INTRO
 
Welcome to CHAPTER 72 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 Frigg. Here's a quick summary of the key events in Frigg's last few chapters. Frigg was called to adjudicate a murder. Harald had apparently murdered his ex-wife Bera. We met Harald and Bera, along with Bera's sister, Yelena, way back in chapter 23. Turns out that Yelena's husband, Klakki, believes that Yelena was a witch. Based on what Klakki said, Frigg also believes that Yelena was involved in cutting out the heart of Baldr's mistletoe...which is why Baldr is having the deathly dreams. Frigg's last chapter ended with her issuing a few orders designed, we think, to keep Yelena in the dark and confront her.

Chapter Seventy-Two
Frigg
“Midwinter is when we celebrate the triumph of life over death,” Frigg said from the platform in the hall where she dispensed punishments and rewards to folk of Gladsheim. Her heart thumped beneath her formal robes, dark blue with silver thread woven around her cuffs and bodice. She had posted city wardens at the hall’s three entrances: west, east and the south-facing, double-door entrance. “It pains me, then, that I must pronounce sentence on one of our own for a horrible crime committed during this season. We should be celebrating life’s promised return, not grieving its loss.”
She raised a hand and beckoned. “Wardens, bring the prisoner forward.”
Manacles clanking and chains dragging across the planks, Harald was shoved toward the front of the hall. Two wardens walked before him and, when Harald stood before her, they forced him to his knees. 
“Let the family come forward to hear my judgment,” she said, gesturing for Yelena and her supposed parents to stand opposite Harald. A pair of wardens stood behind them.
Yelena wore a satisfied smile, and the wicked gleam in her eyes shone like a fresh-honed knife. If she was the one threatening Baldr’s life, then betraying her presence with this murder made no sense. Perhaps her role had simply been to get the mistletoe and, now that she’d done so—assuming her husband, Klakki, was right—she was now about her own business. 
Frigg glanced at Nanna. Her son’s wife appeared composed, aside from picking at the hems of her sleeves. And biting her lip. Not that anyone was focused on her.
Everyone in the hall—from the front benches to the rear doors—was looking at Frigg or Harald. Gladsheim was home to thousands, but it was also comprised of smaller communities. Probably every member of the community Harald and his family—former family—had belonged to were in the hall waiting for the judgment they expected: hanging.
Frigg turned her attention back to Harald, who knelt with his head bowed. The wardens behind him had their hands free and looks of preparation on their faces. She glanced at the pair of wardens who stood behind Yelena and her family.
“Rise, Harald,” she said. And at those prearranged words, the wardens behind Yelena each grabbed one of her arms, while the two behind Harald rushed forward with leather straps.
Yelena began thrashing the moment their hands closed around her wrists. Slight though she was, she nearly flung them off. Even so, they staggered into her parents and banged into the nearby benches.
Yelena, her pretty face flushed and made ugly with fury, opened her mouth to scream something, but before she could do more than haul in a breath, a warden shoved a leather strap so hard into her mouth that her jaws opened wide and her lips pulled back in a grotesque smile. The other warden stomped on the back of her knee and forced her down, binding her arms at the elbows and again at her wrists.
Nanna rushed from the platform to help the old parents up and out of the way. Harald stood slowly, dropping the manacles and chains that had never been locked shut. Anger blazed in his eyes.
Frigg raised her voice and her arms above the commotion and shouted, “Everyone, be still. All will be explained.”

***
Braced for the vision she expected, Frigg stared at Yelena who sat on a bench. Yet no vision came. Yelena’s seat on the bench was the only consideration given to her pregnancy because, slight though she was, she radiated a venomous rage.
Wrists bound in front of her, the wardens shoved Yelena’s hands into a leather bag and cinched it tight. She gurgled some word from behind the wide leather strap in her mouth. The wardens flinched, then rechecked the leather strap binding her elbows together, making sure it was tight enough to prevent her arms from moving. They had already taken a charged spindle off her, along with silver shears, and set both well out of arm’s reach.
Frigg lowered her arms as the many-voiced rumble drew quieter. “Hear me. No doubt you are all curious. Well, my friends, we’ve likely captured a seidkonur.”
Shock rippled through the confused din. She pointed down at Yelena. “This is the witch-woman, right here. From what we’ve been told, she cast a charm on her husband and family, and compelled her husband to abuse and then murder her sister Bera.”
The onlookers, held back by several wardens, began muttering and murmuring. Several made signs of warding with their hands which she knew, having been told by Odin, were complete ineffectual. 
Frigg gestured toward Karl Harald. “I believe this man is blameless. The Norns who carved his path made sure he happened across the witch’s plot. I believe he tried to stop it, but not expecting seidr, was quickly overwhelmed and then blamed.”
“How do you know that’s all true?” shouted one man. And another yelled, “Looks like you’ve just bound a pregnant woman.” A third: “We know ‘er! She’s no witch!”
Frigg squared off against the crowd. “You don’t believe me? I’ve lived three times longer than the oldest one here,” she said, hands on her hips. “I’ve seen more witches than I can count. I know the signs.”
The crowd’s mood hadn’t changed. If anything, her words had made them more sullen judging by the scowls and glowers. Vision-flames flickered above the heads of some among them, particularly a tall, broad-shouldered blonde man with ugly teeth who, noticing her eyes upon him, gave a disgusted snort, turned, and bulled his way through the crowd.
“I see you doubt me,” Frigg said. “Stay, then, if you choose. Wardens, push them back another spear’s length.”

***

Yelena’s long, pale-yellow braid lay over one shoulder and within easy reach of her bagged hands. And though she couldn’t touch her hair, one of the wardens yanked it away and put the braid behind her back. These wardens knew how to deal with seidkonur; it was simple enough to braid witchthread into long hair. Yelena glared sideways at the warden who averted his eyes. Most witches needed thread to work magic, but Odin didn’t—nor did Freyja, not always, at least.
“Remove the gag, please,” Frigg said. “She needs to answer my questions. But stand ready.”
The same warden undid the strap and pulled it from Yelena’s mouth. He let it drop to the floor, careful not to let any of the spittle touch him.
“Who are you, witch?”
Yelena retched, coughed, and looked up, eyes bloodshot, tears welled up. “I’m no witch, Almother. It’s that old woman who left with Hár Nanna. She charmed me just as she did my husband and Harald.”
Doubt wormed its way up from her gut, but the claim was easy enough to check. Nanna had just taken the parents into the small room behind the hall’s platform. “One of you go check on my daughter, please.”
A warden saluted and moved quickly toward the room.
“Almother, she lies,” Harald said. “She must be the one who charmed me. I saw no one else that night.”
“I believe you, Harald, but it doesn’t hurt to check.” Particularly since a seidkonur need not have been present at Bera’s house to work magic.
Yelena retched again and gasped, a long line of spittle stretched from her mouth to the floor. The gag hadn’t been in that long.
Frigg turned when Nanna’s voice came from behind her. “Both parents are asleep, Mother. If that old woman’s a witch, then I am as well.”
“Thank you, Nanna. Stay with me, please—”
A slurping sound interrupted her, and she turned in time to see the witch spit at her. Though she stood nearly two spear lengths distant, the spittle stretched out in one unbroken line. It struck her in face with a wet, sickly splat.
The witch shouted a word, and the spittle flowed down Frigg’s face and tightened around her neck like a noose. It wasn’t spittle at all, but witchthread.
Reflexively, her hands shot up to pull it away, but there was no space between the wet thread and her throat. And it was cinching very fast.
Frigg fell to her knees, breath rasping, heart pounding, the edges of her vision already blackening like a leaf thrown on the fire. She heard Nanna shout, “Silence her, quickly, she’s choking the Almother!”
There was a crack like an axe striking wood, and fresh air rushed back into her chest. From her hands and knees, she looked up to see the witch sprawled across the bench, her forehead streaming blood. Harald stood over her, his knife in his hand.
Nanna’s wildflower scent grew rich in her nose as her daughter knelt beside her and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Can you stand, Mother?”
She nodded, got her feet under her, and stood. Her throat felt worse than it had when Odin had choked her, but she stopped herself from rubbing it. Fresh bruises would shortly blossom. She’d need a high-collared dress for Midwinter now.
She stepped toward Yelena.
“Clever to swallow the thread, witch. Less clever to be caught.”
When Yelena didn’t respond, Frigg motioned to the wardens. “Haul her upright.”
“Yes, Almother,” one said.
The other continued. “Our apologies for—”
She held up her hand. “It was a clever trick. Make sure to tell your fellow wardens of it so we won’t be caught again. But just to be safe, cut off her braid and burn it.”
She turned to Harald. “Thank you for your quick thinking.”
He nodded. “I’m at your service, Almother.”
One warden held Yelena by the nape of the neck, face down, while the second sawed his knife through her braid. Surprisingly, she didn’t resist, nor did she speak. When they were finished, they hauled her upright and shoved her back onto a bench.
“Club her if she tries another charm,” Frigg said.
“Such cruelty, Almother,” Yelena said, her voice a wet rasp. “I never would have guessed.”
“Who are you, witch?”
“Can’t you tell, Almother? I was told you saw the doom of all men and women.”
Frigg frowned and put her arms on her hips. “At my word, these wardens will gut you.”
“But you promised the good people of Gladsheim a hanging, Almother,” the witch said, nodding toward the crowd whose gasps and horrified cries had subsided. The wardens had pushed them further back
“So I did. But I’m not afraid to break that promise if it means a better spectacle,” Frigg said, her voice even. “Now, answer me. Who are you, and how long have you been in my city?”
The woman smiled and shrugged. “Long enough, Almother. Rán herself would be jealous of how far I cast my nets.”
“And what have you caught?”
The witch grinned. “Oh, many fish.”
“I want names—everyone you swayed with your seidr.”
Yelena’s grin widened.
“Break one of her fingers,” Frigg ordered. From the corner of her eye, she saw Nanna blanch.
The warden in front of Yelena ripped the bag from the witch’s hands and snapped her littlest finger like a twig—and with about as much emotion. Yelena’s shriek echoed off the ceiling, and she hauled in a sobbing breath.
“Names, witch. Speak them, and you’ll die quickly.”
The sobbing gasp turned into a hoarse laugh. “But what about the hanging?”
Frigg gestured at the warden. He broke another finger.
This scream was longer, but it roughened again into a ragged laugh even as Yelena sagged in the wardens’ grips, forcing them to bend further forward to support her weight.
Nanna edged forward. “Almother, I don’t think—”
Frigg held up a hand. “Not now, Nanna.”
Across the hall, the door banged open and Gulfinn and Ráta rushed inside. Frigg beckoned them over. The crowd had backed away still further, all but pressed against the opposite wall of the hall. Many were rushing out through the side door.
She looked down at the witch. “Keep your names for now. Tell me instead why you let yourself get caught. Was it sloppiness or stupidity?”
“Neither.” Yelena sagged still further in the wardens’ grips and coughed bloody phlegm onto the floor. “My mistress came to me in a dream. She asked me to.”
“Who is your—”
Yelena surged up on thickening legs. Her shoulders swelled, bunched tight with new, inhuman muscle, and flexed outward. With a snap not unlike the sound of her fingers breaking, the leather strap binding her elbows parted, followed by the snap of the bindings around her wrists.
The wardens who had been holding her stumbled, thrown off balance by her changing shape. Yelena threw her arms upward as the wardens stumbled on either side, grabbed one by the collar, spun in place, and flung him across the hall. He slammed into a pillar to Frigg’s left.
The witch finished her spin by driving a knee into the second warden’s belly. He hit the wall, already limp, and slid into a heap.
Frigg stumbled back a few paces, and her heels banged against the platform’s edge. She caught her balance, arms whirling. To her right, Nanna’s sharply indrawn breath became a shriek like metal dragged across stone.
The witch’s body continued to shift, shoulders swelling and hunching as her arms lengthened and thickened. Her dress tore in long, harsh splits, exposing coarse black hair that pushed up through her skin like grass.
A moment later, Gulfinn slammed the witch. They slid across the floor, limbs tangled in a single, horrid mass. Tables and benches splintered and flew up like spray before a longship’s prow. Yelena just laughed. It sounded like seabirds above the waves.
The warden who’d bounced off the pillar to her left lay unmoving at its base, face down. The bronzed hilt of his sword was just visible between his arm and his side. Frigg ran toward him and fell to her knees, tugging his arm out of the way so she could draw the blade.
She glanced back toward Gulfinn, hoping to see how much time she had. Instead, she saw the witch’s black-haired hand come up, a repulsive spike of white bone where her fist should be. The witch buried that spike of bone her hand had become in the baresark’s broad chest.
Gulfinn roared in pain, red fountaining from his chest and mouth. Sweet Aegir, her vision had just happened. She’d seen it but not known when it would occur. If Gulfinn’s death had come so soon, did that mean that Baldr’s wasn’t far off, either?
The witch gave a triumphant, coughing cry, ripped her reddened spike of bone from Gulfinn’s chest, and spun toward Frigg. Blood spattered from the spike, and black fur rippled down to cover fingers that split out from the bone with stomach-twisting crackles.
Heart hammering in her ears, Frigg shoved the fallen warden’s arm aside, grabbed the worn, sweat-stained leather grip of his sword and she swept the blade out in a flashing arc. She rose into a fighting stance. The last time she’d fought for her life was at the Old Wall, staring down at Vanir spears—but even so, the sword felt alive in her hand.
Yelena’s face had become brutish and leathery, seamed and black, like ancient, oiled leather. Her large black eyes burned with hatred. Her body, fully transformed, had long, heavily muscled arms, covered in coarse black hair. Yelena grinned, baring thick, yellowed tusks, and broke into an unbelievably fast, lopsided charge, black-haired arms thumping against the planks beneath them. The planks flexed beneath Frigg’s feet as Yelena closed the dozen spear lengths between them.
Frigg attacked, slashing at Yelena’s shoulder, trying to sever the thick arm. Yelena swayed to one side and the flashing blade passed harmlessly by. Yelena skidded to a stop, grabbed her by the neck with her other arm and flung her backward against a nearby post. 
The air whooshed from Frigg’s lungs and the sword flew from her hand. Before she could even regain her footing, Yelena’s rough, leathery hand closed around her throat and slammed her onto the floor, pinning her down.
Frigg ripped and tore at that tree-trunk arm. Yelena’s arm felt like a ship’s anchor rope, soaking wet and taut beneath all that coarse black hair. 
Yelena leaned in, breath hot on Frigg’s face, sharp yellow teeth gnashing as she spoke in a guttural, inhuman voice, “It seems my mistress was wrong.”
Yelena raised her right fist, the bone spike again emerging from amid the sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones. She stabbed downward, but a dark shape slammed sideways into the witch. 
The weight pressing Frigg down was gone. She bolted upright in time to see the witch’s body slam down a dozen feet away and skid across the planks. Then she was up on all fours again, long arms planted knuckles first against the floor.
Between Frigg and Yelena, Ráta sprang up from a neat roll and squared off against the shape-shifted witch. Across the hall, Gulfinn had staggered back to his feet and lurched toward the witch’s flank with what looked like a broken table leg in his right hand. His left hand was pressed hard against his chest, and when he roared a battle-cry at the witch, the sound was ragged and wet. He broke into a stumbling charge, but blood fountained from his mouth and he collapsed, twitching on the planks.
At almost the same moment, Ráta rushed the witch, hands open to grapple.
Yelena avoided Ráta’s charge by leaping into the air and catching one of the columns in her rough, coarse-haired hands. She clambered up more quickly than Frigg would have believed possible for such an ungainly beast, paused about two spear lengths up and stared at Frigg with unsettling, hate-filled eyes.
The witch bared her yellow fangs in a horrible smile and in that gravelly voice said, “My mistress was right after all. I suppose I was foolish to disbelieve her—but I had hoped the Norns had given your doom into my hands. Even so, Almother, I will one day drink your blood.”
Ráta flung a hand axe at Yelena, who batted it aside. The witch raced further up the column and leaped casually upward to grasp the lip of the inner roof. She hauled herself up and through and vanished without a backward glance.

OUTRO
Well, folks, that was CHAPTER 72 of Kinsmen Die. I hope you enjoyed it. Hopefully it was both entertaining and maybe unexpected. The chapter also introduces a new mystery — e.g., who is this “mistress” to whom Yelena was referring.

Yelena can use seidr and shift her shape. I tried to make both visceral and disgusting. One of my goals was to make Yelena, smart, capable and extremely dangerous. 

We also saw that although baresarks are formidable warriors — Vidar fighting the Jotunn is one example— if they are surprised by someone who knows their weaknesses, they can be killed just like anyone else. Which is what happened to poor Gulfinn.

And in the next chapter, which focuses on Vafthrudnir we get to see what happens when a baresark dies.

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 72
A son is better, though late he be born,
And his father to death have fared;
Memory-stones seldom stand by the road
Save when kinsman honors his kin.

Larrington, Verse 72
A son is better, even if he is born late,
when the father is dead;
seldom do memorial stones stand by the wayside, unless one kinsman raises them for another.


Thanks for listening.