A Yank at Valhalla Page 12

  He, Thor and I followed the thralls as they bore the heavy mechanism through Valhalla castle and out into the windy, gusty night. Torch-bearing thralls went ahead to illuminate the way. Lights shone from all the castles of Asgard. The Moon was hidden by driving clouds as we moved in a little torchlit group across the giddy span of Bifrost to the flat field on the opposite promontory,

  My plane was still where I had landed it. Aesir warriors and mounted scouts were on guard, watching toward the south for the first approach Of Loki and the Jotun horde. As Odin directed the placing of the copper mechanism, I went to my plane. Something had occurred to me which might enable me to devise an additional weapon for the coming battle.

  In the plane were the half-dozen big signal rockets which were to be used in case I made a forced landing and had to summon help. I began taking the rockets apart, pouring out the gun powder in them, and carefully unfixing the detonators. At the end of a half-hour, I had made three crude hand-grenades or small bombs. I hoped they might be of some use against the Jotuns, who knew nothing of explosives. I left the bombs in the plane and emerged to find Thor waiting for me.

  "My father has already returned to Asgard," the Hammerer told me. "And it is time we followed him, for our nightly Valhalla feast begins soon."

  "Thor, what of tomorrow's battle?" I asked. "If it comes to sword and spear, with the Jotuns outnumbering us many times, what can we do?"

  "We can triumph or we can die!" boomed the giant. "And if it is death — well, the Aesir have lived long and are not afraid to die, so long as we take our enemies with us." He tossed his great hammer in the air and caught it in outstretched hand, as though it were a willow wand. "Be not impatient, Miolnir. You'll not thirst long. And now to Valhalla, Jarl Keith."

  Valhalla was blazing with torchlight when we entered it. Logs in the great hearth burned high. In the flickering torchlight, all the captains and great warriors of the Aesir were gathered at the many tables. The Aesir nobles were appearing, striding toward the high table on the dais. I took my place beside Freya. Beyond her were the two empty seats of Frey and Gerda, then Bragi and Idun, old Aegir and his wife, and brooding, silent Tyr.

  Odin and Frigga entered, and we all stood up. The Aesir king's eye surveyed us with stern pride.

  "Be seated, jarls and captains," he boomed. "Let us eat and drink as of old. Though war and death surge upon us tomorrow, yet is there no fear in our hearts."

  "Skoal to Odin!" rang Forseti's deep voice.

  We seized our drinking-horns and raised them high to a crashing shout of confidence and pride.

  "Skoal to the king!"

  We drained the mead and sat down. The tall serving-maidens hastened to bring us more drink and meat. The din of voices and laughter rang forth, loud as ever. The deepening shadow of dire disaster which lay over Asgard that night intensified, rather than lessened, the merriment of the feast. Horn after horn of the sweet, potent mead we drank.

  Beside me, Freya's blue eyes clung to my face. The shadowed tenderness and love in them was more heart-stirring to me than all else.

  "Come good or ill, Freya," I whispered, "it is worth having lived to sit here tonight with you and your people."

  "Aye, Jarl Keith," she replied. But there was wistfulness in her voice as she added: "I would that I could foretell our sitting here again tomorrow."

  Suddenly all the cheery voices died. Into the hall strode tall Heimdall, warder of Asgard's gates.

  "Why are you here, Heimdall?" Odin asked. "Is it not your task tonight to watch over Bifrost Bridge, and sound the great blast on Giallar horn when the enemy approaches?"

  "Lord Odin, Loki has sent a herald to us," Heimdall answered. "That herald, the Jotun king Utgar, I have admitted under truce. He waits to enter."

  Fierce passion leaped into every face as the men reached for their weapons. Thor raised his great hammer menacingly, but Odin spoke with stern calm.

  "Let the herald of Loki enter."

  Utgar came alone into Valhalla's blazing torchlight. Yet the big, black-bearded Jotun king came swaggering, bearing himself like a conqueror as he strode up to our table where the nobles of the Aesir sat.

  Chapter XVII

  Magic Science

  Utgar's brutal face showed no sign of fear as he met the fiery gaze of his deadly enemies. He spoke to Odin, his coarse, rasping voice loud with utter confidence.

  "I bring a message from the lord Loki, ruler of Midgard and soon to be ruler of Asgard."

  A fierce exclamation went up from every throat. But Odin's stern face did not change as he replied.

  "Speak Loki's message."

  "These are the words of Loki," Utgar said loudly. "'Odin and the other Aesir, the time of your downfall has come. I, whom you cast out long ago, whom you prisoned for centuries, am now free and thirsty for vengeance. Tomorrow I come against you with the Jotuns. We shall have three warriors for each warrior of yours, three ships for each of your ships. You cannot stand against us.

  "'But because I was once of your blood, I shall offer you your lives. If you swear to submit to me as your ruler, if you become my subjects as the Jotuns are and crown me your king in Valhalla hall, then shall you retain your lives. Think well before you refuse this offer. If you refuse it, I shall utterly destroy you all.' These are the words of Loki. What answer, lord Odin?"

  "I'll answer now with Miolnir!" Thor roared, rising with crimson rage on his face.

  A fierce chorus of yells from every throat there, including my own, seconded his cry. But Odin waved us to silence. He spoke slowly, solemnly, gazing gravely down at Utgar.

  "Take this answer to Loki, Jotun. Tell him that he knows well the Aesir will never yield to his demands. We will fight until our swords break in our hands, until our hands be shorn away, until our breath is no more in us. But we will not take back among us the murderer Loki who long ago proved traitor to our race.

  "And tell Loki this also. Tell him that he shall never — even though he and his Jotun hosts utterly overcome us — reap profit from his work. For I say that before that shall happen, all this land will quail beneath destruction. Flame and death shall eat up Midgard and Asgard alike, and all the Jotuns and the Aesir. Tell the arch-traitor that!"

  Involuntarily Utgar recoiled from the dark, dreadful menace in Odin's voice. Then the Jotun king drew his huge figure scornfully erect.

  "Think not that our lord will be frightened by such words," he retorted. "You have asked for doom, and doom you shall have."

  He turned to go, but Tyr, the brooding berserk, stepped in front of him.

  "You know me, Utgar," said Tyr in a slow, bitter voice. "Look for me in tomorrow's battle. I will look for you."

  "Come and find me, then, Aesir," laughed Utgar savagely. "Too long have I heard of your valor. Tomorrow I'll test it with my sword."

  Utgar strode proudly out of the hall, Heimdall following. In the silence, we heard the Jotun king gallop across Asgard to Bifrost Bridge.

  "Let the feast go on," bade Odin at last. Drinking commenced again, the fierce babble of voices arising. My head spun from the mead that I had drunk as the hours went by. Freya sat silent, close inside the circle of my arm, looking up ever and again at my face. I saw Odin brooding as he watched his people make merry on the brink of dreadful war. Pride in these Aesir, gratitude that they allowed me to be one of them, filled me.

  The first light of dawn began slanting through the windows. Bragi stepped forward with his harp, and all voices died as the gentle-faced skald touched the quivering strings. His clear voice rang martial-loud through Valhalla.

  Now comes the great hour

  When Norn-spinners gather

  The fate-threads of warriors

  Of Aesir and Jotun.

  Now Wyrd's dark daughters

  Make ready the battle,

  The struggle long fated

  'Twixt darkness and light.

  Bragi sang on, firing the blood with the stirring strains. And when he had finished, a tremendous shout of
applause roared from us all. As the echoes of our shout died, there came on their heels from far away the low, long reverberation of a horn-blast.

  Louder and louder it grew as we listened in tense silence, waxing until the deep, tremendous note of that mighty trumpet throbbed through every corner of Asgard. Then it fell and died away.

  "The great blast of Giallar horn," Odin said with quiet sternness. "Heimdall warns that the hosts of Loki approach."

  We sprang to our feet. Odin's voice rang in quick command.

  "We go forth to meet them. On the field Vigrid, on the other side of Bifrost Bridge, we will await them. Gather your men and horses. Aegir, you and Niord command our fleet! Put out with all our ships and lie off Asgard until you see along which coast the Jotun fleet comes."

  With a yell the Aesir nobles and captains poured out of Valhalla. Trumpets blared out in the dawn, and there was the thunder of galloping horses, the clanking tramp of marching men hurrying up, the roar of orders shouted loudly. I remained in the almost empty hall with Freya, Odin and his family. The Aesir king was putting over his mail brynja a silver emblem carved with runes.

  Vidar, the tall second son, brought Odin's great sword, and the king buckled it on. Thor, his little eyes blazing with battle-light, was swinging great Miolnir in the air, giving a last test to the strength of its helve.

  Odin looked into the beautiful face of the lady Frigga.

  "Farewell, my wife," he said in his deep voice. "We come back victors or dead men, as Wyrd wills it."

  I had taken Freya into my arms. Almost fiercely I held her bright head between my hands and kissed her. Bright sunbeams from a window lit her hair to dazzling gold as I released her. Her blue eyes looked up into mine without a shadow of fear in their proud depths.

  "Jarl Keith, I must remain with the women instead of riding by your side as I would wish. But my heart goes with you. I am proud that you from the outlands fight today beside my people."

  "Your people are mine, Freya," I answered. "It was I who brought the key that loosed Loki. I can only atone for that by fighting against the devil today."

  Odin was striding toward the exit of the great hall. I tore myself from Freya and followed with giant Thor, Vidal and Vali. We emerged from Valhalla castle into the bright day. Before us were massed the warriors of Asgard, helmets and mail gleaming in the Sun. Three thousand horsemen and five thousand footmen they numbered, their jarls and captains sitting their horses at the head of the men.

  A great shout greeted Odin as we emerged. Thralls held our horses as we swung into the saddles. Thor vaulted heavily onto his great black stallion. Odin raised his hand high and shouted ringingly:

  "To Vigrid!"

  We spurred forward, the king, his sons and I galloping at the head of the massed horsemen. Across the city Asgard we rode, toward the castled gates of Bifrost. They swung open as we approached, and Heimdall, warder of the gates, was waiting for us on his own steed.

  The guards on the tower above again sounded the great, throbbing blast of Giallar horn as we rode through the gates and onto the bridge. With Odin leading us, our horsemen streaming out in narrow file with armor shining gold in the dazzling Sun, we galloped up the arch of the rainbow bridge. Like thunder clattered our horses' hoofs on that flying arc of stone.

  Far below us raged the green sea between Asgard and Midgard. Far back to our right, from the eastern cliffs of Asgard, the Aesir ships were putting out to sea under Aegir's command. Forty big dragons of war, square sails raised to the wind, brazen beaks dipping into the heaving waves, they quickly moved out to await the coming of the Jotun fleet.

  Wild exultation was throbbing in me like wine as we rode down the descending arch of Bifrost Bridge. I had forgotten that I was Keith Masters of the outside world. I had forgotten everything except that I was one of the Aesir, that I was to fight beside them for Freya and for Asgard against the savage hosts of evil Loki.

  We halted on the open, rocky plain that lay at the northern extremity of Midgard. Behind us arched the rainbow bridge leading to Asgard. In front of us, beyond the flat field Vigrid, extended the dark, forested hills of Midgard. Odin had halted us beyond the hillock upon which his spherical copper generator stood, and near which my plane was parked.

  "The footmen will mass in our center under Vidar," Odin ordered. "Half our horsemen on the left wing under Thor, and half on the right under Heimdall."

  By now the infantry was streaming across Bifrost Bridge in dense, long files, archers, and spearmen, and swordsmen. Thor bellowed the orders that drew them and the horsemen up in front of the little hillock. Odin had dismounted and climbed the hillock to his generator, and I followed him. Finally Thor, having completed the disposition of our forces, rode up the hillock to where the Aesir king and I were examining the generator.

  "They come!" boomed Thor, pointing southward with his gleaming hammer.

  We peered intently through the bright daylight. From the south, the glitter of a forest of helmets and spear-points flashed in the Sun as a dense mass of Jotun soldiery advanced along the cliff-edge, screened by horsemen. Far out on the sea to the right, a great fleet of dragon-ships was sailing northward. There were at least a hundred of the black Jotun long-ships, and the Aesir vessels were advancing to meet them. In the south, a growing darkness was clouding the heavens. A strange dusk was creeping up rapidly across the brilliant sky.

  "Loki's storm-cones!" I shouted. "See where he has set them up on that crest, lord Odin!"

  I pointed. Southward, well behind the advancing Jotun army, rose a crest. Upon it was a small group of clustered objects that gleamed in the last rays of the half-obscured Sun.

  "Aye, I see," Odin said in his deep voice. "Loki prepares to loose his lightnings upon us, as we feared."

  The Aesir king began to manipulate the enigmatic controls of his big spherical generator, to throw up a defensive screen. The wind was moaning around us with increasing force as the darkness spread rapidly across the sky. The gloom seemed to boil up visibly from the distant crest where Loki had his storm-cones, and from which he was spraying a terrific electric field to unlock the tempest.

  Down in the sea beyond the cliffs, the dark waves were churning ever higher. They and the shrieking winds were wildly tossing the Jotun and Aesir ships that maneuvered swiftly for battle.

  Crash!

  Out of the night-black sky, a blazing flash of white lightning had struck amid our massed footmen. It left a heap of scorched dead. On its heels came another blinding bolt that blasted three horsemen.

  "Lord Odin, Loki's lightnings begin to slay my men!" roared Heimdall from the right wing. "Let us charge them!"

  "Wait!" Odin called, undismayed.

  At the same time, the spherical copper generator began to throb with power. The radioactive matter in it, which Thor and I had procured with such risk from deep Muspelheim, was breaking down into pure power. The energy was being transformed into a radiant shell of power that was broadcast from the smaller copper ball atop the generator.

  Up into the storm-nighted sky, Odin's mechanism flung a great halo of glowing light. The halo that tented our forces stopped the blazing lightning-bolts that had begun to decimate us! Those blinding flashes hit the halo and splashed harmlessly upon it.

  "It shields us from Loki's storm-cones!" I cried jubilantly. "We've neutralized his best weapon!"

  "Wait, Jarl Keith, before you exult," warned Odin. "There is not enough radioactive fuel to operate this mechanism much longer. When it stops, Loki's lightnings will play yet greater havoc with us."

  "Can't we charge with all our horsemen and destroy Loki and his devilish weapons?" Thor cried fiercely.

  "As soon as we leave the defense of this generator's screen of energy, Loki's lightnings will cleave us," Odin replied.

  I realized the desperate nature of the emergency. If the Aesir and the Jotuns were to fight this battle on anything like even terms, Loki's storm-cones must be destroyed! Even if they were, the Aesir would be facing overwhelmi
ng numbers. But there would be a chance for victory, at least, whereas there would be no chance at all if Loki's forces were not checked.

  In this emergency, my eyes fell on my plane parked some distance to the rear of our forces. Suddenly I remembered the bombs I had made the night before, for possible use in the battle.

  "Lord Odin, I think that I may be able to destroy Loki's weapons!" I cried eagerly. "In my flying craft I have a weapon of the kind my people use in war. Let me try it."

  "Can any flying ship live in this tempest?" the Aesir king asked incredulously.

  I wondered, too. The storm that raged over this strange battlefield had now become chaotic in its insensate fury. From all the black sky over us, bolts of lightning induced by Loki's storm-cones were sizzling and flashing down. Though they were splattering on Odin's defense screen, the mounts of our horsemen were rearing wildly. Our warriors were white-faced in the light of the flashes. In the south, the mighty Jotun army was forming up to advance against us.

  "I can make it!" I persisted without conviction. "I'll circle back around the worst of this storm."

  "Then go, Jarl Keith, and the Norns guide you," Odin said reverently.

  Chapter XVIII

  The Battle for Asgard

  I raced back toward the plane. In a moment I had the rocket motor roaring, and then I managed a perilous take-off from the field. Raging winds, blowing now in this direction and now in that, threatened to hurl my rising plane back to the field. Sheets and flares of blinding lightning dazzled my eyes. But I rose and zoomed out over the sea, to circle back and approach Loki's position from the rear.

  I hurtled through the unnatural darkness over the water. Lightning flares gave me a momentary glimpse of Aesir and Jotun ships locked in death-combat down on the wild waters. I rocketed over them. Then I swung back toward the cliffs of Midgard and came roaring down from behind upon the crest where Loki had his storm-cones.

  I had the cabin-window open, and my crude bombs near at hand. As I dived steeply, I peered down at the crest. Loki stood by the vicious storm-cones. The big mechanisms were clustered close together, their quartz nozzles pointed toward the distant Aesir forces. A fine violet electrical brush played over them as they sprayed their controlled static field.