The Bones of Giants

by Christopher Golden

  The hammer rang and trembled in his hand. Jormungand hissed and surged, slowly, inexorably, pushing its maw up toward the edge of the canyon. He raised the hammer again, blood raging with the lust for battle. For all those he had seen slain during this everlasting war, his children and siblings, his friends and comrades, he desired nothing more than to destroy the serpent. Somewhere nearby he heard the screaming howl of a monstrous wolf, and he knew his father and Fenrir were locked in bloody combat. He tasted the copper of his own blood upon his lips, his hair and beard matted with it.

  The ground shook again as the serpent rammed its head above the edge of that pit. He leaped at it, and the hammer came down and crushed the socket of its right eye. The eye exploded in viscous fluid, and he grabbed hold of the serpent’s scales and hung on as it thrashed. Lightning tore from the sky and struck it along the length of its body. The world trembled beneath them and the serpent tried to shake him off.

  Again the hammer came down, splitting the serpents skull.

  His heart rejoiced. It could die. Jormungand could die and there would be vengeance. He was bathed in the gore of its wounds, and yet still he clutched at the sharp edge of a scale and kept his grip. Raised Mjollnir again. The skies opened with a torrent of rain that fell with such sheer ferocity that the storm nearly tore him loose from his perch atop the serpent’s jaw. The hammer was stripped clean of gore in seconds and he hesitated.

  Upon his chest swung the pendant crafted for him centuries before by the Nidavellim. It was a representation of the serpent itself, of Jormungand. It banged against him, reminded him that victory was already hollow, all was already lost. The end had been determined long ago, and he could only play his part in that.

  But he would not retreat, would not allow the serpent one more inch of ground. He would not take a single step backward toward his fathers palace. Again he raised the hammer. Again the serpent bucked its head. And then he fell, tumbling to the ravaged ground in the rain. It rose up again and then lunged for him, tongue flicking out, fangs like swords glistening with venom.

  He climbed to his feet, but the serpent was too fast. As he lifted Mjollnir again, Jormungand snapped its jaws closed over him, rows of teeth slicing through his chest, snapping bones. His upper body inside the serpent’s mouth, face coated with venom, fangs grinding up inside his body against his ribs, he swung the hammer and cracked its lower jaw. It hung loose and the serpent roared its fury as he forcibly pulled himself up off those lancing teeth that had impaled him.

  It recoiled, pulling back and away from the palace, the one untainted hall in all the city. Painfully, clutching at his wounds, he rose. His skin grew tight across his face as though it might split, and his eyes were scorched by poison, his vision fading as blindness came on. The venom of the serpent was inside him, burning through his veins.

  He waited until it tried to come for him again, hissing through its shattered jaw, unable to snap any longer, hoping perhaps merely to crush him. Jormungand shot forward once more, and he leaped atop the serpents head again. The hammer came down and the thunder roared and the lightning split the sky, searing the serpents flesh over and over. With Mjollnir tight in his grip, he battered Jormungand’s skull again and again, pendant swaying around his neck.

  It shuddered, and then it fell with such force that the great hall of the Allfather cracked and collapsed in upon itself. The city was destroyed in total now. Asgard was no more.

  He slipped off the serpent and faced it one last time, this thing that his own brother had spawned. And then, blinded by poison, venom withering his flesh, he staggered backward, nine steps, giving up the ground he had sworn to defend.

  And then he died.

  When Hellboy opened his eyes, he was underwater. Only then did he realize he was drowning. His chest hurt and he gagged and sucked even more of the river into his lungs. He felt hands on his arms and shoulders, pulling at him, dragging him. Violence filled his head like a melody, and he drove his hooves into the river bed and thrust up out of the water. With a single sweep of his arms he knocked away the men who had been touching him, drowning him.

  Choking, gasping, he staggered to the riverbank with the wind-driven snow buffeting his face, but he did not fall. Several of the men rose and backed away. Only one dared come forward, hands raised in a calming gesture.

  “Hellboy, it’s all right. You’re all right.”

  “Touch me again and I’ll feed your innards to my goats!” Hellboy raged, taking two shaky but imposing steps forward.

  The man—not a man at all, though, was he—pulled off the goggles that shielded his eyes and stared at Hellboy dubiously. Not a man, not with that skin and those markings, the gills that fluttered at his neck.

  Abe, Hellboy thought. This is Abe. It frightened him that he had not known that.

  “What language is that he’s speaking?” Abe asked, glancing around at the other men. “Does anyone know it?”

  Another man, portly and tentative, moved toward the river’s edge now. A kind of odd smile was on his face. Professor Aronsson. Faces and names were coming back to him now, but they were crowded in his mind with so many other images, of monsters and bloodshed and winged women and flashing swords and battles that lasted centuries.

  “Some of the words sound familiar. It’s an ancient tongue, certainly,” Professor Aronsson said. “I think he said something about goats.”

  Abe shook his head and stared at Hellboy again. “That can’t be right.” He stepped forward, offering his hand. “Can you understand me? Are you all right? I thought you were drowning.”

  Suddenly very tired, Hellboy swayed a moment and thought he might throw up. “Abe?” He felt as though he had been drugged and his thoughts were only now beginning to clear. The images that crowded his mind were fleeting, beginning to fade, and he was left with the immediate sensory memory of having struck out at people who had been trying to… drown him. No, not that. Trying to help.

  Hellboy looked around, still unsteady. Fredrik Klar and his trio of silent, somewhat sinister associates stood just behind Professor Aronsson. Klar had his hand inside his jacket, and Hellboy realized there must be a gun in there. He almost laughed at the intense expression on Klar’s face, as though the man thought he could actually do Hellboy some damage that way. But now was not the time for levity. Abe was all right, and several members of the archaeology team had backed away up the riverbank, no worse for the wear save that they were wet and would now have to return to their accommodations. A man with thinning reddish-blond hair and a mustache sat nearby cradling his wrist and staring at Hellboy. Yet another lay on the ground, panting, as the woman who h?j.-i screamed when she first saw Hellboy went to his side.

  “Did I hurt anybody?”

  Professor Aronsson spoke in quick, rhythmic Swedish to the woman who knelt by the fallen man. She looked up, an expression of relief upon her face, and replied even as she helped the man to sit. From the look of things he had only had the wind knocked out of him. The man who cradled his right hand said something in Swedish as well and began to stand, wincing in pain.

  “Anders believes he has broken his wrist, but other than that, it appears we are all well.”

  “Jeez, I’m sorry,” Hellboy said, hoping Anders understood. “Don’t know what got into me.”

  Boots sliding on the snow near the river’s edge, Abe moved to his side. “I can’t believe you aren’t hurt worse. But that lightning scrambled your eggs, I think. What language was that you were speaking?” Hellboy frowned. Lightning?

  He remembered then, the pain that surged through him, the burning in his veins as the venom… no, no, the lightning… tore into him. Agony had torn through him, and he had staggered backward into the river. Nine steps backward, he thought, although it seemed odd for him to remember exactly how many steps.

  Yes, the lightning. It had struck him just after he had picked up… “The hammer?” Hellboy rasped tiredly. Slowly, anxiously, he glanced down at his right hand and saw the huge war hamme
r with its engrav­ings still clutched in his grasp. And he knew it.

  Mjollnir, he thought, and his head filled with images again, horri­ble images of giants and journeys across the evening sky with thunder rolling along beneath him.

  “Gahhhh!” he shouted, and he tried to throw the hammer down.

  It would not come free of his hand. He could not open his fingers. The hammer was fused there as though it had been welded in place. He swung it, stared at it again.

  “Oh, crap.”

  “No kidding, huh?” Abe replied.

  The amphibian glanced around at the others, most of whom had already begun to go back to work buzzing around the huge dead husk just a short way up the riverbank. Professor Aronsson approached slowly, gaze ticking from the hammer in Hellboy’s hand to the gray sky and then back down again. It took a moment for Hellboy to realize what he was waiting for. More lightning. Hellboy flinched and followed the professor’s upward gaze, but there seemed to be no more lightning forthcoming.

  “Guess you’re stuck with it until we can figure out how to get it off,” Abe observed. “You all right otherwise?”

  Hellboy considered before he answered. “No. I don’t think so.”

  But before Abe could respond, Klar approached cautiously. The officious little man with the sculpted blond hair stood before Hellboy as if at attention.

  “That… artifact is the property of the Swedish government. You will release it,” Klar insisted.

  Abe sniffed. “Maybe you haven’t been paying attention.”

  “Or maybe he’s just stupid?” Hellboy suggested reasonably. “Look, Mr. Klar, I don’t want this thing attached to me, but it’s not exactly in my control, is it?”

  “You were brought here to investigate,” Klar went on stiffly, gazing up at Hellboy and not backing off in spite of the other’s imposing presence. “It is upon you, then, the responsibility to find a way to separate yourself from that artifact. Until you are able to do so, you will not be permitted to leave Sweden.”

  The distress on Abe’s face was pitiful to see. “Now wait just a minute. We came here on a consultation. You can’t just—”

  But Hellboy was barely listening. Klar’s tone had woken something in him. Thunder and lightning. The roar of warring giants. The clash of sword against shield. He sneered, baring his teeth, and bent down over Klar to glare at the man.

  “Hold your tongue, little man, if you wish to keep it in your head.”

  Hellboy’s eyes went wide and he clapped his left hand over his mouth. “Did I just say that?”

  “No idea,” Abe replied. “Whatever you said, it wasn’t in any language I’ve heard before. Maybe we should talk, huh? Better yet, let’s call home. Dr. Manning may have an opinion about this, and you can bet Kate will.”

  Hellboy felt the weight of the hammer in his grip, and yet in some ways it had no weight at all. He studied the markings on the side, the two lines that swirled up and curled under, and suddenly he understood what the symbol represented. Yggdrasil. It was the world tree, the foundation of all life upon the nine worlds. And he had not gotten that from studying.

  “Good idea,” he muttered without looking up.

  When he did, Klar was still standing in his way, though the man looked both unnerved and slightly miffed to have been so thoroughly ignored. Professor Aronsson was behind him, still obviously fascinated. The scholar gazed up at Hellboy in wonder.

  “Can it truly be?” Professor Aronsson asked, though the question seemed to be directed to no one in particular.

  “Yeah,” Hellboy said slowly. “Yeah, I think it can.” He stretched, his muscles aching. His teeth stung like he had been chewing aluminum foil, and there was a metallic taste in his mouth. From the lightning, he figured. You got hit by lightning, he reminded himself, still amazed by that. Somehow it was easier to confront that than to spend any more time considering the hammer. Mjollnir. He knew it was, because whatever lingered inside the weapon itself, like the sound of metal striking metal echoing down through the ages, had once been aware. It had its own identity, he reasoned.

  “Its own memory,” Hellboy muttered, staring at the hammer.

  “Come on,” Abe urged. “We’ve got a lot to figure out and I want to do it somewhere warm. If there’s any warm to be found in the Arctic.”

  Hellboy allowed himself to be propelled along by his friend. Klar hesitated only a moment before at last moving aside. The thin man grumbled and pursued them as Professor Aronsson led them back up the ladder and over the hill to the valley where the trucks awaited.

  Once in the passenger seat again, Hellboy tried to rest. His eyes closed as the engine roared to life, but instantly he was barraged with images again, and not merely that, but sounds and scents. He saw stumpy, gnarled beings in black armor and thin, exotic creatures with copper skin who moved like wraiths. The urge to crush them beneath the hammer was powerful.

  Somehow, with the rumble of the truck over the frozen land, he began to drift off. In sleep, though, another image superseded the others—an enormous beast clad in fur, ice hanging in ridges from the folds of his garments. In the midst of a blizzard, he saw it staring down at him, easily ten times his height. Face a blue-white, hair and beard white with a covering of snow, eyes like orbs of clear ice, gleaming from within with an insidious blue glow. The axe over its shoulder covered with frost.

  It laughed at him.

  The truck bumped over a rut in the road, and the stumps of Hellboy’s horns clacked against the passenger window. His eyes snapped open and he stared out at the harsh terrain. The sky was still gray but the wind had died now and the day was clear.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  Then he turned to look at Abe, who huddled inside his parka, eyes closed, also resting. Klar was behind the wheel again, but now they had another passenger. Professor Aronsson looked at Hellboy with great concern.

  “What is it, my friend?” the professor asked. “Something is haunting you.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Hellboy grunted, sitting up. He rested the hammer on his lap and it was starting to annoy him, having to carry the damn thing around all the time. He cast a hard look at Klar. “Turn this thing around, Mr. Klar. We’re going the wrong way.”

  Klar only spared him a sharp, angry look before returning his focus to the road ahead. “We are driving to Skellesval so that you may contact your superiors. This was at your request, I remind you.”

  “Hellboy?” Abe asked quietly from the backseat.

  “Turn it around,” Hellboy told Klar again. “We’re going north. There’s some­thing up there that’s… not right.”

  The trucks rolled north approximately seven miles before Hellboy instructed Klar to stop. He had to open the door with his left hand and then he climbed out onto the hard-packed snow. The truck’s shock absorbers squeaked loudly and it rocked as he took his weight off it. The windstorm that had raged at the location of the body’s discovery was nonexistent here. More than that, the ominous gray clouds above had given way to a clear sky that was almost pure white, as if it too was solid and covered with snow.

  “At least tell us what we are likely to find here,” Klar said, walking up beside him. The man had an almost permanent frown now and his lips were pursed as though he had a great deal more to say but did not dare.

  “I don’t know,” Hellboy replied honestly. “But it’s connected. I can feel it. All of this feels… familiar to me somehow.”

  “Or maybe to that?” Abe noted, pointing at the hammer.

  Hellboy raised it up as though saluting his friend. “Maybe.”

  Professor Aronsson was staring at the hammer again, but then he met Hellboy’s eyes. “This feeling you have. You cannot offer more detail. But are there other feelings?”

  Taken slightly aback by the question, Hellboy did not respond immediately. After a moment, he laid the war hammer across his shoulder casually and looked out over the snow-covered hills and the mountains in the distance. He shrugged. />
  “Yeah. Like pictures flashing in my head. Fighting. Monsters. That kind of thing.”

  “You’ve done plenty of monster fighting,” Abe reminded him, his lips thinner and grayer than usual thanks to the cold. They shivered.

  Hellboy nodded. “Plenty. But these aren’t my memories.”

  They were all silent for nearly a full minute as the other government agents came up from the second truck. The men were armed with automatic weapons. Hellboy frowned at the sight of the guns. He didn’t like guns at all and was disturbed that Klar’s men had been transporting these things without his knowledge. Not that it was any of his business, but still, he would have liked to know.

  “Well?” Abe asked.

  “That way,” Hellboy replied, pointing west. “You up to it?”

  Abe did a courtly little half-bow. “Lead on, god of thunder.”

  Hellboy shot him a hard look. “That’s not funny.”

  “Who’s laughing?”

  They trudged across the snow, over hills that gradually increased in size, for more than a mile. Though Hellboy felt drawn more and more strongly toward that spot, he also worried about Abe. His friends face had taken on the same greenish-gray hue as his lips, and the amphibian had been mostly silent for the trek. He had no idea why the cold should bother Abe so much—he was cold-blooded, after all—but in the end decided, that while it was obviously uncomfortable for him, the weather would probably not be too detrimental. As long as they did not spend too much more time out there on the frozen landscape.

  He might have turned around then anyway for Abe’s sake, as well as for Professor Aronsson’s. The portly man had begun breathing heavy after the first hill and many times they had to pause and wait for him. Klar’s lackeys seemed in fine health, but if they had not been, Hellboy would have happily left them and their automatic weapons behind.

  The hammer seemed to hum in his grasp, a buzzing murmur as though it were resonating like a tuning fork. And the closer they came to their destination, the more certain Hellboy became that something insidious was going on here. Though the day gradually became more and more pleasant, the sky blue and to investigate further, but Hellboy searched the many pouches and pockets on the belt around his waist and came up with a small but powerful flashlight. He led the way, and they took a closer look at the runes. Some were indeed etched in the wall and others painted with ochre dyes, and possibly blood.