Gods of Fire and Thunder

by Fred Saberhagen

  Corporal Blackie, seated at yet another table, had a contribution to make. "If we're being tested, though, how long is the trial to go on? I've been here a year, and all who were here when I arrived are dead now. All of those who tried to escape are dead, and so are many who did not. What kind of a test is that?"

  Blackie looked round, as if seeking an answer to his question, and his gaze fell on the unusual visitors. "What's this? Who invited in these bloody dwarfs? Why are they eating our food?"

  Hal looked over at him. "I gave it to them, Corporal."

  There was a sudden tension in the room, to which the gnomes seemed utterly oblivious. Ivaldr, usually silent, raised a plaintive voice to complain that someone had taken away their essential gold. Without it they could not complete their work, and until their work was finished they could not leave.

  He concluded: "We tried to explain all this to Wodan, but he just walked past us as if we did not exist."

  Andvari chimed in, shaking his head unhappily. "And all the great god said to us was: 'You are always complaining about something of the kind.' "

  Ivaldr was nodding. "I don't know about calling him 'the great god.' Wodan did not look healthy."

  That got Bran's attention back. "Careful what you say about the All-Highest," he rumbled.

  The Earthdwellers must haye heard the words, but they seemed deaf to tone, insensitive to tension. They were busy gulping mead and belching.

  "But what can you expect," Andvari concluded, speaking to the room at large, "from a god of crazy berserkers?" The little man threw the word out very casually, as if he had no idea of what it really meant.

  Hal held his breath. From the corner of his eye he had seen Bran's head turn round. Suddenly Bran had started breathing deeply and heavily, and when he spoke again his voice had changed. It was as if a different man now looked out of his scarred face.

  "You have blasphemed my god. And for that you must die, small man."

  This time the message was in the simple words, and came through clearly. Open-mouthed, the two gnomes sat there looking numbly back at Bran.

  On the bench beside Hal, Baldur seemed not to know whether to laugh or take alarm.

  Hal was very far from laughing. His brain was working rapidly, trying to calculate the chance of summoning a Valkyrie before someone got killed. He could see no chance of any other kind of help. There would be no use trying to reach the sergeant, who was almost certainly busy attending the god.

  The music had long since faltered to a halt. Standing up, Hal called Bran's name, sending the one word clearly into an aching silence. The big man's head turned.

  Hal told him in a flat voice: "The little one you challenge would not be here bothering you, were it not for me. So bring to me any complaint that you might have."

  When Bran said nothing, but only continued to stare at him, Hal added: "You said you admired my honored helmet? Take it, and welcome. A gift." That was the best distraction Hal could think of. He pulled the helmet off and tossed it across the width of the two tables, so it bounced on the table where Bran was sitting, and then onto the floor.

  He might have spared himself the effort. Bran's gaze did not turn to follow the clanging, bounding thing at all.

  Without another word Bran, moving slowly and steadily, got to his feet. He stood much taller than Hal, though as Hal had already noted, there was not that much difference in length of arm.

  Hal wanted to try more soothing words, but he could find none, and suddenly there was no time. Bran was standing on the table at which he had been sitting. From Hal's position he looked about twelve feet tall; and when Bran pulled the short sword from its scabbard at his side, that made him look no smaller.

  Without a pause he charged across the tabletops at Hal, sword raised and howling like a winter wind out of the north.

  When a man came leaping through the air at you, the traditional effective counter was to get out of his way by stepping sideways. Hal's first concern was getting his feet and legs clear of tables and benches.

  Bran's weight splintered a bench when he came down on it. By that time, Hal was out of reach, axe in one hand, knife in the other, trying to find some open space.

  Bran came bounding after him, quick as a bouncing ball. This time Hal stepped into the rush, blocked sword with axe, feinted one way and thrust another, feeling his dagger go deep into the big man's side, sliding through tough cloth, digging on into meat. The cut would have brought down any normal man, but it had little immediate effect on a berserker's strength or energy.

  Hal had to break away. The next rush forced him backward, and in the swift exchange that followed he neatly broke Bran's sword-blade, catching it in the angle between the head and the tough handle of the war-hatchet.

  But to berserker Bran a broken sword meant nothing. He still came after Hal, in one hand the stump of his snapped blade, the other armed with a yard-long wooden splinter, snatched up from a broken bench.

  Men were yelling, scrambling desperately right and left and backward, falling to get out of the way. The howling Berserk kept on coming, too fast for Hal to make a conscious plan. He parried, and struck, and struck again. It seemed like two swords coming at him, not one broken one. His forehand swing with the axe was blocked with Bran's forearm on the shaft, the impact feeling as if he'd hit a piece of wood. But then, backhanding with the blunt end, Hal got home solidly on flesh and bone.

  A broken leg was not going to stop death attacking, but perhaps would slow it down a bit. Now Hal could see a jagged end of white bone, sticking right out through skin and cloth above Bran's knee. Blood from a wounded arm spouted at Hal, and he realized that Bran was spraying him with Bran's own blood, trying to blind his vision.

  Fine dishes, goblets, crashed and clattered underfoot, scattering their contents. In the background, Hal saw another fight had broken out, a skirmish anyway. Baldur, his sword drawn, seemed to be holding off Blackie—and another man was down, not moving.

  Hal's foot slipped, whether in spilled soup or blood it mattered not, and in a helpless instant he went down hard on his back. Death leaped upon him, still spraying blood but never weakening, grappling with inhuman strength. The face of death was inches from Hal's own. Teeth tore at Hal's collar, trying to reach his throat. With an all-out surge of effort, Hal got his hickory axe-handle wedged into the open mouth.

  In his paroxysm, Bran had screwed one of his eyes shut, as if in unconscious imitation of Wodan's one-eyed glare. Bran's wounded arms still clutched and tore. He howled no longer, but his breath sobbed like a great wind.

  Somewhere inside Hal, his own berserker fury had come alive. Enough of it, perhaps. Slowly, slowly his arms straightened, gripping the axe-handle near both ends, forcing the frenzied killer up and back, throwing him violently off so Hal could move again.

  His own breath sobbing, Hal staggered and scrambled to his feet. Bran came up right after Hal, almost with him, still quick on his broken leg.

  Hal could see it, looking into the one open eye: Bran was dead but he would not fall.

  Baldur, you stupid sod, now is the time to hit him from behind with all you've got. If Hal had had the breath to speak, he would have roared the words aloud. But what he could see now and then in the corner of his eye assured him bleakly that no help was on the way. Baldur seemed to have his hands full at the moment, holding other men at bay, those who would have come in on the berserker's side.

  Bran had lost his remnant of a sword, but had somehow rearmed himself in both hands with more splintered wood. He still came on relentlessly, stumbling and lurching on broken bones. The lungs of the dead man were still laboring, forcing in and out the air the dead man's muscles needed for their work. This would be Bran's last fight, but while an opponent still faced him, it seemed the spirit of Wodan would not let him fall.

  Hal gripped his axe in two hands now . . . a weapon so heavy that it seemed to need two hands to lift . . . and Bran, his body still moving, though no man could say how, was coming after him ag
ain. Hal wondered if berserkers had to breathe at all . . .

  Later, Hal could not even remember what final blow had brought the monster down to stay.

  Berserkers were not gods. And in the end mere human flesh and bone must find its limits and fall down.

  Hal dropped the axe and fell almost on top of him.

  He was gasping, gasping, gasping, and thought he could not have made another move to save his life; Baldur's grandmother could have finished him, right there, with a knitting needle.

  He dared not wait until his breath came back, he had no choice. As soon as he stirred and tried to move again, the world immediately started to turn gray before him, as in the beginning of a faint. But he could not allow himself the luxury of anything like that.

  Slowly, laboriously, Hal picked up his knife, which had fallen nearby, With his good dagger in his hand, he began the process of slicing and chopping off the berserker's head.

  Baldur's hand was tugging at his arm. "What are you doing, Hal? He's dead. He's dead!"

  Hal was shaking his head no. That was easier than trying to talk. The job done, Hal heaved his grisly trophy into Loki's fireplace. Automatically he sheathed his knife. Breathing was still a full-time job, but now he could make words. "It's the only way. To make sure. Doesn't get up again. And come after us."

  Baldur had put away his own sword and was retrieving Hal's helmet for him, putting it on Hal's head. No one else was moving to interfere. Now Baldur was handing him the axe. Hal noted dimly that one of Bran's teeth was still embedded in the handle.

  "Hal, you're all blood. Can you walk?"

  It took Hal two more breaths to be able to spare the air for two more words: "Not mine."

  Both arms still functioned, and both legs. By some miracle he wasn't hurt, not really hurt apart from scrapes and bruises caught from floor and furniture, and from the sheer gripping strength of the berserker's hands.

  Someone must have run for Sergeant Nosam, because here the sergeant was, staring in cold horror at the ruin, the dead and wounded men. Let's see you keep all this from Wodan, Sergeant. But then maybe he could. Maybe he could.

  So far Nosam was saying nothing, and Hal stepped over a body he did not recognize, brushed past the sergeant and the surviving corporal, Blackie, white-faced and clutching at a wounded arm.

  "Baldur, this way." Now Hal was almost ready to breathe and talk at the same time. "We go to the Horses."

  At last the sergeant found his voice. He only asked: "What happened to the gnomes?"

  It was Baldur who turned to give the answer: "I saw them running out. They'll be on their way home."

  In the stable, Baldur went immediately to start checking out the Horses. As soon as he was out of sight, Hal, now able to walk unaided and almost straight, moved with deliberate speed to recover the golden saddlebags. Miracle of miracles, almost as soon as he looked for them, there they were! He could only think that someone—quite likely Alvit—had simply lifted them from the Horse and set them down against a nearby wall, where they were inconspicuous though not exactly hidden. In the madhouse that was Valhalla, nothing like a thorough search had been conducted.

  Besides being equipped with a spear holder, each set of saddlebags came with a water bottle made of some treated skin. The bottles were empty now, but once out of Valhalla it ought to be easy enough to get them filled.

  Baldur soon returned, leading the almost-familiar Gold Mane and Cloudfoot. While the young man soothed the animals, Hal quickly strapped on two sets of saddlebags, making sure that Cloudfoot got the gold. He was about to announce that they were ready, when a glance through a nearby doorway spotted something that made him risk delay.

  Quickly he muttered to Baldur: "Hold it one second, I'll be right back!"

  The doorway led, as Hal had instantly surmised, into what had to be the Valkyries' armory, or at least a branch thereof, conveniently situated here near the stable. What he had glimpsed from outside was a high rack, in which half a dozen of the Valkyries' Spears stood waiting, unguarded and available.

  Hal needed only a moment to snatch a Spear and stumble on his bruised legs back to the courtyard. But it was a moment ill-spent, or so it seemed. When Hal emerged, almost staggering, Spear in hand, he saw a sight that made him draw in breath for a desperate yell.

  Baldur, not hearing Hal's last words or choosing to ignore them, had mounted the wrong Horse, the one that bore the gold, and was already on his way. But Hal choked off his yell before it could get started, for Baldur was too far away to hear, and too far away to turn back if he did. Besides, an all-out bellow might bring discovery and destruction on them both.

  Hal had just dragged his battered frame aboard Gold Mane when Alvit suddenly appeared, on foot and out of breath. For a moment Hal was ready to use his borrowed Spear against the Valkyrie, but her first words convinced him that there was no need.

  "There is no help for it, Hal, now you must flee. The sergeant will tell Wodan that Bran and the other man who fell are chasing two deserters." When Hal would have turned his mount away, her hand fell on his arm in a hard grip. "Where are you going?"

  "To Loki's fire. Baldur won't go anywhere else."

  "Then follow him, and I will meet you when I can. I'll try to bring some food."

  * * *

  13

  Baldur was urging his Horse to its best speed, Cloudfoot's long legs working at a hard gallop, reaching out with each stride to take their magical grips upon huge chunks of air and pull them back. Every time the soles of the two hind hooves turned up toward Hal, the gold shoes on them caught dull gleams from the first horizontal rays of the rising sun, seeming to symbolize his vanishing fortune.

  Vaguely Hal realized that if the sun was up already, last night's ritual feast must have started some time well after midnight. It seemed that time itself, like many other things, was coming askew in Valhalla, or at least in the minds of its inmates. Meanwhile he was yelling in Gold Mane's ear, kicking the animal in the ribs, in an effort to overtake his colleague. The trouble was that Hal's mount was slower, though not by much. Trusting that a Horse could be controlled in the same way as a mundane beast, he kicked Gold Mane some more, and shouted out a string of oaths. Their speed increased.

  For Hal, the strangest thing about the ride, at first, was not the visible emptiness beneath him. He had been expecting that. It was that his ears kept anticipating the beat of hooves and metal shoes on hard ground—and there was no sound but only the whisper of the passing wind, soft as a woman's breath, and now and then the jingle of an iron buckle on a saddlebag.

  In cold blood he might not have been able to force himself to dare this ride. But now with the dead berserker and Wodan and slavery behind him, he was ready to dare anything to get away.

  By the time Hal had taken a few gasping breaths, Wodan's stronghold had fallen completely behind them, while ahead and below almost nothing was immediately visible in the gray light of dawn but jagged rock and terrifying space.

  As if to avoid some unseen obstacle, maybe a passing bird, Gold Mane shifted his flight path abruptly, so sharply that Hal's horned helmet, so narrowly saved from the berserker, tilted clean off his head. His instinct was to make a grab for the helmet before it got away, but somehow neither of his hands was willing to let go its grip on coarse Horsehair. Over the next few seconds Hal grew dizzy watching his prized headpiece grow smaller and smaller, becoming a barely visible dot before it disappeared into a distant cloud.

  The falling body of a man, just like the helmet, would take a long, long time to reach even that cloud. Hal slumped forward, clasping his arms around the racing Horse's neck.

  But he was not going to fall. He was not going to fall.

  What was he doing, trying to fly like a bird on the strength of unknown magic? Had he gone completely mad, ready to kill himself trying to regain a few handfuls of stolen gold? Helplessly he yearned after the modest treasure so neatly packaged on the back of Baldur's Horse. And Baldur of course was completely ignorant of th
e fact that Cloudfoot was carrying gold—or was he? No, Hal had to believe he was. By this time he was certain that he knew Baldur pretty well.

  Sternly commanding himself not to look down, Hal managed to overcome his vertigo. Now, glancing back over his shoulder as the clouds flew by, he was heartened by being able to detect no signs of immediate pursuit. To his surprise, they had already covered so much distance that he could no longer see Valhalla at all, but only the mountain peaks among which it nested. As far as he could tell, Alvit was the only one in the disorganized stronghold who knew that they had gone.

  Hal's next shout to Baldur died out awkwardly as Hal's throat spasmed—on reaching a break in the fluffy clouds beneath him, he was suddenly able to see only too clearly the immense altitude that he had now reached. Far, far below him sprawled a wilderness of jagged rock, a scene that lurched and jiggled with the onrushing movement of his steed. Thousands of feet, maybe a mile of empty air, loomed below, a distance that made his gut tighten in anticipation of a fall.

  Once again he clutched desperately with both hands at the animal's mane. The strangeness, the unfamiliarity of the Horse that he was riding made the experience all the more terrible—he had to close his eyes again to reassure himself, concentrating on the solid feel of the galloping animal between his thighs.

  But voluntary blindness was not going to ease his terror for more than a moment; his imagination was all too ready to furnish the space in front of him with objects of dread. Hal opened his eyes again and saw nothing but rushing clouds ahead, and the galloping figure of Baldur's Horse. This time he did not look down.

  The world spread out before the flying riders in the dawn of a clear winter morning was an amazing sight, and Hal was awed by this borrowed, secondhand power of the god—for a moment he was utterly terrified by his own audacity.

  But his situation as a captive in Valhalla had been bad, horrible to the point where he would have tried anything to escape. Even fighting a berserker, though that had not been his conscious plan when the fight started.