Odin shrugged. ‘Put it back. It can’t have been cooking for as long as we thought.’
We put the meat back on the fire and covered it in hot coals. Night began to fall. The icy mist that during the day had kept mostly to the mountaintops began to roll down into the valley.
Honir asked: ‘Is it ready yet?’
‘How the Hel should I know?’ I said.
‘Should we check? I think we should check.’
I pulled a haunch out of the fire. I like my beef pretty rare, and I was more than ready for lunch. But the piece of meat was as cold as ever, not even seared on the outside.
I cursed. ‘This isn’t right,’ I said.
‘Do you think someone’s using glam?’ Honir said.
‘Well, duh.’
I looked around. And we saw, above us, in a tree, a giant eagle watching us. Bjarkán, the rune of true vision, revealed it to be no ordinary bird; its eyes gleamed with evil intelligence.
It saw us watching and gave a croak, flexing its powerful wings.
‘Ark. Share your meal with me,’ it said, ‘and I’ll make sure the meat is cooked.’
I could see the glam around the bird; he had a powerful signature. A demon, I guessed, or a scavenger; or maybe one of the Ice Folk in bird Aspect, flying south to explore the terrain. In any case, our position was weak and it didn’t seem wise to dispute him a share of the spoils.
‘I think we should share,’ Honir said. ‘Don’t you agree that we should share? I mean, if we share we’ll get to eat soon. And birds don’t have much of an appetite. Don’t the Folk say “he eats like a bird” when someone doesn’t have much of an appetite?’
Odin agreed to the bargain. The ox was a good size, he said, and besides, as Honir suggested, how much could an eagle eat?
Turns out that particular eagle could eat almost a whole one. As soon as the ox was ready, it grabbed both haunches and the rump, leaving us with little more than the carcass. Then it took the pieces onto a nearby outcrop of rock and began to tear at the flesh, noisily and with relish.
Let me explain for a moment here. I was very hungry. I’d had a long and exhausting day. I’d had to listen to Honir’s inane conversation for hours. I was cold and frustrated, and the only food for miles around was fast disappearing into the gullet of a great, greedy bird. So shoot me. I lost my temper.
I picked up a length of branch.
The eagle kept on eating, tearing at the pieces of meat with its brutal, bloodstained claws.
I raised the branch with both hands and aimed a swipe at the eagle. It struck. But the moment the blow connected, I felt a sudden surge of glam run through my body and my arms. At the very same time, I found that my hands were frozen onto the piece of branch, which in its turn stuck to the eagle. A blaze of runelight surrounded us both. I sensed that maybe I’d been just a little unwise.
‘What’s happening?’ said Honir.
I ignored him and tried to shift Aspect. But whatever glam was affecting me had robbed me of my power to change. I was trapped; my hands were caught, and now the bird spread its powerful wings and, rising above the outcrop of rock, lifted me with it into the air.
‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘Hey! Let me down!’
The eagle said nothing but rose higher, now flying in a steep diagonal towards the rocky mountainside. Its wings beat with smooth and vigorous strokes; helplessly I just hung on. Below me, the figures of Odin and Honir receded into the rolling mists.
I started to feel a little scared.
‘All right! I’m sorry I hit you!’ I said.
Still the eagle did not speak. My arms were hurting.
I said: ‘Come on. A joke’s a joke. Put me down and finish your lunch. You can even have my share if you like.’
The eagle made no response but continued its trajectory, angling low towards the scree that covered the flank of the mountain. I saw the ground approach at speed and braced myself for a hard landing.
But the eagle did not land. Instead it dipped low across the scree, dragging me along the ground. My hands were still caught; I couldn’t escape. I tobogganed across the scree, the stones and rocks and boulders.
That pain thing again. I’m not a fan. I howled and struggled and begged for release; cracking my ribs against a rock; skinning my backside on the gravel; barking my shins and ankles repeatedly over a xylophone of little stones.
‘Why me? What did I do?’
Still, the eagle did not reply, but concentrated on giving Yours Truly the ride of his life; first along the skirt of scree, then up through a narrow chimney of rock, then through the topmost branches of a sizeable stand of trees, that whipped and tore and flailed at me as I was dragged through the canopy.
By then I was screaming for mercy. My clothes were torn; I’d lost my boots; I was bruised and bleeding. I felt as if I’d been beaten, first by a dozen men with cudgels, then by the same dozen men with whips, then set alight, and then beaten out like a dusty carpet.
‘Please!’ I said. ‘I’ll do anything!’
Finally, the eagle spoke. ‘Ark. You will?’
‘I swear!’ I said.
‘Ark.’ The voice was harsh and dry. ‘Swear you’ll bring me Idun, and her golden apples. Then I’ll let you go.’
‘Idun?’ Too late, I saw the trap.
‘And the golden apples. Ark.’
I started to protest. ‘But how? How could I even do that? She never leaves Asgard. Bragi’s with her all the time. She’s—Owwww! That was unnecessary!’
That was the tip of a young poplar, right in the spot where even a god feels it keenly.
‘Please,’ I said, when the power of speech finally returned to me. ‘It can’t be done. It’s impossible.’
‘Ark. I suggest you find a way,’ said the eagle, making for the next patch of scree. ‘Unless you want to experience the world’s worst case of road-rash.’
My throat was dry. I swallowed.
‘Um. I might be able to think of something.’
‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ he said. ‘I want your word. Your binding oath.’ And he started to plummet towards the ground, folding his wings to increase his speed.
I closed my eyes. ‘All right! I swear!’
The eagle unfolded his wings again.
‘Swear on your name. Your true name.’
‘Please! Do I have to?’
‘Yes!’
So shoot me. I swore. What else could I do?
The eagle’s trajectory broadened out and we started a long and lazy descent back. As we reached the valley floor, some thirty miles or so from the place where Odin and Honir had made their camp, finding my frozen hands free at last, I dropped the last dozen feet to the ground and lay there, exhausted and hurting.
‘Remember your oath,’ said the eagle. ‘Idun, and her apples.’
I flipped him the bird. Even doing that hurt.
The eagle just laughed as it flew away; a nasty, croaking, rusty sound. It knew I couldn’t break that oath; my true name bound me to obey. I had no glam left to shift Aspect, or to hurl runes at the fleeing bird, or even to cast the rune Bjarkán to identify my abductor. Instead I lay where I was for a while until I was strong enough to stand, then pulled myself painfully to my feet and started the long walk back to camp.
It was near dawn when I arrived. I’d had to walk for most of the night. I was starving; I was sore; I was limping badly. Though it was no consolation, I saw that the others had also spent a sleepless night. Odin in particular was looking weary, and Honir, fresh as the morning dew, was talking nineteen to the dozen.
He stopped when I reached the camp.
‘Loki! What happened?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t look like nothing to me,’ said Honir. ‘Odin, what do you think? I think something happened. In fact, I’m pretty sure something happened. Loki looks terrible. Don’t you think Loki looks terrible?’
‘Shut up, Honir,’ Odin said, and, summoning Sleipnir’s true Asp
ect at last, prepared to carry the three of us back to civilization.
Arriving at the Sky Citadel on nothing but spleen and will power, I first ate three roast chickens, a mutton pie, a haunch of beef, a salmon and four dozen jam tarts that Sigyn had left to cool on a ledge. Then I drank three bottles of wine and slept for forty-eight hours.
I awoke feeling somewhat better, if not completely recovered, took a hot shower, shaved and dressed and went off in search of Idun. I found her in her garden, singing softly to herself. Her blonde hair was woven with daisies; her feet were bare in the damp grass. Her basket of apples was at her side, ready for immediate use.
‘Loki, you look terrible,’ she said. ‘Are you hurt? Did you get in a fight? Is there something I can do?’
I guess it was common knowledge that I didn’t make much of a habit of hanging around in gardens. Besides, as Idun had pointed out, I’d taken a lot of punishment, and even after a long sleep I wasn’t exactly Balder the Beautiful.
‘I had some trouble in the North,’ I said. ‘But that’s not why I’m here. Imagine, Idun, while I was there, I saw a tree in the heart of a wood, and on it were apples just like yours!’
‘Like mine?’ said Idun. ‘Really?’
‘The very same,’ I told her.
‘Did you bring some back?’
‘No. I was otherwise engaged at the time in single-handedly fighting off a giant eagle that had attacked our camp. But as I limped back home, I thought, I bet Idun would want to see these. Maybe these golden apples have similar properties to hers. If so, I thought, it’s my duty to check. And so I came here straight away.’
Idun cut me a sliver of fruit. ‘Eat this. It’ll make you feel better.’
It did – Idun’s golden apples were known throughout the Nine Worlds. They were Ivaldi’s wedding gift to her when she moved in with Bragi, and as well as conferring perpetual youth (always a bonus when applying for godhood), they also acted as a kind of universal tonic, healing most ills, from warts to the pox, and all but the most lethal of wounds. My cuts and bruises healed at once; the pain in my body disappeared; my glam was restored to its usual strength.
‘Thanks. That hit the spot,’ I said. ‘Now about that tree . . .’
She looked at me with eyes that were innocent as summer sky. ‘Shouldn’t we tell Bragi first? Or Odin – he’ll know what to do.’
‘What, and disappoint them if the apples don’t turn out to be like yours? No, let’s just go and check for ourselves. Then, if it’s good news, we’ll all celebrate.’
I told you she was innocent. No sense of threat or danger at all. It was like abducting a kitten – but then, I was already running so many risks that the last thing I wanted at that point was a challenge.
I shielded us with the rune Ýr as we passed Heimdall’s lookout post on the Bridge. Then I led Idun as fast as I could into the plains of the Middle World. It wasn’t easy – she stopped to sniff every flower on the way and to listen to every bird – but at last the enemy found us. In eagle Aspect he tracked us down, then, swooping from the leaden sky he picked up Idun, basket and all, in his talons and flew away.
I cast the rune Bjarkán as he left and focused on his signature. As I’d suspected, my avian friend was one of the Ice Folk – one of the worst. His name was Thiassi, and he was a warlord of the far North, an ally of Gullveig, armed with her runes, and I’d just given him what he most craved – Idun’s apples, eternal youth, and the chance to make a serious bid for godhood.
Well, so far so good, I thought. Perhaps my misadventure could be turned to my advantage. After all, if I wanted to bring down the gods, Thiassi could be an ally – except that he had already got what he wanted from me by then, which rather reduced my bargaining power. Besides, the Ice Folk hated me; I’d earned a reputation by then as the Trickster of the gods, and it wouldn’t be easy to convince the enemy of my change of heart. I didn’t blame them. Frankly, I wouldn’t have trusted me either.
I walked back home, released from my oath, but feeling slightly guilty. Idun was the one person in Asgard who had never done a thing to me, and who’d been kind when I was hurt. Still, I’d sworn a binding oath, a real one, on my true name, and no one reneges on a binding oath without some radical consequences. I’d had no choice, I told myself – besides, the sliver of apple that she’d given me would last a while, at least until the other gods started to notice her absence . . .
It didn’t take long. The apples of youth, like all cosmetics, work on a cumulative principle. Meaning: once you stop, you drop. And that’s what happened in Asgard. Before you could say an apple a day, everyone was the worse for wear. Even Golden Boy, Balder the Fair, started to look distinctly less than glamorous. As for the others – well, you can imagine. Wrinkles, hair loss, middle-aged spread, incontinence, forgetfulness, piles . . . you name it – and that was just the goddesses. Except for Your Humble Narrator, of course, which meant that sooner or later they would put two and two together.
That was all right. That was my plan. Another little revenge – this time, hitting the gods where it hurt them the most, right at the heart of their vanity. And the beauty of it was that I would be the one to save the day – because when Asgard fell, I promised myself, it wouldn’t be at the hands of some hairy warlord from the hills, but in style, and with maximum effect, and with Yours Truly holding the whip. I wasn’t about to hand my revenge to someone like Thiassi; a renegade whose ambition extended to nothing more than sitting in Odin’s high seat and assuming the name of Allfather. No, if I was ever to regain my place in Chaos (an almost impossible dream, to which I turned in my darkest moments), I would have to do something spectacular. Nothing short of the total destruction of Order would satisfy Chaos. That meant Asgard; the gods; the Worlds. And even then, it might not be enough . . .
Eventually, they figured it out. Heimdall, whose eyesight had dimmed perceptibly since his supply of fruit was cut off, remembered seeing me coming back over the Bridge furtively a few weeks before. The rest of the gods searched their memories and concluded that this was the last day that anyone had seen Idun. And so they found me and dragged me in front of the Old Man, who was looking older than ever by then, white-haired and craggy-faced, and prepared to do very bad things to me.
‘Is this true?’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘What does it matter?’ said Heimdall. ‘Let’s just kill him now, before we all forget why we brought him here.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said, and explained everything that had happened. Odin listened in silence, while his ravens clicked their beaks and everyone mumbled and dribbled in rage.
‘You see?’ I went on. ‘I had no choice. That eagle was no ordinary bird. It was Thiassi, the Hunter, and he would have killed me if I hadn’t agreed.’
‘We’ll kill you now,’ said Heimdall. ‘Slowly and very painfully.’
‘What? And lose your only chance of getting Idun back?’ I said. ‘Use your brain, Goldie. I know it’s not as sharp as it used to be, but—’
Odin interrupted. ‘You think you can get Idun back?’
I shrugged. ‘Of course. I’m Loki.’
Heimdall protested. ‘Seriously, Allfather, you’re going to let him go again? How can you know if he’ll even come back? He might decide to throw in his lot with Thiassi and the Ice People.’
‘If he’d wanted to do that, don’t you think he’d have done it before?’ said Odin. ‘Besides, we don’t have a choice. Let him go.’
And so, they released me.
I stretched my limbs. ‘Where would you be without me now?’ I grinned at the angry circle of elderly gods and goddesses. ‘I’ll try to be quick,’ I told them. ‘Try not to die of old age while I’m gone.’
Then I looked at Freyja. ‘Lend me your falcon cloak,’ I said. ‘I need to fly to the Northlands.’
‘But you can do that anyway,’ protested Freyja, whose shapeshifting skills were as good as my own, but who rarely shifted Aspects unless she really needed to. Thus the cloak; a marvellous thin
g of feathers bound together with runes, allowing the wearer to fly like a bird, without arriving naked at his destination.
I have to admit, that appealed to me – it was cold in the Northlands, and I didn’t want to freeze to death. But, more importantly, the cloak would allow me to carry the apples home; plus I couldn’t cast runes while I was in bird Aspect, which would make me extremely vulnerable if Thiassi were to come after me.
‘Are you going to argue?’ I said, giving Freyja my broadest smile. ‘Or shall we wait another few days, till your hair falls out and your teeth go black?’
Freyja handed over the cloak.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Now, the rest of you. Keep watch. Look for my signature in the sky. Collect all the firewood you can – dry wood, shavings. You’ll know what that’s for if the time comes. And try to stay awake, won’t you? I might be in a hurry.’
Odin said nothing, but nodded. I pulled on Freyja’s feather cloak. An interesting sensation, though I had no time to enjoy it just then. I took flight at once, leaving them to watch me, open-mouthed, as I flew, and made my way back to the Northlands, shielding myself with runes all the way.
I tracked Thiassi back to his stronghold – the Ice Folk are careless with signatures – a castle built into the rock in the cleft between two mountains. It was bleak and very cold – even with Freyja’s feather cloak I was half frozen in the air – but luck was on my side, because I found Idun almost at once; alone and shivering by the fire in one of the castle’s many rooms.
I stepped out of the feather cloak.
‘Loki!’ she cried, and hugged me. ‘I knew you’d come to rescue me!’
I said, ‘Where’s Thiassi?’
‘Gone ice-fishing with his daughter, Skadi. I don’t like her,’ Idun said.
I thought that if Idun didn’t like her – Idun, who thinks that wolves and bears are cute and that even Your Humble Narrator has a soft side – then Skadi must be something else. I made a mental note to avoid her.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Then let’s go.’
A single cantrip and I’d changed her into something a falcon could carry. Then I swept her basket of apples underneath my falcon cloak and let it transform me once again. A moment later, we were off; a falcon, flying hard and high, carrying a hazelnut.