Heimdall set them down in a narrow clearing surrounded by haggard pines and larches, all heavily laden with fresh snow. A storm must have just passed. Stray snowflakes still danced in the air and dark clouds hung in the distance.

'Is this place as miserable as you remember it, father?' Loki asked.

Odin's mouth twitched and he brushed away the snowflake that had got caught in his eyebrow. 'Best we move.'

The Bifrost had burned through the foot of snow that carpeted the ground, revealing the dead grasses and ochre mud beneath. Loki and Odin nudged their horses out onto the unmelted snow on the clearing's edge. Within seconds, Loki was certain the horses would be more a hindrance than a help. The deep powder masked the unevenness of the ground beneath. It was too easy for the horses to stumble over a stray boulder and break a limb.

'Allfather! Loki!' a familiar voice disturbed the wood's frosty silence, then Volstagg emerged from the tree line. 'Norns be praised. But come, come, we shouldn't be out in the open.'

Leaning on his axe as he walked and with clumps of snow hanging from his beard like garlands, Volstagg led them to rest of the Asgardians.

Snow coated their clothes and armour. Every inch of exposed flesh was flushed and beginning to blister. Two of the Einherjar walked with their comrade slung between them. The injured soldier barely had their strength to keep his feet moving, let alone to greet the newcomers. Fandral looked little better. The front of his armour was sticky with blood and a large gash ran from his right eyebrow to his chin. Hogun, even more resolute than usual, kept him steady. Sif and the last Einherjar soldier brought up the rear of the party.

'Where is Thor?' Loki asked. When Sif and the Warriors Three exchanged uneasy glances but didn't produce a word, Loki grabbed Volstagg's beard and pulled the man towards him. 'Where the hell is my brother?'

Volstagg's eyes widened and he stammered out his response. 'Captured.'

'Explain,' Odin demanded. 'Start at the beginning and explain all of this.'

Loki let go of Volstagg's beard, sending the man stumbling back. He produced an incomprehensible series of stammers until Sif cut him off.

'Respectfully, your highness,' she said. 'We need to keep moving until we can find shelter. From what I remember of my father's words, there were caves where one could take shelter a few miles to the north-east.'

'Surely even you can talk while you walk? Out with it,' Loki replied.

On any other day Sif would have glared at him; today she kept her eyes on the snow at her feet. 'Thor found us at the training grounds last night. He was incensed about how my father kept wasting his time talking about supply trains and such. Thor said he could achieve just as much without a thousand Einherjari soldiers slowing him down. He wanted the four of us and you, Loki, to go with him. But you were nowhere to be found and Fandral persuaded him to at least take twenty soldiers with us.'

'We found a sorcerer who could reopen the portal the frost giants had used to get into Asgard. It led to a cave in the hills above a village,' Hogun said.

Loki nodded. He remembered that village. Two dozen houses, most with unevenly slanted roofs, and a few farm animals in rotting pens. He had found his co-conspirators there for his plan to disrupt Thor's coronation. He hadn't thought much of them at the time, but someone in that village must have had the intelligence to make Helblindi aware of the prize Loki had offered. In hindsight, it would have been smarter to eliminate everyone who had known about the portal when Loki decided not to follow through with the plan.

'Did you enter the village?' Odin asked.

'We did.' Sif glanced up for a brief moment, then dropped her head again as if she didn't dare chance meeting Odin's gaze. 'That's where it went wrong. They were waiting for us.'

'There had to have been at least sixty of them,' Fandral added.

The injured Einherjar soldier's foot caught something, nearly sending him and the two men helping him face-first into the snow. Loki dismounted and motioned towards Iiro. The party could only travel at the pace of their slowest member. They might as well put the worst of the injured atop the horse. Loki could walk and make sure Iiro didn't misstep and injure himself.

'Sif, get on with your account,' he said while he helped the soldiers get their injured comrade into the saddle.

She sucked in a breath and went on. 'At first it was a heavy fight, but not the worst odds we've seen. Then, I still don't quite understand it, but then a young-looking female appeared. She grabbed Thor's hand and he collapsed like all life had been stripped out of him. A pack of frost giants seized him and bore him away before any of us could get to him. We went after him, but it was no use. They wouldn't let us anywhere near him. That's when the Einherjar took the heavy casualties. We had to retreat.'

Odin closed his eyes and drew his head back until he stared up at Jotunheim's lukewarm sun. 'Laufey will feast tonight.'

'Do you...' Sif seemed to recognise that this wasn't the time to bother Odin with questions, so she hesitantly reached out to Loki. 'He is still alive, isn't he?'

Loki pulled away from Sif's hand. 'Heimdall could sense him, but he couldn't tell us where Thor is.'

'The Norns bless us, not all is lost,' Volstagg said.

'Bless you?' Loki sneered. 'The Norns would do well to spit in your eye, Volstagg. In fact, all of you. You follow my brother about like you are moths drawn to his flame, always encouraging the worst in him. One night I'm not around to talk him out of idiocy, one night! And come morning, we have this disaster. Wonderful, fucking wonderful.

'What was your plan here anyway? Did you bother to ask Thor what his plan was? Because I can't see what it could've been. For one, we still don't know if Laufey ordered the attack or if Helblindi made the move on his own volition. Even if Laufey is responsible, did you really think he would just let you walk into his house unchallenged? Or did you not think at all? Was it just a vague idea that you would smack about any frost giants who happened to get in your way?'

No one had an answer for him, which only left Loki more incensed.

'So it was to be random mayhem in that village?' he snarled. 'How does that make you different to a marauder?'

'Loki,' Odin said quietly. 'Now is not the time for anger.'

'When is?'

Glaring, Loki looked up to his father. His breath hitched. All colour had drained from Odin's face and his mouth hung half-open in dismay. Honestly, Odin had looked healthier while dying.

'Father, remember Heimdall's words, Thor's lives,' Loki muttered.

A familiar, ugly jealousy stirred in the pit of Loki's stomach. Odin loved him as his own, Loki knew that, but a small voice still screamed out: would his father look so stricken had Thor and Loki's places been exchanged? It was a struggle not to indulge that instinct.

Odin attempted a smile, but managed only a cold grimace. 'Helblindi is dead, by Thor's hand.'

'We will find shelter soon,' Sif said. 'We'll rest through the night. In the morning, we will get Thor back.'

Loki clenched Iiro's rein, but swallowed the biting answers he had for Sif. He had said enough already, anything more would be self-indulgent and unproductive.

What then was the productive move? The Asgardians were in need of a healer or two. They hardly looked ready to take on frost giants once more. On the other hand, Laufey had no reason to treat Thor gently. The longer they waited, the longer Thor had to endure Laufey's wrath and the harder it would be to track where Thor had been taken. Perhaps this was that time, which came once in a century or so, when Sif was right - they needed to find a safe place and regroup.

An arrow whistled through the air.

Iiro reared up with a wild roar, ripping his reins out of Loki's hand and sending the injured soldier flying out of the saddle.

Before the Asgardians could even duck down, more arrows came down on them.

So much for shelter and safety.

Loki threw himself onto the ground and threw up a rough shielding spell over the Asgardians. He was too slow to catch all the arrows. Someone screamed. In reply, another volley of arrows whistled towards the Asgardians.

'Come and fight us face to face, cowards!' Fandral shouted, drawing his rapier.

Loki drew his own knives and tried to make sense of the situation while his shielding spell gave him the opportunity to do so. Odin had caught Iiro's reins and was trying to bring the horse under control. The injured soldier was on the ground, but he was moving. The rest of the Einherjar kept close to Odin. Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg were crouched down, eager for a fight. Which left Sif.

Shit.

She was slumped on the ground a mere three feet behind Loki, one arrow shaft protruding from her left arm and another from the base of her neck. Trembling, Sif held her right hand over the neck wound, but blood ran freely down her fingers. Loki scrambled over to her.

Another volley of arrows descended on his shield. Had the arrows come from a single direction, Loki wouldn't have been concerned. But the frost giants seemed to have surrounded them and it strained him to keep everyone protected from every angle.

'Loki, release the shield!' Volstagg yelled. 'If they won't come to us, we shall come to them.'

'Look at Sif!'

Loki pressed his hands against the wound on her neck. Within moments, his gloves were soaked.

The blood still flows, which means the heart is still pumping. That's good.

'You'll be fine, Sif,' he muttered. 'We've survived worse over the years, haven't we?'

'Heimdall!' Odin's voice boomed out.

Light and colour descended upon them. Loki released the shielding spell when he felt the Bifrost's pull and surrendered to it. The Jotnar sent a volley of arrows in farewell; their hiss died just as Loki glimpsed Asgard in the distance and released a breath of relief.

He landed awkwardly, but kept his hands firm around the shaft in Sif's neck. He was vaguely aware there was commotion in the Bifrost Observatory - men groaned and swore; horses huffed their displeasure. He didn't care. He focused what magic the time travel spell hadn't stripped away into slowing Sif's frantic heartbeat.

'Heimdall,' Loki called out. 'She needs a healer!'

No reply came.

Loki glanced up. Everyone else in the Observatory stood in a tight circle at the bottom of the dais in the observatory's centre.

'I need...'

Hogun shifted his weight from one foot to another, opening up a gap between himself and Fandral. Loki could see the edge of a red cloak through that gap. Only one of them had worn anything red today.

Loki swallowed the lump in his throat and gave voice to the question he desperately didn't want answered. 'What's wrong with my father?'