Whatever Thor's chief concern might be, it did not seem to be the conduct of the two frightened men before him. The god looked grim, but, thank all the Fates, the cause of his grimness seemed to have nothing to do with the puny mortal men before him. "We were talking about Loki," he reminded his interlocutors, gently enough. "I suppose you fellows do know who Loki is?"
"Yes sir," said Hal. "In a vague, general way, that is."
"Well then, let me be more specific. It's important. Either of you see him anywhere, within the last few days? Now remember; he's a great shape-changer. Did either of you see anyone—or anything—that struck you as especially remarkable?"
"I can't remember anything like that, my lord," said Hal. "I mean, considering we've been in Valhalla until very recently. There were some strange things there—but I think not of the kind you mean." He looked at Baldur, who silently shook his head.
Hal was beginning to feel some of the strain that was paralyzing Baldur. In a way, Thor, in his matter-of-fact sanity, was more frightening than Wodan. People had described similar sensations on confronting Apollo. Whatever this god might decide to do, it would not be out of forgetfulness, or befuddlement. But there was a reassuring aspect too. Thor did not seem much interested in who Hal and Baldur were, or what sins they might have committed against Wodan—he only hoped that they might answer some questions for him.
Silently Hal was cursing himself again for getting into this at all. For being so greedy for gold, so big a fool, that he would stick his nose into gods' business for the sake of some farmland and fishing boats. How could he, with his experience, have fallen so completely for the ancient lure of greed?
Meanwhile, Hal's and Baldur's Horses, in the presence of Thor and his two huge, incongruous goats, had almost ceased entirely to move. The beasts were still standing as if frozen into sleep.
Thor seemed to have decided not to press his questioning any further. "Looks like a hard battle coming soon," he observed, to no one in particular. After studying the horizon in several directions and listening carefully—he briefly held up one huge hand for silence—as if to sounds that mere human ears could not expect to hear, Thor waved an abrupt farewell, climbed back into his chariot, and clucked to his outsized Goats, who scrambled into action. In a moment the god and his strange equipage were airborne and out of sight.
Hal mourned the loss of his borrowed Spear, but there was nothing he could do about it. "Let's see if the Valkyries are still in sight," he suggested. Baldur agreed, and volunteered to climb a tree—his joints and limbs were, after all, younger than Hal's.
"I won't argue with you there." Hal's body was starting to stiffen, in the aftermath of the battering he'd taken in the fight with Bran. He ached when he tried to move and ached when he did not. If he was still alive tomorrow, he thought, he would be lucky if he could stand on his feet without help. It was as if some enchantment had suddenly advanced him to about eighty years of age.
Baldur had done some fighting in Valhalla too, but had fortunately escaped without wounds, and he seemed to feel no aftereffects. Vaguely Hal could remember what it felt like to be that young. Now the young man nimbly shinnied up a trunk, and presently was peering outward from the upper branches.
"What word?" Hal called up to him.
"Looks like the Valkyries are all gone," Baldur reported. "I don't see them near the flames or anywhere else. We can go on at once," he concluded.
Moving with the agility of youth, Baldur had dropped from the tree again before Hal made any move toward the saddlebags on the young man's Horse. A moment later, the young man was once more astride Cloudfoot's back. His knees were practically touching the packaged gold, though plainly he had no suspicion it was there.
"Maybe," Hal offered, "we should wait a little longer to make sure that Wodan's not coming after us." If only he could think of some reason to get Baldur away from his Horse for one nice, full minute . . .
At this point the young man, thoroughly disillusioned by his experiences in Valhalla, seemed not even to care whether or not an angry Wodan might be pursuing them. Baldur was not going to be distracted now. He did care enough about one subject to say something before becoming airborne again. "I have been thinking, Hal, and now I understand the problem."
"Oh. You do?" By now Hal had hauled himself aboard Gold Mane again. He was going to make very sure that Baldur did not get away from him.
"Yes." Baldur had the air of announcing a great discovery. "It is not really Wodan who has turned senile."
Hal stared at him. "I got a very strong impression that he was about as crazy as two monkeys with—"
"No, what I mean is, the problem lies only with the avatar, not with the essence of the god. A Face cannot become senile, can it?"
"Well. I don't know. I never heard of anything like that."
"Of course it can't." Now Baldur was as certain as if he had been dealing with gods' Faces all his life, turning them out like cheap helmets in the smithy behind his mother's house. "Which means that the problem can be solved. It is just that the time has come for another man to put on Wodan's Face."
The northman stopped to consider. "I hadn't thought of that." True enough, he hadn't, because such a possibility hadn't seemed worth thinking about. Unless, of course, something were to happen to Wodan, which so far had seemed about as likely as the Einar drying up. "But you may well be right."
Their argument, or discussion, was interrupted by the arrival of Alvit, who as she rode up announced that she had been watching from a distance.
"I rejoice to see that Thor has not taken your Horses or your lives," was the Valkyrie's next remark, as she slid off her barebacked mount to stretch, in unconscious imitation of Thor. Then she looked at Hal. "What happened to your helmet?"
He shrugged. "I'm lucky I've still got my head."
Alvit had not paused to listen to the answer. "I have warned all the Valkyries to keep clear of the Thunderer," she told them. "I feared he might be grown contemptuous of Wodan, and would confiscate the first Horse he saw, and ride it into the flames, to see for himself just what Loki's fire is hiding. But what did he want of you? Was he curious to know what was happening in Valhalla?"
Hal shook his head. "Not very," said Baldur. "He was asking about Loki."
"In the tone and manner of one who tries to locate an enemy," Hal amplified. "But of course we could tell him nothing. Then he said that some kind of battle was about to start. Any idea what he meant by that?"
"The reasons for it I do not know, except that the creatures of the Underworld hate gods, especially Wodan. But the evidence that we will soon be fighting is very strong."
Hal said: "But you and the other Valkyries remain loyal to him."
Alvit was obviously troubled. "Most of my sisters are loyal—when they are loyal—only because they are afraid. The All-Highest devises terrible punishments for those he thinks have betrayed him. That is why you did well to flee."
"But you wanted us to go for other reasons. Why are you helping us?"
"I had thought there might be time to strengthen our forces before we had to fight, but it is too late for that. Wodan must fight for his life, and he will have no time for distractions. And you would be a great distraction now, so it is better that you simply go."
In the presence of the Valkyrie, Hal dared not say or do anything about the gold hidden in the saddlebags. He couldn't even suggest breaking out the food Baldur had packed, for fear that someone would open the wrong containers.
Baldur was obviously growing restless, impatient with all this talk. Now the young man insisted that he could delay no longer, and was going to ride immediately to Loki's Fire, and clasp his Brunhild in his arms. "You cannot stop me, Alvit, before I have done that, unless you kill me. When I have done it, I will give back this Horse."
"I have no intention of killing you, young man, and you may both keep the Horses yet a little longer. I have no need of them at the moment, nor does the All-Highest. What we need now is not more Horses.
" On the last words her voice came near breaking, in something like desperation.
Then she pulled herself together, thinking matters over in her serious way. "Yes, go to Brunhild—or get as close to her as you can. Stay there with her, and in a little while I will come in through the Fire and tell you whether Wodan has abandoned his pursuit."
"Could you bring us some food?" Hal asked. "That last feast was a little thin."
"Yes, I will try to do that," she agreed, and noted with approval that they had their water bottles.
"We thank you, Alvit," said Hal. "I still don't understand why you are doing this for us."
She hesitated before adding: "Long I have loved Wodan, too. But now there are things . . . it is strange, almost as if he has determined that his life will end. For his own good, some of us must disobey him." For a moment the Valkyrie seemed on the brink of weeping.
Hal wished that he could do something for her. He also wished that he could think of some excuse, any excuse, for swapping mounts, or saddlebags, with Baldur. But before he could come up with a good idea, Baldur was again on Cloudfoot's back, urging his mount toward the flames. This time Hal had to watch in silence as his farm and his fishing boats seemed about to vanish into the distance. All he could do was jump on Gold Mane and try to keep up with them.
In less than a minute the men were riding very close to where the flames still burned, and quickly they brought their Horses down to land, side by side, on the high hillside not far from the spot where they had first met.
Looking cautiously about, Hal made sure the Valkyrie was out of sight. Now he ought to be able to get his gold back in one way or another—without doing Baldur any damage, if that was possible.
The young man, his face working with some deep emotion, said to Hal: "You have been a true comrade, and I owe you more than I can ever repay."
"Never mind about that—wait! Hold up!" Hal had to force his own mount right next to Baldur's, and jostle him aside, to keep the headstrong youth from plunging right into the fire.
"Let me go!"
"Not yet! By all the gods and devils, man, hold off a moment! Can't you see we must think of what we're doing, before we attempt this? I might have some interest, too, in what's inside the flames." If you must plunge in there, give me my gold first. Then maybe I'll follow. But he could not quite bring himself to say that in so many words.
"What more is there to think of? Brunhild is in there, she may be dying, and I am going to—"
"You're still absolutely convinced she's there. Then—"
"Of course she is there. You heard Alvit."
"Yes, yes, but she's already been there for several days—how many is it now?—and she can wait another minute or two. Will you listen to me a minute? I propose we first try riding near the flames, and make sure the heat won't scorch us, that these magic mounts offer us protection." And Hal reached out and caught his companion by the jacket.
"Hal. Let me go."
"Look, I know you saw a Valkyrie do this trick, but it also might be a good idea to drench ourselves in water before plunging into that kind of—wait! Hold up, damn you!"
But Baldur had wrenched free, knocking Hal's arm away with a swinging elbow. The young man kicked his mount in the ribs again, and he was off, headed straight into the wall of fire. The Horse, as if accustomed to such a practice, did not balk or shy away.
Hal's cry went unheeded, and Baldur's mount bore its rider straight into the wall of flame. At the last moment the young man bowed his head so that his face was hidden between his arms, his shoulders in the tattered jacket tensing in the instant before the fiery tongues closed around them.
Raising his head along with his clenched fists, to hurl an oath of anger at the sky, Hal caught sight of something in the distance that stilled his outcry in his throat.
His vision was ordinarily quite good at long range, uncomfortably good in this case, and he had little doubt that the approaching object was a two-wheeled chariot. For some reason he felt vaguely relieved to see that the animals pulling it through the air did not look at all like goats. Then relief faded. At first he had thought there were two Horses, but now he could see that there was only one, and it had eight legs. There was a single rider, who seemed to be carrying a long Spear, a weapon even longer than the Valkyries', and ominously stouter.
Hal hesitated only briefly, taking one last look around. Baldur and his steed had disappeared right into the fire, and they were not coming out. Not immediately, anyway.
Hal's imagination presented him with an unwelcome sensation, the smell of cooking meat.
But Wodan was coming after him, and Wodan was angry. No doubt about it now. The man could feel the radiation of that wrath, even at a distance, and it felt even hotter than the fire. Like the approach of a piece of red-hot iron, or the imminence of a thunderbolt from a black cloud. Choking out a strangled oath, Hal closed his eyes, kicked his Horse savagely in the ribs, and went plunging straight into the flames after his companion.
* * *
15
For just a moment Hal's ears were buffeted by a huge noise. In his imagination it was equal to the roaring of all the flames that Loki in all his avatars had ever kindled. In the same moment, a fierce light came glaring at him, forcing its way in through his closed lids in the colors of blood and gold, far brighter than any natural fire.
But he felt nothing of the blasting heat that he had expected and instinctively tried to brace himself against. The motion of his bounding, airborne Horse kept on unchanged. Then the great light was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and the noise of the divine fire had faded to its usual muted roar. The plunging motion of Hal's mount stopped abruptly, and he thought he felt the Horse's four legs all come down on solid ground.
Opening his eyes, Hal nearly fell from the beast's back in astonishment. He had come through one fire only to confront another. He and Gold Mane had come to a standing stop in the middle of a corridor of clear space, some ten yards wide that ran curving away in two directions, between two concentric walls of fire, so that the strip of free space between them was shaped like a wheel's broad rim. The flames on each side were equally tall and bright, and for just a moment he feared that he would be roasted between them. But this fire was the work of a god, not ordinary nature, and the god had designed this curving space to be habitable by mortal humans.
The air immediately surrounding Hal and his mount was clear, free of smoke, and cooler than many a summer's day he could remember.
The ground on which Hal's Horse had braced its legs was mostly rocks and scattered tufts of grass, much like that he had observed outside the outer ring of fire. The chief difference was that in here the surface was almost flat.
The breath Hal had been holding broke from his lungs explosively. His mount had landed quietly and easily, and as if it found this environment familiar, was already tasting some of the grass that struggled to grow here just as it did outside the outer burning ring.
Within this narrow sanctuary, bounded inside and out by Loki's glowing barricades, the air was so quiet that Hal could hear the slight ripping sound made by his Horse's teeth as they worked calmly on the scanty grass.
A pebble's toss ahead of him stood Baldur's mount with Baldur still aboard, facing toward Hal. Cloudfoot was also calmly cropping winter grass. Both animals were behaving as if this little space of rocky soil were some ordinary pasture—somehow, Hal thought, the beasts must be able to distinguish Loki's handiwork from ordinary fire, and they felt no dread of it at all. Or perhaps—and this idea raised new questions—it was as if they had visited this place so often that Loki's handiwork was quite familiar to them.
From where Hal perched on Gold Mane's back, he could see no sign at all of Brunhild. Baldur, also failing to discover his beloved anywhere, shot one haggard, desperate look at Hal, then tugged at his mount's golden mane and kicked the animal into action, so that it bore him quickly away. In only a moment, beast and rider had vanished around the sharp curve of fire-boun
ded space. And in the next breath the youth and his Horse were returning, coming around the bend of narrow corridor from the opposite direction.
Raising both arms in a despairing gesture, Baldur gave a cry: "She is not here!"
Hal had already reached that conclusion and only nodded abstractedly. At the moment he was less concerned about Brunhild than he was about the fact of Wodan's furious pursuit. Hal found himself holding his breath, expecting at any moment the noise and fury of an angry god to come bursting in through Loki's outer fire-ring. Listening carefully now, the northman could even hear (or imagined that he could) the All-Highest out there somewhere, bellowing in a kind of rage that matched berserker Bran's.
Hal could only pray to the Fates that eight-legged Sleipnir could not breach Loki's barrier as easily as the Valkyries' Horses had. Of course Gold Mane and Cloudfoot had not been harnessed to a chariot. Now if it should occur to Wodan to borrow a Valkyrie's Horse . . .
If Hal was ready to forget Brunhild, Baldur seemed to have already forgotten Wodan. The young man's fears were of another kind entirely. Again he shouted: "She is not here!" And he waved both arms at Hal, as if he expected his mentor to tell him where she was.
Hal shook his head. "I kept trying to tell you it would be better not to get your hopes up—what're you doing now? Wait!"
Baldur wasn't listening. Instead, he had flung himself from his mount and was dancing and scurrying back and forth, getting as close as he could to the inner barrier of flame and trying frantically to see through it. If Hildy was not to be found in this wheel-rim space between the fires, then maybe she was in there, somewhere deeper inside Loki's sanctuary. There was a kind of logic to the idea. Bending and crawling, her lover brought himself as close to the ground as possible, evidently seeking a favorable angle of sight.
Muttering blasphemies against a whole pantheon of gods, Hal scrambled after the young man, trying with practically no success to get his attention.
In this fashion the two men had made their way almost halfway around the inner barrier when suddenly Baldur froze in position and let out a hoarse scream.
Gods of Fire and Thunder Page 18
