Kevin Hearne - Hammered

“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.