Snorri moves up the gorge, past the remains of the demons his first-born son has slain in defence of his step-family.
Above him the gyre in the sky tightens and narrows. Soon, Snorri knows, he will stand beneath its centre, at the eye of an invisible storm.
The gorge widens into a valley, angling down now, out of the highlands. Snorri hobbles on, his wounds stiffening, the injury to his shoulder still pumping blood, the pain all through him like white wire.
Ahead the valley reaches a neck after which it falls away too swiftly to be seen again, and beyond this narrow point a view opens up such as Snorri never imagined to see in Hel. He stands, his eyes filled with the Uulisk Fjord, soft with mist, its slopes spring-green, black woolly goats dotting the Niffr slopes high on the far side where the sun touches the land with gold. There should be a village here, houses scattered all the way down to the water’s edge—but all Snorri can see are the eight quays stretching out their slim fingers across the fjord, and a hundred yards back up the slope, a single house. Familiar even at this distance. His house.
Ice fills his veins. The gyre in the sky centres above that lone house. The great turning in the heavens, the labyrinth of stone beneath it, all have led him here, to his past, his present, a place with no future. Snorri sets his jaw, holds his axe close against his chest, and walks on, so full of broken emotions that he seems a man on fire, and yet the hand around his heart clutches colder than ever.
As he walks Snorri sees that slaughter has been done here too, the carnage strewn about. An arm here in the shadow of the rocks, a head there, offal strewn across a broad swathe of stone. Not misshapen demons but men, or beings like them, and not just men, but women too, shieldmaids armoured in the fashion of the north and bearing axes, spears, hammers. Each of them though, whether tall or short, broad or narrow, shares one trait that speaks of their origins. Every person there lies white-fleshed on the right, black on the left, the same with their armour, each axe or sword cast in a metal white as milk, their shields so black they might be holes cut into the day.
“Servants of the goddess.” Snorri kneels, wincing, to inspect a shieldmaid. An axe blow has sheared through the side of her helm. Hel must have sent her and the others to retrieve Freja’s soul and those of the children. Whoever killed them has not been gentle, but this was not the work of Karl’s sword. Snorri studies the woman’s white eye, reflecting the gyre above his shoulder, and her dark one, like a polished black stone. Her lips are drawn back in the snarl she wore when struck, the teeth behind serrated like a sawblade. Not human, then.
Though Hel has no sun there is a sun here in this memory of the Uuliskind, and it is setting. Ahead of him in the neck of the valley, black against the sunset, a lone warrior, wide, armoured in ill-matched pieces, arms spread, a buckler held in one hand, an axe in the other, its blade a wedge for piercing mail.
“Sven Broke-Oar?” For a moment Snorri knows fear. The giant is the only man to have bested him: his strength is not human. Weak from loss of blood and crippled by his injuries, he knows this fight to be beyond him. Still on his knees the Northman whispers a prayer, the first to pass his lips in an age. “All-father, I have done my best. Watch me now. I ask only that you give me the strength that has left me.” The prayer of a man who has met his challenges with an axe and a brave heart. The prayer of a man who knows this will not suffice. The prayer of a man who will not live to speak another.
Snorri rises with a snarl, careless of his wounds, knowing that the gods are watching him. He stands, clothed in the ichor of demons and the scarlet of his own blood, hardly distinguishable from the beasts he has slain in such numbers.
“I am ready.” If Hel has set Sven Broke-Oar between him and his family then Sven Broke-Oar will die the second death. “Undoreth!” he roars, and as if his shout is a spear launched at the heavens themselves the sky turns red as blood behind him. And then he charges.
The warrior holds his ground as Snorri races toward him. He wears an outsized shoulder guard of spiked black iron, a pot helm, visored to offer only a slit for his eyes and perforations at the mouth. Black bands of iron around his chest and middle girdle a thick shirt of leather and layered padding. Iron plates sewn to leather trews defend both legs. Every part of his armour bears the signs of battle, bright cuts, dull crimson splashes, dented metal, torn leather.
Twenty yards remain between them. The warrior raises his axe above him. Ten. The warrior tilts his head. “Snorri?” Five. And lets the axe fall.
Snorri, filled with battle-rage, swings his own axe in a decapitating arc, razored steel driven with the force of both arms. At the last moment mind over-rides muscle, and screaming with effort he pulls the blow, able to rob it of most of its power. Hel’s blade strikes the warrior’s gorget, coaxing a bright sound from the metal collar before falling away.
“Snorri?” Gauntleted hands fumble with the helm’s hinged faceplate.
Snorri lowers his axe and uses it to support himself, heaving in laboured breaths.
The faceplate comes free.
“Tutt?”
“I knew you’d come.” Tuttugu smiles. He lacks his beard, his chins raw where it was ripped away. The red slice Edris Dean’s knife made still marks Tuttugu’s throat, his face pale. His eyes though, they shine with joy. “I knew you’d make it.”
“What in Hel’s name? What . . . Tuttugu . . . how?”
“Ssshhh!” Tuttugu raises a hand. “Don’t speak her name—not here. She’ll send more of her guards, and they’re hard to beat.”
Snorri looks back at the body-strewn valley. “You did all this?”
Tuttugu grins. “They didn’t all come at once.”
“But still . . .”
“I couldn’t let Freja and the children be taken, Snorri.”
“But Karl . . .”
“Karl could fight the demons, they’re just beasts following their instincts to hunt down stray souls. But to go up against Hel’s servants as they carry out their orders? That could get him thrown out of Valhalla. We couldn’t have that.”
“But you . . .”
“I haven’t taken up my place yet, so they can’t throw me out. When you’re bound for the halls you keep your body in Hel . . . or a copy of it I guess . . . Anyway, I went looking for Freja instead of going where I was supposed to.”
Snorri reaches out and sets his hand on Tuttugu’s shoulder. “Tutt.” He realizes that he hasn’t any words.
“It’s all right. You’d do the same for me, brother.” Tuttugu clasps Snorri’s wrist then moves on to lead the way.
Snorri looks once more, out across the gorge that Tuttugu has held against all comers, then follows his friend down the slope toward the still waters below.
A rowing boat lies close to shore, tied to a boulder in the shallows. Just beyond the rock the fjord’s bed shelves sharply down, becoming lost in clear dark water. Snorri wades out and takes the rope. The awful thirst in him cries out to drink, but he hasn’t come for water.