He never told me how he knew. But the Old Man knew everything. All my petty treacheries: how I’d tried to set up Thor; how I’d lost Frey his runesword. If I hadn’t given away the ring I’d taken from Andvari, I might have assumed that the Maggot’s curse was the cause of my turning luck, but I’d left that ring with Hreidmar as part of Otter’s ransom. No, this was something different, something more unsettling. I could see his disappointment, his pain in the way he looked at me, although he never said a word – to me, or any of the gods.

I think I’d have preferred it if he’d simply punished me. That, I could have dealt with. A world built on Order has rules, so I’d learnt, and breaking them has consequences. I’d been living in Odin’s world for long enough to understand, if not to approve, the principle. But this didn’t seem to be Odin’s plan. It made me quite uncomfortable.

Don’t get me wrong. I had no regrets. Odin’s corruption-by-sentiment hadn’t brought me quite that low. And don’t go believing those stories about how I really cared for him, and how our tragic friendship became a kind of passion-play acted out over centuries. Take it from me, it wasn’t. All right? But I was feeling insecure. I felt the hammer about to fall, and I had nowhere to run. I needed to know the Old Man’s mind. I needed to know what his plans were. And so I looked to the sky for help – and Hugin and Munin, Odin’s birds.

They were no ordinary birds, of course. They were Odin’s ravens, trained to carry the Old Man’s thoughts anywhere in the Nine Worlds. That was a part of his power, those birds; manifestations of his Spirit and Mind – with their help, he saw everywhere. But it also meant that he was never at peace. If anyone ever thought too much, it was the Old Man, always alert, always scrutinizing the Worlds for the hint of a threat to his empire. It isolated him. It set him apart from the rest of the Aesir.

It suited him to be that way, but I knew he was lonely. Power had taken its toll on him, and knowledge was eroding the rest. Perfect knowledge was what he’d craved, but with perfect knowledge, illusions die, including such perennials as friendship, love and loyalty.

Think about it for a while. How can you hope to have any friends when you spy on everything they do? How can you enjoy the present when you can see the future? Most of all, how can you love when you know Death lies in waiting?