What are they doing?”

Morning, and Forseti stood atop the Wall, staring out over the writhing black morass of Hel’s army. So many damned and rotting souls, thieves and cowards, oath breakers and murderers. Dancing mad dances beneath the scythe-clawed talons of nightmares made flesh, chaos-spawned get of Loki, folly of Odin, betrayer of Ásgarðr.

Fingers curling tight around Gungnir’s haft, Forseti swore he would not make his grandfather’s mistakes. Whatever the cost.

The einheri beside him huffed, rubbing a hand across his clean-shaven chin. One of Ásgarðr’s newer warriors, dressed in strange and flimsy greens. He’d introduced himself as Private Johns, and Forseti did not know if this was a name or a title. Modern mortals could be . . . confusing.

“Well,” Private said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were protesting.”

Over the Wall, a thousand voices chanted, sound carried on the wind. The words spoken in the mortal’s modern tongue, saying:

One. Two. Three. Four. Release our boys from Odin’s war.

Over and over, and Forseti scowled.

“ ‘Protesting’?”

“Right,” said Private. “Saw it when I got deployed.”

Private, Forseti knew, was killed within the Caliph’s lands. He did not know why the Saxons would provoke war with such a great power, so far to the east.

“I . . . do not understand.” Forseti bit down anger that he would show ignorance in front of a lowly einheri. “What is ‘protesting’?”

If Private sensed his Lord’s annoyance, he did not show it. “Right, right. Sorry,” he said. “Protesting is, uh. It’s when people don’t like something—something the government does, usually—they get together and”—he gestures out across the Wall—“protest. Shout and yell. Make banners.”

There were certainly many banners, of both the new kind and the old. Forseti could not read the text written in the modern tongue, but the runes he saw were, for the most part, names. Declarations of love and devotion. Pleas to come home.

“The mortals do this?” he asked. Then, when Private nodded: “Why do they not petition the þing directly?”

Private laughed. “This is petitioning the ‘thing.’ “—Forseti tried not to wince at the mangled word—“I mean, unless there’s an election on, there’s not many better ways to do it.”

Mortal governance was a strange thing, but Forseti believed he understood. Hel was wicked and deceitful, silver-tongued like her father. Of course she would try this coward’s way.

Heart hard and lips thin, Forseti left the Wall. He had seen enough. And so, he decreed, had the einherjar who lined its length. He scattered them with a command, posting Ullr and Rígr to keep more from congregating. For a time, at least.

So much trouble brewing at Ásgarðr’s gates. First the . . . business with the thing that wore Father’s skin, then “Loki,” then Hel. Forseti could not believe them not related, or the actions of mere happenstance. Someone had planned this, planned war and destruction against Ásgarðr and all its people. Planned to break open this would-be golden age.

And, with Father gone, who was left to defend the realm other than his only son?

“Forseti. Stop, I would speak with you.”

Only three steps into his hall. Forseti tried not to wince. “No, Mother. I have other matters to—”

But Nanna was not dissuaded. When was she ever?

“Enough.” She planted herself in Forseti’s path, chin raised and eyes narrowed. “You cannot avoid me, boy.”

Forseti tried to sidestep. “We have nothing to say. My decision is final, you will not—”

“You will not deny me.” Mother stamped her foot against the stone, petulant and childish. “Gather the þing, Forseti. I would speak before it.”

“No.” What more was there to say? Mother’s stubbornness could not change the law. “Women have no place before parliament. You know this.” He pushed past, not daring to meet his mother’s eyes.

“Women may not,” she snapped. “But queens—”

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“Mother, stop.” But it was Forseti who did. Back turned to Nanna, hand raised to rub across his eyes. “Please. Let this be.”

“I will not!” Nanna’s voice was as cold as ice and just as brittle. “You know what sits outside our gates. I have spoken with Hel and heard her claims. She has cause, Forseti.”

“No!” He turned, butt of Gungnir slamming against the stones. “I will not hear this.”

“You will!” Mother, stubborn to a fault. “Or would you have me break my oath?”

“You should not have given oaths you knew you could not honor!” Rage, rising in his gut. Better that, Forseti thought, than despair. “This is your dishonor, not mine.”

For a moment—one long, endless moment—Forseti stared his mother down. In the end, it was she who turned aside.

“You are my son.” Her voice was low now. Low and as endless and cold as the twisting halls of Helheimr. “Given charge of Ásgarðr’s law. Hel’s claim is just. If you will not hear it—”

“Hel is a deceitful íviðja witch!” Forseti snapped. “Ásgarðr does not make treaties with such monsters. We never have. Why can you not see this?”

“Hel is a queen. As am I. We deal as equals.”

“Then do so in the spaces women have,” Forseti countered. “Law and politics are the realm of men. You have no dominion there. That is law.”

In that moment, Nanna pulled back as if slapped. She stepped away, once. Then twice. “That,” she said, “is your law. Not mine.” And she turned.

“Mother . . .” But what more was there to say? The law was law. Forseti could no more change it than he could move the Realms upon the Tree.

Nanna turned, only slightly. Not looking her son in the eye as she said, “Ásgarðr will hear Hel’s claim. If you say my place is not before the þing then so be it. I will use my spaces, the space of home and hearth.”

Forseti sighed. Let Mother gossip all she liked, around loom and cooking fire. “Very well,” he said. “This is your right, and I will not interfere.”

“No,” Nanna said, the curve of a smile on her lips. “You will not.”

Forseti watched her go, fingers caught on Gungnir’s wood.

----------------------------------------

The inevitable happened that evening. From its place in the sky above, Munin saw it all.

The Screamer was cunning, waiting until dusk to bring out the big guns. A young girl with an acoustic guitar, plus a shaggy-haired boy clutching a keyboard. Together, they wove the forbidden galdr, the mansöngr.

Also known as love songs.

Most of the lyrics were in English, and it took a little while for the trick to catch on among the náir. Munin watched the gossip spread, from the newest dead to the very eldest, women hiding giggles in their hangaroc, men shuffling awkwardly, not daring to make eye contact. The new dead, meanwhile, passed out candles. Lighting them and holding them aloft, swaying in a sea of stars as the sun descended beneath the Tree.

Three songs. Elton John, Crowded House, Nick Cave; Munin circling low and humming along. At the end, the Screamer came back out, thanking the band. Then she said:

“Ladies and ghouls, up next I’ve got something special for you and something even better for one lucky guy behind the Wall. So please put your claws together and give a big welcome to Winflæd, here to dedicate a special message to her trapped beau.”

The crowd knew what to do, roaring and cheering, as the Screamer guided an anxious woman to the front of the stage. Round and fair, and glancing between the Screamer and the strange black spike of the microphone.

Eventually, she leaned forward and began to speak. In Old English. Munin was rusty as hell, but it knew enough to catch the sentiment. Winflæd missed her husband, Hræiðarr. Twenty winters they’d been married, with four children between them. Then, one day, Hræiðarr had gone west. And had never returned.

“I waited,” Winflæd said, voice trembling and uncertain. Breathy over the dead hush of the crowd. “For twelve more seasons. Our son, Kolbæin, said I should find another in your stead. There were suitors. I refused them, Hræiðarr. How could I take another, after you? Twelve seasons, cold winters, and—and I thought, when it was done, that we could meet again. I searched for you, my love. All these years, I—”

And then:

“Winflæd!”

It was bound to happen, sooner or later.

There, on the Wall. A man, fighting to get to the front. Hræiðarr, calling his wife’s name.

Winflæd gasped, the sound a sharp burst of static into the mic. “Hræiðarr?”

“Winflæd! My love!”

Then Winflæd was surging forward, the crash of the mic booming as she knocked it over in her haste. The Screamer intercepted her, a hairsbreadth from the Line.

On the Wall, Munin saw Ullr raise his bow.

The Screamer was holding Winflæd back, the latter’s howls and sobs echoing loud enough without the artificial amplification. On the Wall, a handful of einherjar were returning the favor for Hræiðarr.

“That’s my wife!” Munin heard him roar. “Let me go to her!”

“No one is to pass the Wall!” That was Ullr, voice equal parts fear and panic, arrow wavering between the two spouses.

Behind the Line, the dead split apart like a sea, bowing as Hel herself moved to the front. When she reached Winflæd, she said nothing. Just put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, Winflæd falling still with the touch.

Still, but not silent, voice crying for her husband. Joy and heartbreak, all in one.

And the Screamer, watching from two paces back, pink Shaker at her side. This, Munin thought, was what she’d been waiting for.

And, really. There was only ever one way it was gonna go.

With one final roar, Hræiðarr broke free of his companions, leaping onto the battlements of the Wall.

Then right down over the side. ’Cause what was a twenty-foot drop to a dead guy, really?

He ran. Right for his crying wife. One stride, two, five.

Just before the Line, Ullr loosed his arrow.

By the sixth stride, Hræiðarr was dead. Again. One black-feathered shaft sticking up from the back of his fool skull.

If grief really could bring down stone, then Winflæd’s howl would’ve done it, right then and there.

Then nothing but sobs, muffled against the brocade of Hel’s robe. Folded into the arms of Death herself.

Not a single other thing moved. No howls of outrage, no recycled ’60s chants. Just silence, and thousands of glassy eyes, fixed against the gates of Ásgarðr.

When they opened, two score men filed out. If they expected a fight, they didn’t get one. The disapproval of the dishonored dead was weight enough.

They collected Hræiðarr’s body. He’d be better by morning, everyone knew that. Locked up in a cell somewhere, Munin would bet. Lest he get any more ideas. Lest anyone else get any of the same.

Meanwhile, Winflæd wept.