Fallon felt the wheels hit the snow and the frozen ground close beneath it. The plane, traveling at express-train speed, bounced crazily back up from the floor of the gorge. Then it smacked down again, hit deeper snow, and heeled over on its nose with a crash that stunned him.
He did not know exactly how long he had been unconscious, when he awoke. Dazedly, he felt around and found Helverson still unconscious. He squirmed weakly until he got the door of the jammed cockpit open. Then he hauled the senseless Norwegian out with him into the snow.
Freezing winds hit him in the face, blowing up the gorge from the west with increasing violence. To north and south rose sheer, icy cliffs. The sky above still flamed awesomely with that supernatural splendor of Northern Lights.
“Nels, wake up!” he cried hoarsely, slapping the unconscious giant’s face. He could see now that Helverson had lost much blood.
The Norwegian stirred weakly, opened dazed blue eyes. He seemed not to see Fallon bending above him.
“Listen, they come!” he exclaimed huskily. “I hear them above the wind, riding toward us.”
His eyes flared in exaltation. “The Valkyries come! We are dead and the messengers of Odin ride to bear us to Valhalla!”
So wild and eerie their surroundings, that the staggering Fallon himself seemed to hear thunder of rushing hoof beats and a stabbing of silver-clear cries above the screeching wind.
Snow suddenly kicked up a yard from the American, and a shot rang through the uproar of tempest. He whirled, and stared unbelievingly.
Victor Heysing was coming up the gorge toward them, his black figure clear against the aurora-lit snow. The Nazi triggered his pistol again and the slug whistled past Fallon and hit the Norwegian’s lower arm.
Fallon could have admired the Nazi’s relentless devotion to duty, at another time. It was clear that Heysing had watched their plane land, had seen that they could have escaped injury, and had himself landed down the gorge and come on foot to finish them while they lay unconscious.
Blind rage at the merciless pursuit exploded in Mart Fallon’s brain. He flung himself with a crazy access of strength toward the other.
Heysing’s gun kicked twice and searing flame grazed the American’s temple. He was upon the Nazi before he could trigger again. He tore at the man’s gun, his other fists weakly smashing at Heysing’s face.
“You weak fool!” snarled the Nazi, contemptuous of the strengthless blows as he sought to free his gun-hand.
Heysing’s blond, devilishly handsome young face had not a trace of apprehension in it. The superbly muscled officer had a wolf’s tough strength, and Fallon knew that he himself was going fast.
That knowledge, and the red sting of hate, convulsed his body for a final effort. He jabbed both hands savagely into Heysing’s chin. As the Nazi struggled to keep his balance, Fallon snatched fiercely at the gun.
He got it. But before he could use it, Heysing was charging back in at him with a snarl of fury. His cap had been knocked off and his blond hair and contorted, handsome face were clear in the spectral brilliance. Fallon’s arms felt like lead as he struck clumsily with the clubbed gun.
The weapon rang on the Nazi’s head, and he pitched into the snow. “Fallon turned back toward the Norwegian, and as he did so, fell forward on hands and knees. He knew consciousness was running out of him but he crawled blindly forward through the snow.
But why, above the shriek and whistle of the winds, did he still seem to hear the thunder of nearing hoofbeats and the squalling cry of a hunting beast? Why did the unearthly flare of the aurora seem waxing in brilliance all along the gorge?
Helverson was on his knees in the snow, his massive face flaming wildly as he pointed back down the gorge.
“The Valkyr-maidens!” he was shouting in a hoarse cry against the wind. “They come!”
Fallon tried to turn to look behind him, but everything seemed spinning around him now. His brain refused to credit what his eyes saw.
Rushing up the gorge was thundering a wild troop of riders. They were Valkyries, warrior-maids of ancient legend, mailed and armed and with their pale gold hair flowing from beneath their winged helmets. Their silver cry streamed out on the shrieking wind.
“Yo to ho! Yo to ho!”
The messengers of Odin, the choosers of the slain, riding fast toward him through night and wind and flaming Northern Lights!
Fallon knew it was delirium as those incredible riders rushed upon him. In their lead, upon a black stallion, rode a mailed girl who wore no helmet and whose gold hair streamed back in the wind like flame. And by her knee, like a hunting dog, loped a huge white lynx.
This Valkyr-leader had seen the little group—the prostrate Nazi, the raving Norwegian, the drunkenly swaying American. Her voice pealed in a cry of command as she drew rein beside Fallon.
An incredibly beautiful white face looked down through the dark mists that were closing over Fallon’s mind.
It was a face fearless and dynamic, whose most wonderful feature was the stormy blue eyes in which little lightnings seemed to flash.
Her red lips uttered a ringing order. The white lynx padding toward Fallon snarled and stopped. A Valkyr-maid spurred to the senseless Heysing and stooped low and pulled him across her saddle-bow. Another took the Norwegian in similar fashion. And Fallon felt the unbelievably strong arm of a third girl hook his shoulder and pull him onto her horse.
The unhelmed girl leader shouted another command and spurred forward. And the whole troop galloped on up the snowy gorge, with the wind at their backs and their silver cry pealing in the Northern Lights.
“Yo to ho!”
Fallon knew that all this must be the delirium before death, yet he struggled to remain conscious as he jounced on the galloping steed.
He could dimly hear Helverson’s voice raving near him. “I told you the old gods lived! We are dead, and they bear us to Valhalla!”
Fallon’s darkening mind wondered if the Norseman could be right. He might, indeed, be dead for his body seemed now to have lost almost all sensation.
He opened his eyes for a last time. They had galloped up the gorge to a narrow, snowy pass. Beyond its crest lay a great valley cupped by towering, icy peaks.
But he could not see down into that valley. Was it his dimming vision or was it magic that made the whole valley seem an unseeable blind spot? His sight seemed to curve around it. The entrance to it was an uncanny blank in his vision.
Yet the girl leader was riding fearlessly forward, and the other Valkyries followed. Fallon felt a sudden sharp, wrenching shock as though he had fallen from a great height. He was now inside the blind-spot valley.
And now, he could see its interior. It stretched miles away, a dim vista of forests and fields and stone castles, toward a distant sheer cliff against which bulked the frowning mass of the biggest stone citadel.
He could no longer sustain consciousness. As he sank into darkness, his last sensation was hearing Helverson’s mad, exultant cry.
“Valhalla! Valhalla!”
CHAPTER III
Daughter of the Gods
Fallon woke from heavy sleep, with a feeling of extraordinary lightness and well-being. He looked around bewilderedly. He was lying upon a bed made of hides stretched on a massive wooden frame whose four posts were carved into wolfs heads. It occupied a corner of a dusky stone room that had no other furniture except some hide chairs.
There were two windows, tall, narrow and slit-like. They were wholly unglazed and unshuttered, and admitted air so sharply chill that it set Fallon to shivering. At one window bulked the massive figure of Helverson, gazing eagerly forth into the gray daylight.
“Nels!” exclaimed the American, sitting up. “I thought you were nearly dead. Those two wounds you got—” Helverson turned. His blue eyes gleamed with a curious exaltati
on as he approached.
“Why, I am dead,” said the Norwegian simply. “So are you.”
Fallon felt a gust of impatience. “What are you talking about? You’re as alive as I am.”
“We are dead,” Helverson repeated with firm conviction. “We died in that snowy gorge, and the Valkyries came and bore us here to Valhalla.”
Fallon suddenly remembered. The crash of their plane, the fight with Heysing — and then that incredible troop of wild Valkyr-maids who had galloped up the gorge and had carried all three of them into an uncanny hidden valley that could not be seen from outside.
Surely that had all been delirium? Yet if so, where were they now and how had they come here? Fallon stumbled hastily to one of the narrow windows. Astonishment and awe fell upon him as he looked forth.
His window was high in that massive, square stone castle which hugged the looming cliff at the head of the valley. He could look straight down into paved courts and smaller stone buildings. Down there were mounted men and men afoot. But they wore armor and horned helmets and short fur jerkins. And they carried swords and shields and axes!
Fallon’s dazed eyes lifted to search the distance. The gray daylight had a curiously pale, cloudy quality but by it he could see far back down the valley. Dark forests of shaggy pine and fir clothed its floor and the lower slopes of the bounding precipices. He glimpsed other, smaller stone castles out there, miles away. Most upsetting of all, he could nowhere see out of the valley, now that he was in it.
“I don’t understand this,” Fallon gasped. “There’s no one at all lives in the wilderness of north Norway. What is this place?”
“It is Valhalla, the home of the old gods,” Helverson said with absolute faith. “The paradise to which are borne all who die in battle.”
“Was it not the Valkyries who brought us here?” the Norwegian continued. “Was their leader not Thor’s daughter, the warrior-goddess Brynhild herself, she who is magic mistress of lightning, wind, and storm as her father was?”
“Thor’s daughter?” Fallon remembered now the beautiful girl who had ridden unhelmed at the head of those wild warrior-maids, with a great lynx loping at her knee.
“Aye, the daughter of Thor, the god of lightnings,” affirmed Helverson. “She it is who always leads the messengers of Odin.”
The American exploded. “Thor and Odin and the other old Norse gods are only myths! You must be out of your head from those wounds. Here, let me look at them.”
He opened Helverson’s bloodstained jacket. A chill amazement shocked him to find that the Norwegian’s two bullet-wounds had disappeared. There were only two livid scars to mark their place.
Stunned, Fallon raised his hand to his own temple. The furrow that Heysing’s grazing bullet had cut there was gone. He could feel nothing but a healed scar.
“This is insane,” he choked. “Our wounds couldn’t have vanished like that. It’s magic!”
“Aye, magic of the Aesir, of the old gods,” rumbled Helverson devoutly. “Now that we are dead and in Valhalla, no wounds can harm us.”
Fallon’s Twentieth Century mind shook beneath the impact of unexplainable mystery. His skepticism wavered. What if they really had died back in that gorge?
He knew the legends of the old Norse gods. Legends of their fabulous home in Asgard, the castle Valhalla to which were borne all warriors who died in battle and who there lived immortally on. Legends that for thousands of years had been firmly believed by the fierce Vikings of the North. What if those stories were not legend, but truth?
“I won’t believe it!” Fallon shouted, seeking to prop up tottering reason. “This is the year 1940, not the dark ages. And I’m not dead—I’m living. If I weren’t living, would I feel cold?” He was, indeed, shivering from the sharp chill of the air from the open windows. Looking around, he noticed fur jackets hanging from pegs in a corner of the stone room. With relief, he donned one of the short, jerkin-like garments.
In doing so, Fallon discovered inside his own uniform the heavy pistol he had wrenched from Heysing in the fight. Its magazine was still half full, and it gave him a sudden new feeling of confidence.
“Listen, I want you to get over that crazy notion that this is Valhalla, and get down to earth,” he told Helverson urgently. “We’re going to go out and find out where we are and how we got here, and what the shortest route to the northern coast villages is.”
The Norwegian shook his yellow head. “We can’t leave here. Those whom the Valkyr-maids bear to Asgard never return to men.”
“We’ll return to men,” Fallon promised grimly. “The information I have about the Nazi defenses at Narvik will be vital if I can get it back to England, and I’m going to get it there.”
He tucked the pistol inside his fur jacket and started toward the heavy plank door of the chamber. It opened suddenly before he reached it, and two men strode in.
They were figures out of history and romance. For they were Vikings, big, burly men whose yellow hair flowed to their shoulders and whose pale eyes were bleak as the northern ice. Each was armed with a heavy sword and round shield. Each wore a horned helmet, and a fur jacket over a mail shirt and tight breeches of soft leather.
One of the two Vikings, a man of over middle age with iron-hard, weather-seamed face, spoke curtly to Fallon and Helverson. He spoke in an archaic form of the Norse tongue, strange but comprehensible.
“The princess Brynhild commands your presence, strangers,” he barked. “We will lead you.”
“Brynhild! Thor’s daughter!” cried Helverson. He turned excitedly to the American. “Said I not that it was so?” Fallon was staring bewilderedly at the two Vikings. “You two are not men of the outer world!”
The older warrior shrugged. “We were of the outer world once. I am Tyr, captain of the Aesir, and this is Heimdall.”
Helverson gasped, his eyes dilating with awe. “Tyr, the god of war? And Heimdall, the watcher of the gods?” Fallon looked incredulously from the one warrior to the other, from the iron-hard face of the man who called himself Tyr to the alert, keen, middle-aged face of Heimdall.
The young American felt caught in a nightmare of unrealities. These men were as real as himself. Yet they claimed to be of the Aesir, the ancient Norse gods who had been legend for thousands of years.
Fallon struggled against the crumbling of his skepticism. “Then this is Valhalla?”
Tyr stared at him. “You stand in Valhalla castle, citadel of the Aesir and stronghold of Asgard.”
He and Heimdall led the way out of the door, and the American pilot followed with Helverson as numbly as in a dream.
They went along a shadowy stone corridor and then down massive stairs. Fallon glimpsed men and women in the chambers and passageways of the castle. They seemed all of the same big, fair-haired race as his escort. The warriors wore armor, and carried sword or axe. Some of the lithe young girls were in glittering mail also. Others wore white gowns.
He and Helverson were conducted to a long stone hall of giant dimensions. Its only occupants were a group of towering chieftains of the Aesir who were gathered near a raised stone dais at the farther end.
As they neared that group, Fallon went tense with recognition and reawakened hatred. For Victor Heysing stood there. The handsome, blond young Nazi officer, looking oddly out of place in his black uniform, was watching Fallon’s approach with narrowed eyes.
“So that devil was brought here too,” Fallon muttered tautly, “Then I’m not dreaming. He’s real, anyway.”
“Thor’s daughter!” Helverson was gasping. “I told you that it was she!”
Fallon followed the Norwegian’s eager, reverent stare, his eyes lifting to the girl who sat on the dais in a black marble chair.
He thrilled to a shock as of tangible force. All thought of his bitter enemy was swept away
by the tumult of his emotions. His first thought was that this girl who was looking down at him was a goddess. She did not now wear the shining mail that she had worn as leader of the wild Valkyries. That had been put aside, and almost her only garment was a short black kirtle held by a jeweled girdle, and high-laced sandals of soft leather. Her only upper garment was the long hair that fell like a torrent of golden flame around her high, white breasts. A queer, lambent light seemed to glow from her body.
It was the unearthly, dynamic beauty of the face that held Fallon’s eyes. The royal beauty of perfectly chiseled features and sweet red lips was a frame for eyes whose blue gaze met his like a sword-shock. Those eyes, clear azure depths in which tiny lightnings seemed constantly to flash and play, held him hypnotized.
A low snarl woke him from the spell.
Beside the marble chair of Thor’s daughter, crouched the white lynx. The beast was huge beyond the custom of its kind. And it was showing menacing fangs and talons as its slant green eyes blazed at the American.
Brynhild’s voice rang impatient, silver command to the animal. “Be silent!”
The lynx settled back upon its belly obediently, but it continued to glare at Fallon.
The eyes of Brynhild ran over Fallon’s tall, lean figure and black hair, glanced at the eager, massive face of Helverson, and then returned to the American.
“You do not look like one of our northern races, dark one,” she said to Fallon with musing interest. “What is your name?”
Unsteadily, he told her. Brynhild repeated it, her sweet red lips forming it oddly. Suddenly she asked, “Why were you and this other outlander battling in the gorge?”
Fallon shot a bitter glance at Heysing. “He is our enemy. Our peoples are at war.”
The result of his statement amazed him. A flash lit Brynhild’s blue eyes. And from the towering Aesir chieftains came chorus of eager and excited exclamations.
“War?” cried the fierce-eyed Tyr. “War in the northland again? You bring good news, outlander!”
The Fantasy MEGAPACK ® Page 22