But there was also the blue skin of the frost giants and the gray-green skin of the brine giants, some of whom likewise sported patches of scales, webbed fingers and toes, or gill slits opening and closing in the sides of their necks. There were the ice ships and the wrecked ships converted into shacks, and a strange beast somewhat like a hut-sized dragon but with a blunter head and long white fur standing guard like a watchdog over what was presumably an especially valuable wagonload of crates.
Moreover, with every step the Asgardians took, the hugeness of everything before them became more apparent. His heart beating faster, Heimdall found the sight daunting. Thanks to the fights he’d already won, he’d largely shed his fear of individual frost giants, but creeping into a whole city of them was still an intimidating prospect.
He glanced at his sister stalking along beside him. If she felt at all intimidated, as usual he couldn’t tell it. In fact, she was half smiling, as if slipping through the giants would be an amusing game. Resolving to emulate her example, he drew a long, steadying breath.
Once he and Sif reached the harbor, they sought cover and crouched low whenever a giant tramped near. At one of those moments, it occurred to Heimdall to be glad that neither his sister’s armor and other trappings nor his shined brightly any more. The journey had dulled and dirtied them. Dried to a rusty brown, the saber-tooth tiger’s blood had added a final layer of dinge to his own appearance.
In time, brother and sister came to a wrecked ship shanty where a frost giant sold ale through the window someone had cut in the hull. Chains attached the drinking horns to the counter to ensure customers didn’t walk away with them.
Three of those customers, a trio of brine giants, stood outside. Two were drinking. The third was tossing a dagger into the air and catching the spinning blade again. Either it was a game, and his companions would take their turns in due course, or he was simply showing off his dexterity.
Whatever exactly was happening, his attention was on the blade, and the other giants’ attention was on him. Heimdall thought he and Sif would have no trouble slipping by.
Then, however, the brine giant who’d been playing with the dagger cried out. Heimdall looked up, and the weapon spun earthward to land in a mound of dirty slush. Snarling curses, the wounded giant clutched the gashed fingers from which blood now dripped. The others laughed at his discomfiture.
In a moment, though, the brine giants were going to look down to retrieve the fallen knife, and when they did, they were going to spot the Asgardians creeping along nearby. Heimdall frantically cast about and spied a ragged hole in the base of the shanty. He lunged through, and Sif scurried after him.
A shaft of Jotunheim’s wan light shined through the opening to illuminate floating particles of dust, but there was gloom beyond together with the smell of damp, rotting wood and a ceiling scarcely higher than Heimdall was tall. That, he supposed, was preferable to being in the same space as the giant selling ale. He and Sif were inside the wrecked ship’s enclosed bilge with the ale vendor presumably standing on the deck above their heads. When Heimdall peered, he could make out some of the ballast stones that had steadied the vessel at sea.
Hunched forms scuttled from behind the stones. Sif said, “Watch out!” and snatched for her sword. With the ceiling so low, he had to crouch to draw his own blade over his shoulder. He barely had time to do that, straighten up, and assume a proper fighting stance before the giant rats were on them, creatures of gnashing chisel teeth and coarse bristling fur as big as the Asgardians were themselves.
Heimdall slashed again and again, eliciting squeals of pain, and beside him Sif did likewise. At one point, a rat lunged and caught her by the leg, but before it could bite through her armor or yank her off her feet, she thrust her broadsword into its neck. A moment later, the surviving rodents retreated into the darkness leaving the carcasses of half a dozen of their pack behind.
So far, so good, but, Heimdall realized with a twinge of alarm, one of the brine giants outside might have heard the frenzied squealing and wonder what the commotion was about. He looked back at the opening, and an enormous gray-green leg was bending as a giant lowered himself to one knee. In a moment, the creature was going to peer inside the rat hole.
“Get out from in front of the opening!” Heimdall said. He and Sif took up positions on either side of it with their backs pressed against the wall. The light spilling through the rat hole dimmed as the brine giant’s head presumably blocked a goodly portion of it.
“See anything?” one of his companions asked.
“Just a pile of dead rats,” said the giant who was looking.
“Then get up. Unless you’re hungry.”
The remark sparked another round of rumbling laughter from all the giants except the butt of the joke, who growled an obscenity in response.
New scuttling, the click of claws faint on spongy decaying wood, sounded in the dark. Heimdall wondered if he and Sif would have to fight a second wave of rats. He didn’t relish the prospect, but he and his sister nonetheless stayed where they were to give the brine giants a chance to walk away.
The rodents didn’t try again, and when he judged enough time had passed, he peeked outside. The giants had indeed gone on their way leaving behind only footprints and drops of blood from the knife juggler’s cut hand in the slush. He nodded to Sif, and they exited the rat hole and prowled onward.
“For a moment there,” he said, keeping his voice low, “when the rat took you by the leg, I was worried.”
“My saga might have ended with me slain by Nidhogg. Or even the giant tiger. It won’t end with me losing a fight to vermin.”
“You think you’ll have a saga, do you?”
“If we steal back Mimir’s head, I expect so.”
“Is it going to mention me?”
“I’ll ask the skald to work in a line or two.” Sif’s tone turned serious. “Being small and inconspicuous is all very well, but as we just saw, we’re still in danger every moment we’re out in the open. Maybe we should hop on any cart we can. At least get ourselves up into the city and past the first set of walls.”
“Maybe,” he said, and then, up ahead, a cluster of brine giants broke apart as the green-skinned creatures went their separate ways. Their dispersal revealed the ox-drawn wagon loading on the other side. “On the other hand, take a look at that.”
The wagon was big, and heaped with sacks. Painted yellow crowns adorned the sides of the conveyance.
“I see it,” said Sif. “Also, the driver loitering beside it.”
“But he’s looking down the dock yonder,” Heimdall replied, “impatient for the rest of the king’s goods to come off that ice ship, not paying attention to what’s already in his wagon. If we’re careful, he won’t notice us jumping in.”
“Let’s do it, then.” The Asgardians crept forward.
There was one bad moment when a fishwife pushing a barrow full of the day’s catch unexpectedly looked down, and Heimdall was all but certain she was peering directly at him. Then, however, she simply wheeled the barrow on her way, and as she did, he noticed the milky cataracts clouding her sight.
A few seconds after that, he and Sif reached the back of the wagon. They jumped, caught hold of the edge of the cargo bay, and heaved themselves aboard. They then squirmed into the tight spaces among the sacks, concealing themselves. Up close, the bags smelled of the plums the frost giants evidently obtained somehow despite their frigid climate. Heimdall’s mouth watered at the temptation of something other than coarse, foul-tasting tiger meat, but he told himself the prudent course was to leave the bags alone.
Stevedores loaded in more sacks. Ensconced in his hiding place, Heimdall couldn’t see it happening, but he heard the soft thumps and felt the bags around him shift as new ones pushed up against them.
A few moments after that, the wagon lurched into motion, and the rumbling, shaking ride
commenced. To Heimdall, it seemed to last a long time, time that gnawed at his nerves. He could think of no reason the driver would stop in the middle of the city, go rummaging among the sacks, and discover him and Sif, but he found himself imagining it anyway.
Mere fanciful trepidation gave way to a sense of genuine urgency when the wagon came to a halt. That was because he suspected he and Sif had only moments to escape the conveyance before giants came and started unloading it, an event that would almost certainly lead to them discovering the stowaways. He squirmed out of the mound of sacks, and Sif burst out beside him.
Scrambling out of the back of the wagon, they found themselves in a courtyard with frost giants towering on every side and tramping back and forth. Heimdall judged that the wise course was to get out from among the Jotuns as soon as possible. Not caring where it led, he bolted toward the nearest open archway, and Sif dashed after him.
When they were halfway there, she grabbed him by the shoulder and jerked him to a stop. He realized that in his haste he’d somehow missed a frost giant warrior striding at right angles to their own path, and if his sister hadn’t brought him to a halt, the Jotun’s enormous foot would have kicked him or come down on top of him. As soon as the danger was past, Sif shoved him into motion again.
They ran through the arch and on into a shadowed passageway that evidently saw less traffic than the courtyard. At the moment, there were no giants in it at all. At their backs, a Jotun apparently spotted them scurrying into the gloom, but all he said was, “Cursed rats!”
Twenty-Three
Hours after sneaking into King Skrymir’s citadel, well after night had fallen, Heimdall and Sif stood at the base of a tall spire, pentagonal in cross section, that was windowless for much of the way to the top. After getting inside the castle, they’d spent considerable time spying and eavesdropping and had gleaned that the common run of citadel retainers didn’t even know the head of Mimir existed. That suggested it wasn’t in his throne room or his royal apartments either.
However, sorcerer that he was, the frost giant king also spent considerable time in this tower in the center of the castle where he practiced the mystic arts and which others were forbidden to enter on pain of death. The spire seemed an eminently likely repository for a magical artifact like the head, and the Asgardians had resolved to search it.
No Jotun was in the small graveled yard surrounding the tower. Perhaps the lateness of the hour accounted for some of that, but not, Heimdall suspected, all. His hunch was that most of the frost giants avoided the area altogether. Who knew what uncanny things one might encounter near a mage’s sanctum?
Sif glowered at the flight of stairs rising into the structure’s interior. “Are chambers devoted to sorcery always either underground or at the top of towers? Give me a warlock with a bad leg who works on the ground floor.”
Heimdall smiled. “That would have been preferable. But it’s our bad luck that Skrymir’s hale and hardy.”
“So up we go,” his sister replied. “You’ll notice there’s no sentry at the foot of the steps to prevent us, or even a door.”
“I did,” he said. “Skrymir’s chambers may have magical defenses like the vault where Odin sleeps.”
“Well, we managed before.” Sif took a running start and sprang onto the first stair step, a riser nearly as high as she was tall. Heimdall followed.
They’d stolen water and scraps of pork – roasted with a strange blue fire then burned without heat but somehow cooked food nonetheless – during the hours they’d spent in the castle, and Asgardian vigor saw them to the top of the long staircase. They scrambled over the last step, and then, before Heimdall could form more than the most rudimentary impression of the space before him, it was as if he blinked although he was sure he hadn’t actually closed his eyes. An instant later, when the blink ended, he and Sif were standing at the foot of the stairs once more.
He felt an upwelling of astonished disbelief, and then that feeling gave way to frustration and slight irritation at his own initial reaction. By now, such marvels shouldn’t amaze him. If this mission had shown him anything, it was that magic could accomplish anything, especially if it was inconvenient.
Sif cursed. “We’re back where we started!”
“I noticed,” Heimdall said. “Maybe a person needs to speak a password or make a magical gesture to open the way.”
“We’re not going to hear a password or see a gesture from way down here at the bottom of the steps, and there’s nowhere to hide at the top.”
“I noticed that, too.”
“Well,” she said, “we’re still tiny compared to frost giants. Maybe, when he climbs the stairs, Skrymir will miss us anyway. If he doesn’t, we fight. Killing him might be another way to turn the war around.” She started forward and, with a jolt of alarm, Heimdall remembered that Skrymir was supposedly adept at creating illusions, and that recollection prompted him to fear what might be about to happen. It was his turn to grab Sif by the shoulder and hold her back.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The thought just struck me: Are we sure we’re seeing what’s really before us? The tales say Skrymir can make you see what he wants you to see.”
Sif’s eyes narrowed. “Then you think we really are at the top of the steps and just can’t tell it?”
“I think it’s possible.” Heimdall drew his great sword and edged forward using the weapon to feel along the floor as he’d felt his way in the Realm Below. The tip found emptiness. “There’s a hole.” With Sif following, he worked his way along it until the illusion faded away, revealing the hole and likewise the cavernous room beyond, the chamber he’d glimpsed for an instant before the magic altered his perceptions.
Sif looked down the shaft. “A hole wide enough for a frost giant to fall into and a drop all the way back down to the bottom of the tower.”
“And if the illusion fooled a thief, and he turned around and tried to walk away, he might tumble down the stairs and break his neck.”
Beyond the pit, readily avoided if a person knew it was there, was a spacious, high-ceilinged chamber. Heimdall’s father had a sorcerer among his retainers, and he’d occasionally visited that warlock’s quarters. He’d also carried a few messages to wizards affiliated with the Asgardian army. In short, he’d seen enough mages’ laboratories to know he was looking at another such. There were, however, differences from those he’d seen before. The magic circles on the floor were made of ice, not chalk or pigment, and there was no hearth or other means of providing the fire often employed in Asgardian wizardry. Bluish phosphorescent crystals mounted in wall sconces provided the ambient light.
“Well, it’s definitely a warlock’s workroom,” said Sif, looking this way and that. “But I don’t see the head.”
Heimdall likewise peered about at the icy sigils on the floor, the freestanding bookcases full of tomes, scrolls, clay jars, and other items, the racks of ritual staves and swords, a couple long worktables, and all the furniture looming high above him. “I don’t either,” he said. “But if it’s on top of one of these tables we wouldn’t see it, not from down here.”
Sif nodded. “True. We need to get on top of them. You take the one on the left, and I’ll take the right.”
The table legs were smooth and rounded, but by dint of pure strength, clutching with hands and thighs, brother and sister scaled them. The near end of Heimdall’s table contained a mortar and pestle that, except for their size, many an Asgardian witch, warlock, or healer might have employed for crushing and compounding ingredients for a potion or spell. Several more of the clay jars reposed in a tabletop rack, perhaps because they contained materials Skrymir used frequently.
Heimdall still didn’t see the head of Mimir, however, and after a moment Sif called across the gap between the tables to report she hadn’t found it either. He then looked around the room, at the upper reaches of the floor-to-ce
iling shelves in particular, hoping his higher vantage point would enable him to spot something he hadn’t been able to see from the floor.
It didn’t. But while he was trying, a faint sound, part hiss and part scrape, came from farther along the table on which he stood.
The head of Mimir spoke when Odin questioned it. Did it, then, ever shift and make noise of its own accord? Heimdall had never been close to the necromantic artifact and had no idea, but perhaps it did. Or maybe he was hearing something dangerous. Hopeful and wary in equal measure, he readied his two-handed sword and stalked in the direction of the sound.
In the center of the table sat a round, shallow iron basin, flat on the bottom so that, except for the lack of a handle, it reminded him of an oversized frying pan. Contained within was another design made of ice, perforce smaller than the ones on the floor, but just as intricate and infinitely more active because it was busy elaborating on itself. As though laid down by an invisible pen or brush, a thin, continuous line of rime added detail after detail to the drawing. The process was fascinating to watch.
“Heimdall?” Sif called.
He knew he should answer. But it occurred to him to wonder how the design could perpetually add to itself without eventually becoming a solid sheet of ice, and he felt that if he studied it for another heartbeat or two, he’d discover the answer. Then, his curiosity satisfied, there would be time enough to reply to his sister and get back to searching for Mimir’s head.
“Heimdall!”
He scowled to have her distracting him, but despite the clamor he spied the solution to the riddle. The design was all one continuous line, and as the head of it defined new angles and curves, the back of it disappeared, possibly melting to provide fresh water for the front end to freeze in place. At the moment, the effect was of an inward spiral that drew a person’s gaze toward the center of the figure.
The Head of Mimir Page 19