‘Only one,’ replied Surtr evenly.
‘Does it eat corpses?’ enquired Jormunrek, light-heartedly.
‘No,’ replied the Fire Giant.
‘Does it drip venom?’ asked Ulric, suspiciously.
‘No,’ replied the Fire Giant again.
‘Oh – oh... ’ went Hodbrodd, desperately trying to think of a question for Surtr, ‘... er... is it huge and… vicious with… great big teeth and... will it eat us if it gets the chance?’
[Quiet laughter of derision from some of the men, along with scornful advice to Hodbrodd not to be so ridiculous.]
‘Yes,’ said Surtr, crisply.
[Silence.]
‘You just had to ask, didn’t you?’ grumbled Fearless.
‘What is it?’ asked three or four of the men, simultaneously and Surtr stopped in his tracks.
‘Listen... ’ he said, holding up a giant hand for silence.
In the far distance, there was a faint noise: a barely-audible, high-pitched, plaintive, wailing noise.
‘It sounds... ’ said Aldaron who, in addition to having very keen eyesight, also possessed excellent hearing, ‘... like a wolf... or, maybe, a dog.’
‘It is a dog,’ confirmed Surtr, with an impassive nod.
‘Ah, now… ’ interjected Fearless, looking from side to side and displaying the familiar, early signs of panic-stricken cowardice, ‘… I’m not very good with dogs... or, rather, they aren’t very good with me! They don’t tend to like me very much, for some reason.’
‘Smart animals, dogs,’ observed Randver, nodding sagely to himself.
‘But this dog... ’ began Sharp Axe, addressing Surtr, ignoring Fearless and Randver, ‘... is no ordinary dog, is it?’
‘No, it is not,’ replied Surtr, apparently unconcerned. ‘It is Garmr... the Hound of Hel.’
‘The dog belongs to Hel... so... she would feed it – yes?’ reasoned Fearless, hopefully.
‘I don’t think,’ said Sharp Axe, as he strained to look into the murky distance for evidence of Garmr, ‘that Hel is likely to be winning any awards for her outstanding contribution to pet welfare.’
‘Garmr is cared for – ’ began Surtr.
‘There!’ interrupted Fearless, with a triumphant expression, for his brother’s benefit. ‘See?’
‘ – but he must still be treated with caution,’ continued Surtr. ‘His task to guard the Realm of the Dead and he guards it zealously. Before entering Helheimr, we must first pass Gnipa, the cave which is home to Garmr.’
As the journey continued, the howling grew steadily louder. Although it filled the men with a sense of unease and foreboding, they felt relatively safe in the presence of the Fire Giant as they walked on.
In time, a cave came into view, over to the men’s left and it was from here that the sound was clearly coming. As the group came to within a stone’s throw of Gnipa, the howling stopped abruptly.
‘Proceed... cautiously,’ advised Surtr and two bright, glowing red eyes, not unlike those belonging to the Fire Giant himself, gradually became visible through the deep darkness of the cave mouth.
The men wanted to stop but Surtr continued to walk, so they followed him, all the time keeping an anxious watch on the cave.
The red eyes appeared to rise in the darkness with slow, deliberate care; shortly afterwards, Garmr, the Hound of Hel, emerged from his cave. The men gasped.
Garmr was, by some considerable margin, the largest dog any of the men had ever seen: he was stocky, with a squarish head, short, rounded ears and unkempt, jet-black fur but, most disturbingly of all, covered in patches of what looked like congealed blood all over the front of his body and muzzle. Garmr seemed to recognise Surtr and began to lumber, unhurriedly, towards him. Before the hound had covered half the distance to the giant from its cave, however, its attention was diverted to the men; it stopped in its tracks, bared its yellowing, dangerous-looking fangs and began to give out a low-pitched, menacing growl.
The men, too, had slowed to a halt, as they quickly assessed their chances of outrunning a canine the size of an overfed carthorse.
‘He looks mean,’ pointed out Hodbrodd observantly, though quite unnecessarily.
‘He looks like he’s already eaten,’ added Ulric with uncharacteristic optimism. ‘See? All that... blood.’
‘Probably just the first course,’ contributed Fearless, having adopted none of Ulric’s optimism, but trying hard to comfort himself with three thoughts: firstly, that his deeply-held belief that dogs enjoyed attacking him was not actually founded very firmly on scientific fact; secondly, that Garmr was ten times more likely to eat someone else in the target group, purely on the basis of mathematical probability and, thirdly, that whilst the hound was eating whichever one of his unlucky comrades was on the wrong end of that one-in-eleven probability, he would be away from the scene of carnage and out of sight before Garmr had so much as had the chance to savour the taste.
‘Don’t worry,’ advised Sharp Axe, failing miserably to sound anything like as cool, calm and collected as he had intended, ‘Surtr will... pro... tect... ’ and, here, Sharp Axe’s voice trailed away, as a rather unwelcome sight had met his eyes: namely, the sight of Surtr striding away from him at a brisk pace, in what Sharp Axe supposed to be the direction of Helheimr, ‘… er, that is to say... ’ continued the leader, now sounding even less cool, calm and collected than before, ‘... Surtr doesn’t seem too concerned about Garmr, does he?’
‘No… ’ agreed Fearless, ‘… but the dog knows him – plus, Surtr is much bigger than the dog!’
‘Now, let’s not panic,’ suggested Sharp Axe, who really wanted to panic, as Garmr slowly but purposefully now began to approach the group, his low growl somehow starting to sound even more menacing than before.
Sharp Axe heard two swords being drawn and guessed they would belong to Hedin and Hamdir, the two group members most liable to take on the Hound of Hel in armed combat, given their inclination to want to counter even the mildest of perceived threats with sharpened steel and their likely disregard for the ultimate consequences of doing so in this case.
Hedin and Hamdir, though more than prepared to take on Garmr with their swords to discourage it from attacking them, need not have troubled themselves, for Hel’s hound had long since selected the target for his main course.
‘G-g-good d-dog,’ trembled Fearless, as Garmr slowly approached him, licking his lips and slobbering repulsively. ‘N-n-nice d-dog... er… has anybody got a b-bone? S... s... sit, boy.’
‘Oh, that’s no good!’ chided Fynn, with a good deal more courage than any of the other men felt. ‘It doesn’t matter how big they are, you have to be firm with a dog... watch. Stay, Garmr! Stay!’
Garmr, probably unused to being addressed at all, let alone being given commands it did not understand, stopped in its tracks and weighed up Fynn, with its head cocked a little to one side.
‘Good dog! See?’ said Fynn, feeling rather pleased with himself. ‘They’re all the same. All they need is a bit of discipline – ’
It was at this precise point that Garmr concluded his brief weighing-up exercise and decided to opt for action. The giant hound rocked back on its powerful hind legs and launched itself at Fynn who, not surprisingly, given that a terrifying, over-sized, ravenous canine was hurtling towards him at roughly head height, went completely rigid, paralysed with fear.
[Gasps of concern for Fynn’s well-being from the men.]
Fynn the Fortunate, Sharp Axe’s right-hand man and veteran of the campaign to find the hammer of Thor, must have thought the end had come for him and, indeed, it would have, but for one thing: the thick rope around the dog’s massive neck, secured to some unknown, solid object within the cave and which, up to this point, none of the men had noticed in the gloom, suddenly reached the absolute limit of its length. Fynn had actually felt the heat of the animal’s putrid breath in his face, even before the moment when the unyielding rope caused the furious, snarling animal to free
ze momentarily in mid-air; at that point, Garmr’s fangs, as long as a man’s fingers, were so close to his intended victim’s face that, if he had undergone the appropriate training and had sufficient time, Fynn could easily have performed a superficial dental examination on the hound. For the very briefest of split seconds, Garmr’s normally terrifying features took on a confused, wide-eyed look, immediately after which he was yanked unceremoniously backwards into an ungraceful, partial somersault, before landing with a painful, heavy thud on his back, in an undignified heap.
[‘Ooohs’ from the men, accompanied by the kinds of facial expression which would be expected from anyone who had just witnessed an oversized animal hitting the ground hard from too great a height.]
‘Now, that... ’ breathed Randver, ‘... is what I call... lucky!’
Garmr picked himself up and, having gone right off the idea of dinner, limped slowly back to his cave, whimpering forlornly.
‘I... think he’s hurt,’ said Sharp Axe in the general direction of Surtr, unsure of what fate might befall anyone who wounded a pet belonging to the Goddess of the Dead.
‘Er… sorry... ’ offered Fynn weakly in roughly the same direction, swaying slightly where he stood.
The Fire Giant, however, again failed to turn round and most of the men then broke into a brisk jog, with some degree of urgency, in order to catch up with him.
‘That,’ said Surtr suddenly, pointing ahead and persuading those pursuing him to squint into the half-light of the far distance, ‘is the bridge of Gjøll. Beyond it stand the gates of Helheimr.’
‘If the gates are locked,’ began Fearless hopefully, ‘can we go home and come back another time?’
*
The bridge over the river Gjøll was a simple structure; nothing more than a wooden walk-way, in fact, with a smooth wooden hand-rail on either side. It seemed barely to clear the height of the river.
As the men drew closer to the shallow banks of the Gjøll, they could see that a pale, translucent mist hovered just above the surface of the water, which appeared to be flowing very slowly, if at all.
‘Looks stagnant,’ commented Aldaron. ‘Bad sign, that.’
‘More good news to lift our spirits!’ retorted Fearless, aiming a disapproving glare at Aldaron.
‘It does look a bit… odd, though, as rivers go,’ offered Randver, by way of support for Aldaron.
‘It carries the sadness, despair and lost hope of Helheimr’s dead,’ Surtr informed them.
‘You two should form a double act,’ suggested Fearless to Aldaron, not quite loud enough for Surtr to hear.
‘You may experience some of those emotions yourselves, as you cross,’ pointed out Surtr, who did not appear to do so himself, for he marched over the bridge in three bold, spring-laden strides, without so much as a sigh of disappointment and, considering the wooden structure did not look anywhere near strong enough to support him, against the odds.
Sharp Axe was next to negotiate the bridge. Two short, tentative steps in, he came to an abrupt halt: he felt as though he had been hit suddenly and very hard by a wave of profound sorrow, anguish, gloom and misery, which had washed over him, consuming him totally, leaving him bereft of all hope for either the present or the future. At that moment, it was as if no light remained in his world; as if he had no cause for optimism; as if there were no reason at all for him to go on. To all intents and purposes, the moment Sharp Axe had set foot on the Gjøll bridge, his life had ceased to have any purpose; he began to contemplate the potential merits of throwing himself head-first into the river, thus ridding the Nine Worlds forever of his futile, meaningless existence.
‘No... ’ said Sharp Axe dully, as he grabbed the wooden hand-rails on either side of him, unable to move in any direction, mentally trying to fight the rapidly-growing urge to plunge into the Gjøll.
The procession of men behind Sharp Axe stopped equally abruptly.
‘What is it?’ asked Fynn, next in line and, therefore, the person with the keenest interest in Sharp Axe’s problem. ‘Are you all right, Sharp Axe? Is something wrong?’
‘I... I... ’ began the leader, shaking his head slowly, ‘… I just can’t do it, anymore... I can’t go on… it’s all so... so... pointless.’
‘I’ve been saying that ever since we arrived in Muspelheimr,’ lied Fearless, ‘but does anyone listen to me?’
Surtr, who had progressed several giant strides beyond the bridge, now stopped, about-turned and walked back towards it.
‘It is not surprising,’ began the Fire Giant matter-of-factly, without any trace of sympathy. ‘The Gjøll induces very powerful emotions.’
Surtr took two steps back onto the bridge and, in an astonishingly-swift movement, given the size of his frame, reached down, grasped Sharp Axe’s left arm and dragged him along the walk-way as if he were weightless. Although Sharp Axe desperately wanted to resist, fear of losing his left arm persuaded him to forget his reservations for long enough to be able to run over the wooden structure with Surtr’s assistance. Once on the other side and clear of the river, Sharp Axe immediately felt as though the enormous emotional weight, which had caused him to plummet into the depths of despair so swiftly, had now been lifted from him just as swiftly. He felt drained and weary as a result of his first, bruising encounter with the Gjøll, but the world – even this inhospitable lower world, in which he currently found himself – was suddenly a good place to be. Sharp Axe breathed in deeply, held his breath for a moment to calm himself further, then breathed out slowly; as he did so, he tried not to think about the return journey across the river which awaited him, at some point in what he hoped would be the not-too-near future.
‘You next,’ Surtr informed Fynn, then grabbed his left arm in much the same fashion as he had with Sharp Axe and began to pull Fynn forwards.
‘No, no! I’m not ready!’ protested Fynn, the instant his foot touched the wooden bridge; unlike Sharp Axe, however, he did try to resist Surtr’s assistance. As a result, the Fire Giant unintentionally lifted Fynn off his feet and slung him, through the air, to the stony bank on the other side of the bridge.
‘Thank… you,’ shouted Fynn weakly, as he picked himself off the ground and staggered around a little unsteadily, massaging the shoulder which Surtr had so nearly just dislocated. ‘That was... very helpful.’
Having witnessed this and quickly considered the outcome of Sharp Axe’s and Fynn’s differing approaches, the rest of the men concluded that Sharp Axe had had the right idea and they allowed the giant to assist them to the other side of the Gjøll as best he saw fit, without offering any resistance.
Once Fearless, the last in line, had crossed the bridge, the rest of the men stood aside to allow Surtr to make his way towards an enormous pair of wrought-iron gates which were taller, by some way, than the giant himself and which were set within an equally-tall, forbidding grey-stone wall.
There was nothing to hold the gates together, other than their colossal size and weight. For most beings in the Nine Worlds, such size and weight would have been sufficient to prevent entry through the gates into Helheimr; Surtr, however, was no ordinary being. He placed the palm of one enormous hand on each gate, inclined his mighty upper body and drove himself forward with his powerful legs. Initially, the gates seemed to consider offering some resistance to the advancing Fire Giant but, after a brief moment, thought better of it and yielded to his force.
The loud, grating sound of the base of the gates as they scraped slowly along the stony ground and the squeaking of their iron hinges as they reluctantly rotated, set the men’s teeth on edge. The screaming, unworldly, icy wind, which seemed to rush suddenly and unexpectedly through the opening in the gates when Surtr had succeeded in separating them, chilled each man to his very soul.
The Fire Giant, having opened the gates to the Realm of the Dead, stood upright, turned slowly and, in a voice which showed no sign of breathlessness from his recent labours said, rather ominously:
‘Welcome to Helheimr
.’
*
As Surtr led the men into the heart of the Realm of the Dead, a solitary hooded-crow swooped down from high in the air, perched itself on top of one of Helheimr’s wrought-iron gates, raised its head and cawed loudly.
Chapter Nine
The Realm of the Dead
‘Up ahead is Eljudnir: the Great Hall of the Dead,’ said the Fire Giant to Sharp Axe and his men, referring to the huge, imposing building which stood before them; it appeared to be constructed from the same grey stone as the wall which ran all the way around Helheimr. ‘It is in here where we shall find Hel, Goddess of the Dead.’
The outside of the Great Hall was rectangular in shape and, except for a large, wooden double door in the middle of the building, it was quite featureless. It was also every bit as unwelcoming as everything else the men had encountered so far, during their journey through the Lower Worlds.
‘What’s the difference,’ ventured Hodbrodd, now satisfied that Surtr, in addition to being extremely knowledgeable, was also more than willing to share his knowledge, ‘between this place and Valhalla?’
‘Interesting question,’ conceded the Fire Giant, which pleased Hodbrodd no end. ‘Valhalla is, to all intents and purposes, a great banqueting-hall, set aside for those mortals who have died glorious deaths in battle – “brave warriors”, you might call them. This place is for those mortals who have died less than gloriously – from old age, through disease, as a result of an accident, or by their own hand.’
‘Usually, at least,’ muttered Sharp Axe, thinking of his grandfather, Knut Cod Killer, whom he knew from the God of Thunder, Thor, to be residing in Valhalla, even though he had died under a fallen tree, the victim of an unfortunate accident. Knut Cod Killer had secured his place amongst the brave warriors in Valhalla only because Sharp Axe had managed to ensure his grandfather’s sword was in his hand, at the moment he had passed away.
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