Gods of Fire and Thunder

by Fred Saberhagen

  A strange, whinnying sound, unfamiliar to both men but not entirely strange to either of them, carried in the clear morning air.

  "Listen!" Baldur's breath puffed like steam from a kettle when he whispered again. This time it was obviously not the whinnying horse that he had in mind.

  Hal listened, standing in shadow. All the while, despite his warm coat, he kept shifting his weight and swinging his arms, fearing that he would stiffen if he stood still for very long in the fierce cold. Soon he could hear a few more clangs, of a slightly lighter tone, as if the smith who wielded it were now getting down to serious business. Maybe, Hal thought, there was urgent work on iron and steel to be got out of the way, repairs to harness or armor, before the artisans could get to working the rare and valuable stuff.

  "What do we do now?" Baldur was gripping his sword-hilt, and his voice held an agony of fear.

  Hal kept his own whisper quiet. "We sneak around there, and try to get a look at what they're doing. Well, we've come to see the Horses, haven't we?" He made a savage pointing gesture. "They must be over there somewhere." ' And, he thought to himself, if golden shoes were being forged right here, then the raw material could hardly be very far away.

  * * *

  9

  Cautiously the two men kept working their way, a step at a time, toward the small building that poured out sounds of industrious activity. Hal, moving a step or two ahead of his companion, thought the little shop or smithy could not have been part of the original construction of the citadel, because it was so roughly built, mortared together of much smaller stones than the towering walls surrounding the courtyard. This structure also enjoyed what seemed to be quite a rarity in Valhalla, an intact roof. As Hal crept closer, he took note of the fact that the covering of the smithy was a fairly recent construction of poles and thatch. A few small birds, their winter nesting evidently disturbed, now flew out screaming.

  Energetically, the black smoke continued to pour out of the short stone chimney. Each visible side of the small structure boasted one small window, and each opening was protected by a crude wooden shutter, roughly wedged in place. Hal decided that the building probably served as housing for the visiting gnomes as well as their workshop. Naturally, gnomes would require more shade against intruding daylight than any of the surrounding ruins seemed likely to afford them, all well-ventilated as they were.

  Once again, as when he had picked up the fragment of horseshoe in front of the wall of flame, Hal became aware of the twitching of the Golden Fleece in his belt pouch. Elated, he sneaked a look into the pouch, and saw that the bit of special fabric that he cherished was glowing as before.

  "What are you doing?" Baldur breathed.

  "Nothing! Never mind." With a gesture commanding full attention to the job at hand, Hal led on.

  Hal saw that the building had at least two doors. The small one, which he could see, was tightly closed. The other was big enough for large animals to pass in and out, and was guarded only by a tattered canvas that was doubtless meant to keep in warmth and block out the dazzling daylight from sensitive gnomish eyes.

  Moving with what seemed to him infinite care, Hal got close enough to the gnomes' forge to get a look inside, peering through a chink at one edge of one of the uneven shutters. He could see and recognize Andvari's face, but not that of the gnome who worked beside him.

  The gnomes had removed their outer clothing in the heat of the interior, exposing most of their pallid skin. The master artisan was frowning with concentration as he bent over his anvil, hammer raised in a big hand at the end of a lean arm gnarled with muscle. The assistant was a vague shadow, moving briskly in the background.

  It was pretty much the scene Hal had expected to see, and the only trouble with it, from his point of view, was that there was no gold to be seen anywhere. He caught a brief glimpse of something on the anvil—but all he could tell about the workpiece was that it was glowing metal.

  The raw material for magic horseshoes had to be somewhere nearby—but where?

  He opened his pouch again to sneak one more look at his fragment of Fleece, and discovered it no brighter and no warmer than before. His talisman was going to provide no further help.

  Where in the Underworld would the guardians of golden treasure put it, to minimize the risk of theft? A strongbox of some kind seemed likely. Or it could be simply buried in a hole in the ground, almost right under the forge-fire. And where were the guards? Hal thought there would simply have to be guards standing by, and he had noticed none. That of course raised the ominous suggestion that Wodan might be depending on sheer magic, or invisible beings of some kind, to protect his treasure—and that would be bad news indeed.

  Baldur was nudging him. Suddenly it was necessary to temporarily abandon all attempts at spying, and try to conceal themselves in the inadequate shelter offered by a corner of the building, because the crunch of feet on snow and gravel signaled someone was approaching. Here came a scrawny youth who looked no more like one of Wodan's Heroes than he did a gnome, leading one of the strange four-hoofed animals through daylight from a nearby stable to the forge. This individual was ill-clad and shivering, moved at a shuffling pace, and looked almost as blank-eyed as the ghost Hal had encountered on the trail. He guided the willing Horse along with one hand gripping its mane. The farriers' operation had begun very recently, but already a broad trail had been trampled into the snow between the stable and the smithy.

  Hal and Baldur both froze into immobility when this attendant appeared. They were only half-hidden, and it seemed inevitable that the fellow was going to see them, yet he did not. His eyes were fixed in a hopeless stare on the ground some little distance ahead of him.

  As soon as the youth had once more passed out of sight, Baldur, whispering something Hal could not hear clearly, something about finding the Horses, began a nervous slow retreat. But Hal had not come this far to be easily scared away. He waited until he felt sure the gaunt fellow was out of the way, and then carefully worked his way closer to the window, thinking that in this case the bright sunlight outside would protect him from observation better than midnight darkness. Baldur took courage and with his hand on his sword-hilt crept up close to Hal again.

  Between the intervals of hammering, there were other sounds from inside the workshed, as of some large, hard-footed creature moving on a floor of hard-packed earth. And there were smells that might have issued from a cameloids' stable—but it was not exactly the same smell, with which practically everyone in the world must be familiar.

  With each passing second, Hal became less and less concerned that the gnomes, with their poor sight and their concentration on their work, were going to catch sight of the intruders. Nor, with the noise of fire and hammer going on inside, were they likely to be heard. And even discovery would not necessarily be disastrous.

  At last Hal could peer in round the edge of the crude canvas drapery shading the doorway. He got one good look at Andvari, and then at last he was granted an eye-shocking glimpse of the glow of gold. With one wiry hand the farrier was fitting an aureate shoe onto a broad hoof, while holding the animal's fetlock clamped between his knees. First it was necessary to scrape the bottom of the hoof, using a rasp or sharp iron tool made for the purpose.

  Standing slightly in the background, the assistant gnome, who was really a skilled magician, gestured and muttered at each curved piece of metal before it was nailed into place.

  The shoe itself went through some slight variations in color until it was securely fastened on. It grew blurred and dim as the nails went in, one after another, and Hal thought it lost all special radiance the instant the last one was clinched tight.

  There was another roofed building nearby, evidently a kind of stable, from which the gaunt assistant was leading the animals one by one to be shod. The pair of intruders looked into that next.

  Baldur repeatedly kept whispering: "Gold Mane, Gold Mane." Hal recalled that that was the name of the horse that Brunhild had ridden. Meanwhil
e, Hal kept silently but fiercely scanning every inch of the place for gold.

  Naturally enough there were stalls in the stable, besides sources of food and water that Hal thought might very well be magical. And still there was the strange and half-familiar smell, very earthy and mundane. Hanging on the walls were clusters of leather straps, some kind of harness evidently, but none of the metal attachments to the straps were gold.

  Of anything resembling a treasure vault, there was no sign at all.

  When Hal had completed a stealthy progress through almost the entire complex of stables and barns, he had actually seen no more than about a dozen Horses in all, in space adequate for many more. The animals present were housed in two different buildings, the majority in one barn where they were waiting to be looked at and worked on by the farrier. Only a couple of Horses were in the other group, standing about restively on their new footwear. Hal was no judge of quality in the rare species, but to him, all the animals looked strong and healthy.

  Gesturing silently, Hal led his companion around the smithy where the forge-fire burned, and from which issued the occasional sounds of metallic hammering. He had convinced himself by now that there was no need to be exceptionally quiet. One creature snorted as the strangers passed through the stable; and the straw littering the old wooden or earthen floor of its stall stirred and crumpled and jumped, disturbed by heavy hooves.

  Half-expecting at every moment to encounter someone, Hal was ready with what he hoped might be a halfway plausible story; and as a last resort, his battle-hatchet. But they found no human presence other than their own.

  This stable, like the others, was a dim place, with a broad central aisle, from which a number of finely built, commodious stalls diverged on each side. Baldur began to look into each of these in turn. Hal thought he had seen a lot of human habitations that were not as comfortable.

  Hal could see no droppings in the occupied stalls; maybe some magical power was cleaning the stables as fast as they were dirtied.

  There was a strange sound from the next stall, and Hal looked over to discover Baldur in a paroxysm of delight, which he was somehow managing to keep almost entirely silent. At the moment he was kissing a large, pale-haired Horse on the muzzle, and it was obvious that the young man had at last identified the animal he had been seeking. Baldur kept stroking Gold Mane's head and shoulders, and murmuring feverish endearments, almost as if to Brunhild herself.

  The Horse seemed pleased by this treatment, as far as Hal could tell, and Hal himself was pleased as well—any confirmation of the wild stories that Baldur had been telling him was more than welcome.

  Just as Hal was turning away again, his foot inadvertently nudged a battered metal or wooden bucket, which made a weighty rattling sound. He looked down, and his breath caught in his throat. For once, it seemed, the Fates might be truly with him!

  Jumbled carelessly in the bottom of the bucket were at least a dozen golden horseshoes, full-sized and unbroken.

  For a wild moment Hal was tempted to grab the container by its rope handle and run for the open gate and the descending trail. But any such mad try would of course be hopeless. Even if his dash to get away went unmarked by any of Wodan's creatures, Baldur would certainly yell after him, maybe even jump on his back and tackle him, for committing such a staggering blasphemy as stealing from the great god.

  A second look into the pail convinced Hal that these were the worn shoes, pried from the horses' hooves and casually tossed into a bucket, ready to be melted down, then, with some addition of new gold to replace what had been worn away, reworked into new ones. Now he estimated there were more than a dozen, as many as fifteen. Why they should be here, yards away from the forge and out of the farriers' reach, was not immediately obvious. But a lot of things in the world were awkward and illogical.

  Blind greed, surprisingly strong now that it had a real chance, urged Hal to snatch up and carry away the whole bucket, heavy as it was. But the instinct for self-preservation insisted that he not try that. Half a dozen shoes would be plenty, or at least he was willing to bet they would, and he thought he had room for that many in his pouch.

  As fast as his hands could move, Hal began stuffing twisted little curves of gold into his pouch; they were heavy, but there seemed little danger of his falling into deep water, so he would be all right.

  There was a strange little noise, a kind of choking, and he looked up to see Baldur staring at him. The youth was almost stunned. "What are you doing?" he quavered, in evident horror.

  "Providing for my future, lad." Hal kept his voice to a hoarse whisper. "For yours, too, if you like. Let's get on with it!"

  "But you cannot steal from Wodan!" Baldur was almost hissing with outrage. "I should have known, because all along you have talked of gold, gold, nothing but gold! I should have suspected—but still I thought—"

  "I'm only taking a few—"

  "You cannot!"

  Hal drew himself up and tried to speak in a paternal voice. "My son, a great god, a glorious deity like your Father of Battles will never miss a few small metallic crumbs." But he had to heed the look on Baldur's face, inflexible already and getting worse, practically ready to commit murder.

  Right now they could certainly not afford a serious argument, much less a brawl. Hal pulled most of the gold from his pouch—carefully retaining his original fragmentary find—and dumped the rest quietly on the ground beside the bucket, thinking the clanging metal would make less noise that way. Even as he sacrificed his treasure he was marking the spot mentally, intending to come back later for what he had already begun to think of as his own property.

  Horror and rage were fading from Baldur's face, and he quickly regained some of the happiness that had been his only moments earlier, when he was embracing Gold Mane. In the ecstasy of his excitement he seemed to forget and forgive Hal's attempted crime.

  The fact of an exotic stable awoke old memories. "Let me tell you a story about Hercules sometime," Hal whispered to his companion, trying to distract him from his outrage, meanwhile chuckling to himself.

  But the youth was in no mood for distraction now, and seized him by the arm. "Hal, do we dare, after all, to do this?"

  Hal stared at him. Maybe it was finally dawning on Baldur that Wodan might consider the taking of one of his Horses as great a crime as the pilfering of discarded shoes.

  Drawing a deep breath, Hal became heartily encouraging. If it was truly possible for men to ride these creatures, they would provide an excellent means of getting away. "Of course we dare. We are going to borrow—not steal, you understand—a couple of these excellent animals. You will help me find one I can ride. Then they will carry us to a safe spot at some convenient distance. When we are there, you and I will discuss what our next step ought to be."

  "Right now?"

  Hal mastered an impulse to club the young fool down. "Yes, right now! What did you think? Before someone comes nosing around and discovers us. When d'you think we'll have a better chance?"

  Hal's sporting blood was up. It seemed that Baldur, though now his will was wavering, had not been entirely crazy after all. In situations fraught with danger there were times—and Hal thought he had learned to recognize them—when the least dangerous thing to do was to move fast and straight ahead.

  Experience had given Hal a great respect for the powers that god-Faces bestowed on men and women; but it had also completely freed him of the commonly held notion that gods, especially the truly great ones, could see everywhere and find out everything.

  The lord of this ruined fortress might still be formidable—but on the other hand there were certain indications suggesting he might not. Certainly the place had been allowed to go to rack and ruin. It would have come as no surprise to Hal to learn that whoever wore the Face of Wodan now had not visited this scene of embarrassing deterioration for a long time. It was easy to believe that he might never come back. It even seemed quite possible that the most recent avatar was dead, and no one else had yet pick
ed up the Face. Hal had never laid eyes on a naked Face, few people had, but he had no trouble imagining the Face of Wodan lying somewhere, lacking all power and purpose in itself, until, as would inevitably happen, another human being should pick it up and put it on.

  If Wodan was truly dead, and the gnomes knew it, they were successfully keeping the secret. And if the Valkyries knew it too . . . ? The implications were too complicated and far-reaching to be immediately grasped.

  But right now the only thing to do was to climb on a pair of Horses, as quickly as they could, and get away before they were discovered by a stablehand—or by some being far more dangerous. If the Horses could really fly, then they would leave no trail of hoofprints in the snow—and it ought to be much easier that way to carry a truly substantial weight of gold.

  Baldur was still dithering. Hal shook him by the shoulder and demanded: "How are you going to reach Brunhild, otherwise?"

  Spurred on by this reminder of his beloved, the youth joined Hal in the effort to decide which Horse Hal was going to attempt to ride.

  "Of course Gold Mane might carry us both."

  "Without a saddle, and a hundred feet in the air? I'd rather not take that chance, let's try for two." Hal had not abandoned his determination that when he left Valhalla he would be carrying some gold—far from it. Which meant he would probably find it convenient to separate from Baldur shortly after they reached their next stop. Of course he hoped, he really did, that the lad would somehow succeed in recovering his beautiful Brunhild.

  And still, the methodical clanging racket from the forge went on; evidently the gnomes were unaware that anything was happening outside their door.