INTRO
 
Welcome to CHAPTER 3 of the Kinsmen Die podcast, home of fantasy fiction based on Norse mythology that’s written and read by me, Matt Bishop.
 
I’ve written two novels – Kinsmen Die and Dark Grows the Sun. They are the first two books in my series called And the Heavens Burn. 
 
In this podcast I will read both books and, when it’s finally finished, that third, concluding book in the series.
 
My goal is to share my love of Norse mythology and, obviously, my books. I believe I’ve done something unique when it comes to the retelling those old stories because the point of view characters in my books are the Aesir themselves. 
 
In CHAPTER 2, for example, we met Vidar Odinsson who arrived outside the town of Hals which had apparently been sacked by the Jotunn. In this chapter we will meet Odin himself. 
 
Everything you’ll hear is based on my interpretation of the source materials – the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, along with a stack of books that discuss the myths … and another stack of academic articles that do the same.
 
Right now, I’m planning to read one chapter per week. Every five episodes will be a combination recap and explication of how I incorporated the myths and why I made the choices I did – without spoilers!
  
Before I begin, let me just say – I’m learning the art of podcasting as I go. I’ll do my absolute best to produce a quality product for your listening pleasure. And, I’m just a writer reading his book – I’ll do my best to not suck too bad.
 
So, my friends, remember, Thor and Loki were friends, not brothers.
 
Let’s do this.

Chapter Three
Odin
“I rode back as fast as I could, Frigg,” Odin said, making sure to keep his tone mild. He glanced away from Baldr, who was laughing at something Nanna had just said. “And you checked his tree?”
“Of course I checked it. Lush and green during the summer, now completely covered in snow and ice.”
He smiled and raised his hands, palms up. “All right, Frigg, I’m just asking. But he looks fine to me.”
Frigg snorted, hot anger in her eyes. “You should have seen him this morning. Skin like bluest ice until Eir daubed his lips with that elixir he made from Yggdrasil’s fruit. When Sól’s light touched him, he gasped, color flooded back in, and he sat up. And you missed it.”
“I belie—”
A fist pounded against the heavy wood table. “Ale! More ale! You there. Yes, you! Bring me more ale!” Tableware clattered, jumped, and danced.
Odin leaned forward, frowning, to stare past Frigg at Heimdall. The burly flaxen-haired Aesir’s face was flushed with drink. His eyes were bleary, and he rubbed at his temples with the long fingers of one hand while his other hand held out his cup.
An Alvar thrall, head shaved, skin the color of gold, refilled Heimdall’s cup, bowed, and flowed back into the throng of tables to meet the same demands of the hundred other guests. The late-morning gathering had grown as word spread throughout Gladsheim that the Alfather had returned.
Frigg sat back, annoyance evident in every line of her face and body. Odin gestured with his chin toward Heimdall. She didn’t bother following the gesture; she just rolled her eyes and sniffed. “It started maybe a dozen winters ago, after he bested Loki.”
“Bested Loki in what?”
She waved her hand in the air. “Foolishness around Freyja and that torc she wears. Does Loki get bored, is that it? Or has he always been this vicious?”
He leaned back so he could look directly at her. “What did my brother do this time?”
She touched her own necklace. “You know that torc Freyja always wears—the one her husband gave her before he vanished?”
He nodded.
She leaned a little closer, speaking to be heard over a sudden swell in the celebration. She smelled like a new-dawned day. “Well, after the Spring Festival, it went missing—”
On impulse, he laid his hand on hers, squeezed gently and kissed her cheek. She drew away, surprised, but with the hint of a warm smile displacing the lingering anger at him—and annoyance at Heimdall—on her face. He’d been gone twenty winters. It hadn’t felt as if that much time had passed, but now that he was back, it felt as if twice that time had passed.
“More ale! By Rán’s weeping nets! More ale!”
He leaned forward again.
Heimdall’s face twisted in pain even as he held up his newly drained cup. A moment later, he crashed his fist against the table, dropped the cup, and balled his fists against his ears as if he was trying to block out some sound.
Those few Aesir still near him picked up their own cups and platters and moved toward the few unoccupied benches built into the walls.
Odin patted Frigg’s hand and shifted in his seat, preparing to stand. “I’d better check on him.”
She shrugged. The heat in her eyes had cooled. “Don’t bother. He’ll pass out in a few minutes. He always does.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “It’s not even midday.”
Her gaze was the flat of a sword. “Don’t give me that look. I had enough to deal with while you were gone.” She pursed her lips and looked down the long, curving table to where Heimdall sat. “But he usually does wait until evening to drink himself into a stupor.”
“So I should just let him drink? He seems to be in pain.”
“His behavior isn’t unusual, Odin. I did try to help him. Baldr, too. He rebuffed us both.”
He looked again at Heimdall. The man’s grimace had faded. “All right, I’ll let it be.” But he shifted so he could keep an occasional eye on the man whose senses had helped guard the Aesir for as long as the Aesir had existed.
Frigg gestured toward the crowd, the motion catching his eye as much as the hard note in her voice. “So this grew bigger than I expected. It’s almost as if you’ve been gone for a long time.”
“Only twenty winters, Frigg. Not that long for us. Not anymore.” He ran his eyes over the crowd of folk, finding dozens of familiar faces all looking much older than he remembered.
“Not for you, maybe.”
He glanced at Frigg, about to ask what she meant, but stopped when he saw her expression grow fiercer.
“So did you find them?” she asked.
“No. Not yet.”
“Twenty years of searching and no trace? It’s almost as if they don’t want to be found. If they’re even still alive.”
“I wouldn’t say no trace,” he said in a level voice. “I came across a dozen scattered, thriving settlements of Aesir who claim descent from those who stayed put even as my brothers ventured farther away. I asked the leaders of those settlements if they’d join our realm. They seemed to welcome the idea. I’ll have to go back obviously, but—”
“What?” She shifted in her seat; her black eyes pinned him. “Go back?”
He raised his hands again. “Not now, nor any time soon. I’m not going anywhere until we figure out what’s happening with Baldr.” He gestured toward the rest of the hall. “And I’ll start once I can reasonably excuse myself from all this. I promise.”
She blew out a breath and nodded once. “Good.”
“So tell me, what have you learned about what’s happening to him?”
“Little enough.” Her gaze lingered on Baldr before meeting his own. “He’s been having dreams for months now. Not every night, but often enough. He doesn’t remember what happens, but Nanna is terrified. And with good reason. I’ve seen it before, but this morning was the worse yet.”
“Freyja can’t explain them?” he asked, voice low.
“No, but then I haven’t told her everything, either. I felt we should both make that decision. I sent for you when I—” She glanced discreetly around their places.
“When what?”
She leaned toward him, speaking softly. “My visions are returning. Something terr—”
Heimdall’s voice cut through the crowd’s din like a blast from his horn. “Just give it to me!” A loud crash followed.
Odin stood. An Alvar thrall was untangling himself from the group of Aesir he’d been flung into. Like an indrawn breath, the hall had gone quiet.
Heimdall stood, swaying slightly, a stone pitcher in one hand. His other hand beat at his ear. Each time he grimaced, gold teeth as big as a horse’s gleamed behind his beard.
“Go on,” said Frigg, flicking her wrist at Odin. “Best to deal with him when he gets like this.”
He strode past the empty chairs on his left, chairs where Gladsheim’s jarls would soon sit. Heimdall had sat back down and, with trembling hands, was trying to pour ale into his cup. He kept missing the cup, and the dark liquid sloshed across the table.
The thrall bowed deeply when he realized the Alfather now stood beside him.
Odin held out his hand. “Give me that cloth.”
“Yes, Alfather,” the thrall whispered, pulling the stained cloth free from his belt.
“If you’re all right, return to your duties. If not, go see Eir. Tell her I sent you.”
“Thank you, Alfather. I am fine.” The thrall bowed and fled toward the kitchens.
Odin hitched at his breeches and sat sideways on the table’s edge. Heimdall’s sheathed seax lay between them, a poor dam for the pool of spilled ale. Odin threw the towel on top of the spill.
Heimdall’s head came up, and he raised his cup in mock salute. “Welcome back, Alfather.” Then he threw his head back and drained the cup again. His head came down, bobbing and rolling on his neck.
Odin stared down at his cousin for a long moment. “I should be shouting ‘Thief! Thief!’ right now.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because beer’s obviously stolen away with your wits. You disgrace yourself.”
Heimdall fumbled for the pitcher and managed to refill his cup without spilling too much more. “It’s beer that does that? Ymir’s tits, I’ve been wasting my time with ale.”
Odin slapped the cup away, feeling anger’s first hot flush. The cup flew, ale spraying, until it bounced hard against the platform’s wood planks and rolled away.
Heimdall watched it go, shoulders slumped.
Odin pitched his voice lower, for the hall’s noise had only partially returned. “What is all this about, Heimdall?”
Heimdall swayed in his seat, burped, and reached for the stoneware pitcher but instead knocked it down. The last bit of ale poured out. Odin snatched it up and moved it to one side.
Heimdall exhaled long and loud, wet lips flapping. He wiped sloppily at a bit of drool and motioned Odin closer, pawing at one ear with a clenched hand. “It’s the birds, squawking my name over and over and over. Always the birds. A dozen winters now. I can’t handle it. Not anymore.”
Birds?
Banging one hand against his ear again, eyes closed tight, Heimdall continued in a low, slurring whisper. “The squawking voices... always there. Always. And then sometimes, as just happened, a scream cuts through everything and now it echoes and echoes and echoes...”
He burped and weaved, hands twitching outward, searching for stability. Everything along the long wooden table rocked as Heimdall held onto it.
Odin moved the stoneware pitcher further away. “I don’t understand. Birds? A scream?”
Not a handspan’s movement of Sól after he’d arrived, Gná had delivered a message to Frigg. A bird had been sent from Vithi with a message: Háls had been attacked by an unknown force, and Vidar was riding to investigate.
Frigg had summoned Saglund, the Einherjar hersir, explaining to Odin that outlaws from the two western districts had banded together and begun raiding. So far, they remained at large, despite the efforts of the town garrisons as well as the Einherjar garrisons.
When Hersir Saglund presented himself, he had argued that they should wait for more details. He hadn’t received any word from his garrison in Vithi. Frigg insisted that he ready a company of Einherjar, but the hersir—who Odin had himself appointed before leaving—insisted they wait for further word.
At that point, Odin had stepped in, and Saglund had backed down. Thinking about it now, he wondered if Frigg had intended that confrontation to happen.
Heimdall’s muttering drew his attention back just as he drew his seax with more speed than such a drunken man should have been capable of. The knife’s blade, long and sharp, glinted with reflected yellows and reds as it moved toward Heimdall’s right ear.
Odin grabbed Heimdall’s thick wrist, halting the seax’s wavering progress. Then he swung himself over the table and came in behind Heimdall, twisting the knife hand behind him and pinning him against the table.
Heimdall struggled a few moments but then gave up, sagging against the table. His hand opened, and Odin twisted the seax free.
“Knife’s too long, anyway,” Heimdall said around a belch and a sigh. “Need something shorter.”
Odin slammed the seax point first into the table a hand’s breath in front of Heimdall’s face. “What did you hear, cousin?”
Bleary, bloodshot eyes struggled upward and met his own. Heimdall shrugged. “Horn, I think? Or maybe a fox screaming somewhere, maybe?”
He frowned and gripped Heimdall’s shoulders, almost in his face. “A fox? That could’ve been Vidar’s horn. He’d sent word of trouble in Vithi. Is that what you’d heard? Vithi’s horn?”
Heimdall belched again, and Odin recoiled from the stench. A moment later, he felt his cousin’s shoulders go limp. A rumbling snore followed.
Odin straightened and banged the table loud enough to bring murmurs into the silent hall. He beckoned at his son. “Baldr! Get over here and wake him up.”
It was hard to believe that the eyes and ears of the Aesir had come to this. No wonder Gladsheim—and Vithi—had been taken unawares. 

OUTRO
Well, folks, that was CHAPTER 3 of Kinsmen Die. I hope you enjoyed it. We met Odin and experienced his somewhat rocky relationship with his wife, Frigg, and how he doesn’t tolerate drunks especially when it comes to the eyes and ears of Gladsheim itself.
 
I’m a big believer in value for value. So, I have several requests:
1)   Please leave a review on whatever podcast app / platform you use. They really help.
2)   Please share the podcast. That also helps a ton.
3)   And finally, please consider supporting my work by buying my books on Amazon or in some other way – likes, follows, Patreon, Locals, a boost through the Lightning/Bitcoin network, etc.
 
I’d also enjoy hearing from you. You can email me at mattbishopwrites@gmail.com
 
All the links will be in the show notes.
 
And with that, I will leave you with this thought from the sayings of the High One, Odin himself:
 
This is the Bellows translation, available on Sacred Texts
https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe04.htm
 
 
Verse 3 
 
Fire he needs | who with frozen knees
Has come from the cold without;
Food and clothes | must the farer have,
The man from the mountains come.