The Bones of Giants

by Christopher Golden

  Hellboy stretched and scratched at the back of his head, then went out into the corridor. The second floor seemed very quiet so he went downstairs, where he tried to ignore the damage in the foyer. Time to talk to Brokk and Eitry, see what sort of help they were willing to provide. But when he opened the front door, there was no sign of the Nidavellim. A few cars passed by on the cobblestoned street and Hellboy saw an old woman swerve as she stared at him while driving past. He stared back, and her car sped up.

  An elderly man walking a dog that looked more like a wolf went by at the bottom of the steps and did not even look up. After he had gone by, Hellboy went down to the sidewalk and around both sides of the house. There was nothing to indicate a struggle, but the Nidavellim were gone.

  Okay, he thought. Can’t count on those two.

  Though he wondered what had become of them and whether or not they would be back, he wasn’t about to wait around for them. Back inside, Hellboy shut the door and walked deeper into the house. He glanced into the parlor but found it empty. With a frown, he began to wonder if Abe and Pernilla had left the house. As if in answer, he heard a metallic banging from the back of the house and followed the noise until he discovered the small kitchen there.

  A small, slightly lopsided table was pushed against the back wall beneath a wide open window that looked out upon a slightly overgrown garden. The table was set for three. There were small pitchers of milk and juice, along with a small basket of thick toast.

  Pernilla stood in front of the stove frying eggs in a pan. A fragrant mixture of sausages, onions, and peppers cooked in a skillet beside it. His tread was heavy, and Hellboy knew she could not have failed to hear him, but she did not turn as he entered the kitchen. He was about to break the silence when he noticed her shoulders hitching, and she wiped at her eyes.

  Aw, Jeez, he thought, shifting awkwardly.

  “Smells great,” he said. “But you didn’t have to cook for us.”

  Again her hand fluttered up, and she dabbed at her face. “It’s no trouble. Abe is taking a bath. Would you tell him that breakfast is almost ready?”

  For a moment he only stared blankly at her back. Then her words sank in, and Hellboy turned to go. In the hall he paused and turned to look at her again. The way the doorway seemed to frame her made him feel like an intruder, a peeping torn.

  “Pernilla. We’ll find him.”

  She waved at the air, still without turning. “Let us speak about it over breakfast. There are things you promised to tell us, and things you should know as well.”

  Hellboy frowned. Well, that was cryptic, he thought. But he could not hold it against her. Pernilla had a lot to deal with and she didn’t need him hovering around while she was crying over her father’s mysterious departure the night before.

  Putting aside his curiosity about her comment, he went back down the hall and upstairs. The door to Abe’s room was halfway open, and Hellboy knocked once and called his name before stepping into the room. A quick glance around confirmed that Abe was not there. His clothes were hung like a half-hearted scarecrow from one of the posts at the end of the bed. He did not particularly want to disturb Abe in the bath, but Hellboy was also in no rush to go back down to the kitchen and be alone with Pernilla again. Besides, she had asked him to let Abe know it was time for breakfast.

  With some reluctance he went down the hall to the bathroom and rapped on the door. “Abe. Pernilla says breakfast is almost ready.”

  As he waited for a response, it occurred to Hellboy that he could use a bath himself. He did not want to crack the tub, but thought that if he were careful he could manage it. Not that he ever really stank. Once upon a time a Bureau parapsychologist he worked with had observed that Hellboy smelled like dry-roasted peanuts. The guy had no idea why he would find such a comment insulting, and in retrospect Hellboy saw his point. There were a lot of worse things he could smell like. Still, the description had stayed with him. When he needed a shower, the way he did now, he always figured he smelled like a whole lot of dry-roasted peanuts. Stale ones.

  Hellboy frowned and rapped at the door again. “Abe?”

  He listened. No sound came from within that room. No running water, no movement. His mind flashed again to the front of the house and the absence of Eitri and Brokk. For the third time, Hellboy knocked. He counted to ten and when there was still no response he turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  The bathroom was empty. Or, at least, that’s what Hellboy thought at first glance. The tub was filled nearly to brimming with water but it was dark inside. Something shifted and the surface of the water rippled. Cautiously, Hellboy took a step forward and peered into the tub.

  Abe lay submerged, gills fluttering slightly in the water, a look of peace upon his features. His eyes were closed and Hellboy wondered if he was asleep in there. The urge to retreat was very strong. He did not want to disturb his friend. At the same time, however, the trepidation he had felt a moment before remained. Now that the daylight had come, they should not waste it. There was a lot to talk about and a lot to do, and they ought to get started. Plus, Pernilla had sent him up there in the first place.

  He tapped lightly on the edge of the tub.

  With a sudden thrashing, Abe opened his eyes and sat up, gripping the sides of the tub. Water splashed out onto the floor. He calmed down a notch when he saw Hellboy, but only a notch.

  “What is it?” Abe asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Pernilla wants you to come down for breakfast.”

  Abe glared at him. “Breakfast? You nearly gave me a heart attack. Don’t do that.”

  With a dry chuckle, Hellboy headed for the door. “You’re just lucky she didn’t come up looking for you herself. Next time, lock the door.”

  “So, at some point, the age of gods came to an end.” Hellboy put the last bite of his toast into his mouth and let his words sink in as he ate it.

  Abe had taken two servings of the sausage and onions but had left the eggs alone. Pernilla, on the other hand, had had nothing but a slice of thick toast and two cups of tea. Her flesh was even more pale than it had been the night before, though there was no sign now that she had been crying.

  She did not smile, however.

  “But the Svartalves and the dwarves?” Abe prodded.

  “Nidavellim,” Hellboy corrected. “But yeah. They stuck around. Made a go of it. Anyway, this guy Thrym was king of the frost giants for a while. He learned magic from some of the Nidavellim who knew that kind of thing, traveled the nine worlds picking up as much arcane knowledge as he could gather. He got pretty powerful, apparently. Of course, he wanted what they all wanted, which was to destroy the Aesir.

  “Even though the darkling races always fought amongst themselves, Thrym figured he had enough allies in Svartalfheim and Nidavellir to make an alliance work. The Svartalves threw in with him, but the Nidavellim refused and most of the giants other than his own clan ignored him. He had some other allies, though, even one of the Aesir, according to what Brokk and Eitri said. No one knows exactly who betrayed him, but apparently someone cast a spell on his favorite mug. Except they called it a tankard.

  “Anyway, when Thrym toasted the impending attack on the Aesir and drank, his spirit was ripped from his body and trapped inside that tankard. He didn’t die right then, but he had no soul. By the time I… well, when the Aesir caught up to him to punish him for his plotting, he was killed pretty easily. They buried his body on Midgard. Word is that the Tankard of Thrym was buried far away from his corpse in a secret chamber somewhere.”

  Pernilla had grown even paler as he talked, and she dropped her gaze when he finished. Hellboy watched her with great concern, wondering what it was she was not telling them.

  “So your bodyguards told you all this?” Abe asked.

  “Most of it,” Hellboy replied, but he did not elaborate.

  “And now they’re gone?”

  “Yep.”

  “Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but I think I
missed something. What does any of that have to do with the hammer, or the body, or the empty cave we found?”

  At Abe’s words, Pernilla hugged herself as though she was cold.

  Hellboy shrugged. “The dwarves—”

  “Nidavellim,” Abe corrected.

  “Yeah. They say the word on the street is that Thrym is back and the Svartalves are helping him again.” He glanced down at the hammer that he held upon his lap. “According to them, the fates unearthed those remains the old fisherman found up north on purpose. The timing wasn’t a coincidence. Mjollnir was supposed to be found so someone would have the power to stop Thrym.”

  “Makes sense,” Abe said with a nod.

  “Glad you think so. Can you explain it to me, now?” Hellboy asked.

  Abe took a sip of water from a tall glass and stared into it a moment. Before he looked at Hellboy again he glanced at Pernilla, and it was clear that they both knew she was keeping something back.

  “The chamber we found up there? The one the hammer led you to? What I figure is that the Tankard of Thrym was buried there. Professor Aronsson can probably confirm that if he can translate the symbols we found, but it stands to reason. If all of this is true, someone dug it up.”

  Hellboy made no response. Abe toyed with his water glass, but he also said nothing more. Several seconds ticked past, and the two of them looked at Pernilla. She seemed to have folded in upon herself, grown smaller there in the chair. At length, she let out a long breath and sat up, pushing her hair away from her face as she regarded them.

  Then she nodded. “Yes. My father.”

  “You know that for sure?” Hellboy asked, though he did not doubt it at all.

  “Not absolutely. But he only returned last week from a dig in the north. He was ecstatic, but wouldn’t share many details with me. That isn’t all that unusual, I’m sorry to say. He told me that he had recovered an artifact that would have an enormous impact on our field of study. He’s spent a lot of time away from the house these past few days. I assumed he was meeting with colleagues, that sort of thing.”

  “Maybe he was,” Hellboy said. “Just not the kind of colleagues you were thinking.”

  Pernilla closed her eyes and grimaced. Abe shot him a withering look and Hellboy shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t meant to make light of it. It’s just that—”

  She gazed at him grimly. “Just that he’s betrayed you before.”

  “There’s that,” Hellboy agreed.

  Once again the kitchen fell into silence. After a time Abe rose and began to carry dishes to the sink where he rinsed them. Pernilla and Hellboy sat across from one another and she drank the last of what must have been very cold tea. Finally, she rose.

  “Let me have a look at my father’s papers. Then we’ll go see your friend at the university.”

  Pernilla drove. Hellboy had to put the passenger seat all the way back and he was still cramped. Somehow Abe managed to fold himself into the backseat in such a way that he actually looked comfortable. They traveled mostly in silence, each contemplating all they had learned. Hellboy figured Abe wished he was back in the tub, where he could tune out the world. But he doubted there would be much opportunity for relaxation for any of them until they got to the bottom of this.

  Edmund Aickman’s papers were startling only in their utter lack of infor­mation. There was nothing in his journals or on his computer about the Tankard of Thrym or the dig he had completed in the north. There was no way to know who had worked with him on that excavation, but he had obviously not done it alone. Still, Pernilla had placed calls to several of his usual associates and none of them had been involved.

  In the entire house, the only bit of information they had uncovered about the Tankard of Thrym came from a battered, faded leather volume of Norse myth written in Lappish. According to legend, anyone who drank from the Tankard of Thrym would be gifted with extraordinary power, instilled with the strength of the Frost King. Considering what happened to Thrym when he drank from it, Hellboy thought anyone would have to be pretty dumb to fall for that one, but he did not say that aloud. Of course, the legend did not match up to what Brokk and Eitri had told him. They hadn’t said someone had the power of Thrym. They said Thrym was back.

  Big difference.

  It was yet another thing they hoped Professor Aronsson could help them with. Which made it that much worse when they arrived at the university to find the area around his office cordoned off by police, prowled by tracking dogs, and populated by students who were quickly spreading the rumor that the professor had been murdered.

  “This is bad,” Hellboy said as they pushed through the students and faculty that were gathered outside the cordon.

  Several people shouted in alarm when they passed by. A pair of uniformed police officers who stood by their vehicle spotted them and conferred quickly. One of them spoke into a radio as they approached, his eyes darting from Hellboy to Abe, but his expression revealing nothing. When they reached the police car, however, the officer turned his attention to Pernilla and they had a brief conversation.

  “What’s going on?” Abe asked.

  Pernilla took a deep breath. “It’s true. I’m sorry, but your friend is dead.”

  Abe touched her lightly on the arm. “There’s no reason to think because of this that anything will have happened to your father.”

  “That’s not what I’m afraid of,” she said quietly.

  Hellboy frowned, wondering what she meant, and then it hit him. The woman was not afraid her father would meet the same end, but that he had been in some way responsible for Professor Aronsson’s murder. He would have liked to comfort her, but he had nothing to say to that.

  Pernilla glanced up at him. “There is a Mr. Klar here from the government. Apparently he was expecting you to be here. The officers have orders to bring you to see him.”

  Though they made it clear she could stay outside, Pernilla accompanied them into the office building. Its exterior had a Scandinavian flair that the inside sorely lacked. It was cold and impersonal, the rooms and corridors no different from those in a thousand other buildings Hellboy had been in. Professor Aronsson’s office had been on the first floor in the rear of the building and Klar was waiting for them when the officers led them to the spot. If it was possible, Hellboy thought the severe government man had cut his blond hair even shorter. There was no exchange of pleasantries, not even a hello, as the man gazed sternly at them.

  “Who is your companion?” Klar demanded.

  Hellboy bristled at his tone. “This is Pernilla Aickman. She’s helping with the investigation.”

  “The folklorist you spoke of yesterday?” Klar asked, studying her, eyes large behind his thick, rimless spectacles.

  “His daughter.”

  “And what of the man himself?”

  Mystery and suspicion and the sudden knowledge that not all myths were fiction had dimmed the spark in Pernilla Aickman over the previous twelve hours. Now it appeared that meeting Klar was just what she needed, for Pernilla was clearly practiced in dealing with obnoxious bureaucrats.

  “My father has taken ill,” she said, meeting Klar’s gaze with a steely glare of her own. “I have offered my help to these gentlemen and we thought we might benefit from the expertise of Professor Aronsson. Obviously, that will now be impossible.”

  Hellboy tapped Mjollnir against his leg, drawing Klar’s attention to it. “So, what happened to him, anyway?”

  Klar’s lips pressed together in a tight white line. “Where were you and Mr. Sapien last night?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I doubt he ever kids,” Abe noted dryly. He wore sunglasses, and his jacket collar was turned up. He shivered despite the warm clothes.

  “In addition to my aid, I also offered them my hospitality,” Pernilla noted. “They were guests at my home.”

  For long seconds the quartet only stared at one another. At length, Abe slid o
ff his sunglasses and put them into the breast pocket of his jacket, just above the patch with the BPRD symbol on it. Klar’s eyes were drawn to the symbol.

  “Let me remind you, Mr. Klar, that we were asked to come here to aid in the investigation into the remains you discovered north of Skellesvall,” Abe announced. “I’m willing to bet Professor Aronsson’s death is related to that investigation. But you know what? I’m cold and I want to go home. So if you’d rather not have our cooperation, we’d appreciate a lift back to the airport.”

  Klar scowled, seemed to be searching his mind for an appropriate retort, and then simply turned sharply on his heel and led them through the tangle of police and government investigators into Karl Aronsson’s office.

  “This way,” he said.

  Hellboy gave Abe a none-too-subtle thumbs up, and the three of them followed Klar. There was some jostling as several officers had to vacate the office in order to make space for them. When the place was clear enough that Hellboy could get a look at the inside of the room, he winced. Though the corpse had been covered with a black plastic sheet, it seemed somehow misshapen under there, as if the professor’s limbs had been twisted at all odd angles. There was a pool of blood that seeped out from beneath the sheet, dried brown at the edges but still bright red and moist closer in toward the body. Hellboy thought about wet paint.

  Angular patterns of blood, likely the spray from severed blood vessels or the spatterings of the murder weapons, decorated the floor and walls and desk.

  Hellboy frowned. “The desk.”

  He stepped toward it, careful not to trammel upon the blood stains on the floor. Abe and Pernilla came up behind him and Klar on the other side of the desk. The spray of blood went up the front of the desk, started across the top, and then the pattern was interrupted by a broad stretch of wood that was clear, only to resume with a final few splashes of dark crimson.