had skills, but I could not use them.
I clawed at the bracer, and it didn’t move. It never had, and I had never tried.
Or had I? When she had told me about my past, I must have tried.
I struggled weakly, and the thing was stuck fast.
I gave up trying.
I couldn’t even remember my oaths to Lok. Only to Father. And Odin.
I had failed. I deserved to die.
Eglin was commanding our people up to the hillside. The thousands of Aten and Malignborg were in tight columns, taking the winding way, men falling to arrows and ballista here and there, stumbling over corpses.
I saw my flag already up on the battlefield.
How many times the mercenary companies had tried to attack, I didn’t know. There were just a thousand or more of them, a number made up of all the men hacking and bleeding on the steep rubble of the gate. They had ladders on half the wall, many empty, and those who had scaled them were dead below. On those walls, enemy archers were preparing Helheim for the marching snake of silver and black, the men of Aten, the men of Reignhelm, and curs of Vittar.
On the stone-slope of the former gate, the enemy was thick as flies, trying to find a foothold to push our mercenaries back, and back.
Our men were dying, dead, Hardhand heroes falling in droves.
The steel snake of western armies was now marching up that hillside, up to the battle, through the weakening hail of arrows. A hundred, then more men were falling rolling down the hill. Stones and javelins, ballistae were spitting death on the attackers, fifteen thousand of them.
I watched Graymoor, sitting on a horse, staring up at the castle, alongside Reignhelm and Tarl Vittar.
I didn’t understand the needless butchery.
Unless they wanted to kill as many men as possible.
The crow ruffled its dark coat and shook its head.
It was a relief not to be alone.
I saw men of Midgard, rushing forward to kill men of Midgard, and whatever they found on top, it would not be Jarl Barrac, but some poor bastard. The two brothers and their sister sat there, and I, half man, half something else, would be…Borin’s?
“You might not have a feast, friend,” I told the crow. “I think they have plans for me yet.”
I watched until the mercenaries were nearly all dead, and Aten’s men took their place, Malignborg rushed to the ladders. When it was dark, I heard men’s jubilation far up the hillside, up in the castle. There, men were throwing their final foes out of the castle's windows or hanging them from the crenellations.
Like animals, like what they had done to my father, driving men into savagery, the city of White Tower was dying for Lok, all its inhabitants put to the sword or crushed.
It went on for a long while, until deep in the night, the armies were marching down to the town and left the city silent but for the birds.
And still I lived, barely.
And I, finally, closed my eyes and resolved to give up, laying in a pool of poisonous blood.
“You have me now,” I whispered to the faithful crow.
“Remember,” it said, “that is a promise.”
I opened my eyes in shock.
The thing hopped near me and tilted its head. “We have no time, no time at all. Will you, friend, take a chance?”
I blinked.
Hope.
It was a fool’s hope, and I was dying and hallucinating.
“Will you, Hagar of Lok, take life and pledge yourself to the one goddess who can save you? Will you swear on your life that you will serve her, a lady most dark, in exchange for your life?”
“Revenge,” I hissed.
“Our path is the same,” the crow said. “You may take yours as you serve.”
“In that case…”
The crow grinned. It looked odd. “Swear, on Nött’s name, that you will follow the goddess of Svartalfheim, you shall serve her in the shadows and the night, the queen of thieves and assassins, and you will bring her the Truth Stone, as your first assignment. In doing so, you may slay all three of those bastards there, and you need not fear Odin and the Aesir, for you are truly lost on them too.” The crow winked. “She loves an odd vagabond, but if you betray her? Your fate will be just as terrible as what they planned for you.”
“You speak too much,” I whispered.
There was no confusion.
There was only hope.
The honorable, weak Hagar might have preferred to die, rather than serve Nött, but I was far more practical now. “I shall serve her. So I swear, on my life.”
Something moved, and I saw a great shadow. There was a figure looming over me. It picked me up, and it smelled of sulfur. It tore my chains out of the wall and, chuckling, picked up the head of Reignhelm and Vittar both.
Then it ran and seemed to fall down.
Instead, it fell up.
In the light of the moons, I realized I was being carried high, far above the city, and I wondered if the dark shadow would take me away to Helheim or Asgaard.
Nay. Not there.
No glory for Lok’s spawn.
And I had just abandoned Odin for good.
For revenge.
Far below, I saw a stream of men marching off from the city, the remains of the armies of the west, bloody from butchery, and then, below in the docks, vast fleets of all the nations preparing.
There, too, the lone ship of the north, ready to go home.
The city below me was a speck of darkness, and thousands of corpses lined the streets below—the fallen of the war, men, women, soldiers, merchants—slain and butchered. I was bleeding terribly, felt cold grip around my heart, and as I was closing my eyes, the creature that carried me banked and landed. It swerved down in the winds, dark wings spread wide, and floated down for a building. Suddenly, it dodged through an open window in one of the tallest of the white towers.
“This is not,” I whispered, “Valholl.”
It croaked, a gigantic crow, heavy enough to carry a full-grown man, and landed, throwing me roughly on a destroyed bed. I bounced off it and crashed on my back. The creature shifted and changed, before turning toward me.
It was Chal.
It was the jotun I had defeated.
Nött? She was there for Nött?
She looked unhappy with the ransacked room as she walked to a wall. There, she touched the wall in a spot much like any, and part of it opened up with a click.
She grasped something inside and pulled it out, walking across the room with a small bottle of something. Then she came to sit next to me.
She sloshed the liquid inside the bottle and then lifted me by my chain and pulled me on my back, like she would set up a fish about to be gutted. She looked into my eyes, her yellow and golden ones boring a hole into mine. She groped at the wound in my chest. She flinched. “Elven blade, with Aesir’s angry spell in it. No wonder the Lok-span fear it. Enchanted to cut, to bite, and it bit, boy. It also left rot in you.” She squatted on my side. “And the side slashed to the gut. Well. We’ll fix that, night brother.”
I had not even realized my side was slashed.
I tried to climb to my feet but failed utterly as she held me stretched out.
She brushed her dark red hair aside, and flames ran across her skin. “You ready?”
“Dead, I am near…” I croaked. “Please—”
“As agreed,” she said softly. She got to her knees next to me. “Oh, here we go,” she said, and poured something ice cold on the wound.
She pressed something between my teeth. The pain was excruciating. I was hovering between joy and pain. The flesh began to knit together, my blood purging, and nausea rose in my throat. Dark vomit ran from my lips—the rot of the Aesir—and bubbled on the floor. It sizzled in the stone, made pockmarks on it, and splattered on her boot. She had to back off, cursing softly in a language I didn’t know.
After a while, I could breathe.
