The Quest for Valhalla (Order of the Black Sun Book 4)

by P. W. Child

  Sam nodded. Eldard brought them each a beer from the fridge, “Captain says about 10 more minutes,” he announced.

  “So that is why Val was so protective of the vial when the museum robberies started,” Nina noted.

  “Yes.” She could see a flicker of longing in Gunnar’s eyes at the mention of his late wife’s name and her burning eyes looked over to Sam. She remembered him saying he wouldn’t know what to do if she had to perish, a cherished memory she hoped would be the essence of Sam’s feelings. It denoted a similar loyalty as that which she saw in Gunnar and the idea made her heart jump just a little.

  “Hello!” they heard Eldard chime and he raised his hand in an amicable wave.

  Nina, Sam, and Gunnar turned to see who he was greeting, and promptly joined in, waving with a smile towards the other boat which trailed happily a short distance behind them to the left. They found it endearing that senior citizens that mature still went out and enjoyed life, having no idea that the two old men from Tomar were not in Regensburg for the sights.

  ***

  When the four companions arrived at Keflavík International Airport, it was freezing. It was not quite into autumn, it was an odd weather day in Iceland. Fortunately, they had catered for such conditions with windbreakers and plenty of socks, not to mention, the daily intake of blood warming liquor. From there, they took a taxi to Reykjavík City where Nina booked them into a small motel where they could stay overnight. There was a quaint, white building with those lumpy walls one would expect of a structure erected in the previous century with bulging rocks and untrimmed beams of wood.

  Their accommodation was at the small house behind it, just peeking from the driveway. Brightly painted in red and green, the roof was also green to compliment the posts of the porch, upon which several large wooden benches boasted embroidered cushions made by the owner’s wife.

  After an unsuccessful dinner, Nina retired to her room in alarming haste, assuring the men that she was just very tired, even though she slept for most of the time on the plane. Her male companions noticed that her tone was subdued under shortness of breath and she constantly excused herself to go to the ladies room.

  “We have to get her something for that fatigue,” Eldard said as he sipped the last of his beer, trying to sound unassuming. Sam leaned forward on his elbows and spoke as quietly as possible.

  “Did you look up her symptoms?” he asked the big tattoo artist.

  He nodded, sinking his chin and looked at them, “I think it is Arsenic Trioxide they planted in her.”

  Sam felt his heart sink and Gunnar cleared his throat before asking, “How would they slow release it without feeding it to her every day, then?”

  “You saw that surgical method they used. Remember, we are not dealing with gay plastic surgeons with a penchant for branding pretty women with infamous symbology, pal,” Eldard said, thrusting the point of his index finger on the table with conviction. “These are the sickest Nazi motherfuckers of the lot. They have inexhaustible quantities of chemicals that the world’s best scientists had never even heard of. You are talking about people who have the knowledge to twist physics and alter genetic make-up as if they’re making toast.”

  Sam poured another shot of the local fire water and downed it. He caught his breath and shook his head wildly from the bitter aftertaste, then asked, “What is your take on the release of it, if you can think like them?”

  “I think they engineered a biological gel or something similar, containing a lethal amount of arsenate, which would bond to her tissue,” Eldard speculated. “That disk of flat skin? I think they smeared that stuff on the flesh under it and replaced the skin to seal it in. And ever since, small particles of it would be assimilated through tissue and blood, slowly poisoning her to death.”

  Sam felt sick; it was all one living nightmare. He was about to lose Nina, he was plagued by a mickey from hell that had him running from rabid dogs and she-males in his sleep and if he did not put out soon, it would literally be the end of the world.

  “That’s me for the night, lads,” he said suddenly, shoving his leftover beer toward the center of the table. They lifted their bottles in a salute and he went upstairs. When he passed Nina’s room, he could hear her throwing up, but he decided not to disturb her. Now that he had some idea of what was coursing through her bloodstream, he would figure out a way to find her treatment while they raced the enemy to Valhalla.

  Lethargic from the day’s travel, the alcohol and the ever-present vile elixir Sam, fell on the bed in the dark room. The lantern outside cast some light in through the window, but other than the square projected on his bed and floor, there was nothing but shadows and shapes around him when he closed his eyes. He did not even bother to undress to get into bed, just kicking off his shoes and shedding his jacket, and before he could gather the pillow to lay his head upon he fell into a deep sleep.

  Nightmare after nightmare hounded him, from the ice of Wolfenstein to the hell of the U-boats. Then he would fall from tall buildings or be trapped under a thin sheet of ice while Nina watched from above. Then she would drop to her knees on the window of ice between them so that he could get a closer look at her flesh falling from her bones while he drowned in the frigid water underneath. All the while, he would hear the horses from Walhalla running, neighing deep in his mind. As the water engulfed him again and again, Sam felt the sensation of hands reaching inside his mouth and prying his jaws apart.

  Suddenly, he awoke with a jolt of adrenaline so strong that he almost fell off the bed. Nervously touching his open mouth, Sam realized that it had been just another score of nightmares plaguing him once more. But in the dark of the room, something stirred in the corner between the cupboard and the wall. It was enormous and faintly luminous, while the awful echo of the horses remained in Sam’s ears. He was certain that he was awake, but the horses would not relent in their wailing and scoffing.

  From the shadows, it emerged as Sam sat up on the bed and retreated up against the headboard. Before him, mildly glowing, stood a horse. It was missing both coat and flesh, eyes and mane. Entirely made of bone, the skeletal animal pawed the wooden floor repeatedly with its left front hoof. Louder and louder it became, until Sam had to plug his ears with his fingertips. It dipped its head into a large, coppery bowl that bore ornate etchings and runes. There were four of these around the glowing horse and the row of bowls prevented the horse from progressing towards Sam.

  “What in God’s name?” Gunnar shouted crisply in his ears and Sam started from his vision. His eyes like saucers, he panted as the sweat rolled from his chest and face. Repeatedly, he pounded his fist on the floor, simulating precisely the sound of the hoof. Now he realized that Eldard had seized his wrist to make him stop.

  “What did you see, Sam?” Gunnar asked, his face twisted in eager sincerity warped by the play of light from the window.

  “We have to look for another horse, I think. A dead horse…pawing the ground with one hoof? And four huge…pots, I think?” Sam frowned. That was all he had. But as they had learned by now, once at the site, even the most absurd things had a way of making sense.

  Chapter 35

  “Tomorrow we must rise at dawn, whenever that is,” Lita sighed through her smoke screen. The odor of cigarillo smoke filled the room of the house where Lockhart and Slokin accompanied her. Now it was a hunting lodge for rent used by tourists and hunters. Lockhart had led them to the very same property where, as a child, he stayed when the killer collected him. A hundred nuances of emotion trekked through his soul at the first sight of the converted building where the hotel had stood during the Second World War.

  It was the last place he had tea with his mother and the ache of reminiscence grated his heart until it felt raw, yet he could not show it. He could not venerate her one last time, here in the town he thought he would never see again. As if played by fate, Lockhart’s room was the very room he and his mother had parted in before she took the SS-officer out to the mounds that terribl
e day.

  Inside the house, it was dank and smelled like old water caught in stone. For some reason, the stench comforted him, like the safe and eternal bed of a tomb. Lockhart did not want to die, yet he longed for the refuge of a sepulchre in the way of a cradle. Both served as a place of social absence, he thought, where no-one deemed one important enough to call upon. As infant or corpse, he would not have to be present, he would not have to make a living, he would not have to engage in company or be needed for tasks so that he was constantly hounded. Sometimes, he just wanted to stay in bed, or he wished he could just sit and think in the dusty darkness of his bedroom and not be called upon, not have to tread outside his own threshhold and enter the peril and betrayal of life.

  “Slokin. Coffee,” Lita asked in her nicest tone. Her feet, now in white socks, lay one atop the other where she sat in the high back chair, watching the imp concoct her beverage without a word. Slokin kept casting glances at her, deliberately, to make her aware that he needed to speak to her outside of Lockhart’s presence. Lita blinked slowly, her equivalent of a nod.

  “I suppose we must all get some rest, especially you, Master Lockhart,” she coaxed as she took her mug of hot coffee from Slokin. “I shall be waking you bright and early to take us to the site you saw in your dream. We have to see if it is the same one…”she hesitated, not wanting Slokin to know too much about Lockhart’s past, “…I read about in the file.”

  “Quite correct, Madam,” Lockhart smiled at her as he rose from his chair with a groan of old age frailty. He was only too pleased that he could excuse himself from such vile company and find a few hours’ solace in a bed, alone.

  When he was gone, Slokin threw his comical frame into a chair opposite Lita’s and latched his busy hands together like a housewife about to gossip. He whispered, “I have something to confess,” he started, “I think we are being played.”

  “By whom?”she asked in her abrasive voice, putting out her tobacco stick and nursing the hideous scar left in her thigh by the rune blades of Erika the Dead.

  “I could be mistaken, but I think Lockhart is faking the visions. When I exchanged the vial for the bratty academic, I could have sworn I saw Sam Cleave See-Walk for a moment,” he reported in a low voice. Lita looked shocked, then exasperated. With lightning speed she responded with a lunge toward him, violently pressing down on his skinny chest until he felt at one with his chair.

  “You idiot!” she grunted, abandoning momentarily, her restraint of voice. A massive blow struck the side of his face as she dealt him a tremendous bitch slap. “All you had to do was to determine if the compound in the silver relic was real. I trusted you! Not only did you fail at recognizing the contents, but you saw Sam Cleave’s moment…and you gave him the little bitch anyway?” Now she was unbridled, her knee firmly between his thighs, pressing hard against his scrotum. Pitched high in hysterics, she squealed hoarsely, “I should kill you for this, you inept piece of shit!”

  Slokin was disappointed in himself. While trying to implicate Lockhart as a traitor, he inadvertently exposed his own mistakes. He did not mind the devastating clout, but the knee in the balls was a buzzkill. Trying to get her attention with a raise of his index finger, he held his breath for the next shift in her weight that would no doubt have him clutching his nuts. Lita dismounted and paced furiously.

  “It’s alright, though. I found something you are going to love!” he smiled like a Hollywood bullshitter. She ignored him, but he pulled a paper from his pocket and waved it about to draw her attention.

  “What’s that?”she scowled, her eyes dark in the shadow of her eyebrows. Her dress moved on its own accord from the twitching tail she hid there. Under the fabric, she was lashing it with impatience.

  “This, my dear Lita, is the key to Valhalla,” he smirked with dodgy eyes ablaze with iniquity.

  Lita stopped pacing throwing out her hip in a stance of disbelief. She planted her hands on her waist and stared him down, “Oh, it is?”

  “Yes, it is. I procured this from an archive in Tomar, Portugal, when I went to speak to that old fool from the Portuguese Black Sun affiliate about The Brotherhood,” he bragged.

  “Carlos Oliveira?”

  “Yes, him. I found this in the Castle of Tomar. It is from an old ledger, but it has more than financial records. Have a look and tell me I am redeemed,” he sneered. Lita scoffed at him. His pathetic attempt at charm was wanting.

  Her heart jumped when she read through the scribbling in black, Indian ink on the back of the yellow rusted document. Recorded there in front of her eyes, was the half the number sequence needed to enter Valhalla, also naming the town where it was hidden. Supposedly, the other half of the number was inscribed in the skull bone of a child, Hermann Brozek, son of a Polish Brotherhood scribe . Lita looked up, her haunting eyes glistening with promise.

  “Staraya Ladoga. That is near Novgorod in Russia! Tomorrow we will take Lockhart there…and he will…supply us with the other half of the number,” she smiled. “You are redeemed.”

  In the dark of the staircase, the eavesdropping old man heard the toll of his gallows bell. He had to get the number, which he had memorised as a child already, to Nina’s friends before Lita and her demon ape killed him.

  “Two days until St. Blod. We are cutting it close,” Slokin said. “I propose we kill him now. He is slowing us down anyway.”

  The red haired bitch smiled, “Now. Tonight. Then we…pick his brain.” Lita giggled at her wordplay and lit another cigarillo. Rushing to his room, Hermann Brozek from Poland, now Herman Lockhart from Scotland, Chosen (Doomed) Secret Keeper of Valhalla, rummaged through his luggage. With a shivering sigh he closed his eyes and clutched the object he was looking for with great affection. Cell phone in hand, the old gentleman sat down on his bed and sent a text. He poured himself a stiff cognac and savored the smooth lick of alcohol infiltrating his body and senses.

  “I love you Mama,” he sniffed and lifted his glass aloft, “Hail Odin!”

  Outside, the quiet night became restless as if the spirit of Frau Brozek heeded the call of her son’s reverence. The window slammed open and the wind swept the fine curtains into the air like an ethereal sigh as the old professor laid down on his stomach, face down. Under his open mouth he placed the limonka grenade and pulled the pin.

  The Order and its crazy queen would never get to read the code in his skull bone. They would never open Valhalla and would never assume power. Not if he could help it.

  As the breeze caressed his hair like the lullaby of a mother’s hand, the Russian grenade erased the code forever.

  Chapter 36

  “One day till St. Blod. Christ, we’re never going to make it,” Eldard lamented, resting his forehead in his palm, his fingers poking through his unkempt, loose hair.

  “We will, if we just keep on keeping on. I vote we don’t sleep until we have gotten this thing done,” Nina said. Her slender hands were hugging a mug of tea and she sounded courageous, but she looked like a cadaver pulled from a river. She popped three painkillers into her mouth and drank them down.

  “Nina, have you noticed that your body is busy caving at an alarmig rate? You’re insane if you think you can do all this in your condition,” Gunnar said bluntly. “You have to get to a doctor and handle the consequences later.”

  “Fuck that!”she protested, but her body ached as she rebuked his opinion, rendering him correct. “Gunnar, I did not want to bring this up and come out like an insensitive bitch, but…” she did hesitate, but it needed to be said, “…Val died for this. The least we can do is to spearhead and give it our all. If she had to die for this, what is so fucking special about me?”

  Gunnar did not look at her, but his eye caught her tattoo again and in his memory he caught that familiar smell of Val’s hair. It hurt. He stood up, towering over Nina.

  “Where is Sam?” he asked.

  “Present,” Sam said from the doorway. He poured himself some good steaming tea and sat down at the table. �
��I won’t be long. Just need to warm up quickly.”

  Nina looked weak and faint. Her hair was tied back, revealing the moist glisten of her skin.The corners of her mouth fell downward, flanking cracked lips. Sam could see the grip of death’s hand reaching for her. He brought the hot tea to his mouth while looking at her and scalded his lips, sending a shockwave of adrenaline through him. Dropping the cup, he saw the kitchen fading and another scene unraveled before his eyes.

  A river meandered through a flat landscape of lush green, upon it, Viking merchant ships floating by the banks. The kitchen came back into view, with Gunnar and Eldard pulling him up. Then it fell away again, but he still heard their voices asking him what he saw. This was a sign that Sam was losing the ability to see, weaving in and out of reality instead of being wholly submerged for the duration. The river came back, and then, a settlement appeared as he walked on the uneven banks. It reminded him of a fishing village, and he described it to the others while he looked for clues. As the kitchen started melting into the borders of his sight, he desperately read a sign chiseled out on wood, fixed to a building. The vision vanished and reality enveloped him.

  Sam’s lips quivered, his eyes blinking rapidly, “Staraya Ladoga.”

  After looking up the name on Sam’s phone, Nina took steps to secure them her boyfriend’s private plane. She hated taking such liberty, but he had given her permission to use his staff should she ever have urgent need of them. This was urgent. Also, this was Russia.

  When they reached the longhouse exhibition at Reykjavík 871±2, all four of them started looking for Sam’s dead horse.

  “This is stupid. If he had a new vision, why do we still bother with this one?” Nina moaned with short gasps. Gunnar held her firmly against him and he could feel her entire body shivering.

  “Every vision has its own message,” Eldard replied. “We have to find them all. Otherwise it’s like having four keys for six locks, you know? Dead horse, dead horse, dead horse…” he carried on walking through the old hall, surrounded by so many artifacts and old furniture that it would be exceedingly easy to find a horse. It would, after all, stand out amongst the other objects. But soon, he found that it did not stand at all. Under the west wall of the longhouse he discovered large skeletal bones. Like a naughty schoolboy, the massive biker froze, surveying his surroundings for witnesses before crouching to scrutinize the large vertebrae and skull. Then he recalled Sam saying that the beast was pawing the ground with his hoof, and after some rather awkward investigation, Eldard found his prize.