Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles) (19 page)

“Ugh. Yeah. Maybe we can shut that path down.”

“I don’t wish to set them all on fire. Relations with Odin are going to be strained enough as it is.”

“I don’t want that either. We could immobilize them from here by binding their legs together, or whatever. I’ll take the leather, you take the glass? Then we talk to Hugin and Munin.”

“I like this plan.”

“Then let’s make it so,” I said, with my best attempt at imitating Sir Patrick Stewart.

We both began to speak in Old Irish, crafting bindings that would force swaths of leather or glass to adhere to another one we targeted nearby. I started with the nearest fully bearded dwarf I could see in the second rank, zeroing in on the leather jerkin peeking through the joints of his armor and binding it to his neighbor. When they were yanked off balance by the binding and then collided, they fell down into the snow, with much cursing and confusion. I repeated the binding on two more nearby soldiers and made an ungainly grouping of four hopping-mad dwarfs, spitting at each other as they tried to win free. Then I moved on to repeat the process with four more and saw that Brighid was operating in much the same way, though a lot faster. The Glass Knights were covered all over in those runed glass tiles, whereas the leather on the dwarfs was a bit more difficult to pinpoint. It took a half hour or so, but we eventually had the entire army tied up into clusters that could still move if they cooperated but could certainly not fight. They were having some pretty epic tantrums about it too; I didn’t think the spirit of cooperation was going to blossom anytime soon.

“Now,” Brighid said, projecting her voice over the field as only the goddess of poetry could, “let us discuss how we can all go home alive after this.”

She lowered us to the ground slowly, and it would have been awesome except that when I touched down, my right leg would not support my weight. Besides the gammy hamstring, my knee had been thrashed, so it was simply saying “nope” to helping me stay upright. Toppling over sideways did not make me look like a badass. Luckily, Brighid was commanding enough for the both of us.

Her helmet tilted back and she found the ravens circling above. “Hugin and Munin. Odin. Listen well, for I speak true.” Her voice boomed in three registers. “We bear Asgard no ill will and regret the injuries and death sustained today. We acted to prevent war and save life rather than take it. We wish the Svartálfar to join us against Loki and Hel on the day that Ragnarok arrives. We believe they will play a pivotal role once they become our allies instead of a neutral third party. Bringing them to our side will require effort, but it is an effort we feel you should make, so that both they and the Æsir can continue to thrive.”

Some jeers and epithets got hurled in our direction at that, but Brighid ignored them.

“Send an envoy—unarmed—to negotiate in good faith. I will guarantee safe conduct for both sides. Your army will remain here until I hear a reply. They will be released to return to Asgard once that envoy appears. That is all.”

Hugin and Munin squawked and spiraled into the clouds, ascending up the root of Yggdrasil to return to Odin.

Brighid surveyed the army for potential threats, saw that they remained akimbo in the snow and supremely cheesed at us, and nodded in satisfaction before turning to check on me.

“How fare you, Druid?”

“Leg is pretty messed up, but I’ll be able to limp out of here eventually. Working on it. Is Fjalar truly dead, or can we save him?”

She took in the charred remains of those she had set aflame; I could smell the cooked flesh and saw smoke rising from the corpses, but I had hope that perhaps he was merely unconscious. Brighid evaluated the bodies for a few seconds and shook her head. “Fire is unforgiving, and I did not hold back.”

“Oh.” I was sorry for that and wished Fjalar would have been more reasonable. Silence fell between us, except for the uncomfortable shifting of bodies in the army and the dark curses muttered at us from various quarters.

“Shall we go visit the Svartálfs while we wait?” I said. “Sitting here in front of the army is getting awkward fast.”

“Very well.”

We flew back to the dark doors of Svartálfheim and called out that we had good news: The army had been halted and an envoy would arrive soon for talks.

“No one else need die today,” Brighid said. “We can talk in peace of a more lasting accord.” With her permission, I stood behind her right shoulder, kept my weight on my left leg, and surreptitiously leaned on her back for support. Soon the doors opened and the leaders of the Svartálfar reemerged. This time, they deigned to favor Brighid with a shallow bow, and she in turn did the same and removed her helmet. If I stopped leaning on Brighid to remove mine, I would fall over, so I kept my helmet on.

It was poetry after that. Brighid was much better at slinging words around than I was, and before long we had a pavilion set up outside with tables and chairs and hot drinks and nobody killing anybody else. I got to sit, Brighid melted some snow away so that I could put my bare foot down on the earth and draw some strained energy from Gaia to aid my healing, and then she employed that honey-throated voice of hers to convince Turid and Krókr that fighting against the hordes of Hel would be better for the Svartálfar in the long run than sitting it out—the logic being that it was quite possibly going to be the end of the world, and you didn’t want that one to go the wrong way. She actually made them smile and laugh a couple of times, until the envoy from Asgard showed up an hour later.

It was not who we expected. Not that we expected anyone in particular, just that we did not expect that particular envoy. It was a man dressed entirely in gray with a beard like a cliff wall and a patch over one eye, with two ravens riding along on his shoulder: Odin himself. Everyone tried to be cool, but it’s difficult not to sit up a bit straighter when Odin joins your party. Sort of like if you’re relaxing with your friends and Neil deGrasse Tyson walks up, you suddenly want to talk about science: His arrival changes the subject. Two dark elves flanked him and one carried Gungnir, Odin’s spear.

“I come in peace,” Odin said right away, his head tilting toward the guard for a moment. “I gave up my weapon willingly.”

Introductions were made all around. When attention fell on me, Odin’s remaining eye narrowed but he said nothing. That was enough to communicate his displeasure with me, however.

“Excellent,” Brighid said. “Before we begin, can we all agree that saving the world would be better than allowing Loki to torch Midgard and all the nine realms to bring Gaia under his and Hel’s control?”

Everyone nodded or grunted assent, and Brighid beamed. “Good. That’s a strong foundation to build upon. The fact that the leaders are here and we don’t need to use go-betweens is also good. Let’s proceed.”

Hours of grievances and apologies followed, together with arguments and concessions and more than two trips into the trees to relieve bladders filled by hot spiced cocoa. I only mention those trips because they were perilous journeys for me, which I hopped at first and then gingerly limped through. At no point did we enter the doors of Svartálfheim.

Near the end I must have dozed off, lulled by the drone of carefully controlled voices, because Brighid had to shout me awake. “Siodhachan!”

“Eh? Wuzzah?”

“We are finished. I need your help unbinding the army.”

“Oh, yeah? Hey, yeah! I hope they’re not frozen to death. What did I miss?”

“Say your farewells and I will tell you on the way.”

Odin accompanied us back to the army, and Brighid filled me in. The new accord between Asgard and Svartálfheim included trade agreements, remunerations for past trespasses, new diplomatic channels—and also a promise that no dark elves would accept a contract that would harm Granuaile, Owen, or me.

“Wow,” I said, “that’s impressive.”

“And they will fight with us in Ragnarok,” Odin added, “which is all I wanted anyway. This exercise served its purpose.”

I nearly snarled but managed to merely grunt in response. Fjalar’s death, all those other dwarfs set on fire, was an
exercise
? Including the crafting of that armor and those axes? That was a long and risky game to play, believing that you could maneuver someone into becoming your ally by threatening to exterminate them first.

It wouldn’t have happened if Brighid and I had not become involved—which then made me wonder if she had been in collusion all along. Perhaps the Morrigan too. I would not put such scheming past any of them, even though it meant using Fjalar horribly and resulted in many other deaths besides. Would Fjalar still want to fight as one of the Einherjar, knowing that he’d been manipulated so? Would the Svartálfar wish to maintain their new alliance if they knew Odin had somehow tricked them into it?

It was all speculation, but I didn’t ask for confirmation from either of them. Brighid was my ride home.

T
raveling to Cape Arkona is not as quick as much of my travel, since there are no bound trees on the island. I have to shift to the German mainland and take a ferry out to Rügen. But because Orlaith has been so patient and such a good hound, we stop at a sausage haus and order a sampling of their trade—bratwurst, knackwurst, and weisswurst.

Orlaith is happy to be petted by a couple of older women on the ferry and obligingly growls at a young man who wishes to use her as an excuse to flirt with me. My weapon, Scáthmhaide, can be mistaken for a fancy walking stick so that to some eyes I look like a hiker instead of a martial artist.

“Ach! Control your dog!” he says to me in accented English.

“My hound is quite controlled. You will notice that she growled instead of bit you. That means you should go away now.”

He starts to berate me in German, an ugly sneer on his face. I don’t need to listen, so I ask Orlaith to bark and lunge at him but not bite. He jumps back and leaves us alone after that, though he curses us from what he thinks is a safe distance. I smile and wave him goodbye. The older women return and pet Orlaith some more.

Rügen turns out to be a lovely place, with expansive fields and rolling terrain. Orlaith and I stretch our legs and run across to the northeastern tip, passing hikers and campers and a shepherd with a small flock of sheep.

Orlaith comments.

The remains of Jaromarsburg rest precariously atop chalk cliffs that crumble into the sea a bit more every year. There are no handy signs telling me which way to go to find Świętowit, so I squat down, close my eyes, and reach out to the elemental of the region, which is associated with the lake plateau of the nearby mainland. It’s called Mecklenburg.

//Greetings / Harmony / Land is beautiful// I send to the elemental, and he—I don’t know why I’m assigning it a gender, but Mecklenburg just
feels
masculine—responds with joy.

//Greetings / Harmony / Welcome Fierce Druid//

I’m not sure how to proceed. I can hardly ask Mecklenburg if he saw a white horse go through here a thousand years ago. Elementals wouldn’t notice what color a horse was. They do tend to notice gods, however, since gods often warp existence around them and bend the rules a bit. Their magic leaves traces and therefore can be tracked.

//Query: any gods here?//

//Sometimes. Not now//

//Query: gods with horse?//

//Sometimes//

//Query: near my position?//

//Below. In ground//

That is perplexing. Why is the horse in the ground? Maybe the horse is dead? Or else there is a space underneath Rügen. I ask Mecklenburg to show me, and through my tattoos it guides me to a spot a few hundred yards away from Jaromarsburg, in a churned-up field lying fallow for the winter, past a lighthouse. The ground opens up in a square, showing me a flight of stone steps leading down into darkness, and I shake my head from the déjà vu. “Nope, nope, nope! I’m not doing that again,” I say aloud. I didn’t need another encounter with a creepy trickster god in a subterranean chamber. Though this is somewhat different from that pit in India: These steps are permanent, and the chamber is already excavated. It’s not an abandoned archaeological mystery but more of a secret underground lair, the entrance to which is disguised by a chunk of nondescript turf.

//Query: horse is down there?//

//Yes// Mecklenburg says.

//Query: which god visits horse?//

//Earth god Weles//

Oh. That would explain the location of the horse, at least. //Gratitude / Harmony / Will return later// I say, and urge Mecklenburg to close up the hole in the ground.

“Back to the ferry, Orlaith,” I say. “Weles might not be down there now, but I don’t want to face him alone if he comes back. We need backup.”

“No, I think they’re busy doing something else. We need Perun. He would know best how to deal with Weles.”

“He’s friendly. Atticus told me he likes to play with hounds. Oberon wrestled with him.”

“They wrestled for fun and succeeded in having plenty of fun, so I think they both won.”