The Wolf Hammer, page 27
part #1 of Odin's Bastard Series
I snarled at him and feeling vicious and cruel, I looked at his study.
“The book,” he whispered, looking at his stump, “cannot be harmed.”
“But the rest can,” I said and braided together an inferno.
The library was engulfed instantly.
It burned like a dry pile of hay, and everything in it was destroyed in an eyeblink.
The book remained, open but on the floor.
I pushed away from the flames.
Mar’s skull cracked open.
Od was shaking with rage.
His face was twitching, and I felt he was gathering great powers. “Children,” he said. “I am now warmed up.”
He let go of a spell.
Everything on the floor around him seemed to jump up. Thousands of coins, bits of stone, wood, and broken urns were lifted and then they were broken, like a child was breaking clay into sharp, dry pieces. The things turned into sharp, serrated missiles, and then they began spinning in the air around him.
Vali howled and summoned energies to guard him.
I called for the fiery shield and jumped for Chal. She screamed with pain, for part of her was outside the protection. The coins and bones and sharp debris in the room flew around. Od was laughing and in the middle of it, not far. I saw Vali standing, hurt by hundreds of such missiles, his swords, and weapons falling.
I saw him tossing something my way before he crashed to the wall, and partially in it.
The Wolf Hammer landed near me. I reached for it, and the debris tore at my hand, and still, I pulled it to me.
The storm went on for a long time.
Then, suddenly, it ended.
The items around him just stopped and fell like rain.
I found I was alive. I got up, on shaky feet, and held the shield out to him.
Od was walking about, touching the stump of his arm, and debris and bits of coins were falling from the crack in the ceiling, and pages of destroyed books were falling like rain. He was watching Chal, who was still and bleeding next to me.
“You do not look good,” he said, as he turned his eyes on me. “Neither do you. When you fight jotuns, and their kin, you are as mortal as you would be facing men as men. You are not above death, Lok spawn.”
He was right.
I had a huge bruise in my chest and a wound on my side, another wound in my back, and dozens of deep lacerations.
And the hammer was making my life hell.
The hammer hurt more than ever, my hand shaking with the pain.
Od turned to watch the last of us.
Vali was standing, weak, bleeding, one arm ripped. He fell back against the wall.
“Weak,” Od whispered and looked at me. “Will you take your hammer, boy?” he asked with humor, “and use it. Come. Kill a god.”
“I think,” I said, as I walked for it, “that you are no god. The least useful of the lot, a terrible lover to your wife—”
“Terrific,” he said, snarling and spitting.
“She says that of Odin alone, and of fat slaves,” I corrected him, “and you are a pathetic guardian of any book. I think Odin,” I laughed, “indeed sent you to find the elf, because he thought you would be wise enough to open an artifact like this with care, and not fall victim like a simple mortal, you idiot Aesir.”
He snarled. He threw his hand out, and fire, deep, dark and bitter, tore out of the air for me.
And I felt it and saw it, and because Narfi had given me love, an affinity for fire, I used it.
It came instinctively.
I wrestled the power from him and threw it back at him. It was red, dark, and terribly hot.
The fiery storm splashed against him, against his face and hair, churning and savaging bitterly, rending the god’s rotten flesh.
He gasped and staggered through the storm.
And he didn’t see the wolf hammer coming, as it smashed into his eye, sinking deep into his skull.
I held my hand, flesh torn.
A god, even a long-dead one, should be a spectacular thing to see.
Od simply fell, like a log.
Vali jumped forward and sawed his blade on the neck of the thing, hacking savagely, until the head fell off.
The lips, smacking foully, went still.
I walked to it and pulled the hammer out, gasping with the pain.
Vali, hesitating, backed off, as I lay the hammer on a thick bit of old leather, and then turned to look at him.
Vali was staring at me, and then at the book, still on the ground.
I turned to look up at the stairs.
Narfi and Faria were gone.
“So, Uncle,” I said. “Where to now?”
Vali laughed bitterly, his voice dark and bitter. “Hundred years I sat in White Tower. Hundred years I hunted the mountain and stayed hidden, pretending to be half-mad hermit, and did it many times, new generation supposedly as degenerated. Hundred years, I helped my brother to plot and watched him. And he left me here. Alone.”
“Not alone,” I said. “He left you with Od.”
He nodded. “And you.”
“Narfi read it,” I said. “He did.”
Vali growled. “So, he is gone, Hagar. You will never find him. Nor will you know his secrets.”
I eyed the hammer. “I am the Wolf Hammer, no longer Hagar. I am a grudge breaker still. I have grudges to end.”
“What will you do?” he asked, moving around Od’s corpse. “Freya will not be happy. To imagine, below her temple!”
“Well,” I said. “It seems I have just one ally. And it would seem that all the gods greatly desire what you wanted. I think it is only fair that I find it first.”
He grinned. “Truly?”
I nodded. “It seems to me that the one who finds the Truth Stone shall be forgiven much. And I still will want my soul back.”
“I care not,” Vali said. “I think I shall go home to Lok. I shall try to heal.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For fighting with me.”
He laughed. “Your friend didn’t leave me any choice!”
I nodded and walked for Chal.
Vali was collecting his swords, the demi-god bleeding from his wounds. I passed him, and then I whirled and grasped him by the throat and rushed for a wall. I smashed him into it and placed my hand over his maw. I let flames into his mouth, and they poured out of his eyes, and I watched the bastard die.
“Someone has to die,” I told him. “And I don’t wish to see you again, Uncle.”
I dropped him and walked to Chal. Chal’s eyes opened up, her leg broken, and back likely as well, bleeding from many wounds.
“You killed him,” she whispered. “So. You choose Nött.”
“I’ll be a killer for her,” I said. “And I think she will approve of me. She’ll be happy to see how I can serve her. But I cannot promise I’ll be a good thief. I need to get my soul back. It will change many things.”
“She will probably make me hunt you,” she said weakly. “We should go and meet her. She will aid us.”
I pulled out a bottle. “You are not making a strong case for yourself, if you suggest, you might kill me one day.”
“Only in bed,” she laughed. “Nött’s milk, but it hurts.”
“Here. My turn.”
“The potion,” she said. “It is precious. Don’t waste—"
“No?” I asked her. “I’ll take it then.”
I took a sip of it, and her eyes were full of surprise, and as she opened her mouth to complain, I poured it in her mouth.
She screamed, for it was a painful cure. I staggered away, gasping with the pain and slowly healing from my wounds.
I found the book and sat next to it.
I touched not the page and saw the words. In it, the elf Mar had described a place far from Midgard. It was called the House of Iron, in the Melt of Nifleheim, where a vast hoard of dverger lay hidden under the heels of one of the First Born.
There would go Narfi, and there, too, would go Faria.
There would travel Odin’s people as soon as he found the room.
And now, a man with no soul, a half-god with love for fire and a mad hammer would walk to Nött, in the Unlit City, to find a new mistress, and a quest.
I did have one.
Revenge. My soul.
I smiled and looked at the fallen. I would make sure Morag was safe with Rikas, and she could start rebuilding and hunting down what Lok still might have left. I would personally find Eglin, as Chal healed.
I also would have a chat with Naera, Narfi’s scribe, and the twins.
I’d find out my father’s secrets all right.
And I would kill any being, who stood on my way.
Nött would suit me well.
Aye, I had no soul. Possibly, I would never regain it from my wife. I instead thought she was making sure that if I were to thwart their quest for the stone, she could bargain.
But I wasn’t sure I would.
The emptiness was terrifying. The loss, the memories are gone. The hammer I needed would one day rip my arm apart, for I was not whole, and growing less so.
But perhaps there was a way to regain what I had lost.
The world of magic and god-like quests awaited me.
The Truth Stone was a quest worth taking. Worthy of Lok, Odin, and Nött, and who knew who would get it? And possibly, I would find a Wish Stone as well, and regain my soul.
I looked at the book.
On the list of items, on that page, such a stone was mentioned.
And if I were to regain my soul, and I alone knew the secret to save the gods and all life, then, perhaps, it would be the Wolf Hammer who might rule over any land.
Perhaps over Asgaard itself.
I smiled. With a new life, one must have new goals.
- The story will continue with the Lair Beast early June 2019 -
A D Aldhard, The Wolf Hammer
