Hammered Read Online Free PDF Page B

somewhat spare in its diversity of life, like the frozen lands the Norse hail from, but it is sharply rendered, redolent of mystery, and a bite of danger wafts about in the air.
    Admittedly, the danger part might have been something I was projecting onto the wind. This wasn’t a fun run; it was insanely perilous.
    Ratatosk had told me I would know immediately when I’d reached Vanaheim. For one thing, the purple teeth of the Asgard Mountains would loom large in front of me, and for another, the Plain of Idavoll would give way to harvested fields, idyllic farmland dotted with bright points of color on the horizon, where barns and granaries rested like the desultory afterthoughts of an impressionist’s brush, all waiting for winter’s first snow. I arrived there as the sun was setting in front of me, and I marveled at the imagination of the Norse, who thought that things like the sun and gravity and weather would behave the same way on a floating plane attached to an ash tree as they did on earth.
    Still, they’d imagined their paradise well. If I wasn’t about to become the Norse’s most wanted, I would have liked to linger there awhile.
    I kept running past the twilight songs of birds and cast night vision to save myself from injury. I had run for more than eight hours straight at ten miles per hour, and now the Asgard Mountains were close, jutting up into the early evening like towering ziggurats.
    Another mile earned me a glimpse of a pale yellow glow shining just north of west over the canopy of a forest I was fast approaching. It was either a very large campfire, which I deemed unlikely, or it was the golden mane of Gullinbursti. Deciding I had run a bit too far south, I altered my course to head straight for it, and before long I stopped for the first time since I’d left the Norns. There was a river to cross here; it definitively marked the traditional border of Vanaheim, according to Ratatosk. I didn’t relish a swim, but I didn’t appear to have a choice. Flying across as an owl would mean leaving almost everything behind. I shrugged, sighed, and waded in. Everything that needed to be dry was safely tucked into a waterproof pouch anyway.
    Fortunately it was a slow stretch of river, its current not particularly strong, and even weighted down with my clothes and sword, I was able to manage without much trouble aside from the chill. I admit it: There was shrinkage.
    Figuring the best cure for shivering would be to resume running, I jogged for maybe forty yards toward the pale light before I had to stop again. Just before I entered the trees, the glow flared brightly and something launched itself from the woods. A blinding phosphorous comet streaked into the sky, followed by a rolling rumble of thunder and a dark cloud bank that had not been there moments before. I remained still, dripping onto the earth and getting colder, because those particular flying objects were gods—and they were probably looking for me.
    It was the fertility god Freyr, riding on the back of Gullinbursti, and behind him came Thor in his chariot, pulled by two goats. They were headed toward Yggdrasil.
    I waited until they were almost out of sight before moving again. I continued straight on my northwesterly path, now sure that I was headed in the right direction and positive that I didn’t have far to go.
    That was good, because my timetable had just accelerated. I’d been hoping to be gone before anyone discovered the Norns were missing, but that seemed unlikely now. How fast they picked up my trail depended entirely on how fast they set the god Heimdall the task of finding me. He had superlative senses that made him an excellent tracker; if he was nearby, I had no doubt he’d be able to hear my heartbeat and smell my anxiety.
    There was nothing for it but to proceed quickly. I suspected that Odin had seen through my ruse by now; he’d had plenty of time to figure out that Bacchus wasn’t coming and the dark elves hadn’t done