INTRO
 
Welcome to CHAPTER 91 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 Odin. The last time we were with him, he’d been cursed by the dead witch Angrboda such that he became, to an extent, the disguise he’d taken — that of the Wanderer — to deceive her.

Let’s rejoin him, now.

Chapter Ninety-One
Odin
The Wanderer patted his horse’s neck as she drank from the brook. It burbled and trickled over the stones and broken branches that comprised its bed. He yawned just thinking about a bed. He rubbed his eye. He was hungry, but there was nothing to eat in the wet, cold, gray forest. His horse snorted, shook her mane and snorted again.
Why did he think of his horse as a she? His hand thumped against her doubled shoulder joint and the thick cords of muscle, sinew, and smooth gray hide. The rain drummed on the wide brim of his hat, pattered on his shoulders, ran off his legs and down into his boots.
Shivering, he tipped his head back and drank the rain. The rain fell harder. Louder, like arrows slamming into shields or feet pounding on hard packed earth. A sail, rattling against the shrouds.
Odd thoughts. Memories, maybe, of a dream. All he’d ever done was wander. He rested the butt of his spear in a stirrup, cradled it in the crook of one arm, lifted his hat and ran his other hand through damp hair, slicking it back from his forehead. His fingers caught on a strap that ran round his head. He followed it down to a patch over his eye. That eye pounded, like drums calling warriors to arms. No, not drums. A horn.
He spotted something dark swinging on long arms among distant branches. Rain ran into his eye, his sight blurred and his mind drifted away. He rubbed his eye till vision returned, clicked his tongue and his horse lurched into motion.
She took maybe a dozen steps forward in an odd, doubled rhythm, pulling hooves through a muck that sucked at them like an old man at his teeth. He counted the hoofbeats, dull though they were, all eight of them. 
Eight? He was more tired than he thought.
The rhythm of the hooves drummed away the brook’s trickling. Thunder boomed and rolled overhead. He smiled at the sound; it kindled something fierce and hot in his heart.
His horse’s hooves banged and scraped against stone. He’d found the road. Had he been looking for a road? If so, where was he going? Where had he come from?
Thunder split the sky, rain drummed, wind howled, the spear in his hand grew warm. A spear? His eye ached beneath its patch.
The spear twitched in his hand. His horse whinnied and stomped the road. That spot between his shoulders itched. The Wanderer looked behind him. Mist draped the trees like the heavy coils of Loki’s son. Loki? That name stirred familiar feelings, but the mist slunk forward and his thoughts slipped away again.
His eyes swept across the gray trunks and dark leaves and naked fingers of branches. There was that shape again, swinging closer. Watching.
The horn screamed again, like warriors beside him in the shield wall.
He’d stood in the wall. In many walls. His horse snorted and pawed the ground. He rocked in the saddle, swearing, clinging to its horn like he might a ship’s gunwale during a storm. Not just a horse, a sleek mare. Tall and swift. The spear in his hand swayed.
He focused on the horn’s call, throbbing in the air, clawing at his mind like a bear at a tree. He shivered again.
If he’d plunged his head into a barrel full of ice and kept his eye open, that gray-black bottom is what the sky above him looked like. His thoughts were sluggish, like ice-cold fingers. The rain grew heavier, colder. But he focused on the horn’s voice, the sharp sliding of steel against steel.
Or like the ice of a frozen lake on a sad gray day—and he’d fallen into the lake and sank slowly down and down till Rán’s nets clutched at his feet.
Perhaps he had fallen in. Or been thrown in.
In his mind, he pushed off the bottom of the barrel…or the lake…or wherever he was…and struggled upward toward the long, drawn-out screech of a woman’s sorrow. He’d made widows of many.
That was a true thought. 
Lightning darted across the sky above. He swam more strongly upward. Now he saw thick ice above him. He ran his fingers across it, scrabbling without sound as he looked for a weakness. The ice slashed him and red ribbons of blood billowed around him.
The old wound in his side burned; his missing eye pounded like a war drum. Again, those were true thoughts.
He shoved against the jagged ice and floated backward. He clenched his jaw, and curled bloodied hands into fists and swam back at the ice, twisted, and then slammed his feet into the rough underside. He drifted away again, but the burning in his side became a fire, and his rage kindled.
At last, it kindled.
Thwarted?
No.
Not him.
Not ever.
Inside his mind, his spear swayed into his hands, her blade a bright promise. He thrust upward with his spear. The ice shattered and tumbled down around him.
I am Odin.
He shivered like a longship striking an iceberg. He pitched forward in Sleipnir’s saddle, hands seizing its pommel. Gungnir fell away like a broken mast, vanishing into the depths.
I am Odin!
The screaming, shrieking, rumbling voice that reverberated throughout the gray, wet forest was Heimdall’s horn. Something had happened—
The horn’s pitch grew higher and thinner, as if the author of its voice was running out of breath, till it died away. Odin’s ears rang hollow in the now silent forest.
Understanding crashed in like a wave. There were many reasons why Heimdall might have sounded the horn. But Odin knew, in his heart, precisely why that horn’s singular voice rang out. He had failed. 
His son Baldr was dead.

OUTRO
Well, folks, that was CHAPTER 91 of Kinsmen Die. I hope you enjoyed it.

As Frigg had feared, Odin did not make it back to Gladsheim in time to save their son Baldr. The idea in this chapter was to show Odin breaking the curse laid upon him by Angrboda. Again, we see that the Gjallarhorn can be heard even in what will eventually be called Helheim.

Next week we’re back with Loki. We haven’t seen him since Ch 47. I wonder what he’s been up to.

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. Again, I’d like to thank all of you who are sharing, reviewing and listening. 
  
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 91

Clear now will I speak, for I know them both,
Men false to women are found;
When fairest we speak, then falsest we think,
Against wisdom we work with deceit.

Larrington, Verse 91

I can speak frankly since I have known both: men’s hearts are fickle towards women;
when we speak most fairly, then we think most falsely, that entraps the wise mind.

And here’s is Kodratoff’s as literal as possible translation:
 
My naked thought, I speak now
because I know both,
the heart of the man is unfaithful to women; when we utter our finest words, our thinking is the craftiest:
thus you seduce the wise (women) ’s heart.

This stanza, and other ones we’ll soon hear, shed a little bit more light on stanza 106 of the Hovamol, which is where Odin describes how he seduced Gunnloth to obtain the mead of poetry.


Thanks for listening.