“They can’t have him,” I murmur, stepping nearer Red Stripe. I touch his cool chest and draw a line toward the gash with its crystallized blood, like tiny chunks of amethyst growing out of him.
“My understanding is Baldur wishes to make him a sacrifice of some sort, so you don’t have to worry about him living long.”
“No.” I turn to put my back against Red Stripe, leaning into the hard marble of his bent chest. “I know this troll, and tamed him. That’s why he didn’t fight you. His name is Red Stripe; I captured him with Ned the Spiritless last year outside Montreal.”
Darius lowers his head slightly, thoughtfully. “I see. If it were up to me, lady, I would relinquish him to you immediately, but the gods have an interest now, and we’ll have to communicate properly and make requests.”
“I know a way to contact Baldur about him.”
His eyebrows lift, but he doesn’t question me. “Good.”
I walk to him, our gazes connected, and I look for a rune in his warm brown eyes. Darius is a decade my elder, I think, or twenty-five, young to be the leader of an entire berserk band. Maybe he has that little Frankish beard to appear more mature. There’s a tiny string of runes repeated in a line from his pupil to the darkest ring at the edge of his iris. It’s one of the runes in the binding rune scar on my palm: servant.
I call the Shipworm and leave messages for both Rathi and Soren. To Rathi that I’m well and with the Mad Eagles, and to Soren that I need to speak with him as soon as possible. I leave the private number for the warehouse.
Hopefully through Soren I can find a way to not only keep Red Stripe safe but maybe pull in resources for the hunt. Baldur might agree to help me get permission to have the Mad Eagles at my disposal, or a local militia unit. Anything that could help expand the search for her. I wonder how much to tell any of them about why I need to be there when she’s found.
Darius gives me a copy of his report, but there’s nothing useful inside, nothing I didn’t already assume. They made a thorough sweep and killed five more trolls, plus caught Red Stripe, but weren’t able to spend enough time, boots on the ground, to track the mother.
While I wait to hear from Soren, all I can do is keep myself busy with Red Stripe and learn what I can from the berserkers.
Most of them share duty shifts with soldiers in Thor’s Army. They patrol the coast in heliplanes and man the front gates of the base, and fly regularly over the Canadian sea to watch for trouble out of troll country. They wait to be called up by the president or the Council of Valkyrie as peacekeepers overseas or as bodyguards stateside. Guarding is one of their only allowed duties on New Asgard soil because of prejudice against them—the fear of their berserking, that they might lose control at the drop of a flag.
After scrubbing dust and amethyst flakes from Red Stripe, after waking him and feeding him under the watchful eyes of Darius, I insist on helping with chores like unloading the crates of supplies that arrive around lunchtime and scouring the feast hall tables of spilled mead and pork sauce. Anything to keep myself busy.
Captain Darius gives me a berserker uniform and the smallest black coat he can find. I work out with a contingent of them: Sharkman, who makes himself my informal chaperone, and Thebes and Marcus and Carrigan and Brick. They’re interested in my troll-fighting techniques, and I show them how I steady the troll-spears with my weight, though it isn’t much suited to their rampaging style. The fact that they never did catch the troll mother burns their pride. Sharkman swears to me that if I ask, he’ll track her down; we’ll find her together. With the Mad Eagles at my side we could destroy her. I promise I’ll do what I can to see it happen.
That evening at dinner I paint runes onto the thumbnail of every berserker present. I look into their eyes and draw for them the blessing I see. I sleep with Sharkman (torch) near the round hearth in the center of the warehouse; he holds me close and intimately, stroking my nightmares away. There’s a tattoo on his chest: eight horizontal spears in a line down his sternum. He’ll add a ninth, he says, when I am in my proper throne.
The troll mother wakes me at dawn with a roar, tusks pressed to my cheeks, hot breath rolling over me. My eyes snap open, suddenly and sharply, my heart pounding. I slip free of Sharkman and gather Unferth’s sword from where it hangs on the throne by the fire. With it I run to the guardhouse, where the berserker Brick slumps in the chair with earphones tucked into his ears. He sits up at my approach, but I go straight to the chain-link gate, shut tight overnight. I curl my fingers through the links and peer out into the army base. The airfield is slowly waking up; a handful of men in flight suits crawl all over the heliplanes whose rotary blades droop like spider legs.
“All right?” Brick says through a yawn. I hear the tinny song beating from his abandoned earphones.
A small SUV turns the corner onto the road leading directly for us. It’s shiny and dark blue, cleaned of all the salt spray and Vinland mud. He drives slowly—it must be exactly the on-base speed limit—along the low gray fence surrounding the airfield and stops ten meters back from me and the guardhouse.
Soren turns off the engine and climbs out. He glances briefly at Brick, who’s clamoring out of the little wooden house, then keeps his gaze on me through the gate.
“Good morning,” I say.
“I didn’t think you’d be waiting.” The sun behind him turns his buzzed black hair into a trim halo and makes it tough to see his tattoo.
“Odinists only, boy,” Brick says.
I sigh. “Then let me out to speak with him.”
“Valkyrie …”
“Brick. Soren Bearstar is a hero of Asgard and my friend. I recognize his worth, and I will not speak to him through a chain-link fence.”
Making his reluctance known by dragging his feet, Brick levers the gate lock open and we slide it aside. “Come on,” I say, waving my hand for Soren to follow. He does as Brick gets on his radio to warn Captain Darius what I’ve done.
I lead Soren away from the warehouse to the edge of the camp where the asphalt meets star-shaped pylons and the wide, cold sea. Mist and low clouds obscure the sun. “You could have called, saved yourself that,” I say, nudging his wrist.
“It wouldn’t have mattered. That’s how they treat me.”
“Odd-eye, Soren, you’re such a martyr. You should be devoted to the god of sacrifice.”
The little jerk of his shoulder is all the answer I get. The wind scours salt against the concrete pylons, rushing past my face. “The Mad Eagles have Red Stripe, the runt troll Ned and I captured last winter. I want him, but the captain says Baldur has put a claim on him already. You need to explain to Baldur that Red Stripe is mine.”
Soren eyes me sideways. “Explain to Baldur.”
“Well.”
“I’ll call him. See what he says.”
“Tell him Red Stripe lost an arm and is ridiculously tame.”
“A pet. You have a troll for a pet, even after all of this.”
I scrape the toe of my boot against the pylon, scraping off a few little flakes of concrete. “Also I’d like to see about having the Mad Eagles—or at least some of them—assigned to me. A Valkyrie usually has a small band of berserkers, and even though I’m not technically on the council, maybe Baldur could help get around that.”
“I’m starting to think it isn’t my help you want so much as whose help I can get you.”
I offer Soren my best smile. “Can’t it be both?”
“There was a report in Vertmont last night of a sighting of a greater mountain troll mother.” He says it so casually I’m halfway to answering I don’t care about Vertmont before the meaning sinks in.