by Eric Flint
"If there is one thing I really like about them, it's that you and I are not monsters in their eyes," said Jörmungand. "You've got to admit it, Brother. It makes a change. Loki and Sigyn were always good to us. Thor . . . well, he was so far down the slide to being a stumblebum he didn't care any more. He wanted company to drink with. He only took the sword out of your mouth because he was blind drunk and wanted to sell it for more booze."
"He admitted that, yes," said Fenrir. "And I used to get on with Tyr. But these people are still mortals, Sis. Whether Loki admits it or not, Ragnarok is coming. I don't even know if he can stop it if he chooses. And in Ragnarok all mortals will die, and we'll stand beside our father in battle against the Æsir."
"Hmph. You're not even full grown yet, Fenrir. Ragnarok isn't due for centuries. If things can change that much, we can change them some more. Besides, I like having a girl for a friend. There's all sort of woman talk that I never had a chance to do before."
It was Fenrir's chance to snort. "Soppy stuff. But, fair enough, I like Liz too. And the kids have brought out a big brother side I never knew I had. But there's no sense in getting sentimental about it. Ragnarok will end all things."
"So this is where you two are," said Liz, coming through the door. "Time for us to get going."
She looked faintly guilty. "We're going to need a hand to get the half-boat out. I didn't think of that."
"Hands are something I'm a little short of," said Fenrir.
Liz found getting the half-boat out was an easier task to accomplish than she'd thought. Actually, it displayed the kind of thinking she wished she'd employed in her various house-moves. Do not fight the queen-sized bed-base around corners and up the stairs. Just have the world's biggest snake swing its tail once at the wall, and push the thing straight through the new hole. Easy really, if not the sort of action that pleased landlords—or Thrúd.
"You should treat Bilskríner with some respect!" she said, as Jörmungand pushed the half-boat through the hole.
"Why?" asked Jörmungand.
"Because it is home of the god Thor," said Thrúd.
"It's a house. Big and badly built. It can be fixed. It's not exactly an architectural treasure, Thrúd. And in the last little while he hasn't actually spent much time here. I know because I spent most of the time drinking with him."
"You should respect it because he has lived here," said Thrúd stiffly.
"Oh?" said Jörmungand skeptically. "I'm inclined to respect people, not things. But I live in the ocean, mostly. Call that my home. I'll thank the Ás and the Midgarders for not making water into it."
Thrúd found something else that needed doing, and Liz had to grin to herself. She was not a bad kid, but was obviously used to being the strongest female around—which you could believe if you'd seen her carrying a few "essentials," like a metal mirror that must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. She had her father's strength, but packed into a smaller female body. Mixing with Jörmungand would do her the world of good.
Jörmungand slid herself into the rope and strut harness that Liz and Lamont had constructed. She had a good look at herself in Thrúd's mirror and arched her neck up proudly. "All aboard."
The Mythworld-skidoo moved fairly slowly at first, very sinuously and with enough lateral sway for Liz to wonder if Jerry would have been seasick on this craft too.
"Chariot goes faster," grumbled Thor. It was still snowing, but not with the force it had had the night before. The snow lay about four feet thick and was still loose and powdery. Perhaps Thor's goats could have coped with it. But the Mythworld-skidoo was accelerating as they hit a slight downhill, with their back-track straightening out and the half-boat rising onto its keel instead of digging its way through the snow. Now they went fast . . . and then still faster.
Straight toward a party of warriors struggling their way through the thick snow. "Wheeee!" shrieked Jörmungand. "This is fun!"
By the way Odin's Einherjar were diving into drifts, they didn't think so. Just because you're a Valkyrie-chosen brave warrior does not mean that you want to be flattened by a half-boat moving at least forty miles an hour, by Liz's estimate. It went on accelerating, spraying powder snow and racing ever faster on the downhill toward the gates of Asgard.
"Thor had better be right," Liz yelled, "because if those bloody gates are closed we'll be jam at this speed!"
An arrow winged over her head, and skittered off Jörmungand's scales. The gates were open—but Heimdall and a dozen others were trying to close them.
"Faster!" yelled Liz in Jörmungand's ear. "And the rest of you get down!"
But Loki and Thrúd had already taken up bows, and were shooting back at the frantic gate team. Another black-fletched arrow sprouted in the boat-timbers as Jörmungand churned the snow behind them. Through the snow-arch Liz could see that the gate-closers had run away. But the gap was a narrow one. Liz just hoped that Jörmungand was keen sighted. It wasn't a major reptile trait.
Sure enough, they hit the gate edge with a shriek of splintering wood because Jörmungand's aim was not that good. But at least they were through.
And then Jörmungand was turning. Was she taking them back? Was she crazy? Best not to ask.
The entire half-boat lifted—all twenty feet of solid oak—and Jörmungand turned across the gateway she'd been racing straight toward. The half-boat slid sideways, a good seventy feet. A sheet of snow, several tons of it, sprayed straight at the Einherjar. One moment there were thirty warriors with swords, battleaxes and spears, bracing themselves, archers ready to fire.
And the next there were only snow-men, and Jörmungand was turning again, racing across the flat and away.
"I've done that at sea, but it's even more fun on the snow!" said Jörmungand happily. "Swamped a few longboats like that, I have."
Liz could well believe it. She was just very glad that she hadn't been on the longboats, or standing in the snow.
They were away from Asgard.
But they had left a trail that even a blind man could follow, if he didn't mind getting his knees wet.
Chapter 24
Liz was not the only one who could see that the trail would be easy to follow. Loki was up on the prow talking to Jörmungand. They immediately began to throw a series of s-bends that Liz just knew would have made poor Jerry lose his breakfast.
"That won't stop them following us," she said to Loki, as she clung to the gunwale.
"It might just put them off doing so on horseback," said Loki, with a wicked grin. "Look."
Liz could see what he meant. The trail was no less clear, but now there were huge ridges of snow—real powder drifts—seven or eight feet high to wade through. As a South African from an area of that country where it never snowed she had no idea how much it would affect the horses. But it didn't look like it was going to be pleasant. And galloping down their back-trail, which would have been easy a little earlier, was going to be impossible now.
"We'll reach the sea before they reach us," said Loki. "I have arranged a vessel."
Liz was impressed. Either Lamont or Thrúd or Sigyn must have leaned on him, hard. Loki wasn't much of a hand at preparation.
* * *
The sea, when they got there, was cloaked in a clinging sea-mist—the ocean plainly warmer than the frigid air. Liz wondered what sort of little unseaworthy tub she was going to encounter. The poor thing she and Lamont had vandalized in Thor's workroom had been well built, she had to grant. And weren't these Norsemen Vikings? It had to be better than that Greek boat, or that blasted Egyptian floating banana, stuck together with linen strips. And at least she was used to going to sea in small boats.
The vessel loomed blackly out of the mist, at least the size of a supertanker.
"Naglfar," said Loki. "She cannot come too close to shore."
Thor and Thrúd both shuddered.
"At the moment she carries no cargo," said Loki, urbanely. "And what other ship did you two think I could get?"
"I suppos
e a cruise liner was too much to hope for," said Liz. "Or even a battleship."
Loki chuckled. "On Naglfar we need fear no warship. She is the biggest ship in all of the nine worlds. I have to have the biggest and best of something."
"So they let you have the corpse-ship," said Thor, a little tersely. "Well, let's go to her then, if we must."
It looked like a long cold wade and then a longer cold swim to a ship that even Thor seemed reluctant to board. But the Midgard serpent had shaken herself free of the Mythworld skidoo. "I'll take you out to her," she said. "Get up on my back."
It wasn't quite as wet as swimming might have been, although stowing all of Thrúd's bundles was less than easy. In some ways Thrúd was a woman after Liz's own heart. She also didn't believe in that silly "traveling light" idea.
When they got closer to the great vessel, Liz realized that it might just be bigger than she'd thought . . . and a lot weirder than the Egyptian banana boat. In the sea-mist it almost seemed to be constructed from tiny scales.
"Okay, what is it made of?" asked Liz, as Jörmungand got closer to the vessel that loomed like some vast cliff over them.
"Nails," said Loki, ghoulishly, plainly relishing telling her. "The nails of the dead."
He was rewarded by suitable shudders from some of Jörmungand's passengers. Liz wasn't going to oblige him. "Lousy building material. What do you do for struts?"
Loki looked darkly at her. "You and Sigyn are two of a kind."
Jörmungand reared up out of the water and deposited them on the deck.
The ship really was at least the size of supertanker. "A lot of nails," said Liz.
"The godar are encouraged to make their people be sure that no man dies with untrimmed nails, as Æsir would have Loki's ship take a long time to finish," said Thrúd.
Liz sniffed. "Smells like old toenails. Maybe washing their feet before they died would have been nice too."
Sigyn gave a snort of laughter at the hastily turned back of Loki. "Now he's gone off to sulk. He's very proud of Naglfar."
"She's certainly big enough," admitted Liz.
Sigyn shrugged. "She will ferry the enemies of the Æsir to Ragnarok. So Thor will tell you that she is too big, and I would have her twice the size."
"Well, let's see if we can skip Ragnarok. It does sound as if I could pass on it."
"All that lives will pass, or so it is foretold, either in flood or by fire," said Sigyn, with a hint of sadness.
"A lovely grim prediction," said Liz. "Packs them into the churches, does it?"
Sigyn looked a bit nonplussed.
Liz took pity on her. "Look, back where I come from there are dozens of religions, and preaching that the end of the world is at hand is good business. So far their gods have been a bit of a let-down, because the end keeps being delayed. It's probably because the dead are now working to rule or something."
Sigyn looked at her and shook her head. "Here the end comes. Fimbulwinter has begun. There will be no spring for three years."
"And no hay fever. Look. Things have to change. And if you believe in them, they won't." Just don't stop believing in this ship of nails until we get to disembark, she thought to herself.
Sigyn shrugged. "Nothing really changes in the nine worlds. We live in the great cycle of time. And here the dead do not work to rule, they fight to rule."
Jötunheim lies to the north and east of Asgard. Liz thought it was probably a good place for hunting snarks. It was a place—if she remembered her Lewis Carroll correctly—entirely composed of chasms and crags. And even finding that the snark was a boojum was easier than taking another voyage on Naglfar. The nails formed a flexible armor, very like fish scales. But unlike fish scales they did not have anything inside them (like a fish, for example) to stop them flexing with each and every wave. Liz was an old sailor. She didn't mind the ship pitching or rolling. But the deck moving in parallel with the waves under her feet was too much! She understood now why Thor and Thrúd had been so unenthusiastic about the corpse-ship. It wasn't squeamishness. It was just a liking for being able to remain standing up.
At least the children had enjoyed it as much as Loki did.
"So where now?" asked Liz, as they sailed into a deep bay that would have made the average Nordic postcard photographer orgasmic and the average sailor very wary. Snowy pines clung to the cliff edges above the midnight blue water. Naglfar touched and scraped her way slowly in toward the shore. Liz had yet to work out what moved the great ship. She was a little afraid to ask.
"I must consult my kin," said Loki. "And then we will need to find a messenger to send to the Æsir."
"And we need to set about getting to Marie," said Lamont. "As I explained to you last night, Loki, she's . . . sick."
Loki nodded. "I have thought about what you told me, and I have thought about where you are and her health. I must explain fully what the thorn of sleep does. It may be that Odin has unwittingly blessed you. He may have given you hope."
"Don't play the fool about this, Loki," said Lamont harshly. "We had the best doctors in the U.S. examine her. It's too late. It's gone too far. There is no cure known to man."
"I do not jest." There was none of the usual mockery in Loki's voice. "Odin has not given you healing. He has given one thing that you did not have before, though. And that is time to seek that healing."
"What?" Lamont's head bobbed forward. He stared intently at Loki.
"The thorn of sleep. It is a magical thing. The victim will lie without breath, but without change or death either, until that thorn is pulled out. I do not know this illness that you speak of. But there is much wisdom to be found in the nine worlds. This will give you time to seek it. Were you from the nine worlds your Marie might go to rest with my daughter Hel, if she died. But from what I can understand, if she dies she will go beyond the reach of men and possibly gods. This way, that won't happen while you search."
Lamont sat down on Naglfar's deck with a thump. Looking at him, Liz wanted to start crying herself. Tears were streaming down his face.
Liz bit her lip. It had always seemed that the Mythworlds were places to escape from. Where time rushed past, and death and danger were the best reward. Suddenly she could think of several million people who would settle for as much of a chance as Lamont Jackson had just been handed.
"So who is our hostess?"
"Ran."
"It's an odd name," said Liz.
"I wouldn't let her hear that," said Thrúd, with a wry smile. "She's quicker tempered than Papa-Thor, even if Loki does have her wrapped around his thumb. The mother of the waves is she who normally deals with drownings."
They were inside the cliff dwelling of the giantess Ran, which was where Loki had been heading with Naglfar. Liz was engaged in her least favorite pastime. Waiting.
Fair enough, Loki and Sigyn had a lot of organizing to do. And Lamont, having been handed something of a possible lifeline, was trying to work out where he could track down any wisdom that might just help Marie.
Thor was training Emmitt. Jörmungand had gone off on some errand for Loki, and Fenrir had been sent off on a similar mission into the hinterland. The two younger boys were happily engaged in boy-mischief, and Ella was asleep. That left Liz and Thrúd to entertain themselves, as their hostess was off about her watery business.
Thrúd embroidered. It was what a noble Scandinavian lady did. Liz's mother would have approved too, so Liz had carefully avoided learning any of that type of art. Which left talking and being irritated. Liz and Thrúd were swapping stories of very different worlds—with strong similarities in places. Hunting, for one, wasn't that different.