Hammered

wattled neck and said, » He is still here. The danger remains. «
    Danger to whom? I hadn’t come to throw down with them. I just wanted some extremely rare produce. They all deserved a swift kick in the hoo-hah for what they had done to Ratatosk, but much as I wanted to deliver it, I didn’t see an upside to picking a fight with them when they could vaporize giant rodents. I took a step to my right, an overture to running away, but they must have spied the movement, for their heads all snapped down to lock directly on me with jaundiced, egg-yolk eyes.
    » He is there! « the middle one cried, pointing, and then in unison they sang out in a truly ancient language and threw open their hands at me, their dirty fingernails releasing a foul dust into the air.
    I didn’t know precisely what the dust was supposed to accomplish; most likely, it was my demise. Perhaps, in their old age and infirmity, they thought they were throwing confetti at me—but their behavior did not seem all that warm and welcoming. Rather the opposite, in fact. My cold iron amulet flashed hot for a second, confirming that they had just tried to kill me, and my stomach twisted oddly in my guts, causing me to fart robustly.
    Normally I laugh at such things, because there is nothing like a fart to lighten up a tense situation. But this one hadn’t been a natural result of my digestion; it was a deadly serious fart, a sign that some small fraction of the Norns’ magic was getting past my amulet—perhaps a single speck of that dust—and that worried me.
    » He’s still alive! « the one on the right cursed, and that dispelled any lingering doubts about their intentions.
    I probably should have run for it. But then, if I escaped, they’d raise the alarm and all of Asgard would be searching for me. That wouldn’t end well. Strategically, logically, and even instinctively, in self-defense, I had to take them out. And once a decision like that is made in a moment of crisis, there is no such thing as calm, reasoned execution. There is only action, fueled by the baser parts of our brains.
    The rags on the Norns’ bony frames were natural woolen fibers, and as such, lent themselves to easy manipulation. As the Norns shoved their claws into pockets for more dust and began to chant something different and more dire in their old tongue, I murmured a binding for the material at their shoulder blades, so that when I finished and willed it done, they were abruptly pulled back-to-back and held in place like a hissing human triangle. That disrupted their spell and caused some wailing and gnashing of teeth. I paused; I almost left them there, bound only by their clothes, seemingly impotent for now. But then abruptly they calmed down and began to rotate in a circle, chanting something low and venomous. Each Norn in turn faced me and pulled a thread from the front of her garment, passing it to her sister on the left. They began to weave the threads, pulling and twisting and chanting all the while as they spun. It was seven kinds of creepy, and I knew I couldn’t let them finish whatever they were doing, because it would likely finish me. I drew Moralltach and charged, not caring if they heard me. Their yellow eyes widened as they heard my approach, but they didn’t stop chanting their spell, so I couldn’t allow myself to stop either. I swept Moralltach through their necks in a single broad sweep, their heads sailed away like ragged balls of gray twine, and thus were the Norse unyoked from the chains of destiny. And thus was I plunged into a galactic vat of doom.
    » Damn it! « I shouted, frustrated beyond belief at how badly this had played out. I released my binding and let the bodies slump as they may. I slumped to the ground after them, dragged down by the weight of what I’d just done.
    When you steal an apple, you can simply disappear. That had been my plan. But slay a manifestation of fate, and » they will find you, « as Hans Gruber pointed out in Die Hard .
    I chewed over the idea of aborting the mission. It had a nice light flavor to it, a piquant savor of surprise. I could try my hand at being unemployed in Greenland. Maybe that would keep me off the radar. Laksha would never find me there, I felt sure.
    But the Norse probably would. And Oberon would be miserable. There was the bitter aftertaste.
    Still, I had time to think of something better; I had until New Year’s to get the golden apple. Laksha wouldn’t start looking for me until