From "Snorr's Saga" by Timothy Brommer

Stretching out to the horizon, hewn limbs lay as numerous amongst the hacked bodies as the weapons dropped by dying hands. Corpses by the tens of thousands were strewn across the trampled wildflowers of the sunny plain of Asgard, putrefying the air with the pungent cloying stench of emptied bowels and coppery blood. Thousands more gravely injured warriors moaned and wailed as death approached, many blindly pawing at the sky or clutching their wounds.

 

“You’ve waited long enough,” Thor’s father, Odin, called out above the din.

“I don’t answer to him,” Thor shot back angrily, glancing to his right.

His father angled his rune-engraved spear, Gungnir, over one shoulder. “That isn’t the issue, is it?” His father’s spiteful grin jabbed Thor in the belly like he enjoyed knowing his son was troubled. Beside his father stood a lithe dark-haired Valkyrie in a white dress of gossamer cloth. The top of the human’s head barely reached his father’s waist.

“I’m trying to watch the fight,” Thor said bluntly, not swallowing the bait, returning his attention to the pair of human men trying to kill each other.

Soaking in the thrilling sights and odors, Thor eagerly raised his drinking horn.