Gods of Fire and Thunder

by Fred Saberhagen

"By all the gods!" Hal couldn't keep his voice from getting louder. "You haven't really been thinking that we're dead?"

  Slowly the expression on the youth's face altered. "No. Not really. Though for just a moment, when Alvit swiped at us with her Spear . . ."

  Hal was shaking his head. "Look, Baldur . . . I'm not sure how to try to tell you this . . . but none of us here are dead."

  Baldur was dignified. "If we are not, we ought to be."

  The man from two bunks away was listening now, and went through a kind of spasm, gripped by almost silent laughter. "Dead? Dead? You're not yet dead, you clodpate! Though you might soon wish you were." He turned his body and let himself fall face downward onto his bunk, where the sounds of his laughter grew louder, until they turned into convulsions of desperate coughing.

  Hal studied his companion. "You have the damnedest eagerness to be dead of anyone I've ever met!"

  "So I admit that now we are still alive." Baldur took a long, shuddering breath. "But that being so, I don't know where we are. It should be Valhalla, because Alvit and her sisters are here, but . . . what does it all mean?"

  "For one thing, it means that all the old stories about Valhalla have got it just a little wrong."

  The man on the other bunk had lain down again, and turned his face away. Baldur was silent, contemplating the impossible. At last the youth got out: "But if this is truly not Valhalla—what should we do?"

  "Well, let's not be in any desperate hurry to make up our minds. This is . . . not too bad. Let's give them the chance to feed us a couple of square meals first. A little food, a little knowledge—that's what we need right now."

  And a little gold, Hal added in the privacy of his own thought.

  At the dim far end of the large room were two closed doors. Hal pointed toward them and asked a veteran: "Where do those go?"

  "Private rooms, for our two corporals, Corporal Bran and Corporal Blackie. You'll know Blackie by his white hair. All white though he's not old."

  "So where's the sergeant sleep?"

  The man gestured vaguely toward the keep. "Just outside the old man's quarters, where he can be easily summoned at any time. Being sergeant in this outfit is not a job I'd want to have."

  On their next morning in Valhalla the men were wakened at first light, and Hal and Baldur, as they had expected, were told that they were going out to drill.

  Nosam had their names down on a roster. "Couple of new ones for you, Blackie."

  Blackie, in his slyly indifferent way, gave Hal and Baldur what he said was the same warning he gave all new recruits, that there was no use trying to get away. There were only a couple of dozen live heroes on hand anyway, and the Valkyries ruthlessly pursued and brought back any who tried to get away—except for those who died in the trackless mountains, trying to find their way out.

  Hal and Baldur exchanged a look. When it came to planning an escape, they were conscious of having a special advantage shared by none of the other men in the barracks—they had not been carried here on Horseback, but had walked into Valhalla on their own two feet, and therefore they knew the path that could carry them out. It seemed that no one but Alvit knew of their advantage.

  The joking man from two bunks down, whose name was Baedeker, now seemed to have taken to his bed more or less permanently. The sergeant had excused him from all duty, and he did not look at all well. In fact the more Hal studied him, the worse he looked, and Hal soon decided that the fellow might well be dying. The victim did not appear feverish, and so Hal thought there was probably little risk of contagion. But to be on the safe side, he avoided getting too close, anyway.

  During their first morning drill session, Hall and Baldur took part in the scene they had earlier witnessed from a distance: the daily combat drill, including the charade of dueling, in which breathing Heroes were pitted against wraiths.

  Hal sparred very cautiously at first, guarding and striking as if he were in a fight against solid metal and solid muscle. He had to begin by assuming that the wraiths, with their fierce aspect, had some real power to inflict harm. But this proved not to be the case.

  Fairly often during drill and marching these disobeyed the sergeant's orders, or rather simply ignored them, as if they were listening to commands from someone else. The result was that he gave them specific orders rarely; there was after all no way to punish them, by whipping, confinement, or deprivation of pay or rations. The noncoms had long ago given up trying to shout them into obedience.

  On the positive side, several veterans assured Hal that these seemed to have no power to do serious harm. If you saw them from a distance, or squinted at them with your eyes nearly closed, they did lend a great air of military bustle and purpose to the establishment. When Hal was matched against them in the practice drills, he soon realized that their weapons were as insubstantial as their bodies, and only stung and did not wound, when employed against live flesh and blood.

  "Doesn't seem that they would be of much help in a real battle," he remarked while getting back his breath.

  "They do a great job of rounding up deserters," Corporal Blackie assured him with a smile.

  "How do they manage that?"

  "You felt the sting just now. Their swords and spears carry power and pain enough to harry and drive men of solid flesh back up the trail. Though one or two have chosen suicidal leaps instead."

  Some other Hero demonstrated the essential harmlessness of their wraith-opponents by allowing one of them to strike him several times. But such playful negligence seemed to be against orders. When Bran and Blackie bellowed at the offender, he went back to treating his opponents seriously.

  The only one who never seemed to slack off during the drills was Bran, though sometimes he would fake a withdrawal. Then with a yell he'd spin around and rout his insubstantial assailant with a powerful blow.

  Panting with the effort, he smiled at Hal. "Hit a wraith a real good lick and he disappears for good. Just like a real man in that respect. Like most men, that is."

  "If you keep exterminating ghosts, don't they all get used up after a while?"

  "Wodan has a device that produces more." Apparently the answer was meant to be taken seriously.

  Gradually Baldur was forced to the understanding Hal had already reached—that Wodan's fabled honor guard contained less than a score of living men in all, and most of those were in poor physical shape, hardly able to do more than go through the motions of drilling and practicing at arms.

  There were a few exceptions, most notably Corporal Bran, a great physical specimen who seemed to genuinely feel a tremendous devotion to the god. Fighting, even against ghosts, seemed to awaken something deep and terrible in the man's nature. When the drill was over, he seemed to be awakening from a trance. This man seemed to take a liking to Hal, and suggested that the two of them spar sometime with dulled blades.

  "Don't think I want to dull my axe."

  "That would truly be a shame. By the way, I like that helmet that you wear."

  Hal thought that there was something lacking in Bran's eyes, as if he were already dead. Outside of that, nothing in the man's appearance or behavior made him seem particularly threatening at all, at least at first glance, though he was physically formidable enough. Several inches taller than Hal, with sandy hair and beard, he owned sloping shoulders and powerful arms. He walked with a kind of eager, energetic shuffle and carried nothing extraordinary in the way of arms or armor. He was usually smiling, in a way that could easily be taken for mockery. But Hal soon decided that the man really had no thought of mocking anyone.

  Minute followed minute in this strange new existence, hour followed hour, a full day went by, and then another, and still Hal had heard nothing about stolen gold. He kept making up imaginative scenarios to explain to himself what seemed a remarkable stroke of good fortune. The most optimistic of these said that whoever had found the treasure had simply decided to keep it, and that even if the loot should somehow be recovered, at this stage there would be no clu
e to show that Hal had ever touched it.

  But then he changed his mind and decided the gold was probably still in the saddlebags. Routine care of the Horses must be sadly neglected here, like so much else, but probably the animals' magic, or that of their golden shoes, allowed them to survive anyway, even to flourish. But sooner or later someone would go to lift those containers off the Horse, and be astonished by their weight. And then . . .

  But still there came no alarm, no accusations. It was as if the absence of a few pounds of mere gold was likely to pass entirely unnoticed.

  Among the breathing men now quartered in Valhalla, the later arrivals, being better nourished, usually had an advantage in drill and practice, if they were not badly hurt when they came in. But there were some recruits who, seemingly in some kind of shock when they arrived, withdrew into themselves, ate and slept little, and had trouble talking or even understanding orders.

  "Those kind never last more than a month or two," was one of the veterans' comments.

  Others, usually men of lower rank who had been collected by Wodan's flying girls because no higher were available, took a philosophical soldier's attitude that one outfit was not essentially different from another and life was bad in all of them. These tended to last longer than men of any other category.

  When the sergeant summoned Baldur to stand guard duty, he was more insistent than Hal had been, about having the formalities spelled out. "Is there not to be a password, then?"

  One of the veterans, overhearing, called out an obscene suggestion in jest.

  Baldur ignored the jibe, and in his anger criticized Nosam as being a poor noncom. "When I chose men to lead into battle, I chose none who were like you!"

  The sergeant's reply was quiet and unthreatening: "Baldur, I just told you to shut up about passwords and such stuff. That's an order, I want to hear no more. Disobey me and I'll put you on report, and you won't like what happens to you then. You're young and hard, you could probably kill me if we fought, but then Bran would kill you. Or if he didn't—" Nosam's lips smiled thinly. "You might be promoted to sergeant."

  Baldur slowly lowered his raised fist. "What do you mean?"

  "Just what I said. And you wouldn't want my job, young one." The white-haired Corporal Blackie was shaking his head sadly in the background, while Nosam went on. "Twice a day—and sometimes twice a night, if Wodan's sleep is restless—have to report to the god in person."

  Time dragged on, in drill and guard duty and boredom, and Hal began to lose track. Had they now been Wodan's guests for four days or five? And did it matter?

  And meanwhile the intermittent presence of wraiths made the armory and barracks seem much busier, more fully occupied, than they really were. At least they consumed no food and filled no sleeping space.

  Bran, in his normal mild and almost wistful way, frequently expressed a wish that Wodan would snap out of his listlessness and inattention.

  Bran thought that the god must be the victim of some enemy's sly magic. "If only a man could find out who it was . . ."

  Loki was a prime suspect, in Bran's thought; and even Thor was not above suspicion.

  Bran when he hung around the barracks was a mild-mannered sort, with a tentative and almost gentle smile. His nominal rank seemed to mean little or nothing to him, except that he was never detailed to clean the latrine. But Hal noted that the veterans all went out of their way to avoid antagonizing him.

  As soon as Hal and Baldur were able to talk privately, Hal said: "It seems that we can walk away, the gates are seldom guarded. If we time it right, no one will miss us for a few hours. But walking won't get us far enough or fast enough. I think we really need the Horses."

  Baldur agreed. "If we walk, Valkyries could overtake us quickly."

  Hal looked around. "And Valkyries might not be our worst problem. They say that sometimes Wodan sends out his best berserker after deserters."

  "You mean Bran? There would be two of us."

  Hal did not reply. Corporal Blackie had suddenly appeared, from around a corner, and as if he knew what they had been saying, began in his gently taunting way to talk about escapes.

  "Maybe you've been wondering why we don't guard the gates."

  "It's not for us to question such decisions," Hal said nobly. Baldur looked at him.

  So did Blackie. "No one who tries to leave us can get far. A few who attempt to desert are simply lost in the mountains. The others are hunted down and brought back, the very lucky ones by flying Valkyries. Those who are simply fortunate are harried and driven back by wraiths."

  Hal was curious. "Why do you call them fortunate?"

  "Because sometimes Wodan sends out the berserker instead—you know what a berserker is?"

  "I've heard the name."

  Blackie appeared to be reminiscing. "I remember well one such group. There were three men, all recent recruits, all desperate, and well-armed." A pause. "And when they were reported as deserters, Bran volunteered to bring them back, and Wodan granted his request, and sent him out alone." Blackie nodded solemnly.

  "Well, what happened?"

  "Bran returned, wounded but alive. Not so the others."

  Baldur asked it: "Bran brought them back?"

  "Not altogether."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Only their heads."

  * * *

  11

  As far back as Hal could remember, he had understood that two of the most important things about any military organization were the name and nature of the commanding officer. Ever since he and Baldur had been so irregularly drafted, Hal had been looking around and listening, trying to gather information on the individual, whoever it might be, who held that position in Wodan's divine guard. But for all he had been able to discover so far, the job might be wide open. Hal had yet to hear of anyone who outranked Sergeant Nosam—unless it would be Wodan himself, as supreme commander.

  When Hal questioned the sergeant, he was told that for the past year the rank of general had in theory been held by one of the mere ghosts. The sergeant could not remember ever hearing the General—as this wraith was generally called—give an order to anyone, or even speak.

  The sergeant's mild attitude encouraged Hal to question him further. "If this General says nothing and does nothing—why is he commander?"

  "Because the Father of Battles says so."

  "Oh."

  "Haraldur, it's not your place as a new recruit to criticize our methods of organization. Rather, you should be learning them, and doing your best to fit in. You don't want to be promoted, do you?" The question made it sound like some exotic punishment.

  "No, I don't think so. Since you put it that way, Sergeant, I don't believe I do. So I will try to learn your ways, as you recommend. If in the process of learning, any more questions should come up, I suppose I can bring them to you?"

  The sergeant gave him a severe look. "First, just try to forget the things that bother you. Let that be the first thing you learn."

  "Right."

  Sergeant Nosam relaxed a trifle. "This really isn't a bad outfit, Haraldur. I've been in a lot worse in my time."

  "You must tell me about them some day, Sergeant."

  "I may do that. Here, if you just go along, as a rule nobody will bother you."

  "What more could a man ask?"

  Hal and Baldur soon learned that none of their living colleagues had been here in Valhalla for more than a few years, and their average length of service was probably less than a full year. There were probably many real deaths among them, but few of these were casualties from actual fighting. Hal supposed it would be easy to get lost when attempting to escape.

  On the evening of their first day of duty as members of Wodan's guard—or as Wodan's captives, but it didn't help to view things that way—Hal and Baldur got their first look at Wodan's great hall. Baldur at first refused to dignify the place by that name, but it was the chamber where the Heroes were expected to put in an appearance every night, for a meal that was
often a poor excuse for a feast, enlivened by some sad revelry.

  This chamber had thick stone walls, like most of the rest of Wodan's stronghold, and like the rest was well on the way to falling into ruin. Hal thought it must have been designed and built many long years ago, and for some lesser purpose. There was a distinct lack of grandeur. This portion of the stronghold did have the great advantage of a nearly intact roof. Two functioning fireplaces, with one of Loki's roaring, fuelless fires in each, kept the worst of the freezing cold at bay. Hal could see that one good reason for coming to the great hall each night was that two fires made it marginally warmer than the barracks, despite the ruinous condition of the walls.

  Half a dozen trestle tables, long, worn, stained, and old, were not only carved with many initials, but much hacked and battered around the edges, suggesting that mealtime was not always peaceful. Sixty or seventy men could easily have been accommodated around the tables, but less than a third of that number were on hand. Once in a while the sergeant urged them to spread out, occupying a greater number of benches, as if he wanted to make it look like the whole room was truly occupied. Here and there the figures of wraiths appeared, filling in empty seats.

  Veterans informed the latest recruits that Wodan himself was usually, though not always, in attendance at the nightly gatherings they called his feasts, not at any of the wobbly tables, but sitting gloomily on a high, thronelike chair positioned midway between the fires. Old hands said that the quality of the food and drink would vary wildly and unpredictably from one night to the next. At intervals poor music squawked and wailed, provided by serf attendants with stringed instruments and horns. Hal thought he saw a wraith musician or two, but could not tell if their instruments were making real sounds,

  "This can't be all, can it?" Hal murmured when he had looked the place over. "This is supposed to be Wodan's entire harvest of Heroes, going back to the beginning of time?"

  Baldur shook his head decisively. "It cannot be. This is some elaborate device for testing us."

  Sometimes the wraith figures responded when spoken to, lips moving and producing hollow, distant voices. Hal never heard more than a word or two from them, not enough to let him decide if what they said made sense; but he had the impression that no real thought or feeling was behind their words. And when he steeled his nerves to touch one, his hand passed right through, his palm and fingers appearing brightly lighted when inside the spectral body.