Granuaile considered. “The Finns had a thunder god, didn’t they, sort of like Perun?”

“Yeah. I saw him once. His name is Ukko, which basically translates to old man. God of the sky and thunder. He was part of the crew that came to kill me in Arizona and instead hacked up Coyote into tiny pieces. He seemed a bit more laid back than the other thunder gods, though. Probably because the Finns are just cool like that. Want to guess where they say thunderstorms came from?”

“Oh, ew. I’m not sure, judging by the grin on your face.”

“All that noise and precipitation gets made when Ukko and his wife, Akka, have thunderous sex. Isn’t that awesome?”

Granuaile shook her head. “No, it’s gross. You are such a guy sometimes.”

"Isn’t he a guy all the time?"

She’s not saying I’m occasionally female. She’s implying that I’m shallow.

"Oh, I know. So why did she say only sometimes?"

Hey!

Granuaile couldn’t have heard what I said, but Oberon’s comment, plus the outrage that must have shown on my face, caused her to laugh.

"Burrrrn!"

“Good dog,” she said, petting him.

“Well, I hope Ukko’s all right,” I said, steering the conversation back to safer territory, “if indeed he was the target and if this was Loki’s doing.”

“Ukko wanted you dead and you’re worried about his welfare?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. He also cheered when the Morrigan cut Vidar in half. I think he was more bored than truly angry with me. He tagged along for the entertainment value.”

“If he calls ganging up on people and watching them die entertainment, I’m not predisposed to like him.”

“Few of the old gods are truly friendly. Goibhniu is a notable exception.”

"Don’t forget Fand! She gave us both bacon and sausage."

Granuaile brightened, agreeing with my hound. “Yeah, I like Fand, and Manannan Mac Lir. They tend to save our asses, so what’s not to like?”

“Count them amongst the few, then,” I said, and squinted west toward the sun, now low on the horizon. “You let me sleep a bit long, didn’t you?”

“You needed it. I was just about to wake you.”

Two large ravens swooped down from the sky and landed on the branch of an ash tree. “Ah, Odin was watching us after all,” I said, pointing at Hugin and Munin. “Perhaps we can get some answers.”

In the mundane spectrum I still couldn’t tell them apart, but in the magical spectrum they were easily distinguished now, since Hugin glowed with more magic as the mind of Odin. Hugin jerked his beak at Munin, indicating that I should bind my consciousness with his.

Once I did so, Odin’s memories caught me up with recent events. I saw Loki still dazed by the charms of the Sisters of the Three Auroras, specifically by Klaudia’s lips, to which I myself had succumbed once upon a time. They were decadent. Sultry. So very, very kissable. And, damn, they almost snared me through the replay. The witches and the god of mischief were still in the same field where we had left them, which surprised me to some extent. I had expected Malina to move the operation elsewhere, but perhaps she had decided that moving was more trouble than it was worth, and it’s not as if onion fields are subject to constant scrutiny. The view expanded to show me Garm, Hel’s gigantic hound, similarly entranced by a couple of other witches. I smiled appreciatively. With Garm occupied, Hel wouldn’t know where to send her draugar. Malina had done well.

Garm’s gaze was fixed on a stick held in front of his eyes by one of Malina’s younger coven members. Clearly it had been enchanted with the same beguiling charm they had used on their body parts to ensnare humans. With both Loki and Garm preoccupied—Garm being Hel’s eyes and ears on earth, much like Hugin and Munin often served as Odin’s—Malina could conceivably stave off Ragnarok indefinitely, keeping Hel uncertain of victory.

Provided, of course, she wasn’t interrupted.

Ukko provided the interruption. Somehow, he’d discovered that Loki was unbound from his long imprisonment and located him—a mystery that begged to be solved, since no one else had beaten him to it. Why was Ukko the first to discover this? He flew down from the sky, landed a short distance away, and, without so much as a howdy-do, threw lightning at Loki.

His motivation wasn’t a mystery at all. Like Perun, who held an equivalent position amongst the old Rús tribes, the Finn would have very little love for the Norse pantheon, being a sort of direct competitor for the hearts and minds of people in that region of the world.

Loki flew bodily through the air, his torso folded and his long flailing limbs reminding me of a squid. He landed fifty yards away, far outside the range of Klaudia’s lips or Malina’s hair or any other charm capable of calming him. His body bloomed in flames and the madness returned.

“Hah? Who?” he cried, then saw Ukko advancing. “Thhhhunder god! G-g-guh, good!”

Malina shouted something in Polish, but Loki and Ukko ignored it, focused as they were on each other. Loki took a deep breath in the way a trained opera singer would, chest rising faintly but lungs filling like a bellows. He threw back his head and roared as his hands flew up and an inferno exploded from him, a burnin’ ring o’ fire that lifted Ukko off his feet and set the field alight. Here, then, was the great conflagration that Malina’s coven had foreseen.

“S-s-set your world on f-f-fire!” Loki spat before launching himself into the air and streaking north, presumably toward Finland. Ukko, having no choice and forced to play defense, followed him without ever acknowledging—or perhaps even realizing—that he had flipped Loki’s switch from “Neutralized” to “Unchained Sociopath.”

Odin’s vision didn’t chase after them but rather panned back to the witches. They had their purple wards up, protected from the flames but clearly feeling the heat. Garm, however, had no such protection. His fur was aflame and he sprinted, howling, for the river that bordered Jasło’s western edge, some two hundred yards away. The witches ran after him, cursing in Polish and sounding far more angry than scared.

Munin broke off the images and squawked at me. I disconnected with him and then switched to Hugin to speak with Odin.

All right, why was Ukko there? I said.

The Gray Wanderer’s voice lacked the casual tone he’d employed when Loki was safely occupied. Even the raven looked a bit more concerned. "I was hoping you could tell me."

Are you suggesting I had something to do with it? Not only would that be against my own interest, but I’ve been a little busy lately.

"Someone had to stir him to action. Ukko is not what one would call vigilant."

Well, what about Hel?

"She didn’t know where he was. Her hound was ensnared by those witches. Besides, she wouldn’t need to send anyone if she wished to free her father. She would have come herself and brought draugar along, as she did when Loki invaded Nidavellir."

Maybe she just told Ukko that Loki was free and Ukko used his own methods.

"Possible, perhaps," Odin granted, "but not really her style. This seems more like the sort of string-pulling favored by the Tuatha Dé Danann, if you don’t mind me saying."

Oh. Right. Midhir, I said.

"Who?"

I shared my suspicions about Midhir’s motivation to want me dead and his relative ability to do it.

"Interesting. This will set off a whole new round of betting in Valhalla."

This time I didn’t curb my tongue. The Einherjar can go toast their foreskins.

Odin laughed at me. "I’ll be sure to tell them."

Do. What happened to the witches and Garm?

"The witches reached the river safely. Garm shifted to Hel before he got there, so I assume he is recuperating now."

Great. One more thing to worry about.

"Garm is of no concern at present, and neither is Hel. Loki is. He’s burned out the Finns and presumably he’s now free to look for you. He’ll scour the continent for you because of what you did to Fenris."

That reminds me. How is Freyja doing? The Norse goddess of beauty and war had been severely injured in our raid on Hel.

"Recuperating. Frigg is looking after her."

Does she even know we were successful?

"I do not believe she has regained consciousness yet."

I frowned. Is she in a coma or something? I knew that she had lost a lot of blood and had some shattered bones when we evacuated her, but perhaps she’d suffered more head trauma than was immediately evident.

Odin huffed impatiently. "I don’t know. I haven’t checked today. What you need to worry about is Loki’s next target—and that’s you. He’ll want you dead before he starts Ragnarok. I think he sees you as a bigger threat than me right now. The best thing you can do, therefore, to delay the onset of the world’s end is to make yourself scarce. Get off this plane."

Thanks, I said dryly. We’ve been working on that. Gotta go.

"No, stay there."

Why?

"There are dark elves on the way. You’ve remained in one place long enough for them to pinpoint your location."

Like I said, gotta go.

"The Ljósálfar are coming too. And one other."

Who?

"You’ve met." The rainbow bridge from Asgard shimmered into existence on the pasture next to the Long Wood, and we saw distant forms in the sky growing larger. I broke my link with Hugin and turned to Granuaile.

“On your guard. Dark elves coming,” I said. “And apparently some standard elves and a bonus dude to help us somehow.”

Oberon perked up. "Awesome! I’ve never seen a base-model elf before! But they come with bonus dudes?"

In this case they do.

Granuaile hefted Scáthmhaide. “Going invisible,” she said, before speaking the binding and winking out. I cast camouflage on Oberon but left myself visible.

The Ljósálfar, when they stepped off Bifrost onto Midgard, both disappointed and delighted me. They weren’t wearing leaf-shaped green and gold armor with curlicues or long robes with overlarge embroidered sleeves. They didn’t glow with backlighting or come with their own soundtrack by Enya. Their hair wasn’t long, straight, and silky, and their eyes weren’t limpid pools of oh-my-god straight out of manga. But they were tall and slender and very shiny, and they sounded like wind chimes when they moved.

The sound came from their light-blue enamel armor—that is, glass fused to a metal base. It draped their forms in layered scales so that they reminded me of pangolins, if pangolins could blind you like metal mud flaps on a semitruck. In the center of each enamel scale, a single rune had been etched with acid, and so far as I could tell, it was always the same rune. On a practical level, I couldn’t imagine the benefit to enamel; basic blunt force would shatter it, and the metal backing each scale looked to be either aluminum or a thin wafer of steel. But the runes must offer some protection. Their helmets had no metal backing: Each was a solid piece of shaped glass in light blue, etched with the same rune over and over, lending the impression that someone had found some defective fishbowls at an outlet store and shipped them to Álfheim. A grid of thin holes had been drilled through the glass around the nose, mouth, and ears, which had the effect of blurring out those features, but otherwise I could see that their heads were closely cropped and the tops of their ears did have the famous pointy cartilage. They had swords swinging on their left hips, but I wondered if they weren’t ceremonial. Their primary weapons rested in holsters strapped to their thighs—large flechette pistols.

Two dozen such elves were led by a thick, diminutive fellow in heavy steel plate. His armor was also etched with runes, but these were many and varied and flickered with their own light. Four small axes were strapped to his back, handles peeking over his shoulder. His voice was muffled somewhat by his helmet, but I still recognized the diction.

“I greet you, Druid, Wolf Slayer, Freyr’s Bane, Loki Shepherd. May you walk from battle unbruised and exult in the death songs of the slain.”

There was only one person I knew who would assign me such epithets and string them together. “Fjalar? Is that you? Runeskald of Nidavellir?”

"The dwarf who made us nom-noms?" Oberon said.

“Yes. I have come with the Glass Knights, the Ljósálfar elite, rune-warded and ready for battle, to meet the Svartálfar who pursue you. Axes have I brought, newly forged and blazoned, to cut the smoky black and tear flesh out of vapor.”

“What? I beg your pardon, but you lost me there.”

Fjalar drew one of the axes fixed to his back. It had a barb on the handle that triggered a release on the holder as he pulled it up so that the blade wouldn’t get caught. Clever design. He pointed at the runes seared into the blade of the axe and said, “These are experiments in craft and war, an attempt to cleave through magic mist and wound the flesh, to sunder smoke yet slice through bone and sinew.”

“You’re saying if you hack a dark elf in his smoke form with that, he’ll show the wound when he turns solid?”

“I will not know until I attempt it, but it is my hope. The runes are supposed to end their vaporous state and then the blade cuts them, which binds them to their solid form. Should any of the axes prove successful, more will I make and teach the craft and song to other Runeskalds.”

“That sounds fabulous,” I said, “but what if none of the axes perform the way you hope they do?”

The dwarf’s armor twitched, signaling a shrug underneath all the steel. “I will return to my forge and try anew.”