“How will you find us?” asked Shea.
Snögg’s grin was visible in the gloom. “Never mind. I find you all right. You bet,” He was gone.
* * *
Shea and Heimdall waited. They heard a rumbling challenge from the sentry and Snögg’s piping reply. A chain clanked, the sound suddenly drowned in a frightful roar. “Why, you snotty little —” Feet pounded into the night, and shoutings.
Shea and Heimdall raced for the entrance and out past the door, which swung ajar. It was blacker than the inside of a cow, except where dull-red glows lit the undersides of smoke plumes from vents in the cones.
They headed straight out and away, Shea, at least, with no knowledge of where they were going. It would be time enough to think of direction later, anyway. They had to walk rather than run, even when their eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, and even so, narrowly missed a couple of bad falls on the fantastically contorted rock.
The huge cone of Surt’s stronghold faded into the general blackness behind. Then there was a hiss in the dark and they were aware of Snögg’s fishy body smell. The troll moved light and sure, like a cat. He was chuckling. “Hit giant in nose with chain. Should see face. He, he, he!”
“Whither do you lead us, troll?” asked Heimdall.
“Where you want to go?”
Heimdall thought. “The best would be Sverre’s house, the Crossroads of the World. Or failing that, the gates of Hell, where one may hope to find even yet the Wanderer at his task. He must know, soon as ever, what we have seen. That were a fortnight’s journey afoot. But if I could get to some high cold place, where this fire magic is not, I could call my horse, Gold Top.”
“Look out!” said Snögg suddenly. “Giants come!”
A flickering yellow light was showing across the lava beds. Snögg vanished into a patch of shadow, while Shea and Heimdall crouched under the edge of a dyke in the lava flow. They heard the crunch of giant feet on the basalt. The shadows swayed this way and that with the swinging of the fiery swords. A giant voice rumbled. “Hey, you, this is a rough section. There’s enough pockets to hide fifty prisoners.”
Another voice: “Okay, okay. I suppose we gotta poke around here all night. Me, I don’t think they came this way, anyhow.”
“You ain’t supposed to think,” retorted the first voice, nearer. “Hey. Raki!”
“Here,” growled a third, more distant, giant.
“Don’t get too far away,” shouted the first.
“But the other guys are clear outta sight!” complained the distant Raki.
“That don’t matter none. We gotta keep close together. Ouch!” The last was a yell, mixed with a thump and a scramble. “If I catch those scum, they’ll pay for this.”
The light from the nearest giant’s sword grew stronger, creeping towards Shea and Heimdall inch by inch. The fugitives pressed themselves right through it. Inch by inch —
The giant was clearly visible around the end of the lava dyke, holding his sword high and moving slowly, peering into every hollow. Nearer came the light. Nearer. It washed over the toes of Shea’s boots, then lit up Heimdall’s yellow mane.
“Hey!” roared the giant in his foghorn bass. “Raki! Randver! I got ’em! Come, quick!” He rushed at a run. At the same time there was a thumping behind them and the nearest of the other two leaped up out of nowhere, swinging his sword in circles.
“Take that one, warlock!” barked Heimdail, pointing with his sword at the first of the two. He vaulted lightly to the top of the dyke and made for the second giant.
Shea hefted his huge blade with both hands. You simply couldn’t fence with a crowbar like this. It was hopeless. But he wasn’t afraid — hot dog, he wasn’t afraid! What the hell, anyway? The giant gave a roar and a leap, whirling the fiery sword over his head in a figure eight to cut the little man down in one stroke.
Shea swung the ponderous weapon up in an effort to parry that downstroke. He never knew how, but in that instant the sword went as light as an amusement park cane. The blades met. With a tearing scream of metal Shea’s sword sheared right through the flaming blade, The tip sailed over his head, landing with a crackle of flame in some brush behind. Almost without Shea’s trying, his big blade swept around in a perfect stop-thrust in carte, and through the monster’s throat. With a bubbling shriek the giant crashed to earth.
Shea spun around. Beyond the lip of the dyke Heimdall was hotly engaged with his big adversary, their blades flickering, but the third giant was coming up to take a part. Shea scrambled upon the dyke and ran towards him, surprised to discover he was shouting at the top of his voice.
The giant changed course and in no time he was towering right over him. Shea easily caught the first slash with a simple party carte. The giant hesitated, irresolute; Shea saw his chance, whipped both blades around in a bind in octave, and lunged. The giant’s flaming sword was pushed back against its owner, and Shea’s point took him in the stomach with such a rush that Shea almost fell onto the collapsing monster’s body.
“Ho, ho!” cried Heimdall. He was standing over his fallen opponent, terrible bloody slashes in the giant’s body showing dim red in the light of the burning swords on the ground. “Through the guts! Never have I seen a man who used a sword as he would a spear, thrust and not strike. By Thor’s hammer, Warlock Harald, I had not expected to find you so good a man of your hands! I have seen those do worse who were called berserks and champions.” He laughed, and tossed his own sword up to catch it by the hilt. “Surely you shall be of my band at the Time. Though in the end it is nothing remarkable, seeing what blade you have there.”
The big sword had become heavy again and weighted Shea’s arm down. There was a trickle of blood up over the hilt onto his hand. “Looks like a plain sword to me,” he said.
“By no means. That is the enchanted sword, Frey’s invincible Hundingsbana, that shall one day be Surt’s death. Hai! Gods and men will shout for this day; for the last of the war weapons of the Æsir is recovered! But we must hurry. Snögg!”
“Here,” said the troll, emerging from a clump of treeferns. “Forgot to say. I put troll spell on sword so light from blade don’t show giants where we go. It wear off in a day or two.”
“Can you tell us where there is a mountain tall and cold near here?” asked Heimdall.
“Is one — oh, many miles north. Called Steinnbjörg. Walk three days.”
“That is something less than good news,” said Heimdall. “Already we have reached the seventh night since Thor’s play with the giants of Jötunheim. By the length of his journey the Wanderer should tomorrow be at the gates of Hell. We must seek him there; much depends on it.”
Shea had been thinking furiously. If he knew enough to be a warlock, why not use the knowledge?
“Can I get hold of a few brooms?” he demanded.
“Brooms? Strange are your desires, warlock of another world,” said Heimdall.
“What you want him for?” asked Snögg.
“I may be able to work a magic trick.”
Snögg thought. “In thrall’s house, two mile east, maybe brooms. Thrall he get sick, die.”
“Lead on,” said Shea.
They were off again through the darkness. Now and then they glimpsed a pinpoint of light in the distance, as some one of the other giant search parties moved about, but none approached them.
Chapter Ten
THE THRALL’S HUT proved a crazy pile of basalt blocks chinked with moss. The door sagged ajar. Inside it was too black to see anything.
“Snögg,” asked Shea, “can you take a little of the spell off this sword so we can have some light?”
He held it out. Snögg ran his hands up and down the blade, muttering. A faint golden gleam came from it, revealing a pair of brooms in one corner of the single-room hut. One was fairly new, the other an ancient wreck with most of the willow twigs that had composed it broken or missing.
“Now, he said, “I need the feathers of a bird. Preferably a swift,
as that’s about the fastest filer. There ought to be some around.”
“On roof, I think,” said Snögg. “You wait; I get.” He slid out, and they heard him grunting and scrambling up the hut. Presently he was back with a puff of feathers in his scaly hand.
Shea had been working out the proper spell in his head, applying both the Law of Contagion and the Law of Similarity. Now he laid the brooms on the floor and brushed them gently with the feathers, chanting:
“Bird of the south, swift bird of the south,
Lend us your wings for a night.
Stir these brooms to movement, O bird of the south
As swift as your own and as light.”
He tossed one of the feathers into the air and blew at it, so that it bobbed about without falling.
“Verdfölnir, greatest of hawks, I invoke you!” he cried. Catching the feather, he stooped, picking at the strings that held the broom till they were loosened, inserted the feathers in the broom, and made all tight again. Kneeling, he made what he hoped were mystic passes over the brooms, declaiming:
“Up, up, arise!
Bear us away;
We must be in the mountains
Before the new day.”
“Now,” he said, “I think we can get to your Steinnbjörg soon enough.”
Snögg pointed to the brooms, which in that pale light seemed to be stirring with a motion of their own. “You fly through air?” he inquired.
“With the greatest of ease. If you want to come, I guess that new broom will carry two of us.”
“Oh, no!” said Snögg, backing away. “No thank, by Ymir! I stay on ground, you bet. I go to Elvagevu on foot. Not break beautiful me. You not worry. I know way.”
Snögg made a vague gesture of farewell and slipped out the door. Heimdall and Shea followed him, the latter with the brooms. The sky was beginning to show its first touch of dawn. “Now, let’s see how these broomsticks of ours work,” said Shea.
“What is the art of their use?” asked Heimdall.
Shea hadn’t the least idea. But he answered boldly. “Just watch me and imitate me,” he said, and squatting over his broom, with the stick between his legs and Hundingsbana stuck through his belt, said:
“By oak, ash, and broom
Before the night’s gloom,
We soar to Steinobjörgen
To stay the world’s doom.”
The broom leaped up under him with a jerk that almost left its rider behind.
Shea gripped the stick till his knuckles were white. Up — up — up he went, till everything was blotted out in the damp opaqueness of cloud. The broom rushed on at a steeper and steeper angle, till Shea found to his horror that it was rearing over backward. He wound his legs around the stick and clung, while the broom hung for a second suspended at the top of its loop with Shea dangling beneath. It dived, then fell over sidewise, spun this way and that, with its passenger flopping like a bell clapper.
The dark earth popped out from beneath the clouds and rushed up at him. Just as he was sure he was about to crash, he managed to swing himself around the stick. The broom darted straight ahead at frightening speed, then started to nose up again. Shea inched forward to shift his weight. The broom slowed up, teetered to a forty-five degree angle and fell off into a spin. The black rock of Muspellheim whirled madly beneath. Shea leaned back, tugging upon the stick. The broom came out of it and promptly fell into another spin on the opposite side. Shea pulled it out of that, too, being careful not to give so much pressure this time. By now he was so dizzy he couldn’t tell whether he was spinning or not.
For a few seconds the broom scudded along with a pitching motion like a porpoise with the itch. This was worse than Thor’s chariot. Shea’s stomach, always sensitive to such movements, failed him abruptly and he strewed Muspellheim with the remains of his last meal. Having accomplished this, he set himself grimly to the task of mastering his steed. He discovered that it had the characteristics of an airplane both longitudinally and laterally unstable. The moment it began to nose up, down, or sidewise the movement had to be corrected instantly and to just the right degree. But it could be managed.
A thin, drawn-out cry of “Haaar-aaald!” came to him. He had been so busy that he had had no time to look for Helmdall. A quarter mile to his right, the Sleepless One clung desperately to his broom, which was doing an endless series of loops, like an amusement park proprietor’s dream of heaven.
Shea inched his own broom around a wide circuit. A hundred yards from Heimdall, the latter’s mount suddenly stopped looping and veered straight at him. Heimdall seemed helpless to avoid the collision, but Shea managed to pull up at the last minute, and Heimdall, yellow hair streaming, shot past underneath. Shea brought his own broom around, to discover that Heimdall was in a flat spin.
As his face came towards Shea, the latter noted it looked paler than he had ever seen it. Then As called: “How to control this thing, oh very fiend among warlocks?”
“Lean to your left!” shouted Shea. “When she dives, lean back far enough to level her out!” Heimdall obeyed, but overdid the lean-back and went into another series of loops. Shea yelled to shift his weight forward when the broom reached the bottom of the loop.
Heimdall overdid it again and took a wild downward plunge, but was grasping the principle of the thing and pulled out again. “Never shall we reach Odinn in time!” he shouted, pointing down. “Look, how already the hosts of Surt move towards Ragnarök!”
Shea glanced down at the tumbled plain. Sure enough, down there long files of giants were crawling over it, the flaming swords standing out like fiery particles against the black earth.
“Which way is this mountain?” he called back.
Heimdall pointed towards the left. “There is a high berg in that direction, I think; though still too strong is the fire magic for me to see clearly.”
“Let’s get above the clouds then. Ready?” Shea shifted back a little and they soared. Dark greyness gripped them, and he hoped he was keeping the correct angle. Then the grey paled to pearl, and they were out above an infinite sea of cloud, touched yellow by a rising sun.
Heimdall pointed. “Unquestionably the Steinnbjörg lies yonder. Let us speed!”
Shea looked. He could make out nothing but one more roll of cloud, perhaps a little more solid than the others. They streaked towards it.
* * *
“There must be an arresting!” cried Heimdall. “How do you stop this thing?” They had tried three times to land on the peak; each time the brooms had skimmed over the rocks at breathless speed.
“I’ll have to use a spell,” replied Shea. He swung back, chanting:
“By oak, ash, and yew
And heavenly dew,
We’ve come to Steinnbjörgen;
Land softly and true!
The broomstick slowed down, and Shea fishtailed it into an easy landing. Heimdall followed, but ploughed deep into a snowdrift. He struggled out with hair and eyebrows all white, but with a literally flashing smile on his face. “Warlocks there have been, Harald, but never like you. I find your methods somewhat drastic.”
“If you don’t want that broom any more,” Shea retorted, “I’ll take it and leave this old one. I can use it.”
“Take it, if it pleases your fancy. But now you, too, shall see a thing.” He put both hands to his mouth and shouted, “Yo hoooo! Gulltop! Yo hooooo, Gulltop! Your master, Heimdall Odinnsson, calls!”
For a while nothing happened. Then Shea became aware of a shimmering, polychromatic radiance in the air about him. A rainbow was forming and he in the centre of it. But unlike most rainbows, this one was end-on. It extended slowly down to the very snow at their feet; the colours thickened and grew solid till they blotted out the snow and clouds and crags behind them. Down the rainbow came trotting a gigantic white horse with a mane of bright metallic yellow. The animal stepped off the rainbow and nuzzled Heimdall’s chest.
“Come,” said Heimdall. “I grant you permission to ride
with me, though you will have to sit behind. Mind you do not prick him with Hundingsbana.”
Shea climbed aboard with his baggage of sword and broom. The horse whirled around and bounded onto the rainbow. It galloped fast, with a long reaching stride, but almost no sound, as though it were running across an endless feather bed. The wind whistled past Shea’s ears with a speed he could only guess.
After an hour or two Heimdall turned his head, “Sverres house lies below the clouds; I can see it.”
The rainbow inclined downward, disappearing through the grey. For a moment they were wrapped in mist again, then out, and the rainbow, less vivid but still substantial enough to bear them, curved direct to the bonder’s gate.
Gold Top stamped to a halt in the yard, slushy with melting snow. Heimdall leaped off and towards the door, where a couple of stalwart blonds stood on guard.
“Hey,” called Shea afrer him. “Can’t I get something to eat?”
“Time is wanting,” shouted the Sleepless One over his shoulder, disappearing through the door, to return in a moment with horn and sword. He spoke a word or two to the men at the door, who ran around the house, and presently were visible leading out horses of their own.
“Heroes from Valhall,” explained Heimdall, buckling on his baidric, “set to guard the Gjallarhorn while the negotiations for my release were going on.” He snatched up the horn and vaulted to the saddle. The rainbow had changed direction, but lay straight away before them as Gold Top sprang into his stride again.
Shea asked: “Couldn’t you just blow your horn now without waiting to see Odinn?”
“Not so, Warlock Harald. The Wanderer is lord of gods and men. None act without his permission. But I fear me it will come late — late. He turned his head. “Hark! Do you hear — Nay, you cannot. But my ears catch a sound which tells me the dog Garm is loose, that great monster.”
The Incompleat Enchanter Page 12
