Loki's Gambit, page 114
part #1 of I Bring the Fire Series
Pressing a hand to his eye patch, Odin says, “Come.” His voice is almost a sigh.
As Loki walks beside him, Odin says, “The ring Andvaranaut has been hidden in the realm of the Black Dwarves for many centuries—so long even they don’t know where it is. It poisons their land. Their crops are not as good as they could be. Their children not as strong…”
“Yes, I understand that,” says Loki, trying to bite back his frustration.
“To secure more favorable weapons contracts, I need you to find it and destroy it,” says Odin. “It shouldn’t affect you much, if at all. It’s magic is so close to your own—”
“All that I understand,” Loki says. “What I don’t understand is why Nari and Valli should come with me.”
Odin lets loose a long breath. “All the young men of Asgard are being called into service.”
Loki lets out a huff of frustration. Not that all were answering the call…
Odin continues. “The Fire Giants’ raids at the edges of Vanaheim, Alfheim, and Asgard—”
“I would rather them fight beside Thor, even against Fire Giants, than have them journey with me to the realm of the Dark Elves!” Loki says. The damn ring has to be dumped into an even more damnable volcano. It’s a suicide mission, but he’s come to realize the more ridiculous a task is, the more likely he’ll succeed. Still, dropping the ring in lava is one thing—keeping his children alive?
Odin drops his head. “I thought you’d prefer them with you.”
There is no lie in his words. Loki turns to the Allfather.
Odin sighs and then says, “I am reinstating War Rites.”
Loki’s breath catches. Long ago, the Vanir had ruled the Nine Realms. They raped the enemies they vanquished—men, women, and children. Men and boys were systematically castrated. When he marched against the Vanir, Odin ended that last cruel practice and nearly ended the rape of children, if not their parents.
The Allfather’s jaw goes tight. “I know what you think of me, Loki, but although I may use deception on a woman…I have never hurt a woman.”
Loki’s lips tighten into a thin line. Rind, the Frost Giantess Odin raped, lived only nine days after the birth of their child. The child himself lived only seven days. Odin mourned them both and threw them grand funerals…but Rind might disagree that she’d not been wounded.
Shaking his head, the Allfather says, “And I’ve never taken a woman in the heat of battle. In the rage of war, it would be too easy—” His jaw becomes tight. “Nor have I ever, a child.”
Odin isn’t lying. It is testament to his disillusionment with the Allfather that the truth makes Loki reel back a bit in shock. But hadn’t Odin always cared for his children, and their mothers, willing or not, even if they were human? And Odin always insisted Thor and Loki do the same—not that Loki ever had unexpected children.
Odin’s voice is almost a sigh when he speaks. “I thought you’d like to keep your sons away from it… It isn’t…healthy.”
Loki ducks his head, grateful…but confused. “Why reinstate War Rites? After all this time?” They are logical; keep your enemies from breeding. And compared to what he suffered in Geirod’s castle, it’s quicker, maybe not even as painful. Still, there’s a finality to it that makes his gut clench. And that children aren’t spared…
Odin snorts. “Because we don’t have enough young men and women willing to go out to the dark corners of their realms to honorably fight a merciless foe they somehow believe will never come to their capitals. The Fire Giants themselves utilize the practice…and the soldiers I do have are asking for the same. I can barely pay my forces, the Fire Giants have nothing we can plunder, and so I must cede to the demands of the least honorable of my men, no matter how I think it spells the end of everything we fight for.”
The last comes out in a rush of barked words.
Loki murmurs. “The end?”
Something in his voice makes Odin halt his steps. He turns to face Loki. The mighty Allfather’s lip trembles slightly. “It isn’t what you want…” Closing his single eye, Odin lays a hand on Loki’s shoulder.
Loki’s eyes slide to the Allfather’s fingers. Once, he would have reached across and clasped Odin’s shoulder in return. Now, he feels like a maid with an unwelcome suitor.
Odin’s eye flutters open. Barely containing a bitter smile, Loki meets his gaze.
“Fight with me, Loki. Fight for me, and we will hold the end at bay.” Odin’s hand falls away. He looks older, sadder, and more exhausted than Loki’s ever seen him.
Loki can’t care. Where there might have once been feeling, there is only emptiness.
Amy reels from the reminiscence, the sadness and fear in Odin’s face etched in her mind—and the gratitude and relief when he realized Loki wasn’t yet dead set against him.
Behind her, Bohdi is saying, “So plasma fire…hot enough to melt lead?”
“Well, it tends to cool in the air—but it’s still hot enough to melt skin at three hundred paces,” says Pascal.
“Hmmm…” says Bohdi.
He seems genuinely interested. Maybe he won’t mind what the Einherjar are planning for him…too much.
Amy finds a mirthless laugh rising in her throat, Loki’s memory still sharp in her mind. Odin didn’t rape women in the heat of battle…or children.
Her feet skid across the gravel as she increases her pace. She takes a sharp left, no longer concerned if her path isn’t indirect. Behind her, Gabbar says, “Miss—you don’t want to go that way.”
Amy starts to run deeper into the trees. Her feet fly over roots that seem to writhe beneath her steps. Around her the light is dappled and many colored.
“It’s dangerous!” shouts Gabbar.
But Amy keeps going. She plunges through a hedge and comes to a halt.
She stands in a clearing sparsely covered with short, scraggly grass. But where Hoenir’s hut used to stand is a roughly rectangular patch of lush, waist high grasses and wildflowers. From it rises the buzz of insects. Sharp chirps of birds fill the air, and she sees insects, birds, and small animals flitting over the tops of the grasses.
But her pathway is not clear. Around the former site of Hoenir’s home stand Einherjar in tight rectangular formation. Half of them face inward. Half face outward. All hold spears. None acknowledge her as she walks forward, but a flock of small birds suddenly launches from the long grasses. On their tails rise snakes with butterfly wings.
Hoenir’s creatures. Amy bites her lip, in joy, wonder, and relief. The patch of grass may be all that’s left of his hut, but in Amy’s mind, she sees the home glowing golden, the same color as Hoenir’s aura. Once, this place was so alive with magic, Loki had to avert his eyes, as though he was staring at the sun. Magic doesn’t exist linearly in time…and Hoenir’s hut was a maze of World Gates.
One of the soldiers facing inward hacks in half a snake that flutters in the direction of Amy, Bohdi, and their two guards.
Amy gasps.
Pascal, or maybe Gabbar, grabs her arm, but releases it as another snake hisses and lunges through the air in their direction. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Amy grabs Bohdi’s arm and pulls him forward. Bless him, he doesn’t ask questions, just runs with her, darting toward a space between two Einherjar. The one facing outward drops his sword, holds out his hands, and shouts in Asgardian, “No, you’ll be hurt!”
Bohdi yanks her right, away from his outstretched arms. Amy lunges forward. Her foot pushes off the ground, she leaps—the Einherjar catches her around the waist and somehow her wrist slips from Bohdi’s grasp—but her momentum is already carrying her into the former foundation of Hoenir’s home. And suddenly she is wading in the grass and wildflowers, gasping for air because the Einherjar, still holding onto her waist, had knocked the wind out of her. She lifts her head… There is no flash of rainbow.
The Einherjar holding her shouts. She turns with a gasp to see him wincing in pain. He falls forward and Amy catches him, slumping under his weight. A butterfly snake slips from his neck and into the grass. She feels it pass over her feet.
“Amy!” shouts Bohdi, from the edge of the grass. Pascal and another Einherjar are holding him back.
She hears the guards speaking in Asgardian around her. “Was she attempting suicide?”
“Think she knows she has the Allfather’s eye?”
“She can’t have known it would be dangerous—”
“Did the fool just want to pick the pretty flowers?”
Craning her neck, Amy tries frantically to track each voice. And then her shoulders slump, and not just from the weight of the Einherjar she holds barely aloft. She was sure Hoenir would be here—or at least open a gate here—but if he was going to open a gate for her, he would open one anywhere he wished unless…
Pain flashes behind her eyes, so great it almost blinds her. She gasps and winces, nearly falling under the weight of the nearly unconscious guard.
“Get out of there, Mademoiselle,” Pascal shouts. “The animals will kill you!”
She doesn’t move. She doesn't want to leave this place, even though the brush is so rough it scratches her skin through her clothes and shadows slither and creep at her feet.
“Amy?” says Bohdi.
The man leaning on her groans. One of the Einherjar says, “Someone should go in and fetch her.”
Stepping forward, Pascal says, “Mademoiselle, I am coming.”
“No!” she says. She swallows. Carefully avoiding the shadows slipping among the stalks, she pulls the arm of the Einherjar up and round her neck and leads him to his comrades.
Bohdi casts a worried look in Amy’s direction. Several men approach and relieve her of the Einherjar she lugged from the briar patch. Still she walks heavily, staring intently at the ground, feet shuffling over the tiny gravel stones on the garden path. He isn’t sure what she was trying back there, but he knows it didn’t go as expected, and he’s worried.
“This way,” says Pascal, guiding them right, a hand on Amy’s shoulder. She follows meekly.
Pulling out his lighter, Bohdi spins the thumbwheel and glares at Pascal.
They pass under some enormous trees and then into what looks like maybe an orchard of baby trees. They only come to about his hip. Amy suddenly lifts her head. “What’s this?”
“Apple trees,” says Pascal.
“Idunn’s apple trees?” says Amy.
Pascal smiles. “Oui, Mademoiselle. Odin has ordered that the orchard be expanded.”
Amy jerks to a stop, and she spins on her feet. Bohdi follows her gaze. To him, it looks like the orchard extends for about a quarter mile straight ahead, but miles to his left, up to the base of a mountain that shimmers a little in the midmorning light.
Amy bites her lip. And then her face hardens.
“Come,” says Gabbar. “Perhaps you would like some tea?”
Amy replies, “Yes, thank you.”
Pascal’s hand ghosts down her back. “There is a veranda that is—”
“No,” says Bohdi, eyes on Pascal’s hand. He lifts his head and sees Gabbar’s gaze on him, an eyebrow raised. Bohdi feels his skin heat.
“That would be nice,” says Amy, voice tired.
The back of Bohdi’s neck prickles and his jaw goes tight, but he doesn’t protest.
It takes about twenty-five minutes to reach “the veranda.” It is nice. But not for the picturesque view of the gardens, or the cool shade of the shadow of the palace-castle-bed-and-breakfast-whatever that they had spent the night in.
It’s nice because, after they’ve sat down, Gabbar abruptly suggests to Pascal, “Let’s give them some privacy,” and the two guards move to a station out of earshot. With the distance, and the gentle breeze whistling through the building’s spires, once the maid-waitressy-people laying out tea and bread-stick thingies leave, they won’t be overheard.
As soon as Amy and Bohdi are alone, he leans forward and whispers, “What the hell is happening?”
Amy, whose expression has been carefully blank since the orchard, erupts in a muffled, bitter laugh.
Not meeting his gaze, she says, “From what I gathered back in the guard room, in Hel, Asgardian forces are clashing with the forces of Sutr.”
Before Bohdi can ask, she says, “King of the Fire Giants. Besides King Utgard of the Frost Giants, the only credible threat to Odin’s rule.”
“The guns?” says Bohdi.
Amy gives a tight smile. “Supplied by the Dark Elves, who got them from—”
“Former Soviet Block countries,” Bohdi says.
Amy nods. “Right. And somewhere in between, the bullets have been reinforced with—”
“Promethean wire,” says Bohdi. Leaning forward, he whispers, “If the Fire Giants got their hands on some of incendiary weapons and Kevlar armor, the Asgardians would really be fucked… and if Asgard’s got forces on Earth, I think they're going to get a little more than they bargained for.” He smiles, maybe a touch gleefully.
Amy’s face becomes tight. “Maybe…but Asgard attacked the Dark Elves’ trading partners on Earth. So I doubt the Fire Giants will be getting Kevlar anytime soon. And from what I’ve gathered, Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine won’t be able to route Asgard from the new stronghold Asgard’s established on Earth.”
Bohdi blinks. “How did they manage to attack on Earth? From what I’ve seen of Asgardian tech…it isn’t that great.”
Amy shakes her head. “I don’t know.” She puts her face in her hands. “Bohdi…when I went to another universe, I learned that Odin has had his sights set on Earth for centuries. The only reason he hasn’t touched our Earth is because of some deal he has…with someone…” She rubs her forehead and winces. Her head ticks to the side… He’s seen that expression before, in the library, when she was talking about the hour she “lost.”
“I…I…” she stutters.
Bohdi reaches toward her, but then she abruptly raises her head, and he drops his hand.
“Apparently, that deal is off,” Amy says, scanning the trees beyond the veranda. “The Nine Realms are at war, and it’s going to be on Earth, too…and I’m guessing that’s why Odin is expanding Idunn’s orchard.”
Bohdi knits his brow in confusion. “Why?”
Amy sighs. “The apples offer immortality—well, sort of. They have to be eaten every year. They also awaken magic in humans. Odin traditionally offers them to his own people and the Einherjar. He also uses them to bribe some Vanir, Frost Giants, Fire Giants, and Dwarves.”
The implications of that sink in. “And he wants to bribe humans,” says Bohdi.
Amy nods. “I think so…but there are so many of us…”
Bohdi looks out at the orchard. The trees look too small to produce apples, but in another few years… How many apples can a single tree produce? To Bohdi’s eyes, it looks like the orchard could produce millions.
“We have to get home,” says Bohdi, suddenly finding himself at the edge of his chair. The shade they sit in suddenly feels too cold.
Amy wilts. “Well, my fallback plan didn’t work. There was no gate… And no one seems to think that we’ll ever go back to Earth. It just isn’t done.”
Bohdi starts to feel a bit panicked. “But Odin said…”
Amy shrugs and smiles ruefully. “You’ll be pleased to know that many of the Einherjar think that your stunt with the Norns should make you an honorary Einherjar—” She waves a hand. “And Thor seems to have told them about your valiant fights with spiders, kappa, and adze…”
“And you?” says Bohdi.
Amy gazes out at the orchard, and then looks down at her hands.
Bohdi’s chest goes tight. “Amy…”
Her lips purse, and then she looks up at him sharply. “You haven’t asked if they’ve found Loki—”
Bohdi's face goes hot. And then he snaps. “Believe me, I really don’t want to hear about your ex-boyfriend.”
It’s not what he meant to say, or how he meant to say it, and to his own ears he sounds like an ass.
Amy’s eyes go wide—she looks surprised, confused, and hurt.
His hands find his lighter.
Looking down quickly, Amy says, “He really wasn’t my boyfriend.”
Bohdi flicks his thumb on the lighter’s flint wheel.
Returning her gaze to his, chin a little higher, she says, “They haven’t.”
“Great,” says Bohdi, feeling the burn of flame against his thumb.
Leaning forward, Amy says. “Don’t you get it? The Fire Giants are in Hel, too—they have to be there looking for Loki.”
Bohdi snorts. “Why is one guy this important?”
Amy’s eyes leave his and scan the table as though she’s lost something. “I think…Odin always felt as long as Loki was on his side, he couldn’t lose.”
She blinks and holds her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God—the vial of clouds. He used a magical vial of clouds to create fog and help the British during the evacuation of Dunkirk in WWII!”
Bohdi parses her words. If the German air force hadn’t been grounded by fog when the allies evacuated the continent, the war might have gone very differently. Leaning forward, he says, “Loki was on the side of the Allies…?”
Does his voice sound hopeful?
Amy winces. “No, he was just too drunk to use magic, and he’d lost a bet with some Nazis—one of whom was Thor on a recruiting mission—and he had to make a quick retreat.”
Flicking his lighter, Bohdi slouches in his seat. “A real hero.”
“The point is,” Amy continues, ignoring Bohdi’s sarcasm, “he is always on the winning side! That’s why Sutr must be looking for Loki, too—he probably has spies in the court who were just waiting to hear what Thor found out from the Norns.”
Bohdi thinks Sutr and Odin are full of shit. But truth doesn’t matter, does it? He flicks his lighter again. “Goody.”
Amy meets his eyes again. “This is very important to Odin, so important he’s gone to Hel to try and find Loki himself! He even took Heimdall!”
Bohdi blinks. And then another thought occurs to him. “Where exactly in the former Soviet Block did Asgard attack?”
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