Hammered

spittle frothed from the sides of my mouth, as an inchoate roar swelled from my lungs.
    I sprinted to the body of Freyr and shifted back to human once I reached him. He was dead, Gungnir having done its work, and I yanked the enchanted spear out to employ it further. I searched eagerly for new targets, but all were partially blocked by allies—until I looked up. There I spied two enemies circling above the mêlée between the few remaining frost Jötnar and the Æsir: Hugin and Munin. I had no clue which was which, but if Odin’s unconsciousness could drop them from the sky, could the death of one or both ravens drop Odin? Time to find out. Choosing one, I hurled Gungnir with all the strength of my right arm and watched it fly. It bent in the air like a well-struck football will swerve toward the corner of the goal, heading for its target with infallible accuracy. It spitted the bird through the breast. When the raven fell spiraling to the snow, Odin seized up in the midst of swinging a blow at Hrym and allowed the Jötunn to bat him away powerfully with his ice club. The one-eyed god flew like a sack of bones through the air, and his journey attracted the dismayed attention of Freyja, who called out and broke off her own attack, wheeling her chariot around to render assistance. She forgot entirely in her haste that frost giants have very long arms. Suttung snatched her out of the open back of her chariot and instantly caused a sheath of ice to freeze her from head to toe; she was a goddess Popsicle. The chariot, pulled by Freyja’s cats, flew on toward Odin.
    » Graah! « Suttung bellowed jubilantly, holding his prize above his head. » I got her! «
    » Father! « the Æsir in black cried, confirming his identity as Vidar. He disengaged from the giants more successfully than Freyja had and rushed to the allfather’s aid. This would have been the best time to sound a retreat and get out of there while we still could, or at least help Leif or Zhang Guo Lao or Perun with their Æsir deathmatches, but instead I scooped up Fragarach from where it lay in the snow and chased the son of Odin, all the warnings from Jesus and the Morrigan forgotten now that I had taken leave of my reason.
    I really should have heeded those warnings.
    Something punched me hard in my left side as I ran, knocking me off my feet to tumble gracelessly in the powder. Pain followed shortly afterward, and my arm swung into an arrow shaft underneath my ribs. I couldn’t breathe for the excruciating agony this caused, but I understood what had happened. Ullr had taken a shot at me instead of at Perun, knowing an easy target when he saw one. I drew on the magic in my bear charm to squelch the worst of the pain and staggered to my feet, twisting around in time to see Perun cleave the bastard in two with his axe. That relief allowed me to gasp in a lungful of cold air, but my will to fight on left me when I exhaled. Reason returned: Let Vidar tend to the broken body of Odin, I thought, and I’ll tend to my torn intestines.
    I was a bloody mess inside, and it was only going to get worse. The tip of the arrow hadn’t gone all the way through, and it would have to before I could snap it off and remove the shaft. Perun, looking around for another foe, spotted me floundering in the snow and I waved him over weakly. He had three arrows in him, all on his limbs on the left side. The two I had spotted earlier were still in his arm, and a third was lodged in his thigh, causing him to half-limp, half-hop to me. The five surviving frost giants were huddling together to admire the frozen Freyja, still clutched triumphantly in Suttung’s hand.
    Two vicious battles continued as Perun made his way to my side. Týr was discovering that he had no way to anticipate the drunken boxing moves of Zhang Guo Lao. His thrusts whiffed through the air or caught nothing but the voluminous material of the immortal’s robes, and it was all he could do to keep his shield in front of Zhang’s attacks.
    Farther away, almost all the way back to the wall of ice the Jötnar had erected upon our arrival, Leif’s duel with Thor raged on. Considering Leif’s speed and skill with swordplay, I would have thought he’d have finished it one way or another. But Thor was lightning fast himself—go figure. And that new shield of his was holding up very well compared to the first one; there was probably an enchantment of some kind on it.
    Perun ducked under my right side and draped my