I nodded at her. “No argument here.”
“Of course,” Brighid agreed. She gestured at the body. “Well done. Whether you wanted a cookie for that or not, you’re going to get thousands.”
“How did things go in Taiwan?” I asked.
“I’m glad I went,” she replied, “because Sun Wukong is an excellent teacher and Taipei is a wonderful city. I’m going to make Mandarin my next headspace. But I wasn’t truly needed there. The masters of the heavens are more than a match for the lords of hell, and you knew that. You both made a decision for me as if I were a child, and I don’t appreciate it. You might think the difference in our ages makes you wiser somehow, but I don’t need to be thousands of years old to know you shouldn’t treat someone like that.”
Neither of us was able to respond, because a good chunk of the Norse had arrived. Thor and Freyja landed first, each in their chariot, on either side of Loki’s body. Odin and Frigg appeared soon after, escorted by Valkyries, and they set up a perimeter, making sure the retreating draugar streamed around and didn’t interrupt—or interrupt us, anyway. I felt fairly certain they would be interrupting the citizens of Skoghall soon.
“Who slew him?” Odin demanded.
Granuaile raised her hand with the arrows clutched in them. “I did.”
The Norse all blinked in surprise, clearly expecting Brighid to have done it. “The Druid? We didn’t know you were here.”
“Late arrival.”
“Huh. You win all the cookies, then.”
“Yeah, Brighid mentioned something like that.”
“There is a more important matter to settle, Odin,” Freyja said, descending from her chariot, sword in hand, “and you know it.”
“I do, yes. Your pardon, Freyja. Druid,” he said, and pointed to me so that there would be no question to whom he was speaking, “you have committed many crimes against the Æsir, for which you now need to answer.”
“I’ve already answered,” I said. “We made a deal in Oslo. I returned Gungnir. I helped destroy both Fenris and Jörmungandr, and I was instrumental in slaying both Hel and Loki.”
“You never made a deal with me, Druid,” Freyja said. “You killed the Norns and unleashed all of this. You killed Sleipnir, and your actions brought about the deaths of Ratatosk, my brother Freyr, Heimdall, Thor, and many Valkyries.”
“First,” I said, pointing to the thunder god, “looks to me like Thor’s fine.” The others she’d mentioned weren’t fine, though. Or at least they weren’t in attendance. Four figures muscled through the throng of draugar and passed between the Valkyries. It was the Olympians, Athena and Minerva and the two Apollos. Owls swooped down to land on the shoulders of the goddesses of wisdom. “And for the rest I have made recompense. You even helped us fight Fenris.”
“Yes, at Odin’s request, I agreed to defer my vengeance until a later date to accomplish a strategic goal. But that deferment has now ended. You have not answered for what you did to me personally, and Odin cannot bargain that away. And for that offense I call you out right now.”
“Wait. What offense?” Granuaile said.
I closed my eyes and sighed. I knew Freyja would never forgive me, and I could not blame her.
“He recruited the frost giants to help him invade Asgard,” Freyja explained. “And their promised payment…was me.”
“What? Atticus, you never told me this.”
“No, I didn’t.”
People tend not to volunteer what shames them the most. This was, as I’d feared, my personal judgment day, and I had so much to answer for: A discordant symphony of poor choices that accelerated and crescendoed from the moment I decided to fight Aenghus Óg. Boneheaded moves rooted in codes of honor and loyalty more than logic. Astounding dismissals of the warnings of two deities—one of them omniscient—who stated in plain terms that this wouldn’t end well for me. And I am just honest enough with myself to realize that I would probably make those same decisions again, for that is how deeply flawed I am. My long life has not made me especially wise or some paragon of moral rectitude; it has just given me greater scope to cock everything up. Coyote’s observation that all presidents were narcissists came back to me, for it struck me that I might be one such—not a politician, of course, but a person in power who made decisions in his own self-interest over the obvious interests of a great many other people.
I stepped away from Brighid on suddenly unsteady knees and faced the Norse goddess of war and beauty. Physically my knees should be fine—I’m still enjoying the ligaments and cartilage of a man in his early twenties—but such is the power of emotion over our bodies. “Freyja, I apologize. I never should have done that.”
“I didn’t come here for an apology.” The grin on her face contained no scrap or hope of mercy. That same grin bloomed on the faces of the other Norse in attendance, and I remembered they had flashed such smiles before the battle too. This confrontation had been planned all along. They’d been looking forward to it.
“I know. I wanted to give you one anyway. It’s sincere.”
Freyja ignored this and bent her knees ever so slightly, raising her sword and her eyebrows. “So you will answer on your own? No pleas to Brighid or summoning the Morrigan to your side?”
“I will answer.” I glanced at Granuaile and added, “On my own,” to make sure she wouldn’t intervene.
The land we stood on was dead, drained by the portal to the lower realms of the Norse. I was out of energy, my bear charm drained. I could not boost my strength or speed or perform the simplest binding without Gaia’s energy. I was a mere human squaring off against a goddess who once held her own against the Morrigan and walked away—a trained fighter, sure, and with an excellent weapon, but still a mere human.
“Good,” she said, crouching down to spring. I set myself in a defensive stance and felt the adrenaline begin to pump into my system. It didn’t help much.
When Freyja attacked, she blurred with speed, and the only reason I got Fragarach up in time to block her blow was that she had some distance to cover and I guessed right about where the attack would come from. It came from above, just to the left of my head, and though I placed my blade in the perfect position, her strength was such that it simply knocked my blade down on contact while only slowing her strike somewhat. The edge hit my scavenged Fae armor between my neck and shoulder and it held, but I staggered back and she followed, kicking me in the chest to make sure I went down. That knocked me clean off my feet and I crashed into the flash-cooled volcanic earth, crunching my head onto something and seeing lights pop in my vision.
I heard some chuckles, maybe someone retching, but saw no incoming attack. She was waiting for me to get up again. Playing with me. And I felt the hot trickle of blood on my neck. I’d gashed my scalp and most likely earned a concussion. But when I got up I didn’t feel like waiting for another beat-down. I charged and delivered the best flurry of attacks I could manage, but her speed and strength allowed her to deflect and parry and repel me. It was abundantly clear that I couldn’t win and that she could end it whenever she wished, but she wasn’t smiling anymore. Her expression was one of intense concentration. She was looking for something—but what was she after? She beckoned me forward, but I planted myself instead. I wasn’t going to give her what she wanted.
“Fine,” she growled. “I’ll make you hurt first.”
First before what? I wondered, but then she launched herself at me, and after my initial attempt to block, I was rocked by punishing blows to my body from both fists and feet. I took the pommel of her sword in my right temple, which stunned me until a tremendous impact chunked into the top of my right shoulder just outside the protection of the armor and it dawned on me, far too late, what she’d been after. I toppled over a few pounds lighter, my blood spraying onto the ground, and I let loose a single cry of horror and disbelief.
Freyja had cut off my right arm.
turns out you can actually be sick with worry. I always thought it was just an expression, being worried sick. But I’m so stressed and fearful for Atticus as the duel begins that I throw up a little bit. Because without the earth’s power at his call, he’s so slow compared to Freyja. He doesn’t have a chance and he’s well aware and fighting anyway, and I’m sure that she’s going to kill him, especially after that first blow—that’s when I toss my cookies. But then she beats him down, hacks off his arm, kicks it away, and all I can think is that he’s going to bleed to death because there’s no way he can heal. I mean, apart from the fact that there is no power to draw upon, his healing triskele is now separated from his command. And so are his bound animal forms and his ability to shift planes.