“I . . . also stole a cask of smoked herring from him,” Horvik said. “And, well, his wife and I—”
“We get the picture,” said Fulnir. “But I shouldn’t think those errant ways would warrant an eternity in Hel’s domain.”
“That’s the problem with having a name like mine,” Horvik the Virtuous moaned. “If you’re not virtuous every day, all day, they really stick it to you in the end.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Drott said, “but nice seeing you anyway. You don’t look too bad for being dead,” he added, trying to brighten Horvik’s spirits.
“Kind of you to say,” said Horvik, “I think.”
The ship continued up the black, sulfurous waterway, leaving the grim tide of newly arriving dead behind. Here and there Dane began to see small spots of fire floating on the river’s surface, and soon the spots grew alarmingly larger in size, as big across as the length of the ship. This reminded him of the house-size icebergs that had harassed them on their last adventure, ice floes the whalers had called “growlers” for the sounds they made when they were crunched together by the wind and the tides.
The Ship of the Dead made no effort to avoid these patches of floating fire, cutting right through them, and Dane shared looks of concern with the others, worried the ship’s hull would burn and they’d all sink into the ooze.
“Fear not, my fellows,” said Thidrek, grinning madly, “where we go is infinitely worse.”
And they were soon to see he spoke the truth, for ahead lay the underworld’s vast Lake of Fire.
As far as the eye could see in any direction, its vast surface was aglow with a bubbling stew of molten rock and flame, colored in the deepest oranges and reds and spitting up bursts of steam, the whole of it not unlike the embers of an immense campfire. Worse, the Lake gave off a stench of sulfur mixed with the nauseating smell of burning flesh. Burning human flesh, Dane was sickened to realize.
The Ship of the Dead plowed forward through the liquid rock, magically impervious to the torridity and eruptions of flames.
Dane thought he heard a whisper or a cry of some kind, coming straight from the fire below. Ghostly figures of the dead bobbed to the surface, engulfed in flames, their spindly arms reaching up, their mouths open in agonized screams. The figures rose to the surface, then just as suddenly were sucked under again, as if they were being pulled to the depths by the claws of an unseen demon.
“My parents always said I’d wind up here if I wasn’t good,” Drott said between the hiccups he always got when he was afraid. “I never thought this place was real.”
“N-n-neither did I,” Fulnir said, his voice quaking. “I thought m-m-my folks were just making stuff up to keep me in line.”
Thidrek—clutching the handle of the Blade of Oblivion and standing coolly at the prow as if his dead draugr heart insulated him from the searing heat—gave a chuckle. “Parents are like that, aren’t they? My father, Mirvik the Mild, filled my head with similar nonsense. He’d say, ‘Thidrek, if you insist on being unduly cruel to others, one day you will find yourself doing the breast stroke in a fiery lake.’ Funny, isn’t it? How wrong fathers can be about their children’s destinies, eh, lad?” he said, looking at Drott.
“Uh, are you sure he was wrong about yours, my lord?” Drott was bold enough to ask.
“As sure as I know your father was right about yours,” Thidrek said with a sublime look. “For all too soon you will be drowning in the molten depths.”
“My lord,” said Alrick the Most Merciless, “you said all. Does that mean we’re to be—”
“No! Not you!” Thidrek barked in exasperation. “This group? Tied to the mast? Our prisoners will be swimming in the molten depths! By the gods, why must I keep explaining myself? Is your brain full of maggots?”
“Um . . . yes.” Alrick shrugged.
Thidrek sighed in exasperation, turned to Grelf, and was heard to mutter, “Whose idea was it to recruit these dunderheads?”
Grelf had the good sense not to answer.
As the ship continued across the Lake of Fire, a pall of woe descended upon Dane and his friends. They had been in awful fixes before, but nothing like this, nothing so seemingly insurmountable. They all had faced death numerous times. But this was far, far worse, for death was merely a prelude to an eternity of torment.
Dane remembered a time a few short months before when he was held captive with his mother on another ship, commanded by the evil Godrek Whitecloak. They were doomed to die, but his mother had looked into his eyes with steadfast determination and had said, “I will not go like a lamb to slaughter.” Her tenacity had helped stiffen his backbone and spurred him to act.
But what could he do now?
Even if they got free from the ropes, they had no weapons against the armed draugrs or the Blade of Oblivion in Thidrek’s hands. And they couldn’t exactly jump overboard into a fiery lake and swim for shore. Even if they did miraculously make it to shore, they were still in Hel’s realm, which was guarded by a bestial monster who Dane suspected would not open the gate, wish them luck, and hand them free sandwiches.
“Which souls are sent to the Lake of Fire?” William asked Lut. “Will Horvik be thrown in?”
“I believe the lake is reserved only for those whose crimes were the most heinous on earth,” Lut said.
“You mean someone like Thidrek.”
“He would fit the profile,” Lut said.
“If I may interject,” said Red Mustache on the sail, “it is the goddess Hel who decides the punishment for each soul. I believe the minor crimes of said Horvik would spare him from such fiery agony.”
“So then maybe she will spare us,” William said.
Having overheard this, Thidrek roared with laughter. “Spare you? Do you think I’ve brought you here for Hel’s mercy? You’ll find none of that! Your souls are the kind she’s most hungry for.”
And with that, the towering black parapets of a fortress hewn from solid rock loomed before them. There were murmurs of awe from the draugrmen and stunned silence from everyone else as the ship drew ever nearer the dark, menacing palace. Even Dane’s raven, Klint, reacted in fear, flapping his wings and squawking fiercely about the deck, until Lut took him in his arms and comforted him.
Dane looked hard at Lut, at the bits of gray he saw now streaking his hair and the tiny lines returning to his face. He wanted to tell him that he knew what was happening, that he had sensed it during the storm, could see a weakening of his energies. But he said nothing, for he knew that it was Lut’s wisdom he prized most of all. It had gotten them through rough times before, and he was hoping it would once again.
Astrid had done as the Norns had ordered. She had slipped into Asgard, stolen Sleipnir, and made her miraculous getaway down the Bifrost rainbow to the earthly plane. Unfortunately, she had been seen by Aurora, which meant her traitorous sister most likely had deduced where she was heading—because no one would be mad enough to take Odin’s prized eight-legged steed unless they desperately needed to get to one place and one place only.
Hel’s underworld.
Sleipnir had once taken Odin’s son to the underworld on a special mission. The steed knew the way in and out, so Skuld had instructed Astrid that all she needed do was command Sleipnir to take her there and the horse would do the rest. Once there she was to deliver the item in the canvas satchel to Hel and hope it would do the trick.
They had ridden all day and on into the night, Astrid feeling more alive than ever, despite the fear that raced through her. The land had given way to the shining surface of the sea, and still they rode on until the sun returned. And then, quite abruptly, the steed drew to a sudden halt. Below her was nothing but calm seas, and she thought that perhaps Sleipnir had stopped for a much-needed spell of rest.
Then, in the very blink of an eye, a dark cloud appeared on the horizon. A shrieking wind blew in. An angry tempest had them in its sudden grip, the sky around them bursting with lightning and booming with thunder. Surrounded
as she was by the fury of it all, Astrid’s only thought was that this had to be the work of the gods, a warning to return Sleipnir at once or suffer even more dire consequences.
But just as suddenly the steed bolted downward toward the raging waves. Panicked, she pulled back on the reins but was powerless to stop his steep dive. Down, down, he flew, determined to plunge headfirst into the water, and she shut her eyes and clung to his back as tightly as she could, hoping the force of the impact would not knock her free.
But she felt no splash at all. Opening her eyes, she saw she was enveloped in water yet wasn’t the tiniest bit wet. Everything began to spin, and she realized that she and Sleipnir were caught in a gigantic swirling funnel of water. Round and round they went, furiously fast, sucked ever downward, deeper and deeper into darkness until—
Just as suddenly she and her steed burst through a wall of wind into a world of thick fog. She found they were hovering above the calmest of seas and enveloped by a dense white vapor so icy cold that it froze the hairs on her skin. She sat there a moment atop Sleipnir, getting her bearings, each of her exhaled breaths turning to frosted ice particles as it hit the air. So this was it, she thought. The Land of the Dead. She patted the steed’s brawny neck for bringing her. “Thank you, mighty Sleipnir.” He turned his head and gave her an imperious look as if to say, Foolish maiden, how could you have doubted me?
Somewhere off in the fog Astrid heard the sound of a ship cutting across the water. They set off to follow it through the Niflheim gate.
The Ship of the Dead came to rest on the shore of the Lake of Fire at the base of ancient stone steps cut into the rock. The steps zigzagged precariously up the sheer granite face to the pinnacle upon which Hel’s dark fortress sat. Even from his vantage point far below, Dane saw that along the outer perimeter of the fortress there looked to be hordes of the doomed perched on scaffolding, laboring to repair walls that had fallen down. Driving them on were large brutes cracking whips over their backs.
Drott craned his neck, gazing up at the crumbling fortress. “This is where Hel lives? What happened to the place?”
“Those spared from the Lake of Fire are put to work on Hel’s fortress,” said Red Mustache. “But doomed souls are notoriously poor workmen. Every time they repair a wall, it just falls down again.”
“Maybe Hel should try paying them better,” Drott suggested.
“Paying them better?” Jarl said. “What part of eternal suffering don’t you get?”
“I’m just saying a happy worker is a better worker,” Drott argued. “Whether you’re alive or not, human nature is all the same.”
“If that’s true,” Jarl quipped, “when you’re dead you’ll be just as brainless.”
Drott opened his mouth to protest but had no retort.
“Judgment time is nigh,” Thidrek announced, gesturing to the fortress. “The goddess Hel awaits.”
Dane took Klint on his arm and stroked his feathers. “Stay, Klinty. Where I go is no place for you.” The raven gave a complaining squawk, flew up, and landed on the top of the mast. As Dane was herded off the ship, he turned back to take a last look at his faithful friend. Klint was gone.
It was an arduous journey up the cliff. At several places the steps had crumbled away, exposing gaps that plunged to the rocks far below. One by one Dane and his friends jumped these yawning spaces. The last to jump was a draugrman, Alrick the Least Merciless. He easily bridged the gap, but the step he landed on broke away and he fell, screaming his Berserker cry. His body shattered upon the rocks below like a piece of crockery and his skull caromed off a boulder out over the fiery lake. He landed faceup, and his horrible shriek of pain was awful to hear.
Thidrek watched his head sink below the scalding muck and, with a wry grin, said, “Serves him right for being least merciless.”
The remaining draugr herded Dane and the others up the steps, and finally they reached the summit. Before them lay a fortress of such massive size that Dane felt puny and powerless standing before it. He realized that this must be its intended effect: to make all newcomers quiver in terror at their first sight of Hel’s lair. Its very size was an expression of her ultimate power in the underworld, just as Odin’s equally vast Valhalla was a symbol of his rule in Asgard above.
But, oh, what a difference between the two. While Odin’s palace was magnificent to behold, Dane was struck by how grotesquely ugly Hel’s was. By design or by accident, all its angles seemed crazily askew, and even its soaring towers leaned haphazardly this way and that, appearing as if at any moment they might topple. And, stranger still, dotting the structure were crude, crumbling statues of misshapen demons that assaulted the eye.
“In a way you were right about human nature, Drott,” Dane said.
“I was? Really?” Drott said, always eager to know when he had inadvertently said something intelligent. “How?”
Dane gestured to the monstrous structure. “This is what happens when the only reward is fear and punishment.”
With a thunderous crash, a section of an outer wall then collapsed, sending the scaffolding and the doomed workmen down with it. The brutish overseers waded in, lashing the poor souls with their whips. Dane saw that instead of leather, the whips consisted of white-hot sizzling bolts of lightning that grooved deep burns across the backs of the laborers. Having to watch such pain inflicted on the defenseless, Dane had a sudden urge to rush one of the huge brutes, but Lut, sensing his rash intentions, grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Don’t be a fool, son,” Lut whispered to him.
Upon Thidrek’s orders, the draugrs prodded them toward the fortress gates. Passing an overseer lashing some poor souls, Jarl whispered to Drott, “Why don’t you explain your happy worker–better worker stuff to him.”
Unaware that Jarl was joking, Drott paused for a moment, tapping the brute on the shoulder. “Uh, sir, if I may have a word—”
The brute whirled. He had the face not of a man, but of something of a more bestial nature, with protruding snout and tusks. He gave a furious roar and lashed out with his lightning whip, missing Drott by a hair. “M-maybe now is not a good time,” Drott bleated, backing away. A draugr shoved him forward to rejoin his friends. “Some people just don’t want to listen,” Drott said, shaking his head.
Turning now to Hel’s lair, Dane saw that the entranceway was formed by the face of a hideous three-eyed demon, its mouth open wide to accept them. One by one they began to enter, the funereal silence broken only when Jarl asked Thidrek what the name of this creature was.
“Hyrrmund the Firebreather,” said Thidrek. “Demon of the Underworld, one of Hel’s minions. Up there, those are the Ice Demons whose touch will freeze your soul. Oh, and over there, just above that scaffolding, those are the Sleep Demons, the creatures that visit you in nightmares.”
Then Fulnir leaned over to Dane and muttered, “Don’t you find the whole demon theme tiresome? I mean, she’s Hel, queen of the underworld. She couldn’t have dreamed up a better design scheme than this demon thing?”
Once inside the fortress walls, in the dim light Dane could see they were met by a vast moat. A narrow bridge spanned the moat, leading straight across to the soaring, colossal structure of Hel’s hall, the entrance to her inner sanctum. Also, there were four of the demon guards patrolling the moat bridge, each with his own lightning whip.
There was an understandably uncomfortable moment as Dane and his friends stood still. No one—not even the draugrs—wanted to move across the bridge. But all Thidrek did was clear his throat—ahem!—and the mere sound of it held such menace that everyone instantly sprang to life and began to follow him one by one across the narrow walkway. Dane kept his eyes on Fulnir, who was walking directly in front of him, not wanting to risk a look at the demon brutes. But soon he began to hear a chorus of voices, whispers that seemed to be emanating from somewhere below. Who is that? . . . Are they alive? . . . What are they doing here? . . .
Peering over the side of the bridge, he saw
that standing shoulder to shoulder in the moat were thousands upon thousands of doomed souls, tightly packed like a herd of swine on their way to market, their faces gray and eyes empty of light. It made him sick to see them, and then one of the doomed ones called out, “We wait eons for an audience! How can they jump ahead in line?”
In a flash the two nearest demon guards began raining lash upon merciless lash down onto the complaining soul and those around him in the pit below—and the shrieks of pain, the sizzling sound the lightning whips made upon the doomed, once more filled Dane with disgust and anger. Again came the words of his mother: I will not go like a lamb to slaughter. Drawing ever nearer the sanctum door, he vowed that neither would he; if Hel was to take his soul, she would have to fight him tooth and nail for it.
That steadfast bravado lasted for only a moment, for as they approached entrance to Hel’s hall, the massive doors slowly creaked open and an oppressive wave of heavy, sickly sweet air swept over him. All thoughts of defiance fled, replaced with a debilitating fear that almost buckled his knees. He grabbed Lut’s shoulder to steady himself, and Lut tried to return a stiff-lipped nod of courage, but all Dane saw was similar terror in his eyes.
His belly roiling with panic, Dane wanted to turn tail and run, but the draugrmen’s spear points prodded him on. Glancing back, he saw that the warriors also wore rabbity looks. They were afraid, too! And for good reason. They were all about to come face-to-face with a being who engendered such horrific dread that even the brave gods of Asgard feared and loathed her. Dane tried to steady himself and prayed he wouldn’t die from fright before he even laid eyes on her.
Chapter 21
The Goddess of the Underworld
Once inside the doors to Hel’s hall, they were enveloped in darkness. Behind him Dane heard the doors close with a thunderous clang, and from its resounding echo he concluded that they must be in a chamber of vast size. Afraid to move and fearing what the next moments would bring, Dane stood listening to the frightened breathing of his friends. And then a sound most chilling came . . . a sibilant hiss and slither, followed by a throaty female voice from some distance away. “Have you . . . brought it?”
Ship of the Dead Page 17
