Hammered

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?
    One word: Heimdall.
    He was lingering around the roots of Yggdrasil instead of tending to Bifrost—probably as a result of my nighttime raid for the golden apple—and must have thought it odd when twenty giant eagles came flying out of Ratatosk’s passage to Jötunheim. Thus, when we emerged from the hole directly behind said eagles and Perun let us drift down to the new-fallen snow around the trunk, there was already blood staining it. Heimdall had cut down two of the frost giants as they shifted to their bipedal forms, but the rest had shifted successfully and were converging on him. He didn’t see much hope of getting out alive, and he spied us landing and realized we weren’t friendly tourists either. So the bastard whelp of nine mothers put a horn to his lips—Gjallarhorn, specifically—and blew for all he was worth until the giants smooshed him to paste with colorful, juicy noises.
    Hrym’s people considered this to be a wholly positive turn of events, and they laughed uproariously at the pulped remains of the god. Stomping Heimdall into a bloody smear was tangible, immediate proof that we could change the future and that Ragnarok would not play out according to the prophecy of the Norns. Heimdall was supposed to have killed Loki on the Field of Vigrid and be killed in turn. He was fated to be the last of the gods to die; instead, he was among the first.
    But I thought their celebration was misplaced. Gjallarhorn was supposed to warn everyone in Asgard that Ragnarok had begun, and now everyone who could grab hold of something pointy would come running to the source of that magical call—including the berserker hordes of Einherjar.
    » Look to the west, Leif. That’s where they’ll come from. I need to see if I can find Moralltach, « I said.
    » Which way is west here? « he asked, and I realized that he’d probably become disoriented during the flight up, and the stars weren’t the same as ones we saw on the plane of Midgard in any case.
    » That way. « I pointed, indicating the mountain range that surrounded Asgard.
    Leif started shouting in Old Norse and then repeating himself in English to get everyone facing west. He had Hrym and Suttung erect a wall of ice behind us so that we couldn’t be easily flanked from the other side of Yggdrasil, and he asked Väinämöinen to cast a seeming over us so that Hugin and Munin couldn’t scout our forces. I liked that spell because it targeted an area rather than me specifically, so my amulet didn’t shut it down.
    Once standing uncertainly over a spot that seemed close to where I had cached Moralltach for later retrieval, I had to dig down through two feet of snow to reach the half-frozen earth. The storm that had brought this snowfall must have hit shortly after my last visit. I was so very glad the Morrigan had taught me the core-temperature trick, because the ground was still bloody cold when I put my bare feet on it. The tattoo on my heel renewed the strained connection I had with the earth on this