Now an argument erupted. Another Viking said, “That’s not the sun-worshipers. My second wife was a princess of the sun-
worshipers. They did not burn men, they cut open their chests while still alive and drew out their still-beating hearts.”
This was accompanied by hand gestures and by rude asides from some of the others at the table: “Princess, my arse, she was a slave girl with nice—”
“They burn them, too!” Eric said, punctuating his statement by pounding on the table and making a burned pig jump. “They burn them and eat their bones!”
“Are you saying I am a fool? That my second wife, mother to my eldest son, would dare lie to me?”
Olaf held up a placating hand and even put down his knife.
“Worthy kings, worthy kings. There are four minstrels here.
Enough for you, Eric, to burn, and for you, Hedrick, to cut out their hearts.”
Another fabulous witticism from Olaf and the place erupted in haw, haw, haws and “What did he says?”
“Come, minstrels. Juggle, jest, or recite the poems composed by your betters. If you amuse me you will be well-rewarded. And if not—” He looked around, building to the big joke. “If you do not, then we must in the spirit of fairness cut out your hearts…
and then roast you.”
The last time I’d tried to entertain anyone had been the ill-fated poem where Christopher had made everyone laugh.
This was going to be worse.
What passed for silence descended. In other words, there was a sort of lull in the mayhem.
“April! Sing something!” Christopher said through gritted teeth.
“I—” she stammered. “I—”
The look in Olaf’s eyes grew darker. He wasn’t laughing anymore.
“Give us a poem!” he roared in a voice that rattled the roof timbers.
I opened my mouth. “Twas brillig, and the s-s-slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the—”
“Do you seek to mock me?”
He wasn’t Loki, but he was doing a good impression. At the moment it was Christopher who saved us. I don’t know what moved him. I don’t understand the brain that could do what he did next. But at that moment he not only saved us. He gave us a hit.
He stepped forward. He clenched his fist. His knees buckled, but he caught himself before he hit the floor. And in a loud voice edged with hysteria, he sang:
“M-m-mine eyes have seen the glory of the… the mighty Viking lords, they are trampling out the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored. They have loosed the fateful lightning of their terrible swift swords, the Vikes are marching on!”
He went through the “glory, glory, hallelujah” chorus with a few changes and then stopped suddenly.
The Norse kings were gaping. The crowd was silent. And then Olaf, his dark eyes ablaze, said, “What do you call this manner of poem?”
“Um… a song?” Christopher said in a soprano squeak.
“A song! Give us more, give us another verse. Only start back at the beginning.”
“There’s a second verse?” Christopher asked me, his eyes desperate.
Starting at the beginning was easy enough, and Jalil, April, and I all joined in, more or less tunefully belting out the chorus, but how was Christopher going to come up with a second verse?
“We jumped aboard our longboats and we sailed upon the seas, and we slaughtered all who fought us and we did just as we pleased, ‘cause we’re crazy Viking warriors and… and… “
“… and we never beg for peace,” April jumped in.
“The Vikes are marching on! Glory, glory, hallelujah!” we all sang. “Lordy, how we’ll stick it to ya. Glory, glory, hallelujah, the Vikes are marching on!”
Pandemonium. Foot stomping, fist pounding, yelling, bellowing, roaring approval.
Some of the drunker ones were trying to repeat the lyrics, struggling to catch the tune.
Christopher shot me a grin. “We own these guys.”
And that’s when the crowd parted and four massive trolls walked in.
Chapter
XX
“Trouble,” Jalil whispered.
Olaf curled his lip. “Well, my good trolls, what brings you here to a hall of men?”
This was apparently too subtle for the trolls. They stared blankly, confused. I looked for a way out. Reaching any exit would involve getting past a hundred armed Vikings.
Helpless. Trapped. Nothing we could do. I’d soared on hope, and now I was yanked back to reality. Four lame kids in a land of mad killers.
I saw the old man who’d done the sacrifice watching me. A glint of humor? Or at least curiosity?
“Come, come, good trolls,” King Olaf said again. “Why are you here? What do you want?”
The leader of the group comprehended this. “I am Gatch.
We come from Great Loki. He seeks four who… “ He searched his memory, pig eyes rolling up. “Great Loki seeks four who were his guests and are lost.”
I had begun to think the Viking kings were at best primitive warriors and at worst drunken fools. But when I shot a fearful glance at the head table I saw a dozen very alert, very intelligent faces.
Remember that if you live, I told myself. Don’t underestimate these men.
Olaf considered the trolls while he calmly munched his slab of meat. “Great Loki has… lost his guests?”
He wasn’t calling the troll a liar. But he wasn’t even half fooled.
“Yes, O mighty king,” Gatch said, ducking his big rhino head.
“Are you sure these guests did not escape?”
The troll answered hotly, “No one escapes Great Loki’s castle! It is guarded by loyal men and mighty trolls.”
Olaf nodded reasonably. “That is certainly true. Yes. Why, if Loki’s prisoners were ever to escape, Great Loki would look foolish, eh? And good friend troll, you are not calling Loki a fool, are you?”
All four trolls shook their heads. No. No, they sure weren’t calling Loki a fool. But they weren’t blind, either. They kept glancing at the four of us.
“Those are Loki’s guests,” the lead troll said defiantly.
That was laying it on the table. Showdown time. I tensed up, searching for a sword I might grab. The babble of voices was dead still. Olaf whispered his next statement.
“These are my minstrels,” Olaf said.
“They… they have the same faces as Great Loki’s guests.”
“Are you calling me a liar, friend troll?” Olaf smiled as he said it. But even the trolls weren’t dumb enough to buy the smile. If Olaf so much as raised a finger, an awful lot of swords and an awful lot of axes were going to start flying. The trolls knew it.
“Great king…“ the troll leader began, then ran out of words.
Olaf stood up. He was a large man, even by Viking standards. I won’t say he could have wrestled one of the trolls, but he’d have given it a shot. “All men know why we are gathered here,” he announced in a loud, politician’s voice. “We gather here to go a-Viking, as our fathers did, as their fathers did, even in the generations of the Old World before the gods brought forth Everworld. And as all our fathers before, we will take to the sea in our ship and visit terror on our foes!”
Lots of foot stomping, then total silence again.
“Only this time, we go for a new purpose. To collect the ransom demanded by Loki. An impossible ransom to col ect, were we not carrying a mighty weapon!”
Everyone but us must have known what the weapon was because Olaf might as well have been introducing Michael Jordan to a Chicago boosters club. The place went nuts.
Olaf weighed the applause, let it go on for a while, then continued. “Then we will pay the ransom to Loki so that he may release from unjust captivity the All-Father himself, Odin One-Eye.”
I saw Jalil’s eyebrows go up.
So, I thought. These weren’t Loki’s men at all. Or at least not all of them.
“I, Olaf, who some call Olaf
Ironfoot because my own natural foot was eaten by a dragon — a dragon who will never more trouble a peaceful village—” lots of murmuring and approval, sort of a collective “You got that right.” Dragon killing was approved of by all, except possibly the trolls, who may have gotten Olaf’s underlying message of “Look, I killed a dragon, so don’t mess with me.”
“I, Olaf Ironfoot, have said that I will lead the expedition, and I have sworn to pay the ransom demanded by Loki.” He leaned down over the table, going face-to-face with the troll. “Go to your master Loki and tell him this: He needs us to destroy the sun-worshipers who ally themselves with the Hetwan. And this we will do. But I am not Loki’s vassal. And I will not be questioned by his foul creatures.”
The trolls hesitated. But not for long.
“Loki’s guests are not here,” Gatch said.
Olaf held his hands out placatingly, the genial host again.
“Exactly what I’ve been telling you.”
The trolls walked away, shoved a few guys just to act tough, and disappeared. The room breathed again. I breathed again.
“Hetwan,” Jalil whispered to me.
“Yeah. I heard.” At least one Hetwan had been with Loki.
And it sounded as if that creepy alien spoke for the head Hetwan. Things were going on here that were over my head.
Not my concern. My concern was simple: Keep Olaf happy.
Olaf happy meant me alive.
“Now give us a song again!” Ironfoot commanded. “More verses!”
We sang. I’d have sung anything for the big Viking.
Chapter
XXI
We sang the ‘Battle Hymn of the Vikings’ about twenty more times till the whole drunken, reeling assembly was singing along with us. Then April sang ‘Killing Me Softly’ again, and it was a mass weepathon. Burly, violent men just boo-hooing and letting the tears run down without shame.
This was not a bunch of guys worried about acting tough.
They started tossing us slabs of meat: goat, horse, I don’t know what they were. We at the meat, even April, and quaffed water, to the vast amusement of all. We expanded it into a whole routine. We’d lift bowls of beer up like we were going to take a drink and then pause… and the whole Viking host would hang there, poised, ready… then we’d turn up our noses and grab the water instead.
Jerry Seinfeld on his best night has never cracked up an audience like we did with our water-drinking routine. The women and slaves would come crowding in to watch.
“We’re a hit!” Christopher said. “If these guys had cable we’d be getting our own HBO special by the end of the week.”
The Vikings partied till what had to be three a.m. But by then slaves were patiently disentangling heaps of passed-out bodies, then hauling them off on stretchers. The great hall reeked of stale beer, vomit, urine, wood smoke, tobacco smoke, meat, and sweat.
We were passing out from exhaustion by the time Olaf himself finally slumped facedown on the table, signaling the end of the party. They carried the big black Viking off on a section of the table.
A nearly sober Thorolf came to collect us. He marched us out of the town and into the forest.
It was a forest from a Grimms’ fairy tale. A forest of black trees and blacker shadows. Distant wolves howled, plaintive.
Nearer, sometimes so close I felt I could reach out and touch them, glittering eyes blinked, watched us, considered us, lusted after the marrow in our bones.
Thorolf seemed unafraid. But he kept a firm grip on his ax, and once raised it from his shoulder, feeling the weight, sending the message.
“Nothing like a ten-mile hike on no sleep,” Jalil grumbled.
“Where are we going, Thorolf?” April asked, her voice raspy from singing and from breathing smoke.
“You are to stay on my farm till the fleet departs tomorrow if the wind is fair,” he said. “Olaf Ironfoot said you were to be well cared for.”
“Guess he’s a music lover,” I mumbled.
Thorolf smiled. “Ironfoot loves a good entertainment, it is true.
But still more, he loves to show all men that he is not Loki’s vassal.”
So. Olaf knew full well that we were the ones Loki was looking for. And in sheltering us he was jabbing a finger in Loki’s eye.
“An extra bargaining chip,” Jalil said. “Loki’s demanded some kind of ransom for releasing Odin. Olaf doesn’t trust him.
Figures if it gets down to hard bargaining he can throw us on the pile as a sweetener.”
That killed some of my affection for Olaf.
Thorolf looked at Jalil with troubled eyes. The thought had not occurred to him. But now that Jalil had mentioned it, Thorol wasn’t exactly laughing it off.
“The ways of kings and chieftains may be different from those of ordinary freemen,” Thorolf allowed.
We marched on, tensed for a sudden attack, expecting to turn the next curve and find our way blocked by Fenrir himself.
We were on something that might have been called a road, but it was dirt and narrow, with the forest beginning abruptly on either side.
Looking up, I could see occasional hints of gray, dawn sky overhead. But I was so bleary, so far past exhaustion, that I wasn’t doing much sightseeing.
At some point Thorolf led us off the road, along a much less traveled path. Here the forest gentled down into white-trunked birches, with open spaces and even pale, ghostly flowers.
After another interminable walk, we emerged very suddenly into the open, into earliest morning sunlight and green and blue.
A long, gentle, sloping field opened before us. It was covered in grass so green it seemed unreal. A rocky, snow-streaked peak loomed above in the distance. The sky was deep blue, fresh with morning sunlight.
We saw a farm, although at first we didn’t notice it. It seemed to be a single building added to many times, expanded in all directions. The walls were low and dark, with few windows. The roof was covered in the same brilliant grass that covered the slope.
A fenced enclosure contained a single horse. Along the slope, in various little patches of white fluff, were grazing sheep.
The sunlight work me up — a little, at least. I noticed Thorolf taking in every detail, the sharp landowner checking to see that all was well.
As we approached, Gudrun Man-Beater appeared in a doorway. I guess it was the front door, although concepts of front and back seemed iffy on this building.
She laughed on seeing her husband with the four of us.
“I have guests,” Thorolf said, grabbing his wife and giving her a ferocious hug.
“I have eyes,” Gudrun said. “I see them. They can stay with the cows. Are you hungry?”
This last directed at us.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “Just tired.”
“It is tiring work, entertaining kings,” Gudrun said.
“And more tiring still, escaping Loki’s castle,” Thorolf said.
Gudrun blanched. Her lip trembled and she glanced away in a particular direction.
Toward Loki’s castle.
“They are under Olaf Ironfoot’s protection,” Thorolf explained.
“Yes, but are we?” Gudrun said darkly. “When Ironfoot has taken you and the other men away, we will still be here. With Loki’s creatures and priests and evil men everywhere.”
She looked darkly at us. We were not exactly welcome guests. But that didn’t stop her from shoving a small loaf of bread off on each of us and detailing a yawning slave girl to show us to an empty cow stall.
It was a musky place, but clean. The cows were being milked by an old woman who muttered to herself as she yanked the udders. She didn’t look up as we passed by.
The slave girl showed us the stall. Hay. I hit it facedown and was asleep before I could take a second breath.
“When it happens, David, will you save me?” a voice whispered.
“Yeah,” I said. “But sleep. First, sleep.”
When I woke the electric red numbers
on my bedside clock said 3:21 a.m.
Chapter
XXII
Clock?
I jerked up out of my bed. Covers! Sheets!
I threw them back. I had nothing on, no T-shirt, no warm fur tunic, no dirty running shoes.
My wrists. Normal! No scars.
I fumbled for the light switch and snapped it on.
My room!
I froze, staring. No, no, no. This was a dream. This wasn’t real. In the harsh light it didn’t even look real.
“Oh, man,” I muttered. “Something here is messed up.”
I climbed out of bed, slowly, carefully, like I might break something. I went to my closet and searched for my Radiohead T-shirt. The one I had been wearing.
It was gone. So was the cutoff sweatshirt.
My running shoes, gone.
Everything I’d been wearing was gone.
I just stood there, totally lost. Was this the dream? Was that the dream? Were they both dreams and April was right that I was a lunatic locked in a padded cell somewhere, imaging I was me?
I grabbed the phone. Jalil. I’d call Jalil.
And ask him what, at three in the morning? “Hi, Jalil, are you having my same nightmare?”
Senna. She was the key.
I dressed as quickly as I could. Down the stairs. Silent. I looked in my mom’s room. The door was closed. So this was a different night, not the same night.
Out into the dark street. Dawn was a long way off. Here it was dark; there it was bright morning. Maybe.
I walked fast, boots loud on the sidewalk. It was chilly. Damp, but not rainy. I walked past normal houses with normal fences and hedges and lawns. Some entirely dark. Others with a porch light burning. In one I saw the blue light of a TV. Some insomniac up late. Or early. Whichever it was.
Senna’s house was eight blocks away. Her folks had money.
They were on this little private street right down near the beach.
I trotted a little. I wasn’t tired. But why not? I’d been exhausted in… in my dream? In the other place? In bizarre Vikingland.
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