Late in the fifth day, the pursuers had stopped to refill their water bottles at a place where a frosty trickle of a stream, still unfrozen, crossed the pathway under a rude log bridge. Hal's curiosity was alive and well, as usual.
"I still keep wondering why the farrier and his comrade did not choose to ride. Anyone who deals in golden horseshoes ought to be able to afford a couple of cameloids."
"How should I know?" Baldur, now that his great adventure was actually under way, was growing nervous and irritable, which Hal thought was a bad sign. "Maybe the dirt-eaters don't like to get as far above the ground as a cameloid's back would lift them. But their being afoot will make it much easier for us to follow."
Hal grunted something. Following the trail was certainly easy enough. Now and then the trackers even caught a glimpse of the distant pair whose footprints led them on. Only occasionally, at dusk or dawn, could the two slight, dark-hooded figures be seen against the snow. Once Hal spotted them no more than about two hundred yards ahead, and the trackers waited for long minutes before cautiously advancing farther. On and up they went, following a slight trail back and forth, working their way higher and higher into what, after the first few hours of real climbing, seemed an uninhabited and practically uninhabitable wilderness of rock.
The deeper Hal and Baldur were led into the foothills by the twisting path, the more difficult the going became. Hills melded together and became the flank of an undoubted mountain. All river valleys were well below them now, and they were no longer walking so much as climbing, hands as well as feet being necessary to get over some of the steep rock ledges.
"Well," the puffing northman told his colleague, "if those two damned moles can climb it, so can we."
"I only wish they would go faster," Baldur murmured back.
Ever deeper they went into the mountains, and ever higher. Steadily receding into the wintry distance was Loki's ring of magic fire, which still sprouted untiringly from the top of its rocky hill. Several times Hal caught a glimpse of the tall flames, hanging on the rim of the sky, like a signal of warning to the world. Now, at a range that must have been more than twenty miles, the god's handiwork seemed no more than a distant candle.
Once Baldur stood looking back at the fire, murmuring Brunhild's name.
At the end of one of their nightly rest stops, while they were waiting for the sky to lighten enough to let them begin a seventh day of tracking, Baldur suddenly asked: "Hal, I keep wondering about Wodan."
"What about him?"
"He is not merciful, that cannot be part of his nature—so if he releases Brunhild, it will be because he is honorable, and generous to his chosen warriors."
Days ago Hal had given up trying to understand Baldur's theology. "If you say so."
"I do say so, Hal—my friend. How much do you know about the gods?"
The northman studied his young colleague warily. "Just what everyone knows, or ought to know."
"What?"
"Well. That Wodan, and Loki, and all the rest are people just like you and me. Except that at some point in their lives, each man or woman of them picked up and put inside his or her head one of the things that we call Faces. And each Face gives its wearer tremendous powers."
"I believe that Wodan must be more than that." The young man's voice was low, but full of emphasis. "The Father of Battles must be something more than just a man with power."
Hal sighed. "Well, I don't want to argue. What makes you think I have knowledge of gods beyond the ordinary?"
Baldur shook his head, as if in disappointment with Hal's answer. "When we first met you told me that you'd once been shipmate to some god, but failed to recognize him."
"Hah, so you were listening after all! But the fact that I once made a fool of myself doesn't qualify me as an expert on the subject."
"You must know something more than you have said!"
"Not much."
"But I have never even seen a god!" Baldur clenched his fists and turned around. "If Wodan should appear now, up there on the mountain . . ." He seemed almost despairing at the prospect.
"You'd deal with the experience somehow. People do. If he appears, then at last you'd get to see what he looks like. Tell me, besides Wodan and Loki, what other deities are most popular around these parts? To which of them do people pray?"
"Well, there's Loki, of course. But I wouldn't say Loki is popular. Feared, yes. He's the subject of talk, not the object of worship." Baldur sounded wistful, adding: "Naturally, those who hope for leadership in battle universally choose Wodan."
"I suppose. Who else?"
The young man meditated briefly. "Thor may be even more popular with the common soldiers—of course he too is a good fighter."
"Of course." Hal was nodding. The mention of Thor had jogged his memory, brought back in sharp focus the face and voice of the poor woman standing in the road with her ragged children, snatching back her copper coins and mouthing the strange prayer, or blessing, with which she had anointed Hal.
He nodded again. "Thor with his hammer, a mean weapon by all reports. As I understand it, he throws it out to kill anyone or destroy anything he chooses. Then back it flies to his hand again. I've heard some stories about that. But what about the ordinary folk? Who do they worship? Not everyone wants to be a berserk warrior, froth at the mouth and ignore wounds."
"Certainly not." Baldur's tone became cool at this irreverence. "As for the commoners who are not fighters . . ." The young man had to stop and think; it was as if he hardly could remember anyone who fit that category. "I suppose Freya is most popular. She's undoubtedly the greatest goddess—and there are half a dozen lesser deities, male and female."
"No more than that?" Hal snorted. "Down south they have 'em by the hundreds."
Baldur's look seemed a polite expression of doubt. If such a swarm of beings claimed divinity, he seemed to be thinking, most of them must be frauds, or at least inferior, and he had no interest in them. "And do the people down there know of Wodan? Are they true warriors?"
"Warlike enough," Hal assured him. "And you may believe me or not, but few down there have ever heard the name of your All-Highest. Round the Great Sea, where I've been living the past few years, everyone would tell you that Zeus is the greatest god of all, practically the ruler of the universe. Of course Zeus frequently has his troubles with Hades, now and then with Neptune. He's chronically at war with Giants. And down there, if you ask who is the god of war, people will tell you it's a fellow called Mars, or Ares."
Baldur shrugged and shook his head, as if there could be no accounting for some people's crazy ideas. "Our gods, with Wodan leading, know that they will face monsters and Giants in the final battle of the world, when fire and flood destroy everything." He sighed. "Giants are another kind of being that I've never seen."
"I don't know about the end of the world. But no one around here has ever raised a temple or an altar to Zeus? Or to Athena?"
Baldur seemed to be trying to remember. "I've heard those names mentioned. But altars and temples? No, I don't think so."
Hal clapped him on the shoulder, an almost staggering blow. "Lad, it is time you got out in the great world, and discovered what most of the people in it are doing!"
The youth was steadfast in his gloom. "Brunhild is the only part of the world I care about. To join her, or to spend my life in the attempt, is the only adventure I am seeking now."
When their journey once more resumed, under a sky grown bright enough to let them identify the marks left by gnomes' feet in the white snow, Hal and Baldur got one more look at the glow of the distant fire-ring, now many miles away.
Drifted piles of old, crusted snow began to appear around the trail as they went on up. The trail itself was covered, and the footprints of the two gnomes were plain to see. The snow was naturally deepest in the places remaining shaded all day long. On and on the two men traveled upward, deeper into the mountains. It was good that they had equipped themselves for cold weather before settin
g out.
And, since they wanted to avoid freezing to death, a fire was beginning to seem like a necessity, not just a good idea. Hal kept thinking it over, and shivering, until he convinced himself that there was no real reason not to have one, if they built it in a sheltered place and kept it small. At night the Earthdwellers would be intent on their own climbing progress, steadily getting farther ahead, not much caring if someone else happened to be on the trail behind them. Quite possibly, as Wodan's artisans, they felt they had reliable magical protection against assault. Anyway, it was worth a few risks to keep from freezing. As night approached again, they moved aside from the trail, into the midst of a small stand of evergreens, and set about gathering sticks and twigs. Getting out his flint and steel, Hal soon had created a comforting small flame.
There was no game to be had, and even had there been, neither man was carrying a projectile weapon. The little grove offered nothing in the way of nuts or berries.
With the coming of daylight on the eighth day of their hike, they picked up the trail again and climbed on, trying to ignore the growling of their almost empty stomachs. Hal was thinking to himself that if there was a real Valhalla anywhere—and he had no reason to doubt that some truth lay behind the stories—then it would be hard to find a better setting for it than these mountains.
At one spot, a place where the footprints clearly went off the road and came back, Hal and Baldur investigated. At a little distance from the trail they found a kind of campsite, not much more than a small trampled area, where the gnomes must have sheltered during the previous day. Hal supposed they must be carrying a roll or package of lightweight fabric that they raised as a tent to ward off the dangerous sunlight. He searched the area diligently, but unhappily could discover no forgotten food. He and Baldur had been rationing the cheese and biscuits for several days, but now their supplies were almost gone. Right about now, a few roots and mushrooms would taste very good.
While encouraging Baldur to keep thinking about Horses, Hal kept alight the flame of his own secret enthusiasm. It was a good way to keep from thinking of his stomach.
Baldur never mentioned gold but kept speculating about the Horses. He claimed to know the names of several, had various contradictory ideas about exactly where the animals would be kept, how well their stables might be guarded.
Hal was careful not to argue too strenuously against even the most far-fetched details of his companion's scheme. But at the same time he wanted to prepare Baldur, without alarming him, to face the possibility of a sudden change of plan. The young man would have to come to grips with the fact that their chances of even laying eyes on one of Wodan's magic steeds were very low.
Of course Hal's chance of getting his hands on any scraps of gold might not be any better. But he thought that still remained to be determined.
And as for Wodan's Horses—Hal's mind boggled when he tried to visualize himself, or his naive companion, actually getting astride one of those marvelous beasts, let alone using them in a cavalry raid to plunder old Loki's fire-ring of the fair prisoner supposed to have been confined there.
No, if he and Baldur were really on the path to Wodan's stronghold, and he had to admit that now seemed to be the case, then more likely than not they would soon encounter some insuperable obstacle. Probably something—or someone— would appear to turn them back well before they actually got within sight of their goal, and at that point Hal would be ready to give in graciously and sensibly. The trick was in knowing when certain disaster loomed, recognizing the warning signs before it was too late. He had followed a similar plan for most of his life, and so far as he was still alive.
The trouble was, he didn't think that Baldur would calmly accept the postponement, if not the absolute cancellation, of his last hope of reaching Brunhild—not unless the denial came from Wodan himself.
And was there any reason to think Wodan would be even a little tolerant of casual trespassers? But there was no use worrying about that; not now, while the way ahead still lay open. Hal was advancing warily, thoroughly aware that persistent climbing might well bring a couple of mere foolhardy mortals abruptly to the brink of some kind of suicidal confrontation. Of course he fully intended to turn around before they ran headlong into anything of that kind.
And yet, in spite of all the alarms put up by common sense, despite the foreboding of gruesome danger, he was drawn irresistibly forward by the thought that there was still a chance—a slight, magical, insidious, and wonderful chance—that Baldur's scheme was not entirely crazy. The road to full success, to magic gold and magic Horses, to who knew what, might actually lie open—and there was a much better chance, Hal thought, of simply gaining information that could make him at least a moderately wealthy man.
Such trees as still grew at this altitude were sparse, stunted, and twisted with their lifelong struggles against the wind. Now squalls of snow, alternating with freezing rain, came swirling to pester the advancing climbers. Hal found he could no longer tell in which direction they were going, except that it was generally still up. As the howling wind increased in strength, it seemed to him in his more imaginative moments that he could hear laughter drifting down from the still unseen ramparts of Valhalla. He was careful to say nothing of this to his companion.
He was ready to accept that what he seemed to hear was only his imagination. And what he imagined was of course the laughter of Wodan's elite guard, whose ranks had been closed to Baldur by a Valkyrie's whim. They were the pick of the bloody crop, or were supposed to be, men who had been slain in earthly battle but whose spirits had been snatched by Valkyries from the jaws of Hades, saved from the Underworld. By the will of the All-Seeing, they lived on here, above the world.
According to the legends, the courage and ferocity of these warriors had so pleased the great god that he, through his flying emissaries, granted them immortality. They were superbly dedicated fighting men, miraculously restored to life and health after each bout of combat, who could imagine no greater happiness than to spend the remaining ages of the world in a splendid cycle of doing everything they loved, moving perpetually from evening feast and carousal to brief and dreamless sleep, then sallying forth to morning battlefield and staggering, wounded, back again to the hall of feasting, or being carried back by the Valkyries if they were freshly slain.
Trying to picture in his imagination the great game of perpetual slaughter, so lovingly described in many legends, Hal wondered if the players went through rituals and chose up sides anew each night. Or maybe it was just a glorious free-for-all, with no rules to speak of. Wodan's finest should be always honing their martial skills, keeping themselves perpetually ready for the final, world-ending battle in which the forces of good and evil were ultimately doomed to annihilate each other.
Hal could remember hearing, years ago, one version of the Valhalla story in which the Valkyries, when not riding forth on their recruiting missions, served the endlessly rehealed heroes nightly as willing concubines. Hal was not sure how well that system was likely to work, given that there were supposed to be only nine of the young women. Presumably by this time there ought to be thousands of heroes, or at the very least several hundred. Delicately he forbore to raise the subject with his companion.
In any case, Baldur's thoughts must have been running along similar lines—and once more there rose up in the young man his sheer dread of the god he worshiped but had never seen. Easy enough to say that gods were only humans who wore Faces in their heads; but when you knew that you were standing face to face with one, there was a little more to it than that. There were moments when it seemed to Hal that the young man's nerve was going to fail him.
Once, for no apparent reason, Baldur stopped suddenly in the middle of the trail. The youth was staring into the bleakness ahead and shivering seemingly with more than the wintry wind.
Instinct told Hal that a rough challenge would be the most bracing treatment he could administer just now. "What's the matter, young one? Your feet suddenly gone
cold?"
The young man sputtered for a moment, then choked out: "What will Wodan do to men who intrude uninvited upon his celebration?"
Hal kept his answer as casual as he could. Demonstrating what he considered heroic restraint, he kept himself from clouting Baldur alongside the head. "You mean, who come to borrow his Horses? Now's hardly the time to start to worry about that. How in the Underworld should I know? If he admires courage as much as the stories say, he might just give us credit for showing a lot of nerve, and invite us in. On the other hand, he might throw us off one of these cliffs—but as they say, a man has to die sometime.
"Anyway, aren't you the same one I heard only a couple of days ago, talking about becoming a berserker?" Trying to come up with some encouragement, Hal added a flat lie: "Even Hagan was looking at you as if he thought you might have the right stuff to join his band. I suppose you ought to take that as a compliment."
But Baldur only shook his head, as if in silent rejection of his crippled berserker father and all his works. Then he cast a long look back, along what was visible of the trail they had just ascended, marked now by four sets of footprints in the ankle-deep snow. Following his gaze, Hal was struck by the thought that if the gnomes started home before that record melted or was covered by a new fall, they would certainly know they had been followed on their way up.
Time enough, Hal told himself, to worry about that later.
Hal had the strong impression that the youth was fighting down an impulse to turn and run. But so far, Baldur was refusing to let himself do that.
At last the young man choked out a few quiet words. "I must see Brunhild again, in this world or the next."
"You know, young one, I really think you ought to make up your mind which it is you really want the most: Brunhild sitting in your lap, or yourself in Wodan's?"
The only response Hal got to that was an angry stare, and for a moment he was afraid that he had gone too far. Probably it was a question Baldur had not yet answered for himself.
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