The Quest for Valhalla (Order of the Black Sun Book 4)

by P. W. Child

  “No. Way,” he said under his breath with a smile.

  Gunnar placed his hand on Nina’s cheek and remarked, “You are holding up remarkably well, Nina, but we have to do something about this. Darling, we think its arsenic, being slowly released into your bloodstream.”

  “Then give me a sedative and remove the fucking thing!” Nina replied with fury and panic. Her sweat drenched hair glimmered over her head and a terrible tremor filled her motor skills.

  “Come! Let’s go! Let’s go!” Eldard urged them, gesturing for Sam to hurry. The four rushed from the hall, but security thought nothing of it when he noticed that the lady was feeling unwell.

  “What’s going on?” Sam hissed in a failed attempt not to look suspicious. .

  “Just get to the car,” Eldard spoke through his inanimate lips. Gunnar was almost lifting Nina off her feet to get her to the car.

  “Did you find the dead horse?” Nina asked as they sped away.

  Eldard first cast a long look at Nina, amusement playing in his eyes and then, trying to fight a smile, he revealed the entire hoof of the horse skeleton he procured.

  “Wha-what?” Sam gawked, while Gunnar looked in the rear view mirror to see what his friend had done. Nina slammed her hand on her mouth and started to chuckle. Gunnar shook his head and cracked a wide smile at Eldard’s mischief.

  “You stole an artifact?” Sam exclaimed with a look of hilarity behind his expression. “No, let me rephrase…you stole the dead horse’s fucking foot?”

  “Well, as they say, you can bring a dead horse to Valhalla…” Eldard started, but the roar of laughter from his companions drowned him out.

  It was the advent of the three days around St. Blod’s Day and they raced towards the air strip where Nina had elicited help from her old friend Gary, the pilot used by Dave Purdue on short notice missions.

  “Nina!” the friendly man exclaimed when he saw them approaching the aircraft. “Lovely seeing you again!” His smile faded somewhat when he saw the state that she was in, immediately looking at Sam for some sign of explanation, but Sam just shook his head surreptitiously.

  “Hey Gary,” she smiled kindly. As the others boarded she leaned into Gary outside the plane and asked sincerely, “You don’t perhaps have a spare pair of those?”

  “Oh, Nina, you can have these,” he smiled and quickly ripped his Ray-Bans from his face and handed it to the self-conscious lady he felt worried about. “What happened to you?” He whispered cautiously, in case the men with her had something to do with her condition.

  “Arsenic poisoning, Gary.”

  The pilot gasped softly at the news, “How long have you been exposed?”

  Nina remembered suddenly that Gary was a trained EMT, and that he would perhaps be able to help them get her the treatment she urgently needed. She explained to him the urgency of getting to the Volkhov River as soon as possible. Then, she made another call to good old Frida back in Edinburgh.

  When they were sliding through the clouds, the group took the time for a much needed sleep break. Sam tried to stay awake to be with Nina as much as possible, to comfort her. She looked dreadful. She was a walking dead, but he still thought she was the most beautiful women on earth. Her body had become positively emaciated from hardly keeping any food down.

  It was hell to see her like this and for the first time in a long time since his life dulled down, Sam felt the characteristic fumes of a desire for vengeance tingle deep in the pit of his stomach. He would trade places with her in a heartbeat, even if it were the last thing he did.

  Lita was due a slow death anyway, and Sam knew he would not hesitate to slit her open if Nina had to succumb to the deadly poison Lita had gifted her. Watching the fragile historian use the time to read into the navigation on the Volkhov River without a thought for her own welfare, Sam’s respect for her only increased. Her strength of will was unbelievable and when he looked at her arm, the tattoo of the Tiwaz rune prevalent, he knew why Val Joutsen had chosen Nina Gould to be her champion. It was not for her historical knowledge at all, he knew now. The wise chieftain of The Brotherhood saw in Nina what no-one even knew was there. With his love for Nina warming him, Sam relinquished consciousness for the glory of a deep sleep without visions of nightmares. Regrettably, Nina’s nightmares had only begun.

  Once they touched down in Pulkovo in St. Petersburg, the party traveled to Veliky Novgorod by road. The two hour drive was filled with suspense. This was it, the eve of St Blod. They were now locked in a world war under the flags of ancient chieftains no modern army could detect. They would leave this day only in victory or in death, each one of them. Gary was with them, to look after Nina while they completed their task. She was in a bad state. It was as if the impending clash accelerated her collapse. Perhaps it was the fact that she knew all the searching, fighting, fleeing, planning, unraveling, crying, aching, traveling would soon be over, regardless of who would win Valhalla.

  Coincidentally or not, it seemed another vehicle was following them. It had been visible in the rear view mirror for over an hour, which was suspicious considering that these roads were not exactly highways with lots of traffic. It refused to pass, even when Gunnar signaled for it to. It would occasionally fall back a bit farther, only to sneak up on them again moments later.

  Nina breathed hard and the men opened the windows for her to get fresh air, although it was very chilly. It didn’t matter to them as long as it made the fatally ill woman comfortable. Now and then, Nina dosed off, only to wake from severe pain in her abdomen, wailing in agony.

  It drove Sam crazy to feel so helpless. Gary gave her Ringer’s solution IV and monitored her vitals. Gaunt and pallidly moist, her face contorted while her hands reached out to something invisible. She appeared to smile at first, but then a look of utter terror came on her and she started fighting it off. Gary and Eldard had to restrain her while her hallucinations grew more intense.

  “No! I don’t want to, you fucking animal! Eat someone else’s hand!” she screamed, curling her hands at the wrist to protect them. When Eldard spoke to her, she looked confused.

  “But you are dead, Professor. I cannot talk to you here. How is your head?” she asked Eldard.

  “Answer her,” Gunnar said plainly.

  “Umm, my head feels much better, thank you.”

  “Oh, good,” she sighed, her drenched hair in disarray. “Because you have shrapnel all over your coat, old boy.”

  “I swear to Christ, if she…” Sam quietly told Gunnar, but then he remembered that he was addressing someone who had, in fact, lost the love of his life recently.

  Gunnar received a text on his cell phone.

  “Just grab this and have a look, Sam,” he said, keeping his eye on the rear view mirror where two very disconcerting things chewed at him – Nina’s rapid decline and the strange car in their wake.

  “It is from Lars,” Sam announced and Gunnar nodded for him to continue. “My wife got a text from an informant she trusts. It says, ‘L18R15. I’m sorry.’ From someone called Herman. Hope you know what that’s about,” Sam recited. Gunnar shook his head in negative.

  “Keep it anyway. So much weird shit has been making sense lately, you never know,” the big widower replied. The car behind them disappeared without their noticing, while Nina took a turn for the worse. By the looks of it, she would not survive the night.

  Chapter 37

  On the Volkhov River, a slight white glimmer lined the ripples raised by boats traversing the water. It came from the moon trumping the horizon. Glittering rays touched on the grass mounds along the banks, illuminating their risen size, proclaiming them magical tombs crowned with silver. It was cold and quiet, an ancient landscape fraught with memories of blood and promises. Gently rocking, the boat slid through the river at a calm pace and it gave them enough time to scrutinize each mound to determine which the sleeping giant was under which Valhalla was hidden. Its presence in this area was explicitly evident by the antediluvian ambience and the u
nseen hum of astral existence all round. Only the lapping waters sounded in the grave silence of the reverend site as their eyes studied the dark Viking hillocks for proof of the Great Hall of Wotan.

  From a few taller trees a way in from the banks, two pairs of evil eyes watched the boat, waiting to see where it would stop. Now that Lita had lost half of the code to the debris of the hunting lodge, she needed to follow the Brotherhood’s allies to find Valhalla. It was imperative that they find it, this being the eve of St. Blod. It was a prophetic event when the constellations would align in such a manner that the atmospheric consistency of earth was just right.

  According to Nazi lore, and a magnitude of scientific notes about physics and climatic properties, the atmosphere would be the catalyst for the destruction brought by whatever wicked thing Odin sealed away when he was chieftain of these tribes. Lita felt her secret excitement mounting. After all the trouble of locating the place, she would soon unlock the hall and unleash Fenrir, depicted as the great black would that would destroy the world.

  With her controlling it, she would execute what Hitler could not.

  She would also be a far more efficient ruler of the Master Race that would populate the world. From what her supreme logic dictated, the mythical Fenrir was in fact a chemical compound that would react with the electro-magnetic emissions of the planet. She would have three days to implement her destruction and keep her chosen safe, shielded from harm until the end of the eclipse. By then, the eradication of unwanted specimens would be complete. She would accomplish what the SS could not, not in the Vril or the Thule Societies they operated.

  Slokin looked around every few seconds, his nervous snorting driving Lita crazy, but she had to keep her eye on the men from Sleipnir on the boat. Incessantly, he would roll his eyes from side to side as if he had seen something and followed its movement.

  “What the fuck is with you, Slokin?” she whispered hard.

  “This place just gives me the creeps,” he huffed with a stupid giggle while rubbing his hands together.

  “I’ll leave your groveling ass here if you don’t pipe down,” she threatened and focused her concentration on the passing boat.

  On the boat it was quiet. Sam and Gunnar faced the right bank while Eldard and Gary checked the left. Nina was lying down, sedated by a sleeping pill Gary dispensed to give her some much-needed rest. The moon rose higher now, silently calling the light to spread across the landscape. Gunnar felt Sam nudge him, mute with excitement. Sam pointed to something shiny a few meters past the bank of the river.

  “What’s that?” he whispered.

  From the boat, they could see that there were more, by the duplicated shape and sheen of the first object he saw. They moored there and stepped off the boat. The four men gasped in wonder at the four bronze bowls fixed into four large stones. Vaguely, by the beam of Gunnar’s flashlight they could see that each stone branded a rune that represented a Norse god - Odin, Freya, Tyr, and Thor.

  “My god, this is amazing,” Gunnar marveled. His companions nodded in agreement. “They look like gravestones, or monuments.”

  “They are singing bowls,” Eldard said nonchalantly in his lecturer tone. “Normally used for meditation.” He stepped through the long grass to take his place next to Freya’s stone. He pulled a wooden mallet from the bowl and tapped it on the rim. Like a church bell, the bronze bowl chimed a deep and beautiful tone, so loud that the men stepped back from it.

  “Aye, that’s the way. Let everyone know we are here,” Sam remarked cynically. He did not see the tall red queen making her way towards the rocking boat they had tied down. He did not see her slip onboard and discover the fatally ill Nina.

  “So what do we do? Where is the hall? Here are the mounds Nina was talking about from her dream. Where is Valhalla?” Gunnar asked, looking in all directions to ascertain if he missed anything.

  “It must have something to do with the number sequences,” Eldard said and checked his hand for the pen written numbers he copied from the hoof he stole from the longhouse. “It says, ‘L12R16’. How is that related to the bowls?”

  “L. L. L…umm, let’s see…l-left. Left! The ‘L’ and ‘R’ must be for left and right!” Gunnar exclaimed.

  “Yes!” Eldard joined in, “That would make sense, since you run the mallet around the bowl to make it sing, you see?” He dragged the wood along the outer rim of the bronze bowl and it started to hum, louder and louder. Even when he ceased, it carried on a little longer.

  “Wow!” Sam said under his breath. He found it truly beautiful, especially here in the moonlit night on the grounds of an ancient settlement where gods were born as men.

  “Okay, one bowl’s is left and the other one’s is right. The numbers must be how many revolutions per bowl,” Gunnar smiled just slightly at the puzzle. “But what about the other two bowls? Or can we choose which ones to use?”

  “Obviously, the other two would utilize the numbers from the second number sequence, you fucking imbecile,” Lita grunted from behind them, her hideous rasp splitting the peaceful night. The men spun around to find her standing with Nina’s limp body in her arms. She had carried her from the boat. Slokin sneered from her side and Sam felt like giving him another blinding punch.

  “Is she alive?” Sam screamed, his eyes wide in shock.

  “Relax, lover boy, she is my insurance. Again.” She looked at Nina, impressed. “She must have one hell of an immune system. Now, lads, you do the turn-turn thing and open Valhalla, and then, when I have collected the monster inside, you can have old whiny back. If she isn’t pissing through her pores by then.”

  “Oh, I’m going to love ripping you open, you fucking freak!” Gunnar roared at Slokin, but the little creep just snickered and looked at his mistress.

  “Get to it!” she shouted in furor.

  Each of the four men took a mallet and, according to the numbers received via text and those carved into the hoof, they each had a number of times to circle his bowl either clockwise or counter-clockwise. Simultaneously they started their revolutions, emitting a gradual crescendo of sound from the bowls. Soon, the unison of the tones at varied heights formed a choir and eventually culminated to one terrifying voice of thunder. The earth under them filled with tremors and shook boulders loose from the river bank.

  With the ground shaking beneath them, the four men counted their revolutions carefully whilst in the throes of reverence and fright. Like the horn of Gabriel announcing the end of the world, the singing bowls sang with the deep voice of a thousand Vikings. It pulsed through all within earshot, rattling their insides and challenging their rib cages. What a truly terrifying sound it was! Even Lita felt her soul kneel in awe of the voice, momentarily realizing just how insignificant humans were in the presence of nature’s forces. No wonder they were called ‘gods’.

  Nina awoke from the din, but she was weak and disoriented. At the sight of Lita, she began to weep softly, desperate that she was yet again at the mercy of the merciless. But the powerful hum scared her even more. Through burning eyes, the dying historian looked for her friends, but what she saw shook her to her core.

  All across the tall grass that was glistening in the glint of moonlight, she saw them converge. They closed in slowly on the four men at the singing bowls. Hundreds of them appeared from nowhere, swords and shields in hand, hair whipping violently in a storm wind while the night air stood still. Nina gasped and turned her head to follow their wandering. She was astonished by their beauty, grace and fury but nobody paid attention to them.

  “Valkyries,” she sighed in absolute worship.

  “What did you say?” Lita asked, but Nina just shook her head.

  The earthquake caused two rifts in the riverbed, about 30 meters apart. Between them, to the terror of all present, the water fell away, swallowed up by the riverbed. Like a bath tub, the water level slowly sank until the singing bowls had chimed their last round. In front of them, the roof of the hall became visible and as the waterline dropped
the moon rays fell upon the hall in all its glory. It had no windows and it was covered in mud and algae. The great doors were crafted from steel and wood, bolts and beams.

  Thoughtlessly, Lita dropped Nina to the ground and told Slokin to watch her, but he only smiled.

  “Not so fast, dear Lita,” Carlos Oliveira called out from the obscurity of the hillocks. “This site now belongs to the Order of the Black Sun.”

  Lita’s eyes flashed with rage, “I am the Order of the Black Sun. And you are obsolete! Slokin, take care of him.”

  “Why would he?” Carlos asked, walking down to them with Miro Cruz at his side. “He is the one who called us here. He is the one who told us that you planned to destroy us and take it all for yourself. You have been betrayed, Lita Røderic.”

  She turned to Slokin, her eyes ablaze and livid.

  “My work is done here,” he laughed in cowardice and ran off. Gunnar went after him, pulling his fifteen inch knife as he ran.

  Lita abandoned them and climbed down the riverbank to the mossy splendor of Valhalla while Gary took place next to Nina.

  “Go on, I’ll take care of her,” he told Sam and Eldard. They recognized the old men from the boat. Now they knew that these were the senior ranks of the Black Sun, eager to claim Fenrir.

  “Kill Lita Røderic and you get out of this alive,” Carlos told Eldard and Sam with good old Nazi authority, but as soon as he finished his sentence his old colleague pulled out a pistol and shot him in the head. They froze, staring at the old man in disbelief.