* * *
Shea turned from the contest, making a desperate effort to concentrate. He looked at the nearest object, an aurochs skull on a pillar, tried another drop of mead in his eye and repeated the spell, forward, backward, and forward. No result. The skull was a skull. Thor was still grunting and heaving. Shea tried once more on a knife hanging at a giant’s belt. No result.
He looked at a quiver of arrows on the opposite wall and tried again. “The sweet mead was sticking his eyelashes together and he felt sure he would have a headache after this. The quiver blurred as he pronounced the words. He found himself looking at a short-handled sledge hammer hanging by a rawhide loop.
Thor had given up the effort to lift the cat and came over to them, panting. Utgardaloki grinned down at him with the indulgence one might show a child. All around the giants were breaking up into little groups and calling for more drink.
“Want any more, sonny boy?” the giant chieftain sneered. “Guess you ain’t so damn good as you thought you was, huh?”
Shea plucked at Thor’s sleeve as the latter flushed and started to retort. “Can you call your hammer to you?” he whispered.
The giant’s ear caught the words. “Beat it, thrall,” he said belligerently. “We got business to settle and I won’t have no snotty little mortals butting in. Now, Asa-Thor, do you want any more contests?”
“I —” began Thor again.
Shea clung to his arm. “Can you?” he demanded.
“Aye, if it be in view.”
“I said get outta here, punk!” bellowed Utgardaloki, the rough good nature vanishing from his face. He raised an arm like a tree trunk.
“Point at that quiver of arrows and call!” shouted Shea. He dodged behind Thor as the giant’s arm descended. The blow missed. He scuttled among the crowding monsters, hitting his head against the pommel of a giant’s sword. Utgardaloki was roaring behind him. He ducked under a table and past some foul-smelling fire giants. He heard a clang of metal as Thor pulled on the iron gloves he carried at his belt. Then over all other sounds rose the voice of the red-bearded god, making even Utgardaloki’s voice sound like a whisper:
“Mjöllnir the mighty, slayer of miscreants, come to your master, Thor Odinnsson!”
For a few breathless seconds the hall hung in suspended animation. Shea could see a giant just in front of him with mouth wide open, Adam’s apple rising and falling. Then there was a rending snap. With a deep humming, the hammer that had seemed a quiver of arrows flew straight through the air into Thor’s hands.
There was a deafening yell from the swarms of giants They swayed back, then forward, squeezing Shea so tightly he could hardly breathe. High over the tumult rose the voice of Thor:
“I am Thor! I am the Thunderer! Ho, ho, hohoho, yoyoho!” The hammer was whirling round his head in a blur, sparks dancing round it. Level flashes of lightning cracked across the hall followed by deafening peals of thunder. There was a shriek from the giants and a rush towards the doors.
Shea shot one glimpse as the hammer flew at Utgardaloki and spattered his brains into pink oatmeal, rebounding back into Thor’s gloves. Then he was caught completely in the panic rush and almost squeezed to death. Fortunately for him, the giants on either side wedged him so tightly he couldn’t fall to be trampled.
The pressure suddenly gave way in front. Shea caught the giant ahead of him around the waist and hung on. Behind came Thor’s battle howl, mingled with constant thunder and the sound of the hammer shattering giant skulls — a noise that in a calmer moment Shea might have compared to that made by dropping a watermelon ten storeys. The Wielder of Mjöllnir was thoroughly enjoying himself; his shouts were like the noise of a happy express train.
Shea found himself outside and running across damp moss in the middle of hundreds of galloping giants and thralls. He dared not stop lest he be stepped on. An outcrop of rock made him swerve. As he did so he caught sight of Utgard. There was already a yawning gap at one end of the roof. The central beam split; a spear of blue-green lightning shot skyward, and the place began to burn brightly around the edges of the rent.
A clump of trees cut off the view. Shea ran downhill with giants still all around him. One of the group just ahead missed his footing and went rolling. Before Shea could stop, he had tripped across the fellow’s legs, his face ploughing up cold dirt and pine needles. A giant’s voice shouted: Hey, gang! Look at this!”
“Now they’ve got me,” he thought. He rolled over, his head swimming from the jar. But it was not he they were interested in. The giant over whose legs he had fallen was Heimdall, his wig knocked askew to reveal a patch of golden hair. The straw with which he had stuffed his jacket was dribbling out. He was struggling to get up; around him a group of fire giants were gripping his arms and legs, kicking and cuffing at him. There was a babble of rough voices:
“He’s one of the Æsir, all right!” “Sock him!” “Let’s get out of here!” “Which one is he?” “Get the horses!”
If he could get away, Shea thought, he could at least take news of Heimdall’s plight to Thor. He started to crawl behind the projecting root of a tree, but the movement was fatal. One of the fire giants hallooed: “There’s another one!”
Shea was caught, jerked upright, and inspected by half a dozen of the filthy gorilla-like beings. They took particular delight in palling his hair and ears.
“Aw,” said one of them, “he’s no As. Bump him off and let’s get t’ hell out of here.”
One of them loosened a knife at his belt. Shea felt a deadly constriction of fear around the heart. But the largest of the lot — leadership seemed to go with size in giantland — roared:
“Lay off! He was with that yellow-headed stumper. Maybe he’s one of the Vanir and we can get something for him. Anyway, it’s up to Lord Sun. Where the hell are those horses?”
At that moment more fire giants appeared, leading a group of horses. They were glossy black and bigger than the largest Percherons Shea had ever seen. Three hoofs were on each foot, as with the ancestral Miocene horse; their eyes glowed red like live coals and their breath made Shea cough. He remembered the phrase he had heard Heimdall whispering to Odinn in Sverre’s house — “fire horses.”
One of the giants produced leather cords from a pouch. Shea and Heimdall were bound with brutal efficiency and tossed on the back of one of the horses, one hanging down on either side. The giants clucked to their mounts, which started off at a trot through the gathering dusk among the trees.
Far behind them the thunders of Thor still rolled. From time to rime his distant lightnings cast sudden shadows along their path. The redbeard was certainly having fun.
Chapter Seven
THE AGONIZING HOURS that followed left little detailed impression on Harold Sheas mind — They would not, he told himself even while experiencing them. The impression was certainly painful while being undergone. There was nothing to see but misty darkness; nothing to feel but breakneck speed and the torment of his bonds. He could twist his head a little, but of their path could obtain no impression but now and then the ghost of a boulder or a clump of trees momentarily lit by the fiery eyes of the horses. Every time he thought of the speed they were making along the rough and winding route his stomach crawled and the muscles of his right leg tensed as he tried to apply an imaginary automobile brake.
When the sky finally turned to its wearisome blotting-paper grey the air was a little wanner, though still raw. A light drizzle was sifting down. They were in a countryside of a type totally unfamiliar to Shea. A boundless plain of tumbled black rock rose here and there to cones of varying size. Some of the cones smoked, and little pennons of steam wafted from cracks in the basalt. The vegetation consisted mostly of clumps of small palmlike tree ferns in the depressions.
They had slowed down to a fast trot, the horses picking their way over the ropy bands of old lava flows. Now and again one or more fire giants would detach themselves from the party and set off on a tangent to the main course.
Finally, a score of the giants clustered around the horse that bore the prisoners, making towards a particularly large cone from whose flanks a number of smoke plumes rose through the drizzle. To Shea the fire giants still looked pretty much alike, but he had no difficulty in picking out the big authoritative one who had directed his capture.
They halted in front of a gash in the rock. The giants dismounted, and one by one led their steeds through the opening. The animals’ hoofs rang echoing on the rock floor of the passage, which sprang above their heads in a lofty vault till it suddenly ended with a right-angled turn. The cavalcade halted; Shea heard a banging of metal on metal, the creak of a rusty hinge, and a giant voice chat cried: “Whatcha want?”
“It’s the gang, back from Jötunheim. We got one of the Æsir and a Van. Tell Lord Surt.”
“Howdja make out at Utgard?”
“Lousy. Thor showed up. He spotted the hammer somehow, the scum, and called it to him and busted things wide open. It was that smart-aleck Loki, I think.”
“What was the matter with the Sons of the Wolf? They know what to do about old Red Whiskers.”
“Didn’t show. I suppose we gotta wait for the Time for them to come around.”
The horses tramped on. As they passed the gatekeeper, Shea noticed that he held a sword along which flickered a yellow flame with thick, curling smoke rising from it, as though burning oil were running down the blade. Ahead and slanting downward, the place they had entered seemed an underground hall of vaguely huge proportions, full of great pillars. Flares of yellow light threw changing shadows as they moved. There was a stench of sulphur and a dull, machinelike banging. As the horses halted behind some pillars that grew together to make another passage, a thin shriek ulutated in the distance: “Eee-e-e.”
“Bring the prisoners along,” said a voice. “Lord Surt wants to judge ’em.”
Shea felt himself removed and tucked under a giant’s arm like a bundle. It was a method of progress that woke all the agonies in his body. The giant was carrying him face down, so that he could see nothing but the stone floor with its flickering shadows. The place stank.
The door opened and there was a babble of giant voices. Shea was flung upright. He would have fallen if the giant who had been carrying him had not propped him up. He was in a torchlit hall, very hot, with fire giants standing all around grinning, pointing, and talking, some of them drinking.
But he had no more than a glance for them. Right in front, facing him, flanked by two guards who carried the curious burning swords, sat the biggest giant of all — a giant dwarf. That is, he was a full giant in size, at least eleven feet tall, but with the squat bandy legs, the short arms and huge neckless head of a dwarf. His hair hung lank around the nastiest grin Shea had ever seen. When he spoke, the voice had not the rumble of the other giants, but a reedy, mocking falsetto:
“Welcome, Lord Heimdall, to Muspellheim! We are delighted to have you here.” He snickered. “I fear gods and men will be somewhat late in assembling for the battle without their horn blower. Hee, hee, hee. But, at least, we can give you the comforts of one of our best dungeons. If you must have music, we will provide a willow whistle. Hee, hee, hee. Surely so skilled a musician as yourself could make it heard throughout the nine worlds.” He ended with another titter at his own humour.
Heimdall kept his air of dignity. “Bold are your words, Surt,” he replied, “but it is yet to be seen whether your deeds match them when you stand on Vigrid Plain. It may be that I have small power against you of the Muspellheim blood. Yet I have a brother named Frey, and it is said that if you two come face to face, he will be your master.”
Surt sucked two fingers to indicate his contempt. “Hee, hee, hee. It is also said, most stupid of godlings, that Frey is powerless without his sword. Would you like to know where the enchanted blade. Hundingshana, is? Look behind you, Lord Heimdall!”
Shea followed the direction of Heimdall’s eyes. Sure enough, on the wall there hung a great two-handed sword, its blade gleaming brightly in that place of glooms, its hilt all worked with gold up to the jewelled pommel.
“While it hangs up there, most stupid of Æsir, I am safe. Hee, hee, hee. Have you been wondering why that famous eyesight of yours did not light on it before? Now you know, most easily deceived. In Muspellheim, we have found the spells that make Heimdall powerless.”
Heimdall was unimpressed. “Thor has his hammer back,” he remarked easily. “Not a few of your fire giants’ heads will bear witness if you can find them.”
Surt scowled and thrust his jaw forward hut his piping voice was as serene and mocking as before. “Now, that,” he said really gives mean idea. I thank you, Lord Heimdall. Who would have thought it possible to learn anything from one of the Æsir? Hee, hee, hee. Skoa!”
A lop-eared fire giant shuffled forward “Whatcha want, boss?”
“Ride to the gates of Asgard. Tell them I have their horn tooter here. I will gladly send the nuisance back to his relatives; but in exchange I want that sword of his, the one they call Head. Hee, hee, hee. I am collecting gods’ swords, and we shall see, Lord Heimdall, how you fare against the frost giants without yours.”
He grinned all around his face and the fire giants in the background slapped their knees and whooped. “Pretty hot stuff, boss!” “Ain’t he smart,” “Two of the four great weapons!” “Boy, will we show ’em!”
Surt gazed at Shea and Heimdall for a moment, enjoying to the utmost the roar of appreciation and Heimdall’s sudden pallor. Then he made a gesture of dismissal. “Take the animals away and put ’em in a dungeon before I die laughing.”
Shea felt himself seized once more and carried off, face downward in the same ignominious position as before.
* * *
Down — down — down they went, stumbling through the lurid semidark. At last they came to a passage lined with cells between whose bars the hollow eyes of previous arrivals stared at them. The stench had become overpowering.
The commanding giant thundered: “Stegg!”
There was a stir in an alcove at the far end of the passage, and out came a scaly being about five feet tall, with an oversize head decorated by a snub nose and a pair of long pointed ears. Instead of hair and beard it had wormlike excrescences on its head. They moved. The being squeaked:
“Yes, Lord.”
The giant said: “Got a couple more prisoners for you. Say, what stinks?”
“Please, lord, mortal him die. Five days gone.”
“You lug! And you left him in there?”
“No lord here. Snögg say ‘no’, must have lord’s orders to do —”
“You damn nitwit! Take him out and give him to the furnace detail! Hai, wait, take care of these prisoners first. Hai, bolt the door, somebody. We don’t take no chances with the Æsir.”
Stegg set about efficiently stripping Shea and Heimdall. Shea wasn’t especially afraid. So many extraordinary things had happened to him lately that the whole proceeding possessed an air of unreality. Besides, even the difficulties of such a place might not be beyond the resources of a well-applied brain.
Stegg said: “Lord, must put in dead mortal’s cell. No more. All full.”
“Awright, get in there, youse.” The giant gave Shea a cuff that almost knocked him flat and set him staggering towards the cell which Stegg had opened. Shea avoided the mass of corruption at one side and looked for a place to sit down. there was none. The only furnishings of any kind consisted of a bucket whose purpose was obvious.
Heimdall followed him in, still wearing his high, imperturbable air. Stegg gathered up the corpse, went out, and slammed the door. The giant took hold of the bars and heaved on them. There was no visible lock or bolt, but the door stayed tight.
“Oh, ho!” roared the giant. “Don’t the Sleepless One look cute? When we get through with the other Æsir we’ll come back and show you some fun. Have yourselves a time.” With this farewell, the giants all tramped out.
Fortunately the air
was warm enough so Shea didn’t mind the loss of his garments from a thermal point of view. Around them the dungeon was silent, save for a drip of water somewhere and the occasional rustle of a prisoner in his cell.
Across from Shea there was a clank of chains. An emaciated figure with a wildly disordered beard shuffled up to the bars and screamed. “Yngvi is a louse!” and shuffled back again.
“What means he?” Heimdall called out.
From the right came a muffled answer: “None knows. He says it every hour. He is mad, as you will be.”
“Cheerful place,” remarked Shea.
“Is it not?” agreed Heimdall readily. “Worse have I seen, but happily without being confined therein. I will say that for a mortal, your are not without spirit, Turnip Harald. Your demeanor likes me well.”
“Thanks.” Shea had not entirely forgotten his irritation over Heimdall’s patronizing manner, but the Sleepless One held his interest more than the choleric and rather slow-witted Thor or the snearing Loki. “If you don’t mind my asking, Golden One, why can’t you just use your powers to get out?”
“To all things there is a limit,” replied Heimdall, “of size, of power, and of duration. Wide is the lifetime of a god; wider than of a thousand of your feeble species one after the other. Yet even gods grow old and die. Likewise, as to these fire giants and their chief, Surt, that worst of beings. I have not much strength. If my brother Frey were here now, or if we were among the frost giants, I could overcome the magic of that door.”
“How do you mean?”
“It has no lock. Yet it will not open save when an authorized person pulls it and with intent to open. Look, now” — Heimdall pushed against the bars without effect — “if you will be quiet for awhile, I will try to see my way out of this place.”
The Sleepless One leaned back against the wall, his eyes moving restlessly about. His body quivered with energy in spite of his relaxed position.
“Not too well can I see,” he announced after a few minutes. “There is so much magic here — fire magic of a kind both evil and difficult — that it hurts my head. Yet this much I see clearly: around us all is rock, with no entrance but the way by which we came. Beyond that there lies a passage with trolls to watch it. Ugh, disgusting creatures.” The golden-haired god gave a shudder of repugnance.
The Incompleat Enchanter Page 9
