Welcome to CHAPTER 61 of the Kinsmen Die podcast, home of fantasy fiction based on Norse mythology that’s written and read by me, Matt Bishop.

In this podcast I read my first novel, Kinsmen Die, one chapter at a time. And, with each episode, when it makes sense, I provide some commentary about the source materials I’ve referenced in the text.

This week, we’re back with Hodr. It’s been quite a few chapters since we were with him. Hodr spoke with the smith Lopt — that was the dude whose horse trampled Hodr. Lopt apologized and it seems he figured out that Hodr was the original Hodr — defender of the Old Bridge. This interaction awakened memories in Hodr of the man he’d been and brought this choice he appears faced with into focus.

Let’s rejoin him now.

Chapter Sixty-One
Hodr
With Sól’s smile warm on his face, Hodr hefted another spear, feeling its weight and finding its balance point.
“And this one? How does it feel?” Lopt asked.
It was the morning after he’d spoken with the smith and received Lopt’s apology—and unasked for advice about Alara. This morning, Lopt arrived early and asked Hodr to meet him in the way house yard, saying only that he had a gift for him.
Hodr twirled the spear and slammed it into the frozen, packed earth. He felt the spike drive deep. He tugged it free. He could feel the clump of dirt clinging to the spike. He knocked the spear against his boot and felt its heft and balance return.
“Excellent yet again, Master Lopt,” he said. “But still not quite right. It’s the butt-spike. It catches on the earth.”
“No problem, no problem,” Lopt said. “We’ll find the right one for you. I’ve dozens here—dozens. A man like you knows his weapons. And of course, a spear serves double purpose for you, which I hope you won’t mind me saying.”
Hodr heard Lopt replace the spear, the haft rattling against the others. Metal clinked.
Kona whickered at him from her stall. She hadn’t suffered at all from the accident in the street.
Lopt’s mutterings drifted in the background. “Ah, let me see. Yes... No, not this one. Too like the first. Hmm... No, not this one.”
The smith blew out a long breath. “Well, there is this one.”
Hodr heard the long sinuous slide of wood against wood, the dull clink of metal against metal. Then he heard Lopt’s voice, even quieter than before. “But am I ready to part with it?”
Hodr turned his head as if his attention were elsewhere. He always tried to hide just how good his hearing was. He was no Heimdall, but he often overheard private words and even slight noises like quickened breath or the sound of a knife clearing its sheath. The latter had saved him several times during his winters upon the road.
Lopt walked closer, but only a step or two at a time, like he was hesitant. “Try this one, Jarl.”
Smooth wood slid into Hodr’s hands. He ran his hands lengthwise along the shaft; lightly oiled. Metal cap at the butt. No spike. Good. He ran his fingers up toward the blade; the wood was scored. His fingers traced the markings. Runes, but none he knew. He touched the blade lightly. Oily and oddly warm to his touch. When he touched the light etchings on the blade’s face, the blade cooled beneath his fingers, sending a chill down his spine. Strong magic. He wrapped his hands around the wood; it seemed to have its own heartbeat.
“Those scratches I see you lingering on are runes, cut to add strength to both the shaft and the joinings. They help the hands keep a solid grip and guide one’s aim. The blade has runes, too, though you may not be able to feel them by touch alone. Meant to preserve sharpness, keep it strong, and further guide the strike. The oil just helps keep the blade sound during travel—the shaft, too. This spear’s very old. Its crafting made me a master smith.”
“I cannot accept it, then,” Hodr said reluctantly even as he spun the weapon. It responded like he imagined a living branch might as it flexed in the wind. For a moment, as his hands gripped the spear, he felt he could see where he stood—the stable’s outlines, Lopt himself—but dimly, as if through shadows or gray mist. Then he balanced the weapon on his palms and presented it back to its maker. “The weapon I had was a soldier’s weapon. No great value.”
“Nonsense, Jarl,” Lopt said.
Hodr felt the man’s hands touch his own and take the weapon back. His hands felt empty, and he wiped at the sudden sweat on his brow despite the chill weather. The rumble and bang of the street and the squawking of the inn’s washerwomen intruded into the short silence between them.
Lopt’s voice dropped in volume. “It’s hard to give away what’s probably the finest thing these hands have ever crafted, but...”
Hodr made a noise, trying to interrupt, but the smith spoke over him. “Please, Jarl, let me finish. You’ve been nothing but gracious toward me, despite the injury I gave you and the difference in our station. What’s more, well, as fine as this spear is—I wish you could see it. The blade glints gold even in the shade. It feels alive. I kept all the wood dust and shavings, you know. Made from the heartwood of an old ash tree. Used them in a ritual handed down, father to son, for”—he blew out a long breath—“well, since the first of my line learned to work metal and wood. This weapon has always felt called to a purpose, ever since I set eyes on the wood it came from.”
Hodr heard Lopt spin the weapon; it sang through the air.
When the weapon fell silent, Lopt spoke again. “I always thought it was shaped for something significant—a hero’s weapon, or maybe some rich karl would pay a life’s wages for it, give it to his boy, and I’d hang up my hammer, give the shop to my own sons, and wait out the end of my days, well fed and with enough gold to help my family in their own lives. Instead, I’ve kept this spear hidden away in my house. I would take it out and oil it every few months, but I never mentioned it to anyone beyond my kin. Could never bring myself to sell it or even display it to prove my skill.”
When he spoke again, his voice had some humor in it. “Foolish, right? But here we are. One of the great Aesir, a son of Odin, in need of a great weapon. Because of me. You would honor me by accepting it and carrying it.”
His scratchy voice ended on a prouder note than it had begun. Hodr heard Lopt step forward, and he knew the spear was held out crosswise before him.
The silence of the moment stretched between them, undisturbed by everyday sounds—the cries of traders in the streets, wagons rumbling past, the washerwomen’s laughter.
Hodr shook his head and held up his hands. “I can’t accept your masterwork, Lopt, though I’m honored that you think me worthy to carry it. It’s too fine a weapon for me. It deserves to be used in battle, not as a crutch for a blind man. I’ll never fight again, but maybe one of my bro—”
“Take it again. If you don’t feel it call to you, then I’ll find a mere warrior’s weapon for you. Or make one. But if you feel the heartbeat of the golden bough from which this weapon was crafted, well then, I’d say the Norns bade me to make this spear for your hands without me ever knowing it till now.”
Before he realized it, Hodr set his hands on the spear. His fingers brushed the smith’s hard hands, hot like a forge’s fire. A longing ran through him, cooled by the ash beneath his hands.
He closed his fists around the spear and stepped back, falling into the fighter’s stance he hadn’t used in more winters than he could remember. Sight crept in from the sides, like a prowling beast. As it stole closer, the stout wooden supports and beams of the stable slid into view like the barest evening light revealing the trees. He looked down and saw—or thought he did—the packed earth of the courtyard.
He spun through a remembered series of attacks. The spear whispered through the air. It sounded like a word. He strained to hear it, but it fled each time he halted the spear’s motion. Even so, the wood throbbed beneath his hands.
There, it seemed to whisper. Across the way.
He spun through a defensive whirl, his feet kicking up dust as his whirl became a confident, shuffling attacking lunge.
In this new sight he glimpsed, darkly, the washerwomen gathered round tubs of water set on grates above low fires. Their arms, just a blur, coming up toward their heads, maybe to pick long strands of hair from mouths and tuck it behind ears where the breeze would pluck them free again.
He couldn’t be seeing. He was only imagining the women, stitching the scene together from dim memories of other places and other people. Even if he had eyes rather than a mass of fused flesh and scars, a cloth covered where they would have been.
But there they were. Washerwomen. The smooth side of the inn wall, and a black sketch of what he knew was the kitchen door.
He thumped the spear to the ground and spun to face Lopt. The smith was a lean shadow against a backdrop of the sky’s warm white and the layered grays of the ground, the cart behind him, the fence in the farther distance, and the rounded bulk of the stable.
Could he now see with this weapon in his hands? If so, he couldn’t refuse it.
He walked back toward Lopt, not tapping the spear to find his way as he usually did but almost like he used to. When he’d had eyes.
“You see! I knew the spear was meant for you.” The smith clapped half-seen hands; his eyes burned like happy embers. “Use it well, Jarl Hodr.”
The smith’s words echoed his own thoughts. He had seen. His hands trembled. He concealed it, and the sob that wanted to unman him, by snatching the wineskin from where he’d left it. He leaned the spear against the half-seen cart. The moment his hands left the weapon, his gray sight vanished, as if devoured by that original beast whose venom had taken it, all those winters ago.
He covered the sudden shock by lifting the wineskin in both hands. The cool, sweet liquid ran in a torrent down his upturned throat. He sucked in a breath, wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I haven’t moved like that since...”
He groped for the spear. His fingers tingled when they touched the wood, and the world around him returned, half-lit, as he closed his hand around it.
“I saw the hero in you dance again!” Lopt said. A bright shadow slid across the smith’s dark face, as a sunbeam might fall on a rock. Hodr realized it was a smile.
“When I hold the spear, I can see again. Dimly, like through a remembered fog, but I can see.” He faced the smith. “Did you know that would happen?”
The sunbeam faltered. Lopt shook his shadowed head. “I—what? You can see?” He ran a hand across the top of his head, shadowed grass rippling in a sudden wind.
“It must be the runes I used,” the smith said, his feet rasping on the ground as he turned away. “I never thought—never conceived—they might have that effect. But then, how could I? I’ve never done more than hold this spear. It’s never been used. Not really. Not like you will, now that it’s yours.”
Hodr said nothing. He forced his hand to open and rested the spear back against the cart, his new sight fell away.
Lopt continued as if talking to himself. “It must be the runes. Must be. Unless you’ve some”—his voice lowered—“some sorcery you keep hidden.” He coughed and continued with a laugh. “But those runes…they’re only meant to guide the wielder’s aim. Who’d have ever thought they’d give sight to a blind Aesir—”
“Half-sight,” Hodr said, picking up the spear again. His own body, Lopt, the cart, the ground, the stable, the way house…all of it, and more, appeared around him. All gray, but he could see.
“Surely in this case, half is better than nothing?”
“Indeed it is,” he said, answering Lopt’s enthusiasm with a grin. He held the spear before his sightless eyes. Mist like that rising from a frozen lake streamed off the blade. “I suspect it may prove an equal to those famous weapons carried by my father and brother. All it lacks is a name.”
“Oh, I assure you, Jarl, it has a name. Most weapons do. Keep it with you, and I’ve no doubt it will reveal its true nature.”
OUTRO
Well, folks, that was CHAPTER 61 of Kinsmen Die. I hope you enjoyed it.

Hodr received a magical spear from Lopt. While holding the spear, Hodr can again see—not perfectly, but enough for it to potentially change his life.

Next week, we’re back with Odin.

Until then, if you have the time and inclination, please rate and/or review the podcast — that helps boost the show’s visibility. As does sharing it.
  
As always, I’m going to read from both the Bellows and Larrington translations of the Havamal, the sayings of the High One, Odin himself.

Bellows, Verse 61

Washed and fed to the council fare,
But care not too much for thy clothes;
Let none be ashamed of his shoes and hose,
Less still of the steed he rides,
(Though poor be the horse he has.)


Larrington, Verse 61
Washed and fed, a man should ride to the Assembly, though he may not be very well dressed;
of his shoes and breeches no man should be ashamed, nor of his horse, though he doesn’t have a good one.


Thanks for listening.