* * *
Hair standing on end, Managarm blinked at the smoking chips of wood scattered on the charred ground before him. His eyebrows were singed, and there were still-smoldering burn holes in his clothing. Wisps of smoke rose from his head, and his scalp felt uncomfortably hot and itchy. All that remained of the tent behind him were a few bits of charred canvas and a blackened metal frame. The campfire that had been roaring a few yards to his right now sputtered and choked, threatening to go out.
He was pretty sure this wasn’t supposed to happen.
Managarm tried to catch his breath. Instead, he coughed and spat sooty phlegm into the dirt.
He growled deep in his throat, a sound indistinguishable from a wolf’s dark warning. If this was going to work properly, he’d need to refine his rune magick, and fast—unless he wanted to chance self-immolation again.
Managarm sat back on his heels. He felt the last vestiges of magick trickle out of his body and into the earth, grounding his spell. His vision blurred, and he reached a hand to the dirt behind him to keep from falling over. As far as he knew, it had been centuries since any dark mage dared to scare up such forces. Very few humans could handle, much less direct, so much power. But this was the first time he’d needed to rely on spellcasting himself, and the old god Managarm did not like being humbled.
Plus, he had no idea if his working had been remotely successful.
The waning moon hung low in the morning sky, on its way below the horizon for another day. Managarm sighed. He had spent centuries chasing the sun and moon to preserve the cycle of day and night. It didn’t matter what modern science said about the vast distances between objects in the solar system. An orbit was an orbit, whether just a few meters or thousands of light years across. He was just a dog chasing his tail—a dog charged with destruction and chaos from the moment of his creation—and he’d long since grown dizzy and tired. There’d been no elevated seat for him at the banquet table, no heroic tales of the Moon Dog sung by Norse bards. Just an endless pursuit of a prey he would never catch.
But come the Black Moon, things would be different.
Sweat and smoke stung his eyes. Managarm reached for Thurisaz, the triangular shape of the etched rune still a glowing ember in the charred wood chip. But the wood crumbled beneath his fingertips as soon as he touched it. He got the same result trying to pick up the smoldering, n-shaped Uruz. As soon as that one had disintegrated, the two remaining chips—inscribed with the runes Pertho and Nauthiz—lost their heat altogether. With the glowing symbols gone, the chips were nothing more than cold ash.
Managarm scooped up the ashes and rubbed them between his bare hands, spreading black soot over his strong, ruddy palms.
“Moon Dog the Magician.” He chuckled and knee-walked sideways to stoke the dying fire. He was careful to keep the campfire out of sight of any park ranger who might be out patrolling—or worse, one of those heavily armed gangs of pot farmers who increasingly strayed onto government lands to grow their illegal crops. He’d had enough run-ins with both.
No sense in attracting unwanted attention, particularly when he was vulnerable—all the gods were these days. It was normal for their strength to wane every four hundred years, just before Iduna’s Grove back in Scandinavia produced its harvest of sacred apples—fruit that restored the gods’ divine stamina.
But this time it was worse. His knees and knuckles ached with arthritis, a curse of aging that had never before touched him, and there were flecks of silver in the stubble of his beard. The longer the gods spent living among humans—and the more generations that passed without real worshippers—the weaker and more pathetic they all became.
But Managarm would set things right again.
He sat back in the dirt and unzipped the collar of his fleece pullover and wiped the sweat off his brow, smearing soot across his forehead. Rubbing his hands together in front of the fire, Managarm spotted his darkened palms and laughed. Humming a forgotten tune, he wiped both hands across his cheeks, nose and chin, blackening the rest of his face.
“Managarm, the dark god.” He sniffed back a surprising, embarrassing tear, then pounded his fist twice into the soft earth—once to relieve frustration, and a second time just because it felt good to hit something.
That’s when the pain hit.
His temples throbbed angrily. It felt like his scalp was on fire while a cold metal pick was being driven into his cranium. Managarm held his head in his hands and moaned.
“Cursed caffeine migraine.” Managarm growled, but the vibration just made the pain worse. Squinting against the early morning light, he reached into his slightly charred rucksack for a large water bottle, a plastic container of ibuprofen and a dented camping kettle that had seen better days. He filled the kettle with water and settled it carefully in the fire before knocking back a handful of pills.
A flutter of wings and gentle song overhead signaled the return of the birds who’d been frightened off by his earlier release of inadvertently fiery magick. Managarm wiped the rest of the soot from his damp palms onto his blue jeans and stared into the fire.
“Out of darkness, is born new light.”
He’d been almost afraid to say the words. His shoulders tensed in an automatic cringe as he glanced quickly at the surrounding forest, as though some ancient curse might rise up out of the earth or swoop down from the trees to smite him for his sacrilege. He’d just used Odin’s own tool—the runes—against him. Or, he’d tried to. This was just a test case, a trial run to make sure he had some idea of what he was doing—but it was possible even his dress rehearsal magick had worked.
It was just as possible he’d be discovered and taken to task for his treason, but if any of the old gods had caught a whiff of what he was up to, they’d kept quiet these long months and years he’d been preparing.
Managarm looked back up at the tiny sliver of moon in the early morning sky and resisted the urge to howl—it would still be a while before the ibuprofen went to work on his headache. His orbiting prey was now his ally. The Black Moon was only days away.
He laughed out loud, and immediately winced at the sound. He rubbed his pounding temples and smiled. What was he worried about? None of the remaining Old Ones could stop him now. Here in the 21st century, they were all impotent, himself included. Iduna’s apples would be ripe for the picking in another year or two—but by then Managarm would be the only god left to enjoy the divine fruit.
In the meantime, he was reduced to practicing magick the hard way—as some mortals dared, much to Managarm’s disgust—using what little he could remember of Freya’s rites and his own imagination, alone in the woods.
If his test spell worked, Managarm would have to figure out what to do with the Berserker he’d just summoned. It wasn’t quite time to build his army of these ancient, crazed warriors. He needed just another day, maybe two. Then he’d be ready to command—something he’d never even come close to doing before. But Berserkers weren’t a particularly patient lot—engineered for the express purpose of making war and violent mayhem—and they would come looking for their maker.
Managarm would call them one at a time, to start. Calling too many too early could be disastrous—especially if Odin got control of them first.
Managarm shuddered. Blasted Odin! Managarm spat more sooty phlegm into the dirt, and his empty stomach churned on the pain pills. The Chief of the Gods—old fool!—couldn’t be satisfied with the victory spoils and titillating dramas of his peoples. He’d gone soft, shying away from war-making in favor of diplomacy. The ancient idiot even sacrificed himself—fasting for a ridiculous nine days as he hung upside down on the World Tree—for greater understanding and wisdom. What deity does such honor to a tree? Even the revered Yggdrasil should bow down and worship at the gods’ feet.
But Odin had been determined to bring written language to the Vikings. As if the bloody Vikings needed to waste their time on that kind of education. What use were reading and writing when there were battles
to be fought and enemy settlements to be pillaged?
With writing came record keeping, stable commerce and trade, peace accords and even civilized government. The mighty Vikings had been wiped out not in armed conflict, but with every careful stroke of chisel meeting stone, every curve of ink on paper.
It was enough to make an old god lose his breakfast.
Managarm took an angry swig from his water bottle. He’d warned Odin and the rest. Even if the mighty Odin hadn’t foreseen where the Norse peoples were headed, he still should have put a stop to the perverse decline of their warrior culture once it was clear what was happening. With each new civilization that flourished, every alliance forged, the Norse gods lost their relevance.
Their very survival was at risk, but the old Æsir had just shrugged it off. It was the proper unfolding of human history, Odin said. Then he’d told the Moon Dog to remember his place.
The kettle whistled in the fire, and Managarm dug into his rucksack for a stash of ground coffee beans. After those runes blew up in his face, he needed a cup of campfire brew to clear his head and chase away his caffeine withdrawal migraine. But the metal coffee tin was empty. Digging deep into the pack, he found a stale, half-eaten granola bar, a bag of dried apricots, and three chamomile tea bags.
Despite the sudden sear of pain across his forehead, Managarm growled and cursed the hippie hiker from whom he’d stolen the pack. Birds fled the branches overhead.
He took another drink of water and looked into the sky. The fingernail moon had slipped behind the evergreen trees.
The Halls of Valhalla were just a memory. But Managarm still dreamt of fallen heroes enjoying an eternal after-life of roasted meat, obliging women, and bottomless steins flowing with mead.
The cursed, bloody runes! Managarm pounded his fist into the ground again. He’d redeem their lost culture. Odin’s obsession with the World Tree was now his own. The Nine Realms would be his. The Cosmos would obey only the Moon Dog. After centuries as an outcast, Managarm would have followers. Let the others embrace their own decline, with hardly any belief left in themselves. Managarm would not scatter on the winds and become a mere shade of his former self.
He scooped up a handful of dirt and threw it at the fire. “Curse Odin!” he screeched, sending more small birds scattering overhead for safety. The moist soil sizzled as the campfire flames danced, threatening to die out but then leaping up again.
The wind shifted, blowing smoke into his face. Managarm coughed violently and scrambled on his hands and knees to the opposite side of the fire. Not even the wind had any respect for an old god, albeit one of the lesser ones.
He laid his palms flat on the ground and pressed hard against the earth.
“I know you can hear me,” he whispered to the Yggdrasil through the network of roots beneath the ground. “The others are still here in the New World, so I know you’re close. Odin has his hunters out looking for you even now. You’re just a tender sapling. Vulnerable.”
Managarm laughed. “Before you know it, we’ll be back to thunderbolts and battle cries instead of computers and cable television. The time of the dark wolves is here. I’m coming for you, little Tree.”
He lifted his hands and brushed the dirt off on his filthy trousers. He added a few pairs of blue jeans and several spare shirts to his mental shopping list. Things could get very messy over the next few days.
Managarm slipped his water bottle back into his rucksack and smiled. With the stars coming into alignment and the Black Moon looming, Odin would be nearly frantic in his search for the young Yggdrasil. Very possibly, Heimdall roamed this very forest looking for the Tree.
It’s too bad the Old Ones would never find it.
Managarm stretched his arms over his head and yawned loudly. The birds balanced on branches above chirped louder now with the brightening sky. Judging the angle of the sun, Managarm took his cue to break camp — or more accurately, to abandon camp. He surveyed the charred remnants of his tent and other supplies and shook his head. He’d be long gone by the time anyone stumbled onto this site.
He kicked at the hot kettle still sitting in the fire, knocking it over and smiling at the sizzle and smoke as the water doused most of the flames. He covered his hand with his sleeve to grasp the handle of the kettle and tossed it into his rucksack.
Now it was just a matter of fashioning a new set of runes from the dead Tree’s ancient corpse to harness the powerful magick still left in the decaying wood—to replace the set he’d made on wood chips from Home Depot, which he’d just burnt up in this latest test spell. He’d call his army of Berserkers, in service to the Moon Dog, not to Thor or Odin. He’d free the Fenris Wolf, his imprisoned cousin who happened to be the only creature in heaven, earth, or elsewhere capable of killing Odin.
“Ragnarok. The End of Days.”
Managarm’s smile widened as he imagined the Earth crumbling to ash, and the new world he’d create—with a new class of reverent, blood-thirsty warriors, a race of passably intelligent elfkin to handle the administrative details of running the Cosmos, and maybe a couple of sea monsters and mermaids for entertainment.
Piece of cake.
But first, he needed coffee.
Managarm climbed to his feet and shook the dirt and ash from his clothes, then wiped the soot from his face with the shirt tail peeking out beneath his fleece pullover. He kicked damp earth onto what remained of the fire, then stamped on the embers with his heavy boots—not out of conscientiousness, but from sheer selfishness. The sapling Yggdrasil might well be in this very stand of trees, and a forest fire at this stage would be disastrous.
He packed up the few items worth keeping—a metal camping mug, his hunting knife, and a spare pair of socks that had miraculously survived unsinged—and left the rest to smolder.
Managarm snaked his way back through the woods on foot, careful to leave a maddeningly meandering trail for anyone who might attempt to track him. He hit the forested park’s main path and followed it back to the parking lot at the trailhead along NW Germantown Road. A ranger was stuffing brochures into a plastic box bolted onto the 4x10-foot trail map stationed next to the trash cans and port-a-potties. Managarm nodded and made an attempt at a smile.
“Getting in a quick hike before work?” The ranger took a sip from a steaming Starbucks cup.
Managarm inhaled the coffee aroma and felt his morning irritability rear its ugly head. The migraine raged. Caffeine withdrawal was a bitch.
“Something like that.” Managarm passed the ranger and yanked open the rusty door of his gas-guzzling Suburban. His vehicle was always unlocked, because who in their right mind would steal such a behemoth, particularly when it reeked of eviscerated game? He threw his few belongings into the back, then climbed into the cab and slammed the door shut.
Managarm gunned the engine to life and deliberately neglected his seat belt. First stop, Starbucks. Second, Home Depot to demand a refund on the sub-standard wood chips he’d bought the day before. They’d actually done just fine, but he was in a mood to argue and it was easy to pick fights with customer service reps. That’d also buy him some time to figure out how to handle the Berserker he’d now have to be on the look-out for. Hell, he might even sic the crazed warrior on the folks at the Returns desk. He needed some entertainment.
~ three ~