The Monstrous Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

watched some children squealing as they played with a rolled-up bearskin outside Gladsheim. They threw it back and forth amongst four, while a fifth tried to grab the hide. Then they saw me, dropped the bearskin and ran away.
    Nothing I wasn’t used to. I heard the roarings of a river, thought I would cool my putrid legs in it. But as I headed for the water a gargantuan hall loomed up, far bigger than any I’d passed. In front of it stood the most beautiful tree I’d ever seen, glistening with gold foliage.
    But what caught my eye were the hundreds of gigantic doorways being carved into the walls.
    I peered in. You could march 250 trolls standing side by side through each one, easily (well, that is if you could get trolls to march, which is unlikely, but you get the picture).
    Gleaming swords, heavy, carved, lit the hall. Rainbows of light bounced off the blades. The rafters were made of spear shafts and thatched with overlapping golden shields.
    Row after row of empty benches stretched into the distance. So many tables, so many shields and axes and lances and swords, glowing red-gold mail coats, helmets too many to count.
    ‘What is this place?’ I asked one of the masons, hewing and lashing bright shields to the roof.
    ‘This is where Odin’s chosen warriors will come, to feast and drink and fight,’ he replied, wiping sweat off his brow.
    I didn’t know what a warrior was. A new race of gods, perhaps? But I didn’t want to show my stupidity and ignorance. Even the dullest-witted builder knew thingsI did not. (I’d been shut away in a cave. I knew nothing.)
    ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Who will they be fighting?’
    The mason shrugged. ‘I don’t ask questions – I just do what I’m told, take the gold and get out.’
    No one stopped me entering.
    I curled up on one of the long wooden benches and I slept.

11
BALDR, MY BALDR

    HEARD A HISS and immediately woke. I feared for a moment my snake brother had returned. Mercifully, not. There were winged women lurking in the shadows. Big, ugly, broad-faced harridans wearing helmets and chain mail. One polished the rows of curved drinking horns, snug in their holders. Others sat at a loom made of weaponsand entrails and skulls. I sniffed the rich smell of roasting boar, and bubbling honeyed mead in a gigantic vat.
    ‘What are you doing? Get out. You don’t belong here,’ screamed one, and her voice was like a raven’s venomous cackle. ‘This is the feast hall of dead warriors. We Valkyries choose who comes here, and we most certainly don’t choose you.’
    She glared at me with bloodshot eyes. I have a good sense of smell, and I smelled death on these women. The benches were waiting for the battle-dead.
    ‘Brynhild, she’s nothing, leave her,’ said another.
    ‘I’m a goddess,’ I said. ‘Daughter of Loki. And you’re what? Servants? Barmaids?’
    The woman spat and glared at me with her narrow red eyes. ‘We are shield-maidens. We decide who lives and who dies in battle. We are the choosers of the slain.’
    ‘No wonder you smell, Carrion Girl,’ I said. Yeah I know, pot calling the kettle black, blah blah blah.
    ‘We will bring the bravest here to Valhall, the hall ofthe slain, to fight for the gods in the Last Battle at the End of Days, when the forces of chaos overrun Asgard,’ said another.
    I went rigid. The Last Battle? What Last Battle? Who are the forces of chaos? Why was there always so much I didn’t know? We were at the beginning of eternity, and already time was collapsing towards an ending.
    One-Eye entered, his wolves padding beside him. I recoiled but I’d been seen. Of course I’d been seen – the Great Wizard sees everything.
    Had I done something wrong sheltering in Valhall? You can never tell what One-Eye is thinking. But Dad and he were blood-brothers. Surely he’d never hurt me.
    ‘She can sleep here,’ said One-Eye. ‘Until I find a better home for her.’
    The crones muttered and spat.
    ‘Thank you,’ I said. I was