Pyramid Power: Chapter Ten

    Lying in the back of the chariot in the cold Jerry could only be glad of the body—presumably still alive because it was warm—stacked against him. He wouldn’t have minded if the man had not had a cuirass on. Brass seemed to transmit cold better than body-heat.

    Time passed. In the way of time when you were worried and helpless to do anything, Jerry was sure that it was passing very slowly. It was getting to be a question of whether he froze to death or worried himself to death first. He worried about the others, let alone about his own fate, at the hands of a guy with metal gauntlets and fake beard, and Odin.

    He tried to distract himself into remembering as much as he could about Odin. Not all of it was comforting. Yes, Odin was the leader of the Æsir who had hanged himself on the tree for nine days and given his one eye for a drink from the well of Mirmir. He was also—a stray scrap of information in the sea of stuff Jerry had waded through in a bibliophile’s life—known by many names, or “kennings” as the Norse put it. They often gave clues to origins and nature of the god in question. This one was known variously as the Allfather, which was a delusion of grandeur from what Jerry remembered, the Wanderer from his habit of wandering about incognito, and Baelwerker—evil worker.

    There were lots more, but those were the ones that came to mind. Odin was known to be fickle with his favors and had fathered a fair number of children on women other than his wife, Frigg. About normal for a boss god, in other words. There seemed to be more of an element of sneaky cunning to him than was typical of someone like Zeus, though.

    Jerry knew less about the other Norse gods. A stray memory brought up Geirrodur the troll king and bars of white hot metal being flung around, but Jerry was almost sure that myth had been about Thor.

    A group of Norse warriors came past, and then Odin on horse-back. An eight-legged horse. Iron gauntlets came and got into the cart.

    “Well, I’m not carrying him down from there myself. He can sober up and get himself home,” muttered the man sulkily. “Damned Einherjar won’t do anything I tell them. But if he says it, then they jump.”

    He kicked the two prisoners aside, took up his stance. “Tannagnjóst, Tannagrísnir, away!”

    Nothing happened.

    Iron gauntlets swore. “Move, damn you, goats!”

    Jerry had put two and two together now. This was Thor’s goat-pulled chariot—only it lacked the ornamentation you might expect of a thunder-god’s chariot. This English-speaking person was also a pretty poor stand-in for Thor.

    Odin returned with a double-clatter. “Tannagnjóst, Tannagrísnir, Bilskríner!” he snapped, walloping the goats with his spear-butt.

    The goats and the chariot took off like a rocket-ship heading for orbit on the bounces. Fake-Thor landed hard on Jerry, as the chariot leapt and bounced down the rough track at terrific speed. The goats seemed to want it airborne, and the chariot didn’t have springs of any sort.

    It was a hellish journey and the charioteer’s efforts to slow it down were met with no success. Neither did his efforts to stand up. To add to the joy of the journey, icy sleet showered down on them. Jerry could only be grateful, when, after an eternity, the bone-shaking slowed and then stopped.

    Iron gauntlets got out staggering, stepping on them as they lay there. They were at least out of the freezing rain. They appeared to be in a barn of rough rocks. Iron gauntlets didn’t bother with unhitching the goats, just left everything.

    They lay there for a long time, as dusk gathered outside. Presently someone with a burning brand came along and unhitched the goats with a lot of grumbling. Norse was a fine grumble-language by the sound of it, with plenty of gutturals to help you sound really cross and miserable. It reminded Jerry a bit of Liz, when she started swearing at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Afrikaans.

    Eventually, the muttering grumbler noticed them. He hauled them out bodily, and dumped them on the straw. Then, pulled the chariot away and left, ignoring Jerry’s yells.

    The straw seemed a better place than the back of the chariot, anyway, although that made no difference to his co-sufferer. The PSA agent had lapsed into unconsciousness. Jerry was suffering from extreme bruising and cold, and some light-headedness, but that appeared to be the worst apart from being tied up and left in a Norse stable.

    He strained at the cords, futilely. Well, maybe he could at least burrow his feet into the straw. The shoeless foot felt as if it might be about to lose toes from frostbite, and the other one didn’t feel much better.

    He was just about half into the straw, and thinking that this had to be an improvement on the chariot, when it became obvious that still being in the chariot had one thing going for it. Goats—huge goats, the size of ponies—could not come and sample your clothing.

    Just when he thought nothing could get worse, Jerry got Wagnerian laughter and a kick in the ribs. The two Norse warriors examined the PSA agent, and settled for hauling Jerry to his feet.

    One said something, accompanied by a prod from fingers the size and hardness of a rifle barrel, that obviously meant “walk,” seemingly oblivious of the fact that his feet were tied together. So Jerry did his best. He hopped. And fell over. The new outburst of Wagnerian laughter was worth enduring just to have his feet cut loose.

    They walked him out, and onto to a rough trail. They mounted and rode, chatting merrily, pausing their cheerful dialogue only to occasionally lean down and belt him with the flat of a sword, if they thought him to be walking too slowly. A numb foot and his giddiness didn’t help.

    Coming over the ridge in the sunset Jerry could be excused for halting. The hall was huge, even by mega-mall standards. Being thatched with spears and with literally hundreds of doors also would have made it stand out.

    “Vallhöll,” said one of the warriors, apparently finding justification in Jerry’s halting abruptly. Not, of course, for too long. A swat with a sword-flat urged him on, towards what, from here, was already quite a racket—a very drunken party, by the sounds of it.

    Jerry blinked. He was hardly a warrior who had died in battle. And a drinking party with nubile Valkyries was not actually his idea of a good time, especially not for eternity. Once in a while, maybe.

    It soon appeared that the joy of drinking himself senseless was not for him anyway. He was led through a corner of the huge hall of roistering men. The hall was decked with shields and axes, and reeking of boiled pork, mead, and the after-effects of too much of both. The two escorts pushed in through a doorway and off towards some private chambers beyond. They came to a door at which they knocked, very respectfully.

    Jerry found himself in the presence of Odin, in Odin’s own chamber. The one-eyed god sat slumped in his chair, a drinking-horn in one hand and a pair of ravens perched on the back of the chair. There were two other people in the room, a golden-haired and bored-looking blond woman and a man with a short stubbly beard and a rather weak chin.

    Jerry realized that the latter was Mr. Iron Gauntlets, without the fake beard, gauntlets, or the broad iron girdle. He looked about twenty-five years old and with incipient jowls already developing. He also looked as surly as bull-beef right now. The blond looked ready to take him out of the mythworld and send him back home with a blow from her tambour-frame.

    Odin stared at Jerry, his one eye cold and penetrating. The stare was plainly intended to intimidate. It might have worked too, if the raven behind Odin had not chosen that moment to lift its tail over the blue cloak. Lightheaded and shivering, Jerry couldn’t help a bit of puerile laughter.

    Plainly Odin had not expected that response. He said something in Norse.

    “Pardon?” said Jerry. His legs felt as if someone had taken the bones out of them, and the room seemed oddly wobbly.

    Odin’s solitary eye narrowed. He raised his hand and said... something. Which became an understandable. “Answer, Thrall.”

    Jerry blinked. It must be some kind of translation spell. “What was the question again?” he asked, swaying.

    “None of your insolence!” snapped the man who had been using the iron gauntlets. “Answer Allfather Odin!”

    Well, that established his pedigree. “Shut up, Thjalfi,” said Odin off-handedly. “I have not yet forgotten that you left Thor behind. Now, foreign thrall, answer me. Or I’ll make the blood-eagle out of you.”

    Jerry’s reply was to pitch forward on his face.

    He was vaguely aware of voices talking after a while. “... Sif, find me two that are not too drunk and have this one hauled to the dungeon. Put him in with the son of Laufey. He’ll be keen enough to talk after he sees what happens to those who oppose us.”

    The woman said something indistinct, but clearly petulant.

    “Hel take it, woman. If he hasn’t staggered home by tomorrow I’ll go back and look for him myself. We still need him. You know that by this time of night the Einherjar are not capable of riding to the gates of Asgard, let alone all the way to Geirrodur’s castle. Now get me someone to heave this carrion away.”

    “If I go out there they’ll think I’m another Valkyrie for them to deflower. And I have enough trouble with one drunken sot,” she said.

    “By my eye... Thjalfi.”

    “They don’t listen to me, Allfather,” said Thjalfi sullenly. “They say I am just a bondsman.”

    “Humph. I’ll do it myself then,” said Odin.

    A door slammed. “Do you think he suspects?” said Thjalfi.

    The woman laughed. “Him? He’s far too vain.”

    “Best to wait until he’s well asleep before... Stop that.”

    “Oh. Don’t you like it any more?” she teased.

    The man coughed. “He’ll be back soon. And you never know when those birds of his will show up.”

    “I’m still going to poison those ravens.”

    “I tried,” he said, glumly.

    A little later two large grumpy warriors picked Jerry up, and transported him down many flights of stairs, and tossed him down into a pit. It seemed to be a place of strange shadows, monstrous, fearful shadows, as Jerry faded into unconsciousness. Those had been quite some blows he’d taken to the head, and it had been a long day.

 

---

 

    When he awoke, Jerry realized that there were very few bits of him that didn’t hurt, but that at least he was no longer cold. He began to slowly take stock of his surroundings. The surface he was lying on felt like stone. Opening his eyes a crack, the wall looked like stone too, stone with odd shadows leaping on it.

    Firelight! No wonder it wasn’t so cold. But... wasn’t he in a dungeon?

    He opened his eyes properly and saw that, fire or no fire, he was in a dungeon, and a place of torment. There was a very large snake high up one of the walls, and although it could not quite reach the man below who was bound to the three huge slabs with what looked like thick red-brown rope, the snake could spit venom at him. There was a harassed-looking woman crouched next to the bound man, holding a bowl.

    The bowl was now almost slopping full of the poison. She darted with it to the fireplace. The snake spat and the bound man writhed and screamed. He must be enormously powerful because the very floor shook. The woman hastened back to hold the bowl in the way again, wiping his ravaged face with a rag. There were tears on her own face.

    After a while he said, “It’s all right Sigi. It’s just pain. It’ll pass.” The voice was thick with agony, but there was no mistaking the affection.

    Jerry sat up, with difficulty, as they’d not seen fit to untie his hands.

    “Ah! Our visitor has stirred. So nice of you to drop in,” said the bound victim sardonically.

    Jerry was beaten up, mildly concussed, and half frozen. But he knew enough mythology to realize that the speaker could only be the bound god, Loki.

    Loki, the father of lies, the architect of Baldr’s death, general maker of trouble... and occasional savior of the gods of Asgard. A great cell-mate.

    “There is some water there, in that rock-bowl,” said the woman, gesturing with her elbow.

    “Poor hospitality,” said Loki, with a wry smile. “But there is something of a shortage of mead in these palatial quarters of mine, I’m afraid.”

    Jerry staggered to where the trickling water dribbled into a small depression in the floor, drank some of the cold water, and then washed his face. It was awkward with bound hands, but at least he could kneel and dip. The icy water hurt, but it did wake him up. He wasn’t that sure that he wanted to be awake, but it seemed that he didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter.

    “So, stranger,” said Loki, when Jerry had finished his ablution, and stepped uneasily nearer to them. “What brings you to this delightful spot?”

    Jerry looked at the snake above them, very warily, but the serpent seemed to be ignoring him completely. “A certain one-eyed... traveler had me sent here.”

    Naming gods was a poor idea in the Mythworlds. It was never wise to call their attention to oneself. “And you, Son of Laufey?”

    It was wry smile, but it was a smile. “I see my reputation, and my fate, have gone before me, mortal. I have been many places, maybe not as far as the wanderer, but far enough. There is that about you that speaks of further places. Places beyond even one-eye’s ken. That must have rubbed him raw.” Loki definitely took some savage pleasure in that last statement.

    “He asked me a question, perhaps about that,” admitted Jerry. “He asked in Norse, not in my tongue, so I was not able to reply. So he sent me here. To learn a lesson, I think.”

    Now those eyes were bright and mocking. “Heh. Not to answer him is to survive, mortal. He can’t bear not knowing. I’d find ways to avoid telling him, if you can. He’s nearly as tricky as me, though.”

    It made sense. The Krim didn’t seem to place any value on the lives of the human victims which it wasted during its re-enactments of myths. It would only keep him alive if there was something to be gained from doing so.

    “I was almost free, and my repayment and Ragnarok the terrible had almost begun, when I would have destroyed all that lives,” said Loki conversationally, “When Odin’s power was renewed. Is this anything to do with you, man from a far place?” That was said calmly, but there was a terrible hatred, barely masked, underneath the words.

    Jerry shook his head. “No.” He was glad to be able to say that. “It’s the Krim.”

    “These are a people of whom I have not heard. When Naglfar sails, they too will not be forgotten.”

    “No,” said Sigyn,” they will not,” and she was just as grim as he was about that.

    “The Krim is a thing, not a people,” explained Jerry. “It’s that pyramid that one-eye wears around his neck. Or at least that is its symbol. It is a machine. A device. I believe it seeks the destruction of my people. My world.”

    “And it has enlisted one-eye to do it,” said Loki admiringly. “It couldn’t have made a better choice, really.”

    “Except you,” said Jerry with equal urbanity.

    That actually got Loki to laugh. “Except me, indeed. But what do I have against your people, your world?”

    Jerry was surprised to see Sigyn wink at him. “Oh, what does that matter,” she said. “Loki will destroy everything. He’s bad.”

    The bound god shook his head. “You do know how to ruin my lines, Sigi. I’ve got a reputation to keep up.”

    “Ah, husband,” she said quietly, a hand soothing his brow. “What does it all matter now? They have killed one of our children, and changed the other into a wolf. What do we care what they think? It has been many centuries since I saw you laugh. I had forgotten. You used to make me laugh all the time.”

    “There is not much to laugh about, Sigi,” said Loki, the grimness returning.

    “That didn’t used to stop you,” she said, caressing him with one hand while she kept the bowl positioned to catch the snake’s dripping venom with the other. “Even when they were all united against you, you mocked them and laughed at them. Only Thor dared to stand up against you.”

    “I never understood that. Why did he let them do this to me? The Thunderer has no brains, but he’s not unfair,” said Loki.

    “I don’t know,” answered Sigyn. “He played no part in your binding. But what I said was that back when you laughed at them, they could not stand against you. This mortal made you laugh instead of wallowing in our bitterness. Maybe if you can laugh again, we can break free.”

    “It has to be worth a try,” said Loki. “Talk, mortal.”

    Jerry took a deep breath. It hurt his ribs. He wished he had Liz’s brashness and courage. But she wasn’t here, so he’d just have to do his best. “My name is Jerry, Loki. Not ‘mortal.’ I’ve defeated one set of gods already, and if I have to beat another I will. I’m only interested in helping you break free on certain conditions.”

    “You make me smile already, mortal that dictates to gods, and claims to defeat them. And Sigyn is right, with that comes hope. Not a lot of it, but a tiny spark. Why should I negotiate, Jerry? Ragnarok is sure. The wanderer himself knows he cannot win when the Time comes.”

    Jerry shrugged, as nonchalantly as he could. “Nothing is sure, this time around.”

    “It is all happening again!” said Sigyn. “I was sure of that.”

    “And,” continued Jerry, “if I am right, this is the pattern. It will happen again, and again, until the Krim’s masters get tired of it, unless we stop them.”

    “That’s a powerful argument,” conceded Loki, with a crooked grin. “Once is bad enough. So, name your terms, Jerry.”

    Jerry could understand why Loki had got away with blue murder so often in Norse myth. His smile went all the way to his eyes. There was mischief in those eyes, but there was also a trustability to it. In some ways it reminded him of Lamont’s youngest child’s smile. It had the same childlike quality to it. Not heedful of consequences perhaps, but with no true intent of evil. And yet...

    Loki led the forces of giantkind against the Æsir in the final battle. The gods had bound him, but not killed him. Odin had by this time known that Loki and Loki’s offspring, would kill him, and the other Ás. Why had he allowed him to live? There had to be reasons. Odin was not known for fairness.

    Jerry swallowed. “Firstly. My girlfriend, my best friend and his wife and children are out there. I won’t have them hurt.”

    Loki nodded. “We place our values in those we know and love most. Many are the men who would kill a stranger.”

    “But when the world falls, those close to us must fall too,” said Sigyn.

    Jerry started realizing that she was more than just loyal. Well, to cope with a man like Loki you’d have be clever and subtle at manipulation.

    “I will have vengeance for my sons, Loki,” she continued. “You promised me that.” There was an implacability there, that Jerry could feel was as unstoppable as the tide. “You promised me Asgard would fall.”

    Loki sighed. “Never make promises to women, Jerry. Not even in your cups. They have a way of remembering everything you have said, in exactly the way that suits them.” Despite the sarcasm in the words, Loki’s smile at her contained both affection and acknowledgment of the agreement. “I said that I would destroy those who did what they did to Narfi and Váli.”

    “And to do that we must bring down the walls of Asgard,” she said.

    Loki shrugged. “Which I arranged to have built, and which will withstand the mountain giants and the frost giants, among which I have my kin.”

    “But not the sons of Muspelheim,” said Sigyn quietly.

    Jerry had it now, that elusive trace of memory. Surtur the fire demon, who had spread his fire and darkness all over the nine worlds at the end of Ragnarok. Surtur, the lord of the fiery South, that balanced Nifelheim of the frozen North. There was a certain symmetry to Norse myth. Sigyn might not want to have Loki destroy the world, but she would let him, if that was the cost of her vengeance. And if Jerry had it right, Ragnarok was something that virtually nothing had survived.

 

---

 

    Watching from among the heather and rocks on the ridge, Lamont saw how the dragon wound its way down to the burn and drank from the dark water, and then turned and made its way back. It huffed as it went, emitting clouds of yellowish noxious-looking vapor from its nose.

    “Where are those kids?” asked Emmitt.

    Ty and Tolly had disappeared again. Lamont was beginning to regret pairing them up. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but Ty was enough of a handful on his own. He just had to be one of the most inventive and creative eight-year-old fabricationists in the United States. Marie called it lying, but Lamont suspect that to Ty the line between truth and fiction was somewhere in cartoon network.

    “Darn those kids. Where did you last see them?”

    “They were just down slope from me. Playing some game. I told them to lie still.”

    Lamont studied the slope. No Chicago Bears sweatshirt visible. There was a slight indent, an incipient stream-bed, with more cover in it than on the rest of the hillside, just below where the kids had been. “They must have gone down the gully. I’ll go and look.”

    “We’ll stick together,” said Marie firmly. “There’s nowhere else they could have gone.”

    So they made their way down. They found them in a small cave—along with two other people.

    One was a man who could have passed for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body double, except that he was blond and had a naked sword in his hand. The other—a short and stocky bearded dwarf—had not drawn his weapon, but looked decidedly nasty.

    “—ling you the truth,” Ty was saying. “The power-rangers are coming. We’re just scouting for them because Dracona the green transformer has their scent. I wouldn’t touch us if I were you.”

    “Tyrone, you come here this minute!” said Marie, startling the two strangers out of any action they might have been contemplating.

    Lamont kept a firm hold on the rock that he’d picked up. It wasn’t much against that sword, but it was all there was to hand, here. Admittedly, by the look on the face of the tall guy with the sword, he wouldn’t need it that much. The big blond looked positively relieved to see them. He lowered his sword, pointed at a stack of implements against the wall, and said something in a lordly gabble.

    What was it that saying architects were so fond of? Form defines function, if Lamont remembered right. It was true, Lamont reflected. Those things might be Norse era tools, but they were still spades, and the blond sword-swinger plainly was expecting people who didn’t have swords to do the digging, especially coal-dust covered ones.

    Well, a spade—even a wooden one with metal edge—was still a better weapon than a rock. “Take a spade, people,” said Lamont in a very even voice. His son and Medea’s were still too close to a man with a naked sword. “And try to look like that’s what you came here to do.”

    A spade is a good disguise. See a man with a spade and you assume that he’s a workman, thought Lamont, looking at the blond swordsman’s casual stance as he attempted to talk to the now blue-kneed PSA agents. It had been a fairly brisk early autumn day back in Chicago. Lamont, Marie, Liz and kids all were dressed for that. But it was much too cold for the gear the PSA agents were wearing. Sandals, brass greaves, the skirty thing—a peltoi, he thought it was called—and a cuirass didn’t do too well in this temperature.

    Lamont almost grinned. A pity Jerry wasn’t here. He’d like to have pointed out that they looked mighty cuirass...

    Blondie looked a bit scornful about their outfits, but seeing as they’d brought him some serfs to do his digging he wasn’t making a fuss. He and the dubious-looking dwarf led them down into the valley, across the burn, and to the dragon’s path. He pointed. Lamont added the Norse word for dig into his vocabulary.

    “A hole big enough to trap a dragon?” said Liz quietly. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Let’s get out of here, Lamont. I’ll distract him, you hit him. We can deal with the dwarf.”

    “Okay.”

    She paused, seeing someone new appear on the scene. From nowhere, it seemed like. “Um. On second thought, better keep digging. That’s the guy we saw in the castle. Odin himself, if Jerry was right.”

    It was Odin indeed, in his blue cloak and broad hat, and with just one eye. Fortunately he was not really interested in labor unrest. He was pointing at the ground. Maybe he was saying that Blondie didn’t have a building permit. Lamont noticed, however, that Odin’s arrival had led to the dwarf’s abrupt departure.

    And Odin’s departure led to the pit digging being moved too. They were now to dig a trench up the slope. Fortunately, it was fairly soft loam. Unfortunately, their chances for rushing the blond muscular warrior were considerably slimmer. He was sitting on a high rock, sharpening his sword. He tossed a fragment of wool into the air and held the blade out as it fell. The sword appeared to split the drifting wool.

    Surely nothing could be that sharp? On the other hand, did they really want to find out?

    “There’ll be a chance to sneak off later,” said Liz, quietly.

    It certainly seemed a safer option, and fortunately Blondie wasn’t after much in the way of entrenchments. He was not watching his diggers but keeping a wary eye on the dragon’s cave. He obviously saw something which made him decide that now was the time to leave and suddenly they were herded back up to the shallow cave where the dwarf had made a fire. The PSA agents looked like they were going to kiss him. Blondie didn’t seem to be planning to stay and enjoy it though. He took up a folded piece of brown coarse fabric and turned towards the mouth of the cave.

    “When he’s gone,” whispered Liz.

    But then Blondie turned back, beckoned to Lamont, and tossed the fabric at him. It was a lot heavier than it looked. Lamont’s knees almost buckled.

    Now, Blondie gestured for Lamont to follow him. So they all started trooping out, but he waved them back with that bright sword of his.

    Lamont followed him back down the hill to the shallow pits. Blondie got into one, pointed at the rough cloth, and said something in Norse. Lamont got the message, even without the Norse. He covered up the hole, with its warrior inside, and pinned down the edges of the cloth with rocks. Now was the perfect time to hit Blondie so hard with the shovel that he couldn’t use his sword, and depart hurriedly.

    But Lamont couldn’t bring himself to do it. The idiot was plainly planning to stab the dragon from underneath, and that dragon made Bitar and Smitar look kittenish.

    From under the cloth the blond warrior said something which Lamont guessed to be “vamoose.” Looking at the belch of yellow smoke coming from the dragon-cave, Lamont didn’t need any further invitation. He legged it across the peat-stained stream and ran for the cave. Now. maybe, they could get out of here...

    Looking back, he saw that the huge green dragon was slowly making his way out of his lair. Lamont ducked behind a handy rock and wished there had been a very much bigger handy rock. Peeping out through some fronds of dead fern that still clung to the stone, he watched the dragon ponderously advance down the path toward the pit where the blonde Norseman lay hidden.

    Lamont could see three possible outcomes. First, the man might just succeed. Secondly, the dragon might just find him and kill him. Thirdly, he might wound the dragon. It was the third possibility that worried Lamont the most—and, unfortunately, it seemed the most likely. This was not a very large valley, it was not a very deep cave that his family were hiding in, and this was a very small rock he was hiding behind. And a wooden spade wasn’t going to make much of an impression, if a sword that sharp couldn’t.

    He watched. And waited.

 

---

 

    In the cave Liz cursed under her breath. The dwarf whose name was apparently Regin, judging from what she thought the blond guy with body-builder build had called him, had drawn his sword and was intent on the scene down below. If it hadn’t been for Lamont being stuck behind a tiny rock a good two hundred yards closer to the dragon than any sane person wanted to be, this would have been the perfect time to make a sharp exit. She had a boyfriend to go looking for, and she had a feeling that the blond guy and this Regin were up to no good, even if dragon-killing was a traditional knightly practice.

    Besides, she was a biologist. There were probably far more knightly types than dragons anyway. She watched Regin’s intent face. It held an expression that seemed a combination of fear and nasty delight. Liz could probably swat him with one of these heavy wooden shovels, but there was no way that Marie would leave and let Lamont catch up. Actually, there was no way Liz could just leave him down there, for that matter, no matter how sensible it would be.

    The dragon appeared to be crawling slowly toward the holes they’d dug. It stopped and puffed some of that sulphurous yellow smoke. Then, turned its great head, as if tasting the air. For a brief, wild moment Liz considered yelling a warning. But that would most likely be terminal for all of them.

    The dragon continued its slow pace forward.

    Suddenly, a great gout of the yellow smoke roared and gushed out of that fangy mouth and surged across the valley. The dragon reared up and even from here you could see a spurting fountain of black blood. Its blood hit the grass, and the grass withered and smoked. The dragon twitched and clawed the ground, its great tail thrashing as if it was about to do a lizard trick and come right off.

    The dragon jerked spasmodically. And then again, and reared up trying to reach the place from where its black life-blood leached out onto the ground.

    Even from here you could hear that it was saying something. To Liz that made the dying worse, somehow.

    They watched and waited. And then the blond man emerged from the side of the dragon, his great sword held aloft, and it seemed catch the sun like some shaft of silver. Liz wasn’t surprised that the others clapped. The dwarf was capering in glee. He waved his sword at them and bellowed something that was probably “out.” Before Liz decided to take him out, he chopped a solitary spruce—perhaps four inches thick—with a single cheerful swipe.

    He shooed them ahead of him like he was herding geese. He was soon happily engaged in kicking the dragon, and loudly congratulating his knight, who was cleaning his sword, and beaming toothily himself.

    “Now do you think we can just slip away?” said Marie. “Where the hell are those children? Come here, you two. Don’t you dare go near that cave!”

    Unfortunately that yell, while it had turned the two boys back, had also reminded the dwarf and the blond dragon slayer of their presence.

    They found themselves lifting a very heavy foreleg while Regin and the dragon slayer took part in some gory butchery. At length the two of them hauled out a heart the size of a steamer-trunk. It was speared onto a spruce sapling, and they were sent walking up the hill with it back to the cave and to the fire. Regin waved cheerfully with a snaggle-toothed smile and left them to make a dragon-heart barbeque.

    By the way Ella had stopped to be sick, it might not catch on in the US, Liz suspected. It might be a better hit back in South Africa, where the men doing the barbequing—”braai-ing”—believed in alcohol marinade, principally applied internally to themselves, because the meat was too hot. This blond Dragon slayer was their kin in spirit, anyway. He had dug out a flask of something and was applying it liberally internally, and not offering to share, either.

    Liz had spent much of her adult life working with commercial fishermen. She was used to out-toughing and out-drinking men. And right now she wouldn’t have minded showing this fellow how was done. Still, after dragon-killing, a drink was probably a fairly reasonable thing to want.

    Liz tried to turn the meat, more on principal than out of any real interest in cooking dragon-heart properly, burned herself, and sucked her fingers.

    “Ow! Give me a hand with this, will you,” she said, putting her fingers back in her mouth. It was some indication of how long ago breakfast had been that dragon-heart tasted quite appetizing.

    Emmitt responded, after a prod from Lamont. He had the bright idea of using another stick. It didn’t work too well either on the lopsided weight of heart. He ended up burning his fingers too, and instinctively sucking them, before they got the meat propped the other way.

    The blonde dragon slayer now tried his hand at singing. You’d have thought that a noise like that would have frightened off birds and any other wildlife, but Liz noticed that two ravens fluttered in and perched on a ledge near the entrance. They eyed the grilling heart with greedy, beady eyes.

    “Where are the others?” one raven asked the other.

    “Probably still flapping along.”

    “Probably flapping in the other direction, Hugin,” cawed the first. “You were supposed to watch them.”

    “I was tired,” said the raven grumpily. “Do you know what it was like trying to find a single nuthatch, let alone five? Here on Gnita-moor of all places.”

    “I know,” said the first raven. “That’s why you should have kept a better watch on them.”

    “I forgot, Munin. I was too busy looking out for trolls. This is too close to Gerriodur’s castle to be comfortable for a bird. There’s nothing trolls like more than raven-roast.”

    “You’d forget your own head next, Hugin,” said the other raven, with a disapproving clack of its beak.

    Hugin scratched his poll with a black claw. “Memory is your job. Anyway we’ll just have to do it without them. When is the idiot going to burn his hand and lick the hot blood, if he has thralls doing the cooking?”

    Emmitt looked incredulously at Liz. “They’re talking,” he said in a frightened whisper.

 

---

 

    Liz had been trying to come to terms with them saying anything but “Nevermore,” herself. She’d already worked out that they weren’t speaking English, but that she was understanding them. “I know,” she said quietly. “Now, for a tasty piece of dragon-heart, they might like to explain.”

    Hugin bobbed his head forward. But Munin—the one on the left—clacked his beak angrily. “You’re not supposed to taste the hot blood.”

    “Why not? The human is blond, and it is offering us some,” said Hugin eagerly, hopping from one foot to the other.

    “Because it is not Sigurd the Dragon-slayer, the killer of Fafnir the Great. He’s the one with the sword and the ice-brew. Go and peck that stuff out of his hand. I’ll chase off these thralls.”

    “No chance,” said Hugin. “If that’s Sigurd, then that sword is Gram. I might not be you, but I remember that much. I don’t want to be half a raven. You do it. I’ll chase the thralls. Peck their eyes out.”

    “Emmitt, pick up a rock,” said Liz, doing it herself. “If one of these dumb birds even takes to the wing, I’ll have to show you how to pluck ravens for roasting.”

    She reached into her bag and pulled out a pair of shades, and passed them to the boy, who now had a rock in his hand. She perched her reading glasses on her nose.

    “How straight and how hard do you throw, Emmitt? I killed a crow or two, from a lot further off than this.” She noticed that Lamont had put down the spade and picked up a rock too. Emmitt might look a bit sulky, but like Lamont the boy was quick on the uptake. “I practice my pitching on sparrows, Liz. I never miss.” He hefted the rock, as if gauging it for a throw. “You get the one on the right. I’ll kill the left hand one.”

    This boy was good. He sounded convincing too. The attitude came through.

    Munin squawked indignantly. “You’re not supposed to do that! We’ll tell Odin.”

    Sigurd started singing again. Liz reflected that obscene songs hadn’t changed much, and then realized that she could understand him.

    “If you live that long,” said Emmitt disdainfully.

    “And, even if we let you live, Odin is going to really like the fact that you’ve botched it,” said Liz, keeping her voice calm and even. “So you might as well talk to us and tell us what’s going on here. Maybe we can reach a deal. In the meanwhile, Lamont, you all need to have a taste of this heart. It does translation magic.”

    “You can’t do that!” squawked Munin. He was definitely both the more intelligent and the more conservative of the two.

    “Why not?” said Liz.

    “Because Sigurd is supposed to,” said the raven.

    “We’ll leave him some,” said Emmitt.

    “But… he’s supposed to eat all of it,” protested the raven. Lamont came forward with one of the PSA agent’s rather useless short swords and sliced a piece off. Sigurd concentrated on squeezing the last few drops out of the skin he’d just drained and swayed out past them to relieve himself of some of his one-man party.

    “And then drink Regin’s blood,” the raven concluded.

    Liz shuddered. “He’s welcome to that. All of it. You Norse are so sweet. We just need a bit of translation skill and we’ll happily get out of here, okay?”

    “I suppose it’ll still work,” said Hugin, as Lamont gingerly tasted a bit of the heart.

    Marie was far more pragmatic when she was told what to do. She closed her eyes and ate it.

    “I don’t see why not,” said Munin. “A drop of dragon’s blood does the trick.”

    Marie blinked at the raven. “Lamont,” she said. “You hear what I hear?”

    He nodded. “Yeah.”

    “Cut another piece for the kids. Quickly now, before that blond lunk comes back.”

    “I don’t want to eat that, mama,” protested Ella, in girlish horror.

    “Just close your eyes and pretend it’s medicine, which is what it is,” said Marie. She pointed a finger at the PSA men. “You, fat ass, you and your friend better get a piece too.”

    Ty and Tolly tried to outdo each other with he-man noises of enjoyment, and Ella gagged on her fragment.

    “I’m a vegetarian,” protested one of the PSA agents.

    That was nearly too much for Liz, and, she noticed, for the ravens. They nearly fell off their ledge.

    “Caw! Vegetables….Caw. Caw. Caw.”

    Back on Earth in the United States, there was no reason why you couldn’t be a PSA operative and a vegetarian—or a homicidal maniac, for that matter. But to the Norse, Liz was willing to bet, it was as funny as it must have been to the Zulu the first time they encountered the idea. She wandered what the word “vegetarian” translated into. By the way the ravens were behaving, it was really bizarre. Liz knew from the farm the idea was still a joke to the rural people whose life centered on cattle herding. Meat was as much of a part of their life as Kleenex wasn’t.

    “Shut up,” growled Lamont. “It’s part of your cover. Put some in your mouth and pretend.”

    The agent looked pale, but took the piece of hot meat. Put it to his face. Seemed to be chewing.

 

---

 

    “Het jy dit geëet?” asked Liz.

    He looked at her blankly.

    “You’ve got to really put it in your mouth,” she snarled. “Ass. The spell doesn’t work otherwise. Your buddy understood me, didn’t you?” she said to the other PSA man.

    He nodded, startled. “Yeah. Look, Stephens, you’ve got to do it.”

    “I can’t…”

    Liz took a fingerful of the hot bubbling juice and pushed it into his mouth, which was still open. He spat and retched. But when she said “Moeshle nyama!” at least he understood her, even if he did not agree.

    “Right,” said Marie. “Birdies. Are you going to talk us out of here? We’ll get this Sigurd guy to taste this stuff when he comes back in.”

    The two ravens had almost gotten over the vegetarian business. “It’s a deal, black elf. So long as we get a piece of heart too,” said Hugin, plainly the greedier of the two. “What do you say, Munin?”

    “I suppose. I want a rare piece,” said Munin. Lamont obliged.

    “Will it work?” said Liz. “Look, we could just sneak out now.”

    “He’d chase you, and cut off your head with Gram,” said Hugin. “It’s what you do to runaway thralls. And that is Sigurd. He’s a one-man army.”

    Munin tore a fragment of meat off the piece between his claws. “No problem. Look, we need you out of here to do our job. And he’s a pushover for us corvids. Trust me, it’ll be easy. A guy who will take advice from nut-hatches hasn’t got much in his brain-box.”

    “Good meat,” said Hugin. “Sure you won’t have some more, grass-eater?” He cawed at his own humor, as Sigurd walked back in.

    Liz pointed at the meat, which was charring on the one side. “Try, master.”

    He shook his head. “Regin’s supposed to eat it, thrall wench. Otherwise I end up with the blood-guilt for killing Fafnir his brother.”

    “See if it is done then, Master,” persisted Liz, wondering how long she could keep up the “Master” bit.

    “I suppose so,” he said, prodding it with a big forefinger. Hot juice obligingly burned him, and he licked his finger.

    “Here stands Sigurd,” said the raven Hugin. “Cooking a dragon’s heart for someone else. If he ate it he would understand the speech of all, even the birds and the beasts.”

    “He really should chase these thralls out of here,” said the other. “They’re here to help the evil Regin who murdered his father with Fafnir and got the great Sigurd to kill the dragon Fafnir, the brother of Otr, for whom the gods paid weregild of Andvari’s hoard.”

    “Yes.” said Hugin. “Send these thralls away. Half of them are black elves anyway.”

    “Regin probably needs them to do his dwarfish magic,” said Munin. “Send them away.”

    Sigurd looked at them. “Shall I kill them all? I fancied keeping the one wench for a tumble.”

    Liz lifted the rock still in her hand just enough for the ravens to get the message. “Caw. Wouldn’t do that. No, never. The black elves would be angry. Send them away now. And give us a piece of meat.”

    Sigurd blinked. “Did you speak my language before?”

    “No, you now understand ours,” said Munin.

    “I meant this thrall-wench.”

    “Only after, Master,” said Liz with a false smile. “Can we go?”

    Sigurd cut himself a slice of hot heart. “I suppose so. I thought I’d get you lot to carry the dragon’s treasure, but you and those men without any pants on can get gone. I worry about men without pants.”

    They left, hastily, with one of the Hugin saying in a wheedling voice: “You could spare us a bit. Come on!”

    Outside the cave it was apparent that both evening and the weather were drawing in. “So where do we go now?” said Lamont. “You’re the outdoor expert, Liz.”

    “And can I take these off now?” asked Emmitt, tugging at the wrap-around dark glasses. “I can’t see much out here in them. I couldn’t see anything at all in the cave except that fire.”

    “Sure. It was just to stop those ravens pecking out your eyes.” She grinned at him, giving a thumbs up. “You did pretty well in there. And Lamont, I think we have to find shelter and warmth, before Agent Bott’s knees fall off and we all freeze to death tonight. This is about as different from my part of Africa as is possible, but that’s just common sense.”

    As usual it was Marie and the department of common sense that took over. “Practically that leaves us with the dragon’s cave—and that bozo Sigurd is going to arrive there, or back to that place the birds said was a troll castle.” She pointed back the way they’d come from. “I’m for the castle. It was fairly warm with those fires, and I think all of the trolls ran away.”

    “Besides, your average troll is an improvement on Sigurd,” said Liz.

    Marie nodded. “And it looks like it’s about to start snowing.”

    As they walked back over the hill it began to do that, in unpleasant wet sticky flakes. By the time they got to the troll castle, Liz was fairly sure they were safe from any sort of pursuit. They were lucky to find the place themselves.

    The room where red beard was still sleeping had delicious warmth seeping out of the stone window, although the two PSA Agents in their sandals were almost too cold to get in there. They had to be hauled over the sill.

    “First things first we ought to block that hole,” said one of them.

    “With what? Fatso’s cloak?” said Liz, sarcastically. She leaned over and gave the ratty garment in question a tug.

    The snoring stopped abruptly. The huge red-bearded man sat up and looked at them, with bleary road-map veined eyes.

    “Who are you?” he asked. “Where is Thjalfi? And has anyone got something for me to drink?”