Speaking of Hate . . .
Time to go back to the well.
A fire crackles on the crude hearth; ventilation is poor, and the smoke hangs over us like a death-shroud. He sits on an ancient throne-like chair carved of wood and watches us with his head tilted, his right eye like an ember that burns with a light of its own; his left eye is the color of old bone. His saturnine face is sharp and lean, with a jutting chin, heavy cheekbones, and a craggy brow. A jagged scar bisects the bridge of his nose, crossing his left eye, and continuing up until it vanishes beneath gold-and-bone beaded braids of coarse black hair at his left temple. When he speaks, he does so in a patois drawn from Old Norse, Danish, and Anglo-Saxon. His vernacular is crude and vulgar, and is peppered with curses, snatches of song, and guttural noises.
He is Grimnir . . .
I am sometimes slow of wit, my friends. One would think I’d already have put two and two together and come to the conclusion that I should mine the only S&S series character I’ve ever actually created. Alas, I’m only just now arriving at this answer. And it is a good answer to a pernicious question that has hounded me since 2023: What’s next?
There are some open calls coming up in the S&S writing sphere, and I have some long-standing invites to submit to certain genre magazines. I think part of my way going forward will be to explore and expand the saga of Grimnir son of Bálegyr by following the threads I left behind in the main books. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to know the story behind how he came into possession of the false eye he wears in his empty socket. Did he make it? Or did he steal it? How did he get back to Sweden from Ireland after Clontarf? What adventures did he have along the way? And how did he spend the years prior to his first appearance in A Gathering of Ravens?
Looking back over what I’ve produced, I feel like this is my Hyborian Age, my Conan. The lore is rich; the cast of characters and creatures is extensive (25 single spaced pages, according to the style sheet produced by St. Martin’s Press for The Doom of Odin). All it needs is room to breathe and a steward who is quick with the pen and motivated to get more material into the hands of readers.
“As for my names, they are beyond number! Corpse-maker and Life-quencher, I am called; the Bringer of Night, the Son of the Wolf and Brother of the Serpent. The Hooded One, I am, the Tangled God’s last immortal herald. The last of Bálegyr’s brood to plague Miðgarðr, last to prey on those wretched sons of Adam.
“To the bastards of Langbarðaland, I am huorco! Aye, I am orco and ogre!” Grimnir flung his arms wide. “To those wretched hymn-singers of England, I am orcnéas! The cursed Irish would name me fomórach, and to the folk of the North, the Danes and Swedes and the doom-haunted Norse, I am skrælingr! To the Kievan Rus and the boyars of Holmgarðr, I am Likho, the Night-Skulker; to those wretched Greeks of Miklagarðr, I am the lord of the kallikantzaroi. I am all these things, you milk-blooded swine, and none of them! I am kaunr!
“I am the slayer of Hróarr, of Hrothmund of Badon, of Nechtan of the vestálfar, of Bjarki Half-Dane, and a thousand more, besides! I walked the branches of Yggðrasil and shook the bones of Ymir! I stood in the shield wall at Chluain Tarbh, outside the walls of Dubhlinn, and on the pitiful ramparts of Hrafnhaugr against the hymn-singers of Konraðr, the Ghost-Wolf of Skara!” Grimnir clenched his black-nailed hand into a fist. “And by this hand was the Malice-Striker — that wretched wyrm, Níðhöggr — freed from its prison and loosed upon Miðgarðr! By the hand of Grimnir!”
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more . . .
Go get em!