The Fenris Wolf
As Balder and I disembarked I saw that we were closer to the red light that hung, like a fog, in the west. Muspelheim. The great chasm, fraught with fire.
We were at the edge of the river, where the road stopped, a dead end. The water here was frozen over. It was probably thick enough for us to take the carriage across, but the snow was two to three feet deep.
The starless sky had the feeling of a vaulted, blank ceiling. All around us, and in every corner of my skull, echoed the wolf’s ceaseless howling. He sounded enraged, I thought. In a frenzy.
‘With bitter rage and fell contention,
That all the woods and rockes nigh to that way,
Began to quake, and tremble with dismay;
And all the aire rebellowed againe.
So dreadfully his hundred tongues did bray…’
Ganglati sat on the coachman’s seat, holding the reins.
‘Will you wait here?’ I asked him. He looked down at me, his head turning slowly.
‘Who, me?’
Balder, who was standing nearby, suddenly jumped at Ganglati. He slammed his fist into the side of the carriage. ‘You!’ he said, pointing at the footman. ‘Wait here. We may need a quick escape.’
Ganglati shrugged his shoulders.
Balder and I, taking few moments to ready ourselves, headed out across the frozen river. No point in waiting. The island was about a hundred meters away, a black hulk in the distance. We trudged through the unmarked snow, sometimes hearing the creak of the ice beneath our feet.
I watched the darkened face of my new companion, thinking again how handsome he was. He seemed to be able to handle everything with such ease. He took so much for granted. I envied him; I had yet to begin hating him.
Something suddenly occurred to me. ‘There used to be a bridge here,’ I said.
Balder stopped, turned around and looked at me. His eyes narrowed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Long ago, when Muspelheim was strong and the river ran free.’
‘What happened?’
‘It collapsed,’ he said coldly. ‘Under a great burden.’ He turned from me and kept walking. I wanted to go back.
If I had just looked over my shoulder, I could have seen the lanterns of the coach, the beacon of light. Balder had become suddenly taciturn. I decided to speak to him again.
‘You don’t think I’ll succeed, do you?’ I asked.
‘What difference does it make whether you succeed or not?’ he said, without turning around.
‘Can you think of any way that we can free Hela’s brother without freeing the wolf at the same time?’ I had not wanted to ask him that. But I felt desperate, suddenly all too inept to complete the task at hand.
When I said that, asking my stupid question, he stopped once more in his tracks. I stopped too, and we stood there over the river and on the ice. A stranger expression on his face than before.
‘Just what,’ he said, licking his lips, ‘exactly, have you been led to believe you are meant to do out here?’
I was confused by this; I thought he knew.
This is how I learned how Hela had truly deceived me.
‘I’m here to free Hela’s brother,’ I told him, like a child.
He nodded slowly, then smiled an ironic smile. One with no warmth or humour. ‘She told you,’ he began, chuckling. ‘She told you the wolf was
guarding her brother.’
He laughed some more. A shiver rolled up my spinal column.
‘That’s not the case then. Is it?’ I asked, slowly catching up to things. The penny dropping. Everything dropping.
‘No, Alex,’ he said. ‘Not in the least.’
I didn’t know. Who the hell studies ancient Norse myths these days? The thing that I had been misinformed about- purposefully- was that the wolf, chained to the rock on the island, was guarding no one. No one at all. The wolf, I learned from Balder in that weird moment, as the ice cracked under our weight, was her brother. The wolf was Fenrir.
Queen’s pawn to E4.
When the mass of rock, called Thviti, was driven into the ground with inhuman force, a shallow crater was formed. It was placed there on top of the magical chain, called Gleipnir.
We continued on to the island. I was worried, now. I wasn’t sure if Balder was lying to me, or if Hela had lied earlier. Either way, little had changed. Whether there was a man and a wolf, or just the wolf alone, I could still carry out my duty, split the rock that held the chain. I could still win my way home.
I tried sorting it out in my head. Hela had a motive for deceiving me. If she hadn’t made me think Fenrir was a man and not a monster I never would have gone so far. Balder on the other hand had no reason to lie.
He took me as far as the crest of the crater’s wall. There he pointed down, into the shallow bowl. ‘You’ll find Fenrir down there,’ he said. He was flippant. He didn’t care about any of this, about what happened to me.
I stood there for a while longer, lingering. My feet were numb already. The air was so cold, almost a vacuum. It stole the vapours from my lungs. Little white plumes of breath.
‘I’m already dead,’ I told him.
He gave me a look. ‘Join the club.’
‘But something tells me that that doesn’t mean I can’t be destroyed by the wolf out there.’
He sighed. ‘You’re right, Alex.’
I didn’t want to go forward. Down into the dark where the wolf was, chained with a wish, gagged with a sword. I was angry.
‘Is this how it really is, then?’ I asked, right before I left him.
‘What’s that?’ he said, amused at my fear.
I looked at him, at his dark face in the faint red light. ‘This insanity. This uncornered chaos.’
He spat in the snow. ‘You don’t get out much, do you?’
Balder stayed there, on the crater’s snowy lip. He didn’t offer any advice. I didn’t ask for any.
As I descended, I imagined a thousand times that I could see the wolf, its form moving in the darkness in front of me. Each time I thought this, I misjudged his shape, underestimated his size. No other wolf, no tiger, nor elephant even, could match Fenrir’s bulk. His open maw was a chasm; he could have swallowed me whole.
The way that con-men get you to do extraordinary things is to build up to it. They don’t just give you a gun and instruct you to hijack a plane. They enlist you, gain your trust, implore your help. It’s gradual, so that you feel that every small movement you make is logical. Yet in the end you still end up in some preposterous position which is totally compromising. It all made sense at the time. It’s only when you look back that you see how you were played all the way down.
I reached the valley floor, and stopped. I listened. Nothing. No howling now, not when I was so close. No heavy breathing, no shuffle of his body through the snow. I close my eyes, and I’m in Kamloops, standing in a snow-covered plain. The mountains up against my back.
I scrounged up courage like spare change. The next moment had me jogging out, ready to meet the second of Loki’s spawn that would play a part in my drama. That would nearly destroy me.
This was unlike anything I had ever known before. Such dread apprehension, a beast waiting in the dark. I was eleven years old again afraid to leave my tent at night on a camping trip because of bear stories told around the camp fire. I was a caveman before history grappling with the unknown.
Yet this was far worse. Because I already knew the beast was out there, somewhere. I knew I was probably close to my end. This was unlike my bold suicide, which had entailed, in its desperation, a sense of continuance. This was different. I remembered what it had been like hanging in oblivion, the nothingness about to permeate me, dissipate the dream that I thought I was.
When you’re already dead where do you go if you die again?
I had no plan. I had only the objective of getting past the wolf. I didn’t even know if he was on the far side, or directly in front of me. I would have to climb to the top of the monolith, Thviti, and draw the rune with the black powder Hela had given me. I had asked her what it was, that sooty grit in the little pouch, and she had told me that it was made from the petals of several potent flowers.
There are many legends that speak of flowers that break stones. The Romans had saxifraga, or sassafras. There were tales of flowers magicallyl opening up hillsides: springwort and forget-me-not. In the story of the Forty Thieves all they have to do to open the secret door to their cave is mention the name of the sesame plant.
So after releasing the wolf, if it came after me, I thought I could find a place to hide, maybe drop between the two pieces of cloven stone. It was, acutely, a gamble.
I was shaking. My hands governed by uncontrollable tremors. I told myself it was because of the cold. I couldn’t have signed my own name.
When I saw the rock, its huge hump as far out into the dark as I could see, I thought it wasn’t real. A swath of imagery conjured by my mind, a blood clot in my cornea. Then I was running, just running. Kicking through the snow, stumbling and reeling.
Fenrir was there.
He had waited until I had crossed the boundary, the perimeter mark of his chain. Then, he waited some more, until I was deep into his territory, the tight radius of his limits. He couldn’t really see me, disabled as he was. His jaw wedged wide open with Heimdall’s sword. But he could hear and smell me; he could still find me.
As I ran toward the rock he lunged out, keeping his chain taut. My feet punching through the snow.
I didn’t hear him, didn’t see him coming. I took it in the chest. I was down before I could cry out. All the wind had been knocked from my lungs. I thought the wolf was upon me, but he hadn’t found me yet. He had clothes-lined me. His tether had snapped out like a bow-string, skipped off my breastplate and sent me flying back. I lay gasping, struggling in the snow. I thought my ribs must have collapsed.
It was a blind chase for both of us. It was only a matter of seconds before he found me. And although he couldn’t bite down, gagged as he was, he could tear me apart with his claws.
I had lost my shield. I was soaked. I ran.
The ground broke up, became rocky. I stumbled so many times, slipping in the snow. Thviti was directly in front of me. It was my only escape. I began to scale its face, leaving the wolf snarling below, frustrated. Running from side to side.
I made it to the top without thinking. Then, once I stood there, under the infernal starless sky, I came to myself. A strange calm washed over me. Perhaps a form of shock. I looked around; I couldn’t see anything but what was directly in front of me.
I remembered Hela’s instructions. I was halfway there. I pushed the trauma and the fear away and I got down on my knees. Scraping the snow away from the surface of the rock, clearing a small patch. Once this was done I reached into my pocket for the pouch, the powder I would use to draw the rune. It wasn’t there. I checked again, then I checked my other pockets, looked around, dug through the snow. I retraced my steps, to the edge of the rock. I even climbed back down a little ways, but was forced to return.
I knew, of course, that it was out there, laying alongside the shield which I had dropped. I had lost it when I had fallen. I would have to go back.
I wanted to laugh, but I was too tired. I sat down, in the patch I had cleared. I sank into my failure.
I was like this when Anubis found me, coming out of the shadows carrying the fuming brightness of a lit flare. He was walking calmly, coming from the far end of the plateau. He must have approached Thviti from the other side, while the Fenris wolf was occupied with me. I didn’t get up when I saw him.
I told him not to come any closer, to stay away from me. I told him to piss off.
Anubis stopped just next to me. I know that he wasn’t angry. He asked me to get up, asked if I had been injured. Wearing a heavy black cloak now. Thick boots and leather gloves. He told me there was danger.
‘I’m not going to go with you,’ I muttered.
That is not a wise choice, Alexander. I think you had better reconsider.
Perhaps I can say now that I regret behaving this way. He had come a long way to find me, and I practically spat in his face. I stood up. Ready to throw at him all the anger that I held for myself. But I didn’t get a chance to do anything.
At that moment the Fenris wolf leapt up onto the rock, thrashing his head. I spun around to face it, turning my back to Anubis.
Before I could think of anything to do Anubis had stepped in between me and the wolf. In the light of his flare, I was able to see Fenrir for the first time. He was huge, crazed and savage. The size of a lorry.
His mouth was stretched wide and I could see the sword inside, keeping it open. The light of the sulfur flare sliding over the blade’s surface, down its edges. A bolt of lightning in the wolf’s teeth. It was as long as I was tall.
I fell back. I fell to the ground. Fenrir struggled, in a rage, to mount the ledge. Maybe his chain was caught below. He had only managed to get half his body up over the precipice, his lower half still hanging. He dug his claws down deep into the snow and rock.
I kept my gaze fixed on one thing. I pushed past Anubis, going for the gold. I had one chance. One chance to succeed here and subsequently succeed ultimately. Anubis reached out to hold me back, but missed. He called out.
I ran at the wolf. Fenrir strained against the edge, pulled hard on the unbreakable chain. I couldn’t see his eyes. Only his fangs, that were all the bigger to eat me with. There was the gape of his maw, little else. And the sword half swallowed.
I stared right down his throat, reaching for the hilt buried in the corner of his jaw. The moment of choosing any sizable risk is always the greatest wilderness.
Even now I cannot convince myself entirely that I did these things, that it was not just something I read somewhere.
‘… for his deepe devouring jawes
Wide gaped, like the griesly mouth of hell,
Through which into his dark abisse all ravin fell.’
Last Knight is available at Lulu.com in ePub and print versions:
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