Hammered

Chapter 19

I met Thor once a thousand years ago, when I was still human. Since that meeting, my every action has been calculated to bring me closer to meeting him again.

I was a colonist of Iceland in early times. A proud Viking man, carving out sustenance from the raw earth, and faithful to my family and my gods. Though it galls me to say it now, when I was human I gave to Thor all honor and obeisance. I wore this hammer necklace every day. I praised him, and Odin, Freyja, and Freyr—all of the Norse. And I hoped one day I would feast in Valhalla and be served mead by the Valkyries, take my place among the Einherjar, and fight in Ragnarok, at the end of all things, against the children of Muspell. All that was in another age, but there I must return if you are to know how I come to be here today.

My wife was named Ingibjörg. Together we had two sons, Sveinn and Ólaf. I fished, kept some sheep, and even turned the earth with my hands.

I was considered a candidate for the Althing. I had seen the New World with Leif Eriksson and returned. I might have extended my acquaintance with the famous explorer, except that he converted to Christianity and insisted that all his men do the same. Nevertheless, I was well traveled and my sword had sent seven and twenty men to Valhalla. Every new accomplishment swelled my ego, increased my fame, and added to the stories I could tell over a tankard of ale in a tavern. I am sure you know how drunken conversations can turn bawdy and even bizarre in the space of a few seconds. Someone will crack a joke, someone else will riff on it, and before you know it you are talking about ridiculous things you would never consider when sober, such as the possibility of breeding blue cows or making weapons out of puffin bills.

One such conversation set me on the path that brought me here.

I was drinking mead on a chilly spring evening with two friends and two strangers. Strangers were common enough near Reykjavík; someone was always sailing in from somewhere. These particular two were big, hulking men, even larger than me, blond and blue-eyed and fresh from raiding and pillaging the coast of Ireland. All of us had been raiders at some point, and to many people we were the scariest things in the world. Naturally, we were scared of something else, and that night we were trying to frighten one another. I mined the stories told on dragon ships, mutterings in the dark that hardened, seasoned men found terrifying. Some were about men who turned into wolves on the full moon. Others were about degenerate creatures that ate the flesh of the dead and took on the form of the one they last consumed. And some that I had heard, more than once, concerned beings who drank blood and lived for centuries. They had inhuman strength and speed and could tear a berserker apart in seconds without shield or sword. But, more than this, they possessed a cold intelligence. They were the power behind the Romans, the tales said. They were slowly moving north and would eventually come to Viking lands; judging by a few mysterious deaths, a powerful one had supposedly established itself in Prague, the capital of Bohemia. The term today is vampire, but that is a modern word applied in the last few centuries. There were different names used back then: revenant or diable, in French; blutsauger in Germany; in Bohemia we were chodící mrtvola, a walking corpse. Every so often, the legends said, these creatures made others like them, damning men’s souls forever with evil so foul that they could not stand the kiss of sunlight on their skin.

“Would it not be grand to be immortal?” I said to the men crowded around a wooden table. “Think of what treasure could be hoarded. What influence one could wield. Think of the lands one could visit if only there were time enough to do it.”

“You would do this if you could?” one of the strangers said. He carried a large hammer instead of a sword, and I remember thinking at the time that it suited him. “If these creatures truly exist, you would sacrifice your humanity?”

“Well, not now, of course. There is my family to think about. In a younger, more reckless time of life, however, I would leap at the chance.”

“Truly? You would give up Valhalla, the food and drink of Odin’s table, for what? A sunless, bloodsucking existence on Midgard?”

“You are leaving out the part where I would be incredibly strong and live for centuries.” My companions thought this rejoinder was particularly witty and laughed. Everything was funny when you had drunk enough mead.

“Fine.” The stranger spread his hands. “I grant you your own definition. But you would prefer this to the glory and honor of becoming one of the Einherjar?”

“Again, I cannot say yes now. I have responsibilities to my family and my community. But if I were just starting out again, nothing holding me back, then why not?”

The stranger sat back in his chair and glared at me. “Why not, indeed?” He looked at his companion, who had lost one of his hands in battle. There was an unspoken query on the first stranger’s face, and the one-handed man answered it with an indifferent shrug.

One of my friends tried to change the topic to dragons, but the first stranger interrupted him. “Very well, it is decided. You are Leif Helgarson, are you not?”

I blinked in mild surprise. I could not recall introducing myself or either of my friends introducing me. We had merely begun talking with these strangers in the way veteran warriors will, ready to share laughs but not names unless we planned on seeing them again.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“I am Thor, god of thunder.”

My companions and I thought it was a fine joke and laughed in his face. He did not smile, however, nor did his one-handed companion.

“You say you would become one of these creatures if you had nothing to hold you back,” he said. “My gift to you is freedom to pursue this dream of yours. You are free of your familial obligations, Leif Helgarson. Now you can follow through on your boast and become a bloodsucking immortal. I dare you.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

One of my friends chimed in. “I want whatever that guy’s drinking.”

“Your family is dead,” the stranger insisted. “Nothing is holding you back.”

All laughter ceased. “That is not funny.”

“I do not jest,” the stranger replied.

“My family is well. I saw them this morning.”

“Lightning can strike at any time, and it struck a few moments ago.”

I wanted to crunch my fist into his face, but if I wished to join the Althing my fighting days were over. I would profit nothing from starting a brawl. So I roughly excused myself instead and left the tavern, a bit unsteady on my feet, and discovered that a storm had rolled in while I’d been drinking. I had some trouble mounting my horse but eventually succeeded. I hurried home in the rain, telling myself that I was being silly, that could not have been Thor, it was just a big bastard with a hammer.

My dread mounted in equal measure with my denial as I rode. That was never Thor. But what if it was? What if a careless moment of drunken braggadocio had doomed my family?

You may imagine the desolation I felt when I burst through my door and found my wife and sons strewn limply about the lodge, their lives burned away. My heart became ash and I tasted nothing but bile.

Guilt and grief: My throat closed with it, choking me and letting nothing but animal cries escape. I sank to the floor, weeping for them and telling them, when I could manage, that I was so very sorry.

Sometimes I cheer myself by thinking perhaps they went to Freyja’s hall, Fólkvangr, for they did nothing wrong. But that would have been a mercy of the gods, and Thor was anything but merciful. More likely they went to Hel, a sunless, cheerless realm, because I, in a fit of inebriated bombast, laid claim to powers beyond my ken.

I built them a funeral ship and sent them to sea aflame. No land has been green for me since that day. It is all a waste, all emptiness. Inside me an emptiness grew as well, a black gnawing void that threatened to eat me and give Thor his victory. But I fought against this: I filled that emptiness with rage and discovered that my rage was as boundless as the emptiness. And so I did not break. I had my purpose: become an immortal and kill Thor. He had dared me.

And, in truth, it was the only way I could see to even challenge him. What cared I for damnation? I was already damned. But immortality, strength, speed—these I would need if I were to ever avenge my family, and I vowed to do so at any cost.

I left my farm, traveled to Reykjavík, and hired myself on the next boat to Europe. By a bit of mercenary work here and a bit of banditry there, I made my way back to the North Sea and thence up the Elbe to Hamburg. This was in 1006, well before the Polish King Mieszko II burned Hamburg to cinders. With some inquiry and patience, I found work as a sword arm to a merchant who wished to trade upriver with Prague. He was anxious to establish ties with the court of Duke Jaromír, part of the Přemyslid dynasty in Bohemia. He taught me some of the language during the trip, but it was practically useless. He did not know Old Norse, and my German was terrible at the time, but I kept at it because I knew I would need to ask questions of the locals if I were to find this blood-drinking immortal who had supposedly settled in Bohemia.

We turned up the Vltava River to get to Prague. It was not then the beautiful city it is today. Like all other medieval cities, Prague was dirty and mean and full of the illiterate and diseased. I myself fit that description fairly well. There was a thriving slave market in the city, which was a trade center for the region, with many merchants basing their operations there.

Once I’d helped to unload the German merchant’s cargo, I got a job at the docks guarding warehouses; it was boring work, but it kept my belly full and paid for a room while I learned the language. Eventually, when snow began to fall, I started to frequent the taverns and ask questions. Sometimes my questions were met with drunken amusement and were openly mocked. To these places I never returned. In other places, my questions were met with stony silence or a curt warning that such things were not spoken of there. I was kicked out of one establishment for daring to ask. I noticed that these places were all located near the old Přemyslid fortress on the west side of the river—it’s the Hradcany Castle now, but English speakers simply call it Prague Castle.

For two months I made a nuisance of myself. I had met every drunk in the town and many occasional drinkers besides and learned nothing of significance. I was about to give up and try elsewhere—Rome, I heard, was the place to go—when a small man, richly dressed with a high collar underneath a gray squirrel cloak, sat down next to me in a tavern on the west side. His dark beard was trimmed into a thin line around his jaw, but his mustache was thick and groomed. He spoke the Bohemian language, but he had a foreign accent that I could not place. The barkeep served him quickly and nervously and scampered away. He did not want to overhear our conversation.

“You are the northman who has been asking questions about blood drinkers,” he said. It was not a question; it was identification.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am no one of importance. I represent a gentleman—a scholar—who may be able to answer your questions. Would you like to meet him?”

I peered at him suspiciously. “Is this an invitation to my death? I have seen people frown at me and heard the muttered oaths. The Christians, especially, do not like me speaking of this. Are you one of them? You have a group of men outside ready to silence me forever?”

“Hardly,” the small man snorted. “This gentleman merely wishes conversation. I think you might survive.”

“Why does he not come here and talk to me? Tell him where I am.”

“He already knows where you are. That is why I am here. You must forgive him; he is somewhat of a recluse. He is obsessed with converting his scrolls to books. Have you heard of these?”

“Yes, I have seen books. The Christian monks and priests have them.”

“Precisely. But they have only one book, do they not? My employer has many in his library and is making more. He has learned how to make paper from the Arabs, who learned it from the Chinese. Now he employs the literate in copying his scrolls and turning them into books.”

“Why not simply copy the scrolls?”

“Books are sturdier. Easier to travel with. Are you able to read?”

I shrugged. “I know the word tavern in three languages. That probably does not count.”

The small man chuckled. “No, but that is a good word to know. Perhaps there is much you can learn from my employer. Will you not return with me to his study?”

“This is not an ambush?” I asked again.

He finished his drink and toyed with his mustache before answering. “I will not raise a hand against you. Neither will anyone I’ve employed, nor anyone my employer has hired. Good enough?”

“What about your employer?”

“I cannot speak for him. He is a … violent defender of knowledge, shall we say. But I believe he merely wishes to speak with you. That is all I can say.”

“Hmm. What is your employer’s name?”

“He will give it to you if he wishes.”

“Very well. I will go with you.” We settled our tabs with the barkeep and walked into a softly moonlit evening in the Little Quarter. The small man did not offer light conversation but kept silent. I kept my eyes moving and a hand on my sword hilt. After three blocks we stopped at the gate of a walled compound. The guards there recognized the small man.

“I have brought him,” he said, and the gates were opened. Beyond them was an impressive house—impressive for the time, anyway—its façade lit by torches in the brick courtyard in which we currently walked. There was a fountain. Flower beds. Architecture. This bookbinder was a wealthy man.

My guide led me into a candlelit foyer. The floors were marble and covered with Persian rugs. Tapestries hung on the walls. It was the sort of wealth one saw only when raiding a monastery, and it exceeded anything in my personal experience. I caught but a few glimpses of the rooms on that floor, because the mustachioed man led me down a flight of stairs into the basement. There was a hallway with periodic candle sconces and several doors that I could see. We stopped at the first one and my guide knocked.

“Come,” a voice said from the other side.

We entered a room lined entirely with bookshelves. Of course it was a library, but I had never seen such a room before. A long worktable scattered with loose pages, scraps of leather, and strange tools led my eyes to a pale man standing at the end of it. Though it was winter and quite chilly in the basement—and I was grateful for the warmth provided by my cloak—this man seemed unaffected by the cold. He wore rich purple silk imported from Asia; the fabric was new to me, but I recognized immediately that it was far superior to linen and wool. He was examining a book he’d apparently just pulled from a wooden vise.

“Ah, you must be the northman. Magnificent,” he said.

“You must be the mysterious scholar,” I replied. “I am Leif Helgarson.”

“It is my pleasure to meet you.” He placed his book gently on the table and inspected me frankly. “Tall, blond, and Viking. Excellent.”

I could have noted at that point that he was none of these, but I had no wish to be rude. Yet. “And what shall I call you?” I asked.

He paused to consider, communicating that any name he gave me would not be his true one. “You may call me Björn.”

“That is not your name.”

“No. It is what you may call me. My name has a high price.”

“You paid nothing for mine,” I said.

“Untrue. You have cost me much already with your ceaseless pursuit of a blood drinker in Prague.” He shifted his gaze to my guide. “Thank you. You may leave us.” After the unnamed servant closed the door behind him, the unnamed scholar smiled thinly and resumed. “Tell me, Mr. Helgarson, why you are so keen to find a creature who drinks nothing but blood.”

“Are you such a one?”

He waved my question away. “More about me later. Tell me about you. Your curiosity has piqued mine.”

There was no point in crafting evasions. Either he could help me or he could not. “I have heard that these creatures possess great strength and long life. I need that to avenge my family. Thor killed them, and so he needs killing in return. But I will never be successful without the time and means to do it.”

“You want to kill a god?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Not just any god. Thor.”

“And thus you want to become one of these creatures?”

“Yes.”

The scholar studied me and rolled his tongue around in his mouth. Abruptly, he laughed. “That is a new one, I must admit. I give you credit for novelty. So you are not a Christian?”

“No.”

“Are you aware that the Christians believe these creatures to be damned—or even demons?”

“Yes.”

“Because you know that you must die to become one of these creatures and then hope you rise from the dead?”

“I have heard that, yes.”

“Tell me, Viking, what would you suffer for the cause of vengeance? What atrocities would you commit in the name of revenge?”

I paused to consider. “If it brought me closer to my goal, I suppose I would suffer anything, commit most any crime.”

“Most any?”

“I have … no stomach for harming the young.”

This brought a wry smile to the scholar’s face. “Because they are innocent?”

“No, it is not that. I have killed innocent men and women along with the corrupted. Whatever they are when their doom falls, they are what the Norns have made them, and I am merely the instrument of their end. But children … are incomplete. I suppose the Norns do not wish to finish the ones who die, but then, neither do I, if you see what I mean.”

“Interesting. You dislike leaving things undone.”

“Precisely. And slaying Thor is something that must be done.”

He said mockingly, “Do not the Norns have something planned for him? A battle with a serpent, I believe?”

“I will figure something out. But, first, I need time.”

“So single-minded! You wish to subvert fate to your own will. That will truly take some figuring. I can see that you have trained your body to dominate others with the sword. Can you train your mind to dominate with the word?”

“What do you mean?”

“I am asking if you would be willing to learn how to read and write.”

“What purpose would that serve? I am not going to write Thor a letter.”

“It would serve many purposes, but primary among them would be your survival. Let us suppose that you become one of these blood drinkers. The long life and strength you speak of would have to come at a steep price, or else such creatures would be everywhere, would they not?”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“Excellent. So what price do you think these creatures might have to pay?”

I frowned. “They never see the sun again.”

“Correct. What else?”

This question earned my host a noncommittal shrug. “I suppose there is the damnation to worry about if one is Christian. But I am not worried about this.”

“No, there is something more you are missing.”

“What?”

The scholar sighed and, instead of answering, said, “Let us sit. My manners have escaped me. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“I could do with a drink, thank you. Ale or mead or whatever you have.”

We left the basement library and bookbindery and returned upstairs. The scholar—for I refused to address him as Björn—asked a servant to bring a drink to the sitting room. It contained four chairs and a fireplace but no windows. There was a fire in the hearth, but the smoke was traveling up into an unseen hole rather than filling the room. My host saw my puzzled stare and explained.

“Ah, the smoke is traveling up a device called a chimney, where it exits above the roof. Wonderful innovation. We can enjoy the fire’s heat without suffering its smoke. Every house will have one eventually, you will see.”

He offered me a chair and took the one opposite. A handsome young woman brought me a tankard of ale. I thanked her, and my host waited for me to sample it and offer my compliments.

“Before I answer the question, I hope you will not think me rude for asking—what do you do for a living?”

I thought he already knew the answer, but I gave it anyway. “I am a guard at the dockside.”

“I am in need of guards here. You have probably noticed that I have significant assets that need protection. Would you consider working for me? I would pay more and you could live here in the bargain, free of charge.”

“I will consider it.”

“Why does it require thought? It is clearly a better offer.”

“I still do not know who or what you are. You tend not to answer the most basic questions. You always change the subject.”

The pale man in purple silk smiled. “I believe I like you, Mr. Helgarson. You are no fool. But verbal dexterity is a skill you should cultivate.”

“You are doing it again.”

His smile grew wider. “Yes. But we were speaking of prices. The knowledge I have gathered regarding these creatures was bought at a very steep price. Like my name, I do not give it away for free.”

“What do you require?”

“Your loyalty. Work for me—under the terms I described, at a higher rate of pay and living here—and never repeat what I share with you.”

“Done.”

“Will you swear in blood?”

It seemed an odd question, especially in relation to the nature of my quest, but I could see no benefit to refusing. “Yes,” I said.

Before I had time to take another breath, he was latched onto my neck and draining me. I tried to push him off, but his grip was iron, and I could no more move him than I could move the stars. I punched him in the kidney and it was like punching a pillar of stone. However, my continued struggles must have finally irritated him, for he struck me sharply in the gut and deprived me of breath.

He withdrew and returned to his chair as my vision began to darken at the edges. I tried to rise from my chair and run but discovered I was too weak. “Now you know what I am,” he said, his fangs clearly visible where none had been before. “I am the thing you would become. Learn to read and write several languages first, and prove your loyalty and discretion. When you are ready, pledge your service to me for three hundred years, starting from when you first rise from the grave, and I will grant you life after death. I will also answer your questions and tell you my name. Then, only then, may you pursue your personal vendetta. Does this sound acceptable to you?”

“Define several,” I managed.

He laughed, my blood thickening in his throat. It sounded like caramel. “You still have the strength to spar with me? You are unusually robust.” He sat and faced me, an amused and bloody half grin on his face. “Let us say three.” He ticked off the names on his fingers. “Greek. Latin. German. And as for this Bohemian tongue, you already speak it and that is good enough. I will not have you write anything in it.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You will never leave here alive. Your survival depends on literacy, as I mentioned before. If you agree but then attempt to betray me, as others have done, you will die. I demand complete loyalty.”

“These other people here—they all wish to be like you?”

“Every one.”

“Will you … turn them all?”

“An excellent question. The answer is no. Some will betray me. Some will get killed in the normal course of living in Bohemia. And some will never live up to their potential.”

“So if I do not learn Greek, Latin, and German, you will kill me?”

“You are quick,” he said. “Come, you are still losing blood and soon you will be too weak to recover.”

“I agree to these terms.”

As before, he moved too quickly for me to follow—especially with my vision fading. I felt his cold hand on my neck and then nothing; I woke up later on a mattress stuffed with feathers, weak but alive. That was in the last month of 1006. In 1010 he told me his name was Zdenik and turned me into a vampire. He told me all the secrets of our kind, of course, though I may share none of them with you.

I served him for three hundred years. I killed for him—not mere humans but sometimes witches or ghouls and the odd lone werewolf. I helped him defend his territory from other vampires and learned how to manipulate the wills of men. The Vikings were right to fear us; the things I did were terrible.

Finally freed from his service in 1310, I returned to the north and searched for ways to get to Asgard. I consulted Norse pagan wise men throughout Scandinavia, and all said I must cross the Bifrost Bridge to get to Asgard or be sent there by the Valkyries to Valhalla. It was another plane of existence, they explained, and the full cruelty of Thor’s crime became clear: Even though I now had the strength to confront him, I could not muster the power to reach him.

Eventually I refocused my search on planewalkers. There are remarkably few of them, and most of those can travel only to certain planes. The only ones who have complete freedom to go where they wish are the Tuatha Dé Danann—and Druids. But the Tuatha Dé Danann rarely leave Tír na nÓg. Their progeny, the Fae, are limited by their need to use oak, ash, and thorn to shift. I thought all was lost. But I ran across the goddess Flidais in the eighteenth century. She refused to take me to Asgard, but she told me one Druid still walked the earth and, if I could find him, perhaps he would take me.

“Where do I find this Druid?” I asked.

“I do not know,” said the goddess of the hunt. “He is in hiding, and he has shielded himself from divination somehow. I think he moves around in tropical zones and deserts, where the Fae cannot find him easily. Probably somewhere in the New World. Do not get frustrated; he’s older than you and has no intention of dying soon.”

That is when I came to the New World. I picked a desert in the southwest of the continent and waited. It was a long, mind-numbing wait, but it proved to bear fruit, for the Druid finally appeared, did he not? I could not simply charm him and force him to bring me here; he is well defended against such intrusion. I had to charm him the way humans do it: I befriended him and earned his trust. Soon we will shift to Asgard, and my millennium of suffering will end one way or another.

I have paid with centuries of anguish for one night’s drunken boasting. I have endured much for the sake of revenge. But when I get my chance, friends, I will be swift. I will not gloat over the thunder god or try to make him suffer. The point is not to cause him pain but rather to end mine. No matter how quickly Thor dies, it will be too late for my family.