“Madam, we mean you no harm,” Lut said. “We must see Déttmárr immediately.”
“Not until I see the gold you have brought!”
“Very well,” said Lut. “But what we bring is infinitely more valuable than the shiny metal you seek.” He nodded to Dane, who then brought out the apple core, showing it to her lying in the palm of his hand as if it were a precious jewel.
She gazed at it, her wrinkled brow becoming even more wrinkled, which Dane had thought impossible. “You have to be joking.”
“Madam, I assure you I am not,” Lut said. “If you’ll just lead us to—”
The she-dwarf grabbed a fireplace poker and smacked Lut in the shin. He let out a yell, hopping in pain. She then smacked Dane with it, and the apple core flew from his hand into the fire. Screeching at the top of her voice, she chased Jarl, Drott, Fulnir, and William around the room. They tried to hide behind the furniture, but it was so tiny it didn’t afford much cover. Meanwhile, Dane crawled to the fireplace and grabbed the apple core off a burning log, singeing his hand.
Amid the pandemonium, a voice sharper and deeper than the others in the room pierced the din like a knife.
“Give me SILENCE!” Everyone froze, falling quiet. “Can a dying man not have peace!”
“Oh, be quiet, you old fool,” the she-dwarf cried. She sighed in exaggerated defeat, then shot a look at Dane. “Well, go on! What are you waiting for, an invitation from Odin? You came for him—there he is!” She pointed behind him. Dane turned and saw a beaded curtain hung against the wall. Stepping closer, he drew the curtain aside to find that behind it was the narrowest of passageways leading up a steep, curving stairway.
With Dane in the lead, Lut and Jarl climbed the stairway. Soon they reached what Dane took to be a bedchamber, a conclusion he drew from the fact that there was a giant bed in the room. It was nothing but a straw-stuffed dirty mattress covered with a thick woolen blanket. The room itself was covered floor to ceiling with handmade wooden shelves holding hundreds of shining trinkets, and there were half a dozen lighted candles surrounding the bed. As Dane’s eyes adjusted to the candlelight, he saw that a body lay beneath the blanket, its head propped on a pillow. A bare twig of a man, it was a dwarf not much larger than the old she-dwarf. The candlelight glimmered off the dome of his round, bald head and lit the outline of his ginger-colored beard that grew like a bush long past his knees.
“Have you come to watch me die?” said the diminutive figure, his voice deep and sonorous despite his obvious illness. For such a small man, he had a very big voice. Feeling more welcome now, they drew nearer to the bed. The sight of the smith’s centuries-old face nearly took Dane’s breath away. So shriveled and shrunken was he, his pale skin mottled with age spots and falling in folds from his face and arms, it seemed he was more a dried-up piece of fruit than a man. His head was large for his body, and tufts of white hair grew from his protruding ears. Beneath an unruly thatch of eyebrows were his deep-set eyes, one green and the other blue. Though their sparkle was near spent, they were the kindest eyes Dane had ever seen.
“Déttmárr,” Lut softly said. “We have come to help save you.”
“Big words, for one so young,” said Déttmárr.
“We have come from the village of Voldarstad to ask you a favor,” Lut said.
Déttmárr waved his hand weakly in the air. “I’m six hundred and nineteen years old. Give or take. Too old to be doing any favors.”
“But it’s gravely important that you make us a weapon,” Dane said. He told him of Skuld and how they had been dispatched to kill the draugr Thidrek the Terrifying.
“A draugr-killing blade, you say? Try another smith. I am but a wasted shell waiting to die.”
The old dwarf gave a pained groan. He lay there motionless. For a moment Dane feared he might be dead. He shook him lightly by the shoulders. “Please! Skuld said you alone are the one to make our blade!”
Déttmárr’s eyes snapped open. “Did you not hear me? I’m too old and tired!”
“But that’s why we’re here,” Lut said. “I, too, was ancient. Death was on my doorstep. But I ate a magic apple that restored me to—”
Jarl broke in. “We don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t have time?” said the dwarf. “I’m the one who’s dying.”
“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you—we have a remedy!”
“Hah! There is no remedy for old age. Potions! Lotions! Spells! Bewitchments! I’ve tried them all. I even fasted on nothing but berry juice and ox vomit for an entire month. Nothing works! Nothing stops the ravages of time—neither man nor dwarf nor gods above.”
“Listen, dwarf, if you don’t make the weapon and we don’t kill Thidrek,” Jarl explained, “then I’m doomed to die in bed like you. And that’s not going to happen. Give him the apple, Dane.”
Jarl had a way of getting to the point. Dane held up what was left of the apple core, the last remnants of the partially blackened golden skin around the top and bottom gleaming in the candlelight. “An apple from the tree of Idunn. Or what’s left of it,” said Dane, glancing then at Lut.
Déttmárr stared intently at the apple core, his eyes shining brighter. “It is told,” he whispered with new gravity, “that Idunn’s apple holds the power to restore life. And if a man were to eat one, he would be magically rejuvenated in mind and body, perhaps even made young again.”
Lut said, “So what are you waiting for? Look at me! I went from a man over a century old to one of merely twenty!”
“That may be so,” said the dwarf, soberly absorbing Lut’s words. “But with so little of it left to eat, I doubt it would have much effect on one as old as me.”
“But you’re a dwarf!” said Dane. “You won’t need as much. We have to try!”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Déttmárr snapped. “It is my life. I will choose whether to eat of it or not to eat of it.”
“But why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I’m done with life, that’s why. The wars, the treachery, the cruelty, the tears. Do you know how many times someone has come and told me that the world was ending and I just had to forge a weapon to kill a demon or draugr or some other denizen of the underworld? Too many times, that’s how many!”
Dane tried to comment, but Déttmárr barreled on.
“And did you get a look at that she-witch of a wife I have downstairs? Answer me truthfully. Would you really want to live even a day with that woman? Can you imagine how I feel? Six hundred years I’ve been with her. I can’t imagine another day with that creature, much less another ten years.”
“I heard that!” came the woman’s voice from below.
“And I meant for you to hear it!” cried Déttmárr. And exploding in a fit of coughing, he collapsed back on the bed. “Go now. Let me die in peace.”
“No,” Dane insisted. “I’m not leaving without that weapon. Eat!” Dane took the dwarf’s hand and placed the apple core in it.
The dwarf stared down at the core in his palm, then up at Dane and his friends. “You’re not leaving till I try this, right?”
Dane nodded firmly. Déttmárr lifted the apple core to his nose and sniffed, making a face.
“It’s just a little badger spit you’re smelling—perfectly harmless,” said Lut.
“Go on,” said Dane. “Eat it.”
Déttmárr gave it a long look, then put it in his mouth and nibbled off a tiny piece of the golden peel. He chewed and swallowed, waiting for it to take effect. Nothing happened.
He took another bite. Still nothing.
“So much for your magic apple,” said Déttmárr. Dane saw the disappointment on the faces of Lut and Jarl, but he refused to give up. He gave a hard stare to the dwarf and watched as this time Déttmárr opened wide and bit off the whole top half of the apple core, stem and all. He chewed it all up and swallowed. Again they waited. Nothing. Dane felt his vitals go cold. Was this really the end of it? A failure before they even started
? Déttmárr opened his mouth to eat the rest of the core—and suddenly froze. The core fell from his fingers to the bed, his mouth still stuck wide open.
The dwarf began changing right before their eyes. His white pallor disappeared and a new glow came into his cheeks, his skin turning rosy pink. The deep creases and wrinkles on his face and arms began to disappear as his flesh took on new firmness. The snow-white eyebrows turned dark gray, and fine shafts of new hair began to sprout atop his head. His eyes burned brighter and his beard too took on new color and shine. Dane couldn’t find his tongue; what he was seeing was truly an act of the gods.
“Now do you believe me?” Lut asked the dwarf.
Déttmárr looked up in wonderment. “By Odin, I can feel it!” he cried, throwing off his blanket and jumping to his feet on the floor, gazing at his newly revitalized limbs. “I’m young again! I can breathe! I can walk! I can dance!”
Déttmárr danced about the room, hooting and shouting with glee and flinging his beard back and forth in front of him as if it were a dance partner.
“Quiet up there!” his wife shouted from below. “You’re upsetting my roly-polies!”
This made Déttmárr laugh all the more. He suddenly patted the top of his head, elated to feel he was no longer bald. “Hair! I’ve hair again! Whoo-hoo!” Sent into new squeals of laughter, Déttmárr leaped into Dane’s arms and planted a big wet kiss on his cheek. He then jumped to the floor and went scrambling down the stairs.
“Where’s he going?” Jarl asked.
“Probably out to find a younger wife,” Lut said.
Chapter 9
A Burning Desire
Déttmárr was itching to get to work again. Leaving Drott, Fulnir, and William behind with the she-dwarf, Dane, Lut, and Jarl followed Déttmárr down a passageway deeper into the subterranean depths until at last it opened into a vast, cavernous pit spanned by a crude suspension bridge. On the edge of the precipice was a sign that ominously read pit of no return.
“Um, Déttmárr? What’s this sign mean?” Jarl asked.
The dwarf pointed down into the seemingly bottomless chasm. “That’s the pit. And if you fall into it—”
“There’s ‘no return’?” asked Jarl, grimacing.
The dwarf nodded and continued across the bridge. With this frightening thought in mind, Dane and his friends now followed him, stepping carefully on the wobbly wooden planks, edging around the gaps where some were missing. Adding to Dane’s anxiety was the fact that the suspension ropes holding up the whole thing seemed to be frayed in places. It wasn’t until they were halfway across it that he dared to look down.
His insides went cold. He was staring into a bottomless abyss, a blackness so dark and limitless, it made him feel dizzy. Don’t look down—you’ll be all right, he told himself. He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and continued on.
Crossing the chasm seemed to take forever, but when at last they reached the far side and were on solid footing again, Dane found himself breathing easily once more.
“Glad that’s over with,” he heard Jarl say.
Déttmárr then led them to a gigantic iron door that he quickly unlatched and pushed open. “Behold,” said Déttmárr, “the Smithy of Yore.”
The spacious three-sided room had a smoke hole in the ceiling, and rising from the center of a stone floor was a round forge pit. On the walls hung various tools of the smith’s trade—hammers, pokers, pincers, tongs—all blackened with soot and showing centuries of use. Shelves were jammed with jars and lidded pots filled with various clays, powders, and brightly colored metallic nuggets. Three anvils sat atop small stone platforms, and the air was thick with the smell of leather and smoke and exotic odors both pleasing and unpleasant. On the far wall was the stoking furnace itself, its large iron doors darkened with age.
The little man found a piece of chalk and squatted in front of them. “A draugr-killing blade must be of special design,” he said as he began drawing on the floor. “The undead are a unique breed of hellion. They’re no easy prey. They’re fast and ferociously strong. You’ll need something with a long handle and a good-size killing surface. Something like this.” He pointed to the chalk drawing he’d finished..
“What is it?” asked Jarl.
“A double-sided crescent axe,” said Déttmárr. “Heavier than the usual war axes, but far deadlier if you know how to use it. The long handle lets you swing it around like this so you can put the power of your whole body behind it. And the elongated blade increases the chances for decapitation in just one stroke. Remember, a draugr is wicked quick. You’ll have one chance to cut off his head. Miss him and you’re likely to lose your own head in the bargain.”
Lut and Jarl swung the mold stone out of the now hot furnace and down onto the floor beside the forge pit. The mold was in the shape of a large, double-bladed crescent axe, and there within it lay the liquefied steel, gleaming bright orange, still a-bubble and smoking and destined to deliver death to the undead.
Déttmárr stood over the molten metal, dropping items one by one into it. “The wing feather of a sparrow hawk for speed . . . wolverine claws for ferocity . . . a bear’s belly hair for strength . . . the eye of an eaglet for true aim . . . .” As each item hit the bubbling liquid and was incinerated, it gave a hiss and sent up a tiny puff of smoke, its essence fusing with the molten mixture.
“And ten droplets of elk’s milk for . . . for . . . oh, I forget what it’s for but I know it’s necessary for some reason.” Déttmárr uncorked a tiny blue glass vial and dribbled out ten drops of pale liquid into the mold. Although he had never tasted any himself, Dane had heard tales of trollfolk curatives that called for the milk of a mother elk, and so the sight of it here only made him marvel at the mysteries of life even more.
“And now for the real magic,” Déttmárr said, and hopping up onto the rim of the forge pit hole, he yelled down into it. “Gregor! I’ve a blade for your fire!”
The sound they heard chilled Dane’s blood. It was a cross between an angry grumble and a beastly roar, and it shook the very ground on which they stood.
“Wha-what’s that?” Jarl asked.
“That’s Gregor, my fire giant,” said Déttmárr with a sly smile. “My secret to forging magic weapons. Gregor was a gift from Odin for my crafting Gungnir, his spear that never misses. This was, oh, three, four hundred years ago, if memory serves.”
“Fire giant?” said Dane, sounding only slightly less nervous than Jarl. “Dangerous, aren’t they?”
“Not if you do as you’re told—exactly as you’re told. Now, who is going down to feed him?”
Dane followed Lut down the stone steps into the dimly lighted chamber. He caught sight of the giant and he felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. The thing was ghastly to behold, and for a moment all Dane could do was stand and stare, letting his eyes adjust to the light. The fire giant had been curled up in the corner, but now he stood and stretched and stared down at them with a mixture of curiosity and vexation.
The height of two grown men, the creature had long hairy arms that ended with hands nearly as large as his head, and his whole body was dusted in soot. His squarish head seemed to be set right into his shoulders with no neck whatsoever, and his large, heavily lidded eyes took a long moment to focus. He was thickset around the middle, but all of it muscle, and the tattered animal skins that were tied around his waist did little to cover his sinewy thighs and haunches.
The giant opened his mouth to yawn, and out between his thick, rubbery lips oozed a stream of black drool that dribbled down into the dark hair on his chin, and when the creature lifted his arm to wipe it away, Dane saw a black smear appear on the back of the fire giant’s hand. It was then he noticed that certain parts of the giant’s skin were translucent—you could see tiny bursts of flame shoot through his limbs and flare up in his belly, then vanish as fast as they appeared.
The sight of it thrilled him but frightened him too. Dane had seen frost giants before—had fought them and
been fascinated by the sight of behemoths made entirely of ice. But this was entirely new to him—a creature made of flesh that ate and breathed fire? Déttmárr had told them that the giant’s fiery breath could produce a flame three times hotter than that of any earthbound fire, and that it was this magic potency that would imbue the blade with its killing power.
Above, there came a cry from Déttmárr. “Start feeding him! But not too much at a time!”
“Hungry, big boy?” Lut asked the giant, grinning with ease and showing no fear. The giant gave a growl and eagerly watched as Lut went to the grate in the wall. He yanked open the metal door, and out spilled hot coals. The sight of the glowing embers excited the fire giant, and he lunged forward, straining against the chains that bound his arms and legs.
Getting down on his haunches, Gregor pushed his head toward them as far as it would go and opened his mouth, showing his blackened and half-broken teeth, the black drool again dripping. It was spit filled with soot and ash, Dane realized, no doubt due to his diet, and as disgusting as it was to look at, Dane knew to the giant it was as natural as oats to a horse.
Lut lifted a shovelful of glowing coals and, stepping closer to the giant’s open maw, flung it upward into his mouth. The giant snapped his jaws shut, chewing with obvious delight, wisps of smoke escaping his lips as he crunched loudly on the coals and moaned in pleasure. He gulped down the whole mouthful in one swallow, and Dane was amazed to see a faint orange glow under his skin as the coals slid down his throat and into his belly. The giant licked his lips and again opened his mouth wide, eager for more. Lut tossed up another shovelful, and again the giant ate and swallowed, a small fire growing more visible in his belly.
Dane took a shovel, and he too began to feed the fire giant, marveling at the speed with which the giant could chew and swallow and even more amazed by the simple fact that it didn’t burn his mouth! The more he ate, the brighter the glow from his innards, and tendrils of black smoke were now pouring from his mouth and his nostrils. Five, six, seven shovelfuls of coal he consumed and still the fire giant wanted more.
Ship of the Dead Page 8
