The single eye held him unblinkingly for a few seconds. Shea felt that it was examining his inmost thoughts. Then the man slumped a trifle so that the brim of his hat shut out the glare and the deep voice was muffled. “I will be tonight at the house of the bonder Sverre, which is the Crossroads of the World. You may follow.” The wind whipped a fold of his blue cloak, and as it did so there came, apparently from within the cloak itself, a little swirl of leaves. One clung for a moment to the front of Shea’s coat. He caught it with numbed fingers, and saw it was an ash leaf, fresh and tender with the bright green of spring—in the midst of this howling wilderness, where only arctic scrub oak grew!
Shea let the pony pass and fell in behind, head down, collar up, hands deep in pockets, squinting against the snowflakes. He was too frozen to think clearly, but he tried. The logical formulas had certainly thrown him into another world. But he hardly needed the word of Old Whiskers that it was not Ireland. Something must have gone haywire in his calculations. Could he go back and recheck them? No—he had not the slightest idea at present what might have been on those six sheets of paper. He would have to make the best of his situation.
But what world had he tumbled into? A cold, bleak one, inhabited by small, shaggy ponies and grim, old, blue-clad men with remarkable eyes. It might be the world of Scandinavian mythology. Shea knew very little about such a world, except that its No. 1 guy was someone named Odinn, or Woden, or Wotan, and there was another god named Thor who threw a sledge hammer at people he disliked.
Shea’s scientific training made him doubt whether he would actually find these gods operating as gods, with more-than-human powers; or, for that matter, whether he would see any fabulous monsters. Still, that stab of cold through his head and that handful of ash leaves needed explaining. Of course, the pain in his head might be an indication of incipient pneumonia, and Old Whiskers might make a habit of carrying ash leaves in his pockets. But still—
The big black birds were keeping up with them. They didn’t seem afraid, nor did they seem to mind the ghastly weather.
It was getting darker, though in this landscape of damp blotting paper Shea could not tell whether the sun had set. The wind pushed at him violently, forcing him to lean into it; the mud on the path was freezing, but not quite gelid. It had collected in yellow gobs on his boots. He could have sworn the boots weighed thirty pounds apiece, and they had taken in water around the seams, adding clammy socks to his discomfort. A clicking sound, like a long roll of castanets, made him wonder until he realized it was caused by his own teeth.
He seemed to have been walking for days, though he knew it could hardly be a matter of hours. Reluctantly he took one hand from his pocket and gazed at his wrist watch. It read 9:56; certainly wrong. When he held the watch to a numbed ear he discovered it had stopped. Neither shaking nor winding could make it start.
He thought of asking his companion the time, but realized that the rider would have no more accurate idea than himself. He thought of asking how much farther they had to go. But he would have to make himself heard over the wind, and the old boy’s manner did not encourage questions.
They plodded on. The snow was coming thickly through the murky twilight. Shea could barely make out the figure before him. The path had become the same neutral gray as everything else. The weather was turning colder. The snowflakes were dry and hard, stinging and bouncing where they struck. Now and then an extra puff of wind would snatch a cloud of them from the moor, whirling it into Shea’s face. He would shut his eyes to the impact, and when he opened them find he had blundered off the path and have to scurry after his guide.
Light. He pulled the pack around in front of him and fumbled in it till he felt the icy touch of the flashlight’s metal. He pulled it out from under the other articles and pressed the switch button. Nothing happened, nor would shaking, slapping, or repeated snappings of the switch produce any result.
In a few minutes it would be too dark for him to follow the man on the pony by sight alone. Whether the old boy liked it or not, Shea would have to ask the privilege of holding a corner of his cloak as a guide.
It was just as he reached this determination that something in the gait of the pony conveyed a sense of arrival. A moment more and the little animal was trotting, with Shea stumbling and skidding along the fresh snow behind as he strove to keep pace. The pack weighed tons, and he found himself gasping for breath as though he were running up a forty-five-degree angle instead of on an almost-level path.
Then there was a darker patch in the dark-gray universe. Shea’s companion halted the pony and slid off. A rough-hewn timber door loomed through the storm, and the old man banged against it with his fist. It opened, flinging a flood of yellow light out across the snow. The old man stepped into the gap, his cloak vividly blue in the fresh illumination.
Shea, left behind, croaked a feeble, “Hey!” just managing to get his foot in the gap of the closing door. It opened full out and a man in a baggy homespun tunic peered out at him, his face rimmed with drooping whiskers. “Well?”
“May I c-c-come in?”
“Umph,” said the man. “Come on, come on. Don’t stand there letting the cold in!”
Three
Shea stood in a kind of entry hall, soaking in the delicious warmth. The vestibule was perhaps six feet deep. At its far end a curtain of skins had been parted to permit the passage of the old man who preceded him. The bonder Sverre—Shea supposed this would be his host—pulled them still wider. “Lord, use this as your own house, now and forever,” he murmured with the perfunctory hurry of a man repeating a formula like, “Pleased to meet you.”
The explorer of universes ducked under the skins and into a long hall paneled in dark wood. At one end a fire blazed, apparently in the center of the floor, though bricked round to knee height. Around it were a number of benches and tables. Shea caught a glimpse of walls hung with weapons—a huge sword, nearly as tall as he was, half a dozen small spears or javelins, their delicate steel points catching ruddy highlights from the torches in brackets; a kite-shaped shield with metal overlay in an intricate pattern—
No more than a glimpse. Sverre had taken him by the arm and conducted him through another door, shouting: “Aud! Hallgerda! This stranger’s half-frozen. Get the steam room ready. Now, stranger, you come with me.”
Down a passage to a smaller room, where the whiskered man ordered him: “Get off those wet clothes. Strange garments you have. I’ve never seen so many buttons and clasps in all my days. If you’re one of the Sons of Muspellheim, I’ll give you guesting for the night. But I warn you for tomorrow there be men not far from here who would liefer meet you with a sword than a handclasp.” He eyes Shea narrowly a moment. “Be you of Muspellheim?”
Shea fenced: “What makes you think that?”
“Traveling in those light clothes this far north. Those that hunt the red bear”—he made a curious motion of his hand as though tracing the outline of an eyebolt in the air—“need warm hides as well as stout hearts.” Again he gave Shea that curiously intent glance, as though trying to ravel some secret out of him.
Shea asked: “This is May, isn’t it? I understand you’re pretty far north, but you ought to get over this cold snap soon.”
The man Sverre moved his shoulders in a gesture of bafflement. “Mought, and then mought not. Men say this would be the Fimbulwinter. If that’s so, there’ll be little enough of warm till the roaring trumpet blows and the Sons of the Wolf ride from the East, at the Time.”
Shea would have put a question of his own, but Sverre had turned away grumpily. He got rid of his clammy shorts instead, turning to note that Sverre had picked up his wrist watch.
“That’s a watch,” he offered in a friendly voice.
“A thing of power?” Sverre looked at him again, and then a smile of comprehension distended the wide beard as he slapped his knee. “Of course. Mought have known. You came in with the Wanderer. You’re all right. One of those southern warlocks.”
From somewhere he produced a blanket and whisked it around Shea’s nude form. “This way now,” he ordered. Shea followed through a couple of doors to another small room, so full of wood smoke that it made him cough. He started to rub his eyes, then just in time caught at the edge of his blanket. There were two girls standing by the door, neither of them in the least like the Irish colleens he had expected to find. Both were blonde, apple-cheeked, and rather beamy. They reminded him disagreeably of Gertrude Mugler.
Sverre introduced them: “This here’s my daughter, Aud. She’s a shield girl; can lick her weight in polar bears.” Shea, observing the brawny miss, silently agreed. “And this is Hallgerda. All right, you go on in. The water’s ready to pour.”
In the center of the small room was a sunken hearth full of fire. On top of the fire had been laid a lot of stones about the size of potatoes. Two wooden buckets full of water sat by the hearth.
The girls went out, closing the door. Shea, with the odd sensation that he had experienced all this at some previous time—“It must be part of the automatic adjustment one’s mind makes to the pattern of this world,” he told himself—picked up one of the buckets. He threw it rapidly on the fire, then followed it with the other. With a hiss, the room filled with water vapor.
Shea stood it as long as he could, which was about a minute, then groped blindly for the door and gasped out. Instantly a bucketful of ice water hit him in the face. As he stood pawing the air and making strangled noises, a second bucketful caught him in the chest. He yelped, managing to choke out, “Glup . . . stop . . . that’s enough!”
Somewhere in the watery world a couple of girls were giggling. It was not till his eyes cleared that he realized it was they who had drenched him, and that he was standing between them without his protecting blanket.
His first impulse was to dash back into the steam room. But one of the pair was holding out a towel which it seemed only courtesy to accept. Sverre was approaching unconcernedly with a mug of something. Well, he thought, if they can take it, I can. He discovered that after the first horrible moment his embarrassment had vanished. He dried himself calmly while Sverre held out the mug. The girls’ clinical indifference to the physical Shea was more than ever like Gertrude.
“Hot mead,” Sverre explained. “Something you don’t get down south. Aud, get the stranger’s blanket. We don’t want him catching cold.”
Shea took a gulp of the mead, to discover that it tasted something like ale and something like honey. The sticky sweetness of the stuff caught him in the throat at first, but he was more afraid of losing face before these people than of being sick. Down it went, and after the first gulp it wasn’t so bad. He began to feel almost human.
“What’s your name, stranger?” inquired Sverre.
Shea thought a minute. These people probably didn’t use family names. So he said simply, “Harold.”
“Hungh?”
Shea repeated, more distinctly. “Oh,” said Sverre. “Harold.” He made it rhyme with “dolled.”
###
Dressed, except for his boots, Shea took the place on the bench that Sverre indicated. As he waited for food he glanced round the hall. Nearest him was a huge middle-aged man with red hair and beard, whose appearance made Shea’s mind leap to Sverre’s phrase about “the red bear.” His dark-red cloak fell back to show a belt with carved goldwork on it. Next to him sat another redhead, more on the sandy order, small-boned and foxy-faced, with quick, shifty eyes. Beyond Foxy-face was a blond young man of about Shea’s size and build, with a little golden fuzz on his face.
At the middle of the bench two pillars of black wood rose from floor to ceiling, heavily carved, and so near the table that they almost cut off one seat. It was now occupied by the gray-bearded, one-eyed man Shea had followed in from the road. His floppy hat was on the table before him, and he was half-leaning around one of the pillars to talk to another big blond man—a stout chap whose face bore an expression of permanent good nature, overlaid with worry. Leaning against the table at his side was an empty scabbard that could have held a sword as large as the one Shea had noticed on the wall.
The explorer’s eye, roving along the table, caught and was held by that of the slim young man. The latter nodded, then rose and came round the table, grinning bashfully.
“Would ye like a seat companion?” he asked. “You know how it is, as Havámal says:
“ ‘Care eats the heart If you cannot speak
To another all your thought.’ ”
He half-chanted the lines, accenting the alliteration in a way that made the rhymeless verse curiously attractive. He went on: “It would help me a lot with the Time coming, to talk to a plain human being. I don’t mind saying I’m scared. My name’s Thjalfi.”
“Mine’s Harold,” said Shea, pronouncing it as Sverre had done.
“You came with the Wanderer, didn’t ye? Are ye one of those outland warlocks?”
It was the second time Shea had been accused of that. “I don’t know what a warlock is, honest,” said he, “and I didn’t come with the Wanderer. I just got lost and followed him here, and ever since I’ve been trying to find out where I am.”
Thjalfi laughed, then took a long drink of mead. As Shea wondered what there was to laugh at, the young man said: “No offense, friend Harold. Only it does seem mighty funny for a man to say he’s lost at the Crossroads of the World. Ha, ha, I never did hear the like.”
“The where did you say?”
“Sure, the Crossroads of the World! You must come from seven miles beyond the moon not to know that. Hai! You picked a queer time to come, with all of Them here”—he jerked his finger toward the four bearded men. “Well, I’d keep quiet about not having the power, if I was you. Ye know what the Havámal says:
“ ‘To the silent and sage Does care seldom come
When he goes to a house as guest.’
“Ye’re likely to be in a jam when the trouble starts if ye don’t have protection from one of Them, but as long as They think ye’re a warlock, Uncle Fox will help you out.”
He jabbed a finger to indicate the small, sharp-featured man among the four, then went on quickly: “Or are ye a hero? If ye are, I can get Redbeard to take ye into his service when the Time comes.”
“What time? Tell me what this is all—” began Shea, but at that moment Aud and another girl appeared with wooden platters loaded with food.
“Hai, sis!” called Thjalfi cheerfully, and tried to grab a chop from the platter carried by the second, a girl Shea had not previously seen. The girl kicked him neatly on the shin and set it before the late-comer.
The meal consisted of various meats, with beside them a big slab of bread, looking as though it had been cut from a quilt. There was no sign of knife, fork, or any vegetable element. Of course, they would not have table silver, Shea assured himself. He broke off a piece of the bread and bit into it. It was better than it looked. The meat that he picked up rather gingerly was apparently a boiled pork chop, well-cooked and well-seasoned. But as he was taking the second bite, he noted that the shield girl, Aud, was still standing beside him.
As he looked round Aud made a curtsy and said rapidly: “Lord, with this meal as with all things, your wishes are our law. Is there aught else that you desire?”
Shea hesitated for a moment, realizing it was a formula required by politeness and that he should make some remark praising the food. But he had had a long drink of potent mead on an empty stomach. The normal food habits of an American urged him to action.
“Would it be too much to ask whether you have any vegetables?” he said.
For one brief second both the girl and Thjalfi stared at him. Then both burst into shrieks of laughter, Aud staggering back toward the wall, Thjalfi rolling his head forward on his arms. Shea sat staring, red with embarrassment, the half-eaten chop in his hand. He hardly noticed that the four men at the other side of the table were looking at him till the big red-headed man boomed out:
“Good is the w
it when men’s children laugh before the Æsir! Now, Thjalfi, you shall tell us what brings this lightness of heart.”
Thjalfi, making no effort to control himself, managed to gasp out: “The . . . the warlock Harold wants to eat a turnip!” His renewed burst of laughter was drowned in the roar from Redbeard, who leaned back, bellowing: “Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho! Turnip Harold, ha, ha, ha!” His merriment was like a gale with the other three adding their part, even the blue-cloaked Wanderer.
When they had quieted down a little Shea turned to Thjalfi. “What did I do?” he asked. “After all—”
“Ye named yourself Turnip Harold! I’m afeared ye spoiled your chance of standing under Redbeard’s banner at the Time. Who’d want a hero that ate turnips? In Asgard we use them to fatten hogs.”
“But—”
“Ye didn’t know better. Well, now your only chance is Uncle Fox. Ye can thank me for saying ye’re a warlock. Besides, he loves a good joke; the only humorist in the lot of them, I always say. But eating turnips—ha, ha, that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard since the giant tried to marry the Hammer Thrower!”
Shea, a trifle angry and now completely mystified, turned to ask explanations. Before he could frame the words there was a pounding at the door. Sverre admitted a tall man, pale, blond and beardless, with a proud, stately face and a huge golden horn slung over his back. “There’s another of Them,” whispered Thjalfi. “That’s Heimdall. I wonder if all twelve of Them are meeting here.”
“Who the devil are They?”
“Sh!”
The four bearded men nodded welcome to the newcomer. He took his place beside the Wanderer with lithe grace, and immediately began to say something to the older man, who nodded in rapt attention. Shea caught a few of the words: “—fire horses, but no use telling you with the Bearer of Bad Tidings present.” He nodded contemptuously toward Uncle Fox.
The Complete Compleat Enchanter Page 3
