The Wheel of Osheim

At the last the warrior stands, gore-splattered, stained with the blood of his enemies, their corpses strewn about him, his sword sheathed, and behind him the dust settles. It’s like a fur drawn back from the bed, revealing three hundred yards, every step of the way littered with the dead, dozens, scores, many and more.

“What a tale we’ve woven here, brother.” Snorri stands to meet the warrior as he returns. It takes all his strength but he’s damned if he’ll meet such a man on his knees. “Who are you? Did the gods send you?”

“The gods forbade me from coming.” A deep voice, speaking Old Norse. Something in it familiar. Perhaps the accent or the tone.

Snorri looks down at his axe. His father’s father’s father had named it Hel. Perhaps some völva had seen its fate and suggested the title. Perhaps it was Skilfar, old even then. He looks up at the warrior, a man his own height, an inch taller, possibly. Snorri’s father stood as tall, had the same hair. “You . . . can’t be . . .” The hairs on the back of Snorri’s arms stand up and a cold chill commands his spine, his mouth too dry to say the words. “Father?” Tears fill his eyes.

The man reaches up with both hands and removes his helmet, shaking the hair from his face. It is not his father, though he has the same look.

“They’re waiting for you.” The warrior nods back up the gorge. Demon bones litter the rocky ground as far as the eye can see, drifts of them in places, skulls rolled to the walls, shattered, broken. “I’ve been keeping them safe as best I can. I knew you would come.”

Snorri blinks, seeing but not understanding. The warrior takes off his gauntlets and puts them in his belt. The hands beneath are scarred, the fingers crooked from old breaks. “They want the key,” he says.

“What?” Snorri’s face tingles, his mouth works but no words come.

“They want the key—the last words I spoke to you. I wanted to say more. To tell you I loved you. To thank you for finding me. To say goodbye.”

“Karl!”

“Father.”

The two men meet in a fierce hug.

Murder stumbled again and jolted once more from the story I glanced around—but I could see none of the Osheim’s horrors: my eyes were too blurry.

“I could come with you, Father.”

“No.” Snorri sets a hand to his son’s shoulder. “Your place is in Val halla. They will understand . . . this.” He lifts his axe toward the carnage stretching back along the gorge. “But more would be too much. We both know it.”

Karl inclines his head.

“I’m proud of you, son.” It doesn’t seem real—to have Karl there before him and to be saying goodbye again. Snorri wants to take his boy home, but a man stands before him. A man with a seat waiting for him in Asgard, a seat at a table in Odin’s own hall.

“We’ll sit together one day, Father.” Karl smiles, almost shy. “That we will.”

Snorri takes his boy in his arms one last time. A warriors’ embrace.

He lets him go. If he were to stay any longer he would be unable to leave.

The child he raised has become a man. Even before he died. The Karl who had played on the shores of the Uulisk fjord, who had chased rabbits, tended goats, played with wooden swords, loved his father, laughed and danced, fought and raced . . . that boy had had his time and that time was good. Even before Sven Broke-Oar tore their world open, that boy was safe in memory and now a young man wears his clothes. Snorri walks away, not trusting himself to speak further, not looking back, wounds forgotten, his arms remembering the feel of his son.

TWENTY-NINE

“Jal!” A tug at my arm. “Jal!”

“What?” I shook off the vision of Snorri and Karl. A desolate heath surrounded us, the horses plodding on, the wind blustery and promising rain. Just ahead of me Snorri rode with head lowered, wrapped in memory, still telling his story. I wanted to follow him back into it. “Jal!” Hennan’s voice at my ear.

Above us the sky had become a purple wound, a gyre that drew the eye. The dreary landscape about us hung thick with maybes, all of them bad. I turned in the saddle. Hennan, immediately behind me, pulled my sleeve again. “What?”

“We’ve passed over the Wheel!” He pointed back to a low ridge in the heath, like an ancient earthwork, stretching off in both directions in a straight line . . . though as I followed it with my eyes a slight curve revealed itself.

“You’ve been watching?” My gaze flitted to the monstrous shapes already starting to gather in the middle distance. They looked uncomfortably close to the demons Snorri had described. “How come you’re not . . .”