Loki struggled to catch his breath as he lay sprawled on the floor. It had been a near-thing, making it through the way-gate before it collapsed entirely. The rest of his unit looked just as stunned and haggard as he felt. Still, he couldn’t just lay there while his men watched. Pushing himself to his feet, Loki dusted off his leather armor. “Are any of you injured?”
“Hallah, my prince,” one of the soldiers said, his tone one of trepidation, “he…didn’t make it.”
“Let me see him,” Loki ordered briskly. “Take me to him before the healers start preparing his body for transport back to Asgard. This might be our first and only chance to see the effects of this new form of attack.”
“This way,” the soldier said. Loki followed him through the brightly-lit corridors of the stronghold. Healers in their pale blue robes flowed past, nodding coolly as they went about their business. Loki ignored them. Messengers wearing crimson-trimmed leather armor hurried on errands and the sounds of weapons being forged or repaired created a kind of dull but reassuring roar that masked the moans and cries of the injured and dying. The soldier led Loki past two doors before entering a third where Hallah lay on a cot with a sheet covering him from head to foot. Loki brushed past the soldier — he wished he could recall his name — and pulled back the sheet. “My prince, what are you doing?” he asked in a confused but scandalized tone.
“Examining him,” Loki said. He flicked his wrist and the dagger strapped to his forearm slipped into his hand. He flipped it around and used it to cut away Hallah’s armor so he could examine the man’s wounds. It was strange — the man had no stab wounds, no crushing injuries, no deep or long lacerations. The only sign of injuries of any kind were dark bruises across his chest. “That’s damned strange,” he muttered as he watched the bruises grow. “Dead men don’t bleed.” Loki reached over, brushing his fingers over the bruises and pushing in lightly while he kept his eyes on the dead man’s face, looking for signs of pain.. Hallah’s skin was slightly cool but had not reached ambient temperature yet. “How long ago did he die?”
“About an hour, my prince,”
“What is your name, soldier?” Loki asked.
“Garen, my prince,”
“Garen, come here and let me see your hand.” The soldier did as ordered but looked confused when Loki gripped his forearm and then reached down to grip the corpse’s forearm. “If he died an hour ago, he shouldn’t be this cold yet,” he said absently. “What in the name of all creation is going on here?”
“I don’t know, my prince. Perhaps it’s related to that new attack that we saw?”
“It could be,” Loki mused. He began whispering the words to an incantation to reveal any signs of enchantment. His own daggers and armor began to glow slightly as did several other items in the room. Loki ignored them, focusing on the sensations he was detecting from the body. The form of magic used was unlike anything he’d ever encountered before. It wasn’t elvish or dwarven. It also had little resemblance to Asgardian magic or Jotun forms that were known. It felt corrupt and vile. The more he let himself study it, the more he wanted to recoil — to jerk away from it. Instead, with the discipline borne of years of study, he forced himself to stay focused on the task. The strands of magic followed the nervous system and the circulatory system, twisting around them. Oddly enough, the web of enchantment seemed to be growing stronger instead of weaker.
“My prince, step back!” Garen shouted. Loki lurched backward just as Hallah’s shot out and grabbed him. The corpse’s eyes opened and the magician could see an unholy and corrupt mockery of life shining dully in them. The man’s once-brown eyes were now a sickly pale blue. Loki tried to pry his arm out of the dead man’s hold but the corpse had a surprising strength. He slashed out with his dagger, severing the tendons and nerves but to no effect. Garen managed to pull his own blade free and brought it down hard on Hallah’s arm, severing it from his body. Blood dripped sluggishly from the wounds. Loki shook his arm but Hallah’s hand still gripped his tightly.
Meanwhile, the corpse was swinging its legs off the cot and moving to stand. Garen reversed his swing and decapitated the corpse but it continued to move. Loki ducked in, ignoring the hand grasping his arm, and drove his dagger into the corpse’s heart. The corpse lurched but regained its balance quickly, its other arm groping blindly until it found Loki’s throat, that hand gripping tightly, choking him. Loki scrambled, losing his footing as he struggled to draw in air. He closed his eyes and thought the words to a spell as he touched his dagger. Lighting arced between his fingers and through the metal of the blade, coursing through the corpse’s nervous system. That seemed to be what it took to ‘kill’ the corpse. The hands gripping him went slack and fell off him, crashing to the floor with a sickeningly wet pair of thuds. Healers rushed into the room seconds later followed by Odin and Thor who stared at Loki with fear and concern. Loki ignored his father and brother as he brushed past the healers and walked over to Garen, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Good work there, Garen,” Loki praised the man. “Tell me, did you notice anything strange about Hallah? Did he seem to breathe at all when he re-animated? Did he blink?”
“N-no, my prince,” Garen stammered in confusion.
“You saved my life. I’d say you can call me Loki,” he offered, wishing for once he had his brother’s easy manner with the other soldiers. “Are you injured at all?”
“No…”
“Guardsman Garen,” Odin said calmly but with a hint of warmth, “you are to be commended for your quick thinking and the swiftness of your blade this day. Hadrir,” he said, indicating one of his chief bodyguards, “will escort you to my personal healers who are looking over the rest of your unit now. I would consider it an honor if you would join my sons and I in remembering and honoring the victorious dead this evening.”
“Of course, my king,” Garen said, his face shining with pleasure. “The honor would be mine.” He saluted them and then hurried out of the room. Loki flushed — with anger, not embarrassment — and glared at his father.
“How is it that you can set them at ease so quickly yet I do nothing but make them more nervous no matter how I try?” he demanded. Thor shot his brother a warning look but Odin took no offense to his raven-haired son’s jibe.
“I am their king,” he said calmly. “I have been in more battles than most of them ever will. They have implicit trust in me. It’s part of being a soldier. You, on the other hand, are young, relatively inexperienced, and a magician. That makes any soldier nervous. Add in that you are my son and they’re all terrified of setting foot wrong with you in case it lands them in hot water with me. Besides, Loki,” he said gently, “it isn’t in your nature to be a soldier. I would never have you be other than what you are. Now, tell me what you have learned of this…foul magic.”
“How did you know…?” Loki asked, bewildered.
“I told you,” Odin said, a spark of amusement in his gaze, “I’m an experienced warrior.”
“I don’t know how they did it or why,” Loki replied quickly.
“So you don’t know what it is?” Thor asked.
“No, I know what it is. And I understand how the spell works once it’s triggered. It’s the delivery method and the trigger that are mysteries to me as well as the purpose.”
“Loki,” Odin prompted. His tone held an undercurrent of impatience.
“The magic invades a living body by some means I’ve not yet determined. Once there, it may lie dormant for a certain amount of time. I’m not certain if it was the magic that killed Hallah or if it was something else but once he was dead, the spell activated and re-animated him.”
“So it’s necromancy, then?” Odin replied. “Nothing we haven’t seen before.”
“No, Father,” Loki interrupted. “It’s more sophisticated than mere necromancy. It doesn’t just re-animate a corpse — it brings it back to life.”
“Resurrection?” Thor scoffed. “That’s impossible. Only the Creator or Death can bring a soul back once it’s been severed from the mind and body that housed it.”
“It’s not the restoration of the soul. I’m not even certain that the soul was completely gone or brought back. Hallah as Hallah did not return,” Loki mused, becoming absorbed in his thoughts. “He did not recognize me or Garen even though he knew us. He made no attempt to speak. He only attacked. The only thing I saw in his eyes was anger and disgust. There wasn’t any kind of confusion, curiosity, or even fear. The life that was there wasn’t the kind of life we’d think of as ‘being alive,’” he muttered.
“Sounds like necromancy to me,” Thor said.
“This was much more than necromancy, brother,” Loki argued. “A corpse that’s just been reanimated can’t think. It can’t plan or react. The necromancer has to expend a tremendous amount of power giving it orders, doing the thinking for it. Yes, yes,” he said, waving away the protests he knew were coming, “you can put some spells in place to handle predictable situations. You can share the load with several necromancers though that makes coordination difficult and the chances of the corpse being given contradictory orders increases greatly. But, it still can’t think. It can’t react, anticipate, or plan. It’s a puppet on strings. In this case, though…there was no puppeteer. The corpse reanimated and had awareness but it was no longer Hallah. Nor was it alive.”
“A new kind of necromancy, then?” Odin offered neutrally.
“Perhaps,” Loki ventured cautiously. “But it felt like more than that to me. For a moment there, it felt as if it were changing him. Altering him into something else. Something that was not Asgardian.”
“That’s impossible,” Thor grimaced.
“Perhaps it’s not,” Odin said, raising a hand to forestall an argument. In the decades since his sons had joined him, they had proven themselves to be capable in vastly different ways. Thor was an fine warrior and an effective leader of men. He could inspire the troops under him to fight and give their all. He was also a more-than-able strategist and tactician. However, of the pair, it was Loki who was truly brilliant. Loki had determined the Jotuns’ plans and how to undermine them. The magician had a way of seeing, of being able to get inside the enemy’s mind, that let him predict where and when they were going to strike. His skill with magic had helped them to turn the tide more than once, saving hundreds of lives when he and his forces had been able to defuse magical bombs and traps that would have ensnared entire battalions. Loki’s strike force had also been the one to determine that the Jotuns had figured out a way to weaken the walls between realms. “Loki, I want you to accompany the healers back to Asgard. Don’t argue with me,” he said forcefully when it looked like Loki was going to protest. “Take Hallah’s remains back with you for further study. You and your best magicians are to study the prisoners we’ve managed to recover over the decades. Frey reports that whatever taint the prisoners contract during their captivity causes some manner of change in them. Perhaps what happened to Hallah is a more advanced and refined version of that.”
“As you command, my liege,” Loki said, bowing his head. He rarely argued with Odin when given an order out-right. That was another difference between the two — Thor would fight his father to his last breath if he thought Odin was wrong. Loki would not. Loki picked his battles cautiously and wisely, selecting ones that were most likely to advance his argument well without making him seem too brash or argumentative. He understood fighting and warfare on a level that Odin often wondered if Thor ever would. Loki would sacrifice a squadron today in order to save a division in a month. He was cold and methodical — that was why so many found it difficult to trust him.
“For now, go see to your men, my son,” Odin said with real warmth. Of his sons, Loki needed the reminders that his father did care more than Thor. “You have done well this day and on every other day and I am proud of you.”
“Thank you, Father,” Loki nodded, accepting the dismissal gracefully. Odin watched him go fondly. Thor, thankfully, waited until the other man was well out of earshot before rounding on his father.
“Father, you can’t keep allowing him to put himself in danger like this! If Garen hadn’t been there, that…thing could have killed him!”
“Thor, your brother knows what he is doing.”
“I don’t think that he does,” Thor fumed. “I think that Loki’s curiosity has blinded him to the danger that surrounds him. On this last attack, nearly three-quarters of his guards were killed. That’s a seventy-five percent fatality rate! If he doesn’t slow down, we may not be able to find men willing to accompany him on these mad forays and then he will get himself killed!”
“Loki does what he feels he must do, my son. Just as you do what you feel you must. Tell me truthfully, Thor,” Odin said, clapping a hand to his firstborn son’s shoulder, “do you fear that your deeds will go unsung? That your name will be overshadowed by his?”
“No! Never will I envy my brother or begrudge him any of the glory that he has earned!” Thor shouted, reeling back in shock. “How could you even think that? Already too many speak ill of him. They say that he is cold, cunning, ruthless, manipulative. That he cares nothing for the lives of those around him and that he would gladly sacrifice all of us if it brought victory. They call him a silver-tongued liar, a conjurer of illusions, a trickster and a lie-smith. Never mind that he’s the one who figured out that the Jotuns were nearly half-way through to Asgard or that they had almost reached us here. Never mind that he’s the one who managed to help us retake most of Nidavellir and his spells are the only reason we have a firm grasp on as much of Alfheim as we do. And never mind that he’s worked tirelessly with the magic users from every race to give strength to our weapons, protection to our armor and keeps, better eyes to our scouts, and so much more. All of those things are forgotten because Loki can see further and think faster than most of us ever will.”
“Myself included?” Odin asked.
“Perhaps,” Thor said honestly. “I do not know, Father. Loki can see and can imagine but he does not have your wisdom. He can be so…reckless. There’s something missing to him. It’s almost as if he’s incomplete.”
“That’s very astute of you, my son,” Odin said, sounding surprised. “Your brother seeks something. None of us know what it is. Not even himself. Until he finds it, he will be reckless and incomplete. For now, our job is to keep him from letting his creativity and his cleverness get him killed before he can save us all.”
“Is that why you’re sending him back to Asgard? Perhaps Mother can talk some sense into him.”
“Your mother is the only person who could stand a chance of doing that but no. That’s not why I’m sending him there. I’m sending him there because he may be the only one who can figure out what is going on with the prisoners the Jotuns allowed us to retake. And, if what happened here today is anything to go on, I’m no longer so certain that their recapture was the victory we’ve always considered it to be.”
Thor was glad of the excuse to slip back to Asgard for a brief time under the guise of escorting Loki and a few others back. It had been nearly ten years since either of them had been home to visit and he wanted to see how their youngest brother was faring. Frigga managed to make frequent visits to the war camps now that they were more secure but Baldur was too young to leave Asgard as yet and Thor knew that it had to be difficult for the boy to be left out of everything. He could recall how difficult it had been for him to accept being left behind while the adults went off to fight. The only thing that had made it bearable was having Loki with him to share the loneliness. Baldur had no one.
The fact that Sif might also be back in Asgard had nothing to do with Thor’s eagerness to stop in. Or so he told himself several times.
Once the magicians had made it through the Bifrost with their cargo, Thor pulled his brother aside. “The prisoners have their own camp set up by the shores of Lake Messilaine. Will you be heading there first or are you planning to visit the palace to see Mother and Baldur before you go?”
“I’m going on to the camp,” Loki replied. He looked puzzled at being asked. “Why? Is there some reason I should check in with Mother first? Has something happened while we’ve been gone?” he asked worriedly.
“No, brother,” Thor laughed. “Mother is fine. I was just going on to the palace myself first. Unless you need me to accompany you to the camp, that is.”
“I believe we can manage without you,” Loki said dryly. Thor grinned and clapped his brother on the arm before beginning to hurry off. “Oh, one thing Thor,” Loki called out. Thor turned to see what his brother wanted. Impatience definitely showed in the golden-haired warrior’s face. “Do give Sif my regards when you see her.”
Thor blushed, his face and neck turning crimson with embarrassment as Loki laughed. Trust his brother to see right through him! Lowering his gaze, Thor set off for the palace with more haste than was strictly necessary. He hoped that none of the guardians noticed just how discomfited he was as he made his way through the city and into the palace.
The city was still empty — most of Asgard felt abandoned with almost every man and woman who could wield a weapon being off to fight the Jotuns. Only those who were unable to fight remained behind these days. Even healers and laborers frequently left Asgard to lend their talents to the armies spread across the mortal realms. The sole military force remaining in Asgard itself were those under the command of Heimdal who stood vigilant, watching and defending the realm from invasion. By the time he reached the courtyard to the palace, Thor was beginning to wonder if Asgard would ever recover from the long absence of so many of its people. But then, as he ducked through the doorway leading into the courtyard, he considered that perhaps the cacophony ringing through the expanse there was some kind of desperate attempt to compensate for the resounding emptiness in the city itself. His ears ached and he winced at the ringing sounds of hundreds of swords — steel and wooden practice blades — clacking together as young recruits drilled. Shouts and orders filled the air with a dull roar punctuated by the continual creak of leather armor, the tingling of chainmail, and the clanging of plate. Shields rang out with disharmonious tones and the grunts of cadets and growls of the defeated only added to the noisome din. Struggling not to cover his ears, Thor scanned the courtyard and, not finding Sif there, hurried in to the palace itself.
“THOR!” a child’s lilting, high-pitched voice called out. The warrior looked around for the source of the joyful shouting as the galloping pounding sound of running feet came towards him. He spun just in time to catch his youngest brother as Baldur threw himself at the blond giant, wrapping his arms around Thor’s neck. “Have you and Father and Loki beaten the Frost Giants yet?” he asked.
“Not yet, little brother,” Thor chuckled as his picked his brother up off the ground easily. “Have you been taking good care of Mother for us?”
“Yes, I have,” he said proudly. “Is Loki with you?”
“He’s in Asgard but he’s not here right now. He’ll be along in a little bit.”
“Oh. You came to see Sif, didn’t you?”
“Of all the impertinent…” Thor growled. “Does everyone know?”
“Know what?” Baldur asked, baffled by his brother’s reaction. “You always go see Sif if you aren’t with Loki when you come to the palace and she’s here.”
“So she is here.”
“Yeah! She’s resting in Mother’s garden with Aunt Freya standing over her because she’s as stubborn as a drunken dwarf — whatever that means,” the child shrugged. Thor chuckled. It was an apt description. “She’s doing a lot better than she was when she first got here.” Thor’s forehead furrowed in worry as his brother continued to tell his tale. “She was all pale and her lips were blue and she kept coughing. There were a lot of blankets and towels wadded on her carrying cot and they were all bloody. Mother wouldn’t let me see but she said that Sif had a bit cut down her chest and tummy. And her hair is all gone, too.”
“What?!” Thor gasped, stopping suddenly and nearly dropping Baldur in shock.
“Mother can tell you more, I think. She and Aunt Freya are the ones who are taking care of Sif but I help out a little,” Baldur said in a small voice. “Is that what happens when people go to war, Thor? Are you and Loki and Father going to get cuts like that?”
“No, we’re not. Not if we can help it,” Thor said quickly. “Now, take me to see Mother and then we’ll go to the stables and I’ll take you out to visit Loki.” Baldur squirmed to be let down so he could guide his brother to where their mother worked. Thor let Baldur go at his own pace. It helped mask just how hard the news about Sif had hit him and gave him a chance to figure out how he was going to break the news to Loki that their best friend had been severely injured and might still be hovering near Death’s dark door.