The Sleeping Army

by Francesca Simon

  ‘We can protect you better on foot,’ said Snot. ‘We’ll walk up Hekla.’

  Freya was secretly relieved. Exhausted as she was, blistered and sore though her feet were, the thought of flying terrified her. She gazed up at the iron-dark mountains. Fire and smoke and ash spewed high into the air.

  ‘Umm,’ said Freya. ‘We’re walking up a volcano, right? What if it erupts?’

  ‘Then that will be how fate has decreed we die,’ said Roskva.

  They hastened up the volcano’s dark face, sulphurous steam whistling out of fissures in the jagged rocks. On and on, up and up they climbed, crunching bits of ice underfoot, until the sun was high in the sky. A nearby volcano puffed, and then orange-red fire spewed from its molten mouth. Freya coughed and spluttered as she walked through rivers of billowing smoke.

  Suddenly the air filled with ash. Chunks of ice and fire hurtled high into the sky. Steam swaddled them. From the plateau they stood on, she could see lava flowing, thick and molten and gloopy. Ice and steam, hot and cold. Surveying the burnt landscape, Freya felt she was already in the Underworld.

  ‘Don’t tell me – that’s Hekla,’ she moaned, as a nearby volcano belched a fresh shower of fire and lava. ‘I’ll die the moment I enter it …’

  ‘No,’ said Snot. ‘We’re standing on Hekla.’

  Freya felt her heart stop.

  ‘So soon?’ said Freya. During the long walk up to the peak, she’d tried not to think about the horror awaiting her.

  Freya gulped. Hekla’s mouth opened out of the rock, a yawning black cavern waiting to swallow her. Shaking, she crept to the rim and peered in. It was like looking into Mordor.

  ‘No one has ever dared come up here before,’ said Snot. ‘We’re the first.’ Freya noticed he stood well back, as if he might get sucked into the world beneath the worlds.

  They stood awkwardly, watching wisps of steam curl up from Hekla’s grisly mouth.

  ‘Get on with it,’ said Snot, glancing nervously at the sky, sword drawn.

  How could there be a blue sky, as if all was well in the world, when everything was so wrong?

  Trembling, Freya took out the gleaming falcon feather and shook it. The grey-white blue-flecked feather glimmered and fluttered and took bird-shape. She spread out the falcon skin and held it in her shaking hands. The others gathered around her. Freya felt like a sacrifice to some implacable god.

  She swallowed and peeked again into Hekla’s black depths. How do I know it won’t erupt? she thought, shuddering.

  ‘I’ll stand guard,’ said Snot. He gripped his heavy sword. ‘If Thjazi comes I’ll be ready for him.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Snot,’ snapped Roskva. Her voice was shaking. ‘We can’t wait up here. We might as well hang out a sign with an arrow saying, “Come and get us, Thjazi!” We’re visible for miles.’

  ‘Roskva’s right,’ said Freya. Ugh, how she hated saying that.

  ‘If death ambushes us, you must fly straight back to Asgard,’ said Roskva. ‘Can you find your way?’

  Freya felt like crying.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Freya. Her mouth was dry and she could barely speak. Compared to what lay ahead, getting to Asgard seemed the least of her woes. ‘Where is it?’ she asked through her tears.

  Roskva pointed. ‘Do you see those black mountains? They’re the mountains of Jotunheim. Asgard lies behind them. Head straight for those mountains then veer north and upwards. You’ll see the world tree Yggdrasil rising high into the heavens … really, you can’t miss it.’

  Don’t bet on that, thought Freya. She had no sense of direction at all. She could get lost going to the loo and back. One mountain looked like any other to her. And which way was north?

  Freya stared at the falcon skin in her hands. She felt absolutely frozen, unable to move. Roskva spoke to her, and it was as if she were already far, far away.

  ‘… and try not to get your blood sucked out by Nidhogg.’

  ‘Nidhogg?’ said Freya. Her head was spinning.

  ‘The corpse-eating dragon the spectre warned you about,’ said Roskva. ‘Do your best to distract him.’

  ‘Thanks for sharing, Roskva,’ said Freya. She held out the falcon skin, the feathers fluttering. ‘If you think I’m so useless you’re welcome to fly down to see Hel yourself.’

  Roskva glared at her. ‘The All-Father gave you the falcon skin, not me,’ she said. ‘Only you can do this. Unfortunately.’

  A horrible image came to Freya. If fate decreed she get out alive, let alone with Idunn, Thjazi would be searching the skies waiting to tear her apart. She saw herself ripped to pieces by the giant eagle, the nut falling from her grasp …

  ‘I can’t do this!’ wailed Freya. ‘Any of this!’

  ‘We all have to do things we can’t do,’ said Roskva. ‘Freya? Put on the falcon skin! Now. It’s time.’ She lifted her head, and Freya glimpsed her mottled ivory neck.

  Freya’s hand trembled, then she flung the gleaming falcon skin over her shoulders.

  Instantly Freya’s flesh prickled as feathers burst forth and her body shuddered and twisted as her bones shrank and bent.

  One moment she was a girl. The next she was a falcon.

  How do I change back? thought Freya frantically, tottering on her little stick legs. I forgot to ask the Gods. How will I get out of Hel? I’m alive. Will I be stuck there forever?

  ‘I wish we could come with you,’ said Roskva suddenly.

  Freya opened her beak. Then she swivelled her head as her newly keen eye glimpsed a dark shape bearing down on them across the empty sky. She squawked.

  The others turned and saw the gigantic eagle approaching, talons outstretched.

  ‘Go! Go!!’ shrieked Roskva, drawing her sword. Snot raised his and they turned to face the dive-bombing eagle as Freya flung herself into Hekla’s vast abyss.

  8 Hel

  Freya fell.

  It was like one of those nightmares where you fall and fall and fall, except this time she knew she was awake. Frantically she flapped her heavy wings as she spiralled downward head-first, screaming as she tumbled into the Underworld.

  The storms inside Hekla buffeted her as the volcano’s breath whirled her about. Freya’s wings felt leaden as she struggled to keep airborne against the winds flinging her against the volcano’s jagged sides. Freya could feel icy fingers reaching for her as she plummeted.

  Were the others alive? Was Thjazi pursuing her even now?

  One moment she thought she would die of heat, and prayed that Hekla wasn’t about to explode. Then icy blasts bit through her feathered body and a shroud of frost enveloped her as she was yanked ever-deeper into the darkness.

  Desperately she tried to right herself as she was swirled about. She had no idea if she was right side up and which way she was facing as she was twisted and twirled. Her stomach heaved.

  Then, gradually, she found a way to spread her wings into the volcano’s gusts, and began to glide downwards less violently.

  Freya had no idea how long she spiralled in her swooping fall. The yawning steep widened and widened and widened and then – THUD! THUNK! She collided with the earth.

  Freya tumbled and rolled and came to a halt, wings outstretched.

  She had stopped falling.

  Freya lay on the cold ground, so dizzy and battered it was hard for her to imagine ever moving again. But she was alive – at least she thought she was alive – in the frozen gloom of the Underworld.

  Freya shook herself, and the falcon skin slid off her back as easily as if she’d undone Snot’s cloak. Instantly her bruised body uncurled and stretched and re-filled her skin as she regained human form. She groped around in the dark for the precious feather, found it, and put it inside her pocket.

  Slowly, shakily, she raised herself on to her knees. Her arms ached. She became aware of the sound of water flowing nearby.

  She had fallen beside a vast, bubbling lake, reeking sulphur, punctured with boulders. Great geysers of lava and flame
leapt from the oily surface. And yet Freya saw her breath, chill and frosty, in the murky black.

  As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that the flashes of light came from a glittering, gold-covered bridge. Frost rose from the river flowing beneath, lumpen with knobbly blocks of ice.

  Freya watched as the shadowy blurs of corpses streamed soundlessly across the Echoing Bridge. On the other side stood a pale young giantess, watching silently as the dead flitted past.

  Maybe I can blend in with them, thought Freya.

  She tip-toed across the bridge, barely able to see in front of her through the mist and the hastening shades. Despite her efforts to walk quietly, her footsteps echoed as loudly as if an army were stomping by. Glints of gold from the bridge’s sides flashed in the darkness. Freya felt the freezing waters beckoning her to hurl herself over the edge.

  ‘Hey you! Stomping across like that. Are you trying to wake the dead? Yes, you!’ came a shout as the girl held up her pale arm and blocked Freya’s path. ‘You’re not dead! Who in Hel’s name are you and what do you think you’re doing here?’

  ‘I’m Freya, and I’ve been sent from Asgard,’ said Freya. She stared at the young giantess, white as chalk.

  ‘Pull the other one,’ said the giantess.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Freya. ‘You think I wanted to come here?’

  ‘No one wants to come here,’ said the guardian. ‘But here is where everyone ends up.’

  ‘I’ve come to find Loki,’ said Freya. ‘Has he passed by?’

  The girl snorted.

  ‘He comes and goes as he pleases,’ she said.

  ‘And has he pleased recently?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Freya. ‘Did Sleipnir pass this way?’

  The girl smiled. ‘Woden’s riderless horse galloped over this bridge not so long ago,’ she said.

  So Roskva was right.

  ‘He’ll have gone to Hel’s hall,’ said the young guardian of the bridge. ‘It’s much further down. Past the shore of corpses and the Carrion-Gate.’

  Freya shuddered at the hideous names.

  The giantess pointed to the bleak road, then stood aside to let Freya pass.

  Freya walked through the mist, straining to see, and shivering as the dripping vapour enveloped her. Shards of ice gave off tiny pinpricks of light. She could barely breathe in the horrible smell of Hel’s ghastly and rotting fog-world. The place was as dreadful as the worst of fears. It was like being sucked into a grave mound, knowing you would never, ever escape.

  The road dropped deeper, running alongside a hissing river, bubbles belching out of the boiling mud. The shades of the dead stretched out to her as she hurried towards the mournful citadel rising high and impregnable before her. There was a bump-bump-bump sound as chunks of ice hurtled against the river bank. Freya recoiled.

  What she had thought were blocks of ice were bodies. The icy river was choked with carcasses, all being whirled downwards towards their grisly fate on the shore of corpses.

  Freya whimpered and squeezed her eyes tight shut. She breathed deeply. I must go on, she thought. I must go on.

  Then she heard an odd crunching sound. Freya peered through the dismal light. A red eye glowered at her.

  The dragon lay coiled in the swampy muck beside a gigantic tree root, mist congealing around it. The only sound was chewing and squelching as it bit into the corpses floating past and sucked out their blood.

  The dragon raised its head, a half-chewed corpse dangling from its mouth. Foam and gore oozed from its boulder-like teeth and dribbled into the murky water as bloated bodies drifted by.

  Freya backed away. Nidhogg gulped down the corpse’s leg and spat out the body.

  ‘A little too chewy, that one,’ it hissed. ‘I like them fresh and bloody. By the time I get the battle-warriors they’re a bit – drained. You, on the other hand …’ Nidhogg leered at her. ‘You look … very fresh. I’ve never had a live one before …’ Drool dripped from its blood-speckled jaws as the dragon slowly uncurled himself from Yggdrasil’s root and slithered towards her. His tail thrashed in the swamp, splattering her with bloody spray.

  ‘Stop!’ screamed Freya. ‘You can’t touch me! I’m a messenger from Asgard.’

  Nidhogg paused. It ground its teeth together.

  ‘Messenger?’ it hissed. ‘From the eagle? Where’s the squirrel who always brings insults from him?’

  ‘He couldn’t make it, so I’ve come instead,’ said Freya. She could hear her heart thudding against her chest. ‘The message from the eagle is, “You smell worse than a thousand pigs.”’

  The dragon spat.

  ‘Ha! I hope this means that revolting little squirrel is dead. Well, tell that stinking eagle from me that he is a coward and a – and a—’

  Nidhogg paused.

  ‘A what?’ prompted Freya. She prayed Thor that the monster would not sense her heart pounding.

  ‘It’s a very long time since that piece of vermin last sent an insult,’ said Nidhogg. ‘I’m a little out of practice.’

  ‘How about “You’re a stinking son of a featherless freak”?’ said Freya.

  Nidhogg considered.

  ‘Good insult,’ he said. Freya tried not to look at the mashed-up guts and bones filling the dragon’s gory mouth. ‘What else have you got?’ he mumbled, swallowing.

  ‘May all your teeth fall out except one, and may that one have a cavity,’ said Freya.

  The dragon cackled. ‘A curse and a jest. I like it. That’ll teach that stinking bird dropping to taunt me. More.’

  ‘You’ve got the head of a chicken and the courage of a sheep,’ said Freya.

  ‘More,’ rasped Nidhogg, reaching out and ripping open another corpse with a horrible squelch.

  ‘Leeches should drink you dry.’

  ‘May you grow a wooden tongue.’

  ‘May your children peck you to death.’

  ‘May crows feast on your liver and your brain dry up.’

  ‘May your wings drop off.’

  ‘May fire burn your home and everyone in it.’

  ‘May your eyes pop out of your head and blind your children.’

  Freya paused.

  ‘I like you better than Ratatosk,’ said the dragon. ‘He only delivered messages.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ said Freya. ‘You don’t have to stick with calling that eagle stinking. There’s Woofy. Poofy. Smelly. Odoriferous. Pongy. Reeking. Whiffy. Rancid … uhhh … Poo-face.’

  Nidhogg snatched up another corpse. Freya tried not to look.

  ‘I’ll remember,’ said the dragon, crunching. ‘Oy! Where are you going?’ he hissed, as Freya started to edge away.

  ‘I need to get back to Asgard,’ said Freya.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ snapped Nidhogg, lurching towards her.

  Freya stamped her foot. The dragon looked startled.

  ‘The sooner I go, the sooner I can bring you the eagle’s reply, remember?’ said Freya.

  ‘Hmmmm,’ said the dragon. Bits of corpse dropped from his jaws.

  ‘That is, if that tiny bird brain can think of anything to top your cleverness, which I very much doubt,’ she added, trying to keep her voice strong.

  Nidhogg retreated back into his swamp and grabbed a body.

  ‘Come again soon,’ said Nidhogg, chomping. ‘And bring more insults.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Freya. She suddenly found she could breathe again.

  She smiled to herself. She’d forgotten to tell him her favourite, ‘May you grow like a carrot with your head in the ground.’

  She’d save it for next time.

  Freya stood tiny before the black walls and bolted, massive iron gates which protected Hel’s poisonous hall. The ghosts streamed through; she was stuck. She reached out and touched the icy gate, recoiling at its oily chill. Somewhere in the dark distance she heard the mad howling of a ferocious dog. She looked up. The walls were far, far higher than she had realise
d.

  There was only one way in.

  Freya shook out her falcon skin, and flew silently over the massive Carrion-Gate of Hel’s walled stronghold. Her body felt more at ease as a falcon now, she no longer feared that she would fall out of the air.

  She perched for a moment on top of the wall to look over Hel’s grisly hall. The only sound was hissing. Freya suddenly saw that the roof was thatched with writhing snakes.

  It was now or never. Freya flew down and resumed her human shape.

  Hel’s door was open. Freya walked into the rain-damp citadel.

  The cavernous hall teemed with the dead. Rotting faces, putrid bodies, half skeleton, half flesh, mingled with long-dead wraiths and ghosts, flitting and flickering. Corpses packed together on the low benches against the wet stone walls, huddling in the dark. Others roamed the vast emptiness, seeking Freya knew not what. The benches clogged with the dead stretched far into the distance, further than Freya could see.

  Chandeliers criss-crossed with bones and skulls dangled from the roof, filled with unlit candles. Sconces made of skulls hung on the walls. There was a stone hearth in the centre. When Freya looked more closely, she saw that the cold fireplace was circled with teeth. There was no sign of Loki.

  To the right of the door, the High Seat was empty. Behind it lay a curtained-off area.

  Freya sat on a bench near the entrance, watching and waiting. There’s no point in hiding, she thought. I want Hel to know I’m here.

  Dead faces without number turned to stare at her. Wraiths, bodies, corpses, decomposed and mouldering, thousands and thousands and thousands, noiseless and prowling. There was an eerie silence as the teeming dead moved restlessly through the hall. The only sound was the ssss ssss sssss of the snakes writhing on the roof. Their poison dripped down the walls.

  A hideous corpse leaned towards her and offered her a drinking horn. Freya sniffed it and recoiled. The horn was full of pee. The corpse opened its rotted mouth, laughed soundlessly and passed on.

  ‘Where can I find Hel?’ asked Freya.

  ‘Talking to me?’ said a corpse with a peeling face, scowling. ‘Or to him?’

  ‘Both,’ said Freya.

  ‘You know we can’t speak unless we’re spoken to,’ said the corpse.