The Gospel of Loki (24 page)

LESSON 8

Judgement

Run first, talk later.

Lokabrenna

T
URNS OUT
my instincts were right again. By the time the hangovers lifted and the sweet light of understanding had dawned, Yours Truly had been unanimously condemned by everyone in Asgard, not just of Balder’s death, but of every crime imaginable.

Once more, everyone remembered something I’d done to offend them – with the exception of Sigyn, of course, who could never believe anything bad of me, and Idun, who could never really believe anything bad of
anyone
.

The rest of them made up for that, however. Skadi was particularly venomous, demanding my blood on the instant, and Heimdall was all too happy to remind them that he had never trusted me, and that if they’d listened to him in the first place, I would never have been allowed to gain a foothold in Asgard.

Finally, sensing weakness, he dared confront the Old Man.

‘What are you going to do?’ he said. ‘Loki has declared war on all of us. Are you going to wait until he marches on Asgard with all of Chaos at his heels, or will you finally admit that you were wrong to take him in?’

Odin gave a low growl. Well, at least I imagine he did. Of course, I wasn’t there to hear it. But I heard enough subsequent dialogue to be able to hazard a pretty good guess. Besides, I knew the Old Man better than he suspected, and I knew that sooner or later he would have to choose a side.

No prizes for guessing which side he chose. Not that I blame him – well, not much. The others were ready to turn on him if he didn’t condemn me. Besides, I had outlived my usefulness, except perhaps as a means of uniting them in shared hatred. And at that point, I knew that the Old Man needed Order a lot more than he needed Chaos.

And so began the hunt. Of course, I knew what would happen if I were caught. I had Nine Worlds in which to hide, and runes with which to conceal myself. And I was good at hiding – but I was outnumbered, and friendless, and Odin had his ravens, his people, his spies and his Oracle.

They combed the Nine Worlds for my signature; tracked me out of Ironwood; tracked me to the Northlands; lost my trail in World Beyond; found it again in the mountains. I kept on the move, shielding myself; changing Aspect whenever I could. Eventually I found a place where I felt almost safe. I hid, hoping to outlast their rage until the crisis was over.

But the gods were relentless. First, they gave me an ultimatum, scrawled across the sky in glam:
Give yourself up. We still have the boys.

From my hideaway, I sneered. Did they really think I’d fall for something
that
crude? They knew I was hardly Dad of the Year. And those boys were barely out of their teens. I knew Odin was ruthless, but would he really murder my sons, just for the crime of sharing my blood? Obviously, it was a trap. I wasn’t going to fall for it.

Then came the birds. Those thrice-damned birds, who’d tracked me to my hideaway, a cave in the Hindarfell mountains. They circled, then came down and perched on an outcrop of rock close by.

I considered giving them a shot of my glam, but Hugin and Munin had Odin’s protection, and I doubted even my best shot would have even singed their feathers.

And so I came out to meet them, first checking that they were alone.

‘What do you want?’

The larger bird
crawk
ed. The smaller seemed to struggle for speech, pecking at the other one in what seemed like frustration.

‘Cake
,’ it said in a rusty voice, its golden eyes shining hopefully.

‘No chance,’ I said. ‘What does he want?’

The smaller bird – Munin – flapped its wings. ‘
Ack-ack. Come back.’

‘What, and leave all this?’ I said. ‘No, I think I’ll stay right here.’

Munin flapped its wings again. ‘
Ack-ack
.’

Hugin joined in the mayhem, pecking at the rock at its feet, flapping its wings and
crawk
ing.

‘Loki. Two (crawk!) in Asgard
,’ said Munin, who clearly had trouble with sibilants.

‘Two sons. That’s right.’ I was getting impatient. ‘And if the Old Man really believes that I’m going to give myself up just because he’s holding them hostage in my place . . .’

‘Ack-acck
!’ said Hugin, beginning to peck at the rock again. The pecks were slow and measured, each one roughly at a second’s interval.

Peck. Peck
.

Two seconds.

Peck
. Three seconds. He was measuring time.

I looked at Munin wildly. ‘What’s he doing? What
is
this?’ I said.

Munin said: ‘
Ack-ax-ty. Ax-ty ack-en.’

‘Sixty? Sixty seconds?’ I said. ‘Sixty seconds until what?’

But I’d already understood. The birds might have problems
with language, but I knew Odin only too well. Never forget that the Old Man was as ruthless as I was myself. He wanted to hit me where it hurt. And he knew me
very
well.

Hugin was still counting down. Twenty seconds. Twenty-five.

‘Wait,’ I said, feeling suddenly cold.

‘
Come back
,’ said Munin.

Thirty seconds.
Peck. Peck
. Each one felt like a hammer blow. I knew the Old Man was watching me through the eyes of those damned birds, trying to second-guess my thoughts, trying to outmanoeuvre me.

‘I’m not going to fall for this,’ I said. ‘Vali and Narvi mean nothing to me.’

Peck.
Forty seconds.
Peck
.

‘You know you’ve got nothing to bargain with,’ I said, forcing a brave, brash smile. ‘Those boys belong to Sigyn, not me. Killing them won’t change a thing. So go ahead, brother. Do the deed. Put them out of their misery. You’re the one with the conscience, not me. So – do you feel lucky? Play or—’

And on that syllable, both birds took wing. With a sound like feathered applause, they rose into the ice-blue sky. And at that moment, a world away . . .

Don’t ask me how I knew. I
knew
.

The thing was, he’d corrupted me with feelings and sensations. In my pure, Chaotic form, I wouldn’t have cared for a moment, however many of my children he killed. But here, in this Aspect, weakened; alone; tormented by fear and guilt and remorse; hunger and cold and discomfort – none of them natural to a being like myself, not born to these sensations.

And the Old Man knew, of course. He was the one who had poisoned me. And he had known how to get to me, and thought he could force me to show myself.

What did they really expect me to do? Come howling back into Asgard, so they could shoot me down in flames? Declare war? Demand recompense? That’s what a
warrior
would have done. That might have earned me some respect, according to
their twisted honour code.

But no – it was too late for that. Odin had taken his revenge. Had I really believed he would? Honestly, I don’t know. I’d always known he was
capable
of doing these things, but to do them to
me
?

And so I stayed in hiding, moving from the Hindarfell underground through World Below. The Aesir widened the search for me, sending Skadi to hunt me in the Northlands; Ran to comb the seas with her net; Njörd to search the rivers. Sól and Mani, the Sun and the Moon, roamed the skies in search of me; the Tunnel Folk looked for me underground; everyone was on the alert for the faintest gleam of my signature.

Frigg was especially tireless. Just as she had canvassed every root and blade of grass after the death of Balder, she now sent out a general call to seek and locate Yours Truly. There was talk of a reward, but mostly folk seemed happy to help. I’d known I wasn’t popular, but not the extent of the hatred levelled at my humble self, growing ever more humble as the circle began to close.

I won’t lie. I was getting scared. Everyone was against me. I’d holed up in the Northlands, in the valley of the Strond, on top of a hill from which I could see for miles. Under the Hill was a gateway that led to World Below and beyond; it was a kind of crossroads, with escape routes in every direction.

For months I lived as a fugitive, shielding my signature; saving my glam. I built a hut from turf and wood; I lived on fish from the river below. Winter was coming; I was cold. At night I was afraid to sleep, for fear that they might track me through Dream. In short, I was about as miserable as any of them could have hoped, and yet it wasn’t enough for them. They wanted me to suffer more.

I don’t know how they found me at last. Perhaps through Dream – I
had
to sleep. In any case, they came for me, converging on my hiding place like wolves on their prey.

I saw their signatures too late; a net of runelight, closing
fast. Nine of the usual suspects: Heimdall, approaching in hawk Aspect; Skadi, in her snow wolf guise, with her runewhip in her jaws; Thor, with Mjølnir, in his chariot; Njörd, riding a kayak downstream; Frey with his golden boar; Freyja in her falcon cloak; Idun and Bragi on horseback, and of course, the General, mounted on Sleipnir, spear in hand, in full Aspect, flying his colours across the sky like a victory banner.

There was nowhere left to run. I shifted Aspect to that of a fish and slipped into the river. The water was deep; maybe I could hide among the stones of the river bed. But rivers were Njörd’s territory; he must have seen my colours, somehow. He reached for the fishing net at his belt and cast it into the water. The weighted mesh fell around me like Fate.

I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that I put up a fight, but that it wasn’t nearly enough. The net was woven through with binding-runes, much like the ones that made up Hel’s rope. I later learnt that Hel herself had aided in its construction, presumably as a means of getting back in with the popular crowd. Or maybe her resentment of me was enough to eclipse her dislike of them. In any case, the net was proof against even my Wildfire Aspect, and after several unsuccessful attempts to free myself of its choking mesh, I was hauled onto the bank, naked, freezing and dripping wet.

‘Gotcha,’ said Heimdall, unpleasantly.

I looked away and said nothing. I wasn’t going to plead for my life; it wouldn’t have worked anyway, and I wasn’t about to give Goldie the satisfaction of seeing me beg. Instead I sat up as best I could and affected an air of unconcern.

‘I say kill him now,’ said Thor. ‘Before he gets away again.’

‘He isn’t going to get away.’ Skadi gave her chilly smile. ‘We can take our time with him. Make it an occasion.’

‘I agree,’ said Heimdall. ‘He deserves something special. Besides, Frigg will want to be there to witness his execution.’

The others seemed inclined to agree. Bragi wanted time to
compose a ballad for the big day; Freyja had a special outfit she wanted to wear and all of them wanted time to discuss the precise method of my dispatching.

Only Idun and the Old Man said nothing. Odin was standing apart from the rest of them, a hand on Sleipnir’s bridle. But Idun had come to sit by my side; I caught the scent of flowers and saw that in the time she’d been sitting there, a number of nearby bushes had been coaxed into early blossom. It was a little warmer, too.

She looked at Odin and said: ‘You can’t.’

Heimdall gave a sneer. ‘Why not?

‘Because he was one of us,’ she said.

Well,
that
was wrong for a start, I thought. I was never one of you.

I said: ‘Go ahead and kill me. Just don’t let Bragi play his lute.’

Idun looked at Odin. ‘You gave your word. You know what that means.’

‘I
didn’t swear,’ Skadi said. ‘Nor did the others.’

Heimdall agreed. ‘He has to die. He’s too dangerous to live. You heard what the Oracle said. When the time comes, he’ll betray us to Surt in exchange for his miserable life.’

So, Odin had confided the Oracle’s prophecy to Goldie, had he? I wondered why that surprised me. In fact, the Old Man had probably discussed it with everyone but me, debating its meaning extensively over the contents of his wine cellar. Conclusion: Loki, the traitor, having first attacked the gods in the most cruel and underhand way, would sell them over to Surt, in exchange for his rehabilitation.

I wish
.

I could have explained at that point that Surt doesn’t
do
exchanges. Exchanges, parley, truces, deals – Surt doesn’t play by those kinds of rules. As for traitors, he deals with them just as he does with everyone else. The sea does not distinguish between individual grains of sand. It passes over everything, and there is no stopping it.

But Odin was looking thoughtful. Words, like names, are powerful things. Once given, there’s no taking them back without risking serious consequences. Besides, we’d
both
heard the prophecy, though Odin didn’t know about my conversation with Mimir’s Head. Both of us already knew what was going to happen to me. Neither of us wanted it – but that was hardly the point, of course.

I looked up at the Old Man and quoted the words of the Oracle:

Now comes a fire-ship from the east,
With Loki standing at the helm.
The dead rise; the damned are unleashed;
Fear and Chaos ride with them.