Kevin Hearne - Hammered

“Excellent points. Allow me to remind you that you won’t be alone—you’ll have us—and the Einherjar should not be a problem. We’re going to show up on the opposite side of the plane from them. You cause lots of freezing and suffering as soon as we get there, and the Æsir will send out those who can respond the fastest—which means those who can fly, right? So we can expect Thor, Freyr, Odin and the Valkyries, and anybody else who can hitch a ride with them. They can’t bring all the Einherjar with them. We strike fast, kill Thor, and take Freyja, then leave. The Æsir will be crippled and—”

“Graah!” Hrym broke in. “How can you prevail against Thor? His thunderbolts will destroy us all.”

“Oh. Perhaps you have not had time to be introduced to our companions. We have our own thunder god.” I turned to Perun and asked him quickly in Russian to produce more of his fulgurites. “This is Perun,” I said to Hrym. “With his help, Thor’s primary weapon will be neutralized. The Æsir are unlikely to have similar protection, because they’ve never had to deal with it before. Our attacks will be unlike anything they have seen or prepared for. None of your people can be struck down by cowardly attacks from the air. If the Æsir are to defeat you, they must do so by force of arms, and surely the people of Hrym can acquit themselves well in battle.”

“Beware of tricks, Hrym,” one of the females said. “This could be a snare to draw you into the Æsir’s clutches.”

“See for yourself, lady, that I speak truth. Here,” I said, tossing her my fulgurite. She caught it and regarded it quizzically; she had probably never seen sand before. I signaled to Perun to let her have it and held my breath. I wasn’t sure that Perun’s powers would work here on the Norse plane—but they did. A lightning bolt struck the giantess, and the frost Jötnar dove for cover. “Graah!” they shouted.

But then they looked back at the woman and saw that she was laughing at them, completely unharmed.

“You see, Hrym? You can finally give back some of what you’ve been getting from the Æsir. There is no need to wait for Ragnarok. This can happen tomorrow.” Perun was busy passing out fulgurites to the frost Jötnar and grinning hugely at them. He was growing beardcicles of his own due to his proximity to the giants.

Hrym still had his doubts. “Is this real lightning you call down from the sky?”

I translated for Perun, and he promptly destroyed someone’s ice house to prove that he was using one hundred percent real fucking lightning. One of the Jötnar bellowed in outrage, but Hrym found this amusing and laughed like he was trying to clear wet cement from his throat.

“Very well, tiny man called Atticus. You may tell me more of your plan. How precisely do we bring the Æsir low?”

I told him.

The frost giants needed no convincing that Thor needed killing. He’d slain the family members or ancestors of everyone in the village, so once they were convinced they had a hamster’s chance in Hel of surviving, asking them to come along was like asking a starving man if he’d like a bucket of chicken. Still, we did not get the entire village to join us; we got twenty, all of whom could shape-shift to eagles, and some of them came from other villages a short distance away. They were called during the day while Leif slept, and we all did our best to prepare for the night ahead by catching what sleep we could. Perun gave me a new fulgurite to replace the one I’d given to the giantess.

When the sun set that evening and Leif pronounced himself ready to get his revenge on, Hrym offered to carry us to the root of the World Tree, since we were so bloody slow in the snow.

Druid’s Log, December 3: “Hitching a ride on a frost giant’s back is both entertaining and eco-friendly.” First, the greenhouse-gas emissions are almost nil; you get to hear all about the many splendid beauties of Freyja; the wind noise is minimal, aside from the occasional graah; and since you don’t have to steer, you can simply enjoy the scenery from ten feet above the ground. On the downside, they smell like ice cubes made of sweat instead of water.

We were traveling in a valley between cragged sweeps of glacial mountain ranges, which I’d failed to notice while shivering in Suttung’s footsteps the night before. It was probably a lovely meadow in the summer—if summer ever truly came to this part of Jötunheim—but under recent snowfall it was a cobalt blanket gently undulating to the night horizon. Stands of evergreen timber, drooping with heavy snow, bracketed us on either side like mute and shivering spectators. A wolf howled off to the south, and Gunnar looked a bit wistful.

Once at the root, we hopped down from the frost giants’ backs and they shifted to eagles—bloody big ones. They launched themselves straight up, following the root to Asgard. Long ago, Hrym told me, young Jötnar tried to climb the root to see if there might be a way to Asgard, but none ever returned. Ratatosk slew them, perhaps, or else the Norns did. Now there was nothing to prevent them from taking advantage of Ratatosk’s passage to the plane.

Perun was going to provide transport for the rest of us. I could have shifted to an owl and joined the frost Jötnar, but I wanted to hold on to my clothes for a bit longer. Väinämöinen and Zhang Guo Lao deposited their packs at the base of the root, to be picked up on the return trip. I slipped my wallet and cell phone into Väinämöinen’s pack, because rule number one of committing naughty shit is that you don’t take ID with you.

“You have arms out to sides, legs together,” Perun said, demonstrating with his own wingspan. We all did as he instructed, but Gunnar in particular looked tense, and his yellow eyes indicated he was struggling to keep his wolf under control. It was a control issue, period, because Perun was going to fly us up there. Thunder gods have to be able to push storms around, so summoning sufficient wind to carry us up the trunk was no problem for him. Keeping all six of us from twisting away unpredictably in the winds was a bit tougher. Imagine an extremely turbulent airplane ride without a seat belt. Or a barf bag. Or a plane. The first half mile was rough on us all, but Gunnar suffered especially, because wolves don’t like to fly.

During the flight, Väinämöinen’s beard flew up around his face, completely hiding it, and a steady stream of Finnish curses could be heard from behind the white curtain of hair. My earlier suspicion that he had weapons hidden under his beard was confirmed: Strapped to his tunic at the top of his chest were seven thin sheathed blades suitable for throwing. Four hilts could be drawn from the right, three from the left.

Perun was finally able to stabilize us and we flew steadily upward. He pushed himself ahead of us, the better to direct the winds at the top of the root, where we’d have to duck into Ratatosk’s hole and then rocket up the chute that would give us egress to the Plain of Idavoll. He gradually strung us out underneath one another in a tight little wind tunnel, which would also facilitate our travel up the root’s throat.

The plan was simple. Once on the Plain of Idavoll, we were going to follow the immortal strategy of Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh and “announce [our] presence with authority.” Perun would send thunderstorms toward Asgard, and everyone would yell at Thor for failing to control them. He’d get angry over the loss of face and come barreling out to investigate the source of the trouble. Meanwhile, the frost giants would send shivering ice storms at Fólkvangr, and Freyja would harness her kittehs to ride out and put a stop to it. There would be no long march on Asgard to attack fortified positions. They’d come to us. That was the plan. It was simple, playing to our strengths and preying on the enemy’s weakness. What could go wrong?