“You know damn well I can’t,” Lee said quietly. “However…”
He had moved closer to Thor. Now his arm chopped down abruptly on Thor’s wrist, sending the automatic spinning; his other hand snapped out to catch the gun. Thor blinked, scowled, and gave a sudden booming chuckle of approval at Lee’s audacity. The approval broke of sharply as Lee tossed the gun to Leif. With another sudden movement, Lee had a two-bitted axe from a bystander and was moving to cover Leif’s back.
“A hero, as all can see,” Thor shouted toward Odin.
Loki snorted. “A hero, to be sure—when Thor drops the weapon into his hand! It proves nothing. Can your hero make such weapons for the Aesir, Oku-Thor? We’ve heroes enough for brawling already in Valhalla. We need ones with skills.”
“Is that what we’re here for?” Lee asked in a whisper. “Make modern weapons for these anachronisms?”
Leif was careful to hide his lips from Heimdallr. The god might be a popinjay in some ways, but his eyesight was obviously a lot better than average, and his steady stare seemed to indicate that he might be able to read lips. “Seems so. I suppose we could make some kind of stab at it, if they have any materials here. I remember some of my college chemistry, and I’ve handled tools enough on the farm. But I’d be lucky to come up with flint-lock carbines and ball shot.”
Thor was standing uncertainly, while Odin looked at him expectantly. Finally the black-bearded god turned to Lee. “Can you, Lee Svensen?”
“Of course not,” Lee answered. “Using guns and making them are two different things where I come from. Besides, I don’t have the materials for it. You might ask my brother.”
Odin turned toward Leif, who felt himself beginning to sweat again. He looked toward Loki, but the god was staring at the ground, muttering something, and apparently paying no head to what was happening. It was up to Leif, it seemed. Well, maybe he could make some kind of weapon, but he had no idea of how long it might take with whatever he could find in Asgard. He was sure that Odin would never accept a promise to deliver weapons in some distant future. There had been too many references to Ragnarok being near. They wanted immediate delivery.
He was bracing himself for an answer when Loki moved in front of him. One hand was behind the god’s back, and he moved it suggestively while addressing Odin. “A difficult task, as Lee says, and one which takes material. Fortunately—and at great effort—I brought with me such material, enough for one gun only, and that without ammunition. Leif will now make such a gun for all to see.”
Chapter VI
The hand move suggestively behind him again, and Leif looked down this time to see an automatic on the palm! Loki slipped it deftly under his corselet, then turned to face Leif, screening them both from any danger of lip-reading by Heimdallr. “Hide your motions and pretend you’re having some difficulty,” Loki ordered softly. “And throw you gun to Lee before you do anything else.”
Loki picked up one of the crude baskets lying on a bench and began tossing something into it where all could see, drawing the stuff from his pouch. It looked like a collection of rocks. At his nod, Leif threw his automatic to Lee, then took the basket and moved with it to another bench near one of the trees ,where no one could see the contents. Loki’s automatic had somehow been transferred from Loki’s garment to the basket, and now lay on top of a small collection of rubble.
Leif buried his hands in the basket, trying to seem actively busy with the contents. His first idea was to disassemble and then reassemble the gun, but that proved impossible. For some reason the parts refused to come loose as they should. All he got for his pains was a sliver in his finger, probably from the rubble. Finally, he contented himself with going through the motions without touching the gun, trying to time it as if he were really working with a standard automatic. He saw Loki drift over toward Lee and watched Lee’s face brighten; some information must have passed Then the god was back beside him, nodding.
Leif straightened, holding up the second automatic and turning carefully so as to catch his elbow on the basket and send it spinning and scattering what was left in it. Loki grunted in approval. But Leif’s eyes were on Thor, who moved forward to study the gun. Finally the black-bearded head nodded reluctantly.
A clamor went up from the crowd, and Odin sagged back into his seat, seemingly still not sure. Heimdallr was trying to gain the ruler’s attention but the noise of the crowd made it impossible. He turned toward Vali and Vidarr and began saying something, his gestures emphatic as Odin lifted his hand for silence.
Vali’s voice cut through the noise first. “Father Odin, it would seem that Loki spoke truth this once, and that Leif shall be the man to hold off Ragnarok.”
Vidarr leaned over, speaking quickly into the ear of his father, while the crow set up a fresh roar. Heimdallr sprang to his feet, shouting and pulling at Vali, but the crowd noise covered his words. Finally, Vali caught him, making frantic motions until he sat back again, scowling. Then, as quiet slowly came, Odin turned to Leif.
“We have decided then, Leif, Son of Sven. We distrust your patron still, and we distrust the arts of weakness that have made men lose the art of their own sinews and good steel. But we have no choice other than to try even such skills against the Day that draws so quickly nigh. Prepare the weapons against Ragnarok, and you shall have any one require within our not inconsiderable power to grant. Betray us, or give us cause to doubt, and Niflheim shall claim both you and your patron Loki. By Ymir, we swear it. As for the other…”
“As for the other,” Thor’s voice broke in heavily, “I have brought Lee Svensen to Asgard under my safe conduct. Does any question the honor of Thor?”
Obviously, nobody did. He scowled from face to face, then nodded. “Lee shall lead the einherjar with me,” Thor finished. He started off, motioning for Lee to follow. Surprisingly, Rex got up and trotted along behind him.
“Be seeing you, son,” Lee called. He went off, whistling snatches from the “Ride of the Valkyries,” winking at Fulla as he passed her. She hesitated briefly.
Loki’s voice reached out, all sweetness and honey now. “Good Fulla, as you can see, I may be busy in conference. Why don’t you show our hero here to the workshop of the dwarfs, since it’s there he’ll work? And you might tell them they’re to do whatever he says.”
Fulla’s protest was stopped by a nod from Odin. She came up to Leif then, jerking her head for him to follow. They went back over the same lane through the woods. She quickened her steps, marching along, head high, not looking back at him.
Leif had his stomach full of her actions. He caught up with her and spun her around. “What’s going on? Just because Loki brought me here—or because you like Lee better—you don’t have to treat me like dirt.”
He tried to pull her to him, but her hand came out, smacking sharply against his face. Lee would have grinned and gone ahead, and for a second Leif considered it. But the look in her eyes was too much for him. He stepped back.
“Dirt I could endure,” she told him coldly. “But a tool of the Evil Companion—a trickster, a false hero—even one who looks like Balder and with whom…”
He grinned wryly. “Go on and say it. You haven’t forgotten being kissed, any more than I have.”
“No, I remember that—and I’ll learn to hate you for it. Don’t feel that you’ve won everything yet, Leif Svensen. Heimdallr saw through your trick.”
She was pointing to his hand, and he looked down now, conscious that he was still carrying the automatic Loki had given him. Then he swore. There was no gun, but only a short stick of wood, shaped something like an automatic—another proof of Loki’s power of slight. Loki had tricked them, somehow. Yet Heimdallr hadn’t been fooled, but only silenced by some persuasion of Vali. Something came into his mind—Loki’s doubts about Vali and Vidarr, who would survive Ragnarok and hence might like the whole idea and the added power it would give them. He swore again and threw the stick aside.
Damn Loki! Leif scowled, wondering jus
t what he’d gotten into. Originally, Loki was supposed to be on the side of the giants against the gods. He seemed committed to Asgard now, but maybe he was only pretending to go along here. If that were so, Leif Svensen was nicely stuck in the middle where the millstones were grinding out trouble. To make things worse, he was apparently enough of fortune’s fool to find that he only girl who’d ever appealed to him was a goddess who was determined to hat anything that Loki touched.
“All right,” he told her bitterly. “So run back and tell Odin the whole story. Maybe he’ll reward you for it.”
“His mind is made up now. And you’ll earn your own reward for your treachery when your time runs out,” she said acidly.
They came out of the forest by another trail, into rough ground near the great wall, almost at the entrance of a sooty huge building that ran back into a hill and disappeared. Fulla pointed to it. “The dwarfs are in there. Modsognir!”
A short ugly creature came out, his face covered with warts, and his whole body filthy, even to the rags that covered him. He was perhaps four feet high, but most of that was torso, and his chest expansion must have been better than sixty inches. He nodded ponderously.
“Modognir here. Chief of armorers.”
“This,” Fulla told him, “is the new master of all of you. The Alfadur commands that you obey him.”
She turned quickly to leave, jerking her head up disdainfully as she swept by Leif. The little grin on her face implied that she knew she had him going and enjoyed that part of it.
It was too much. He caught her by her shoulders this time, and forced her around, pulling her to him before she could draw back her arms to stop him. She was kicking and scratching as he came, but he was pleasantly stronger than she was. Fulla tried to bury her face in his shoulder, but one of his hands in her hair forced her head around. Her lips were thin and hard. Then slowly they relaxed and parted. He pulled her closer still, letting his hand fall from her hair.
She bit him.
His hands dropped completely in surprise, and she was gone, almost stumbling in a mixture of fury and embarrassment. The snickering laughter of the dwarf behind her didn’t seem to help. Leif wiped the blood off his lip, but he wasn’t sorry. At least she’d remember him, even with Lee around.
“You’re growing,” Loki’s voice said behind him. He turned to see the god lounging beside the dwarf. “Fulla needs a bit of taming—as who wouldn’t after being a maiden for fifty thousand years or more?
Leif winced. He hadn’t considered the fact that she was an immortal, like most of the others here. She had looked like a young girl, and he’d taken her at face value. She must have looked the same when his own ancestor were still barely able to chip flint. Maybe, though, age that produced no affect couldn’t be counted. It mattered less than he would have expected. Right now, other things were filling his mind.
“I’m growing sick of it all,” he told Loki. “Why should I try to do anything for this cockeyed heaven of yours? Hell, I don’t even know what’s true and what’s fakery.”
Loki smiled with his lips, but there was no amusement now in the rest of his face. “Maybe we have been a little hard on you. I suppose you’re not conditioned to all this, as the men of old were. But I had to be hard on you, since I couldn’t reason with the Aesir. You can’t walk out on us now, though. Niflheim’s no face, I assure you.”
“What is this Niflheim, anyhow?” Leif wanted to know. He had a vague idea of a cold hell, and no more. Idly, he noticed that Loki’s speech sounded less stodgy now, particularly since leaving the meeting. Or maybe his ears were just getting used to the language, and he was hearing it as he would English. Probably Odin was conservative and insisted on formal rather than normal speech in council.
Loki reached into a small bag at his side and pulled out a little mirror set in a frame with a handle. “I borrowed this from Odin’s possessions—without his knowledge, of course. It’s a small version of the big one on his throne. Elf work—magic or science lost to us now, but very effective. A—um—I imagine that you’d call it a window through the dimensions. Look—here’s Niflheim.”
Leif took the mirror, looking into it curiously. Then he tried to drop it, but his hands refused to move. Something strained at his eyes, and the sight began clearing—showing people—people with—with…
The next second, he was vomiting while Loki supported him. The god had pulled the mirror out of his hand, but nothing could east the sickness that ran through Leif. Finally he stopped the gagging and sat down shakily.
“That’s the mildest part of Niflheim,” Loki said, but his own voice held tinges of what Leif had felt. “It’s a place where everything is wrong—and where men can’t even go crazy, since it has two times, and one is fixed, immovable. The longer you look, the more you see—and that’s true even though you stay there a million years. Some of the ones—but keep the mirror. You may need it to spy out how weapons are made on your world, since you and I know you’re no master of the skills we need.”
“Why didn’t you bring in somebody who was an expert weapons maker, then? Why pick on me?”
Loki sighed. “I argued for a few trained men, but Odin and Thor would have heroes or nothing. I had difficulty persuading Thor to take one whose brother was perhaps useful to me, and more trouble arranging for the proper wounding of both together. I did the best I could, and that was hard enough.”
“The best!” Leif grunted sickly. “You fixed it so I couldn’t return home if you’d let me. There must be at least sixteen major crimes charged to me by now, not to mention what will happen to the farm.”
“Umm. Thor protects Lee, and I’ll try to do as much for you. Perhaps when the time is right I can effect some changes here and on Midgard. Let’s look at your workshop.”
Leif went into the building behind Loki, his legs still trembling form the shock of the quick glance of Niflheim. Whatever happened, he knew he wasn’t going —>there by choice!
Then he looked around slowly from the crude forge that was being worked by hand to the hunk of iron that served as an anvil, while one of the dwarfs held the metal in his hands and another swung at it with a crude hammer. A horde of the creatures were busy working, but most of them seemed to have only their bare hands and their mouths as tools. Beside him, one was holding a crude spear head in his hands and biting off flakes of the metal to smooth it into shape.
Leif dropped back onto a soot-covered rock, staring about. This workshop made things just lovely. If he couldn’t make weapons here, it would probably mean Niflheim for him and maybe for his brother. And Fulla’s hate would be enough to make her look through one of the mirrors and laugh at him—at least, until Ragnarok killed off all the Aesir.
“And if I can help win your Ragnarok?” he asked.
Loki shrugged. “Then maybe you can wangle godhood and win the wench, since she’s on your mind. And your world won’t be destroyed then, though the Aesir will naturally take it over and run it the way they think it should be run.”
Leif had a vision of what that would mean. Lord knew, men had made enough of a mess of things, but with the Aesir turned loose there, hell would really pop. It was a lovely choice—one in which even winning was an automatic losing proposition.
He came to his feet suddenly, but Loki had already stepped out of the doorway, leaving him with his problem.
Chapter VII
After three weeks, Leif Svensen had been able to get used to most things in Asgard. Even the daily slaughter of the einherjar no longer bothered him, since the dismembered parts always flowed together and became whole at the first touch of the nightly dew. But having to take part in the endless fracas was another matter, when he needed all his time in an effort to get some kind of weapons. To the traditions here, however, he was a hero—and heroes were supposed to spend most of their time brawling. Whenever Odin was due to inspect the combating heroes, Leif had to be present.
Now he’d found a section of the field where the dullest einherjar had
drifted, and was pushing a big shield against the swords of two of them, waiting for Odin to finish inspecting a mock battle between the troops of Thor and those of Lee. There was little danger here, but it was hot work, and he was sweating uncomfortably inside his armor. A battle axe took more work than a woodsman’s, he’d found, and the shield seemed to weigh a ton.
Finally, Odin left. Leif sighed and swung the big axe. One hero’s head rolled across the field, to be followed by a second in another moment. Leif swung the shield across his back and hurried off the field toward a grove of trees, carefully avoiding any more heroes. It was time he got back to the shop.
But as he reached the grove, his steps slowed unconsciously. This was the place where the holy apple tree stood, and part of Fulla’s duty was caring for it. He’d seen the girl there several times, though it had done him no good. Still, his eyes moved about expectantly. This time, however, there was no sign of her. The tree stood in the center of the grove, with no one about.
Leif stopped to study it for the tenth time, and the farmer in him felt sick at the sight. It was a fairly old-looking tree, but neglect more than age was responsible for its condition. Dead wood had choked off the new branches and was sapping its strength. The leaves looked sickly and yellow, and the few specimens of undeveloped fruit were small and stunted. The dirt under it smelled sour and leached out. If Asgard depended on that tree much longer, no Ragnarok was needed—the gods would never be in any condition to fight.
He sighed and finally left it, heading back to the shops of the dwarfs. There, at least, some changes had been made. The armorers had been moved out to a separate building, and the addition of a real forge, a flat anvil, some basic tools, and the crude grindstone had freed most of them for other work. The arms and armor had improved in quality for the change.
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