The day after their crossing, they reached the outskirts of Odinsvi, late in the evening. Staying hidden in the woods, Halfdan and Sif waited until Freydis appeared from the shadows cast by the twilight. “A lot more guards at the gates than usual, and more on the walls as well. In addition, they are thoroughly searching every person and cart that enters the city. The jarl’s men acting on orders from Odin’s priest, I assume.”
Halfdan nodded to himself. “Could be worse.”
“How?” asked Sif. “They know we are coming, and they’re watching intently to catch us.”
“Because it means they don’t have all their warriors waiting in the temple to trap us. They are spread thin, probably because they are uncertain as to our true purpose,” Freydis explained. “It makes our success more likely.”
“We wait until nightfall,” Halfdan decided. “Then we move in.”
*
The guards on the walls carried torches to help illuminate the night. This made them easy to spot, and the would-be infiltrators had no trouble finding a gap in their routine, allowing them to blink from the ground onto the ramparts with Freydis holding Sif. Another execution of their ability, and the trio appeared down on the street, hidden between buildings.
“So far, so good,” Sif whispered. As all of them had been to the temple before, they likewise had no trouble navigating the city to find the place. They only halted as they reached the edge of the temple square, hiding in an alley to look at the guards posted outside.
“There is the yard by the back of the building,” Freydis considered. “If we climb onto the nearby buildings, we should be able to look over the wall and blink inside the temple grounds.”
“We don’t know how many guards are inside, though. We could get stuck fighting with more and more reinforcements coming, allowing Odin’s priest to escape. Not to mention, preventing our escape,” Halfdan removed the hammer strapped to his back.
Freydis glanced at him. “Diversion?” He nodded. So did she. “Give us a little time to get into place.”
Halfdan hefted his weapon. “I’ll try to wait.”
*
Halfdan told himself that these men were not servants of Odin, but warriors serving the local jarl. They could not be blamed for standing in his way. Furthermore, this was not a fight he had to win, but simply endure. Thus, there was no need for him to kill them or any reinforcements – no matter how much the berserker in him longed to let go of inhibitions and swing his hammer until nothing remained standing on two feet. But he restrained himself as he crossed the square; reaching the guards, he swung his hammer to strike one man in the stomach, cracking ribs but leaving him alive unlike a blow to the face.
“Help! Help!” yelled the other guard, whose wind had not been knocked out of him. From within the temple, warriors came running. Halfdan smiled and held his hammer ready.
*
In the temple yard, the tranquillity of its majestic tree and quiet pond was disturbed by a high priest, pacing back and forth. In his pocket, his fingers fidgeted with a rune stone that would swiftly see him fled, should the sanctuary be broken. Next to him, two of the jarl’s household warriors stood, armed to the teeth with weaponry and bored expressions.
That quickly changed as cries of alarm reached them, and it became evident that the warriors posted elsewhere in the temple were on the move, running towards the entrance. But as these two made to do the same, the priest raised a hand to arrest them. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Revered priest, our brothers are under attack! We must aid them!”
“And leave me undefended? Spare me such folly!”
In that moment, a priestess of Loki and a skáld joined the goei of Odin and his defenders. Taken by surprise, the latter recovered more slowly than the intruders. Unleashing her galdr, Sif forced the two warriors on their knees, clutching their ears in pain. With another blink and Hel’s dagger in her hand, Freydis appeared in front of them and slashed in one fluid moment to open their throats.
The priest had gathered his wits by now, and he made a gesture with one hand to throw them back against the wall. “I’ll deal with you myself,” he sneered, and tendrils of smoke wound themselves around the assailants to chain them up. Bound, Freydis dropped her weapon, and the smoke even gagged Sif to keep her from employing her magic. “And here I was afraid of that damnable berserker. Did the two of you think you were a match for me? My master is the god most high, the Alfather!”
“And my master is the breaker of bonds,” Freydis hissed, and as she strained against her magical manacles, they burst apart. Astonished, the priest of Odin tried to react in time, another spell on his lips, but Freydis moved faster. She blinked, only to appear behind him and kick the back of his knee to send the old man tumbling into the ground, face first. Swiftly, she followed him, placing her own knee on his back to keep him pinned and one hand pressing his head against the dirt. “Sif, my knife, please.”
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The priest’s concentration broken, Sif’s chains had dissolved; the freed skáld picked up Freydis’ weapon and placed it in her hand.
Pulling the goei’s white hair up to place the knife at his throat, Freydis hissed, “What are the runes to reach Urd’s Well?”
The old man’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s your aim?” His countenance hardened. “Threaten me all you want, I’ll never tell you a thing!”
Freydis cut his throat. “I figured.” She rummaged through his pockets, but found nothing of interest. Her eyes fell on his hand, gripping something. Eagerly, she pried his fingers open to reveal a rune stone that she threw to Sif. “Is this it?”
“No. I think he hoped to escape with this, but not to the Well. Maybe the stone we need is still in the pond,” Sif speculated, looking at the small pond of water that had once taken her and Halfdan to the home of the nornir, courtesy of such a rune token.
The priestess shook her head. “I lived long enough with these people to know how they think. He would have fished out and kept such an item, as a token of his master’s power or to study the runes imparted to him. Follow me.” Back on her feet, Freydis moved without hesitation into the complex. As she reached a corridor, several novices stuck their heads out, some of them no older than Sif. “Stay out of my way or die!” Freydis threatened, and the priests in training quickly complied, slamming their doors. The intruders continued to the end of the hallway, where Freydis kicked the door open, granting them entry to the chamber of the high priest.
*
More and more warriors appeared from every direction. At first, they came from inside the temple, lowering their spears to keep Halfdan at bay. As he had no interest in moving the fight inside, it suited him fine. They jabbed at him, but otherwise kept their distance, reminding him of hunting dogs cornering a bear while waiting for their master to appear and finish the fight. Halfdan did not mind that either, though it was odd to feel like the bear and not the hunter, the role he had filled so many times.
As new enemies arrived, they sought to attack him from all sides. None dared stand in the path of his hammer, but with nobody to cover his back, he was constantly vulnerable, and he could not afford to cease his movements for a single moment. Every time he made an attack to push someone back or strike at their weapons, he quickly had to turn around and defend himself from the assault he knew was coming.
An arrow whistled past him. Halfdan glanced beyond the circle of enemies to see a man in expensive mail, wielding a bow. The jarl. The hunter had arrived to join his hounds.
*
The two intruders rifled through everything in the chamber of the high priest. Freydis opened a chest and took out one piece of clothing after the other, throwing them onto the floor with frantic movements. Sif pulled out every drawer from the writing desk, emptying their contents on the ground before sitting down to go through it all.
“Where would the old bastard hide his treasures?” Freydis wondered, finished with the chest. She continued with the bedlinen, tearing it off to reveal the hay that served as a mattress. Grabbing her dagger, she proceeded to stab into it until her steel struck resistance. Swiftly, she unearthed a small lockbox. “This must be it,” she mumbled, placing it on the destroyed mattress and digging out her picks. “Watch the hallway.”
Sif hurried over to stand in the doorway, staring out at the empty corridor. “Nothing so far.”
Biting her lip, Freydis struggled until her picks found purchase, and with a satisfying click, the box opened, revealing a few bits of jewellery and a handful of rune token. “Your turn – which is it?” She held the box out towards Sif, who picked up one stone after the other. “Quickly!”
“Right, right, I’m trying!” The skáld studied them all and finally chose one. “I don’t recognise all the markings, but at least one of them is Urd, so it has to be that one, right?”
“Your guess is better than mine. Can you use it? Make it work?”
“I hope – I think so.” Sif looked uncomfortable, grasping the stone. “I’ll try.”
“It’ll have to do. Come along!”
*
They attacked from every side. Halfdan had broken quite a few bones and limbs at this point; those of his adversaries, not his own. He could have killed them, but since he was surrounded by more enemies than could actually reach him at any given point, it would not have lessened the danger he faced, and something in him disliked the notion of killing decent men simply for serving their lord, who in other times would not have been an enemy of Halfdan’s.
As for the jarl and his other archers, they were hampered by their own numbers. They had climbed onto rooftops to get a better vantage point, but they still had to be careful; if any of their arrows missed the berserker and flew wide, it would strike one of their own in the surrounding throng. All the same, Halfdan had several arrows stuck into him, and he resembled a hedgehog. His Dwarven mail protected everything important, but his legs hurt, making every step painful. And as he was constantly under threat from every side, he could not afford to stand still.
He longed to let the rage take over, allowing [Pain to Power] to erase the agony, but it would also erase any thoughts, turning this into a mindless bloodbath. Besides his conscience objecting to this, it would also ruin their plan, which relied on speed rather than strength.
“Halfdan! Now!”
Freydis’ voice diffused relief throughout his mind. It suggested every part of their plan had succeeded – assuming they completed their escape, which was the step most doubtful. Looking into the temple, seeing his priestess waiting for him, Halfdan blinked across the crowd of warriors to be inside the building. His sudden disappearance left them confounded, many of them shouting curses or making signs to ward off evil. By the time they realised where he had gone, Halfdan was already in full flight deeper into the temple, following Freydis while pulling arrows out of himself.
Pursued by the jarl’s men, they reached the courtyard, where Sif stood with a glowing stone in her hand and a nervous expression on her face. Seeing them approach, she threw the rune token into the pond, and its light transferred to the waters, making them so bright, it hurt to look. Without hesitation, all of them leapt into the pond. In the blink of an eye, the glow swallowed them up before they vanished from Midgard.
