INTRO
 
Welcome to CHAPTER 20 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. Every TEN chapters, or so, I recap the key plot points and provide some insight into the myths I’ve referenced in the book as well as some of the creative choices I’ve made along the way.

Before we roll into Chapter 20, here’s a quick summary of what’s gone before:

In Chapter 16, we were with Hodr — the son of Frigg and Odin — as he mucked out some stables and remembered the man, the warrior, he’d been. 

In Chapter 17, Frigg pulled double duty — damage control for her husband and as a Mom to Hermod.

In Chapter 18, Vidar engaged the enemy…without and within…and it didn’t go well for him.

In Chapter 19, Loki said goodbye to his wife and sons. Whatever they’re doing, they appear to have all taken sides against the Aesir.

In this chapter, we’re back with Odin as he arrives at the battlefield outside Háls.

As Doug Marcaida says, “Let’s do this.”

Chapter Twenty: Odin

Odin lifted Gungnir free, threw a leg over his saddle, and slid from Sleipnir’s back. Beneath his feet, the grass lay flat against the hard-packed earth. In some places, it had been trampled into the ground itself, mixed with blood and gore and then frozen solid. Bodies lay scattered in grotesque contortions.
Odin glanced behind him and caught a glimpse of Baldr’s sorrowful expression, his lips a bloodless, tight line.
Saglund approached and bowed stiffly, disgust plain on his face. “We’re ready, Sigfather.”
Indeed they were. The Einherjar had formed a shield wall and were in the process of marching forward.
How odd that Saglund should show such revulsion. He had fought a dozen campaigns against the Jotunn and distinguished himself in the last Jotunn war. His valor was partly why Odin had given the man command of the Einherjar.
“Is something wrong, Hersir?” he asked.
Saglund’s expression went hard. “It’s just that I understand now what you meant, Sigfather.”
From high above, his ravens gave a raucous cry. Odin tapped a finger next to his eye. “It gets worse. And this will be a fight these Einherjar have never fought.”
“I’m confident they are up to the challenge, Sigfather,” Saglund replied, pitching his voice to carry above the tramping boots as, two Aesir deep all around, the Einherjar wall parted to engulf the stationary Odin, Baldr, and Saglund and reform with them in the center.
“Then let’s go, Hersir,” he said, clapping Saglund on the shoulder. He pointed north along the bloody trail. “If it weren’t obvious, Huginn and Muninn say we need to head that way.”
As they walked, stepping over or around the Jotunn corpses, he sent a thought back to his ravens: Watch for falcons. He felt them leap into the air.
After the shield wall crawled past a particularly large pile of corpses, he called Gungnir to his hand. “Halt here.”
He lowered Gungnir so her blade was parallel to the ground and waved her tip back and forth as if divining for water. She twitched in his hand and pointed directly ahead toward the heap of wrecked bodies.
He strode to the pile, kicking broken weapons out of his way. When he was directly before the bodies, Gungnir twitched again. He slammed Gungnir into the ground and bent to drag the topmost corpse off the pile. Saglund barked an order, and several Einherjar sprang over to assist, as did Baldr.
When they had dragged the top layers of corpses aside and arrayed them all in a line, he retrieved Gungnir and held her blade parallel to the ground. He walked slowly down the line of bodies until she twitched in his hand. Swiftly, he raised Gungnir high and reversed her so her blade faced downward.
Baldr must have seen it coming. “Father, wait, I might—”
He let Gungnir slam down into the Jotunn she had selected. The warrior’s breastplate fractured with a sharp crack, and the Jotunn himself shuddered, let out a weak cry, and went limp. The spear’s blade glowed golden around the edges.
“You should have let me tend him, Father,” Baldr said, skidding to a halt opposite him. “Alive, he could’ve told us what happened. Why they attacked.”
Gungnir’s glow intensified and drew a mist from the Jotunn’s broken chest; the glow dimmed and the mist thinned. As the golden glow again strengthened, more mist flowed free only to thin again. “The Jotunn hate us, Baldr. They always have. That’s why they attacked.”
He ripped Gungnir back out, fresh gore dripping a crimson trail, and made small circles in the air, wrapping what was left of the Jotunn’s hugr around her blade.
Baldr knelt beside the dead Jotunn warrior, removed the man’s helm, and closed his eyes. Seen in Sól’s long light, the Jotunn’s brow appeared less heavy than he knew it was, the nose less broad. The Jotunn’s skin had gone gray in death. Baldr then laid one of the man’s thick-fingered hands across his barrel of a chest.
He was about to say something—probably something foolish about transporting these dead back to Gladsheim for eventual return to Jotunheim—when an eager ululating shriek ripped toward them from across the plains.
Baldr’s mouth clapped shut, and he rose abruptly. Mutters ran through the Einherjar, leather armor creaking in the silence. Their weapons banged and tinged against their shields.
Odin exhaled and cast his mind upward, seeking Huginn and Muninn. Sharp-eyed though they were, all his ravens could see was a black clump not far beyond the bright circle of their warband.
He sent his mind toward his wolves. Geri was closest, near the high ridge. He felt a rumbling growl building in the wolf’s chest. He sniffed the air again: fresh blood, but something wrong about it. Geri’s hackles rose, and he snarled.
He slipped into Freki’s mind and caught the same scent Geri had, a rotting wrongness woven with the steaming stench of stomachs spilled open.
It stalks you, Pack-Father, Freki thought to him.
He inhaled and fell back into his body. “Saglund, quick, sound the horn. Form the shield wall!”
He lifted Gungnir and ignited the spirit-cloud he had wrapped around the blade. It burned gold and bright, for those with the sight to see it.
Silvery, the horn pealed out.
A tortured shriek answered.
Geri howled a challenge. It comes now, Pack-Father, Freki said in his mind.
“Brace yourselves,” he shouted. He rammed Gungnir into the ground, the Jotunn’s hugr burning bright along her blade. It would lure the creature Vidar had become.
Odin reached into his satchel and withdrew his spool of witchthread. Working quickly, he unscrewed the cap on Gungnir’s cross-brace, hung the spool, replaced the cap, and with a quick jerk of his arm, unspooled a long strand.
The beastly roar echoed again, the sound bearing down on them. Saglund called out and the Einherjar fell back a dozen paces, tightening the circle around Odin, Baldr, and Saglund.
Odin flicked his wrist, sending the thread out to pierce the back of the Einherjar nearest the approaching roar, and began to sing the charm he had taught Vidar. He pulled more thread free, directing it toward the Einherjar with one hand while the other wove it through the leather and steel circle of warriors around them. He sang in the shields, softly, the golden glow of his galdr giving them strength.
The Einherjar fell back again until the line was tight and strong. Einherjar fought in fours, two warriors in front with shields and axes guarding two behind with long spears. The pulling hooks on those spears glinted in Sól’s fading smile.
Something huge slammed into the shield wall. The Einherjar roared. As Odin watched, those in the first rank buckled beneath the impact of something wide and heavy and black. They were driven back two steps, then three. But they held. They stumbled forward slightly as whatever had hit them pulled away.
“Reform,” Saglund shouted, his voice high and tight. He raised his horn and blew a silvery peal.
Odin flung another golden thread into the Einherjar, weaving it back around on itself. The weaving would lend the charm greater strength.
From your left, Wing-Father, Huginn whispered from high above.
Odin thrust an arm that direction, the galdr pouring from his lips.
“Left flank, brace yourselves,” Saglund cried. He dropped the horn and drew his sword.
Like a landslide, the beast struck the shield wall. The line flexed inward, shields squealing beneath huge shaggy paws that flashed with seax-sized talons. Spears bit, flexed, and then splintered with loud pops as the beast pressed forward, head low, haunches high.
The creature swung its heavy head back and forth, sword-long horns catching warriors and batting them down or flinging them up and over. Odin could see the weave unraveling where it struck, looking more like the threadbare knees of trousers than whole cloth. It would tear soon enough before the fylgja, who was trying to force her way through the Einherjar like an enraged bear might rip through a stand of young trees. She was trying to reach him. These warriors were no threat to her. Only he was.
So he sang on, his fingers dancing as he strengthened his weave. At the moment, it was all that was keeping the bodies of his men whole, despite the fraying that happened every time the fylgja’s taloned foot or horns or heavy, shaggy haunches slammed into them.
With a massive crash, the beast burst through the shield wall, throwing warriors aside. Her horns glowed dark red where they terminated in a bony plate on her forehead. The eyes below those horns were green, vicious and hot like spring’s first growth.
He reached for Gungnir even as the fylgja began her charge. Saglund screamed out a challenge and surged forward to throw himself in the way. And then Saglund was down, having tripped or slipped on some soft patch of churned earth or detritus. It didn’t matter either way, since the fylgja would be on him in a heartbeat.
And he hadn’t worked the charm on himself.
The beast grew in his vision, gore-stained horns lowered, matted hairy shoulders making even the bone plate that stretched across its neck behind the horns look small.
And then his view was eclipsed by Baldr leaping in front of him, arms spread wide. Sól emerged from behind a cloud, making his son’s dark blond hair seem to shine with its own light.
Odin’s fingers closed around Gungnir’s smooth wood. She leaped from the ground, swinging down, putting herself in between him and the beast. There was a fleshy, meaty impact. He looked up in time to see Baldr batted sideways, tumbling beyond his vision.
The roar that washed over him stank like low tide along the sea. But it didn’t matter now. He invoked the rune word and the manacle tattooed around the beast’s right foreleg burned bright in his witchsight.
The fylgja stumbled. Haunches bunching for another charge, she shrieked at him in a voice colder than the north wind.
He spun free a length of thread and flicked it toward the fylgja, singing a charm. Fast as thought, the thread darted into the earth in front of the beast. Grasses whipped up around the beast’s scaly legs, climbing them like grasping vines on a thick-boled tree.
The fylgja roared again and strained against the roots. He repeated the charm, and more grasses wound around her broad back, fur matted with blood and gore, and snaked around her heavy, scaled haunches and thick neck.
He met her gaze, eyes hard. “Not so easy with me, disir.”
With a sound like a ship’s stout mast breaking in a storm, the fylgja ripped one foreleg free from the grasses binding it. She roared her defiance, spittle frothing and dripping from her toothy lower jaw.
He swore and took a few steps closer to the struggling beast. The fylgja’s blazing green glare met his, her teeth bared.
He pulled free the last long thread wrapped around the spindle. He showed it to her, doubled and tripled between his hands held arm’s length apart. “More than enough here, child of the Ginnungagap.”
The fylgja’s struggles redoubled.
He spoke a second rune and flicked the witchthread toward her. It curled around the leg she’d managed to free. The tattoos hidden beneath thick fur flared to life, and it went as stiff as if the joint had locked up.
His fingers danced delicately as he sent more thread at her. With each additional rune word he spoke, the tattoos on her legs and neck flared blue.
With each runic flare, the fylgja’s struggles grew slower almost as if she were underwater and swimming up, straining to reach the surface but running out of air. She roared and twitched and thrashed, her hind legs gouging great furrows in the frozen ground. Some of the grasses binding her did pop and tear, but those fetters no longer mattered. He had powered and invoked the runes. In a moment, he would revert the changes she had wrought in Vidar’s flesh.
The disir—Vidar’s fylgja—knew exactly what he was doing. Her stolen breath was hot on his face. Her chest heaved as she tried to break free. She flicked her head and tried to gouge him with her horns, her emerald eyes blazing with hatred.
Odin laughed. “You had your fun, disir. I want my son back.”
He cast the last loop of thread at her, singing, and the grasses dragged her flat, like a dog sleeping on its side.
He knelt beside her and touched the first tattoo around her right wrist. He spoke a word: binda. It cracked the air. The Einherjar warriors staggered away, hands clutching their ears.
Again the fylgja shrieked. This time, it was doubled like an echo in a deep fjord, the otherworldly shriek carrying a distant hint of a man’s voice.
He touched the tattoo on the fylgja’s right upper arm and spoke another word: brott. This word bit the air like an axe striking a tree. The fylgja shrieked again. The bestial quality sounded farther away, while the man’s voice sounded closer.
And more like his son’s voice.
The ice-blue light from the first tattoo mingled with the loops of seidr around the second. Like merging streams, they flowed up and wound around the tattoo about the fylgja’s neck, then down its other side.
The entire body before him flexed, trying to throw off the fetters of light. He raised a hand and they tightened further, constricting like serpents from steamy Alvheim. He touched the tattoos on the fylgja’s upper and lower left arm and spoke the same words again: binda, brott.
“You are chained again, fylgja. By my power, you withdraw.” He stood and held both hands over the creature before him. “I bind you. And so will my son return. Remember yourself, Vidar.”
He licked his thumb and bent forward to trace a single rune on his son’s forehead. He spoke the word: muna.
A hiss slithered from the fylgja’s mouth. Her eyes darted this way and that looking for escape. Her limbs shuddered and bulged with effort, but she didn’t move. Couldn’t move. The wicked green light of the tempest in her eyes began to fade.
He wiped his thumb on his sleeve, licked it again, and raised it to trace another rune on the fylgja’s broad scaly chest. The fur there was sticky with blood and sweat. He traced the rune: hljod.
Inside the constraining threads of light, the fylgja shuddered and began to diminish. A raspy scream ripped from her throat. The beast’s body faded, shuddered, and shrank, regaining its original shape. His shadow lay heavy across the brown grasses and roots humped over Vidar like a barrow.
Odin put his hands on his hips and exhaled long and slow as he turned his face up to the sky, eyes closed. He listened to the creak of the Einherjar’s armor, their harsh breathing and the chilly breeze rasping against the ground like a serpent’s scales across stone.
 
***
 
“Took you long enough to get back,” Odin said, turning a tired smile on Baldr. Baldr’s clothes hung in tatters, but the skin beneath was whole, proving the value of the sacrifice Odin and Frigg had made—and of the old magic she’d used at Baldr’s birth.
“He flung me quite far,” Baldr replied, then gestured at Vidar. “So was that how they all look?”
“The disir? No, they look how they choose,” he said. “I want him up and moving as quickly as possible.”
“After what he just went through? I’d be surprised if he’s conscious inside a week.”
Time was exactly what they did not have. “He may need it, but I need him back in Gladsheim with us.”
Baldr frowned. “He won’t like that. And I susp—”
“And I won’t enjoy dealing with your mother’s anger if I take too long to get back. Get it done, Baldr. Use your new potions if necessary.”
Baldr forced a sunny smile, but wariness clouded his clear blue eyes. “Potions? I haven’t—”
He held up a hand. “Spare me. Freki smelled them and told me.”
Baldr laughed. “Well, that’s hardly fair.”
“Long before you were born the Jotunn tried to steal Yggdrasil’s fruit. Ever since, I keep an eye—and nose—on them. And Idunn keeps me informed.”
“So if you knew and let me continue, then you don’t mind how I’ve been using them?”
He raised a hand. “Let me put it this way. What you’re doing benefits us and may do so even beyond what you’ve already discovered. But make sure folk believe it’s you and your arts healing them. Yggdrasil’s fruit are fundamental to our grip on power. I will do what it takes to keep them secret.”
Baldr’s good humor slowly drained away as he understood what those words meant. “All right, Father.”
“Good.” He pointed at Vidar again. “Now, ply your arts.”
Somehow, the Jotunn had gotten to Háls. He’d nearly lost one of his sons because of it. Could they do it again? If they could, another war truly did await the Aesir. That might not be a bad thing. 

OUTRO
Well, folks, that was CHAPTER 20 of Kinsmen Die. I hope you enjoyed it. 

We experienced Odin plying his magical arts against the spirit which took control of Vidar’s body and shaped it to her will.

Next week we FINALLY meet Vafthrudnir. I can’t wait!


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And if you’re so inclined, shoot me an email at mattbishopwrites@gmail.com.

I’d love to hear from you.
  
As always, I’m going to read from the Havamal, sayings of the High One, Odin himself.

I’m reading from both the Bellows and the Larrington translations

Bellows, Verse 20

The greedy man, if his mind be vague,
Will eat till sick he is;
The vulgar man, when among the wise,
To scorn by his belly is brought.

Larrington, Verse 20
The greedy man, unless he guards against this tendency, will eat himself into lifelong trouble;
often when he comes among the wise,
the foolish man’s stomach is laughed at.