Gods of Fire and Thunder

by Fred Saberhagen

  Time to move on again. Hal thought that now they must be truly very near their goal.

  * * *

  8

  Suddenly there was real evidence that they had almost reached their goal. Tilting his head back, Hal could now see, through swirling snow and mist, some kind of construction looming above them, see it well enough as to have no remaining doubts of its reality. The fortress, or castle, was so hedged about by sharp, unclimbable peaks and barren crags, and the single path that seemed to offer the only approach lay so intricately wound among these rocks, that the two intruders were almost upon their goal before they got their first good look at it. And at that point the two adventurers were gazing so steeply upward, into such thickly swirling grayness, that they could be certain of very little, beyond the solidity of a smooth, looming mass, the regularity of artificial walls.

  Now they had had a glimpse of their destination, but how to reach it still presented something of a question. A light accumulation of new snow, together with drifting of the old, was covering all signs of a path among the jagged rocks, as well as the footprints they had been following.

  As it turned out, there still remained almost a mile of winding trail between them and the structure that loomed above. Hal and Baldur had to spend one fireless and almost-frozen night, huddled together for warmth, when it grew too dark for Sundweller eyes to find their way among the clustered boulders. This close to their goal, they did not dare to show a light of any kind. Fortunately, between big rocks they were able to find a niche in which to shelter from the wind.

  When the stars in the clear portion of the sky started to fade in morning light, and the mountain landscape began to grow faintly visible beneath the waning moon, the men gave thanks for their survival and started climbing again. Each time they paused to take their eyes from the trail, they strained them looking upward at a dim and distant parapet, still wreathed in what seemed perpetual mist.

  Suddenly Baldur came to a halt. He had his right arm raised, aiming uphill with it as if he meant to use it as a spear. The finger that he pointed with was shaking. His voice was practically a shriek when he cried out what he had seen.

  "There's a wall up there. By all the gods, an enormous wall. And a sentry on top of it, looking this way! We have been seen!"

  Hal jerked his head back, staring upward, catching nothing but a blinding swirl of mist and snow. "Well, if we have . . ."

  He let his words die there. If they had been seen by the powers of Valhalla, it was too late now to do anything about it.

  His heart had begun to pound, but he was certainly not ready to turn and run. As far as he could tell, they had crossed no marked boundaries, transgressed no warning signs. He and Baldur ought to have as much right as anyone to this deserted mountain path.

  Moving steadily, they trudged on. They had climbed through one more switchback, when both stopped in their tracks. Someone, a single figure, was marching down the path from above, coming directly toward them.

  Marching was not really the right word. The means of movement looked more like sliding . . .

  Baldur cried out: "It is the sentry! Or it looks like the same man."

  "It must be . . ." Hal started, but again he let his words die. He could not tell what it was, this thing advancing upon them. He could only be sure it was no ordinary man.

  The man, or image, was following a descending trail, but on drawing near the pair of intruders it ignored them as if they were not there. The appearance it presented was that of a lone soldier whose dress and equipment Hal found completely unfamiliar. The figure's clothing was light, utterly inadequate for the cold weather, and it was carrying a javelin in its right hand, and wearing a shorter, broader spear slung over its back, with a sling knotted at his waist and a net bag of rocks for ammunition.

  As the figure drew near, Baldur began an impassioned plea, or greeting, but the thing ignored him totally, and he broke his speech off in midsentence.

  Still it seemed to be gliding, rather than striding normally on its two legs. The legs were moving, but not fast enough to account for the thing's rapid progress.

  "Hal, is that a god?" Baldur's whisper was tortured, barely audible.

  Hal's answer was just as quiet. "It looks like none I ever saw."

  "Is it a ghost?"

  Whether ghost, image, or something Hal had never even imagined before, when it came to the blockage in the trail, it passed through the rock, as if either the stone or the warrior's body were insubstantial.

  Meanwhile, as the thing approached, Hal uttered the best that he could manage in the way of a calm greeting, but unnervingly he and his words were totally ignored. Meanwhile Baldur had resumed his jabbering at the figure, pouring out a mixture of pleas and boasting—but the man, or wraith, in gray still paid no attention to either of them, and strode or glided on about its own unguessable business, until it vanished round a turn only a few yards downhill.

  Hal felt a chill biting deeper than the cold wind, but actually no great surprise, when he noted that their visitant had left no footprints in the snow. Up the trail, there were still only the two sets left by the gnomes' feet, here spared from the drifting snow by some vagary of wind or shelter.

  Well, having come this far, he was not going to be turned back by a speechless ghost. If Wodan meant to warn them, he would have to be a little plainer.

  Baldur was too shaken to notice the lack of tracks, and Hal said nothing about it. Instead he asked: "Was that the sentry you saw above?"

  "I—I don't know." Baldur scowled and stared up into grayness, but the weather had thickened so it was no longer possible to see anything.

  The two men climbed a half-hour longer, making slow progress, panting their way up one switchback after another, before they touched those mist-enfolded walls. They had seen no one else and heard no challenge from above. They had come now to a section of the trail where less new snow had fallen, and still there were only the tracks of the same four feet, marking the passage of the same two gnomes. By now, Hal was confident that he could have recognized the prints of their small but well-constructed boots anywhere.

  Presently Hal and his companion rounded the last bastion of the outer wall, and then went boldly in, entering Valhalla through a huge gateway, passing a framework of metal bars that might have been a portcullis before it was overtaken by utter ruin.

  The doors that must once have guarded this entry had entirely disappeared. It seemed that at some time they might have been ripped or burned from the ravaged gateway, for there still remained the twisted remnants of their massive metal hinges, along with some of the overhead stonework. What was left was only an open passage between the frowning walls of stone, empty except for drifted snow marked with two sets of gnomish footprints.

  An hour ago Hal had thought he was too far from the walls of Valhalla to get a good look at them, and now it seemed he was too close. In a few more moments, the towering stone surface was actually within reach, and behind it an enormous and vastly higher structure, the latter visible only in hints and suggestions, brief glimpses through swirls of mist and snow.

  So far, the only portions of Wodan's home—if such it was—that was clearly visible to the visitors consisted of tiers of enormous blocks of stone, each slab so huge it was hard to imagine how it had ever been lifted and set in place. Certainly forces vastly stronger than human arms and backs must have been at work. But still those great ashlars had been fitted together with consummate skill, the joints all fine and straight.

  Following the base of the gigantic wall for a couple of hundred yards brought the pair of intruders to a gateway constructed on a matching scale. Whatever door or barrier might once have blocked this portal seemed to have been long since removed, just as the outer gates had been. Through this broad aperture the footprints of the gnomes marched on and in with no sign of hesitation, not even a change of stride. Now Hal could see that the outer wall was all of forty feet thick.

  There might have been a sentry on the wal
l above, but there was none now. Nor was there any visible guardian at the gate.

  Having passed the gateway, the two intruders found themselves in an outer courtyard of a savagely ruined but once magnificent castle, built on a scale that Hal thought truly worthy of the gods. He thought the remaining portions of the inner citadel, or keep, even more than half ruined as it was, must be fully a hundred feet in height.

  From up above them somewhere, among the giants' stonework, there came a sudden whine of wind, startling both men. But it was only wind.

  "Hal—this is not what I thought we would discover here." Baldur's voice was awed, and also troubled. He had moved a step closer to his companion. "Not at all what I expected."

  For once Hal had no answer. If this was, or once had been, truly the home of Wodan, then it seemed Zeus had a worthy rival for his claim to be the master of the universe. No doubt about it, this structure was very large and still impressive. But a glimpse through some of the narrow upper windows showed slivers of snowy sky, evidence that the great castle too had been unroofed. Now the still-advancing double trail of footprints was bordered, and in one place partially blocked, by regularly shaped ashlars that had tumbled down from above. The snow hid all details that might have offered a clue as to how long ago the tumbling and scattering had taken place.

  Hal had never visited the legendary home of Zeus and his most exalted colleagues, nor did he know of any human who had done so, despite all the descriptions in hundreds of detailed stories. He wasn't sure that any such place as high Olympus had ever really existed—but he thought that this might once have been its equal in magnificence.

  On the other hand, it looked to Hal like no feasts or ceremonies had been held here in Wodan's castle for many a day. To what height these walls might once have ascended, and what roofs might once have covered them, was impossible to say. Nearly all were fallen in, great beams and stones making vast piles of rubbish, the rubble and the remaining structure alike now half-hidden under mounds of white. On level space, untrodden snow lay inches deep in the mountain's morning sunshine, all across the vast and nearly roofless space that might once have been the great hall of a great god's castle. Here and there, half-shapeless mounds of white suggested snow-buried furniture.

  Steadily the double tracks, the same ones Hal and Baldur had been following for many miles, went on, through and around all these wonders. The gnomes had come this way before. Their footprints betrayed no uncertainty on their makers' part, no false turns or doubling back, showing that the farrier and his magical colleague knew exactly where they wanted to go, and had not been tempted to delay and gawk at any ungnomish marvels on the way. Doubtless they were regular visitors to this mountain realm, and to them this was all perfectly familiar.

  "Wait!" It was an anguished whisper, accompanied by a hard clutch on Hal's arm. "Look over there!"

  Baldur was tall enough to see from their present position, but Hal needed to climb up a step. Raising his head cautiously over the top of a huge tumbled block, Hal saw distant movement in a half-enclosed courtyard—what looked like a squad of perhaps a dozen irregular soldiers, armed men in an assortment of shabby clothes that were not uniforms.

  The courtyard was perhaps a hundred paces distant from the place where Hal and Baldur watched, and over most of its considerable area the snow had been trampled into slush and mud. Snow had stopped falling now, and the sun kept trying to extricate itself from scudding clouds, with intermittent success.

  Keeping themselves concealed behind huge blocks of stone, Hal and Baldur spent a minute or two gaping at a squad of drilling soldiers in the distance. Hal felt mixed emotions at the sight. It would have been unreasonable to hope that the place where the gnomes were going to work would otherwise be entirely deserted. The soldiers were practicing formally with their weapons, while the harsh, penetrating voice of a sergeant, which doubtless sounded much the same forever and in all armies, nagged and berated them. A thin line of men, no more than a dozen or so, lunged with spears at imaginary opponents, and then withdrew raggedly. At a distance they looked more like sick call than dominating heroes.

  The sergeant bawled again, and his squad paired off, one on one, obviously intending to engage in some kind of fencing or sparring practice.

  Baldur found the spectacle disturbing. "Those can't be . . ." He let it trail away.

  Hal kept his voice low. "Can't be your blessed heroes, enjoying their daily brawl?"

  "No." The young man shook his head emphatically. "They can't. Not possibly."

  "Then what are they?"

  The youth was almost dancing in his worry and frustration. "This can't be it. This must be only some outpost, where they stable Horses. But if this is Valhalla, I want to—"

  Hal took a hard grip on Baldur's upper arm, shook him into momentary silence. "Keep it quiet. If your girlfriend actually had to carry someone to this godforsaken ruin, filling her quota or whatever, it's clear why she didn't want it to be you."

  Judging from the look on Baldur's face, the youth might just have received his death blow. "But I . . . no, that must be wrong."

  "Just look around you. The gnomes are real enough. And probably their magic is, for it charms golden shoes, giving Horses the power to fly and carry Valkyries, even carry them unharmed through strange fires. And some peculiar power is producing things like that image of a warrior that met us on the path.

  "But you can have the rest of Wodan's glorious domain. It doesn't look to me like any place I'd want to live. Anyway, we shouldn't be arguing about this now. Now get a grip on yourself, and let's see if we can find some Horses."

  Baldur turned pale under his soldier's tan, at words that must have sounded in his ears as something very close to blasphemy; but it was hard to argue with the evidence of his own eyes. His manner became a kind of frenzied timidity. At last the youth choked out: "I say the real Valhalla must be somewhere else. And this is only some outpost, where Wodan stables Horses."

  Hal was eager to accept that theory, or any theory, if it let them get on with business. "I think you've hit on it, lad. All the better for us if Valhalla's somewhere else. Then its master will likely be there, not here—if he's anywhere right now. So pull yourself together. I thought you were ready to risk all for a chance of seeing Brunhild."

  Privately Hal was thinking furiously. The many signs of ruin and neglect and poverty around them strongly suggested a lack of management, to say the least. Hal could readily imagine that Wodan was currently dead, his Face lying lost and forgotten somewhere, unworn by any human. If that was true, the implications were tremendous. If anyone, Valkyrie or not, was really imprisoned behind Loki's fiery curtain, it would not have been Wodan who put the prisoner there; he or she had run afoul of some other power.

  Again Baldur was peering back in the direction of the drilling men. "It can't be," the youth murmured.

  "You mean those scarecrows with sticks are not your chosen Heroes. I'm sure you're right. It could be they're only—well, enlisted men. Auxiliaries of some kind."

  "Yes, that could be." Baldur sounded slightly relieved.

  "Or Heroes on sick call," Hal added as a private, murmured afterthought. Other possibilities were whirling through his brain. Gods did die, and for all he knew, Wodan might be really dead. Maybe one of the local warlords had secretly taken over the stewardship of Valhalla, gold and Horses and all.

  Not having to contend against a god should make their expedition vastly easier. Whoever was master of the marvelous Horses and their blessed shoes, the farriers' smithy would have to be here somewhere . . . that part of the legend couldn't be entirely a lie. It couldn't be. Because he, Hal, was still carrying a fragment of a golden shoe.

  "Auxiliaries." Baldur was still chewing on that word. It did not really satisfy him, but it gave him something to bite on. "That must be it." Then a renewed note of awe crept into his voice. "Hal, look at this."

  Hal looked. Another squad of men had appeared from somewhere, to practice against . . . but ho
ld on. Were those in the new detachment men at all? Their gliding movements and stiff poses reminded Hal of the "ghost" that passed them on the trail.

  The visitors observed in fascination. Hal, watching as closely as he could at the distance, soon realized that the weapons carried by the gliding images only stung and did not wound, when employed against live flesh and blood. When a weapon in the hand of a live man struck a wraith, the effect seemed even less consequential.

  But all this spying was essentially a waste of time. Now he and Baldur turned their backs on the distant drill and withdrew from it, under cover of the scattering of huge tumbled blocks. Meanwhile the blanket of old snow surrounding them remained almost untrodden, so the castle could hardly be swarming with people.

  The trail of the gnomes remained as plain to see as ever, but now Hal began to move ever more slowly forward. He paused before he crossed each open space, peering cautiously around each corner before advancing.

  He was just at the crucial moment of one such step, when Baldur's touch on his arm made him jump. When Hal looked around, the youth was pointing skyward, whispering fiercely: "Look!"

  Half expecting to see an armored maiden straddling a flying Horse, or maybe a truly remarkable ghost or two, Hal raised his gaze. From some unseen base no more than fifty yards ahead, a band of greasy smoke had begun to mount into the sky; it appeared that Andvari was getting his forge working. Moments later there came a preliminary clang of heavy metal, as if a smith might be warming up his arm with a swing or two against an anvil. Hal thought any golden horseshoe that caught that blow, the way it sounded, would have been mashed flat.

  Working iron ought to need a lot more heat and force than working gold—but of course when magic entered the picture, common sense was often driven out.

  Hal's imaginative conception of an underground workshop, created for the convenience of the gnomes, had vanished in cold morning daylight. Soon the two intruders had got closer to the forge-fire, which glowed behind the closed shutters of a small building. They were so close that Hal could hear the master farrier tell his assistant to throw in a handful of salt, "to keep the fire clean." It was a heavily accented voice, filled with dark overtones, and he thought it was Andvari's. Certainly it sounded like the speech Hal had heard in the gnomes' village.