Fallon felt a queer thudding of his pulses. He could hear Tyr grunting below them as he climbed with his senseless burden.
They went higher and higher inside the, cliff. Fallon estimated vaguely that they must be near its top! A dim uproar of winds came to his ears from above, and gusty currents of freezing air smote his face.
They emerged suddenly into darkness and cold, buffeting winds. Fallon stopped short, momentarily appalled by the giddiness and danger of their situation.
This was a small, flat platform hewn out of the solid rock at the very peak of the lofty cliff. It was only a dozen feet across, and completely unrailed and open to the winds. Far, far below gleamed the torchlit windows of Valhalla castle. Overhead pressed the dull black canopy of the magic valley’s night sky.
Poised above the solid rock floor of this dizzy perch was a massive silver ring nine feet in diameter, carved with strange runic symbols. It hung mysteriously in midair. Moving with fearless lightness, Brynhild led him inside this queer circle.
“Put the German down here, Tyr,” she bade, and the old Aesir obeyed and laid the senseless German inside the silver runic circle.
Then Tyr hastily stepped back out of the circle. He muttered, “I’ll wait down inside the stair. I do not much like your healing magic, niece Brynhild.”
Fallon found himself swaying on his feet, partly from the dizziness of his precarious situation and partly from the wounds that were slowly draining his strength. Brynhild touched him steadyingly, and again, tingling strength seemed to flow into him from the touch.
At her direction, he stripped off his jacket and stood with bare, bloodstained torso shivering in the freezing wind. He also removed Heysing’s jacket, exposing the deep wound in the senseless Nazi’s side. The white lynx had retreated to the stair, snarling uneasily.
“Now stand close beside me, outlander, and move not out of the rune-circle for your life,” Brynhild warned him. “The forces I am about to summon can heal swiftly—but they can kill swiftly too.”
Standing just outside the circle, Thor’s daughter raised her naked white arms toward the night sky. Her blue eyes shone brilliant through the wind-swirled torrent of her pale gold hair. And the uncanny lambency that invested her fair body deepened to a glow.
Great gusts of wind suddenly buffeted them furiously, howling and shrieking in their ears as though seeking to tear them from the lofty cliff. The chill night was suddenly roaringly alive with rising storm-voices. Fallon felt a shivering not wholly born of the cold.
Brynhild’s silver, ringing laughter pealed out on the raging wind. Her face was turned toward the zenith, and from her upstretched finger-tips seemed to dart tiny threads of light. The American’s hair rose on his head. He sensed the ominous gathering of vast forces.
Crash! He staggered, dazed and blinded by the terrific bolt of lightning that stabbed down at them. That flaring bolt seemed to strike down toward Brynhild’s upstretched hands, and then to be deflected toward the silver ring. Another awful bolt followed it, and another and another. Electric flames danced dazzlingly on the silver rune-ring.
Fallon shouted hoarsely to the girl, his voice thin and puny against the rocking thunderclaps. “If that lightning strikes us—”
“It will not, for I am its mistress,” pealed Brynhild’s voice. “But keep here within the ring!”
The scene was mind-shattering to the American. The almost continuous bolts of lightning striking all around the ring, each sheeted flare throwing into wild illumination Brynhild’s glowing figure; the deafening thunder; the shrieking winds that swept their dizzy perch.
Electric flame now completely encircled them in a slowly rising wall. Fallon felt the thrilling shock of electrical or other forces that pervaded every cell of his body. His brain spun with vertigo.
“Stand fast!” warned Thor’s daughter over the crashing tumult. “It will be but a moment.”
It seemed more like a timeless eternity to Fallon’s stunned brain that he stood with the Aesir girl and the unconscious German in the heart of a blazing, inconceivably powerful sphere of electric force.
The thrilling tingle in his body was almost unbearable. He looked down and saw violet electric brush spraying from his own body. He heard Brynhild laugh above the smash of crashing lightning,
“It is enough,” she seemed to be saying. And she lowered her arms.
Magically, the bolts of lightning ceased. And as the rocking reverberations of thunder ebbed away, the wall of flaming force around the silver rune-ring sank and died.
Fallon, coming slowly out of his daze, found himself standing with Brynhild in the windy darkness. Her body still shone uncannily bright, and her brilliant, laughing blue eyes mocked his stupefaction.
“Look at your wounds now outlander,” she told him.
Fallon did so, and felt the shock of increased amazement. The stab in his left shoulder and the cut upon his cheek were both incredibly healed, as though by weeks of time. No trace of the wounds was left except two faint scars. And he felt none of his former weakness, now.
He looked down at Heysing. The Nazi still lay unconscious, but that deep sword-slash in his side was healed to a smooth scar too. And his breathing now seemed easy and normal.
“He is completely healed, as you are,” Brynhild nodded to the unbelieving American. “He will wake in a few hours, as well as ever.”
She raised her voice. “Ho, Tyr! Come and take the German—my magic is ended.”
Tyr came reluctantly up onto the windy place, with the white lynx bounding ahead of him to rub its fierce head against Brynhild.
“I heard you at it,” growled the old Aesir chieftain. “Hel take me if I ever liked it, niece. I thought the lightnings would split the whole cliff this time.”
He shouldered Heysing’s senseless weight as though the man was a straw, and returned with him to the stair inside the cliff.
Fallon looked earnestly at the radiant face of Thor’s daughter. “Brynhild, is this how Helverson and I were healed of our wounds when we were first brought here by you?”
She nodded. “Yes, by the healing magic of the lightning. I have so healed more than one wounded or dying warrior whom my Valkyries and I found outside and brought here, in past years.”
His dazed mind groped for possible explanations. He could understand that the terrific bombardment of electric radiation to which he had been subjected might by concentrated therapeutic power cause unprecedented acceleration of the processes of cell-regeneration. But how was it that Brynhild was able to summon lightning at will?
She smiled cryptically at that question. “Can you not guess an answer? You have heard that this valley represents a fault or weak spot in the fabric of space-time. Is it not possible that the vast electric forces outside our universe could easily be admitted here? And could not Odin, and Thor, and I, use those forces to convert our living bodies into powerful electric accumulators which could attract the lightning?” Her smile deepened as she continued teasingly, “Or perhaps that is only dust that I throw into your eyes. Perhaps there are strange spirits of force inherent in the elements of nature, and maybe I can control those elementals. What think you to be the truth, outlander?”
“I can’t guess,” Fallon confessed. “Helverson, my comrade, thinks that you are a goddess and he explains all so.”
“Then you do not think I am a goddess?” she exclaimed, with mock indignation in her voice but with taunting humor in her eyes.
“I thought you were a goddess when you called down that blaze of lightning just now,” Fallon admitted. “But right at this moment, you look like a girl, the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”
Brynhild looked up at him demurely. “Are there no fair girls in your outer world, then?”
Her brilliant blue eyes were provocative, challenging, more than a little amused and
yet a little breathless too. The royal beauty of her perfect young face stood out in the darkness with that uncanny faint radiance that was inherent in her body.
The American’s throat tightened with emotion. He had lost all awareness of time or place or of anything else except those wonderful eyes in which the little lightning-sparks were now all muffled by new softness. He told himself desperately that he was losing his head, that Brynhild was only flirting with him because he was new and different to her, that he must not— His hand went out and touched her bare shoulder, unsteadily. The tingling energy that thrilled through him from that touch completed the demoralization of his will. Fallon’s arms went around the daughter of Thor and he bent and kissed her parted red lips.
The dizzily sweet shock of it set the blood roaring in his ears. He felt the torrent of golden hair against his cheek like soft flame. And Brynhild did not draw back from his clasp. When he breathlessly raised his head, she looked up at him with a strangely youthful and shy eagerness in her shining eyes.
“This is crazy,” Fallon gasped. “I didn’t mean to do it, but—”
“I am glad you did,” Brynhild said softly. “Outlander, I was drawn to you when first I found you. But until tonight, I thought you a coward, as we all did. I ask pardon for misjudging.”
“You ask my pardon?” Fallon choked, still holding her. “It should be the other way around. I’m only a man, and you’re a goddess or something near it—”
There was sudden interruption—a voice speaking in fierce anger.
They both turned. Old Tyr had come back up the stair and had emerged onto the dark, windy crest of the cliff to see them in each other’s arms. The Aesir’s chieftain’s iron face was suddenly raging.
“You lying outland dog!” he spat at Fallon. “You dared lay your vile hands on the princess of the Aesir!”
“Tyr, be Silent!” ordered Brynhild imperiously. “You know not what you are saying. “This outlander loves me, and you may as well learn now that I love him.”
The frank avowal set Fallon’s pulses racing wildly. But it seemed to increase the fury of Tyr to a point at which the chieftain’s weathered face crimsoned.
“He loves you?” Tyr repeated furiously to the imperious daughter of Thor. “He has told you that? Now I see that it was well I came back up here to keep watch upon him.”
The old Aesir; leveled an accusing finger at Fallon. “He does not love you. He only seeks by professing love to influence you against becoming an ally of his enemies, the Germans. I overheard his comrade today, advising him to make love to you for that purpose!”
Appalled, Fallon suddenly remembered what until now he had entirely forgotten—Helverson’s naive advice to make love to the Aesir princess.
And he remembered now too that Tyr had been close to them when the Norwegian had proffered that advice. It was only too evident that the old Aesir chieftain had overheard.
Brynhild saw that sudden dismay on Fallon’s face, and her own white face stiffened.
“Is this true that Tyr tells me?” she asked the American with dangerous softness.
“Let him deny it if he can,” Tyr bellowed.
Fallon’s voice was hoarse. “It’s true that Helverson said something foolish like that. But I paid no attention to him. Brynhild, you can’t believe that I had that in mind just now—”
Brynhild’s small hand flashed and the stinging slap stopped the words in Fallon’s throat. He stared at her unbelievingly.
Wild anger blazed in the face of Thor’s daughter. The little lightnings in her blue eyes flashed out ragingly.
As though sensing its mistress’ mood, the crouching white lynx sprang up and snarled horribly.
“I see that I did not misjudge you, and that the German was right!” flared Brynhild. “Coward you may not be, but false-hearted trickster you are!”
“Brynhild, listen!” he pleaded desperately, but the white-hot flame of her anger brooked no defense.
“Now I see that the German spoke the truth when he said that all your outland western nations are treacherous and evil!” she blazed. “Nations whose men hate honest war, and seek to gain their cause by whispering lying words of love.”
She made a furious gesture. “Tyr, my decision is made. We Aesir ally ourselves to the Germans. They, at least, fight by clean war and battle and not by trickery. With them, we’ll shatter the western peoples and all their evil!”
Fallon stepped forward, in frantic appeal. “Brynhild, you can’t do that! If you let the Germans use your powers—”
A sword-point pricking his back checked his advance, and the harsh voice of Tyr grated a question,
“Shall I kill the dog now, niece Brynhild?”
“No, he shall see the doom of his degenerate race begin, for his greater punishment,” choked the raging daughter of Thor. “He and his comrade shall ride forth with us when we Aesir go to join the Germans.”
Her voice flared like a silver bugle. “Lock them up until then, Tyr. And send riders down the valley with orders to gather every warrior of the Aesir here at Valhalla tomorrow night. Tell them we go forth at last to war, that we ride forth then to join the Germans in the great battle for the outer world!”
CHAPTER VI
Wrath of a Goddess
Darkness was creeping again across the valley Asgard, like a slow, stealthy, tide. During all the long day, there had been ceaseless bustle of feverish activity around Valhalla. The clang of hammers on weapons and armor, the excited shouts of hurrying men, the rattling hoofs of horsemen hastily coming and going, now faded into a tense silence with the coming of night.
Fallon looked sickly down from the narrow window at the swarms of tossing red torches in front of the castle. The torchlight glinted off the gleaming helmets and armor of hosts of horsemen who were gathering down there. There was something ominous and unnerving about the quietness of that warlike host.
His face was haggard as he turned to Helverson. The big Norwegian sat somberly in a corner of the locked room, his wrists bound behind him by hide thongs as Fallon’s were. He did not raise his leonine yellow head as the American came toward him.
“We’ve got to do something!” Fallon exclaimed, his voice raw. “They’re gathering down there now.”
“There is nothing we can do,” rumbled, Helverson. “All now is in the hands of the Norns.”
“Damn such fatalism!” raged Fallon. “If I’d kilted Heysing as I intended, things would have been different. And even though I failed there, Brynhild still wouldn’t have turned toward the Germans if it hadn’t been for your cursed fool’s advice that came to her ears—”
He stopped, suddenly. He looked shamefacedly at the somber, stolid Norwegian.
“I’m sorry, Nels—you know I didn’t mean that,” he muttered. “My nerve must be cracking.”
“But we can’t let Brynhild lead the Aesir out to join the Nazis,” he repeated tautly. “It’s not just the Aesir warriors I’m most fearful about, though their appearance will have a superstitious effect that may swing the whole north behind the Axis. It’s Brynhild and her terrific powers over natural forces. I saw her call down storm and lightning, last night. If Hitler’s men get the secret of powers like that—”
He left it unfinished, for his agonized mind had swung to his other and deeper torment.
“And she thinks that I made love to her only as a trick! I couldn’t convince her that I do love her and always will, whether she is girl or goddess.” Helverson’s thoughts had shifted, for the big Norwegian rumbled: “Many months must have passed in the outside world during the couple of days we’ve been in this valley. What has happened in the war out there during that time?”
Both men jumped to their feet as the lock of their door grated. Red torchlight spilled into the dusky room. Tyr and Heimdall, in full armor, entered
with two warriors.
“Are you ready to ride, outlanders?” spat Tyr. “Are you ready to go forth with us and see us join the Germans to smash your lying race?”
“Tyr, let me talk with Brynhild,” pleaded Fallon. “If she’ll only listen to me—
“She’s listened to too many of your honeyed lies!” roared the old Aesir chieftain.
Tall Heimdall, glaring at the two comrades, added: “If we had had our way, you’d have been dead hours ago.”
For a moment, Fallon’s mind lit to a vague gleam of desperate hope. Perhaps the fact that Brynhild had prevented their deaths so far meant that despite her anger she had not completely conquered the love for him which she had admitted.
Then he saw the falsity of that hope. She was sparing them this long only that they might taste the bitterness of seeing the defeat and disaster of their country’s forces.
Tyr shoved him roughly toward the door. “Get started, outland dog. The Aesir are ready now to ride.”
Hands still bound behind them, Fallon and Helverson walked in heavy silence down the massive stairs ahead of their stalking escort. They emerged from Valhalla castle into cold, windy darkness splashed by the quivering light of many red torches.
Out here in the torchlit night, a great host of fierce-faced Aesir warriors in full armor silently sat their horses. The crimson rays glinted and gleamed from horned helmets and battered breastplates, from huge battle-axes and sword-hilts. A superhuman tension of expectation seemed brooding over the two thousand mounted men.
Thralls held the bridles of a score of unmounted horses. Fallon and the Norwegian were roughly thrust into the saddles of two of these steeds. Their hands were not unbound and glaring Aesir warriors took the bridles of their horses to lead them.
At that moment, the tense silence of the great host was broken suddenly by a tremendous shout.
“The princess!” crashed the chorus of yelling voices.
The Fantasy MEGAPACK ® Page 25