I pause between two tall trees, wondering if she wants to be alone, if I’ll only be annoying her if I follow. But then I recall the expression of loss pressing down her mouth as she stood up from her bench, and I keep going.
It’s cold in the shade. None of the trees have new buds yet, and the ground is dank with fallen leaves left to freeze over the winter. Thin branches clatter together in the wind.
Astrid follows a straight path, and I easily catch up to her where she’s huddled at the bank of the creek. The water barely trickles around flat rocks and exposed roots. Astrid’s head is lowered and she stares at the stream with her arms wrapped around her knees.
“Astrid?”
Her whole body jerks and she stands. “Oh, Soren.” She relaxes.
“I don’t mean to disturb you, but …” I gesture rather helplessly at the path she took. “You were running, and I thought you might need something.”
Leaning back against a gray tree, she says, “I need a lot of things.”
I don’t reply, just study her. The corners of her eyes are red. I take a step closer. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
She smiles. “I’m not that delicate.”
“Everyone has weak days.”
“You?”
“I feel weak every day.”
“I don’t believe that. You wouldn’t fight it so hard if you were weak.”
“I fight it so hard because I am.”
“No.”
I open my mouth to contradict her, but she shakes her head. “Soren, I’m thinking about what Odin is promising, to whomever returns the Light to Asgard.”
“A boon from the Alfather is a great thing,” I say quietly.
She’s staring at my eyes and I want to look away. She expects me to ask, Do you think he would take away my berserking? Instead I say, “He could tell you certainly about your mother.”
A hiss presses out through her teeth and she turns away from me.
“You’re going to try, aren’t you?”
There’s no answer. Her shoulders shake as a cold breeze flows around us.
“Will you start in the desert?” I ask. “As you saw last night when you seethed?”
After a drawn-out breath, she asks in return, “Do you love the gods, Soren?”
“Love them?”
“You don’t wear Odin’s symbols, or a hammer charm for Thor. You don’t light candles in the chapel.”
“What does that have to do with love?”
She turns back as a quick smile appears and vanishes on her mouth. But her upset is so clear in the rigid posture of her hands. “Faith, then. Do you believe in them? My mom used to tell me all I needed was faith. ‘Believe in them, little cat.’ It was the last thing she said to me, you know.” Astrid’s eyes are big, as though if she holds them wide open enough she will only see me, not her memories. “But I thought having faith in our gods was like having faith that the grass will be green or that gravity will hold me to the ground. There isn’t anything to have faith in. They simply are. They’re real. Their power is real, even if they choose not to use it sometimes.” Her voice lowers and I’m not certain she’s talking to me anymore. “And then one morning, the sun doesn’t rise. Baldur the Beautiful does not do what he’s done for a thousand years! I feel it like a hollow wound right here.” Astrid jabs her fingers against her diaphragm.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you take it seriously. Every day you live with the consequences of the gods in our lives. So many people ignore the gods’ influence until it’s convenient to pay attention. Until they need goblins evicted from their basement or can’t decide what cancer treatment to accept. Taffy just wants me to toss the bones and weave prophecy to tell her if she’ll pass her history exam, and all the girls look at me as if they expect my mother. Expect prophecy to fall out of my mouth every time I open it. You know it’s work. You know it isn’t a game.”
I stare at her eyes, where her passion burns hotly enough that for a moment I am glad I can’t feel it. If I were like her, my berserking would have awakened long ago. But if I were like her, I might not mind—and what would that be like? To embrace the wild battle-fury the way she embraces her spinning magic? For a moment I consider it, my eyes dragging down to her lips as I imagine kissing her, imagine putting my arms around her and drinking her passion up, and her courage, too.
“Soren, what are you thinking?”
I hear her only because I see her lips move. “I am thinking that if anyone can find him, it’s you.”
“Because of who my mother was.” Her brow lowers, her eyes narrow.
“No.” I step away. Otherwise I’ll kneel before her. “Because you’ll be the only one doing it for the right reason.”
Her face opens back up, but she remains silent.
I leave her alone in the forest.
While the rest of the academy’s students are forced to spend the afternoon in club activities and sports, to keep their minds off the outside troubles, I work out in the combat arena with Master Pirro.
Today he’s grumpy and distracted, and I don’t have to ask why. Nothing like this, like a missing god, has happened in anyone’s memory. He wants to be out there, with the war bands, searching. Doing. It’s what he’s meant for, but instead he’s babysitting a kid berserker who refuses to let the fury come.
I heft my ax between two stances, both defensive, while Pirro barks at me to shift my left foot back or roll one of my shoulders. It’s rare enough for a berserker to live into old age, and while he’s a great instructor, the years have cooled his battle-fire enough to make his bones creak and keep us from sparring often.
Out of nowhere, Pirro calls a halt and says, “Soren, I’ve talked with my old friend Karlson at the Hangadrottin. He might have a place for you after Disir Day.”
I don’t move; I stand holding the heavy ax stuck halfway through a swing. Most of the best generals of our time attended the war college, as did the president himself. If I wanted to be a berserker, it would be my obvious choice. I have the credentials: recommendation and family tradition. Dad graduated from there, but in the end it wasn’t enough to teach him control.
Pirro grimaces so broadly it pushes all his wrinkles up over his eyes and I don’t know how he can see through them. He lays a hand on my wrist, gently pressing down so that I lower the ax to the holmring ground. “You need to study with them, Bearskin, to prepare to join a commit and serve your god and country.”
He speaks as if my berserking is inevitable.
Because I won’t answer him, Pirro continues gruffly, “You need their … training. The kind I can’t give you.”
Conditioning, he means. The exercises they put you through to teach you how to kill not just trolls or goblins, but other men. For us it isn’t only about learning to pull the trigger, but about coping afterward, when you come back to yourself and are surrounded by bodies of whatever it is you’ve murdered while you went berserk.
The thought of it sets the fever spinning, making my stomach turn over until I clench my jaw and press my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I take a deep breath through my nose and turn away from Pirro.
I want it gone. I want so badly to be free; it’s like a magnet pulling at my heart. What if Odin could take it away? What if Astrid could really find Baldur, and win us the Alfather’s boon?
Pirro sighs. “Think it over, Soren. Better to be prepared. When the rage fully takes you, your choices will be over.”
Then he gives me permission to go up to my dorm to work on my Anglish paper. But I’m too restless to write. Instead I sit on the floor where London’s bed used to be and concentrate on my breathing. It takes all my focus to balance the fever, to calm it by spreading the heat evenly through my skin. As I slowly breathe, Astrid’s words whisper in my ears. This is what I saw tonight: Baldur sitting in a desert. Faraway cities and people with mournful faces. I saw the New World Tree with ashes at its base, and the ashes blew away in a violent burst of wind.
>
She could find him.
A boon from the Alfather is a great thing.
I can hear the trickle of Sigurd’s fountain now. The Dragonslayer had the patronage of a god. I would if I accepted Odin’s—as Pirro insists I must.
There was a berserker thirteen hundred years ago named Starkad who served Vikar the King. Starkad was known throughout the north as stronger than a dozen bears, wittier than ten poets, and quicker than Loki himself. He and his king went a-viking, drawing praise and glory to their names. But on the way home, their ship was becalmed in a shallow bay. They swam ashore to pray and make sacrifice. Starkad dreamed that in order to be free they must draw lots among the band and sacrifice the chosen man. Because it was a high honor to be killed for Odin’s sake, and because they were desperate, the men agreed. Vikar the King drew the short lot. Again and again they redrew, but all three times Vikar was named to die. But Starkad was distraught—his king, his lord, could not be lost outside of battle, even if it was to the Hanging Tree. Again Starkad prayed, and Odin himself appeared in his dreams and said to Starkad that if he himself cast a reed spear at Vikar as the king stood beneath the tree, the shaft would shatter and the symbolic sacrifice would release them all. Starkad awoke, relieved. That morning as Vikar stood with his neck in the noose, Starkad raised a reed spear and, with a call of praise to Odin, cast it at his king.
The reed pierced Vikar’s chest, destroying his heart.
Such is the honor of Odin, creator of the berserk warriors.
Astrid suggested that I have no love for the gods, but could she blame me for not wearing Odin’s ring about my neck? This spear tattoo is required of me, as a warning to others of what I am, but I refuse to claim allegiance to a god who would so easily betray his own. As he did my father.
When I open my eyes, the sun has set, and I’ve missed the call to dinner. But nobody will mind. They might even be grateful I’m not adding my presence to the anxiety pushing throughout the school.
There’s a tap at my window, like a tiny bird pecking to be let inside. I glance over and see only blackness. As I stand, the sound reoccurs. The window doesn’t open, but I put my nose as close as I’m able. Down in the dark stone courtyard is Astrid. She raises her hand and tosses another pebble. I put my hand to the glass and she sees me. She waves me down. Beside her is a canvas bag.
A louder knock on my door shocks me.
In two strides I’m there, tugging it open.
Taffy.
She pushes past me into the bedroom, then whirls on me as if I’m the one who barged into her room. “She thinks you’ll go with her.”
I look down at her, at the frizz of blond hair she’s pulled back into a tight braid, at her snub nose and surprisingly pink lips.
“Convince her to stay, Soren.”
“No.”
Taffy moves nearer so that she’s completely within my personal space, her crossed arms only a breath from my chest. Her eyelids flutter, the only sign she’s not as confident as she wishes to appear. “Why not?” she demands, but her voice isn’t as sharp as usual.
I glance at the black square of the window and imagine Astrid waiting beside the Sigurd fountain, calm and certain I’m on my way. She needs me, just as she did last night when she danced into the future. I was with her when she saw Baldur, and I should be with her when she finds him. “I know what she is,” I tell Taffy. “I know what her power is, and what mine is.”
She sucks breath in through her teeth. “You think she can do it. That you can do it.”
“Yes.”
For a dozen of my slow heartbeats, Taffy stares up at me, her lips parted. Then she lifts a hand to fidget with the end of her braid where it sits over her shoulder.
I walk to my trunk for my old backpack. I stuff in extra shirts, sweats, and my toothbrush. Taffy says nothing as I put on a dark blue hoodie and tie up my boots. I grab my father’s sword and buckle the sheath to my back, then sling the backpack over it. I take my spear from the closet.
A light touch on my arm nearly puts me out of my skin.
Taffy flattens her whole hand against my shoulder and says quietly, “I should have peeled the apples myself.”
My cluelessness must be apparent, because she grows angry again. “I was trying to apologize, Soren!” She snatches away her hand.
“Oh.” It’s barely even a word, but she draws a deep breath and nods once, accepting it.
“London would want me to say …” She hesitates, her chin down. The rest rushes out: “Thor’s strength and Loki’s luck go with you. But I’ll just settle for”—Taffy lifts her face and glares—“God’s blessings on both of you. Keep her safe, berserker.”
My smile feels weighted down. But I promise.
It’s easy to slip out past the RA, since he watches too much National Stoneball to pay close attention to his wards. Especially on a night like tonight.
Astrid waits on the front steps of my dorm, and when I push open the door, she smiles. Silently, we jog through the courtyard, keeping to the shadows next to buildings. Nearly all the windows pour forth light and the sounds of TV updates, and the majority of the academy is locked down waiting for news instead of engaged in the regular evening movement between buildings for study sessions or visits to friends in another dorm.
Because the main gate may be watched for signs of more parents arriving to collect their kids, we cut through the woods. When we pass the burial hill, Astrid scrambles up it, disappearing over the summit. She skids back down a moment later, an ashy yew branch clenched in her fist. It’s about the thickness of her pointer finger. “A wand for luck,” she whispers.
The trees envelop us, but I know the quickest path off the property from my long runs. Leaves crackle beneath our feet and an owl hoots. Flapping wings trail behind us, but I can’t find the bird to identify it in all the darkness.
We push out through the edge of the woods into an open field. It lies fallow, and has at least as long as I’ve been here. Before us is a gravel road leading west into the nearest town. It will take nearly two hours to walk, I guess, and as we pass one of the troll-marked stones Pirro showed me last winter, I am very glad the hill trolls were driven out of this area long ago. I keep a firm grip on my spear, though, for there might still be lesser trolls and goblins haunting the empty land between here and town. Trolls rarely attack large gatherings of people, but their tenacity is the main reason most people in New Asgard live inside a city.
Astrid takes off for the road. “Do you have a plan?” I ask.
“In town, I’ll wire my uncle for some money.”
That’s good, because I only have half a note and change.
“Then we’ll take the bus to Omaha, where we can rent a car.”
“They’ll be able to track us too easily.”
Astrid hefts her bag more firmly over her shoulder. “Richard won’t tell anyone anything, and even if they use the credit information from the car place, they’ll never catch us in time. This won’t take more than a couple of days.”
“Baldur is that nearby?”
Her smile is beatific. “You know I dreamed he was in a desert. There were layers of rock towering high all around him and a hill covered in little flowering cactuses. And a stone shaped like a mushroom. I didn’t think of it until this afternoon, when I was writing everything down from the dreams, but I’ve been to that exact place. I know where he is. It’s only eight hours from Omaha in a car. Less if we take the kingstate highways.”
I regard her as we stand still at the edge of the gravel road. Despite being on a quest, and despite the frost on the ground, she wears one of her perpetual sundresses and a thin sweater. The string of black pearls hugs her neck. I don’t know what pearls are good for, in the seethkona business. She’s dressed for lunch at a New Amsterdam café, not for hunting a missing god.
And yet, without saying any more, I transfer my spear to my left hand and offer Astrid my right.
FOUR
WE DRIVE THROUGH flat farmland
still sleeping off the vestiges of winter. As the sun rises behind us, it melts frost, pulling gray off the sharp spikes of harvested hay and turning everything around us into gold.
From Omaha, we took the rental car northwest on Highway 275 toward the South Lakota kingstate. Now the highway follows the Elkhorn River, a wide, sad thing dragging a line of trees with it. A hundred years ago this area was the location of constant skirmishes between the New Asgardian militias and native tribes. My grandfather’s grandfather was captain of the berserk band stationed here, and I wonder if he stared at the same stretch of river.
Astrid’s window is rolled down and the wind of our passing roars inside. It’s midmorning, and she grips the wide wheel of our car loosely, drumming one finger against it to the rhythm of some song playing in her head. When she chose this car I was amazed, and suggested something more sensible than a heavy ’84 Volundr Spark with tail fins and a manual transmission.
But she shook her head so that her curls flounced. “It’s what Mom and I used to drive all over the country, Soren. Well, we had an ’89. But this is very reliable.”
Any vehicle painted bright orange seems less than reliable to me.
“You look worried,” she says now. “We’ll find him.”
“It isn’t that. I was thinking …” I look at her gentle smile and don’t want to mention war, or anything hard and bloody. But she takes her eyes off the road to glance at me and lift her eyebrows encouragingly.
“There were battles here a century ago. I was thinking about what it would have been like to fight in them, with so much open ground. The tribes refused to send champions to fight, and so whole armies died.” Their blood soaked into the ground, and after the militias won, enslaving the surviving enemy in Old Asgardian tradition, few settlers came. The area is still rife with ghosts and hill trolls. Not even the Thralls’ War, which ended slavery, brought many back.
How can this be where we’ll find Baldur the Beautiful? Why would he be here? I peer out the passenger window at the naked winter trees and waiting fields. A farmhouse stands like a child’s block in the center of a field of razed cornstalks. Its blue paint peels, as if the atmosphere here is acid and has never recovered from war. I wonder if its inhabitants enjoy the danger of living in isolation. Or perhaps they have no choice.