Her eyes widened slightly; then she simply patted my hand, and sat down across the table from me. She didn't pull out tarot cards, or put a crystal ball between us. All she did was move a candle holder to the center of the table, and fish out a box of wooden matches. The candle was white, and covered with little squiggles and cramped words. She lit the new wick, fanned out the match, and smiled.
"Now, what would you like to know, my young friend? There is a girl, perhaps, or do you have a soldier's fears?"
What did I want to know? I didn't really give a damn about ragheads anymore, so long as they kept to their side of the fence. Even if they didn't, I could handle myself in a fight. Still, that's what we'd come to find out.
I opened my lips to ask about the ragheads, and said, "Tell me how to find Niflheim."
Her eyes shot wide, and her face lost color.
"What?" Her voice was breathless.
"Niflheim," I said with growing conviction. I leaned forward, with my elbows propped against Belgian lace. "If you're any good, Frau Stempel, tell me how to find Niflheim, without dying."
She blinked several times, and closed her hands in folds of the lace, then swallowed. "You... are playing with me, yes?"
I held her gaze. "I'm not crazy," I said softly. "And I'm not making a joke."
Frau Stempel wet her lips, then excused herself and poured a glass of water from a pitcher and drank it down in two rapid gulps. Then she returned to the table, and proceeded to ignore me completely. She concentrated on the candle flame, and whispered words, too softly for me to hear. The room seemed to grow darker, despite afternoon sunlight pouring through the curtains and the candle flame between us. The back of my neck crawled, and I found myself wanting to glance over my shoulder. Maybe this hadn't been my best idea ever... .
The candle flared wildly in the still air. For an instant, I thought someone must have opened the door on us—
Then a four-foot column of flame shot upward from the table. Frau Stempel screamed and I found myself on my feet, backing away from searing heat. Someone was yelling outside, trying to get the door open. Frau Stempel ran for the door, herself, but it wouldn't open. She whirled and faced the thing that was growing out of the fire. I had never taken my eyes from it.
It had fangs, and wild, angry eyes, and the lean, hungry shape of a hunting dog. Belgian lace ignited under its paws. Fire spread to the carpet, the chairs. Snarls filled the parlor, and the saliva dripping from its mouth as it advanced ignited new fires. Frau Stempel screamed again, and beat on the door.
There wasn't a dry spot anywhere on me, and I was having trouble breathing... . I hurled myself between Frau Stempel and the thing locked in the room with us.
It lunged.
I yelled, and threw one arm up—
A warm haft slid into my hand and wild green light flared brighter than the hellhound. Heat engulfed my whole body, and I yelled again. Momentum carried the blade right through the fiery apparition, muzzle to tail. I heard a sizzle as it parted to pass on either side of me... .
Then it was gone.
I stood panting in the middle of the rug, and clutched Gary's knife. The green glow vanished... and so did the knife. Little fires scorched the rug all around my feet. I stamped them out, and grabbed the pitcher of ice water. That took care of the smoldering chairs and tablecloth. A moan reached me from near the door, then the knob simply turned, and the whole gang piled into the room.
"What the hell happened?"
"Get Frau Stempel!" I snapped. She was seated on the floor.
Wally picked her up, and carried her out of the room, while Chuck wrestled with the windows. The parlor was full of smoke. I followed Wally, who had found a couch in the next room.
"Frau Stempel? Are you all right?"
She looked up, and moaned. "Go away... ."
I crouched beside her. "I'm very sorry, Frau Stempel. I... had no idea... ."
She closed her eyes. "Please, go away."
Her face was somewhere between grey and white, and she was shaking uncontrollably. Wally covered her, and found a telephone. We waited until the doctor had arrived. I explained that the candle had overturned, and the room had caught fire, then I left him with some money to cover the cost of his visit and the damage to her home. I felt like a worm; but it was the best I could do.
Crater never did get his answer; but I'd gotten mine.
There was only one hellhound in all of Norse mythology. Its name was Garm. The cave it guarded was the entrance to Niflheim. Somewhere, that cave existed, and Odin didn't want me to find it. In less than three weeks, I'd have all the time in the world to hunt. Just three weeks...
If I could keep Odin from killing me first.
For the next three weeks, I watched my back and slept with one eye on the door, and generally was as edgy as an addict three days after his last blow. At any rate, I watched my step. Every step.
By the time my last shift on the towers rolled around (although I didn't know then it would be my last), I was beginning to wonder if maybe Odin wasn't saving up for a shoe the size of Manhattan to drop on me. Conditions had gotten back to relative normal—although nobody ever talked about Gary Vernon or Frau Stempel—and the guys had started in with the jokes about my being so "short" I'd have to start standing on a ladder to unzip my fly, and other equally crude quips designed to get me through my last few weeks as a U.S. infantryman. They were a good bunch of guys, and I knew I'd miss them.
It was a quiet shift from the start; but there was a new moon, which meant it was black as the inside of a cave beyond the lights. Bright sunshine the day before had started to thaw the frozen ground, leaving relatively warm, wet earth under a blanket of cool night air. Spring wasn't supposed to arrive in Germany until April, but the weather these days was every bit as weird as everything else in my life had been lately.
The nice part was not freezing to death in the towers, or having to slog through two feet of snow on patrol. The bad part was, cool moist air hitting the warm earth as it chilled had resulted in a sea of ground fog stretching across the whole countryside and hiding the terrain beneath a layer of thick white nothingness.
As luck would have it, I was stuck in Tower Three, facing the worst spot on the perimeter, a belly-deep washout that ended just outside the fence. It ended there only because we'd shoveled half a truckload of dirt into it on this side to keep it from running right into the compound. I couldn't see anything of the washout tonight, though. The fences rose from drifting fog, floating eerily above the wet earth as though we'd invented antigravity.
I hated nights like this. There was no way to see what might be crawling around out there, and I didn't have much backup from either direction if things got hot. Butler was over on my right, nowhere to be seen through his windows. Our resident doper was stretched out on the floor again, dead to the world, leaving me with double terrain to watch.
At least I didn't have to worry about watching over to my left. Johnson had really cracked that day I cut up the ragheads. Brass'd had to strip him of his security clearance and pull him off the towers. He'd kept babbling about "that knife... ." They'd given him a job filling ketchup bottles in the mess hall. At least he was off the guard towers and out of my hair.
(Every time I asked Sergeant Brown about the ragheads I'd cut up, he just said, "We're working on it," or, "The MPs are handling it." I finally quit asking.)
There hadn't been any more incidents since then, either. We'd put the fear of Allah into them; or at least made them more cautious. I hoped we hadn't made them too cautious—they'd always left traces before, warning us they were in the area; but things had been so quiet lately, everyone was getting too relaxed. I didn't like it; but there wasn't a thing I could do about it, except sweat.