Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(46)



“Not my best diplomatic achievement,” I told Brighid.

“They won’t listen while they can choose the path of glorious battle,” she replied.

“Ugh. Yeah. Maybe we can shut that path down.”

“I don’t wish to set them all on fire. Relations with Odin are going to be strained enough as it is.”

“I don’t want that either. We could immobilize them from here by binding their legs together, or whatever. I’ll take the leather, you take the glass? Then we talk to Hugin and Munin.”

“I like this plan.”

“Then let’s make it so,” I said, with my best attempt at imitating Sir Patrick Stewart.

We both began to speak in Old Irish, crafting bindings that would force swaths of leather or glass to adhere to another one we targeted nearby. I started with the nearest fully bearded dwarf I could see in the second rank, zeroing in on the leather jerkin peeking through the joints of his armor and binding it to his neighbor. When they were yanked off balance by the binding and then collided, they fell down into the snow, with much cursing and confusion. I repeated the binding on two more nearby soldiers and made an ungainly grouping of four hopping-mad dwarfs, spitting at each other as they tried to win free. Then I moved on to repeat the process with four more and saw that Brighid was operating in much the same way, though a lot faster. The Glass Knights were covered all over in those runed glass tiles, whereas the leather on the dwarfs was a bit more difficult to pinpoint. It took a half hour or so, but we eventually had the entire army tied up into clusters that could still move if they cooperated but could certainly not fight. They were having some pretty epic tantrums about it too; I didn’t think the spirit of cooperation was going to blossom anytime soon.

“Now,” Brighid said, projecting her voice over the field as only the goddess of poetry could, “let us discuss how we can all go home alive after this.”

She lowered us to the ground slowly, and it would have been awesome except that when I touched down, my right leg would not support my weight. Besides the gammy hamstring, my knee had been thrashed, so it was simply saying “nope” to helping me stay upright. Toppling over sideways did not make me look like a badass. Luckily, Brighid was commanding enough for the both of us.

Her helmet tilted back and she found the ravens circling above. “Hugin and Munin. Odin. Listen well, for I speak true.” Her voice boomed in three registers. “We bear Asgard no ill will and regret the injuries and death sustained today. We acted to prevent war and save life rather than take it. We wish the Svartálfar to join us against Loki and Hel on the day that Ragnarok arrives. We believe they will play a pivotal role once they become our allies instead of a neutral third party. Bringing them to our side will require effort, but it is an effort we feel you should make, so that both they and the ?sir can continue to thrive.”

Some jeers and epithets got hurled in our direction at that, but Brighid ignored them.

“Send an envoy—unarmed—to negotiate in good faith. I will guarantee safe conduct for both sides. Your army will remain here until I hear a reply. They will be released to return to Asgard once that envoy appears. That is all.”

Hugin and Munin squawked and spiraled into the clouds, ascending up the root of Yggdrasil to return to Odin.

Brighid surveyed the army for potential threats, saw that they remained akimbo in the snow and supremely cheesed at us, and nodded in satisfaction before turning to check on me.

“How fare you, Druid?”

“Leg is pretty messed up, but I’ll be able to limp out of here eventually. Working on it. Is Fjalar truly dead, or can we save him?”

She took in the charred remains of those she had set aflame; I could smell the cooked flesh and saw smoke rising from the corpses, but I had hope that perhaps he was merely unconscious. Brighid evaluated the bodies for a few seconds and shook her head. “Fire is unforgiving, and I did not hold back.”

“Oh.” I was sorry for that and wished Fjalar would have been more reasonable. Silence fell between us, except for the uncomfortable shifting of bodies in the army and the dark curses muttered at us from various quarters.

“Shall we go visit the Svartálfs while we wait?” I said. “Sitting here in front of the army is getting awkward fast.”

“Very well.”

We flew back to the dark doors of Svartálfheim and called out that we had good news: The army had been halted and an envoy would arrive soon for talks.

“No one else need die today,” Brighid said. “We can talk in peace of a more lasting accord.” With her permission, I stood behind her right shoulder, kept my weight on my left leg, and surreptitiously leaned on her back for support. Soon the doors opened and the leaders of the Svartálfar reemerged. This time, they deigned to favor Brighid with a shallow bow, and she in turn did the same and removed her helmet. If I stopped leaning on Brighid to remove mine, I would fall over, so I kept my helmet on.

It was poetry after that. Brighid was much better at slinging words around than I was, and before long we had a pavilion set up outside with tables and chairs and hot drinks and nobody killing anybody else. I got to sit, Brighid melted some snow away so that I could put my bare foot down on the earth and draw some strained energy from Gaia to aid my healing, and then she employed that honey-throated voice of hers to convince Turid and Krókr that fighting against the hordes of Hel would be better for the Svartálfar in the long run than sitting it out—the logic being that it was quite possibly going to be the end of the world, and you didn’t want that one to go the wrong way. She actually made them smile and laugh a couple of times, until the envoy from Asgard showed up an hour later.

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