Sleipnir

Hearing began to return. The Einherjar were screaming mindlessly. I neither knew nor cared who they cheered. My whole concern was to get the clinging noose off. I tore again at the rope around my throat, dragged it over my head, hurled it away. Then I staggered to my feet and faced Odin. His face was a bloodied mess. His nose was shattered. It streamed gore where I'd kicked the living shit out of him, point blank.

My tongue didn't want to work right. "Old man..."

I coughed, and tried to swallow. I wiped sweat from my eyes with an arm that weighed more than a mountain.

"... Old man, you can't even kill me when you cheat. You're finished. Done. It's my turn, and my world's. Nothing you do will stop us. Nothing, do you hear me?"

I advanced on him. He gave ground at every step I took. I lifted the Biter and pointed it at him, stabbing the air to emphasize every syllable: "You... lost... your... bet! Now pay the hell up and get the hell out."

He didn't reply. He just roared and rushed me, spearpoint foremost. My muscles were sluggish; but the Biter came up, dragging my arm with it. The spear point threw sparks as it scraped along the length of the Biter's black blade. I stumbled to one side, off balance, and tried to get the tree trunk between us as the enraged god charged again.

The screams of the Einherjar shook the earth. The very air trembled. Odin came at me, and I evaded, again with the Biter's help. He came again. I foundered, fell, and rolled aside. Odin drove the great spear into the mud. I tripped him up with my feet and he fell heavily against the spear shaft.

A terrible splintering crack rent the air.

Gungnir split down the shaft, breaking off completely just above the heavy iron point. Odin looked almost ready to cry.

The Einherjar fell utterly silent.

Then Odin shrieked. He whipped his sword out of his scabbard, and swung like a madman. I dodged under the blow, and slashed across the hilt. The Biter sang in my hand. There was a moment's terrible shock... . Odin was left holding a hilt, and two inches of broken blade. He hurled the ruined weapon at my face, and leaped. Odin sought my throat with his bare hands. We rolled. I stabbed blindly with the Biter. I heard a grunt of pain, and stabbed with all my strength. Hot blood drenched my knuckles.

The Biter's hilt went slippery—then a grip of unbelievable strength fastened onto the Biter's tail. It lashed madly as Odin forced it slowly to uncurl from around my arm. The tail came completely loose and he wrenched it bodily away from me. I cursed, and got clear. Odin hurled my knife with all his might. I dropped to the ground. It whistled past my ear as I fell, and landed quivering, its point buried deeply in the trunk of the great oak tree.

Odin slammed into me. We rolled in the mud, unable to get a killing grip on one another. I squirted out of his grasp like a watermelon seed at a spitting contest. I scrabbled my way up a muddy slope. Odin followed, grabbing at an ankle. I kicked backward and slammed my foot into his teeth. I felt several break off; then he let go and I sprawled forward into shadow. I squirmed forward on my belly.

Again he closed, wrestling me into the mud. We rolled in several directions at once, flailing about ineffectually, with arms and legs sticking out every conceivable direction. We fought for fatal grips, lost them, and squirmed for new ones.

He finally got his hands on my windpipe. I couldn't break his hold. He was twisting my head around, toward the snapping point. I jabbed my thumb into his good eye.

He screamed and let go. I wriggled free. Odin groped blindly for a weapon—

I froze. His questing hand had found the hilt of a sword—a sword jammed into gaping jaws. He wrenched it free. I had time to roll aside, then the bloody point stabbed into the earth millimeters from my ear.

I slid backward, willing the Biter into my hand. A flare of frantic motion blazed in my peripheral vision, then the Biter slid firmly into my palm. The tail got a death grip of its own around my wrist. The Biter was literally buzzing with rage. I slashed blindly. The Biter met Odin's swordpoint and turned it. The weapons grated against one another. Then sword and Biter strained sideways, smashing against a taut length of chain.

Both weapons rang and scraped noisily along it, drawing sparks without nicking the fetter. Fenrir was howling like all the demons of hell combined. His chain was caught on our weapons—and I stood between him and his prey.

As our locked blades slid down the length of chain, toward Fenrir's jaws, I yelled in a last-ditch effort.

"Fenrir! This chain is made out of nothing! Nothing at all! It's a goddamned illusion! Break it!"

The Biter pulsed with baleful black light.

Then sliced through Gleipnir's magical links like a blowtorch through butter. Either that, or the whole chain just disintegrated into dust.

And Fenrir was suddenly free. The sword that had held his jaws open for centuries was now clutched in Odin's sweating grip. Odin was frozen in place. He was staring—horror-struck—at the Fenris Wolf.

I came around with a deadly slash. It laid Odin's throat wide. He reeled. Brought up his sword with a fumbling motion...

I slammed the Biter through his black heart.

"Die, damn you!"

I don't know what the Biter did, inside him. But he stumbled backward. Shock and pain turned his face grey. I fell off balance, pulled forward as he jerked himself free. He started to crumple... .

I was buffeted to my knees by a massive, grazing blow from behind. I heard a blood-gurgling scream through the spurting mess from Odin's jugular. A huge shadow fell across us. Odin's scream ended abruptly in a strangled whimper. Then something slammed into me again from above and rolled me aside. When I managed to lift my head, Odin's body lay strangely twisted on the muddy, bloody ground.

He had been bitten in half. His legs and hips were missing entirely. He was still alive.

I caught a glimpse of murderous light dying from his single red eye. It had fixed on me with a look I knew I would see in nightmares for the rest of my life.

Then Fenrir opened his great bloody jaws one more time... .

And the rest of Odin vanished forever.

The silence was so still, I could hear the individual breathing of tens of thousands of men above my own labored gasps.

Fenrir raised his muzzle to the bloody sky and howled once, a drawn-out victory cry that chilled the blood. Sleipnir thundered toward him. The stallion screamed, and reared; then unaccountably settled again, and pawed restlessly with two right front hooves.

Twenty paces away, Thor—his face ashen against his flaming hair—lifted Mjollnir. Mouth working, eyes blazing with homicidal rage, he hurled his massive war hammer. It flew at my head with all the speed of his immortal strength.

I moved blindly. The Biter whipped up. The shock against my arms lifted me off the ground and hurled me fifteen feet backward. Then I lay panting on my back, both arms completely numb. The shattered pieces of Mjollnir lay scattered in the mud all around me.

The Biter purred in my grasp. If it'd been a kitten, I'd have rubbed its ears.

No one else moved, and I remained where I'd landed.

I still was unable to take it in.

Mjollnir was broken.

Fenrir was free.

And Odin was dead.