“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, I want to go with you!"

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

"But I’m always safe with you."

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.”

"Can I go if I call you an idiot and stroke your face with my paw?"

No.

Oberon whined. "This isn’t fair!"

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

"What if you don’t come back?"

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

"They wouldn’t call me Oberon. They’d call me Max. You know how many big dogs are named Max? Like, 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.

"Well, I’ve always been smarter than you."

Chapter 27

I understand the attraction of forgiving gods. There are times, like this one, during which I wish for nothing so much as forgiveness for my trespasses, and if I could truly feel such forgiveness, I would cling to the source of it like a newborn to his mother’s breast. But Odin doesn’t forgive. Nor do the Tuatha Dé Danann. The attitude of both parties is to make whatever restitution is possible and, in the words of my old archdruid, “stop looking at the entire world as a hole to put your c*ck in.”

There was no pardon in the face of Frigg either, who amongst the Norse was most likely to offer succor to those who sought it. Her eyes were cold. She would never say to me, “Go now, you are forgiven.”

To seek absolution from humanity would be to seek my own folly. One may speak of forgiveness here, and another may actually mean it there, but legions remain who would condemn a starving man to amputation for pinching a crust of bread. We are petty creatures who seek to aggrandize ourselves by feasting on the dignity of our fellows.

There was nothing to be done; weeping would not mend it, nor would raging. I could only strive to live so that my merit outweighed my discredit. To pay for the lives of nearly five thousand dwarfs slain by my careless words, I had to kill the biggest, baddest wolf in all the world’s stories.

Fenris wouldn’t fall for a bowl of poisoned kibble. He’d probably turn up his nose at a poisoned steak too; he was too smart to be tricked. Had Týr not been willing to sacrifice his arm, he never would have allowed himself to be bound by Gleipnir, the masterwork of Fjalar’s ancestors, the unbreakable dwarven fetter made of six impossible things. Fenris was a wolf that could reason and speak like a man—like an Old Norse man, anyway. He’d trust nothing from the hand of the Norse anymore. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t poison him.

“Give us time to prepare?” I said to Frigg. “Where and when shall we meet Freyja and the Black Axes?”

“On the very tip of the peninsula southeast of Skoghall in Sweden. Östra Takene. You know it?”

“North end of Vänern Lake?”

“Precisely. Say, midnight, Swedish time. Will that be sufficient for your purposes?”

“I think so.”

“Then Freyja will see you there.” Frigg rose, and, belatedly, so did the rest of us. Oberon recognized that our visit was finished.

"Guess there won’t be any dessert, then."

Fjalar glowered at me from underneath his impressive brows, but the effect was ruined by his comically bald chin. Frigg nodded to us and we thanked her and Fjalar for their hospitality. The dwarf growled at us, which I supposed was the best I could expect from him right then.

"Can you at least ask for the recipe before we go?"

I think he’d rather put us in his next recipe.

We showed ourselves out of the foreman’s manse and walked up the hill to our own cabin.

“So we’re going to Hel, eh? How do we prepare for that?”

“We’re going to yet another sporting goods store—one here in the States, preferably without dark elves or vampires inside, where we can get ourselves some bows and arrows. Then we’re going to cook us up a big heaping batch of poison.”

“Let me guess: wolfsbane?”

“Yep. Why should we wear rubber gloves?”

“Because the aconite in the leaves will seep through our skin.”

“Ogma was right,” I said. “You are well trained.” I was expecting a well-deserved punch on the arm, but Granuaile instead sank down and swept my feet out from under me and dropped me on my back. She kept walking and spoke over her shoulder.

“Trained by the best,” she said. I was about to declare that I loved her when she added, “It’s not going to work.”

“What isn’t?”

She stopped and turned around, waiting for me to get up. “Picking him off safely from a distance using poisoned arrows.”

“Why not?”

“Because somebody else would have done it by now if it were that easy. Freyja could go down there by herself with a sniper rifle and put a bullet in his brain if it were that easy. Odin could have used his spear. A hobbit could have chucked a rock at him with such accuracy and velocity that it beggars belief.”

"I’m going to do a Rick James parody in your honor, Granuaile. “She’s a very clever girl, the kind you don’t take home to Ogma. She will never give you Brussels sprouts when she could give you steak.”"