Ship of the Dead

by James Jennewein

  “I have, your highness,” he heard Thidrek say with pride. “That, and more gifts for your amusement.”

  “My amusement?” the female voice purred mockingly. “I am not so easily amused. Approach!”

  Dane felt a spearpoint jab his back, and everyone began moving forward as ordered. Soon his eyes adjusted to the dark enough for him to discern dim shapes. Gigantic columns, as big around as ten men standing fingertip to fingertip, rose from the floor, disappearing into the gloom above. The surfaces of the columns seemed to writhe as if alive—and when Dane passed close to one, he saw it was covered with a wickerwork of winding, slithering vipers that hissed at him and the others. This, he realized, was the strange sound he had heard in the dark.

  In the distance was a dim pool of firelight. Approaching it, Dane saw what appeared to be four or five females wearing the colorless garb of the dead. They were attending to an entity seated on a colossal black throne, someone—or something—whose face and body were blocked from view by the attendants.

  Thidrek stopped everyone a respectful distance from the raised throne and waited for the attendants to finish. To Dane they resembled frightened handmaidens hurrying to prepare a royal personage to receive guests.

  “Enough! Give me the mirror!” barked the unseen one on the throne.

  The attendants stepped back, revealing such a ghastly sight that gasps of shock issued from humans and draugrs alike—except for Thidrek, who oozed fawning charm. “Your majesty, you grow more . . . lovely with each passing day.”

  Dane could think of many words to describe the goddess Hel, but lovely was not one of them. Her hatchet-thin, hollow-cheeked face was pebbled with snakelike scales. Her eyes were deep set and beady, her nose but two thin slits, and below that was a cruel slash of a mouth. Her hands resembled hooked, reptilian claws; in one she clutched a long, ornate wooden staff topped with a milky-white crystal orb. A tattered black gown covered her desiccated body.

  “The mirror!” she rasped, banging the end of her staff upon the dank floor. An attendant produced a polished silver hand mirror. Hel grabbed it, gazed at her reflection for a moment, then exploded in anger. “This is not what I wanted! Is my hair full and wavy?” She grabbed her lank, greasy hair. “It is not! Are my cheeks rosy and full? No!” Like a petulant, spoiled child she threw the mirror at them. “I bring you into the comfort of my hall—and this is how you repay my kindness?” She raised her staff as if to strike them, and they cowered like terrified dogs. “Away with you! Prepare my bath!” she commanded.

  “Yes, your majesty,” an attendant said. She turned to scurry off with the others when her eyes met Dane’s. It was Mist the Valkyrie! Recognizing him, she froze in shock for a moment. Dane wanted to call out to her, but she gave a curt shake of her head to stop him, then swiftly fled.

  “It was Mist,” Dane whispered to Lut beside him.

  “I know,” Lut whispered back. “Poor thing, to be enslaved here.”

  To see Mist like this, drained of life and happiness, was heart wrenching. Dane owed his life to her. Twice he had been near death on earth and she had been assigned to pluck his soul from his body and take him to Valhalla. But each time she had disobeyed orders and had even helped him survive. The second time, he had been trapped in an ice crevasse and she had said crossly to him, “I should let you freeze to death and finally be done with you!”

  But instead she had shown pity, keeping him awake long enough to be rescued by his friends. Later, he wondered why she had shown such mercy. Did she love him, or was there another reason? Perhaps she could not bear to part him from Astrid, the one he loved. But none of it mattered now. Mist was a doomed soul. And mostly likely Dane would soon be joining her, a permanent resident in Hel’s realm.

  “Why must I endure such incompetence?” Hel fumed. “I’m sure you’d not find such clumsy servants in Asgard. No! If my father, Odin, desires a new coat of armor or another temple built in his honor, all he need do is snap his fingers and it is cheerfully done!”

  “It doesn’t seem fair that he revels in opulence and you’re forced to make do with so little,” Thidrek commiserated.

  “He ordered me to run the underworld but never once mentioned the poor quality of labor down here. Not once!”

  “It’s a miracle you manage so well, your majesty. I can’t imagine any other goddess doing a better job handling the doomed.”

  “And they never stop coming!” she wailed. “Shipload after shipload. And I must find room for them—as if we weren’t cramped for space already!”

  “But your majesty,” Thidrek said playfully, “aren’t you forgetting you’ll soon be moving to much bigger quarters? Say, the entire land of the living?”

  A gluttonous gleam shone in Hel’s beady eyes. Her forked tongue flicked over her lips. Dane took it this was how Hel looked when she was pleased. “We’ll see how father Odin likes that,” she hissed.

  “Don’t imagine he will,” Thidrek said. He gestured to the prisoners. “Nor will he like that you’ve stolen souls meant for Valhalla. My gift to you, to do with as you wish.”

  She stared at Dane and the others like a snake appraising her next meal. “They are pure of soul, you say?”

  “Oh, the purest,” Thidrek said with distaste. He grabbed Dane by the arm and jerked him front and center. “Take this one, for instance. Dane the Defiant. Always doing brave and unselfish acts, saving fair maidens, righting wrongs, protecting the weak. It’s enough to make a man gag.” Thidrek gestured at the other prisoners. “They’re all like that more or less. Even this little pip.” Thidrek grabbed William by the arm and flung him to the floor in front of the throne. “They call themselves Rune Warriors. And do they fight for plunder or land or power? No! They’re all courageous and forthright, the idiots. Perfect candidates for Odin’s corpse hall.”

  Hel clapped her clawlike hands together in girlish glee. It made a dry, raspy sound like dead leaves rubbing together. “Stealing souls destined for Valhalla! My father will have a fit!” she cackled. “Oh, this is too, too delicious!”

  “I knew you would be pleased, your majesty,” Thidrek said, clearly glad that he had made the odious hag so happy.

  So this was the reason they had been brought to Niflheim, Dane realized. Hel was warring with Odin, and the Rune Warriors were but pawns in the game, a way Hel could have revenge against a father who had exiled her to the underworld. It was as Jarl had said: Dane had led his friends to their eternal doom. But he could not stand there idly while the sentence was passed.

  “He lies, your majesty!” Dane blurted.

  Thidrek whirled, backhanding Dane to the face. “Silence, dog!”

  Dane held his ground, appealing to the goddess. “You will not spite Odin by taking cowards!”

  Thidrek raised the Blade of Oblivion to strike Dane down, but Hel shouted, “Stop!” Thidrek froze, the blade inches from Dane’s head.

  “I am the only one destined for Odin’s hall,” Dane declared. “Take me, but release the others. For they are nothing but cowards, truly chickenhearted and yellowbellied.”

  “Chickenhearted? I’m ten times braver than you!” insisted Jarl, unable to stand having his mettle questioned, even though Dane was doing it to save his life.

  “They both lie,” Lut said, stepping forward. “Without me they all would’ve run crying to their mothers. I’m the only one fit for Valhalla!”

  Now Fulnir and Drott chimed in, insisting they were the only courageous ones in the bunch. Then William declared his heroism second to none and that everyone else should be released because they were about as courageous as a kitten in a thunderstorm. Everyone talked at once and some pushing and shoving broke out, until Hel angrily banged her staff on the floor, silencing them all.

  “I want the truth! Each says he is brave and the others are cowards—all except you,” she said, pointing the end of her staff at Grelf. “Are you the only one of courage here too?”

  “Oh, no, your majesty,” Grelf insisted. “I’m a co
ward for sure. Pigeon-livered through and through.”

  “He is merely my lackey, your highness,” Thidrek said.

  “And by his admission of cowardice, I sense he speaks the truth,” Hel said. “But what of these others?” she asked Grelf, gesturing to Dane and his friends. “Are they all Rune Warriors fit for Odin’s hall as your master has said?”

  Dane expected Grelf to quickly parrot what Thidrek wanted him to say, dooming them all. But to his surprise, Grelf hesitated. For a moment he held Dane’s look, and Dane saw a brief flicker of compassion in his eyes, an emotion he had thought Grelf incapable of feeling. “They are all fit, your majesty,” Grelf finally said. “Except for the boy.”

  “No,” William protested, jumping to his feet. “I’m a Rune Warrior, too! Tell her, Dane!”

  Grelf gave Dane a slight nod, which acknowledged that the best he could do was save the boy—and that he would do all he could to take care of him. “A ten-year-old boy is not worthy of Valhalla,” Dane said to Hel. “He lacks courage and is no prize.” It pained him to say these words and see the look of hurt in William’s eyes. The boy had been a true Rune Warrior, as brave as anyone, but if Dane could save his life by telling a lie, it was a small price to pay.

  Thidrek sighed in annoyance. “I don’t care, your highness. If you don’t want him, I’ll take him as my thrall.”

  “He is yours,” Hel said with a wave of a claw. “But the others I’ll gladly keep.”

  “For torture and death and everlasting agony in the Lake of Fire?” Thidrek asked cheerfully.

  “All of the above,” Hel said. Banging her staff on the floor, she called for her guards. Two demons bearing lightning whips appeared from out of the darkness. “Take these live ones to the moat,” she ordered. “I’ll dally with them later.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting one thing, your highness?” Thidrek interjected as the guards started to take the prisoners away. “My reward for bringing the Ship of the Dead?”

  “You mean my promise to make you alive once more,” Hel said.

  “Precisely,” said Thidrek. “And how is that done?”

  Lut had read of his earthly fate in the Norns’ Book of Fate. But he was not on earth now—he was in a different realm where Skuld had no power to mold fate. So everything he had read was now null and void.

  As Hel approached them—gliding as if her feet, unseen beneath her black robe, did not touch the ground—Lut sensed that one of them was about to die.

  The goddess stopped before them and handed her staff to Thidrek. “To restore your life, you must subtract it from the living,” she said. “Touch the crystal orb to the heart of the one whose years you wish to take.”

  Thidrek grinned in anticipation. “And the one I touch will die?”

  “You will take his remaining years of life,” said Hel.

  Thidrek perused the faces of the prisoners. “Now let’s see . . . who is the likely prospect? Someone brave and strong and bursting with heart. This one?” He playfully made a feint with the staff at Jarl, who jumped back from its reach. “Close, but not my choice. This one?” He jabbed the orb toward Drott, who recoiled. “No, too chubby for my tastes.” His eyes settled on Dane standing next to Lut. “Now, here’s the ideal candidate. And isn’t it ironic? A day not so long ago, on a hill outside your village . . . you thought you had seen the end of me. You took my years and now I take yours. How does it feel, knowing you’ll be within me? When I go to your village and kill every living soul . . . when I plunge my sword into your own mother, it will be your own strength flowing within these hands.”

  Dane stared back at him. “If I am to be within you, Lord Thidrek, those hands will cut your own throat first.”

  “Defiant to the last, eh?” Thidrek moved to touch the orb to Dane’s chest—when Lut grabbed the end of the staff and jammed it into his own. A rush of scalding-hot pain shot through him, knocking him to the floor. The room spun; he saw the blurred faces of his friends crying out, but their voices were fuzzy and distant. It felt like an animal had clawed open his chest and had his heart in its jaws. By all the gods in Asgard, make the pain stop!

  Dane girded himself for the touch of the orb. How would it feel to have his life siphoned away? Would it be painful? At the last instant he closed his eyes, hoping it would be over quickly. There was a sharp cry of pain and his eyes snapped open. He saw Lut staggering backward, grabbing at his chest. What had he done? Lut crumpled to the floor, gasping, his body shaking uncontrollably. His rosy skin faded and wrinkled, his hair turned gray, and his tall, muscular frame withered and shrank. All the youth and strength that he had so treasured drained away. And then, abruptly, he stopped shaking and lay silent and lifeless, older and more enfeebled than ever before.

  “Lut!” Dane knelt and put his ear to the old one’s chest but heard nothing. A gasp escaped Lut’s mouth. Dane listened again and heard a faint heartbeat.

  “Why did he do that?” Hel asked, sounding genuinely baffled. “Sacrifice himself for you? Does he not cherish his own youth?”

  Dane looked down at Lut’s ancient face. “He is a Rune Warrior” was all he could think to say.

  “Ah. Idiotically courageous and forthright.”

  “He is, your highness,” Dane said.

  Hel shrugged as if such human qualities were beyond her understanding. “Take them away,” she ordered.

  “Wait!” Thidrek ordered. Dane turned and saw that Thidrek had retrieved the hand mirror from the floor and was admiring his restored flesh. He touched and poked his face. What had been rotting, green, and crawling with maggots moments before was now sound and whole. “I wanted his years,” Thidrek said, pointing at Dane.

  “Has not my promise been fulfilled?” Hel said with irritation.

  “Yes, it’s very good, excellent work, your majesty,” Thidrek said, checking out his full set of gleaming white teeth that had been rotted, black stumps before. “But he took my life and I demand his in return.”

  Hel leveled her reptilian glare upon him. “You . . . demand? If I am mistaken, by all means correct me, but I thought a human could not do that to a goddess.” Her tone was brittle and deadly. Thidrek’s swagger vanished, replaced with a grovel worthy of Grelf’s best.

  “Yes, yes, yes, of course you are correct, your majesty,” he mewled. “Quite correctly correct, I beg your forgiveness. I will never use the, uh, d-word in your presence again.”

  Chapter 22

  The Curiosity of the Dead

  Riding atop Sleipnir, Astrid followed the ship past the Niflheim gate, keeping low to the fog- shrouded water to remain unseen. Once through the gate, she and her steed soared high over the ship. Looking down, she saw the decks were crammed with a gray mass of people standing still as statues. But these weren’t people—at least not the living kind, she realized. They were the souls of the doomed being ferried to Hel’s realm. She kicked Sleipnir’s flanks and they flew on, following the waterway until they came to Hel’s fortress on the banks of the Lake of Fire.

  Poised high in the gloom over the enormous, deformed structure, she saw a shallow ravine behind the fortress that afforded cover. She set down Sleipnir, dismounted, and stepped into the black, sulfurous ooze. “Welcome to the underworld,” she said to herself.

  “Astrid!”

  She saw the dim outline of someone approaching up the ravine through the fog. Astrid thought of leaping back upon Sleipnir and escaping, but the gray figure hurried quickly forward, emerging from the gloom, carrying a bucket. Mist! They both burst into tears and fell into each other’s arms. It was a strange sensation, for embracing and being embraced by a soul felt like the caress of the wind.

  “I was out gathering mud and saw a white flash streak by above. I prayed it was you,” Mist said between sobs.

  “Mist, I’m so sorry!” Astrid choked out. “It’s because of me you’re here.”

  “No, Aurora’s to blame. She’s in league with Hel. But I’ll get my revenge on that little traitor if it’s the last thing I
do.” Realizing the unintended humor of her words, she gave a bitter laugh. “But I’m already doing the last thing I’ll ever do,” she said, nodding at the bucket that was filled with the odorous mud. “Serving as Hel’s handmaiden.”

  “What’s the mud for?” Astrid had to ask.

  “Her bath. She simmers in hot, stinking muck as if it will soften her scaly hide. She commands that we make her beautiful. But that’s like putting sweet cream on a cow pie. No matter what we do, she’s still a big steaming pile of—”

  Sleipnir gave a snort as he nosed at the mud he was hoof deep in.

  “Odin lent you Sleipnir, so you must be on a special mission.”

  “He didn’t exactly lend him to me. I . . . stole him.”

  Mist’s jaw dropped. “Stole him? You stole the most powerful god’s favorite horse? That’s insane!”

  “I don’t disagree, but I had no choice. I had to get here, and he knew the way.”

  “You’ve come to rescue Dane and your friends?”

  “You’ve seen them?” Astrid said. “They’re alive?”

  Mist told her that Thidrek had brought them on his ship and had given them as a gift to Hel. “She especially prizes those who are pure of soul, the kind who fill Odin’s Valhalla. She put them in the Moat of Souls.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Inside the fortress walls. It’s where the doomed are placed until Hel decides what to do with them.”

  “Is it guarded?”

  Mist nodded grimly. “Even if you get them out of the fortress, once they escape, Hel will order the Niflheim gate closed. And there’s no other way out.”

  “Then we must distract Hel so she won’t care if they steal Thidrek’s ship and escape.” Astrid reached into the canvas satchel and brought out the item Skuld had given her. It was a shining crown of simple design, made of bronze. “You say Hel desires to be beautiful. This will make her believe she is. And when she is under its spell, she will think of nothing else.”