I repeated this for Granuaile’s sake and she laughed.
“You are certainly top dog,” she said to him.
"Atticus, have I told you before that I approve of your apprentice?"
Yep. Every time she strokes your ego.
That light feeling evaporated after a few minutes as Oberon wandered sideways to investigate a rustling noise. The accusatory clinking of Granuaile’s throwing knives resumed behind me, and I began to wonder when she would say something. Since we were by ourselves she couldn’t be waiting for a private moment, so I had to conclude that she was waiting for something else. I would simply have to wait along with her.
Oberon halted abruptly as we approached the mouth of the cave; he laid his ears back flat against his head and grumbled softly in his throat.
"Atticus, something about that cave doesn’t smell right."
I stopped hiking and so did Granuaile. She didn’t have to ask what was going on; she could tell Oberon was talking to me.
What’s wrong with it?
"Well, I should be smelling a nasty bird and dead stuff, and I do. Except I also smell a human. And a bear."
A human and a bear? That makes no sense. Unless the human is wearing a bearskin.
"It’s kind of warm for that."
Maybe it’s a bearskin rug.
"In a cave?"
Well, let’s go check it out. Cautiously.
I drew Moralltach as silently as I could from its scabbard and knew that Granuaile would be readying a knife and her staff behind me. I crept forward, the soft noises my feet made in the gravelly hillside unnaturally loud to my ears. I heard some scratching ahead and the soft, dry rasp of a bird’s throat.
My sword crested the lip of the cave’s mouth first, and I paused to see if anything wished to attack the bare blade. When nothing did, I risked a peek.
Two black eyes glared at me over a sharp beak. Oberon’s vulture was perhaps ten yards away, standing in a pile of bones and rotting tissue and watching me. There wasn’t anything suggestive of a nest; it was more of a mess hall, with an emphasis on the mess. It wasn’t convenient to water and it reeked, but it would work if we cleaned it out. The high ceiling was kind of a bonus. We had to convince the current resident to leave first.
“It’s just the vulture,” I said. “Come on up, but watch out for the beak.”
Vultures have no strength in their talons to speak of, because their prey typically doesn’t try to run away from them. Their beaks, on the other hand, are perfect for piercing skin. Strangely, the vulture showed no signs of alarm when I advanced to the lip of the cave. Even when Granuaile hauled herself up, I didn’t see a threatening display of the wings. The bird continued to stare as if it expected us to drop dead and provide it with lunch.
It was when Oberon appeared that the vulture finally showed signs of alarm—and also showed signs of not being a vulture.
Oberon barked and growled, showing his teeth, the hair on the back of his neck raised. "Atticus, that thing is a thing!"
What?
"It’s not normal!"
As we watched, the vulture screeched, spread its wings, and grew—but not into a nastier vulture. It morphed into something else entirely. The neck thickened, the beak became a snout, and fur replaced feathers. Stubby vulture legs became stubby human legs, but what roared at us from the top half—
"Gah! It’s a great big bear!"
“Gods damn the Greeks and their unholy hybrid monsters!” I muttered, then addressed the creature in Greek. “Are you a talking bear-man or just hungry?”
The bear roared again and Oberon tried to bark louder, but then the creature spoke in a malicious rumble: “I am Agrios of Thrace, son of Polyphonte. Who are you?”
I was tempted to tell him “nobody,” but I wasn’t Odysseus and he wasn’t Polyphemus.
“I am Atticus of … Attica,” I replied. Saying anything else would be meaningless to him. His myth was coming back to me. This fellow had been turned into a vulture by Hermes and Ares long ago; his mother and brother, because they were the “kind of nice” Thracian abominations, were only turned to owls. Agrios was the loathsome one. He’d been spawned because his mother, Polyphonte, had managed to tick off Aphrodite, so the goddess of love made her couple with a bear, and rawr, Agrios and Oreios were born.
“Aren’t you supposed to stay a vulture?” I asked.
“I was taught how to transform by Thracian witches. I served them for a time, until I opened their bellies and ate them. Olympus has forgotten me. As long as I don’t hunt the puny mortals and take only that which is given me, I am left alone. It has been many years since I was sent a sacrifice. Who sent you?”
“Whoa. Hold on. We’re not sacrifices. We’re just out looking for the handsomest caves in Greece and thought this was a likely one.”
I shot some quick instructions to Oberon: When we fight, circle round behind him and bite him on the back of the hams.
"Got it."
“You like my cave?” Agrios said, idly scratching his belly in confusion.
“Oh, yeah. Love what you’ve done with the carrion. Most people don’t think of using carrion as an accent for their décor, but I think you’ve stumbled onto something special here. It’s trendsetting.”
Granuaile whispered to me in Russian, “What are you doing?”
“Knives only. Do not engage him,” I whispered back in the same language.
The Thracian groused, “If you are so interested in décor, why do you come with a sword and a giant dog who growls at me?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes people in caves are impolite. But I can tell you are civilized.”
The bear threw back its head and laughed an ursine laugh.
“Knife to the throat now,” I told Granuaile, and she had thrown it before I finished the sentence.
Go, I told Oberon, and he charged around the creature’s side. I charged too, straight toward the outraged roar as the knife sank into his throat. I didn’t want him lumbering after Granuaile. Her staff would be of little use against such brute strength in close quarters, and her knives, however accurately thrown, were probably not enough to bring him down. Bear hide is tough, and the layers of fat serve as a sort of biological Kevlar.
When Agrios lowered his head and charged me, Oberon was behind him. Instead of biting the creature in the back of the thigh, Oberon caught an ankle and yanked, stretching Agrios out until he did a face-plant in front of me. The fall drove Granuaile’s knife deeper into his throat and left me an ideal opportunity to take a free strike. I hacked down with Moralltach, expecting to end it there, but he rolled out of the way in a very human move and tore free of Oberon’s jaws. He ignored the hound and me and launched himself after Granuaile, who had nothing but wee irritating needles and a staff that he’d treat like a toothpick. I didn’t have an angle to cut him off in time.
Oberon was faster than I was, and he snagged the guy by the ankle again. It didn’t halt his charge, but it slowed him down a bit, giving Granuaile a chance to toss another knife. It hit right between his eyes but didn’t penetrate into the skull and mess with his brain. Roaring, Agrios lunged at her again, dragging Oberon with him, but Granuaile twisted away and chose to tumble down the hillside, out of his claws’ range. That helped me, because now I could swing Moralltach without worrying about clipping her; the enchantment on its blade would spread necrosis through friend as easily as foe. Diving toward the creature before he could follow my apprentice downhill, I thrust Moralltach desperately at his side and managed to open a shallow groove in his flank. He bellowed and yanked his leg free of Oberon’s jaws again, trailing tendons and flesh. He wanted Granuaile more than anything. Using the three limbs that Oberon hadn’t savaged, Agrios grunted and leapt in a frantic attempt to break free of us. Victory erupted from his muzzle as he fell over the lip of the cave, but it cut off with a surprised yip once he landed on the steep hillside. Moralltach’s necrotic enchantment had reached his heart, and he could no longer control his fall—or, indeed, anything at all. He rolled in a growing billow of dust down to the bottom, a blackened ruin. Granuaile, who’d found the trunk of a young tree to cling to, watched him in horror.
“Well, go, team!” I said, trying to distract from the fact that he’d been much faster in action than I’d anticipated. “Is everyone all right?”
"I’m fine," Oberon said.
Granuaile was staring at the corpse splayed at the bottom of the hill. “I didn’t know they were all real. I mean, the gods I knew about, but the mythological creatures too?” She tore her eyes free and looked up at me for an answer.
“Well, the Greeks’ more than anyone else. Their tales keep getting told and reinforced.”
“So the manticore? Bellerophon? The chimera? Pegasus? They were all real?”
“Oh, heck, yeah. They had much more press than this guy did.”
Granuaile shook her head. “Please tell me I won’t be bound to the earth here.”
“No. We’ll find someplace else.”
“Then let’s go. Now.” She turned and began to pick her way gingerly down the hillside. I resheathed Moralltach, vowing to clean the blade as soon as I could.
"I didn’t think her mood could get any worse, but obviously I was wrong," Oberon said.
I know. We need to find a safe place for her to yell at me.
"This place is safe now."
Yeah, but it stinks, see.
"So we need to find a safe and fragrant place for her to yell at you."
Yeah.
"On it, boss! Follow me between the hills."
I caught up with Granuaile at the bottom of the hill and flashed a grin at her. She gestured for me to lead the way and said nothing, a bleak expression on her face. I resumed picking a thorny path through overgrown bushes. There was no peace in the valley because there was no peace between us.
And so of course the bloody Norse chose that moment to swoop in and make everything worse.
"Atticus, I think we’re being stalked by the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock. First it was a vulture, and now two giant ravens are coming our way."
Where? I looked up and saw that most of my view was obscured by scraggly trees.
"That way. Um … the direction Santa Claus comes from."
North? I turned to my right and saw the ravens after a moment. They were huge and familiar. They were Hugin and Munin, Odin’s ravens. Hugin was new; I’d killed the first one in Asgard years ago, but Odin had eventually hatched a replacement—or rather, Munin had. As they circled nearer, a rainbow arced down from the sky and terminated a few feet from us. I wasn’t surprised there was no pot of gold, but I was faintly disappointed anyway.
A serene woman floated—or, rather, seemed to float—down the rainbow to meet us. Her long blond hair, gently curling, blew softly in the wind, and a dress of muted oranges and reds completely concealed her feet. The dress was tied underneath the bust and billowed somewhat, giving her a disturbing resemblance to a Dalek as she moved. Still, her bearing spoke of peace and quiet strength, and the tiny smile on her face made it up to her blue eyes once she reached the end of the rainbow and stepped onto the earth.
“Well met, Druids,” she said.
“Indeed. A good day to you, Frigg,” I said. Granuaile’s eyes were only slightly widened as I introduced her to Odin’s wife.
“I’m honored,” Granuaile said. She tried to curtsy but remembered too late that she wasn’t wearing a dress to do it properly, so her gesture turned into a sort of awkward bow with a flourish.
“As am I,” Frigg said. She turned her gaze back to me. “Odin sent me to visit you.”
I squinted up at the sky. Hugin and Munin circled overhead but didn’t look as if they had any intention of landing.
My adversarial relationship with the Norse had been blessed with a truce about six years ago when I returned Odin’s spear and admitted that I owed them something for the slaughter I’d brought to their door.
A blood price was mentioned, but it wasn’t my blood they wanted. As ever, Odin was concerned most with preventing or delaying the onset of Ragnarok, and he recognized that I could be instrumental in addressing those concerns. I had agreed to help if I could, since I had been the idiot who’d kicked off the apocalypse by slaying the Norns, crippling Odin, and aiding Leif Helgarson in his quest to slay Thor.
That didn’t mean everything between us was now Kool and the Gang. Frigg was simply better than any other surviving member of the Norse pantheon at concealing her urge to kill me.
“I expect you’ve heard something about Loki?” I said.
“We have heard and seen much,” she said. “May we speak for a time?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Events are moving toward the cusp of disaster, and we need to make our move soon if we want to avoid the worst.”
I steeled myself for unpleasant news. Regardless of what Loki had been up to, I was at least partially responsible for setting events in motion. Frigg reminded me of this immediately.
Shortly after your raid on Asgard twelve years ago, Hel realized she could freely travel the nine planes of Yggdrasil, for that had been forbidden her until then. When Odin had cast her into Niflheim long ago and given her control of the nine realms, her authority extended to only the old and infirm and those unfortunate enough not to be called to Valhalla or Fólkvangr. She could never leave her frozen land on her own, not without the Norns telling Odin and him casting her down again.
Once freed, she spent much more time on Midgard than we’d originally thought. Odin missed much while he was recuperating, and Hel took advantage of this. She returned to Niflheim with several conclusions, no doubt, one of them being that she needed to learn English, the new dominant language, just as many of the Æsir did some centuries before. We can infer she thought it best that Loki learn it as well, for she sent a shade, one gifted with speech, to teach him the language. We had guards posted at the entrance to Loki’s cave, of course, but they could do nothing to stop the shade. Seeing that it could not possibly set Loki free, and seeing also that it was providing him a welcome distraction from his captivity, we let the shade remain. However, we increased the guard at the cave—fifty Einherjar, outfitted and trained in the use of modern weapons—and also installed some … observers inside. These were sort of like Odin’s ravens.