Norse Code Part 21

"You too, Henry. Look after him, Alice."

"I will," Alice said with a nod and a brief smile. "You tried hard, Miss Castillo. Never forget that."

Mist gently pulled on Sleipnir's mane to guide him toward the Costco.

The store had been trashed by looters and wrecked by the battle. Conduit and wires dangled from the ceiling above a floor strewn with gla.s.s and plaster and concrete.

Quietly, as if he understood the necessity for stealth, Sleipnir crept down the aisles. Even Winston stepped carefully, and so Radgrid was unaware when they came up from behind her.

She was in the barbecue department, standing before a laptop computer resting on a grill. The case was etched with runes, the screen divided into windows showing live feeds from the battle. Mist hung back in the aisle to watch and listen. "Thrudi, it's Radgrid. Heimdall is beating Loki. Bring your squad around and help him out.... I don't care how, shoot the Aesir in the head, whatever. Just distract him so Loki can bring him down. Radgrid out."

So she'd come inside the store to coordinate the operations of her Valkyries and private warriors in relative peace and quiet. She'd apparently found a half-gallon can of peaches in heavy syrup and was daintily nibbling a glistening slice from the end of a fork.

Mist drew in a long breath. She could no longer do anything for Adrian Hoover. She couldn't overthrow Hel and free all her prisoners. She couldn't stop Frigg and Vidar from bringing about Ragnarok. But she could kill Radgrid.

A ma.s.sive figure appeared in a window on Radgrid's laptop screen, leaning his broad face into what was probably a rune-enhanced camera. He wore matte-black armor and a horned helmet, of all things.

"I just thought I'd let you know that Thor is dead," he said. "My father is dead."

Radgrid barely grunted in response. "Just a sec," she said, clicking on another window. "Hrist, what's the status of Frey? Surt should have burned him by now. ... No? Do whatever it takes to pin Frey down. Radgrid out. Okay, Modi, what now?"

"Weren't you even listening? My father is dead."

"Yes, I heard," Radgrid snapped. "You knew Thor wouldn't survive the battle, and he didn't. That means things are progressing as they should. Except for you, who should be out there looking for Mist."

"Yeah, about that-how much longer am I supposed to do your dirty work?"

"Until Frigg lifts her charm," Radgrid said. "And not a moment before."

Modi's voice blared over the computer speakers. "Listen, do you not get that I am a G.o.d? When this is all over, I'm going to be one of the most powerful beings in existence! I mean, f.u.c.k, I'm one of the most powerful beings in existence right now! And you've got me running errands. Following cars for you, killing n.o.bodies like Grimnir, bringing you coffee-"

Grimnir?

Mist jumped from Sleipnir's back to the floor. Radgrid spun around and drew her silver sword. "Ah, Mist-No, I'll call you Kathy. You don't deserve the honor of-"

Mist didn't let her finish the sentence. Unarmed, she rushed Radgrid, knowing it was hopeless but not caring, so long as she got to finish out with violence. A very fitting tribute to Grimnir. Radgrid's blade came at her face, and Mist went down into a baseball slide, taking out Radgrid's knees. The laptop and peaches clattered to the floor.

"I guess sometimes people do get the death they deserve," said Mist, grunting as she used the can of peaches to bash in Radgrid's skull.

OUTSIDE, THE battle stormed on. Tyr grasped Hel's dog, Garm, by the throat, but he was tiring, with Garm's jaws snapping only inches from his face. Frey burned alive beneath a carpet of flame laid down by Surt. Vali, laughing with blood in his teeth, was fighting anyone within reach, be they frost giant or Einherjar. He stood on a pile of dismembered corpses.

The sibyl's prophecy said Vali would survive Ragnarok. If Hermod killed him, then, the prophecy should be broken.

He beat a path to Vali and struggled up the mound of bodies, blood-slicked arms and legs shifting beneath him. Vali saw him coming and hopped up and down, clapping his hands. "Oh, yay, it's Hermod! I'm going to kill you with all my might. I'm going to rip open your belly and pull out all your tubes, and then I'm going to wrap the tubes around your neck, and I'm going to tie a really good knot, and I'm going to squeeze and squeeze and-Oh."

Hermod loomed over him. He brought down the Sword of Seven with an overhand chop, but Vali ducked and pranced down the slope of limbs. He scampered away like a gingerbread man, laughing over his shoulder about how the sibyl said he got to live, how Vidar was going to give him his own land to rule over, with cows and pigs and sheep and otters.

Hermod slid down the limbs to give chase, but his attention was drawn elsewhere. The clang of weapons dampened, the combatants nearby lowering their swords and spears and cudgels as Fenrir and Odin approached each other.

Fenrir had grown even more colossal, crushing cars and shopping carts with every step. His low growl rumbled through the ground and shook Hermod's belly.

In his full armor and helm, Odin strode forward, horrible and spectacular. His beard shone white like a snow-clad mountaintop, and in his empty eye socket, Hermod recognized the nothing it contained.

Odin lifted his spear and broke into a run. Fenrir crouched down and pa.s.sed his tongue over his teeth.

Last chance, thought Hermod. He knew he couldn't defeat Fenrir, even with a sword made of nothing, for Fenrir was more nothing still. But maybe he could interpose himself between Fenrir and Odin in a bid to distract the wolf, even if just for a second, and give Odin some scant advantage.

Odin fast closed the distance to the wolf, and Hermod ran, sped on by thoughts of beer and the taste of roast beef and the pleasure of walking and of loyal dogs and Mist and a world filled with everything he'd ever loved.

Fenrir opened his mouth and expanded, both the shape of a wolf and a shapeless expanse of emptiness at the same time. He was a great hole made of wolf, and Odin fell inside him and was gone.

Dumbstruck, Hermod could only stare at the empty s.p.a.ce where Odin had stood. A great cry rang out: delight from the giants and the trolls and Hel's fighters, rage and sorrow from the Einherjar. The cries were muted, colder somehow than they should be. A certain quality of sound that Hermod hadn't been conscious of before, some kind of background music to the universe, had died along with Odin. The world had lost its first and greatest magician, and in his place, there was nothing. Hermod sank to his knees.

Then Vidar was there, wearing a funny boot. It was made of sc.r.a.ps of things, weaves and mail and strips of material that glittered like diamond, and other material that drank all light. More dwarf tech. He placed his booted foot on Fenrir's bottom jaw, and either he grew to Fenrir's size, or Fenrir shrank to Vidar's, or size lost its meaning. Bracing Fenrir's lower jaw with his boot and grasping the wolf's upper jaw with his one arm, he pulled the monster apart. Fenrir unraveled like the sleeve of a sweater, the threads coalescing into a black whirlwind that thinned and spread across the sky, like ink in water, killing the last daylight, bringing out the stars, which winked in the smoky air, only to fade moments later. The sun leached into shadow.

Footfalls crunched on the gravel, and Hermod looked up to see Vidar's face staring down at him. His brother's cheek was a gluey mess of blood and other fluids. And there was something strange about his eyes. The left one was his. The right one was Odin's.

"Things are going swimmingly for you today," Hermod said.

Vidar surveyed the battlefield. Most of the combatants had fallen. A few Einherjar stood in a cl.u.s.ter, back to back, shaking with fatigue or fear as frost giants lumbered toward them. Surt towered over the Home Depot with magma dripping from his sword. Flames roared in the sky behind him. The corpses were piled high enough to challenge the height of the corpse gate in Helheim.

"There is nothing left for you to do, Hermod. The sibyl's song has been sung." Vidar's voice was rough from disuse but not unpleasant. He seemed more tired than victorious. "Must you fight me still?"

"I'm the great nuisance of Asgard," Hermod said, rising to his feet. "Getting in the way is what I do."

"But the prophecy has been fulfilled. The G.o.ds are dead, and the moon is gone. Soon the sun will be eaten as well. Can't you see that there is nothing left to be done?"

"I guess I don't see the things you see, Vidar."

Vidar closed his own eye, bowing his head in acknowledgment. Odin's eye remained open, watching.

He unslung a folded object of some kind from his back, snapping it open to reveal a scythe with a blade containing the same substance as the Sword of Seven.

Without another word, Vidar swung the scythe in a one-handed horizontal arc. Hermod leaped back and thrust his sword out to deflect the blow. The two blades made contact with a blinding flash, sending jolts of breathtaking pain down Hermod's optic nerves. He staggered and swept his sword back and forth, just hoping to keep Vidar at a distance until he could blink the dazzling colors from his vision. Vidar went at him again, and Hermod felt the blade whisper through the fabric of his shirt and leave a cold chill across his belly. Another millimeter and it would have disemboweled him. Their blades struck again with another flash, the pain driving Hermod to his knees, and then the scythe was coming down on him. He rolled away, but not quite in time, and the scythe cut through three fingers of his right hand.

Hermod found himself staring at his own sword after it clattered to the asphalt, his fingers lying beside it like small, dead animals. Then the pain hit, and he cried out and made a desperate grab for the sword with his left hand.

"Enough," Vidar said quietly, kicking the sword. It spun away, out of Hermod's reach. "Look around you, brother. The war is over. You suffer now only to keep the world's corpse alive. Enough." He raised the scythe and twisted his waist, a spring ready to uncoil. Hermod tried to stand, to fight back, to not make it easy, to die on his feet, but there was no more strength in his legs, and he was grateful again for never having known how he was supposed to die. If he'd been aware that he was fated to perish in a parking lot, gravel digging into his knees, he might have indulged in an even more meaningless life.

"I shall name something for you in the next world," Vidar said.

A hammering of hooves, a movement of grimy white bulk, and Sleipnir slammed into Vidar's chest. Vidar fell back with enough force to shatter the ground. He rolled and regained his feet, a pair of b.l.o.o.d.y puddles on his chest where Sleipnir's hooves had struck. Riderless, Sleipnir turned and came in for another charge. Vidar was ready with the scythe, waiting. Hermod despaired at the thought of seeing Sleipnir beheaded. He forced himself over to his fallen sword and picked it up.

When he next looked toward Vidar, he saw with horror that Mist was racing up behind him. With Vidar's attention on Sleipnir, he didn't hear her coming. She brought her saber down through Vidar's shoulder. Bone splintered, the sound of a snapping broomstick, and Vidar's arm hung by only a thin strip of flesh. He opened his mouth in a silent scream, walked three steps, and then crumpled, just as Sleipnir sailed over Mist's head.

Mist thrust her sword through Vidar's chest, but Vidar was still moving, so she yanked the sword free and went in for another thrust. Then a third. A fourth. A fifth.

Vidar made a sound, a whistling gargle. His eye closed. Odin's eye remained open, seeing what Vidar no longer could.

HERMOD DIDN'T look away from Odin's eye until Mist gently took his forearm. "Hermod, your hand-"

"I'm fine," he said, too pained to laugh at the absurdity of his own a.s.sertion.

She cut away fabric from Vidar's shirt for a bandage and wrapped it around the bleeding stumps of Hermod's fingers.

"If Vidar's dead, does that mean we stopped Ragnarok?" she asked him.

Flames towered around them, feeding on the corpses. Black smoke boiled like oil in a cauldron, rising into the matte-black sky. Shadows crawled across the face of the sun. The fight was over, but the aftermath was eating the worlds. Killing Vidar had removed a domino, but it was as the sibyl said: The last one was still toppling.

Hermod could think of only one thing to do.

He bent over Vidar. With the thumb and index finger of his ruined hand, he plucked Odin's eye from Vidar's socket. It was apparently unattached by nerves or blood vessels or any connections of the flesh. But it was heavy with its own gravity.

"Hermod," Mist said with alarm, "you're not going to-"

Hermod reached up to his face with his good hand. He slipped a finger under his eyelid and grabbed his eyeball. The pain was already immense, but he pulled, screaming, the veins and arteries and optic nerve and muscle resisting, stretching, and he pulled until they ripped and snapped, ball-peen hammers and augers and metal screws driving into his head. To pa.s.s out now would be a waste, so he remained conscious. He plugged Odin's eye into his now-empty socket and screamed some more.

THE WORLD was a tree. Hermod had always known this, had even walked among its exposed roots, but now he saw the tree in its entirety. He towered before it as he had done before the toy mountain ranges at the bottom of Mimir's Well.

He saw how soil and crust and the ocean formed a thin skin over the tree's deeper substance, the living wood. The trunk was riddled with cracks, more seams than he'd ever imagined, some natural, some freshly cut. He saw the seams as clearly as lines drawn on a map, so tightly knotted that he could reach out his hand and watch it pa.s.s through three different worlds.

The roots of Jotunheim and Svartalfheim were burning in full conflagration. Alfheim and Niflheim and Nidavellir had collapsed into piles of ash. Helheim and Asgard were broken to chips and dust.

Flames licked at the edges of Midgard, growing hotter. Up the trunk, in a crook where the limbs branched out, was Vigrid, the battlefield where he now stood. Higher up still were more branches and other worlds, whose ident.i.ty and nature he didn't know. Above it all, the sun hung, glowing black with rot or a cancer. He followed the sticky black threads of rot to their source, a small sliver of the remains of Asgard: Frigg's home of Fensalir, and her closet of nothing.

There was a small part of the tree that had become separated from the rest. The terrain looked familiar-valleys and mountains of Alfheim that Hermod had once enjoyed hiking across but that now burned lifeless. On impulse, he reached out and took hold of the chunk of dead world and hung it in the sky.

"I just made a moon," Hermod said to himself. It seemed easy.

He knew what he had to do now. He turned to Mist. Runes danced over her skin, like living tattoos. They were in his own hands, too, and in the blood seeping through his bandage. They were in Sleipnir's flanks, and in Vidar's body, and in the soil, and in the sky. The runes were everywhere, and they were very interesting. They wanted to tell him things. They wanted to reveal their secrets to him, and he wanted to stand there and read them forever.

But wisdom was knowing when to stop listening to the voices.

He sucked in a breath. Seeing how the worlds were arranged was one thing. Having the confidence to do the right thing with the Sword of Seven was completely another.

"Do whatever you're going to do without regret," Mist said.

"Right." He wanted to kiss her. Runes crawled over her lips, and he liked what they said. But there was no time.

He saw where the root of Midgard joined others. Then he raised the sword over his head and chopped down, through the wood, severing Midgard from the rest of the World Tree.

The ground dropped out beneath Hermod's feet, and then Midgard fell and fell, leaving the other worlds behind.

A WEEK LATER, when the tides receded, Mist and Hermod stood on the debris-strewn beach. Blocks of ice bobbed in the black sea, but the thaw was already noticeable. Sleipnir trotted in the surf, with Winston running behind him, nipping at his hooves.

Mist stepped back from the driftwood boat she'd built. It wasn't seaworthy, but it wouldn't have to sail far. "What do you think?"

Hermod stared at it for a very long time. Then he looked at her with his mismatched eyes, Odin's gray iris glittering in the predawn light. He still spoke and acted like his old self, and he mostly looked the same-in need of a shave, and with his fingers wrapped in dirty bandages-but Hermod had changed.

"It's a good-looking funeral boat," Hermod said. "I think Grimnir would have liked it."

They'd learned the details of Grimnir's fate from a Chinese Shaolin Einherjar, one of the few Einherjar who'd held on a while after the battle. He'd told them that Grimnir had died bravely, on his feet. He said that he'd have been happy with his ending.

Mist doused the boat with a can of lighter fluid. She wished she could give Grimnir a proper burial, but this would have to do. His body, like so much else, had been lost with the worlds of the World Tree Yggdrasil.

"I just hope it'll catch fire."

"I'll make sure it does," Hermod said, and Mist looked at him nervously.

"So, you're some kind of fire G.o.d now too?"

"What? No, I just mean I've got another can of lighter fluid in my bag that I stole from those looters. I figured it might come in handy."

Mist smiled. Not everything had changed.

"Hush now," she said, touching the flame of Grimnir's Zippo to the fuel-soaked wood. The fire did a weak ghost dance, and Mist feared the boat wouldn't catch. But then the flames took hold with surprising strength. Within a few moments, Grimnir's funeral ship blazed on the beach, sending up twirls of tiny orange stars. For the first time in longer than Mist could remember, she felt warm.

She held Hermod's hand and whispered part of a prayer she'd learned on her grandmother's lap: "All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again."

"That's a good one," Hermod said.

They remained on the beach until the waves came in. Cold seawater met the fire, and the boat breathed steam into the morning.

RIDING BEHIND Hermod on Sleipnir, Mist spotted a frost giant cowering in the shadows of an alley. She felt sorry for it and was glad when Hermod rode on without comment. Through the cracks that Almost-Ragnarok had wrought, giants and trolls and elves and dwarves and living dead had entered Midgard, and now that Hermod had cordoned the human world off from the rest of the dying universe, humankind would have to share their world with these refugees from faraway places.

News reports from across the globe were grim. Hundreds of thousands had died in battle and disaster, and more would die in its aftermath. But humanity had been facing war and famine and all manner of natural disaster since its very beginnings. Most had perceived Ragnarok as windstorm, hurricane, tsunami, and flood, as tremors that had torn earth apart and bled flame and magma. They had seen a monstrous serpent, or maybe it was just a tornado.

But many knew the truth. The veils had fallen, and they'd seen G.o.ds. This was not the first time. Man had known G.o.ds before but had forgotten them or consigned them to story. Maybe this time, with their footprints still in evidence, they wouldn't forget.

No, the world was not the same. But, Mist thought, looking up at the round lump of silver in the sky-Hermod's moon-at least it was still alive.

Mist and Hermod rode to a park in Pasadena, where Lilly and Hod and the Iowans had established a command center, from where they were organizing gra.s.s-roots relief efforts.

"Saint Lilly of the Molotov c.o.c.ktail, and her companion, Friar Grumpy," Hermod said affectionately.

"They do sort of resemble a band of outlaw folk heroes, don't they?" Mist said, dismounting Sleipnir.

Lilly came over. "Did you give Grimnir his grand send-off?"

"Not so grand," Mist said, moving off with Lilly. "But it was traditional. He would have liked that part of it."