Three Slices Read online

  Atticus is trying to track down Werner Drasche, and once he does, I think we’re going to have a double-XL ruckus. He’s been financing a shadow war against the vampires using mercenary yewmen, and the vampires sent their toady to hit one of his friends in retaliation. Neither side will back down now and the argument will be settled, as so many arguments have, through violence. So, since it’s just me and Orlaith at the cabin now, it would behoove me to use the time to up my game.

  I’ve collected several different models of “hawks,” as enthusiasts like to call them these days, to experiment and see which kind would suit me best. Some have longer handles than others and different heads on them, and this of course makes their weight and balance vary from axe to axe. My concern is not weight so much as whether they fly true and rotate well after release. The axe must rotate at least once midflight before striking, and judging the distance required for that to happen is often the key to making a lethal throw. Longer throws with multiple revolutions are too easy to dodge, too often hit on the handle instead of the blade, and are rarely accurate—I remember laughing at the circus throws Orlando Bloom’s character made in those pirate movies.

  At first, I’m partial to metal handles because I remember how effective the Black Axes of the Norse dwarfs were in Hel against the draugr, and their smaller, blocking axes were all metal, but to my mind, they don’t throw as well as the hawks with wooden handles. I have my unbreakable staff to block, anyway; what I need is an accurate throw.

  My targets are made from fallen branches and firewood since I can’t countenance using a living tree for target practice. Crafting them is a good exercise for me too: I keep the cellulose of the wood but unbind the current structure and rebind and reshape it into a sort of Druidic plywood, which I set up at the base of trees in a course through our woods. And then I go coursing with Orlaith, carrying a sack full of different hawks in my left hand and chucking them at targets on the run to test their feel and my aim. Orlaith is careful to run a couple steps behind me on my left side, never getting in the line of fire. I invite her to talk to me as we run, which tests her language skills and distracts me as well, a necessary component since battles are almost entirely composed of distractions. If you can’t focus on a target while being distracted, you will die.

 

  You did in your first sentence, indeed. You are such a smart hound.

 

  A very tiny one. You modify verbs with adverbs instead of adjectives, so it would have been better to say “correctly” instead of “right,” but your meaning was clear. You are improving quickly and I am proud of you.

 

  I smile because I had seen that question coming a long way off. Oberon constantly asks me too if Orlaith is ready to be bound yet. I know he pesters Atticus about it as well but he always deflects and says it’s my decision, which means that both hounds ask me when we will bind their minds together multiple times per day, sometimes only minutes apart because they are so bad at remembering how long it was since they last asked.

  Part of me recognizes that she is ready now. She can follow my conversation easily and her fluency is improving daily. But I don’t want her to feel intimidated by Oberon’s abilities. He’s a very old hound with many more years of practice at language, and since he’s male and smitten, he will try to impress her from the start, and I want Orlaith to be able to hold her own.

  I admit there is probably an element of selfishness to it; I enjoy having Orlaith all to myself. But she is so smart that soon I will have no excuse to keep them apart.

  When I think you are ready, we will bind your minds together, I tell her, as I have told her already numerous times. You can trust me on that.

 

  I mentally smile at her and then focus on my practice. Whether it is a function of their manufacture or a function of my throwing mechanics, I confirm that the wooden hawks fly better than the all-metal ones. One particular model with a twenty-two inch handle seems close to perfect but not quite there. I shave a half-inch off the bottom of the handle and try it, and it’s closer. After I shave another half-inch off the bottom, it’s perfect for me. I’m hitting targets consistently on the run at varying distances. Satisfied, I make a note to order more and spend some time practicing melee combo moves with my staff in my left hand. Gandalf made a sword-and-staff dual wield look badass in Return of the King, but working with a hawk is an entirely different proposition because there are no stabbing moves.

  It’s while I’m working through how to deal with an opponent holding a longsword that my mind returns to the indelible mark on my left biceps. It’s because Loki wields a longsword that I’m reminded of him and the brand he left on my skin, and I cannot heal that mark with Druidry. Gaia doesn’t even recognize that there’s a problem. I’ve healed from the broken bones and my bruises are all gone now, but that mark remains, and it means he knows where I am at all times while hiding me from the sight of all others. The latter is a definite plus, but the cost is that Loki holds a certain power over me, and that I cannot abide—especially since he strongly hinted he would try to use me again to advance his goals. I owe him a death in return for my father’s, and many broken bones before that. Atticus has his vengeance to exact for his friend, and I have my own to pursue.

  The nature of Loki’s magic is Norse; the mark is made of runes. What if…

  Orlaith asks me, and I turn my head to look at her. She had lain down in the leaves, head on her paws, watching me train, but now her head is up and her ears cocked in a query.

  “What if Odin could get rid of Loki’s mark for me?” I say aloud.

 

  “Loki’s father—well, he adopted Loki, but still. If anyone could undo a Norse binding, it would be him, and I bet he doesn’t even know Loki is doing this.”

 

  “In Asgard. I don’t have a good way of getting there.” Atticus had shifted to the Norse plane and then climbed the trunk of Yggdrasil to get to Asgard, but that path was surely blocked now that the Æsir knew about it.

 

  “I don’t think Odin has a phone. And there’s no cell service in Asgard, anyway. But you know, there might be a different way to get in touch. Ready for a run?”

 

  “Just down the hill.”

  Our cabin is about a mile uphill from the Camp Bird Mine foreman’s house along County Road 26. Atticus and I met Frigg there once, and Odin’s ravens, Hugin and Munin, had been there as well. Odin knew the precise location of our cabin too, of course; Atticus once left Odin’s spear, Gungnir, inside for him to pick up. But the foreman’s house, being unoccupied, might be more neutral ground, and since Frigg and the dwarven Runeskald Fjalar had spent some time fixing up the place into a sort of mead hall, they might still have an affinity for it that I can use.

  The foreman’s house is more of a white Colonial mansion, and when we reach it, the exterior still looks dilapidated and afflicted with all the ills of age and inclement weather, complete with peeling paint, a sagging front porch, and boarded-up windows. Hugin and Munin are not conveniently perched outside waiting to bear Odin a message, unfortunately, so I have to devote some thought to how I might contact him.

  I have no idea whether he would respond to a prayer. Do the prayers of nonbelievers ever reach the gods, or are they automatically screened by faith and fervor? Atticus never covered details like this in my training, and it’s not the sort of thing I would have thought to ask him—“Hey, Atticus, how do I get in touch with Odin in case I need to chat?”

  Seeing me stop outside the house, Orlaith wonders what we are supposed to do next.

  “No, but let’s knock and g
o inside to see if it’s been maintained.”

  No one answers to my knock or my call. The door is unlocked, however, and we enter cautiously. There is no electricity but I find a candelabra and a box of matches resting next to it on a parlor table and light it up.

  “Do you smell anyone inside? Hear anyone?” I ask Orlaith.

  she replies.

  “Let me know if you hear or smell anything interesting, then. We’ll check the ground floor first.”

  The house still looks as Fjalar had left it; wood-paneled walls with shields and crossed axes mounted on the walls. In the living room, which modern people would use as a place to retire after meals, Fjalar had placed a long wooden table with benches so that people could sit near the hearth as they ate and then remain for skalds and legends afterward. At the end of the table nearest the hearth, a yellow legal pad that does not belong there demands my attention. Stiff capital letters spell out a message: BUILD FIRE FOR FRIGG AND SPEAK YOUR TRUE NAME TO GREET HER.

  That would work. As a healer, Frigg might actually be a better person to talk to than Odin. I don’t know if this message is intended for me or for Atticus, but it appears that they anticipated our need.

  “Looks like we get to build a fire,” I say.

 

  Using wood stored in a box next to the hearth, I lay a fire and light it, waiting until it’s crackling along before speaking.

  “Frigg, it is Granuaile MacTiernan who calls. I have an urgent matter to discuss with you regarding Loki. Please visit me here in Colorado.” I repeat this two more times and hope that’s sufficient.

 

  “No, we go outside to the front porch. If Frigg wants to talk to me, she will arrive on the Bifrost.”

  And Frigg does indeed wish to talk. The rainbow bridge shimmers before us, sloping out of the northern sky to dissipate into the carpet of leaves in front of the house, and the goddess floats down, dressed in blue and white with her hair gathered in a series of braids behind her.

  “Frigg, thank you for coming.”

  “Well met, Granuaile MacTiernan. What news regarding Loki?”

  “Were you and Odin aware of his mark?”

  The goddess’s brows draw together. “What mark?”

  I show her my arm and explain how it came to be there and what Loki said it meant. “I imagine he has branded Hel and Jörmungandr in the same way, thereby making them invisible to Odin and others. It’s why we’re having trouble finding them.”

  After a few minutes’ inspection and questions about how it feels or felt in the past, and a request for a detailed description of the chop Loki used to make it, she agrees that Odin should take a look. “It is not a normal wound, by any means. Have you the time to visit Asgard?”

  “I do. I’d be grateful for the invitation. May I bring my hound?”

  “Of course. You shall be my guests. Come.”

  There is no TSA on the Bifrost. No one questions my staff or my axe. Orlaith is at first unsure she wants to step on the rainbow bridge; to her eyes, it doesn’t appear that solid, and she paws at the bottom edge a few times to reassure herself that it isn’t a trick of the light. But once she is satisfied that it will hold her weight, we ascend into the sky and the Bifrost proves to work like the efficient parts of airports, the moving sidewalks where you walk and the surface also moves with you, quickening the trip. We arrive in Asgard in less than a minute of walking, passing through starscapes kissed by nebulas and feeling only the briefest flash of heat from Muspellheim and a small blast of frost from Jötunheim.

  It’s difficult to act like this is all normal for me, but I firmly smoosh my desire to take a selfie in Asgard, because I know how deeply uncool that would be. Frigg leads me to the great hall called Gladsheim and shepherds me through a maze of passages until we arrive at Odin’s throne. The throne room is almost deserted, defying my expectations. But I discover that Odin is not truly holding court at the moment. Flanked by two scowling Valkyries and a couple of wolves at his feet, Odin’s single eye bores into me and I feel naked before him—not that he regards me lasciviously, but rather in the sense that I cannot hide anything from him.

  His ravens are absent and with them the majority of his consciousness, so Frigg urges him to call them home. “You will need all your faculties,” she tells him, “and we will need privacy for this news. Meet us in my parlor at your earliest convenience.”

  He grunts and we depart without me saying a word to him, and I understand that this is by design. Loki could have spies in Gladsheim.

  Frigg leads me to a room decorated in bronze and ivory. We sit upon a divan together, I set my weapons aside, and Orlaith folds herself around my feet as a helmeted Valkyrie brings us a wide bowl of fruit. I take a fuzzy peach because I want to make a T-shirt saying “I dared to eat a peach in Asgard” and have it be true.

  “He will not be long,” Frigg assures me, and I nod, biting into one of the most glorious peaches I have ever tasted. J. Alfred Prufrock definitely should have dared.

  Odin enters as I’m finishing with Hugin and Munin perched on his shoulders, all three of them alert and focusing their gaze on me.

  “Granuaile,” he says, nodding once by way of greeting. “We have not formally met before now.”

  As I stand to greet him, I’m not sure what to do with the remainders of my peach. There is no protocol that I know of that deals with how to surreptitiously dispose of fruit in the presence of a god. “I’m honored, Odin, if slightly embarrassed to be caught eating.”

  He grins gracefully. “The honor is mine. And not to worry.” A Valkyrie appears at my elbow and takes the remainder from me, leaving my hands free. Odin thanks her and then his eye shifts down to my left arm. The beaks of his ravens tilt in tandem. “Please show me Loki’s mark and explain to me precisely how it was made and what he said about it.”

  I lift my arm and Odin cups it in his callused hand, peering closely at the mark as I recount how Loki lured me into a forgotten room buried in India to procure the Lost Arrows of Vayu, enchanted weapons that would fly true and pierce their intended target no matter the ambient weather conditions, much like Odin’s spear, Gungnir. And once I was rendered immobile by a creature guarding the arrows, Loki branded me with a round, runed chop he carried with him, from which I had been unable to heal.

  The bearded god spends several silent minutes examining the mark from several angles and pressing the skin with a thick finger. Finally satisfied, he drops my arm and meets my eyes with his single one.

  “I have a plan,” Odin said.

  “I’m very glad to hear it. This should be good.”

  As a Druid, I can bind myself to the mind of a creature and calm it if it is feeling aggressive or fearful. If sufficiently worried and I feel like bothering, I can also ask the elemental to prevent animals from attacking me, which Oberon calls “cheating.” But if I’m going to hunt, I’m on my own. I can’t ask an animal to lie down and die for me, and the rules are clear from Gaia: No magic may be used to take another creature’s life. I have to do that on my own.

  One of the lookout hartebeests saw us coming and bleated a warning to the herd. They sprang into flight and the ground thundered with the collective drumbeat of their hooves.

  Oberon and I stayed close together at first; we had to split off a chunk of the herd that had a kid in it. We positioned ourselves to the right of center behind the herd and Oberon barked. It didn’t take many before the animals directly in front of him tried to turn one way or the other, and their efforts pushed others, and in moments, we had a widening schism. We followed the right-hand group and then we had to split up on either side of it, a dangerous game of turning the herd this way and that until the kids they were protecting in the middle eventually snapped out of the end like a whip tail. Oberon leapt onto the back of one and brought it down, the herd kept moving, and then the hunt changed into a protect-the-flag operation.
/>   High-pitched chattering announced the approach of a pack of hyenas. It took me a moment to orient myself and figure out where we had left Mekera, but once I spotted her in the distance, I shape-shifted back to human and drew Fragarach from its scabbard. I waved it overhead, hoping the sunlight would flash on the blade and signal that she should come down.

  Speaking through my bond to the earth, I asked the elemental to redirect the attention of the hyena pack elsewhere in a live-and-let-live arrangement. There had been enough blood shed for my divination already. The hyenas kept coming, though, fanning out to surround and harry us because that was how they operated, lacking the speed to chase down many animals themselves. I thought I was going to have to cut a few of them and risk Oberon getting hurt, but just as one lunged toward me, armed with teeth and hyena death-breath, it abruptly changed its mind, backed off, and then the entire pack skirted us and trotted away after the herd. I sighed in relief and Mekera arrived with my clothes shortly thereafter, untroubled. It was only an hour and a half after we took off through the grass that we returned to Mekera’s house with everything she needed, and she had her cheese started before noon. Normally, separating the rennet from the stomach lining takes days or even weeks, but I sped that process along with some careful binding.

  Below her living area and another level for her private suite, Mekera had a lab for bacteria cultures, a mixing room, and shelves for aging completed wheels of cheese. All of these were additions I’d made in the nineties.

  Oberon was awed by the variety of cheeses on display in the aging room.

  You just ate, Oberon, back on the savanna.