The Apples of Idunn Read online

  The snows ran deep, five feet at least, covering all the North Realms. Farther north, men said it never melted. At least a thousand years of it, the vӧlvur said. Once, long ago, they said, there was a time of warmth. A time of true summers, where green covered the world. A time before the mists that blanketed all Midgard and stole the minds and memories of men. Vӧlvur said a lot of things. Odin suspected they knew far less than they pretended.

  Crossing Aujum in winter meant sledges drawn by dogs, yipping, barking, surging forward as if they also knew it. The fewer nights in the wild, the better. Cowardice sent you to Hel’s table. But if you forgot to fear the mists, you’d find yourself dead or worse.

  If they pressed hard enough, they might make Halfhaugr in three days. Three days—but the nights, oh, the nights they had to huddle around the largest fires they could manage, desperate to ward off not only the cold, but the mist and the fell vaettir it brought with it. The Hasding thegn with Hadding—Agilaz was his name—he knew his woodcraft. Each night he found a sheltered campsite and got a blazing fire going. And then Odin and the others would gather round, trying to stay warm, trying to pretend they did not hear the fell whispers far out in the night. Shades or vaettir, no doubt, watching them, waiting for the fires to die. Waiting to consume their flesh or souls. Vaettir despised men, even as they envied them their warmth, or so vӧlvur said.

  One such fire crackled this night. Tyr sat across from him, roasting a squirrel Agilaz had shot. Odin had consented to bring his own thegn on this trek, had left his brother in charge of the Wodanar in his absence. No sense dragging half the tribe along with him.

  A man had to be mist-mad to travel in winter. A night without shelter was apt to drag a man into the deathchill, leaving naught but a draug behind. The cold could freeze a body solid in an hour—and those who met such a fate without fire would find no peace even in death. The damned wandered the mist for all eternity, preying on the living in a futile effort to divert their own agony and rage.

  Odin knew about rage. About its futility. Some things which had been stolen could never be regained.

  He spat out into the darkness. His vengeance would not be denied. If ghosts or draugar or aught else stood in his way, he would cut them down with Gungnir and send them screaming down to Hel.

  “Jarl Borr called upon us several moons back,” Hadding’s daughter said.

  Odin glanced at her. Frigg looked a few years his junior, but she carried herself with the refined elegance of a born noblewoman—head high, back straight, and eyes sharp. He looked back to the fire. Father had oft called upon all the tribes, endlessly working to avoid war, always making plans. Trying to save everyone. Except himself.

  Head torn from his shoulders.

  Body mangled beyond recognition.

  Father.

  A corpse, rent in half.

  “He was a hero to many people,” Frigg said when Odin didn’t answer.

  He grunted. Yes. Father had been a hero, sure enough. A master warrior, a good man. Generous with his allies, implacable to his foes. And always there for his sons. Odin clenched his teeth so tightly they felt apt to crack. And still he could not release his bite. The pressure would keep him going while his fury kept him warm, simmering, boiling. The waiting ate at his guts. No, he need not worry overmuch about deathchill. Not with such heat consuming him from the inside out.

  Borr the hero. The warrior. The father.

  Head torn from his shoulders.

  “I understand your pain,” Frigg said.

  Odin snorted at that. His brothers—Vili and Ve—they could understand. Perhaps Tyr might begin to. The thegn had been closer to Borr than any man, probably looked at him as a kind of foster father. No one else could know.

  “You see, I lost my mother two winters back. I remember the hollowness, the consuming apathy toward life that threatened to bury me like a blizzard.”

  Apathy. No, Odin knew naught of apathy. His heart was an inferno, blazing with the need to act, to destroy and wreak revenge upon the entire world. So hot did he burn, he wondered that fire did not seep from his eyes, having no other outlet. He glared at the woman who dared think herself capable of knowing his loss. Apathy!

  “He left a legacy behind. A very fragile hope of peace between the nine tribes. In recent years, he had been helping arrange marriages to tie every tribe to every other. A web of alliances that …”

  Odin stopped listening to her. She meant to ask whether he was worthy of his father’s legacy. How could he be? How could anyone? Father had walked with the purpose and stature of one like Vingethor, like Loridi. A legend in his own lifetime, his fame spread across Aujum like a winter storm, touching every living Ás. And Odin, a mere man, had naught to offer next to such grandeur. Naught save vengeance. Father’s ghost could not be allowed to suffer as others did, trapped on Midgard, trapped in the mists.

  “And you must continue what he began,” Frigg was saying.

  “You fear for Halfhaugr,” he snapped. “So you feign empathy for me in the hope I will protect you.”

  Frigg stiffened and Tyr growled, poking the fire with a stick. Hadding and Agilaz had turned to him now, both watching him.

  “Was that my father’s legacy?” Odin asked. “To guard those too weak to help themselves?”

  “Boy!” Hadding coughed, choking on his own outburst. “I fought in the Njarar War while you were barely off your mother’s tit. Agilaz fought beside me. And you …” Another hacking fit of coughs interrupted him.

  “Jarl Hadding risked travel in winter. Out of respect for Borr,” Tyr said. Always chiding him. Like everyone else, he expected Odin to turn into his father. But no one could.

  Still, he supposed he ought to try. Even knowing he could not live up to that legacy, he must come as close as he could. He was the eldest son of Borr, after all. Odin waved the others to calmness. “You need not worry. I will uphold any oath my father made.”

  “Borr did not make us an oath, exactly.” Frigg laid a hand on his forearm, then jerked her arm away as if Odin truly were aflame. “I …”

  “Daughter?” Hadding coughed again. “Are you well?”

  “The weight of urd crashes upon us …” Frigg’s face had turned ashen, eyes staring off at something beyond sight.

  Urd? Now she spoke of fate. She talked like … Frey’s flaming sword! “You’re a fucking vӧlva.”

  For the jarl’s oldest daughter to be a vӧlva—she must have had some natural gift to be chosen for such a calling. Vӧlvur didn’t marry, not often, so the jarl sacrificed a valuable political asset. But some women were born with unnatural insight. You couldn’t trust them. They were always messing with strange plants, speaking to ghosts. And they could bespell a man’s mind with their beguiling seid.

  Let a vӧlva get her legs around you, and she’d ensorcel you. A vӧlva’s trench was as dangerous as a troll’s fist.

  Frigg blinked, shook her head, then scowled as if suddenly aware of him once again. “You say that as if it were a bad thing. Do the Wodanar not rely on their own vӧlvur?”

  His father had. He had looked to Heidr for guidance. But the vӧlva had not foreseen his death or betrayal, or had not warned him of it. She had failed her jarl. Odin would not make the same mistake of trusting in such otherworldly insights.

  Hadding’s daughter was dangerous.

  4

  A low fire simmered in the pit in Frigg’s room, its embers nigh burned out even as Sigyn huddled close, warming her hands. Sigyn’s half sister had returned from the Wodan town, and returned with the new jarl of that tribe, no less. Like any vӧlva, Frigg did what she did with a plan, though she oft kept close-lipped on the details. The vӧlva wanted Sigyn’s advice, of course, but had too much pride to ask for it or even to reveal her own endgame. Not that she had to.

  Whenever they played tafl—one more game sat abandoned on the board nearby—Sigyn always won, much to her elder sister’s chagrin. Frigg saw the board and the pieces, thought about her turns, and yet, somehow n
ever quite wrapped her mind around the finite possibilities of such a game. A limited number of moves existed and, discounting moves made without logic, fewer still remained.

  The Hasding tribe teetered upon a precipice, poised to collapse and be annihilated by any other tribe, be it the Skalduns, Godwulfs, or Itrmanni.

  Sigyn’s stomach churned at the thought of such a day. Men would come with fire and lust, burning and raping, quick to enslave whomever they could and butcher the rest. Warriors, like her foster family, they would die. Noble women, like her sister, would be lucky to find themselves forced into marriage.

  Even the Wodan tribe, those Frigg pled to for succor, had become a source of unpredictability. Their new jarl might embrace Borr’s peace or reject it, and betray the Hasdingi to their enemies. It meant Frigg needed to sway this Odin and do so quickly, before he set his course. To win him to their side, the Hasdingi would need to seduce him, be it with silver, political power, or a more literal seduction, and the vӧlva daughter of a jarl would know of all such means.

  From the way Frigg sat now, eyes staring into the flames, Sigyn could guess how well any of those tactics had worked. Frigg’s maid, Fulla, brought a bowl of soup to her lady, then offered Sigyn one as well. Unlike everyone else in the fortress, the maid had never looked on Sigyn with disdain. Truly, even from a servant, a woman had to appreciate that.

  “Careful now,” Fulla said. The maid had fiery red hair, a face full of freckles, and an over-quick smile. “It’s plenty hot and more than fresh.”

  “How can something be more than fresh?” Sigyn mumbled, not really looking at the maid.

  “Really, now, that’s a silly question from such a smart girl. You just have to ask the cooks, you do, you tell them ‘I want this extra fresh,’ and they give it to you. With a smile. Most times you just have to ask for what you want.”

  Sigyn snorted.

  “See now.” Fulla pointed a finger at her. “You didn’t leave the alfar their copper, did you? Now I told you twice, you just need to offer up a copper—in the right place, of course, in an alf stone—and they’d help you find yourself luck in love. But you didn’t try it, did you now?”

  “No man wants a wife smarter than she is,” Sigyn mumbled under her breath. Freyja, she was tired of hearing her father spout that nonsense! She’d think the daughter of the jarl—even the bastard daughter—would have prospects. And yet, nineteen winters was already nigh past marrying age. She shook her head at Fulla. “If the alfar exist at all, why would they take the least interest in who a mortal girl married?”

  Fulla opened her mouth, but Frigg answered first. “They exist, all the vaettir do, sister, just beyond the edge of our world. The Otherworlds touch ours in places. Do not forget that.”

  “And,” Fulla added, “they’d care about your marriage if you paid them the copper, they would.”

  Sigyn rolled her eyes.

  “Jarl Odin has a grander urd upon him than I would have first thought.” Frigg looked at Sigyn. There it was, wanting advice, wanting to know how to plan her next move, but too proud to ask for it.

  Sigyn folded her arms. “You’ve had one of your visions.” She made special effort to keep any disdain from her voice. “But you don’t know what it means, whether you saw some truth or whether your vision was the result of smoking nasty weeds.”

  “I do not smoke weeds, sister.”

  Sure. “If you are so convinced of your mystical abilities, why do you still doubt them?”

  “I do not doubt my visions. I just … Odin cares only for avenging his father and seemed more than taken aback to learn of my status.”

  Sigyn raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, I did not tell him I was a vӧlva. He determined as much after I read him.”

  Sigyn sighed, then poked the fire. Tending it was Fulla’s task, but Sigyn was used to taking care of such things herself. Not everyone grew up in the jarl’s fortress. Unlike Frigg, Sigyn had learned independence from a young age. “Whatever you plan now will fail, not because you’ve chosen the wrong plan, but because you’ve chosen the wrong time. When you lost your mother, would you have received the advances of a man, political, sexual, or otherwise?”

  Frigg frowned and rubbed her arms at the mention of Fjorgyn’s death two winters back. Sigyn had comforted Frigg as best she could, but Fjorgyn had always despised Sigyn as the reminder of her husband’s infidelity. Only with Fjorgyn’s death had Sigyn even been allowed inside her father’s hall. It made it hard to truly mourn the woman’s passing. Her death did not make this place home, though, nor did it endear her to anyone in it. She came here for Frigg, because her sister needed her, even if she hated to admit it.

  Fulla clucked her tongue. “Now why’d you have to go and bring that up? Here my lady was almost able to forget how her mother went and died like that. It’s a hard thing you know, a hard thing indeed, losing a parent. Now I would know, see. I lost both my parents back in the war, and here I was a tiny girl, not even ten winters.”

  Sigyn fixed Fulla with a level gaze, but the maid didn’t catch the barest hint of her intent. The Njarar War had cost them all a great deal. Sigyn’s mother had died, too, and her father would have exposed her to the winter were it not for his thegn Agilaz taking her in. She sympathized with Fulla, of course, but the woman had the unending effusiveness of a girl of three winters and the credulity to match. “If you wish to win Odin to our side,” she said to her sister, “help him avenge Borr. Then, while he is flush with victory, then you start making your moves.”

  Frigg frowned. “Yes, I told him about a tracker who came here, one Father has housed in the fortress.”

  Sigyn shrugged. “Good. How you help him doesn’t matter overmuch, just that, if he succeeds, he remembers he owes you. And if he fails, still he knows you aided him as best you could.” She rose, stretching.

  “You won’t stay here tonight?” Frigg asked.

  Sigyn shook her head. Sleeping in Frigg’s room she’d be safe enough, yes, but not even their father seemed to want her here. She had better places to be, places where people might relish her company, and where none would look on her with the contempt of Hadding’s court.

  5

  Halfhaugr lay at the center of Aujum, and thus some might have called it the heart of Aesir lands. It earned its name from the hill it sat on, broken as if a jotunn had cleft it in half. A spiked wooden wall protected the town, with a single entrance by the river. Odin had visited here before, of course, and like now, he could not decide whether he ought to be impressed at the defenses or not. Yes, the strong wall and the fortress beyond probably kept the people safe within—even as it kept them prisoner in their own homes, slaves to the fears that surrounded them. Fears of the mist, of the vaettir, of even the other tribes of Aesir all too eager to claim this central location.

  Odin’s tribe traded the security of such places for the ability to pursue game as it migrated. The Hasdingi would have to send their hunters far and wide to feed themselves. These people were ruled by their fears. Whatever they feared … they long ago had let it conquer them. And a people conquered once could be conquered again.

  Still, the fortress itself was built of ancient stone, marked with strange runes perhaps only vӧlvur could read. It stood tall, with a pair of ravens sitting atop its peak as if taunting him. Ravens fed on corpses, and taking this place would create a great many of those.

  Jarl Hadding had given his guest a room within the fortress. Odin and Tyr awaited this foreigner now, sitting in a feast hall lit by too few braziers and no windows. The whole place was choked in shadow and stank of too many men, women, and hounds huddling too close together.

  “I do not understand why you think some foreigner will find what I could not,” Tyr said. “Your place is guiding your tribe. Not charging off alone on such a vain hope.”

  Odin shrugged. “Go back to them, if you will. I’ll not let any chance to avenge Father pass me by.”

  The shadows half masked Tyr’s answering scowl. Tyr cr
acked his neck. “I have no intention of letting the heir of Borr get himself killed.”

  They sat apart from the other Hasding warriors. A few had tried to approach, to offer mead or elk flesh for the night meal. Odin had accepted the food but ushered away company. He did not come here seeking companionship from the cowards hiding behind these walls.

  “I’m not going to die.”

  Tyr thumped the table with his forefinger. “I fear you haven’t given proper thought to our own guest. Idunn. She comes to you and asks you to fulfill Borr’s legacy. To make yourself king of Aesir. How can you back away from such a calling? What better way to honor your father? If you were to unite the Aesir we could fulfill his dreams and more.”

  Odin rubbed the stubble on his chin before fixing Tyr with a level gaze. Surely his father’s thegn knew better than that. Odin had a greater duty to his father. He had sworn blood vengeance, and he was damned tired of having to remind everyone of that.

  A figure drifted toward them, moving in and out of firelight and shadow. The man nodded at them as he drew nigh, and Odin motioned for him to sit. The stranger did so, staring at Odin with intensely blue eyes, almost like crystal. Deep, haunted, seeming to know too much. Like some damned vӧlva. The stranger had reddish brown hair hanging down to his cheekbones, contrasting with the darker hair of his short beard.

  “You are Loki?” Odin asked.

  “Yes, Odin, I am.”

  Frigg must have told him about them. The man didn’t talk like a foreigner, though the vӧlva had referred to him as such. His skin tone was a bit deeper than normal, though perhaps not so much as Idunn’s. “Where do you hail from?”

  Loki laced his fingers together on the table, eyes refusing to release Odin from their gaze. “That’s not what you came here to ask me, nor would names of far off lands hold much meaning to your ears.”

  “Miklagard?” The southern empire was more legend than place, at least to most tribes, but Odin had heard the Friallaf tribe had fought several skirmishes against them. They sailed the Black Sea in great longships every summer, seeking plunder and glory.