The Beast of the North (45 page)

‘Yes,’ he said with a twinkle in his eyes. ‘But perhaps she is happy with swordplay alone. You might not need the Shades.’ He laughed politely and looked away. He thought it would come to a fight. There would be no deal.

‘No deal,’ I breathed, the deal deteriorating. ‘What is she?’

He laughed, and so did a thousand throats, filling the air with guttural noise as the throng kept growing. He leaned on me, and I knew I was dead by the look on his face. ‘She is called Badwahenae, Baduhanna, or the War Maiden. She is Odin’s ilk, one of the lesser gods, spawned as a First Born, a thing of the Aesir, mistress of Spear Dance. She is, Jotun, a demi-goddess. She is not immortal, nor all-powerful. She is a soldier of Asgard, not an actual god. She was a fair match to your grandfather. She is, however, very strong with the Shades. More, humans will fight for her. They see her as one of their makers.’
Balissa had said she would cause more wars amidst humans
, I thought. Thrun went on. ‘And she will likely kill you. But we take this chance to escape, nonetheless. Eating mushroom while the damned fish down there swim in circles and mock us? No more. Leave the gauntlet. Come, it’s fair.’

A demi-goddess,
I thought.
Gods help me.

‘Leave the gauntlet,’ a brown haired dverg grumbled and took a step forward. ‘And swear you will take the blame for all of our crimes.’

I pushed him back. ‘I take full responsibility, by Hel, for all of your oath breakings,’ I said, laughed, and jumped off the ledge. I changed in the air, feeling very drained and fluttered down towards the lake as a raven of immense size. I skimmed the lake’s pristine surface, felt the droplets of cooling water reach up to me and saw the vast bounty, schools of fat fish that were so torturing, the dverger scoot off for the depths under the surface, spooked by my approach. I crossed the boundary of the island and landed on a skull of a Jotun.

And waited.

The mist in the middle of the island dissipated while darkness surrounded the water’s edge.

I was not alone.

There was a statue sitting on a pile of bones, all gray and very mystifying. It was a small woman with ethereal, delicate eyes, pouty lips, slender, near the innocent face. The head was tilted up, thick, long hair was curling around her shoulders, back, and thighs. She wore a long tunic that reached to her knees, and her feet were shod with simple sandals. She was a rare, indescribable beauty. She made you feel peaceful, but for the bones, she sat on. She was beauty and death combined. Like Lith. Unlike Lith, she seemed the type to stand and fight bravely.

I changed to the size of a man. Red’s dverg-made sword was clutched in my gauntleted hand, long and dangerous; deadly, but not as deadly as the delicate thing before me.

She was not like Lith.

She was alive.

The eyes opened, and a puff of dust fell on her cheek.

‘Shit,’ I told myself as the Aesir got up and stared at me curiously. The dust rolled off her skin and twirled around her left, glowing hand, and the grit formed into a shield of silver and black. She looked astonished as she saw me.

‘Shit?’ she breathed. ‘This is all you can say, you stinking Jotun when you meet a First Born.’

‘I—’ I croaked, but she slapped her hand on her chest. The last of the dust fell off.

‘You come with a bared sword. So did Garok Danegell, a fool Ymritoe, once. I think your kin? Ah! He was your grandfather, was he not?’ Her eyes went to a pile of bones and armor on the side. ‘He fought well. Briefly, but well. Where is your traitorous father? I smell him in you. That liar owes me.’

‘Lady—’ I began, but she shook her fair head, and her hair was billowing around her as if it were alive. It was. Alive with magic. A weapon grew out of her hand, a red-hafted flail that radiated strange power.

‘The dverger have been keeping me amused for long years.’ She grinned. ‘They yearn for the fish, and I won’t let them touch it. They grow mushrooms and probably would kill for meat. They are so predictable. But a Jotun is much more entertaining, of course. Your father was talented. Despicable traitor, but clever. I did not think they could block a goddess from leaving this hole, but they did. That is the artifact, no? Truly old thing. I underestimated it,’ she said and gazed at my gauntlet. ‘There is something strange about you. Son of Magor? Yes. But strange, nonetheless.’

‘I’ve barely met my kin,’ I told her honestly, my sword trembling.

She nodded at my gauntlet. ‘Ingvir crafted that eons ago. It is a powerful, sentient thing and meant to signify the kingship of the Jotuns. It will grow with you. If you will grow.’ I gritted my teeth together at that.
If.

‘I came to fetch my army,’ I told her brusquely. ‘I need them. I need you to allow us to leave. And not to fight us,’ I said, and her beautiful eyes grew large with surprise. She laughed with a voice that tingled and carried across the mountain.

‘Your army? The dverger? The mercenary scum I once routed from this city? You know their history? You do, some of it, surely,’ she said as she walked around me slowly. I turned to her, feeling foolish at being afraid of the tiny female. But she was a demi-goddess. Whatever that meant. ‘You know my name, of course?’

‘I heard it,’ I said.

‘What is going on up there in the world?’ she asked, with poorly hidden curiosity in her voice.

I breathed deep and tried to steady my nerves. ‘Midgard is beset with the Cult of the One Man. We … some men believe there are no gods and the High King is the god.’

‘What?’ she tittered. ‘A god?’

‘The god. But he is undead,’ I said. ‘Hel’s thing. Draugr king. Something happened twenty years ago. A spell washed over the land. And it changed something. It was like an evil seed, and now the seeds have grown discontent and evil spreads across the land. Father died fighting it.’

‘Your father left me here,’ she hissed. ‘You ask me to weep?’

‘No,’ I spat, and she grinned. ‘He thought you would be as bad for Midgard as Hel is. He did not want to serve you any more than Hel,’ I said and nearly chuckled at the incredulous look on her face. ‘We distrust the gods.’

‘You know anything about the gods?’ she whispered. ‘About my kin?’

‘I know little of Odin and the Aesir and Vanir, my lady,’ I admitted. ‘I was a thief.’

‘A thief?’ She chuckled. ‘Calling me a lady is a mistake,’ she hissed. ‘Your lady, indeed. You know I once struck a bargain with Thor. I would lay with him if I did not slay as many Jotuns—your kin—as he in a span of hundred years? We are no gentle, peaceful things. We slay and hold grudges. We are not friends to Jotuns, who blame us for their losses in the early ages. We are no friends, Jotun. And I am no simpering lady.’

I bit my lip and decided things could not be much worse. ‘So. How was he? Thor?’

She looked astonished at my temerity. She kept walking around me, but her weapon was now leaving a string of chain behind it; glowing, red-hot chain which she was looping around us and over the skulls that sizzled with heat and let out a noxious stench. She shook her head. ‘He is a god, Jotun. A warrior. He knows how to get to the point.’

‘Siff the Golden is not you friend, then?’ I asked her, hoping I recalled Thor’s wife’s name correctly.

She chuckled. ‘My, but you are brave. She is kind, patient, and a friend to wisdom, but who knows her heart? She might care for Thor, she might not. I suppose she does not like me. Are the ways still shattered?’ she asked me.

‘The ways? The Nine Worlds are shattered from each other as far as I know. We are lost and stuck … gods, dverger, I am, I suppose. This is my home but …’ I told her and shrugged.

She was nodding. ‘The Nine were sundered in Hel’s War. The Nine Worlds are all lost. Some had champions, like me, some not and none knows, not even the Fates what takes place in them. But here? We won. There were but a pittance of her army left after Magor—’

‘Fooled you, goddess. Trapped you here,’ I told her as her face hinted at a rising storm of fury. ‘The Jotuns trapped you here and have ruled above ever since.’

‘Have ruled?’ she choked. ‘Above? Not killed men? They have likely made a mess of it.’

I grinned. ‘The Beast of the North, the King of the Rose Throne, was Magor Danegell. He and his remaining Jotuns have governed the Red Midgard. It is a nation, my lady, of the north. He has ruled well.’

‘Ruled well?’ she hissed. ‘They came here to ransack the land. To take it from the gods. There were tens of thousands of them. And you say they blended in?’

‘They cast spells, they Stir the Cauldron, lady and none else can. We are shapeshifters, and I suppose Father fell in love with the land.’

‘Lies,’ she hissed while the coils of spellbound chain tightening around us. ‘He was a liar. An oath breaker. You are here to fetch the dverger to—’

‘To fight the enemy of all the living people,’ I said. ‘I told you. As I said, something happened twenty years ago. A spell? A storm was—’ I shuddered as a vision of a beautiful, red-headed girl was fighting a strange, powerful female with snakes for hair, releasing a complicated spell in her desperation. ‘A spell. It affected all the Nine, despite the sundering. Death is still the one thing that holds across the Nine, lady, and Hel has a power that spans death. The spell raised dead here, in Midgard. Draugr. And they have been plotting and killing and slaying as they go, and the High King is their lord. We have nearly lost Dagnar.’

‘Magor …’ she prompted me.

‘Dead,’ I said. ‘My mother died twenty years ago when they stole the gauntlet to—’

‘Keep me here,’ she said happily.

Yes, she was right,
I thought. They would have wanted to make sure the Jotuns were the only enemy they had to topple. ‘How did they know of me?’ she asked.

‘Unlucky chance,’ I told her. ‘The dead family whom Hel’s spell chose had been keeping the history of the land, and so they knew all about the Jotuns and you.’

‘How unfortunate,’ she smiled. ‘And this High King is another abomination?’

‘Yes, lady, that he is. And now I need that army,’ I told her stubbornly, nodding at the ranks of dverger. I was aware her mood was swinging from murderous to intrigued and then murderous again.

‘I will leave this place,’ she spat. ‘Perhaps I shall fight the bastard armies of Hel. I shall seat myself as the queen of Midgard instead? Perhaps. But they shall stay.’ She nodded at the dark mass of dverger on the outcropping.

‘No,’ I told her. ‘And Red Midgard has a king. Not a queen. You were a general, not—’

She stopped in front of me, the red-hot coils now burning the skulls around us. They flared up to dreadful flames of dark red and black. She stood there, slender and beautiful, full of god-like anger. ‘I am an Aesir. That makes me the queen of men. You came here to ask me for my throne and an army. And what will you give in return?’

‘My fealty to Odin?’ I asked her and saw she was skeptical. I frowned. ‘I can bring you supper?’

‘Odin might accept, but I do not trust you. Your family is sworn to Hel,’ she hissed. ‘What of that?’

‘I was raised a human,’ I told her stubbornly. ‘And I just told the lot there I’d take the blame if they abandon her. It was good enough for them, maybe.’

‘If Hel finds you on her doorstep,’ she laughed, ‘she will declare a feast. Traitor. Your father betrayed her, me, and now you would do the same to Hel.’

‘I can swear fealty to Odin,’ I told her mulishly. ‘He can surely see my worth? Hel be damned.’

‘Curse Odin,’ she hissed. ‘And damn Hel. You swear to me.’

‘You seem to have plans for your own world?’ I asked her.

‘I deserve the world,’ she said as she cut off a spontaneous giggle, the flames dancing around her now. ‘The gods are not here. I am. I fought for this world. You come here to make demands on a goddess, on an Aesir. You know who I am?’

‘A demi-goddess,’ I said arrogantly. ‘I suppose you can die?’

‘What?’ she asked me, her lips thin with rage. ‘What did you say? Die? Yes, I can die. That might kill me.’ She tapped my dverg-made sword. ‘Thousand of the dverger might do it. But I don’t die quickly. Say my name.’

‘Baduhanna, Badwahenae or just the Bitch, as they call you,’ I told her. ‘A goddess who tortures the living with plenty while they eat mushrooms and mold for thousands of years? I know which I would use if I ate shit for your maliciousness. I swear you nothing. Give them to me. My army.’

‘I’ll let you join your relative, Maskan,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’ll leave you here to have a long rest with him. Then I’ll go up and put things right.’

‘You were trapped by a Jotun.’ I laughed at her, terrified to my core at the now burning eyes. ‘The dead will find a way to kill you. Or trap you again. Possibly in a place worse than this.’

‘The junk,’ she said and nodded at my gauntlet. ‘Give me the piece of scrap. It will obey me. And show me the spell to get out of here.’

‘No,’ I told her and lifted my sword.

She giggled madly, filled with power, and yanked at her weapon. The burning coils shot up from the burning pile of skulls, lightning fast. I jumped up in the air, felt the heat scalding my armored calves as I landed before her. I wiped the sword down at her, but the shield was there, and a thunderous boom echoed in the cavern. I thought I heard the dverger murmur, and I realized they were making bets, most all against me, no doubt. The burning chain was twirling around me, about to split me in half, but I changed to what Father had changed to and came down on her shield as a huge ice bear. Sparks flew from the thing as we fell over her throne of bones and tumbled away to the darkness beyond. As we rolled, I lost sight of all the bones, the lake, and the dverger city. I heard nothing but her laughter in my ears as I raked my claws at her, but the shield was impossibly fast, and sparks ignited my fur. Worse, the fire chain was curling around my rear legs now. She slammed the shield at my snout, and I fell back. I scrambled on the skulls, felt the chain retreat, and as I looked up at her, I saw her shining figure slamming the flail at me. It struck me on the side, and I roared with molten, insidious pain as I was scorched to the bone. I fell on my side as she giggled happily, danced to the side and aimed a swing for my neck. I shot forward, turned into a Jotun, and howled as her hit took a piece of my armored back with it though I was spared decapitation. I felt blood pouring down my back, and the terrible woman was licking her lips in anticipation, fascinated by the battle, her short tunic fluttering with the power and speed of her movements. She pushed me away, and I skidded on skulls and bones. I swiped the blade at her, the long and deadly sword thrumming with power, dangerous perhaps even to a goddess, and she blocked it again with her shield. I charged forward again, threw all my weight at her, and it was a lot of weight.