I took a deep breath. I was gonna say “What the hell happened?” again—old Regin Fafnirsbruder hadn’t told me or anything—but I didn’t. And the reason I didn’t is that the breath I took didn’t stink. With the nasty old Rhine running right by it, the air in Isenstein always smelled like somebody just laid the biggest fart in the world right under your nose.
But it didn’t, not any more. It smelled like grass and water—clean water—and pine trees, almost like one of those little air freshener things, if you know what I mean. Too good to be true. It wasn’t one of those, though, on account of I could smell cows and pigs and horses, too, somewhere way the hell off in the distance. It was like I wasn’t by a town any more, like I’d gone off into the country. But I was still sitting right where that old lightning bolt had clobbered me.
Old Regin Fafnirsbruder started dancing around. I’m not kidding, he really did. He had this grin on his face like he was drunk, and he was kind of halfway between doing an Indian war dance and jitterbugging. Watching the old sonuvabitch shake his can like that was pretty damn funny, it really was.
“I did it!” he yelled, not keeping time with his feet or anything. “My magic worked!” He still wasn’t speaking English, but I understood him okay.
“Crap,” I said. Actually, I didn’t say “crap,” actually, but what I said meant the same thing as crap, so that was all right. “What do you mean, your magic?”
He still didn’t answer me. He was too busy dancing and hollering and having a high old time. He was a very self-centered guy, old Regin Fafnirsbruder was, egocentric as hell. It made him a real pain in the ass to talk to, to tell you the truth.
“What do you mean, your crumby magic?” I said again. I hate it when I have to repeat myself, I really do.
Finally, he remembered I was there. “Look!” he said, and he gave this wave like he was in the lousiest, corniest movie ever made. I swear to God, this wave was so goddam big that he almost fell off the side of the mountain himself.
So I looked. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but I finally went and did. I looked back over my shoulder, and I almost felt like the lightning plowed into me all over again. There was the Rhine, all right, like it was supposed to be, only it was blue, blue as the sky, bluer than the goddam sky, not the color the water in a toilet bowl is when somebody gets there just in the nick of time. No wonder it didn’t stink any more.
And somebody’d taken old Isenstein and stuck it in his back pocket. Instead of a real town, there were these maybe ten houses by the riverside, and they all had roofs made out of straw or something. So maybe old Regin Fafnirsbruder had worked magic. If he hadn’t, what the hell had he done? I didn’t know then and I still don’t know now.
When I got done gawking at Isenstein—it took me a while, believe me—I looked up to the crumby old tumbledown castle at the top of the crag. There it was, all right, big as life, but it wasn’t crumby or old or tumbledown any more. What it looked like was, it looked like somebody built it day before yesterday. There wasn’t a single stone missing—not even a pebble, I swear—and all the edges were so sharp you could’ve cut yourself on ’em. Maybe not even day before yesterday. Maybe yesterday, and I mean yesterday afternoon.
Oh, and there was this ring of fire all the way around the castle. I didn’t see anything burning up, but I sure as hell saw the flames. I heard ’em, too—they crackled like the ones in your fire-place do, only these were ten or twenty times as big. When I was a little kid, I had this book about Paul Bunyan and Babe the giant Blue Ox. It was a pretty crumby book with really stupid pictures, but I remembered it right then anyway on account of if old Babe had tried to walk through those flames, he’d’ve been short ribs and steaks in nothing flat, and I mean well-done.
“Now shall you your destiny fulfill.” I already told you old Regin Fafnirsbruder talked like that sometimes. He did it even when he wasn’t speaking English. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, old Regin Fafnirsbruder wasn’t.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I said. “And where the hell did Isenstein go, anyway?”
“That is Isenstein, Isenstein as it is now,” he said, and then a whole lot of weird stuff I didn’t understand at all, and what language he was talking in didn’t matter a goddam bit. Time flows and sorceries and I don’t know what. It all sounded pretty much like a bunch of crap to me. It would’ve sounded even more like a bunch of crap if I hadn’t kept looking back at that little handful of houses where old Isenstein used to be. Then he pointed up the hill. “You shall to the castle go. You shall through the flames pass. You shall the shield-maiden Brunhild asleep there find. You shall with a kiss her awaken, and you shall with her happily ever after live.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said, and he nodded. Just like before, his head bobbed up and down, up and down, like it was on a spring. If he wasn’t the biggest madman in the world, I don’t know who was. But he was calling the shots, too. I may not apply myself too much—people always go on and on that I’m not applying my goddam self till I’m about ready to puke sometimes—but I’m not stupid. I’m really not. Old Regin Fafnirsbruder knew what he was doing here, and I didn’t have the faintest idea. So I figured I’d better play along for a while, anyway, till I could figure out what the hell was going on.
“Go up to the castle,” he said. “You will it is all as I have said see.”
I went on up. Now he followed me. Like I said before, the old castle looked so new, it might’ve just come out of its box or something. Sure as hell, the fire went all the way around the goddam place. The closer I got, the more it felt like fire, too. I pointed to it. I made damn sure I didn’t touch it or anything, though, you bet. “How the hell am I supposed to get through that, huh?”
“Just walk through. You will not harmed be. My magic assures it.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said. Old Regin Fafnirsbruder’s head bobbed up and down some more. He looked pretty stupid, he really did. “Oh, yeah?” I said. He kept right on nodding. “Prove it,” I said to him. “You’re such a madman of a wizard and everything, let’s see you go on through there without ending up charbroiled.”
All of a sudden, he wasn’t nodding so much any more. “The spell is not for me. The spell cannot for me be,” he said. “The spell is for you and for you alone.”
I laughed at him. “I think you’re yellow, is what I think.” I figured that’d make him mad. If somebody’s a coward, what’s he gonna hate more than somebody else coming out and telling him he’s a coward, right?
I guess it worked. I guess it worked a little too goddam well, if you want to know the truth. Because what happened was, old Regin Fafnirsbruder came up and gave me a push, and he pushed me right into those old flames.
I screamed. I screamed like hell, as a matter of fact. But I didn’t burn up or anything—he was right about that. The fire felt hot, but hot like sunshine, not hot like fire. It hurt a lot more when I fell on my ass from the push, it honestly did.
“What’d you go and do that for, you goddam moron?” I yelled, and then I started to go on out through the fire. I didn’t get very goddam far, though. It wasn’t just hot like sunshine any more, let me tell you. It burned the tip of my shoe when I stuck it in there, and it would’ve burned the rest enough, too, if I’d been dumb enough to give it a chance.
Old Regin Fafnirsbruder was laughing his ass off watching me looking at my toasted toe. “You must what I want do,” he said. “Then will you what you want get. When you come out with Brunhild, you may through the fire pass. Until then, you must there stay.”
“You dirty, filthy, stinking goddam moron,” I said. “I hope you drown in the goddam Rhine.”
He just ignored me, the lousy sonuvabitch. He had no consideration, old Regin Fafnirsbruder didn’t. I started up toward the fire again, but I didn’t stick my foot in it this time—you bet I didn’t. I sat down on the ground. I felt so depressed, you can’t imagine how depressed I felt.
But after a while I stood up again. What can yo
u do when you’re just sitting around on your butt and all? I thought I’d get up and look around a little, anyway. So I did that, and I came to this door. I opened it—what the hell? At least old Regin Fafnirsbruder couldn’t keep staring at me through the flames any more. And after I went through, I slammed the hell out of that old door. To tell you the truth, I kind of hoped I’d break it right off the hinges, but no such luck.
I thought I’d end up in this big old hall full of guys making pigs of themselves and getting stinking and pinching the serving girls on the butt the way they did back in medieval times, but that isn’t what ended up happening. I walked into this little—bedroom, I guess you’d call it, but it wasn’t a bed this girl was laying on, it was more like a little sofa or something.
She was kind of cute, as a matter of fact, if you like big husky blondes. But I’d never seen a girl in chain mail before. To tell you the truth, I’d never seen anybody in chain mail before, and sure as hell not anybody sleeping. It looked uncomfortable, it really did.
She had on a helmet, too, and a sword on a belt around her waist, and this shield was leaning up against the bed or sofa or whatever the hell it was. I stood there for a while like a crumby old moron. In the fairy tales you’re supposed to kiss the princess, right, and she’ll wake up and you’ll both live happily ever after. That was what old Regin Fafnirsbruder had told me would happen, but you’d have to be a real moron not to see he was playing the game for him and nobody else. And if I kissed this girl and she didn’t happen to like it or she thought I was trying to get fresh with her or something, she was liable to murder me, for Chrissake.
I wished I could’ve figured out some other way to get out of there. I hate doing what anybody else tells me to do. I hate it like anything, if you want to know the truth. Even when it’s for my own good and everything, I still hate it. It’s nobody’s goddam business but mine what I do. Not that anybody listens to me. Yeah, fat chance of that. You think old Regin Fafnirsbruder gave a damn about what I thought? Fat chance of that, too.
But I was stuck in this old castle. I was stuck really bad. If Brunhild there couldn’t get me the hell out, who could? Nobody. Just nobody. So I leaned down and I gave her this little tiny kiss, just like it was a fairy tale or something.
Her eyes opened. I’d expected they would be blue—don’t ask me why, except she was a blonde and all—but they were brown. She looked at me like I was dirt and nobody’d invented brooms yet. Then she said, “You are not Siegfried. Where is Siegfried?” She spoke the same language as old Regin Fafnirsbruder, whatever the hell it was.
“I dunno,” I said. I bet I sounded really smart. I sounded like a goddam moron, is what I sounded like. “Who’s Siegfried?”
Her face went all soft and mushy-like. You wouldn’t think anybody who was wearing armor could look so sappy, but old Brunhild did. “He is my love, my husband-to-be,” she said. Then she sort of frowned, like she’d forgotten I was there and was all of a sudden remembering—and she didn’t look any too goddam happy about it, either. “Or he was to have been my husband. The man who came through the fire can claim my hand, if he so desires.”
I’ve always been backasswards with girls. Here she was practically saying she’d let me give her the time, but did that make me want to do it? Like hell it did. What it did was, it scared the crap out of me. I said, “I don’t want to marry anybody, for crying out loud. I just want to get the hell outa here, if you want to know the truth.”
Brunhild thought about that for a couple seconds. Then she sat up. The chain mail made little clink-clank noises when she moved—molding itself to her shape, you know? She had a hell of a shape, too, I have to admit it. A really nice set of knockers.
“What is your name?” she said, so I told her. Just like old Regin Fafnirsbruder’s had, her eyes got big. “Hagen Kriemhild?”
If you really want to know, I was getting pretty goddam tired of that. I said it again, the right way, louder this time, like you would to somebody who was pretty dumb.
But it went right by her. I could tell. Old Brunhild wasn’t much for intellectual conversation. She said, “How came you here, Hagen Kriemhild?”
“That’s a goddam good question.” I explained it as well as I could. It sounded crazy as hell even to me, and I’d been through it. She was gonna think I’d gone right off the deep end.
Only she didn’t. When I finally got through, old Brunhild said, “Regin Fafnirsbruder is an evil man. How not, when Fafnir his brother is an evil worm? But I shall settle with him. You need have no doubt of that.”
She stood up. She was almost as tall as I was, which surprised me, because I have a lot of heighth and she was a girl and everything. But she really was, so help me God. She took out her sword. It went wheep when it came out of the old scabbard, and the blade kind of glowed even though the bedroom wasn’t what you’d call bright or anything.
“What are you gonna do with that thing?” I said, which has to be one of the stupidest goddam questions of all time. Sometimes I scare myself, I really do. Am I a goddam moron, too, just like everybody else?
But old Brunhild took it just like any other question. “I am going to punish him for what he did to me, for this humiliation. Come with me, Hagen Kriemhild, and guard my back. He has besmirched your honor as well as mine.”
I don’t know what the hell she thought I was gonna guard her back with. I had some German money in my pocket, and my traveler’s checks and all, and a little leftover French money I’d forgotten to change, and that was about it. I didn’t even have a pocketknife, for crying out loud, and I’m not what you’d call the bravest guy in the world anyhow. I’m pretty much of a chicken, if you want to know the truth. But I followed old Brunhild outa there just the same. If she could get out through the fire, maybe I could, too. I hoped like hell I could, anyway.
There was old Regin Fafnirsbruder on the other side of the flames. He gave Brunhild the phoniest bow you ever saw in your life. “So good you to see,” he said. What he sounded like was, he sounded like the headwaiter at this fancy restaurant where all the rich phonies and all their whory-looking girlfriends go to eat and he has to be nice and suck up to the sonsuvbitches all day long even though he hates their stinking guts. “Does your bridegroom you please?” He laughed this really dirty laugh. Pimps wish they could laugh the way old Regin Fafnirsbruder laughed right then, honest to God.
Old Brunhild started yelling and cussing and whooping and hollering like you wouldn’t believe. She started waving that goddam sword around, too. She wasn’t very careful with it, either— she damn near chopped me a couple of times, let me tell you. I had to duck like a madman, or I swear to God she would’ve punctured me.
All old Regin Fafnirsbruder did was, he kept laughing. He was laughing his ass off, to tell you the truth. He really was.
Well, that just made old Brunhild madder. “You will pay for your insolence!” she said, and so help me if she didn’t charge right on out through the fire. I halfway thought she’d cook. But she was hotter than the flames, and they didn’t hurt her one bit.
Anyway, I figured I’d better try and get outa there, too. Old Regin Fafnirsbruder had said Brunhild was my only chance of doing that, and she’d said I was supposed to guard her back even though I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do if somebody did go and jump on her. So I ran after her. People always say I never listen to anybody, practically, but that’s a goddam lie. Well, it was this time.
I didn’t run all that goddam hard, though, on account of I didn’t know for sure if the fire would let me go the way it did for old Brunhild. But it felt like it did when that goddam sonuvabitch moron bastard Regin Fafnirsbruder pushed me through it going the other way—it was hot but not hot, if you know what I mean.
Let me tell you, old Regin Fafnirsbruder didn’t look any too happy when Brunhild burst out of the ring of fire with me right behind her—not that he paid all that much attention to me, the lousy crumby moron. Actually, when you get down to it, I can’t bl
ame him for that, to tell you the truth. Here was this ordinary guy, and here was this goddam girl with chain mail and this sword coming after him yelling “Now you shall get what you deserve!” and swinging that old sword like she wanted to chop his head off—and she did, honest to God.
But old Regin Fafnirsbruder was a lot sprier than he looked. He ducked and he dodged and she ran right on by him. The sword went wheet! a couple times but it didn’t cut anything but air. And old Regin Fafnirsbruder laughed his ass off again and said, “Your blade is my life to drink not fated.”
Well, old Brunhild was already madder than hell, but that only pissed her off worse. She started swinging that sword like a madman—up, down, sideways, I don’t know what all. I swear to God, I don’t know how old Regin Fafnirsbruder didn’t get himself chopped into dog food, either, I really don’t, Houdini couldn’t have gotten out of the way of that sword, but Regin Fafnirsbruder did. He was a bastard, but he was a slick bastard, I have to admit it.
Finally, he said, “This grows boring. I shall another surprise for you one day have.” Then he was gone. One second he was there, the next second he wasn’t. I don’t know how the hell he did it. I guess maybe he really was a magician, for crying out loud.
Old Brunhild, she needed like half a minute to notice he’d disappeared, she really did. She just kept hacking and slashing away like there was no tomorrow. She’d already hit the ceiling in fourteen different places, and she wasn’t anywhere close to ready to calm down. I wanted to keep the hell out of her way, was all I wanted to do right about then, if you want to know the truth.
Only I couldn’t. There was this castle with the ring of fire around it, and there was the slope that headed down towards old Isenstein and the Rhine that didn’t stink any more, and there were me and old Brunhild. That was it. Talk about no place to hide. If she decided I was in cahoots with old Regin Fafnirsbruder after all, she’d chop me in half. I didn’t know how the hell he’d dodged her, but I knew goddam well I didn’t have a chance.
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