Hammered

Chapter 27

There were still three of the Æsir scattered about the field. More would be coming soon but probably not before dawn. Heimdall’s horn had called everyone. Frigg, Odin’s wife, would no doubt appear to take charge of her husband’s care. If anyone could restore him, she could.

I needed to see to my own care, but I couldn’t do it safely in Asgard. I needed to get back to Midgard or one of the Fae planes, where I wouldn’t be disturbed, because once I started this sort of healing I’d probably fall into a trance. First, there were things to do and words to speak. We collected my swords and Odin’s spear—I figured it was mine now—and placed them against the root of Yggdrasil, along with the bodies of our fallen. Perun’s strength, like Thor’s, was Herculean, and he was able to drag Gullinbursti off Gunnar using only his right hand, even wounded as he was.

After that, Perun and I limped and winced our way over to the paralyzed and cursing Týr, while Zhang Guo Lao accompanied us in serenity. He had acquitted himself remarkably well, accomplishing his revenge and suffering nothing but a bruise or two from his extended duel with Týr. He’d been sipping on his elixir to restore himself.

It took Týr a good couple of minutes to shut up long enough to listen to us. He thought we were there to finish him off, so he wanted to make sure he cursed us good before he went to Hel. The thing about uttering death curses is, they don’t work unless you follow through and die, and we had no intention of killing him. When I finally convinced Týr we meant him no harm, he glared at me while Perun kept an eye on the west. Vidar hadn’t moved from Odin’s side, and the remaining raven still circled above. Neither Freyja nor the frost giants had returned from the southwest.

“Your worthy opponent will release you from paralysis in a moment and you will be free to leave,” I said to Týr in Old Norse. “If you attempt to attack us once he does, you will be slain. I want you to return to Gladsheim and report what happened here today, but, more importantly, I want you to know why this happened. We came for Thor and Thor only, but of course he was too cowardly to face us alone. His centuries of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, his casual slaughters, have brought this day of reckoning upon you all. Should we kill all the Æsir and the Vanir too, it would not be sufficient blood price for Thor’s villainy. If you have even a passing knowledge of his activities on Midgard, you know this to be truth.” I suspected he did. The one-armed man with Thor in Leif’s tale had probably been Týr.

“Who are you?” Týr asked. He saw me standing there with an arrow in my side, apparently unconcerned by it, but in truth the effort of keeping myself together was very taxing. His question was too good a straight line to pass up, though.

I preened. “I am the immortal Bacchus of the Olympians. I represent a consortium of individuals who had scores to settle with Thor. That includes the dark elves, who showed me how to get here without using Bifrost. You really should have been nicer to them in the old days.”

I doubted that would hold up under scrutiny, especially if the frost giants ever talked, but one could always hope the Norse would swallow it for a time. It would give me a head start on hiding and give Bacchus a headache. I turned to Master Zhang and asked him in Mandarin to release Týr from his paralysis but to be on guard afterward. He lunged forward, causing Týr’s eyes to bug out, and struck him in five places with one of his iron rods. He didn’t bother to do it gently. Those hits were going to leave marks.

We backed off and Týr leapt to his feet, death in his eyes. His shield and sword were still in the snow, so perhaps he thought we’d wrestle.

“Go in peace and see the sunrise,” I said, “or a bolt from the sky will strike you down where you stand.”

He took his time thinking about it. He really wanted to come after us, but eventually he counted and saw that we were three, he was only one, plus there was the lightning thing. He took a few steps back, hurling insults he thought were dire, like “craven weasel puke” and “maple-flavored whale shit.”

A muttered request to Perun lifted us in the air back to the root. There I picked up my swords, and Zhang Guo Lao graciously agreed to carry Gungnir for me.

We took one last look at the southwestern sky. No eagles flew there. I hoped the frost giants were not so stupid as to follow Freyja all the way to Fólkvangr.

“Let’s go, Perun,” I said. “Hrym and his people can find their own way back to Jötunheim.”

As he had done on our trip up the root, Perun summoned tightly controlled winds to carry us—including the bodies of Leif, Gunnar, and Väinämöinen—through Ratatosk’s tunnel. On the way back down, I finally let the emotions I’d been repressing out. Anger and guilt for myself, grief and regret for Gunnar and Leif, fear and uncertainty about what consequences this would hold in the future: All of it came roaring out of my throat and eyes and was consigned to the wind.

I’d kept my word and my friends had avenged themselves, but I doubted the Tempe Pack would thank me for losing their alpha. I don’t know what I could have done differently, once the battle started, to save either of them; I just kept returning to the idea that I never should have taken them there in the first place. My word would have been worth nothing and they’d have hated me, but they’d both be alive. Now my word was still good but they were dead (or as good as dead). How was this any better? I’d cocked everything up so badly, and Hal might never forgive me. He was alpha now and Leif was out of commission for who know how long, perhaps never to regain his old personality. There would probably be a vampire war anyway, despite my efforts to give Leif a chance at coming back.

At the Well of Mimir, we wasted no time, because we had only a few hours of darkness left. We retrieved the packs we’d left behind—I checked Väinämöinen’s to make sure my wallet and cell phone were still in there—and clustered around the root. We had some difficulty arranging ourselves, since three of our party were dead, but I pulled us through to earth and breathed a heavy sigh of relief—at least as heavy as I could with an arrow in my side. Our campsite was undisturbed, and there were no signs that anyone had visited the area since we’d left.

“All right, I’ve stalled long enough,” I said, wincing. “Perun, if you push through my one arrow and break off the tip, I’ll do all three of yours.”

“Is deal,” he said. “Ready?”

“One thing. Can you tell if it’s going to come out where my tattoos are on the right side?”

He and Zhang Guo Lao both examined the angle of the arrow and determined that it would come out slightly in front of them on the stomach side.

“Good, that makes things a bit easier,” I said. The tats renewed themselves as part of my skin whenever I took my Immortali-Tea; they looked new instead of two thousand years old. But if they were torn completely, I’d need to get them touched up, and at this point that meant going to one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. No thanks.

Feeling the comfort of the earth underneath my feet, I asked Zhang Guo Lao if I could use one of his iron rods. He handed it over and I put it between my teeth, at which he blanched. Who knew he was a germophobe?

“Okay.” I nodded at Perun. “Do it.”

Yes, I cheated and dulled my pain receptors. You would too. I still felt a blazing stab, and the unspeakable discomfort of things tearing inside cannot be ignored, pain or no pain. This wasn’t simply hemorrhaging tissue; there were gastric acid and other toxic fluids loose. Without the earth’s help, it would have been a mortal wound.

We weren’t finished. Perun snapped off the arrowhead and I felt the twinge of it through my core. He did his best to clear away any splinters, and then I bit down hard on the iron rod as he yanked the shaft back through me.

Thank the Gods Below I didn’t have to deal with this while stranded on cement somewhere. The earth gave so much to me, and as I used its energy to bind my insides back together, I was reminded again that I still needed to help the earth heal itself in the Superstition Mountains. Every moment that it gave of its substance to help me renew myself only increased my debt.

After an indeterminate time, I became aware of an ache in my jaw and realized I still had my teeth clenched around a rod of iron. My companions were staring at me. I withdrew it from my mouth, now a bit slobbery, and offered it to Zhang Guo Lao with my thanks.

“Consider it a gift,” he said, a trifle horrified. “I will get a new one.”

I thanked him again and refocused on my healing, closing my eyes. When I opened them again, Perun’s arrows had been removed, and he was urging a giggling Zhang Guo Lao to have just one more shot of vodka with him as they sat on the boulders around the fire pit. And it was daytime.

“Where’s Leif?” I said. “Guys? Where’s Leif?”

“Druid speaks!” Perun gushed, throwing his hands up in the air. The growth underneath his arms was nearly as full as his beard. A gigantic smile split his hairy face, and he said, “We should have drink!”

“Honored Druid,” the immortal Zhang Guo Lao began, waving at me. He must have been deep in his cups, for this action caused him to slip off his boulder and fall backward, feet in the air. This set off Perun and he nearly fell over himself.

“Guys? Seriously. Where’s Leif?”

“Is fine,” Perun managed. “Is safe. We bury him behind you.” He pointed, and I turned to see three grave-shaped mounds of dirt. Perun’s voice was sober in my ears, hilarity gone: “We bury others also. Is okay?”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. “You buried Gunnar?”

“Da. You sleep standing up, could not wake, so we make us busy.”

Zhang Guo Lao raised himself up to a sitting position and waved for my attention. “Honored Druid, I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“I have a question,” he repeated.

“You said already,” Perun pointed out.

“Thank you for your attention. My question is this: When are you going to put on some clothes?”

I looked down and realized with some embarrassment that I’d left my clothes back in Asgard. It was precisely the reaction they’d been hoping for, and they clutched at their bellies and roared with unbridled mirth.