Groggily I rolled over. The cyalume still glowed brightly. Higher up, another greenish glow caught my attention.
Uh-oh.
I dragged myself up onto hands and knees and peered at the knife. It was embedded nearly to the guard in stone.
The eerie green light which I'd seen swirling through it during battle was back. A high-pitched sound resonated through the very rocks. I reached out hesitantly and touched the haft. The tail grabbed my wrist with scalding strength. I yowled and jerked back. It felt like I'd tried to move the whole mountain with my wrist.
"Ungh—"
There wasn't room to stand up, so I shrugged out of my pack, and sat with both feet braced against the wall. I grabbed hold with both hands, and pulled. Several vertebrae popped creatively; then the blade wrenched loose from crumbling stone and my head cracked hard on the opposite tunnel wall.
When the stars disappeared, I shook myself and sat up.
The knife lay quietly in my grasp. The blade wasn't even scratched.
It figured.
I rubbed my skull gingerly and didn't feel any blood, although there was a lump growing beneath the skin. Having determined that I was relatively undamaged, I sheathed the knife and retrieved the cyalume stick, then took a quick look around.
This passage was low and very narrow. Beyond the glow of my lightstick it seemed to end in the utter blackness I'd learned to associate with deep passages. So far so good. I eased up onto my knees and established that there was just enough clearance to crawl with my pack in place, so I strapped it back on and began to explore.
Presently the tunnel opened out into a larger chamber. Walls, floor, and ceiling had been smoothed from centuries of flowing water. Soft green cyalume light showed a vast circular pattern worn into a bowl-shaped depression below me. Looking up, I saw a matching pattern on the ceiling, forming a dome above my head. It looked as if a whirlpool had formed where the tunnel opened out, carving the dome above and bowl below. Beyond the depression, the passageway continued on, wider and higher, through a black hole in the far wall.
Good. That boded well. But first, I had a little urgent business to attend to. I was shivering so hard my elbows wanted to collapse beneath me. First came dry clothing. Fortunately, I'd packed my spares, including underwear and socks, in waterproof bags. I stripped off my wet stuff, shucked on dry clothes, and spent the next fifteen minutes doing calisthenics. When I stopped shivering and finally began to feel warm again, I sat down to deal with the rest of my soggy gear.
The sleeping bag was hopeless. I set it aside to form an "abandon" pile. Inside the pack, I found a waterlogged lump of former hardtack biscuits glued to the inside of their paper container. My stomach rebelled; but I'd eaten worse. I patted the mess into a lump, and divided it into three smaller "loaves." These I put to one side, along with my remaining bits of dried fruit and the last jerky stick.
Most of my spare ammo was wrapped in plastic against the dampness of the cave. I was pleased to find it still dry, despite my recent immersion. I set the wet plastic carefully aside and stacked ammo into a neat little pile, then removed the magazines from my belt pouches. They were soaking wet, of course, along with the ammo in them. I hoped the individual rounds were well sealed. I emptied the magazines and set the wet rounds to one side.
My meager supply of carbide was completely useless now, of course, since I had no way of burning it without the helmet lantern. I stacked that on top of the sleeping bag.
I then emptied every pouch and pocket of my gear, and spread everything out. I frowned and pulled at my lower lip. Two of my four twelve-hour lightsticks had broken their vials during my bout with the river, so I had plenty of light at the moment; but I'd run out one day sooner than I'd anticipated. I was down to two twelve-hour sticks, four six-hour units, and seven half-hour shorties, for a total of two days, three and a half hours of potential light.
Something told me I wasn't going to stumble across the gateway to Niflheim during the next two days and three and a half hours; but there wasn't much I could do about that. Spelunking in the dark ought to be about as much fun as scuba diving the Titanic.
Having established the condition of that gear absolutely essential to my survival, my next priority was to dry and clean the guns. They shouldn't have begun to rust yet, of course; but it didn't pay to take chances. Rummaging through my supplies, I found the little field cleaning kit I carried with me everywhere, and took the guns apart one at a time, drying, cleaning, lubricating, and carefully inspecting each part before reassembly. I checked the AR-180 aluminum magazines for damage. Thankfully, I found none, so I dried them and the rounds they had contained.
I took more care with the P-7 magazines, drying and very lightly oiling each one, both inside and out; then I dried each individual round thoroughly before returning it to the magazine. The only ammunition I had been able to buy for the P-7 had been some World War II German surplus 9mm Parabellum, which had steel-jacketed iron bullets rather than the civilian hollow-points I would have preferred. The caution I used in drying them out was well advised; there's always a risk of iron rounds rusting in steel magazines, even without submersing them in mineral-rich water.
Then, hungry enough to eat nails, I bit into the first of the three "bread loaves." It was awfuclass="underline" wet and doughy. But I choked it down and washed the taste from my mouth with water.
After drinking my fill—half emptying the canteen in the process—I grabbed a cyalume stick and crawled back to the river. Refilling the canteens left me with a full supply. I was relatively warm, relatively dry, and relatively fed. All in all, I felt relatively marvelous—only mildly battered, bruised, and bashed. Not bad for a guy who ought to have been dead a couple of times over.
Once everything was dry, I threaded the chain that held my gold Thor's hammer through carrying holes in the ends of my three functioning lightsticks. I couldn't afford not to have both hands free; hanging from my chest was a good place for them. Then I snugged the magazines back into the pouches on the web gear, repacked everything I was taking with me, and carefully strapped the rifle to the pack frame, with the stock folded so the barrel wouldn't scrape on the low ceiling.
The P-7 hung reassuringly at my waist, and the knife seemed to hum a pleasant little tune against my calf. My footsteps echoed above the distant sound of the river. I even whistled a Sousa tune, feeling remarkably well pleased with the world.
Which was probably a good indication that the bottom was about to fall out again.
It was Crater's fault we visited Frau Stempel in the first place. I'd never been to a fortune teller in my life, although I'd been to the circus as a kid, and had blown plenty of pop-bottle money on the sideshows. Crater got this wild idea that a fortune teller could warn us if the ragheads were going to hit us again, so after an argument, and several bets and counter bets, we decided to visit Frau Stempel. She had a place in the village, nice and discreet, and made a living selling books, candles, and advice. She could've been my grandmother.
As luck would have it, I drew lots for the first session.
"Sit down, won't you?" she asked with a smile.
Her "sitting room" smelled like a bakery, warm with scents of apples and cinnamon. There was no trace of mumbo-jumbo knickknackery, just a cozy little parlor for two, with comfortable, overstuffed chairs, and a little table with Belgian lace draped over it.
"You do not believe in what you have come for, do you?"
I glanced up, and met bemused blue eyes. I started to answer, reconsidered, and finally said, "Frau Stempel, I don't know what I believe."