Gods of Fire and Thunder Page 5

  "Hah!" Hal lay back in comfortable hay, pulling his cloak about him. "Were you to die in true berserker fashion, you'd be mincemeat when you finally fell. The dogs wouldn't want you, let alone your lover. And if Brunhild wouldn't carry you to Wodan the last time you got knocked down, what makes you think another Valkyrie would?"

  Baldur didn't want to hear such quibbling. He rolled over in the hay, turning his back. Finally his murmur reached Hal's ears: "I am ready to join Hagan's band."

  Hal grunted. "I didn't hear him ask you."

  Baldur had the last word, sleepily: "You know, he is my father."

  * * *

  4

  On the second evening of Hal's visit, he joined the family group round the hearth in the chill evening. The central hall of the house, heated by two fireplaces, was big enough for quite a gathering. The drizzling rain had stopped, but the sky was still a clammy gray, and a chill wind suggested that the first snow of the season could not be far off.

  In conversation, he gradually revealed a little more about himself. Baldur's sisters and his aunt had a way of getting a man to talk without seeming to ask probing questions. The small group included the very old grandfather, who smiled encouragingly but had very little to say.

  Hal told his listeners that he had spent the last several years in the far south, round the shores of the Great Sea.

  Now and then one of the younger members of the family, reassured by Hal's mild and courteous manners, tried tentatively to press him to tell his stories. The two half-grown boys, Holah and Noden, especially were keen in their expectation of tales of adventure from one who had spent years of his life voyaging round the mysterious and legendary Great Sea. Hal had told them a couple of stories, but the more he talked the more they wanted to hear.

  The boys by now were growing gradually a little bolder in their questioning. And it was plain they were still fascinated by the battle-hatchet, though neither of them had ventured to lay a hand on it. Probably they had learned in early childhood that men tended to be touchy about their weapons.

  Now Noden pointed at the axe, still standing exactly where Hal had put it on his arrival. "I bet this has seen some fighting, Hal!"

  Holah chimed in. "Can you throw it, Hal? Stick it in a target?"

  "Has it got a name? I've heard that all gods and famous warriors name their weapons!"

  Hal only looked at the youngsters morosely, and they fell silent. One of the elders, who had been half-listening, routinely cautioned the boys to mind their manners, not to pry.

  Suddenly Hal couldn't remember whether or not the lads were orphans. Some of the children, maybe a majority, in the extended household were, but he had got the various names mixed up in his mind. Battle-orphans generally want to avenge their fathers, bereaved siblings their older brothers; so it has always been, and so it will be. Hal told them that he had to think about it before discussing such serious matters.

  When one of the sisters asked him if he had ever met true royalty, he said: "I have seen enough of kings—and of princes and princesses, as well."

  "You really have known such people, then?"

  He hesitated, then shrugged. "Here and there."

  The night was growing late, the fire was beginning to die down, but it was still warm in the snug house. Now Matilda had joined them, but for once she had little to say.

  And Hal, responding to another question: "Yes, since you ask me, I was with Jason. But then I decided . . ." Gazing into the distance, he let his words die away.

  "Decided what?" Matilda was all in favor of plain talk. Secrets were a sign of something wrong.

  That I did not want to be a Hero any longer, caught up in endless games of blood and magic, gold, and power. Games in which I played with some of the high gods themselves and with the human rulers of the earth. Oh, playing for such high stakes can be great sport. Or so it seemed to me. And the very fact of danger has its own fascination. But in the end even the great prizes meant very little.

  How could a man hope to find the words to explain things like that? To Matilda, whose mind was in her farmland. And why should he want to try?

  "That I wanted to go home," he finally answered.

  He wasn't sure if anyone believed him when he said that. Soon someone asked: "Maybe you can tell us, Hal: did Jason really bring home the Golden Fleece? And then it somehow disappeared? That's what we heard a month ago, from travelers passing through."

  "I have heard much the same story myself," was his short answer.

  "But you were there. You must have seen what happened?"

  "There was a great deal of confusion toward the end."

  He had not actually told anyone yet that he was even now carrying with him the muddy remnant of the miracle that had once been called the Golden Fleece.

  Yes, he had wanted to see his home again. But he had known all along that the home he had left as a boy would not be there when he got back to it, that the people and things that he remembered could no longer exist as he remembered them.

  He had been trudging along through the valley of the Einar, on his way home, contemplating how fierce the winter would be just now, up there in the country where he had been born. A great difference from the summery lands in which he had spent the last few years. When he had looked up to catch his first glimpse of Loki's fire on the high crag, it had seemed for a moment like a summons, a beacon of some kind, meant for his eyes in some special way.

  "I suppose you'll have people at home, waiting. They'll be glad to see you when you get back." Matilda was at last getting into the discussion.

  It took Hal a little while to answer. "If they recognize me at all," he said at last. "They'll look at me and tell me I've been gone a long time. And they'll be right." A few faces came and went in memory. Not, he thought, that anyone up there in the north could really be waiting for him now. Not any longer, not after all the years he'd been away. The young girls he remembered would be raising girls and boys of their own by now, and starting to lose their teeth. By the balls and the beard of Zeus, some of them would probably be grandmothers!

  That idea had never occurred to Hal before, and now for some reason it shook him deeply. Had a long time spent in those warm climates made him soft?

  He knew he was not handsome, that most people found his appearance more frightening than heroic. Baldur had been telling everyone how neatly Hal had disposed of one bandit and faced down another, and the story had done Hal no harm in the eyes of anyone in this house. He could see in the faces of Baldur's family that in general they were all still a little afraid of him—but he could see also that men who caused fear were by no means a novelty in this household.

  Other people had retired, rather suddenly, so that before Hal knew it, he and Matilda were sitting alone together by the fading fire.

  She had brought some kind of sewing project with her, and her fingers were keeping busy. She said to the fire: "I could see myself marrying a farmer, if he was ready to settle down and work some good land. But never a fighting man again."

  Hal had nothing to say to that. Presently he got up and went to find his bed in the soft hay.

  Part of Hal's long journey toward home had been accomplished without too much effort, riding a succession of riverboats. Part of it he had endured jolting along in a cart behind a drom, and much had been spent on foot. It had been quite a change from the long voyage with Jason, months of steamy sunburned drudgery at the oar, enlivened with occasional hours of extreme peril. And for Hal the aftermath of the great quest had been greatly disappointing, despite the fact (or maybe because of it) that he had been spending time in the company of gods and kings and princesses and Heroes.

  Leaving that all behind him, he had abandoned whatever hope he might once have held of achieving a glorious success in the world. Instead he had conceived what had seemed a much more modest plan, that of accumulating enough gold to perhaps buy a sizable farm in his own country. Maybe a farm, or maybe a couple of stout new fishing boats. With that kind of
security, a man could settle down and marry.

  One trouble with his plan of retiring to a small farm, as he was beginning to discover, was that unless some unusual opportunity came along, the modest success seemed no more attainable than the great one.

  And now there was opportunity, in the form of Matilda, her generous body and her farmland. Practically inviting him to plow and plant them both. And what was really wrong with Matilda, if he really wanted to settle down? If she imagined she heard messages from the gods, she was still far less crazy than many another woman that he'd known.

  This wasn't home, of course. But then he was far from sure that he any longer had a home, or that he really wanted to find out if he did.

  What was the price of northern land this year? he wondered. Maybe eight or ten acres, in one of the good, rich valleys. And what about the price of boats? How many golden horseshoes would it take to establish himself on a substantial farm? More than one, he would be willing to wager. He thought he would begin to feel comfortable if he had four or five such lumps of yellow metal. To be sure, make it half a dozen.

  Having survived the long ordeal of Jason's Argosy, and what came after it, Haraldur had started to be tempted by the thought of starting a new life for himself while he was still young enough to raise a family.

  Maybe he was being too pessimistic about the costs, and the golden horseshoe fragment already in his pouch might be in itself enough to make him an owner of substantial property when he got home. Maybe. But more likely not.

  He had the feeling that more, much more, might be almost within his grasp now, if he were bold enough to take it. Why not try to gather in the wealth of a dozen horseshoes, or a score? After all, there would be nothing wrong with owning two or three big farms and a fleet of boats.

  The fact that the thing in his pouch was so laden with heavy magic made him mistrust even the permanence of its common value.

  And again, as he sat talking: "But it all comes down to having some modest measure of wealth, enough to do all these nice peaceful things." As he spoke, his eyes met those of the old man sitting across from him, and it seemed to Hal that a kind of understanding passed between them.

  In fact it was Baldur's old grandfather, somewhat hard of hearing, who roused Hal from contemplation by asking him: "It's gold, aye?"

  "Beg pardon, grandsire?"

  "It's gold, I say, that you're concerned about."

  Hal had to agree. "Gold is a thing of constant interest, yes. To a man who must try to plan his future. A subject of which few people ever tire."

  The oldster slapped a lean hand familiarly on Hal's knee. "Aye, it's always the yellow heavy metal, isn't it? You can understand that, northman, I can see it in your eyes. Jewels can give wealth too, but gold is more than simply wealth. It's light, and life, and warmth. The softness and the beauty, and the glow. The light in sparkling jewels is much too sharp."

  And it was practical Matilda, coming in on the end of the conversation, who asked: "Easy enough to say it would be a good idea to have some gold. But how do you propose to get it?"

  Hal closed his eyes. He could imagine himself showing his interlocutor what was left of the small scrap of peculiar fabric he had been carrying with him for some months. Pulling it out of his belt pouch, and holding it out.

  He could readily imagine what the person he was talking to would say: "Where'd you get that rag? It doesn't look like much."

  He saw himself offering it on the palm of his broad hand. "This is gold too, or it once was. Ever hear of the Golden Fleece?"

  "It is important magic, then."

  "Important, and also exceedingly strange. When I first saw this, it was much larger, and such power as it possessed was of a totally different kind." How could he make a very long story short? Only by throwing most of the story away. "It has—changed, since it came into my hands. First, it is very much diminished. Secondly, it has developed a new power, which astonished me the first time I saw it."

  "What power is that? A useful one?"

  "A simple one, and tempting. As for useful . . . maybe 'dangerous' would be a better word. Now it shows me whenever gold is near." And it was easy to perform a demonstration on a small golden ornament.

  He might of course have told a glorious story, all of it true. Something about how he had picked the little patch of fabric out of the mud of a certain southern beach, on the shore of the Great Sea. The remnant had been lying there ignored, forgotten, after people had died to bring it to that place.

  "It was dull and dirty even then. But it was not always so."

  "No?"

  "No."

  And that was all. Hal found that he had suddenly lost his taste for telling stories, even in his imagination.

  In real words, Hal questioned Baldur: "Haven't I heard somewhere that the god himself rides on an eight-legged horse?"

  "Yes. Or he rides behind one, rather; Sleipnir is the creature's name, and it pulls his chariot."

  "You've seen such an animal yourself?"

  "No, nor have I ever seen Wodan. But it is true nevertheless." Baldur was firm in his belief, as only those who have not seen can be firm.

  After another half-minute had gone by he went on: "I have been thinking, Hal, about the Horses."

  "The magic ones, you mean, that the Valkyries ride on? Yes, they seem worth thinking about." Especially their golden shoes.

  "If one of them can carry a woman in through the flames, to Brunhild's side—why could one not carry me?"

  "Oh, we're back on that again?" Hal was about to tell the youth to forget about any crazy plan he might be thinking up for rescuing his girlfriend, or at least paying her a visit. But the golden shoes were still in his mind, and he could not let the subject go.

  Yes, Baldur assured him, Alvit had been very clear about the shoes. Even ordinary horses, which were in common use in some parts of the world, wore smooth, curving bands of metal, nailed right on their hooves. "The Horse's hoof, you see, has no more sense of pain than do our hair or fingernails."

  "I see." Hal made his expression innocent of knowledge, willing to be instructed.

  Baldur was musing. "And in the case of the mounts Valkyries ride, the metal is definitely gold."

  Hal had already made sure of that for himself. Delicately, carefully, and in deep secrecy, scratching his secret fragment of a shoe with his dagger's point. He had weighed its heaviness in his hand, assured himself that it was true gold.

  Baldur now began quietly and eagerly to explain the plan he had been devising, which involved borrowing at least one Horse from Wodan's stables. Hal's first impression was that it was the kind of scheme hatched by men who had been hit too often on the head.

  No one in his right mind would use soft lovely gold to make a mundane horseshoe, and see the precious metal quickly worn away to nothing on hard ground. But gold with a suitable alloy of magic, now—that could be a very different matter.

  Hal didn't want to sound too easily convinced. "It strikes me that golden horseshoes would wear out very quickly."

  "Not on the feet of a Horse who does most of his running in the air. And of course it isn't just plain ordinary gold, it must be imbued with magic."

  Hal had more questions: Exactly why was the Valkyrie riding into the fire, then out of it again, when Baldur saw her at it?

  "I thought I had explained'that. Because Alvit wanted to—she dared to—visit Wodan's prisoner and see if anything could be done for her. She found Brunhild alive, breathing, seemingly unharmed, but in an enchanted sleep." Baldur's voice almost broke on the last word, and he paused to regain his grim determination. "Hal, I must have the use of one of those Horses."

  "Sounds impossible."

  "Why? Nothing is impossible, to a true warrior-hero. To a man who refuses to admit impossibility."

  "Oh, really? For one thing, you have no idea where the Valkyries' Horses are stabled—or is that another secret you've been keeping?"

  "It's true, I don't know where the Horses are, exactly."
Baldur admitted. Then he looked up slyly. "Probably they're in Valhalla. But wherever they are, I do know a means of reaching them."

  "What way?"

  "This must be kept a secret. Have I your word, as—as a warrior and a gentleman?"

  "My solemn word as a warrior and gentleman. Oh, of course."

  The youth looked all around, then dropped his voice till Hal could barely hear it. "I know who serves as Wodan's farriers. They are gnomes, and I have even visited their village."

  Afterward, Hal found it hard to remember whether it was he himself or Baldur who first suggested that they should make a scouting trip to the gnomes' village. Whoever had thought of it first, some such reconnaissance seemed the only way they were going to find out any more about Wodan's Horses—and in particular about their golden shoes, which was the part that interested Hal.

  Meanwhile Hal, as usual, kept up his patient search for more information. "Does anyone know what was up on that crag before the fire started? I mean, was there really a castle, watchtower, anything of the kind?"

  Even as he asked the question, he was reasonably sure that the answer must be no. If there had been any substantial structure, then there should have been a road going to the top, or at least the traces of an old one. No one could put up a sizable house or fort atop a steep hill without first making a road, or at least wearing a broad path with all the going up and coming down of workers and materials. And of course there had been nothing of the kind.

  Baldur had no particular interest in golden shoes, or gold in any form: what he kept coming back to was that the only known way to get through Loki's fire was by riding a Valkyrie's Horse.

  Hal just as persistently kept trying to lead the talk from Horses into the related subject of horseshoes.

  Hal kept at it. "So, Wodan's cavalry can really fly, then. Not just fly, but carry people through Loki's fire without harm."

  "Oh, no doubt about it. I know it's hard to believe, Hal, but—how many times do I have to tell you? If I had a Horse here now, I could be at Brunhild's side within an hour."