Staked

“First, that’s bullshit either-or thinking. And second, I’ve already told you that the Svartálfar are not on the side of Hel any more than they are on yours. They’re neutral, and if you’d take the time to talk to them instead of marching on them, we could spare a lot of lives here.”

“I asked where you stand, Druid.”

“Right here in front of you, demanding that you not attempt genocide.”

Fjalar paused and craned his neck to look at the gray ceiling of clouds. “So you would defy Odin?” He spied and then pointed to Hugin and Munin, circling above us. They had not been there earlier. “He’s watching.”

“Then he can watch me say this: I would defy anyone who wished to commit genocide, including Brighid.” In fact, I was starting to wonder about Odin. Loki wanted to burn the world, and Odin wanted to just wipe out part of it. There was a difference of scale, but the sentiment was the same—denying people their right to live because you didn’t like them. It gave me pause to think about what I was doing: Do vampires have a right to, uh, unlive? Was my situation any different? I supposed it was: Theophilus had actively sent Werner Drasche and others to kill my friends and me, and he would doubtless do so again. He intended me to be the last victim of a genocide he’d carried out centuries ago with the help of the Roman legions, marching to do his bidding much as Fjalar and company were marching to Odin’s. But my rationale of an active self-defense was perilously close to Odin’s, and could bear some further scrutiny later.

“I certainly hope you would defy me in such a case,” Brighid said, igniting her left fist. It did much to draw Fjalar’s attention, as did her three-level voice, in which she could speak only truth and could be quite persuasive. “I am Brighid, First among the Fae, and I also will protect the right of the Svartálfar to exist. Withdraw and let us talk calmly of these matters and come to an accord.”

“No,” Fjalar replied. “You underestimate the will of Asgard. The time for talk has past. We must prepare for Ragnarok.”

I cocked my head at him and said, “When was the time for talk, exactly? Because I must have missed it. Seems like you haven’t talked to the Svartálfar at all.”

“Enough! You insert yourselves into matters that don’t concern you. Move aside.”

“Be very concerned, Runeskald,” Brighid warned in her three-part voice. “If you move forward, you will be the first to die an unnecessary death. I can read those runes well enough to know your armor does not protect against fire.”

“You may send me to Valhalla if you wish,” Fjalar said. “Either way, I will fight in Ragnarok.”

I raised my left hand in a plea for him to stop. “Fjalar, no. Wait—”

The Runeskald lifted his axe high and shouted, “Æsir!” As soon as he brought it down, pointing it at Brighid and shouting, “Forward!” the goddess of fire lit him up like a stump, just as she had promised, and I wondered why people who believed in the next life were so anxious to start living it instead of enjoying the one they had.

Fjalar cried out in agony and the Black Axes roared in response, charging right through a wall of flame that Brighid laid down between us. They went from orderly to berserk in less than a second and didn’t care how hot she could make it for them; they were going to take a swing at us no matter what.

Brighid unhitched that monstrous sword of hers and swept aside the first few axes. I likewise was able to parry a couple of swings with Fragarach, but the tide coming against us was too huge, and the third dwarf who missed kicked me in the right knee—the leg that was already uncertain thanks to Werner Drasche—and I went down. Axes clanged on my cuirass and failed to penetrate, but I still felt them like powerful punches to the ribs. I took a kick to the head, which rung the belfry pretty good, but Fragarach’s enchantment allowed me to cut off at the knees the dwarf who did it, slicing clean through his armor. Brighid helped out by setting those immediately around me on fire—the pain distracted them long enough to delay a coup de grâce—and then she bowled through them, hooked her arm underneath one of mine to scoop me up, and turned on the fire jets. We only rose twenty feet or so and hovered, facing the army now unable to reach us, their front line on fire and rolling around in the snow to try to extinguish themselves. The back lines of Glass Knights fired a volley of fléchettes at us, some of which went wide or short. The darts that did hit us pinged harmlessly off our armor.

“Not my best diplomatic achievement,” I told Brighid.

“They won’t listen while they can choose the path of glorious battle,” she replied.

“Ugh. Yeah. Maybe we can shut that path down.”

“I don’t wish to set them all on fire. Relations with Odin are going to be strained enough as it is.”

“I don’t want that either. We could immobilize them from here by binding their legs together, or whatever. I’ll take the leather, you take the glass? Then we talk to Hugin and Munin.”

“I like this plan.”

“Then let’s make it so,” I said, with my best attempt at imitating Sir Patrick Stewart.

We both began to speak in Old Irish, crafting bindings that would force swaths of leather or glass to adhere to another one we targeted nearby. I started with the nearest fully bearded dwarf I could see in the second rank, zeroing in on the leather jerkin peeking through the joints of his armor and binding it to his neighbor. When they were yanked off balance by the binding and then collided, they fell down into the snow, with much cursing and confusion. I repeated the binding on two more nearby soldiers and made an ungainly grouping of four hopping-mad dwarfs, spitting at each other as they tried to win free. Then I moved on to repeat the process with four more and saw that Brighid was operating in much the same way, though a lot faster. The Glass Knights were covered all over in those runed glass tiles, whereas the leather on the dwarfs was a bit more difficult to pinpoint. It took a half hour or so, but we eventually had the entire army tied up into clusters that could still move if they cooperated but could certainly not fight. They were having some pretty epic tantrums about it too; I didn’t think the spirit of cooperation was going to blossom anytime soon.

“Now,” Brighid said, projecting her voice over the field as only the goddess of poetry could, “let us discuss how we can all go home alive after this.”

She lowered us to the ground slowly, and it would have been awesome except that when I touched down, my right leg would not support my weight. Besides the gammy hamstring, my knee had been thrashed, so it was simply saying “nope” to helping me stay upright. Toppling over sideways did not make me look like a badass. Luckily, Brighid was commanding enough for the both of us.

Her helmet tilted back and she found the ravens circling above. “Hugin and Munin. Odin. Listen well, for I speak true.” Her voice boomed in three registers. “We bear Asgard no ill will and regret the injuries and death sustained today. We acted to prevent war and save life rather than take it. We wish the Svartálfar to join us against Loki and Hel on the day that Ragnarok arrives. We believe they will play a pivotal role once they become our allies instead of a neutral third party. Bringing them to our side will require effort, but it is an effort we feel you should make, so that both they and the Æsir can continue to thrive.”