“How long till their arrival?”

Munin clicked its beak, hopping from foot to foot, exhaustion eating at its bones. Two days it’d been flying, ahead of the kids coming back from Sindri. It was a long trip, and Munin was about ready for a soft nest and a good nap, followed by a fresh corpse and a birdbath full of mead.

Forseti, however, wasn’t coughing up any of it.

“A day,” Munin said. “Maybe less.” It hopped backward again as Forseti paced. The kid didn’t look well. Sort of gaunt and pale. Haggard and washed out. And Munin would’ve sworn he was favoring a single eye.

Not to mention he was still holding Gungnir. Munin wondered if the kid even put it down to sleep.

Come to think of it, was Forseti even sleeping? Munin would’ve suggested a massage and a day off if it would’ve earned any response other than a glare and potential slap.

“And they have Mjölnir?” Forseti was giving that one-eyed stare again. The one that made Munin shiver. The one that should’ve died a long, long time ago.

“Yeah, see,” it started. “About the hammer . . .”

“Tell me!”

“Of course, of course.” Munin hopped back, definitely out of reach. “It’s just . . . I’ve been flying a long time. Pretty tired, y’know? Hungry. If you could bring up a bit of meat, maybe it’d help with the memo—”

“No!” Forseti’s fist slammed down on the table, hard enough to rattle cups and send Munin stumbling backward with a squark. “First you will speak.”

“Boy, enough.”

Forseti’s head turned, a sneer curving over his lips. Munin, meanwhile, felt relief. And not all of it because Nanna was approaching, carrying a tray of offal and a bowl of water.

“Mother, get out. We have no time for your coddling.”

Nanna, to her eternal credit, shouldered past her son, placing the tray down in front of Munin.

“Please excuse Forseti’s . . . inhospitality,” she said. “He has had a trying time of late. You have served Ásgarðr well. Some comforts are the least we can provide.”

Keeping Nanna between itself and Forseti, Munin obliged her on her offer, eyeing the stinking pile. Liver, lungs. Kidneys and a heart. All the good stuff.

It bowed, wings spread. “Thank you, ma’am.” Then hopped forward, beak plunging into flesh.

Nanna took a seat, patiently watching, back straight and arms folded. Forseti beside her, looking one sharp jolt from catching fire.

“The hammer,” he growled.

“Right, right.” Munin gulped down a piece of lung, blood smeared over its beak and claws. “It’s coming back, don’t worry about that. But the other stuff isn’t.”

“What?” snapped Forseti, even as Nanna’s eyes widened and she said, “Þrúðr?”

“Is fine. She’s got the hammer.”

“What of Magni?” From Forseti.

“He’s, uh . . . indisposed. Injured. The dvergar are looking after him.” Munin tore off another piece of meat, stomach a riot of growling. “Look, it’s a long story. The short version is Þrúðr isn’t married, she gave her dad’s belt back to the dvergar, and the gloves to the þursar.”

“What!”

Yeah, Munin had been afraid of that reaction. Even the normally serene Nanna looked perturbed.

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“There would’ve been war, otherwise,” it said.

“There is war now!” Forseti really did love slamming Gungnir down against the floor. The wood made a real solid thwack when he did it. Munin remembered that thwack. Odin had been a fan of it as well, once upon a time. “Armies on two fronts,” Forseti continued. “Duplicitous, cowardly beasts. Let them come. Ásgarðr will not fall.”

“Forseti!” Nanna half turned to her son, voice and eyebrows high.

“He’s right,” Munin said. “Ásgarðr won’t fall, at least not to Þrymheimr. Þrúðr gave them the gloves as a peace offering. No gloves, no one uses the hammer. No one uses the hammer, the þursar sleep easy in their nests at night.”

Nanna looked grim, but she was nodding. Forseti was livid.

“No! No no no no no!” being the gist of his reaction. “I sent that fool girl to buy our future, not barter it away on softhearted sentiment!”

Nanna pursed her lips, disdainful of the outburst. “It would seem she bartered it on peace.”

“She makes us weak before the Realms. Before the þursar, no less. She dishonors us and her father both.”

That did earn a scowl. “Boy, perhaps you—”

But Forseti wasn’t listening to his mother. Instead, he rounded on Munin. “And Magni? Where was Magni? Why did he not stop this?”

Munin inched across the table, making sure the plate of offal was between it and Forseti. And that a window was in easy reach. Magni’s . . . predicament was a no-go. Everyone had been pretty clear on that. Somewhere, between the threats and bribes, Munin had gotten the message. If Forseti was going to learn Ásgarðr’s hottest secret, it would be from the people it affected. Not Munin. So:

“Like I said, he was hurt pretty bad trying to get the hammer back. I don’t think he’ll be stopping anyone from anything for a while.”

Even from the air, Munin had heard the mournful howling. Gossip was gossip, but there were limits.

Forseti was well past his, knuckles white against Gungnir’s wood.

Nanna didn’t fail to notice.

“I don’t see why you fret so,” she said. “Mjölnir is returned and relations with Þrymheimr have improved.”

“Ásgarðr does not have ‘relations’ with the jötnar!”

That outburst earned Forseti a dubious look from Munin and Nanna both.

Forseti noticed, his eyebrows colliding like angry lions bickering over a kill. “Do not think I am ignorant of your plans, Mother. Þrúðr’s folly is not precedent for you to make the same mistake with Hel.”

“They wish peace, Forseti,” Nanna said. “Peace and freedom.”

“No! They wish to make mockery of everything Ásgarðr stands for, pervert everything we are. I will not allow it.”

Nanna stood, the scrape of her chair loud against the stone. “The decision is not yours,” she said. “You are not king, and if your father were here he—”

“Father is dead!”

Munin wasn’t sure what stung the most: the words, or the slap Nanna delivered to her son as soon as he spoke them. Either way: ouch.

Munin hunkered down behind the offal plate, doing its best imitation of invisibility.

Forseti and Nanna, staring each other down, stiff and still but for where Munin could see the breath come as fast and heavy as if they’d just done dash at the Olympics.

It was Nanna who walked away first, silent and furious. Forseti making a disgusted noise once she was out of earshot, before storming off himself. Not in the same direction. Both seemed to have forgotten Munin’s presence.

Munin, who looked at the plate in front of it and then to the window. The plate. The window. The plate, the door. Food, gossip.

In the end, gossip won out. With one last gulp of water and carrying a chunk of liver in its beak, Munin hopped up onto the windowsill and left the building.

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

The Wall was empty, Forseti had ensured it. No one was permitted to scale it, bar Ullr and Rígr. They would keep watch in place of simpering einherjar who had proven they could not be trusted.

Meanwhile, beneath the sunset, the writhing mass of Hel’s army wailed on. And endless maelstrom of madness, set to the tune of skalds and grinding music. Ásgarðr’s men were bred for war, not for this. This attrition of monsters, taunting Forseti’s warriors with perverted visions of dead loved ones. With howls that promised peace even as their very presence withered the land around.

This thing could not be borne. Not with Forseti’s mother brewing dissent from within. Not with Þrúðr showing weakness from without.

No rain had lashed on Ásgarðr’s eaves since Mjölnir had been lost. Now, the hammer was returning and with it, Forseti felt the storm.

Men could not fight corruption with poetry and song, and Ásgarðr was corrupt indeed. Weak. They had forgotten their purpose. War and glory. Honor. Forseti felt it, all of it. Carved in the runes that marred Gungnir’s surface, worn smooth by centuries of Odin’s steady hand.

Grandfather had not been an honorable man. But he had been a necessary one, his deceptions keeping Ásgarðr strong against its foes. He, Forseti knew, would not stand by idle while monsters snarled before the gates. Nor would he sue for peace.

He would have war instead. Would show the quarrelsome Realms what price was had to disobey the gods.

As the sun lowered, Forseti heard the men below begin to file into their halls. To feast and sleep. To gossip. To whisper cowards’ words.

Forseti would have them do a different thing. He would have them remember whence they came. To remind them of the men they had once been.

And so, alone atop the Wall, Forseti raised his arm.

And threw Gungnir across the Line.