INTRO
 
Welcome to CHAPTER 24 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.

In this chapter we’re back with Vidar who, if you recall, had lost control of the spirit bound to him. Odin had arrived and brought that spirit back under control.

So, let’s do this.

Chapter Twenty-Four
Vidar
Vidar thrashed awake. He took in the bright night sky even as he heaved in a lungful of air. He was soaked, cold, and flat on his back, rising and falling with the sea on a bit of weathered flotsam just big enough for his body. He sat up; his raft shifted alarmingly. Mist clung to the wavetops, churned by a chill breeze. 
A vast black shape circled the depths, and large, steady green eyes gazed up at him. He recoiled and the raft rocked beneath him.
A burning longship pushed through the mists, first its prow then its mainsail, flames skittering across it, bellied before the wind. It passed within a spear’s throw of him, the heat washing over him along with the fruity smell of hot mulled wine. 
Just before the mainmast, a figure sat in a chair. Flames curled around the chair legs like tired hounds. The ends of the figure’s clothing were alight, the gold and silver woven in with the cloth molten with firelight. The figure’s hair had begun to crisp and float away on the wind. He gagged on the stench of burning hair and flesh.
The figure turned toward him. It was Baldr. Unmistakably Baldr, his half-brother. Baldr nodded to him and began to speak, his teeth flashing bright white even as the flames ate his blackening flesh. Like ash, fragments of speech floated across the depths to Vidar.
“... seek me out, nor my mother. ’Ere the flames come to the green wood, my doom is set. I see it now, rising, it takes wing. A long...”
“... time since I last saw you, Brother,” said a pleasingly warm voice. The smell of warm cider hung in awful contrast to the stink of ash, smoke and burning flesh of where he’d just been.
Where had he been?
Where was he now?
The pleasant, familiar voice fell away into a quiet humming that lapped at his thoughts like the waves on which he’d just been floating.
Wherever he was now, he was warm and dry. He forced his eyes open; light stabbed them. He squinted through it, trying to make out some detail past the fuzziness.
He lay on his back. On blankets. His body ached, but he could move his hands and feet. A fire crackled merrily, but it glared at him. Vidar squeezed his eyes shut and, despite himself, peered down into his own dark depths where his fylgja slept, bound by Odin’s magic.
“Ah, there you are,” the voice said, sounding less distant than a moment ago. It made him think of riding across Vithi’s rolling grasslands in the high summer heat, with a west wind rippling through the tall grasses.
“I thought you’d wake soon, and see, you proved me right. Well done, brother.” Cloth rustled and leather creaked. A cool, dry hand rested on his forehead. It dabbed his eyes with a damp cloth that smelled faintly of honey. His skin tingled when the cloth and the hands departed. They returned a moment later to lift his head slightly and place something soft beneath it.
From right above him, the now-familiar voice spoke again. “Try opening them now.”
Vidar did. His eyes opened easily, and this time the faint light was easier to bear. Baldr’s bright smile swam into view. They were in a long, low tent. Baldr was mostly in shadow, lit as he was by firelight from behind. Steam drifted up from a kettle over the fire, carrying with it heady scent of fruits and spices and wine.
Baldr’s cool hand touched his shoulder, then folded the blanket down to lightly touch here and there. The fingers pressed in circles and in lines and several times went around his torso toward his back. Finished, Baldr replaced the blanket, set his hands on his knees, and sat back.
“You took a beating, but you suffered no actual wounds.” Baldr’s grin was as if Sól herself had stepped out from behind a cloud on a summer’s day. Like a mountain lake, Vidar couldn’t help but return the smile. Baldr favored his mother, tall and lean where she was willowy and every bit as tawny-skinned as she was. His hair, though, was as golden as Vithi’s grasses before the snows came.
“How do you feel?” Baldr leaned aside to let more light fall on Vidar, his clear gray eyes focused in concentration. Baldr’s clothes were simple, brown, and well made. The arms of his overtunic were rolled back, exposing arms corded with muscle.
“Well enough,” Vidar said, voice thick and dry. He tried raising himself up to his elbows but slumped back again.
“I can see that,” Baldr said, merriment in his eyes. “Give yourself a few minutes, Vidar. You just went through a lot, thanks to that thing inside you.”
He waved a hand in the air, a gesture that succeeded in encompassing both acknowledgment of the fylgja and his disapproval. “Father wanted you up and moving quickly, so I cheated. Just a warning, he wants you back in Gladsheim right away.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Vidar said. Then his brother’s remark registered. “Wait, Father’s back?”
Baldr brought a horn of water to his lips. Vidar drank the honeyed water gratefully, greedily, even. That honeyed scent was everywhere in the air, the cloth, the water. He sensed a theme. Based on Baldr’s remark about cheating, well, it wasn’t hard to puzzle out, even with his wits still scrambled.
“He is indeed, a few nights ago now. He’d ridden in at dawn and was gone again before the day ended, thanks to this attack.”
Vidar rolled the sweet water in his mouth and swallowed, feeling a comforting heat bloom outward. “I’ll bet your mother loved that.”
“Aye, she did.” Baldr leaned forward to take the horn from him. “Not too much, now.”
He raised a shaky hand to rub at his eyes. “Does Idunn know what use you make of the golden fruit she plucks from Yggdrasil?”
Baldr’s laugh was rich and hearty. And again, he couldn’t help but smile.
“Of course she knows,” Baldr said as he secured the drinking horn’s plug. “She’s a willing participant in my wicked plot to find new and varied uses for Yggdrasil’s fruit. She’d probably hand them out to all comers, maybe even the Jotunn, if they asked nicely—and assuming Father allowed it.”
“But he doesn’t,” Vidar croaked. And with good reason.
“No, he doesn’t. Not yet. But I think I can persuade him—to let me use the fruits for healing, I mean.” Baldr flashed another sunny smile as he moved to the opposite side of the small fire.
Vidar pushed himself to his elbows. More easily, this time. Every single muscle in his chest and back burned with dull pain. In a soft croak, he asked, “My warriors? How are they?”
Baldr looked up from the herbs he’d placed in a mortar. “A dozen with serious wounds. Another six with minor injuries. All being cared for in a nearby tent. They’ll all recover. I cheated with them, too.”
“And me? How long have I—”
“Drifted half-alive in my tent?” Baldr smiled. “Nearly two nights now.”
“Two nights?”
Baldr laid down his mortar and pestle. “It’s nearly midday of the second day after your battle with the Jotunn. Father’s impatient to leave, but I told him you needed to wake up on your own.” He spread his hands. “I can heal the body. Usually. But the spirit? That’s beyond my arts, such as they are.”
“I lost control,” Vidar said, sighing and lying back down again. He closed his eyes and tried not to focus on that moment his fylgja’s fierce glee swamped him.
“Yes, and Father brought you back.”
He sent his mind inward, spiraling downward till he saw his fylgja bound by the golden threads of Odin’s magic. She still slept. He swam upward and opened his eyes to stare at the rippling black fabric of the tent roof.
He wasn’t sure how to ask. “How bad was it? I didn’t...”
Baldr didn’t respond for a long moment. When he began grinding herbs with the pestle again, he said, “Don’t dwell on it, Vidar. It’s done. It was always done, scratched and painted red by the Norns.”
The note of quiet sadness in Baldr’s voice pierced right through him. He closed his eyes again and tried to squeeze out the fragmented memories that swirled from the blackness inside.
How could he not dwell on it? He lost control.
The pestle’s grind continued, harder. “And, no, you didn’t kill any Aesir.”
He opened his eyes, pushed himself back up, and stared down at his bare arms. At least the blood had been washed off, but he imagined he could still taste it, coppery and thick.
Baldr set his pestle aside and brushed the mortar’s powdery contents into a small pouch. “Do you remember anything? From while you were shape-shifted, I mean.”
He remembered that she had enjoyed feeding just as he might enjoy a good meal.
“No, not really.” He shrugged and winced as pain thrilled down his arm. “Bits here and there. Impressions.”
“Uh-huh.” The pestle resumed its grind. “The Aesir and the Jotunn have been at peace for more than forty winters. I know that’s not very long to us, not anymore, but for many Aesir alive today the times of open bloodshed with the Jotunn are just a memory.”
The pestle ground on alone for a time.
“Obviously, that means the Jotunn have also been at peace. Trade grows. But although the Jotunn themselves seem to be suffering less than in past winters, they are having fewer and fewer children. Those who are born alive, arrive ill and soon perish. At least those I’ve seen.”
Baldr set the pestle aside and brushed the remaining powder into his pouch.
Vidar sat up straighter despite the now duller aches and the popping of his joints and sinews. He glanced toward the tent flap, then looked around for his clothes.
“They’re there, by my bags.” Baldr gestured toward a bundle tucked behind saddlebags. He began grinding more herbs. “So I’m curious, Vidar. What’s here in Vithi that the Jotunn wanted badly enough to break the peace?”
Did Baldr suspected something? If not, why ask? Father had told him to stay quiet about his work—the new weapons he’d forged, his farseer, that old, broken ironwood device, his observations of the night sky—so he shrugged and then winced at the resultant sharp pain. “Metals and timber, probably. The skymetal mines in Háls run deep and rich.”
The grinding stopped. He felt Baldr’s gaze on his back—now more like the sun on a hot, windless summer day. And then the pestle tapped against the mortar.
“Rich indeed,” Baldr said. “But Háls is further from the Breach than probably any other mine. And why go for the raw material when they could more easily ambush any number of carts carrying weapons to one of the many Einherjar garrisons?”
Vidar stood, shakily, holding the blanket around his midsection. Stooped, he shuffled toward the stack of clothes.
The grinding started up again. “Any ideas on how the Jotunn reached Háls? Father said the Breach hasn’t been attacked.”
He decided not to risk another shrug. “I don’t know. By ship would be fastest but more easily spotted. Over land would take months.”
The grinding stopped, and the fresh silence hung for a moment. “Just after the Last War, I remember you moving out to the high peaks east of Gladsheim. You also ventured into Utgard several times?”
He began dressing. So Baldr recalled the farseer; best to not play dumb, then. “Yes on both counts. I was working on the early models of that long tube that lets you see faraway objects as if they were an arm’s length away.”
“I remember. You called it a...?”
“Farseer. I should ask Bragi to think of a better name,” he said, tugging on his trousers. “The idea for it came to me during the first years of the Last War. I was with Tyr in Utgard, and we were riding past a frozen waterfall. Tired though I was—we all were—my eye caught Sól’s light streaming through an icicle. On a whim, I broke off a chunk and played with it. Looking through it distorted how the land appeared. Some things seemed far away, some close, some blurry, some crisp. And that’s right about when the Jotunn set a pack of dominated snow bears on us.”
He shook his head at the memory of his younger self, so taken with his discovery that he barely got to his sword in time. “Anyway, the experience stuck with me. Many winters and many failed attempts later, I built the farseer.”
“That shows the world upside down, if I remember right,” Baldr said, sounding amused.
“I haven’t figured out how to fix that yet.”
Baldr shrugged. “I’m sure you will. My guess is you just haven’t been able to spend all your time on it. I remember you working on something else in those mountains, something found late in the war and brought to Gladsheim. And then we never heard of it again—or at least I didn’t, though I was preoccupied with starting the fregnahol at Breidablik.”
Baldr had been a warrior once and fought alongside Hodr during the Last War when Hodr had been blinded by a snow bear’s venom. Baldr’s skill at healing, comparatively meager in those days, wasn’t able to restore his brother’s sight. Nor could their father’s magic. After ten winters, a bitter, angry Hodr deserted Gladsheim in the night.
The whole sorry mess had compelled Baldr to give up fighting and dedicate himself to learning all he could about healing. In Breidablik, his jarldom southeast of Gladsheim, he began to pursue those arts nonstop. In time, the village became a town and then, with Frigg’s blessing since even back then Odin was often elsewhere, a fregnahol that trained the valkyr. Many Aesir, Vanir, and Alvar flocked to Breidablik to learn what Baldr and his fellow healers taught.
Vidar carefully pushed his arms and head through his shirt. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Baldr.”
Baldr laughed. “You’re so like Father in a hundred ways, Vidar. Except one. You’re terrible at lying.”
He glanced at Baldr, feeling his cheeks beginning to heat up. There was nothing but mirth in Baldr’s expression—and he couldn’t help but grin back at him. He shrugged. “I promised not to say anything.”
Baldr slapped his knee and set his mortar and pestle aside. “Aha! I knew it! Tell me what’s been going on here, Vidar. Please. Maybe it has something to do with this Jotunn attack. If it does, maybe we—I—can stop this…sickness…before more suffer.”
He’d hoped to avoid this confrontation. He looked down, pretending to concentrate entirely on donning his woolen socks. His beard, no longer weighted with silver or bound up with straps, spread like a bird’s tail feathers across his chest and upper arms.
“Vidar...”
He met Baldr’s eyes. “I can’t answer you, Brother.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
Vidar shrugged. “Both. I gave my word.”
“Indeed he did, Baldr,” said their father from the tent’s opening, his voice chillier than the air flowing in.
Baldr’s expression grew more resolute.
“I can heal this breach between us and the Jotunn, Father,” Baldr said. “But I need to know what’s been going on—what exactly might have prompted the Jotunn to violence rather than just speaking to Mother or me.”
Odin fully entered the tent, dominating the entire space. Vidar straightened as much as he could and faced his father. In a way, it was a little absurd—as if he and Baldr were children caught stealing wild berries.
Odin’s evaluating gaze shifted from Baldr to Vidar. “You did well, Baldr. Less than two nights, and he’s whole and moving about. Stiffly, but moving.”
“You did say to cheat,” Baldr said.
“So I did,” their father said flatly, smiling that not-smile of his.
Even after more than a hundred and twenty winters of not seeing it at all, that particular expression of his father’s still made Vidar’s stomach roil. He’d watched many grown men, proud Aesir, back down from that not-smile. Even Tyr chose his words more carefully in its light.
He’d only ever seen two Aesir completely unaffected by that not-smile: Thor and Loki. Thor would simply drop a hand to Mjolnir and smile back at his father. Loki never seemed to see it.
Odin looked from Baldr to Vidar, then back again. “Well, if you’ll excuse us, son, there’s much Vidar and I need to discuss. About this attack on Vithi.”
Baldr must’ve heard the same unspoken message Vidar had. “Thank you, Alfather, but after I finish here, I need to check on the wounded. Perhaps later.”
“Of course,” Odin said. He turned and ducked out of the tent, taking the chill with him.
Vidar bowed to his brother. “Thank you for your care, Baldr.”
“You are very welcome. And Vidar?”
Vidar paused in mid-stoop.
“Don’t follow him too closely.”

OUTRO
Well, folks, that was CHAPTER 24 of Kinsmen Die. I hope you enjoyed it.

We were with Vidar as he came back to himself under the care of his half brother, Baldr.

The chapter began with Vidar experiencing a vision of Baldr on a burning longship which the reader knows is similar to the vision that Frigg herself had in an earlier chapter.

Please take a few moments to rate and/or review the podcast — that provides valuable feedback for me and helps boost the show’s visibility. As does sharing it.

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.

This verse is a good example of why it can be valuable to use different translations. Bellows version is difficult to understand, but Larrington makes it much more clear.

Bellows, Verse 24

The foolish man for friends all those
Who laugh at him will hold;
When among the wise he marks it not
Though hatred of him they speak.

Larrington, Verse 24

The foolish man thinks that everyone
is his friend who laughs with him;
he doesn’t notice though they say nasty things about him when he sits among the wise.

The following is a minor rephrasing of the Larrington translation:

The foolish man thinks that everyone
is his friend who laughs with him. But, when he sits among the wise, he doesn’t notice when they (the people he thought were his friends) say nasty things about him.


Thanks for listening.