Pyramid Power: Chapter Fourteen

    A particularly large bump knocked the breath out of Liz. Lamont didn’t know if he should be relieved or not. Liz was to singing what Pavarotti was to the construction industry.

    But at least she’d made Ella laugh. His little girl was troubled. She’d had a bad night. Dreams about, not surprisingly, her twin. Well, Lamont would have had a bad night himself if he hadn’t been too exhausted. There was enough to worry about.

    Looking at Liz, he realized that exhaustion or not, the blond Amazon had had a bad night too. She was more upset and worried about Jerry than she was ready to let on, and there was not a thing she could do about it. It was anyone’s guess as to where he was. Privately, Lamont knew, there was a damn good chance his corpse was lying on a slab back in Chicago. Privately too, he was glad to be here, doing something, rather than hanging around Chicago, waiting for Marie’s condition to worsen. The downside was Tina not being here… or maybe the other kids being here. The Mythworlds were dangerous places. And he’d have to look after them, now that his vaunted luck had run dry.

    Just how dangerous it was, was suddenly apparent as the sled slewed sideways and spilled them all into the snow. One of the PSA agents almost vanished into a snow drift. It took his partner two minutes to help him get out.

    The figure rising from the snow and towering over them looked seriously unimpressed at having had two goats run onto his face. “Can’t a body sleep in peace?” he said, in a gravel-crusher grumble. He peered shortsightedly at them as he hauled his fist back.

    Thor stood up and shook the snow out of his beard. “Why do you sleep in the middle of the road, Hrímner?” he bellowed.

    The giant paused. Squinted. Blinked and lowered his fist. “Because it is flatter than sleeping on the rocks?” he answered.

    “I should knock your head off for that,” said Thor crossly.

    “There’s no need to be so hasty!” said the giant. “It’s not often that I get guests riding over my face. Let’s have a bite and something to drink, eh?”

    Something about the way he said it started danger signals in Lamont’s mind. The giant obviously didn’t want to fight with Thor, who had a certain reputation. But Thor lacked some of his tools of the trade—that strength belt and his famous hammer. And he’d gone to seed a bit. Lamont was sure by the way the giant said “drink” that he knew all about that. If he’d had any doubts, they were erased by the way the giant opened the huge flask and shook it so that the smell of alcohol and honey washed over them like a tide.

    Thor made a weak noise and reached out for it. But the giant and the Æsir had failed to factor Lamont’s wife into the equation. Lamont had to grin. A few people had made that mistake before. A couple of them even lived.

    “You stop that right now!” Marie hollered at Thor, stepping between them. “And you, put that away, before I put it away for you.”

    The giant blinked myopically at her. “Are you refusing my hospitality?”

    “Yeah—and you know why, too.” Marie planted her hands on her hips and stared up at him.

    The giant looked at her, and then at Thor, and then more carefully at her, and then at Thor, whose reaching hand was still weakly wavering. “Hey, Öku-Thor, where is Mjöllnir? And who is this woman who looks like a Svartalfar, but smells like one of those Midgard worms?”

    “You mind your language, motherfucker,” snapped Marie. “And take that booze away. Or do I have to make you?”

    “Do you wish to refuse my hospitality and fight?” Hrímner peered at more closely still. He was at least thirty feet tall. The size of a double story house.

    “If that’s what it takes,” said Marie, seeming unaware of her husband and daughter trying to haul her off in opposite directions.

    “It’ll have to be a duel of wits,” said Thor, rubbing his temple. “It wouldn’t be fair and I would have to deal with you myself otherwise, Hrímner.”

    The giant looked thoughtful and a little wary. “Three questions then. I’m not Alvis.”

    By the looks of it Thor was managing to keep a straight face with difficulty. “I wondered if you’d heard about that. Maybe you should just let us pass,” he said, appearing to go off into a paroxysm of coughing.

    “If you’re absolutely sure you don’t want a little drink for that cough,” said Hrímner, “I suppose I could just do that.”

    Thor hauled the sleigh back onto its runners and nodded, keeping his head down.

    “I think that sounds quite wise,” said Lamont, bodily lifting Marie and putting her onto the sleigh before she did any more insane things.

    “Right,” agreed Hrímner. “You black elves are tricksy ones. Is that how you got it right, Thor?”

    Thor, coughing so much his shoulders shook, nodded, and got back on the sleigh. “Tanngnjóst. Tanngrisnir. Away, Bilskríner,” he managed to croak. The goats hauled them away from the giant, at a speed that Lamont felt was not fast enough.

    When they were a good hundred yards off, Lamont turned on the red faced Thor, who was doing a good imitation of a fat walrus having an epileptic fit. “What was that all about?”

    Thor’s laughter nearly started several avalanches on the surrounding hills. When he eventually managed to speak it was pretty asthmatic. “I’m not the sharpest file in the box, but those frost giants…” He started laughing again.

    “Will someone please tell me what is going on,” said Liz crossly.

    “I think Thor just put one over that frost giant,” said Lamont, still holding Marie.

    Thor nodded happily. “They have ice for brains. He never figured out that I wasn’t the one that tricked that smart-ass Alvis. My poor daughter Thrúd. She should never have agreed to it.”

    Lamont could believe that Thor would never have managed to outwit any smart-ass. “So… um, who did trick this… Alvis?”

    “And what did your daughter agree to?” asked Marie.

    Thor smiled. “Gol-teeth was getting a little particular in his attentions to my little girl. He’s a real philanderer, that one! So she said she’d only entertain the advances of someone who could defeat her old man in a duel. That’s my girl! I hear it put off a fair number of Ás, including old one-eye. Then up comes this smart-ass black dwarf, ugly as sin—and he says he has come to take up the challenge for my daughter’s favor. Only since he is not the challenger, honor says that he gets to choose the weapons. And he chooses a battle of wits. A test of knowledge.”

    Thor coughed. “It’s not exactly my strongest point, I reckon Odin put him up to it, because who else would have thought of it?”

    “So what did you do?” asked Lamont.

    Thor grinned. “The trickster stood in for me.”

    “Loki, you mean,” said Emmitt. “I thought he was the bad guy.”

    “Nah. Well, yes. But not on purpose, a lot of the time. He’s just… kind of heedless. And he loves making mischief, just to see what happens.” There was a troubled note in Thor’s voice.

    “So what did he do?” asked Ty.

    “Loki asked the dwarf a question as long as the Midgard serpent’s tail… and kept the smart-ass showing off until sun-up. Smart-ass turned to stone, then,” said Thor, cheerfully. “I have the little bastard’s head as an ornament. Thrúd likes to go and sit on his head from time-to-time. You’ll see it when we get to Bilskríner.”

    Liz had to admit that the goats made good going across the snow, despite her impatience. At least they did not encounter any more giants. Instead they came to a vast causeway of light that led to the gates of Asgard, and the end of the snow. The goats just kept right on going, cloven hooves clattering across the solid rainbow, to the giant-built walls of Asgard.

    “Did you sell the wheels?” demanded the tall, slightly sneering man at the gate-arch. He cradled an enormous horn with a sliver mouth-piece and silver chasing around the rim in his arms. “And why are you bringing a bunch of your Midgarders to the home of the gods?”

    Thor shook his fist at him. “Shut up, Heimdall. I’ll take who ever I want to Bilskríner.” They bumped past, under the disapproving gaze of the watchman of the gods.

    “He needs a T-shirt that says ‘honk if you’re horny’,” said Marie disapprovingly. “He looks a bit like fat-ass, my old boss.”

    “He doesn’t like me much, but he’s still too scared to make something of it,” said Thor. “So he contents himself with sneering at me and kissing up to Odin. Smarmy bastard.”

    The sled continued to bump and slither its way down an earth track. Liz’s American companions seemed a bit startled by that, but she wasn’t. All over Africa people still used sleds towed by oxen, in a total absence of snow. And those two goats were nearly as big as oxen, and amazingly strong.

    They came over a slight rise and saw a huge thatched hall. “Bilskríner,” said Thor proudly. “It has five hundred and forty rooms.”

    “Any of them bathrooms?” asked Liz, noting that the thatch was in less good repair than it might be.

    “Water washes away your strength,” said Thor, earning himself instant popularity with Ty and Tolly. “But we have a steam room.”

    “That’ll have to do, although it wasn’t quite what I had in mind.” Liz was almost at the point of twisting her legs around each other, and wishing fervently that the sleigh didn’t bounce quite so much. There was no smoke rising from Bilskríner. Liz was willing to bet that most of those five hundred and forty rooms, including the sauna, were unoccupied.

    She was quite right about that. There was a stable-thrall, who by the looks of him had been asleep in the hay-loft a few moments back. But then all he had to care for was two goats. The huge place was conspicuously empty.

    “Where is everyone?” asked Ty eventually, as Thor led them in from the stables.

    “Probably over in Valhöll,” said Thor, gloomily. “But Sif, Roskva and Thjalfi should be here. As often as not, they’re not, though. Thrúd always pops in. Modi and Magni spend all their time over at Valhöll. So: as I said, welcome to my humble home. What can I offer you?”

    By the looks of it, thought Liz, nobody had better ask for much. But what she said was: “What I really want is information. I want to know if they brought…” she thought how best to put it, and settled for “my man, here. You said those warrior types…”

    “Einherjar,” said Thor, his expression bleak. “Odin’s chosen warriors. Once many of them cleaved to me. But he and his Valkyries have lured them hence to Valhöll with boar meat, mead from the goat Heidrún, fighting and their ever-renewed virginity.”

    The ever-renewed virginity sounded a pain, but Liz could see the attraction of the rest compared to this cold hall. Obviously Thor’s thoughts ran down the same direction. “I suppose I did let things slip a bit,” he admitted, kicking aside a pile of debris. “The drinking got out of hand. Well, lets start by asking Thjalfi.” He bellowed into the dusty emptiness of the hall. “Thjalfi!!”

    There was no reply. No sound of running feet. Thor scratched his beard. “Hmm. Sif!” He tried Roskva next. Still no reply. He shrugged and bellowed back toward the stable. “Lodin!”

    The man who had taken the goats came dog-trotting in and bowed. “Yes, Master?”

    “Where is everybody? Where is that man of mine? I’ve got some awkward questions to ask him.” Thor slammed a huge meaty fist into his palm.

    Lodin looked a little surprised. “He came in last night with the two prisoners.”

    Liz pounced on him like a cat. “Prisoners. Where are they?”

    Lodin shook his head. “Two of the Einherjar came and fetched the one.”

    “And the other?” demanded Liz.

    “He’s still back in the stable, I suppose,” said Lodin, jerking a thumb in that direction. “I thought the master must have taken them prisoner. I don’t mess with his deeds.”

    “Show me,” said Liz, taking a firm grip on his collar. “Now.”

    So Lodin led them back into the stable—to a pile of straw. “He was here, somewhere. Maybe the goats et him.”

    That was said with perfect seriousness. Considering the two goats, it might very well not be a joke at all.

    Looking around, one of the children found a brass grieve, with the leather strap gnawed.

    “Them goats have a taste for leather,” said Lodin. “The one the Einherjar left here was wearing those. I guess he must have got loose. Nasty looking coves, both of them.” He scratched his head. “Wonder where he could have got to?”

    Liz suddenly had a very good idea where the “Greek Hoplite” agent had got to. Probably a mortuary-shelf back in the USA. But that meant that these Einherjar must have taken Jerry. And at least at that time… he must have still been alive or he too would have disappeared.

    “These Einherjar. Where did they take him?”

    Lodin looked at her as if she was a little simple. “To Valhöll, naturally.”

    Liz took a deep breath. “I suppose I’d better get along to this Valhöll place too. Go and sort these guys out.”

    Even Thor looked a little taken aback. “I suppose you could pass for a Valkyrie,” he said. “But this is not the best of times for going looking for anything at Valhöll.”

    “And a bit of caution might just be called for, Liz,” said Lamont. “There’s no point in you getting killed trying to find Jerry.”

    “I’ve got to try. He’d do the same for me. He has before, crazy fool,” she said fiercely, trying not to cry.

    “For sure, we have to try. But if I have it right this Valhöll place is Odin’s hangout. And it’s supposed to be chock-full of his warriors.”

    Thor nodded. “The Einherjar. The lone warriors, who spend each night in feasting, fighting and drinking and sport with the Valkyries. And each morning the slain are as good as new and the Valkyries are virgins again.”

    “Sounds like a great place for those dragons of Medea’s,” said Liz. “So what do you suggest, Lamont? Besides me running off half-cocked into a bunch of these hungover warriors. I suppose it is a big place too, and there are a fair number of them?”

    “Each gate is big enough for eight hundred to march abreast,” said Thor.

    “Hmm. It must fun to clean,” said Liz, who had long since figured that the best reason for a small apartment was that you didn’t have quite so much to vacuum. “So what do you suggest? I dress up as one of these Valkyries? Can do, I suppose.”

    “I could go over there and ask,” said Thor, “He’s not going to pick a fight with me. But, well, Odin always talks rings around me. I can never get a straight answer out of him, and somehow I always end up doing things his way.”

    He scrutinized Liz for a moment. “You’d need a breastplate and a sword and a shield.”

    “Master,” said Lodin tentatively. “I could go over and ask.”

    “You?” said Thor gaping. “Ask Odin?”

    Lodin nearly fell over backwards into the dung-heap. “No, master! Ask the other stable-hands. They always know what’s going on. And they always give me a horn or two of ale. They like you, master.”

    “Odin gets the noblemen who fall in slaughter, but Thor gets the kin of slaves,” said Thor, sighing. “Ah, well. I think that could work. Find out if Thjalfi is there too, Lodin. If you see him give him a clip around the ear from me and send him home.”

    Lodin grinned revealing good, solid pre-orthodontistry skew teeth. “Now that’ll be a pleasure. He’s changed, master. Not the same man at all that used to come down for a drink with me. And he was sick all over the chariot.”

    “Chariot?” said Thor.

    Lodin looked wary. “Uh. Lady Sif said I wasn’t to say anything about the chariot—after last time.”

    Thor scowled. “I’m Öku-Thor. The charioteer. If I crash it, it’s my look-out. Now get along to Valhöll with you! Try to come back sober enough to muck out here. And don’t come and tell me what good beer they’ve got. I’m craving a drink really badly myself.”

    Liz noticed that his hands were shaking quite a lot. She wondered just how you dealt with a god who was seeing snakes and pink elephants. Thor might be flabby, and have let himself go, but there was still a superhuman quality to him, besides the smell.

    “How about if we tried this sauna,” she said determinedly, turning him. “And Lodin.”

    He bowed. “Yes, Lady?”

    “Don’t stay too long over those horns of ale. Please.”

    He nodded, looking as if this were the first please ever to come his way, and turned toward the stable door, briskly.

    “Don’t run. Slouch along like normal,” said Thor. “You never know when those damned ravens of Odin’s will see you.”

    Dead on cue, two black birds fluttered in. “One of them said ‘Odin’, Hugin. I heard it,” said one of the two.

    Thor glowered at the birds. Liz was much more practical. She picked up a piece of broken yoke and hefted it for weight.

    “Caw! You wouldn’t dare,” said one of the ravens. “We are Odin’s ravens.”

    “I did earlier,” said Liz. “Or have you forgotten the dragon’s heart?”

    “Good eating,” said the first raven. “You haven’t got any more, have you?”

    “We’ve got a job to do, Hugin,” protested the other raven. He sounded exasperated, as if his partner’s greediness was a longstanding issue between them.

    “Yeah. Caw. Anything that says we can’t eat on the job?” Hugin perched on a rafter. “You speak good raven for a human.”

    “Ah,” said Liz. “And there I thought you spoke good human for a raven.”

    “If you can speak to them,” rumbled Thor, “tell them if they’re not out of my stable by the time I say Vanaheim, I’ll try a lighting bolt on them.”

    “Caw. He must more hungover than usual. Come on, Munin. I’m not that interested in who Thor is drinking with.”

    The ravens fluttered out with what looked to Liz like a careful show of not being too hasty but really moving rather fast.

    “They all spy on me,” said Thor blackly.

    Liz could see why, even without suspicion about what the Krim was up to in this Ur-mythworld. In a way it was a good thing Thor had a drinking problem. It was probably why he hadn’t been recruited by the Krim. And the ravens turning up to see who Thor’s “drinking buddies” were smacked of the gatekeeper telling tales. They walked back through to the great hall. Thor had a visible tremor in his hands and shoulders, as he opened the door.

    Liz was surprised to see Marie putting a hand on his arm. “You can do it.”

    He was panting a little. “It’s bigger than me.”

    And suddenly Liz realized that he wasn’t exaggerating. And he was seeing snakes.

    So was she. Well. One snake. More like a dragon, but without wings. And quite big enough to make up for there only being one.

    It’d be a pink elephant next.

    It wasn’t. It was a wolf. A wolf pretty close to the size of the elephant, though.