Fallon twisted in the saddle. His heart thudded as he saw Brynhild striding lithely out of the castle into the torchlight. She wore the supple, glittering mail, but her pale golden head was unhelmed. Her light sword swung at her belt, and the white lynx loped beside her.
A little behind her came the sullen-eyed Thialfi, and the trim, handsome black figure of Victor Heysing. They were followed by the slim, mailed Valkyries.
Fallon’s heart contracted with impotent rage at sight of the Nazi. Heysing showed no sign of ill effects from his wound now, and his pale eyes had a glitter of triumph in them.
“The princess! Homage to Thor’s daughter!” crashed the shouts of the, hosts, and a forest of swords and axes flashed up in salute.
Brynhild flung up her white hand in acknowledgment of that wild greeting. Her royal beauty was like a thing of leaping flame tonight. Her brilliant eyes swept the fierce host, ignoring Fallon.
“Lords and captains of the Aesir, this night we go forth again to that which you all have longed for—to war!” her voice rang. “Yes, to clean, honest war, man to man, sword to sword, a fair, fierce combat such as we knew and loved before we came to this valley.
“War! Good, clean war again!” yelled the eager host in fierce delight.
“Before this night passes, you shall know battle again,” Brynhild promised. She gestured toward Victor Heysing. “This man tells me that the valiant Germans, who are to be our allies, are less than a night’s ride from here.”
“It is true!” Heysing exclaimed loudly to the host. “I went forth from this valley just now, and communicated by certain means with an army of my countrymen that is not far from here.”
Fallon understood. The Nazi had gone out of the valley to his plane in the gorge, and had used its radio to communicate with the nearest German forces.
Heysing’s face was flaming with excitement. “I learned that almost two years have passed in the two of your days that I’ve been in this valley! And during that time, our German forces have conquered all the northland except for one large guerilla band that still resists.
“A German force is even now moving to attack that band. It and the British tricksters who have deluded it into resisting us are holding a coastal village on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, only some hours ride from here through the mountains.”
Brynhild’s clear voice concluded. “We ride over the mountains to join that valiant German force in its attack! We shall be their allies henceforth against the traitorous outland peoples. This very night, we Aesir awake from sluggish peace and strike again in clean, manly war!”
Deafening roar of acclamation greeted her fierce promise. As it reverberated, the daughter of Thor vaulted lightly into the saddle of her black stallion. The others were mounting hastily too.
Fallon called desperately to her. “Brynhild, you must listen to me! This purpose upon which you start is evil! You have been tricked into it by lies—”
“You are the one who deals in tricks!” she flamed at him. “Now you go forth with us to see the fruits of your cunning treachery.”
She spurred with her Valkyries, and Heysing and Thialfi, to the front of the great host. Her glittering mailed arm flashed up into the torchlight in signal. “Lords of the Aesir, we ride!” Trumpeters instantly sounded their brazen horns in a long, thrilling blast. The ground shook from the tread of thousands of hoofs. The Aesir host moved forward, fierce warriors galloping knee to knee as they streamed down the valley.
Fallon, jolting in the saddle as the mounts of himself and Helverson were led by their guards just behind the Valkyries, plumbed a nadir of black despair. And the same emotion throbbed in the hoarse voice of the Norwegian.
“Fallon, did you understand what the cursed German said?” cried Helverson over the roar of rushing hoofs. “It’s 1942 by now out in our own world! The Nazis have conquered all Norway except the far northern wilderness, and now they’ve sent an army to conquer that!”
“And Brynhild’s Aesir are riding to help the Nazis do that, and crush the last Norwegian guerillas,” Fallon agonized.
“They can’t do it,” Helverson asserted dazedly. “Thor’s daughter will surely never use her powers against us Norse.”
But Fallon had no hope left. He had lost the game to Heysing, from first to last. The German riding ahead there was on his way to a supreme triumph. It would not be long before the Nazis would penetrate the secret of Brynhild’s powers. Their scientists would come to this hidden valley, would pry into the cosmic forces focused here, and forge irresistible weapons.
And Hitler’s lieutenants would find a way to dispose of Brynhild, once she had served their purpose. It was maddening—the thought of how she and her clean love of combat were about to be used as a tool against the embattled democracies.
They were riding on down the dark valley in perfect silence except for the throbbing thunder of thousands of hoofs. It did not seem long to Fallon’s overstrained nerves before they were approaching the western end of the valley.
Nothing was visible ahead except a wall of blankness in the dark. It was impossible to see out of this uncanny blind-spot. When Brynhild and her Valkyries, at the head of the host, vanished magically, into that blankness, Fallon knew they had emerged into the outer world.
The weird blank barrier loomed in front of his own led horse. Tyr and Heimdall and all the other Aesir chieftains were riding fearlessly on. They reached the barrier. And as he passed through it, the American felt again that sharp, wrenching shock through every atom of his body.
He was outside Asgard valley—back again in his own world of faster time.
“It is winter again, out here,” Helverson was muttering, staring incredulously. “Two winters, since we crashed here two days ago.”
That was hard for Fallon to believe too, that two years could have passed out here. For the snowy white gorge looked just the same.
The sky overhead was ablaze with the brilliant winter stars. But already the first bars and banners of the Northern Lights were wheeling across the nighted heavens as Brynhild led her host of warriors in a rapid trot down the long gorge.
Fallon, looking up haggardly at that quickening dance of the aurora across the heavens, wondered fleetingly if it could be true that Brynhild called forth those spectral lights to illuminate their way. He had little room to doubt it, knowing her mastery of storm and sky.
For hours, the Aesir host moved through the snowy mountains. Brynhild led the way ever northward, through gorges and narrow passes. They were close, Fallon knew, to the Norwegian villages on the wild Arctic coast which he himself had been making for when his plane crashed.
In silence that had a quality of gathering fierce tension, the warriors of Asgard urged their mounts over the ranges in the teeth of a bitter wind. At last the daughter of Thor halted their host beneath the slope of a last, long snowy ridge.
“Just over this ridge lies the coastland where we shall join the Germans!” she called. “Now give your horses breathing and see to your swords and axes, for soon we clash blades with our enemies.”
The blazing excitement in her eyes was reflected by the fierce battle-light in the faces of all the Aesir host.
Fallon tried despairing final appeal. “Brynhild, you can’t do this thing—” He was interrupted. Heimdall had been alertly listening and now uttered a sharp exclamation.
“Listen! There is battle now over the ridge!”
Dimly to their ears there came dull roar of distant explosions, and a lurid red light paled the aurora just north of the ridge.
Victor Heysing shouted exultantly. “It is my German comrades whom we came to join! Already they are attacking the enemy down there!”
“Then we wait here no longer!” flared Brynhild’s silver voice. “Up to the ridge, men of the Aesir! We ride into battle.”
“
We follow, princess!” came Tyr’s deep, eager shout. “Oh, that your father Thor were with us as again we sweep to war!”
Up the snowy slope spurred the whole great host, led by Brynhild’s slim, shining figure and the loping lynx. And the wild war lust of the Aesir thousands broke forth in ringing battle-cries.
Fallon, gripping the saddle with his knees as his own mount was swept along by his guards, saw that Nels Helverson’s face was crimson with emotion. The big Norwegian was making mad efforts to burst his bonds, as he heard the roar of battle from over the ridge.
“My countrymen and yours are fighting over there!” he cried hoarsely to Fallon. “I will fight and die with them if I can get free, even against Thor’s daughter and the Aesir!”
Spread out in a long mass, the excited Aesir host reached the flattened crest of this last ridge. And there they suddenly stopped.
Brynhild had abruptly drawn rein, and so had all her fierce followers. They seemed stricken into stupefaction by the spectacle which lay before them, and whose ear-splitting uproar now clearly reached them.
Fallon, close behind her, saw the blazing excitement fade from the face of Thor’s daughter. He saw it replaced by a stunned, bewildered expression.
“Why, what is this that takes place?” she exclaimed bewilderedly.
Under the Northern Lights, the scene before them was appalling. From the ridge on which they sat their horses, the snowy terrain sloped downward for two miles to the ice-fringed shore of the heaving black Arctic Ocean. Out on the sea, two small steamers were struggling bravely through the ice to ward the docks of the little village on the shore.
Half the wooden houses in that Norwegian village were burning fiercely. Dive-bombers with the black swastika on their wings were swooping continually down through that lurid glare and the shattering explosion of bombs was constant. Gouts of bursting flame seemed to engulf houses, streets, and women and children who were fleeing toward the docks.
The land side of the village was protected by low barricades of frozen earth. Behind those flimsy defenses, scattered handfuls of men with rifles were resisting the advance of a mass of several thousand Nazi infantry pressing toward them from the west. The Nazis were preceded by light tanks that already were riding roughshod over the barricades.
“What is this that we see?” exclaimed Brynhild again, seeming stunned like her followers by the hellish uproar.
“It is my countrymen who attack!” cried Victor Heysing triumphantly. “Look, they seek to conquer before those British ships can reach the harbor to take the defenders away. This is how we Germans make war.”
“But this is not war!” burst out Brynhild. “Not clean, man-to-man war by sword and spear in equal combat, such as we Aesir knew and loved! This is a massacre by machines of iron and fire!”
A dazed cry of agreement rose from her stunned Viking followers all along the ridge.
Tyr’s iron-like face was raging as he watched. “Why, these Germans are not warriors! They are butchers who slay women and children by dropping flame upon them from the sky.”
“And those whom they massacre are of our own Norse blood!” cried Heimdall furiously. “The German said that his countrymen sought only to protect the Norse.”
Brynhild’s face was a white flame of anger and loathing. “We Aesir will never ally ourselves with a race who fight like that!”
She swung toward Fallon. “Now I understand at last why you said you hated war. This war is hateful, and so are those who unloose it upon the world.”
She spurred close, and her dagger flashed and cut the bonds of the American and Norwegian. Her blue eyes appealed to Fallon.
“Outlander, I beg forgiveness! You spoke truth from first to last. It was the German who lied—”
She swung back suddenly, her voice flaring. “Where is the German? Seize that lying plotter!”
The mounted Aesir warriors milled upon the snowy ridge in a confusion of swift searching.
“The cursed German is gone!” yelled Tyr. “He must have seen the way the wind was blowing, and slipped back down over the ridge. And Thialfi is gone too.”
“Find and seize them!” cried Thor’s daughter. “If Thialfi has turned traitor and deserter—”
But the Aesir warriors who rode furiously back down behind the ridge soon returned—with Thialfi, but not with Heysing.
Loki’s son was dying. A gaping slash in his throat bubbled horribly as he looked up at them from the snow in which they had laid him, and tried to speak.
“The German—slipped away from beside me when he saw your horror and rage,” Thialfi choked to the princess. “I galloped after to halt him—but he turned and pretended surrender, then struck suddenly with a dagger—” Thialfi’s head rolled slack. Whatever else he had been, Loki’s son had been no traitor.
Fallon saw white, terrible rage gather in Brynhild’s face and stormy eyes. And that rage was reflected in the faces of all the Aesir.
“Look!” shouted Heimdall, pointing down toward the roaring battle by the village. “The Germans come toward us!”
It was true. The advancing Nazi force had suddenly wheeled away from the barricades it had been attacking, and was starting up the slope toward the crest on which the Aesir horsemen were.
The tanks already led the way, rumbling up the snowy slope with their snouted guns swung forward ready for action. Behind them came the masses of the infantry, in quick, rapid march.
Fallon understood instantly. “Heysing escaped to them and told them of our presence here! They’re after you, Brynhild. If they can capture or kill you and shatter your Aesir, Heysing knows they can invade your valley and gain the key to great powers there.”
“That’s been the lying devil’s plan all along!” cried Helverson.
A cry of rage went up from the Aesir host as all understood the duplicity with which Heysing had planned to trick them.
“They would invade Asgard, would they?” roared Tyr. He flashed his heavy sword in the air. “It seems that we shall have the fighting we hoped for, after all.”
Brynhild’s blue eyes were blazing. Her voice rang along the raging host on the ridge.
“From henceforth, the German butchers are our blood-enemies and the Norse and their allies our friends. Make ready children of Asgard, for the battle is near.”
Wild shouts of exultation answered her. Swords and axes flashed out in readiness, Helverson had secured Thialfi’s axe, and handed the dead man’s sword to Fallon.
“Brynhild, what are you going to do?” cried Fallon to the daughter of Thor. “You can’t stand against those Germans. No matter how brave your warriors, swords and axes are no good against planes and tanks and guns!” The Nazi forces were already streaming up the lower slopes. The tanks rumbling ahead in the snow would be spitting death from their machine-guns within a few minutes. They and the automatic-riflemen behind them were almost within range.
And the dive-bombers that had been attacking the burning village had turned from it and were banking around in answer to radio commands. Those planes, Fallon knew, would quickly spot the Aesir host and come down upon it.
Brynhild answered Fallon’s expostulation with a ringing laugh. “I tell you that despite their machines of iron, we shall shatter them this night. Now keep back from me, and await my signal.”
Thor’s daughter rode forward, out onto a little promontory of the snowy ridge. Her slim mailed figure, and unhelmed head were silhouetted against the wild glare of burning village and flaring Northern Lights.
She raised her hands toward the sky in a fierce gesture. The Nazis charging up the slope had glimpsed her, and the machine-guns of their rushing tanks spat a hail of missiles toward her. But Brynhild remained unmoving upon her steed, hands still reaching upward.
Fallon felt a great throb of fear as he saw the distant Na
zi planes now roaring toward them. In a few moments, those planes would be overhead and would be diving to release their bombs and shatter the Aesir host before tanks and gunners arrived. In a few moments the girl he loved beyond life would be blasted—
The flaring sky suddenly darkened. Clouds like vast black wings closed down upon a moaning wind to blot out the aurora’s rays.
“It is the storm-magic,” muttered Tyr in a voice suddenly hoarse. “See—”
Fallon felt the hackles rising on his neck. Those vast black cloud-wings that had appeared so suddenly were sweeping with incredible swiftness lower and lower toward the crest of this ridge.
The moaning wind was rising to a whistling, screaming gale that smote from overhead toward the north. The throbbing planes out there were batted like leaves by the raging tempest.
“I am afraid, Fallon,” husked Helverson, his eyes dilated in the ghastly dusk. “It is the wrath of the goddess—”
Heaven and earth leaped into blinding light as titanic bolts of lightning seared down out of the descending blackness. The lambent, gleaming figure of Brynhild was revealed, wild hands still raised skyward.
The American glimpsed those dazzling lightning-bolts hitting the rumbling tanks down on the slope, fusing them to scorched metal. He saw the masses of Nazi infantry pause confusedly.
“The hammer of Thor’s magic power falls upon them!” yelled Heimdall. “Make ready, comrades!”
Unceasing detonations of thunder rolled across the blackened sky. Torrents of raging hail were sweeping the lower slopes, and still the dancing brands of lightning struck and struck down there.
Fallon saw the struggling Nazi planes swept from the sky by that appalling storm. Continuous sheeted flares of lightning showed the German troops milling wildly down there in the snow. Out of the infernal tempest, Brynhild appeared suddenly at his side.
She was goddess indeed, now—her figure shining with that eerie lambency and her wild white face transfigured in the lightning.
The Fantasy MEGAPACK ® Page 26