Stormbringer: Book 2 of the Wyrd

Twenty-Two

Instead, I pull the memory of a cigarette from nowhere, light it, and take a long and satisfying drag. My mind is thinking contracts and connections, steel and industry and the taste of home, when I hear Tóki say.

"Now die, æsir thieves! For the honor of Niðavellir!"

I stop. "Whoa. Wait, Tóki. What are you doing?"

Tóki snarls. "Silence, jötunn cur! You will die with them."

All of a sudden, the guys surrounding us are looking significantly more armed.

"This wasn't the deal, kid."

Tóki laughs. "I make no deals with oath-breaking scum like you. I am no fool like my uncle was. He sought to please Ásgarðr in his vanity and received nothing for his labor! For my father's labor. Today, I redress this wrong. Take back some of what was once stolen from us, and take blood in payment for the rest."

Oh.

Shit.

"Brokkr made a fucking deal. It was fair, and he got what he bargained for. Don't fucking pin his greed on me!"

"Why would I need to? Father told me of the fly that broke his concentration on the forge. All know it to have been you, liar and cheat. There was no fair deal. Ásgarðr got what it always did, bleeding the Realms dry for its amusement. Because of your tricks, Mjölnir's forging was imperfect. Now may you choke on the justice of your own demise! Kill them all! For Niðavellir."

Like I said: It was always going to come down to this. A betrayal. The only thing ever really in question was whose it was gonna be.

A thousand years ago, a fly bit at a dvergr as he worked the bellows of a forge. Because of this, the handle of the hammer he was forging was made too short. Because the handle was too short, it wasn't enough to ground the lightning called by the runes forged into the hammer's head. Anyone trying to do so would be fried. And because of that, a separate set of gloves were forged. To protect the hammer's wielder.

So. Here we are. In the place where, it turns out, irony is not just a descriptor of Mjölnir's metal.

As one, the dvergar howl, lunging forward with weapons raised. I take a step back, cigarette falling from my lips, winding up shoulder-to-shoulder with Móði, who growls, "See the price of your betrayal!"

"Fuck you!" I snarl.

Then the dvergar are upon us and there's no more room for talking.

Forty versus three. Skewed odds, but I've had worse.

I also have a secret, and it's time to fess up.

A dvergr lunges at me with an ax and I roll sideways in a flash of feathers, leaving a line of flames in my wake. He steps around them, coming at me again even as ten of his fellows close in from all around. I have fractions of a second before they hit and, in the space between two breaths, I reach inside. Down beneath muscle and flesh and scars, to where a golden heart beats beneath the surface. Burning with the glory and the fury of the sun, and I crack it open and call it do—

Pain explodes on the side of my head, the world going dark as I fly sideways from the impact, trailing streamers of noxious blood. When I hit the ground I roll, over and over, feeling things snap until I finally come to a stop by hitting something hard and armored that goes "Oof!"

My head is still ringing. A morning star, maybe, my thick skull saved only by my horns.

Of course, I need my horns to see and do magic. But hey. What use are either of those things on a battlefield?