The Mist of the Niflungar (ebook)

Twilight crept upon the sea, the Mist thickening with each moment, hungry for the soul of a Man too stubborn to come ashore. At either end of Grimr’s fishing boat, torches guttered, struggling to hold back the treacherous vapours. Icy waters, rough, as if bestirred by something in the depths, lapped against the sides, sloshing over Grimr’s sealskin boots as he hauled in yet another empty net. His father, Ketil the Trout, was king of Hálgoland in all but name, and Grimr would be damned if he was going to let this famine take his people.
Maybe he’d just plain be damned. Others, they daren’t venture so far from the ice sheet that bridged the numerous islands in northern Nidavellir. Here, the wild was thick with landvaettir and the Mist billowed like dragons’ breath. Serpents slept in the deeps, men said. Inland, beneath the soaring peaks, dwelt the dvergar whom all the lords of Nidavellir paid tribute in plunder, in thralls. In game and fish, even if it left too little for the people living on Hrafnista or in surrounding Hálgoland. Starving, Father said, was still better than what the dvergar would do if unappeased.
Dark clouds rumbled on the horizon. With a huff, Grimr hurled the useless net aside. The sunlight died, and the moon soon silvered the Mist. He felt it watching him, felt it wroth over his temerity in venturing here. Bah! As if he so wished to live, after losing his betrothed.
Something clattered against the hull, and Grimr started, cast about until he saw the chunk of ice floating off. He’d thought himself well clear of the bergs. Was that a piece of the shelf, broken? More ice stones hammered the boat, became a drumming hail. What in the Gates of Hel was happening? Grimr peered into the Mist, couldn’t make out much, save perhaps the hint of something watching him where no mortal thing could lurk.
He heard it ere he saw it: the crunching sound of the sea freezing beneath the Mist, reaching for him like frozen hands from beyond the world. A new ice shelf grew up around him, closing in. As if asking whether he really sought to embrace Hel and join her in her icy demesne.
Then he knew he did not. With no time to unfurl sails, Grimr seized the oars and came about, rowing for shore for all he was worth. He was a strong man, so strong some claimed he had jötunn blood in his veins, and he could row so fast his boat would seem to skim along the surface of the water like a swooping seabird. Even so, the rapidly spreading ice shelf was drawing closer. The Mist wanted him now, was determined to have him, to drag him screaming to its dire queen.
Grimr grunted, heaved against the oars until his arms burned, until his lungs seemed to freeze in his chest. Until the boat smacked against the opposite shelf. Grabbing his bow and axe, Grimr vaulted the side and landed on the ice, came up in a roll. The Mist surged over his boat, crystals forming along the hull, seeping up the torch poles, even, to tease the dying flames. Grimr broke into a run, made for the cliff. His boots skidded, he slipped, cracked a knee on the ground, sending a jolt shooting through his spine. Like a solid wave, the Mist rose behind him. No man had ever called Grimr craven. No, but dread rose in him then, clenched around his heart and turned his bowels watery. He was up, running, a mad dash away.
Without flame, he couldn’t see anything, could scarce make out his hand before his face. He was breathing in Mist, could go Mist-mad from it, he knew, yet he could not stop to light a torch. Should have made offerings to the vaettir. He had angered the spirits of this place, defiling it with his presence and doing naught to propitiate them. Only, he’d had no spare goat to spill its blood and had not wanted to kill a thrall to feed the rest of his clan.
The Mist thinned as he reached the cliff. Above, a dozen feet up, he could see a recess, a cave, perhaps, where he might find shelter and strike up a fire. His axe wasn’t for climbing, but that little stopped him from hacking into the cliff, trying to carve handholds. Then he was scrambling up that wall, making for the darkness within …
* * *
Grimr woke, heart drumming as it had back then, cold sweat drenching him as had the seaspray. Beside him, Lopthoena was already awake. His wife did not ask what he’d dreamt. She stared at him, as dour as he felt. Maybe it was the hazy light from the fire pit, but her eyes looked red.
“You’ve slain trolls,” she said. Well, maybe she knew well enough of what he recalled, of where he’d regained her, once he broke the sorceress Grimhild’s curse upon her. “What need to fear a berserk?”
Grimr wiped his face, scratched the shaggy patch of fur on his cheek. “Sörkvir is a Dögling prince.” And Grimr would not be shooting him with magic arrows crafted in the dark of Pohjola, tempting though it was. The berserk had challenged him to a holmgang, and Grimr’s honour bade him fight fair. He didn’t know whether he could win, but he was not about to back down and sure as Hel’s own arse was not giving up his daughter to that beast.
“There’s hours, yet, ere sunrise,” Lopthoena said. So eager for delays. So was he, but his daughter could not afford such.
Grimr lurched from the bed shelf and donned trousers, a tunic, a fur cloak. He’d come back for his war-garb. “Have her readied,” he told his wife. “I’ll see her off before I go.”
“And if you win—”
“When I win,” he said, hoping his voice showed confidence he did not feel, “then she’ll foster a few years with a close friend ’til she’s of proper marrying age.” He’d never have married his daughter to a berserk—savages were as much beast as Man—but even less so at fucking twelve winters old, and damn Sörkvir for forcing such an issue.
He stretched cold muscles, tight from the nightmare, then washed his face. Finally, he donned his war-garb, the habergeon, and above that the hauberk. His sword over his shoulder, his axe at his hip. A time, he looked at his bow, at his magic arrows, taken by Father, long back, from the witches of Pohjola. It would be so easy to end this with a single shot … Maybe no one would blame him, even. No one, save himself.
Time came too soon, and he found Lopthoena and the children in the harbour. Hrafnista was an island, joined to the mainland by the ice shelf. The harbour, such as it was, stretched some distance out over the sea, though no one knew where the ice shelf began for certain. It seemed to be growing, though, for the poles driven into the ice in his grandfather’s time were now too far inland to use, and Father had extended the harbour.