Chapter XX
Ragnarok
Thor's hammer smashed down, and the first two Jotuns fell back with crushed skulls. They pitched off the stair to the depths below. Arrows from enemy archers farther down the stair whizzed up through the lightning-seared dusk and rattled off our mail, or struck down men among us. Freya's bow kept twanging. Each time she loosed an arrow, her clear cry sang loud in my ears.
I tried to keep her near me as I fought beside Thor and tall Vali, desperately trying to hold back the Jotuns. But the stair was wide enough only for three of us to fight abreast. Thor, crimson with blood from many wounds, swung his hammer like a demon of destruction. Yet we were forced up the stairs. Vali dropped with an arrow in his eye, and an Aesir from behind rushed to take his place.
Upward we were pushed, to the top of the stair, the very edge of the cliff. There we hacked with sword and ax. The terrible weapon of the Hammerer whirled and screamed with such fury that the Jotuns could not force the narrow way.
"Make way for me!" pealed Loki's silver voice from below, through the clash of battle and the storm's roar. "I will force the way!"
"I am waiting for you, Loki!" bellowed Thor to the arch-traitor.
Lightning flared again in a continuous blinding flame. It showed Loki's golden helmet flashing up amid the Jotuns crowded on the stair. And it showed, too, a slimy, black, scaly monster whose coils rippled up the steps as it advanced before its master.
"Iormungandr comes!" cried Freya. "The Midgard serpent!"
The Jotuns hugged the cliff side of the stair. Even they were appalled by their dread ally as the incredible snake writhed up toward us. Thor raised his hammer high. Like a shooting black thunderbolt, Iormungandr propelled himself at the bearded giant.
In the lightning streak, I saw the snake's giant spade-shaped head darting with the speed of light. Its opaline eyes were coldly blazing. Its opened jaws emitted a flood of fine, green poison-spray that covered Thor's crimsoned figure.
"My oath to Frey!" roared Thor, and his hammer flashed down.
The snake, with more than human speed, swerved to avoid that terrific blow. But not so swift as Thor's stroke was its swerve. The steel head of Miolnir smashed down upon the spade-shaped head and ground it into the rock of the stair. The hammer itself shivered to fragments from that tremendous stroke.
Iormungandr's monstrous body writhed in its death-throes, flinging Jotuns from the stair to death. Then the serpent's great body fell over the edge, dropping to the sea far below.
"Slain — my wolf and serpent slain!" raged Loki's voice. "Vengeance, Jotuns! Vengeance on Thor!"
The giant was staggering almost helplessly. The helve of his broken hammer suddenly fell from his hand. His red face grew pallid through the blood and green poison that coated it. I sprang with Freya to support him. The few score Aesir warriors left were trying to hold back the Jotuns. Loki's sword was stabbing in deadly strokes among them.
"I am sped," gasped Thor. "The poison of Iormungandr enters my wounds. Help me to Valhalla, for Asgard is lost. There still remains that which Odin bade me do."
Freya and I stumbled with the reeling giant away from that hopeless battle. Our last Aesir warriors could not hope to hold back Loki and his ravening horde. The unending drum-roll of thunder was crashing over Asgard. By the sheeted lightning, we saw Aesir women running calmly to stand beside their men in death. We staggered with Thor into the torchlit entrance of Valhalla castle.
"To the chamber of — the pit-road — to deep Muspelheim — take me there!" Thor gasped.
As we entered Valhalla castle, I heard a wild, wolflike shout of triumph behind us. I looked back. The last Aesir resistance had been overcome, and Loki and the Jotuns were pouring onto the lofty plateau of Asgard. Some of the Jotuns already were running to open Asgard gates to those who battered them from Bifrost Bridge. Women who had rushed out to seek their dead mates were being cut down everywhere.
"Asgard has fallen!" moaned Freya, her blue eyes stricken in the lightning flare. "Loki triumphs!"
"No!" cried Thor in a startlingly great voice. "Never shall Loki reign triumphant in these halls. Lead me on!"
Freya snatched a torch from a socket as we entered the passages of Valhalla. We stumbled past the great hall where Frigga still sat motionless beside Odin's body. On we went, down into the dark passages to the chamber of the pit that led to fiery Muspelheim.
Swaying blindly, Thor pressed the runes on the door with a swiftly failing hand. The door swung open and we entered. Immediately the bearded giant crumpled standing against a wall. Fighting to retain consciousness, he pointed to the square silver box that held the remote control of the sea-gate in the roof of the fiery underworld.
"Give me that control box, Jarl Keith," he whispered in a weakening voice, "that I may open the gate far below and let the waters of the sea rush down into Muspelheim upon the atomic fires. It was my father Odin's order to me. Yes, the atomic fires will be smothered and their radiations will be ended. This will no longer be a place of eternal youth and warmth."
"But when the sea water strikes Muspelheim, there will be an explosion that will wreck this land!" I protested.
"And that, too, would be well!" Thor shouted, swaying. "Let the land be wrecked before Loki and the Jotuns reap fruit of their victory and become a dread menace to all the rest of Earth. It was Odin's warning — Loki must not be allowed to menace all the world!"
He fell heavily to the floor. But he raised his great head and his voice came chokingly:
"Give me the box!"
I heard the quickly approaching roar of Jotun voices from Valhalla's halls above. I heard the shriek of the last Aesir women being cut down by the followers of Loki. In my mind unfolded a shocking vision of Loki, using his overwhelming powers of evil science to dominate all the outside world. I sprang toward the silver control box and was turning to hand it to dying Thor, when Freya screamed.
A man burst into the chamber. Loki's angelic face was a hell-mask of rage. The sword glittered in his hand and his blue eyes were blazing.
"I knew the Aesir would seek thus with my own ancient handiwork to snatch triumph from me by destruction," he said. "But you are too late."
He sprang at me with tiger swiftness, his sword raised. I ripped out my own weapon, but Loki's blade was already stabbing through my shoulder like a white-hot iron. I reeled, senses failing from that agony, dropping the silver control box. Freya darted forward with a wrathful cry, and I saw Loki hurl her back against the wall.
"You have lost, Aesir!" taunted Loki maliciously. "Asgard is mine, and the last Aesir falls to the swords of my Jotuns."
He did not see the great shape rising behind him. Thor, roused by sound of Loki's hated voice, had clutched the rock wall with his nerveless, bloodily tattered fingers and dragged himself erect. Involuntarily I recoiled from the staggering, ominous, black-fleshed figure. But Loki was caught unprepared. The giant hands stole close — and clutched Loki's white neck!
"Turn the knob upon the control box, Jarl Keith!" Thor roared.
Loki stabbed his dagger blindly and furiously back into Thor's breast, battling venomously to free himself. I lunged forward and snatched up the silver box. I seized the knob upon it and turned it as far as it would go.
From the pit-mouth at the center of the chamber came a dull, distant roar of rushing waters. Then a terrific shock rocked Asgard to its foundations. Blinding steam swirled up from the pit with a ravening sound.
"Fool!" shrieked Loki as he tore free from dying Thor.
He hurled himself at me, seeking to snatch the control box from my grasp. I thrust him back with the last of my strength. Through the scalding steam that filled the chamber, Loki staggered backward — and reeled straight into the pit!
A fading scream came up from the roaring cloud of steam as he plunged down into the abyss…
All Valhalla castle was rocking wildly above us. One fearful earth-shock followed another. Wild yells of panic chorused from above, comin
g thinly through the tumult of grinding mountains. Freya was flung against the stone floor, and I stooped frantically over her.
"It is well!" choked Thor. "Asgard and Midgard shall die with the Aesir!" As he sagged to the floor, he raised his dying face toward me. "Save Freya if you can, Jarl Keith. If you can reach your flying ship, you may escape the death that stoops now over all this land."
His eyes blazed up with the last light of fast departing life. For a moment his voice rolled out as strongly as of old.
"Skoal to the Aesir! Skoal to the great race that is gone forever!"
Then his bearded face sagged to the floor in death.
I helped Freya to her feet and dragged her out of that scalding, steam-filled chamber. The Earth-shocks were becoming more violent with each moment. The crash of falling masonry was ominously loud.
"We can't stay here any longer!" I cried to her. "But if we can get to my plane, we can escape."
"Let me die here with my people," Freya moaned, her white face agonized. Abruptly her eyes cleared and she clasped my arm. "No, Jarl Keith. Even now I wish to live for you. But can we escape?"
I stumbled with her up through the shaking, grinding halls of Valhalla castle. The Jotuns had fled or been buried. The scene outside the castle was appalling. Storm still blackened the sky. Lightning flared and thunder roared, but all noises were drowned by the terrible grinding crash of the Earth-shocks.
The castles around the edge of Asgard were being shaken down into ruined masses of masonry. The Jotuns were fleeing wildly down toward their ships in the fiord.
I hastened with Freya toward Bifrost Bridge. A terrible roar beneath us heralded the new shock that flung us off our feet. From cracks splitting in the solid rock of Asgard, wild clouds of steam rushed up. There was a prolonged roar of falling stone. Freya cried out. I looked back just in time to see great Valhalla collapsing into flaming, tumbling ruin.
By this time we had reached Bifrost Bridge and were stumbling precariously across that corpse-littered, dizzy, trembling span. The rainbow bridge abruptly rocked beneath us, threatening to throw us into the crazily boiling sea far below. Some Jotuns were escaping ahead of us, paying no attention to us in their mad panic.
My plane suddenly loomed out of the stormy dusk. The Jotuns, in their fierce eagerness to get into Asgard, had not even molested it. I pulled Freya into the cabin. The rocket motor roared into life, and the plane rushed along the quaking field and lurched into the air. Upward we climbed, the ship bucking and rocking in the terrific currents.
As we climbed higher and headed northward, I saw the full extent of the disaster that had smitten the hidden land. Midgard and Asgard, rocking wildly and shaking the rainbow bridge between them into fragments, were sinking into the sea, shrouded with steam.
The titanic explosion caused by the inrush of sea upon the raging atomic fires of Muspelheim was forcing the whole land to collapse upon that buried underworld. Before our eyes, as I fought to keep the plane aloft, the land solemnly sank.
There was nothing but sea and veils of steam. The blind-spot refraction around the whole land instantly vanished. The rhyme of the rune key had been fulfilled.
Ragnarok had come — the twilight and doom of the Aesir, destroying them and their amazing, wonderful civilization — and also their destroyer…
Epilogue
Of my great adventure, little remains to tell. Our night back across the frozen ocean to the expedition's schooner was without mishap. I shall never forget the amazement of Doctor Carrul and the rest of the expedition's members, when I landed my rocket plane beside the Peter Saul. Feverishly they asked excited questions when they saw Freya and the bloodstained, battered helmets and mail we wore.
I told them the truth, though I suppose I should have known they could not believe my story. But for their disbelief, I cared little. Nor did I care about what happened after our return to New York. The expedition included in its report a statement that Keith Masters, physicist and pilot, had returned in a delirious condition. They said I had been caught in an Arctic storm, and had brought with me a woman who was obviously a survivor from some storm-wrecked Norwegian ship.
I know now that the smug skepticism of modern men is not to be shaken lightly. Far in the north, beneath the frozen ocean, lie the shattered ruins of the hidden land I trod. Though men may some day penetrate to that submerged, lost land and lay bare the broken stones that once were Asgard's proud castles, they will not wholly believe.
Nor can I entirely blame them. For there are times when even to me all that I experienced takes on the semblance of a dream. It certainly seems like a dream that I rode over Bifrost Bridge with Odin and the warriors of Asgard. Did I really sit in Valhalla's high hall and feast with the nobles and captains of the Aesir? How can I be sure I fought side by side with Thor against Loki and his hordes, on that last great day?
But to reassure myself that it was no dream, I have only to turn and smile gratefully at Freya, my wife. She is dressed now in modern garb, but with the same bright golden hair, sea-blue eyes and slender grace as when I met her first on the cliffs of Midgard. For always Freya is beside me, and not one day have we ever been separated, nor will we ever be.
We do not speak often of lost Asgard and its people, though always they are in my mind as I know they are in hers. But on one night each year, the night of that doomsday eve when we feasted in Valhalla before the coming of the enemy, I pour wine into two glasses and we drink a toast. And our toast is in the words that Thor spoke from dying lips.
"Skoal to the Aesir, to the great race that is gone forever!" I say as I raise my glass.
And from across the table comes Freya's sweet, sorrow-filled voice, whispering her reply.
"Skoal!"
And we drink in memory of the greatest people Earth has ever known.
The End
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A Yank at Valhalla Page 14
