The Bones of Giants

by Christopher Golden

  “Did your people take anything out of here?” Hellboy asked.

  “Not yet,” Klar replied. “We noticed this as well. It appears that whoever killed the professor removed whatever he was working on at the moment.”

  “We know what he was working on,” Hellboy said. Glum, suddenly filled with grief for this man he had known only a few days, he looked back at Abe. “Think there’s any reason to search the place?”

  “Not really,” Abe replied, hands thrust into his pockets. “If they’re smart enough to have taken his notes, I’m sure they’ll have taken the photographs and things as well.”

  Pernilla blanched. “So we’ve got nothing to go on. We don’t even know where to start looking. You’ve got nothing left from up there except Mjollnir and the body.”

  At the mention of the corpse that had acted as a lightning rod on that frozen riverbank up north, Hellboy glanced over at Klar. “What about it? Did you learn anything from examining the body?”

  His eyes narrowed and he studied them, obviously suspicious. “A preliminary autopsy on the remains revealed nothing out of the ordinary aside from the unusual size of the deceased.”

  “And how remarkably well preserved it is, given its age.”

  Klar did not even blink. “Tests were performed. There is no evidence to suggest that the remains are more than a century old. Easily explained if they were frozen in ice.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Hellboy muttered.

  “We’re not at a total dead end,” Abe observed. “I mean, we can always go back up and take more pictures. And there’s this.” He reached inside his shirt and dragged out the heavy serpent pendant on its ancient chain.

  “You’ve been wearing it?” Hellboy asked, surprised.

  “Professor Aronsson took a picture of it. He said I might as well hold onto it until they were ready to do metallur­gical tests on this and the hammer.”

  “Both of which are property of the Swedish government,” Klar reminded them.

  “You’ll get them when this is over,” Hellboy said sharply. “I don’t want this freakin’ thing attached to my hand forever.” He raised Mjollnir and Klar actually flinched.

  Pernilla stared at Mjollnir. “You said that when you were above the Arctic circle, you had a kind of intuition that led you to the place where my…” She glanced at Klar quickly, then back to Hellboy. “Where that excavated cave was found. Anything like that now? Any sense of where we should start to look?”

  “Look for what?” Klar asked. He slipped off his glasses, and they dangled from his hand as he pointed accusingly at them. “You are hiding something. It may be that the government invited you here, but do not think we will allow you to behave as though you have no one to answer to. You are to keep me informed of anything you discover.”

  “And you’ll do the same, right?” Abe asked, a cynical edge to his voice.

  Hellboy shrugged. “You want to know what we’re looking for?”

  “I insist,” Klar replied.

  With the hammer, he indicated the corpse on the floor. “His killers.”

  “You know who they are?” Klar sputtered in disbelief. “Tell me and we will find them.”

  “Maybe you should just leave it to us,” Hellboy suggested.

  Klar sneered at him. “You will cooperate.”

  Hellboy glanced at Pernilla. “Miss Aickman. You want to tell him?”

  Without any trace of amusement, she looked directly at Klar. “They’re Svartalves, sir.”

  A myriad of emotions warred upon the man’s face in that moment. He looked at first as though he wanted to laugh, and then as though he had been physically hurt by her words. At last, though, his face reverted to its usual, pinched, annoyed countenance.

  “Elves?” Klar said, sniffing. “Professor Aronsson was murdered by elves?”

  “Well, they’re evil, if that makes any difference,” Abe offered.

  “And they have swords,” Hellboy added.

  Klar shook his head in disgust. “Get out of here. Stay out of my way. If you have any useful suggestions or information, you have my cellular phone number. Otherwise, stay out of my way. And you will not leave the country with those artifacts.”

  Hellboy turned his back on Klar. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Chapter Eight

  Outside, they were ignored by the authorities and gawked at by the bystanders, who seemed to be waiting around for something to gawk at. Once they had moved beyond the cordon, however, and begun walking back toward the lot where Pernilla’s car was parked, the campus seemed almost deserted.

  Hellboy heard a cawing above him and looked up to see a pair of huge dark birds circling like vultures above him. He shielded his eyes against the sun and squinted, trying to get a better look. Abe and Pernilla had kept walking but now they stopped and waited for him.

  “What are you looking at?” Abe asked.

  “Those ravens,” Hellboy replied.

  “What? Where?”

  Confused, Hellboy glanced over at Abe. His friend seemed genuinely baffled. With a shake of his head, Hellboy pointed up at the sky and was about to ask if Abe needed glasses. But the ravens were gone.

  “Never mind.”

  “You’re seeing things, now?” Abe asked.

  “Guess so.” Hellboy glared down at the hammer as though it could feel his ire. And the truth of it was, he was far from certain it could not. “Maybe I should just get a crowbar to take this thing off.”

  Pernilla went to him and touched the massive fist that clutched Mjollnir. “May I?” she asked.

  When Hellboy lifted it, she examined his grip, ran her touch along his fingers where they clutched Mjollnir, along the hammer itself, and upon the edges and contours of his hand.

  “What is it made of?” she asked. “It feels… warmer than I would have expected.”

  “Don’t know.”

  Abruptly, Abe began to stamp his feet. He was shivering and had his arms wrapped around himself as though he was standing in the middle of a blizzard. The sun shone brightly down and, though far from hot, the day was pleasant enough.

  “Abe?” Hellboy ventured. “You all right?”

  He did not answer. Instead, he fumbled inside his shirt for the medallion and lifted the chain over his head. “This thing is like ice, all of a sudden. It’s… it’s freezing.”

  “Let me have it,” Hellboy said, holding out his left hand.

  Abe put the pendant into his hand, and Hellboy found that he was right. The metalwork serpent felt as though it had been carved from ice. The moment he was no longer holding the thing, Abe let out a long breath and began to calm down. After a moment, he unbuttoned his coat.

  “Is that better?” Pernilla asked, concern etched into her features.

  “Much,” Abe replied, staring at the pendant in Hellboy’s hand. “What do you think that was about?”

  Hellboy did not reply. He was not even looking at Abe. Instead, he stared off to his right where a copse of trees grew up beside a grand structure that must have been one of the university’s first buildings. Just within the shade of those trees stood an unnaturally tall woman in fur and armor, her long red hair pulled back in a thick braid. Her face was obscured by the shade, but he knew she was staring at him. In her right hand she clutched a proud spear made of strong oak with an iron tip.

  Without a word, Hellboy started across the grass toward her. As he walked, he managed to slip the serpent pendant over his head. Its chain was so cold it seared the skin at the back of his neck.

  Abe called after him, but he did not respond. Hellboy had the sense that his companions followed, but it was as though all of that happened in some dimly recalled dream.

  Face to face with the woman in the shadows, he still could not see her eyes.

  “I know you,” Hellboy said.

  “As well you should.”

  “Mist?”

  “I have been called that.”

  “I cannot accompany you,” he told her, uncert
ain where the words were coming from.

  “You are already with us. This bit of you is only an echo, the clang of the hammer perhaps. But I will collect even that when the time comes.”

  “Then why appear now?”

  She gestured to the pendant around his neck. “When you claimed the death-gift Eitri made for you, it brought me. Now I wait. “

  Eitri, Hellboy thought. Gonna have a few questions for that stumpy little monkey when I catch up with him. “So you just hang around, waiting. I guess we can’t expect any help from you.”

  A flicker of a smile appeared at the edges of her lips, and then she seemed to be swallowed further by the shadows. “I am a simple servant and not given to idle gossip. You know who to ask if you wish to know what is whispered beneath the branches of the Ash.”

  As cold as the pendant was where it now hung against his chest, so was Mjollnir warm in his grip. It seemed to stir of its own volition but he forced his arm to be still.

  A hand landed on his shoulder and Hellboy spun, hammer raised to defend himself.

  It was Abe.

  “Hey. Are you okay? Maybe we should call Dr. Manning, try to get another team out here. I don’t like what this is doing to your head.”

  Hellboy shook himself, under­standing at last why Abe had seemed so cold all along. He touched the pendant at his chest but left it there. That was, after all, where it belonged. Abe and Pernilla stared at him, and the world seemed more alive, suddenly, the colors somehow richer than they had been moments before.

  In the gray. In the shadows beneath the trees.

  He looked over to where the spear-bearer had stood a moment before and was unsurprised to find her gone. “You didn’t see her, I guess,” he said.

  “See who?” Abe asked. “Hellboy, I’m serious. I’m very concerned here.”

  Hellboy nodded. “Me too.” Then he gazed up into the trees. “Ratatosk. Where are you, old friend?”

  With a chittering sound, the squirrel popped his head out of the upper branches and gazed down upon them. After a moment, Ratatosk ran along the inner branches of the tree, scrabbled down the bark with his sharp claws, and then traveled along a lower limb. It sat up, staring at them, head jerking back and forth in the way that squirrels have.

  Ratatosk chittered loudly as if panicked.

  “The Svartalves,” Hellboy said. “And the one with the essence of Thrym. Do you know what they plan? Or where we can find them?”

  “Hellboy,” Abe said. “I really think we should—”

  “The reign of Thrym is to begin again,” Ratatosk said, in that ancient tongue that Hellboy did not know, but nevertheless interpreted.

  “What the hell?” Abe asked. He and Pernilla took a couple of steps back. “It talks?”

  Surprised, Hellboy glanced over at them. He had assumed that Ratatosk would be like the ravens and the spear-bearer. But they had seen him, and heard him as well.

  “Did you understand him?” he asked.

  Abe scowled. “No!” he shook his head. “But I can tell it’s talking to you.”

  “I didn’t even expect you to be able to see him,” Hellboy noted.

  Ratatosk turned and began to scamper up the branch away from them. The leaves rustled as he went. Hellboy called after him and the squirrel turned and gave him an impatient look that was unsettling coming from a squirrel.

  “I have appointments to keep,” Ratatosk said crossly.

  “You didn’t answer my other question.”

  He glared at Hellboy with tiny eyes. “Where the children of Dain and Dvalin tramp upon his face, there were Thrym’s bones interred. Find the body and you will find the soul.”

  With that, Ratatosk was gone.

  Dain and Dvalin. The names were familiar somehow, but he could not figure out from where. He felt as though so many memories and bits of knowledge were just out of reach, and it infuriated him. Aronsson was dead, Pernilla’s father had unearthed the soul of Thrym and thrown in with the weasels, and all of these freaks kept showing up to confuse him even more and not really offer any help at all.

  A rage simmered within Hellboy. It had been born quiet as a whisper in him and now it began to rise up out of him as though the whisper had become a scream. He shook his head and stamped his hooves on the ground, and though Abe and Pernilla were speaking to him Hellboy did not hear them. He growled at the very air itself, at the mischievously cryptic messenger and the death-maiden Mist, whom he knew still lingered nearby.

  Above, the sky went gray, clouds rolling in as if out of nowhere. The air grew thick and moist, and drops of rain began to fall. With a roar, he swung Mjollnir at the huge, ancient tree Ratatosk had scampered up into. Its trunk split as though struck by lightning and a huge portion of the tree cracked off and crashed to the ground beneath the limbs of its brothers.

  Not far off, thunder rumbled across the sky.

  Hellboy’s chest rose and fell in deep, rapid breaths as he stood there, clutching the hammer. Then he blinked several times and took two steps backward, staring at the shattered tree. He glanced around quickly to see if anyone was coming and found Abe and Pernilla staring at him in surprise. There was genuine fear on the young woman’s face, and grave concern on Abe’s.

  “Jeez, Abe,” Hellboy said, slightly disoriented as he walked toward his friend. “What the heck’s happening to me?”

  Pernilla stayed back, but Abe came to him immediately and put a hand on Hellboy’s shoulder. The clouds had begun to break up and the sun to burn through once more, but even with that warmth it was Hellboy now who felt cold.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Abe replied. “But something tells me the sooner we get that thing out of your hand, the better.”

  Both of them turned to look at Pernilla. She seemed somehow smaller, as though each new revelation caused her to shrink a little bit. All three of them were aware that the only way to put an end to all of this was to find her father, to stop whatever the ghost of Thrym had in mind. To destroy the thing or return it to captivity. What that meant for Edmund Aickman, none of them knew, but neither Hellboy nor Abe was about to start that discussion.

  “The squirrel. Did you really understand it?” Pernilla asked.

  Hellboy nodded.

  “What did it say?”

  He glanced at Abe, then up at the tree. Finally he regarded her again, this young woman who had spent her whole life buried in folklore and myth, only to have it come alive around her.

  “The names Dain and Dvalin mean anything to you?”

  Her eyes narrowed and creases appeared in her brow as she considered it. She whispered the names to herself a couple of times, and then her eyebrows shot up.

  “Yes. There are four of them, actually. Dain, Dvalin, Duneyr, and Durathror. They’re harts. Enormous ones, of course. Several myths claim they live around Yggdrasil, the world tree, nibbling at its branches.”

  Abe raised his hand tentatively. “Um, hearts?”

  “Harts. Male deer,” Pernilla explained.

  “Ah,” Abe said, a sheepish look on his face. “Got it. I think I knew that once, but I forgot. You remember what a doe is ‘cause of the song. But not a hart.”

  “The song?” Pernilla asked, confused.

  “Doe, a deer, a female deer?” Abe offered, just a little bit of the melody in his delivery.

  Pernilla smiled at that, and some of the color returned to her cheeks. Hellboy was pleased to see it, but he was not paying very much attention to their exchange. Where the children of Dain and Dvalin tramp upon his face, there were Thrym’s bones interred, those had been Ratatosk’s words. The children of harts.

  “You have a zoo here?” Hellboy asked. “In Stockholm?”

  “A zoo?” she asked slowly, obviously confounded by his change in topic. “Well, not like the one in Copenhagen. If you really want to see a zoo, that would be—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Hellboy interrupted.

  Abe stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. “Good. ‘Cause I
remember the last time we went to the zoo in Copenhagen. The necromancer and that thing with the penguin heads? I’ll die happy if I never have to go back there again.”

  “We’re not going to the zoo,” Hellboy snapped. Again the anger had risen in him, the readiness to spill blood that was so foreign to him. He took a breath and let the moment pass. “I could use a beer.”

  “Or, apparently, a cup of mead,” Abe replied dryly.

  Hellboy nodded slowly. “Sorry. All I want to know is, if I wanted to find a bunch of deer in Stockholm, where would I go?”

  Once upon a time, Djurgarden had been the hunting ground for the king of Sweden. A vast forest stretched across most of this island that made up the southeastern portion of Stockholm. A single bridge on the northern tip connect­ed it to the rest of the city. It housed a great many museums and other historical buildings, and was among the primary tourist attractions in that glorious capital. But there were still oak groves dense enough that only the occasional band of hikers braved those woods, where the king’s deer still ran.

  That much, at least, they had learned from Pernilla while still at the university. She had offered to let them continue to stay at her father’s house on Gamla Stan, and they had wanted to bring their bags from the university office where the late Professor Aronsson had held onto them. But all three of them had a sense of urgency now, and did not relish the idea of returning to Gamla Stan before driving out to Djurgarden. Abe spoke to Klar and asked him to see to the bags until they returned for them; Hellboy would have gone in to speak to the man but he was afraid he might crush the little fascist’s skull with Mjollnir.

  Klar had reluctantly agreed, and they set off.

  Most of the drive to Djurgarden was made in silence. Pernilla turned on the radio for a while. It did not bother Hellboy at all, but there was only so much Swedish pop Abe could put up with, and he asked her to turn it off after quarter of an hour or so.

  A narrow strait separated the island from the rest of the city, and even as the car traveled across the bridge the forest appeared lush and green, beautiful ancient oaks that swallowed them up the moment they reached Djurgarden.