Stormbringer: Book 2 of the Wyrd

Twenty

What are they doing?"

Morning, and Forseti stood atop the Wall, staring out over the writhing black morass of Hel's army. So many damned and rotting souls, thieves and cowards, oath breakers and murderers. Dancing mad dances beneath the scythe-clawed talons of nightmares made flesh, chaos-spawned get of Loki, folly of Odin, betrayer of Ásgarðr.

Fingers curling tight around Gungnir's haft, Forseti swore he would not make his grandfather's mistakes. Whatever the cost.

The einheri beside him huffed, rubbing a hand across his clean-shaven chin. One of Ásgarðr's newer warriors, dressed in strange and flimsy greens. He'd introduced himself as Private Johns, and Forseti did not know if this was a name or a title. Modern mortals could be . . . confusing.

"Well," Private said. "If I didn't know better, I'd say they were protesting."

Over the Wall, a thousand voices chanted, sound carried on the wind. The words spoken in the mortal's modern tongue, saying:

One. Two. Three. Four. Release our boys from Odin's war.

Over and over, and Forseti scowled.

" 'Protesting'?"

"Right," said Private. "Saw it when I got deployed."

Private, Forseti knew, was killed within the Caliph's lands. He did not know why the Saxons would provoke war with such a great power, so far to the east.

"I . . . do not understand." Forseti bit down anger that he would show ignorance in front of a lowly einheri. "What is 'protesting'?"

If Private sensed his Lord's annoyance, he did not show it. "Right, right. Sorry," he said. "Protesting is, uh. It's when people don't like something—something the government does, usually—they get together and"—he gestures out across the Wall—"protest. Shout and yell. Make banners."

There were certainly many banners, of both the new kind and the old. Forseti could not read the text written in the modern tongue, but the runes he saw were, for the most part, names. Declarations of love and devotion. Pleas to come home.

"The mortals do this?" he asked. Then, when Private nodded: "Why do they not petition the þing directly?"

Private laughed. "This is petitioning the 'thing.' "—Forseti tried not to wince at the mangled word—"I mean, unless there's an election on, there's not many better ways to do it."

Mortal governance was a strange thing, but Forseti believed he understood. Hel was wicked and deceitful, silver-tongued like her father. Of course she would try this coward's way.

Heart hard and lips thin, Forseti left the Wall. He had seen enough. And so, he decreed, had the einherjar who lined its length. He scattered them with a command, posting Ullr and Rígr to keep more from congregating. For a time, at least.

So much trouble brewing at Ásgarðr's gates. First the . . . business with the thing that wore Father's skin, then "Loki," then Hel. Forseti could not believe them not related, or the actions of mere happenstance. Someone had planned this, planned war and destruction against Ásgarðr and all its people. Planned to break open this would-be golden age.

And, with Father gone, who was left to defend the realm other than his only son?

"Forseti. Stop, I would speak with you."

Only three steps into his hall. Forseti tried not to wince. "No, Mother. I have other matters to—"

But Nanna was not dissuaded. When was she ever?