Stormbringer: Book 2 of the Wyrd

Twenty-Seven

We're barely out of the forest when we hear it.

"What is that?" Þrúðr catches it first, sitting up straighter on her horse, eyes squinting into the dawn.

"What's what?" I say. In my arms, Sigmund's head keeps dropping to my chest and jerking back. If I weren't holding on to him, he'd have fallen off miles ago. It's been a long couple of days.

"Shouting," Þrúðr says. "In the distance. And . . . a horn?"

I tilt my head, trying to catch the sound. Jötnar don't have great hearing but, even still, I think I can just about make out what Þrúðr means.

"It's coming from Ásgarðr," I say.

Þrúðr doesn't respond, just spurs her exhausted horse onward.

"Shit," I say. Then, to Sleipnir, "Well. Feel up to a bit of a race?"

Stupid question, I know. An instant later Þrúðr is eating dust, and I have my arms full of a suddenly very awake and very startled Sigmund.

Sleipnir isn't a horse, but he's still the fastest thing in all the Realms. We make it to the Wall in no time.

And just as quickly wish we hadn't.

* * *

Chaos. Utter chaos.

"What the hell happened!" Sigmund yells, twisting to try to face me.

Sleipnir is still running, but it's getting difficult now that we've passed the Wall. In through the hole at the back, Sleipnir leaping the crumbling stone with ease.

The shouting gets closer with every step. Male voices, mostly, yelling in a mixture of Old Norse and English. Norwegian and Dutch. Some other things I don't recognize, syllables lost above the clash of swords and what are undeniably the roars of jötnar.

Ásgarðr isn't a big place, and soon the collection of halls comes into view. Men stand on rooftops with arrows, run between doorways holding axes. On a balcony, a woman hacks at the talons of a jötunn that tries to use its sharp claws and stumpy wings to run up a building's wall. Beneath her is a zombie-on-zombie melee, an endless tide of nár on einheri action.

Hel's army is attacking Ásgarðr.

"This shouldn't be happening!" Sigmund yells. Before I can respond, I've had to press him flat against Sleipnir's neck, the three of us lurching sideways to avoid a volley of arrows that rain down from above.

"Now they're shooting at us!"

Of course they are. Two jötnar running through Ásgarðr in the middle of a battle? What else did Sigmund think would happen?

It occurs to me, as Sleipnir clears a path with a well-placed foot to an einheri's face, that Sig is very, very susceptible to arrows. And axes. And swords. And maces, and . . .

Shit.

"We've got to get you out of here."

Sleipnir darts through the gap between two buildings, leaping over a log pile just as another jötunn rears up with a roar.

Sleipnir returns it in kind, but I've had enough, pulling out my gun and firing it into the air with a "We're on your side you bloody idiot!"

The sound startles the jötunn, but it also draws the attention of two einherjar, who appear at the far end of the alley.

"Shit!"

I jump off Sleipnir's back. "Get him out of here," I say. "Somewhere safe!" I'm not talking to Sigmund when I say it.