"What thoughts are in your head, mortal?"
Her raspy voice—snake scales slithering across dry rock—reached over the sound of the wind, apparently without effort. I turned reluctantly to meet her gaze.
"This sea—what is it called?" I gestured out to the horizon.
Her cackle filled my ears. "This is no sea, human. This is the River Gjoll, flowing out of the great wellspring Hvergelmir, which feeds all the rivers of Niflheim. Gjoll is Hel's river—it flows past her gate." She laughed again. "Living men are not welcome in her hall, little man. Hel prefers them newly dead. Shall we oblige her?"
Before I could even try to frame an answer, she was talking again.
"Loki's kin, she is, full blood daughter, and sent here by Them above as don't trust her. Give Hel the dead to satisfy her, They said, and she won't look to Asgard with greed in her eye." The old woman's laugh wheezed with every sentence. "Comes the hour when the sons of Muspell ride, and Hel will have Asgard; aye, in flames. And I, Modgud, will stand and watch as I've done through these long centuries."
Just when I thought the bombast had ended, Modgud's eyes caught mine and held them.
"I'll watch for Loki's fall in the Final Battle, I will, the great Ragnarok, and I'll laugh when I see him down. His groaning and fighting to be free of the Rocks shook the earth and broke my lovely bridge... ." Her thin shoulders were shaking, with visible rage. Spittle flew from loose lips. "Once I was Queen of the Golden Bridge of the Gjoll and now—nothing!—nothing but a slave, chained to this wretched boat. I'll watch him bleed and die on Vigrid's plain and I'll laugh as Surt burns the world. Aye, it'll be a fine day for vengeance when the sons of Muspell ride."
Modgud's eyes were glazed, my presence forgotten.
And I thought I was out for vengeance... ?
I hoped to hell—or was it Hel?—I did nothing to anger the old witch. Enemies like her I could do without. She began crooning to herself in a language I'd never heard, so I turned my gaze back out to sea—or rather, to the river. Christ, they didn't do things on a small scale in Niflheim. The opposite shore was closer; but not much.
What would I find on that inhospitable jut of land? Niflheim was where the old, the sick, and the accident-prone came when they died. From everything I could gather, it was supposed to be a pretty dull place. All the real fun was in Valhalla; although if Valhalla was supposed to be fun, maybe I'd settle for boredom and Niflheim.
The only thing I heard was wind in my ears. Given the way sound carries across the water, I couldn't imagine there'd be much happening over there. Maybe I'd find Hel's Hall, like Modgud had said. Would Loki's daughter tell me where to find her father? Or just casually squash the life out of me for daring to intrude into her kingdom? My fingers caressed my pistol and I thought I heard the old crone's snicker at my back.
A movement far off to port, almost on the horizon, caught my eye. The water was boiling. Great waves rolled off some disturbance. Plumes of spray shot into the air like a row of uncapped oil wells—angry foam bubbled and hissed for nearly a mile in either direction from the disturbance's center. A brief gleam tantalized my retinas, gone before I could name color or substance. The water continued to boil and spew for several moments more, then gradually subsided to flat black again.
I turned to look at Modgud; but she hadn't noticed or didn't care, and after her response to my last question, I didn't much feel like asking. The first rolling swell caught up with the skiff, lifting it slightly before the stern slipped into the trough. I thought the next wave would surely swamp us; but the skiff only repeated the gentle, lifting motion. Or was Modgud doing the lifting to keep her craft afloat?
I wondered if Death liked wet feet any more than the rest of us. Except she wasn't really Death; Hel was... .
I shook my head to clear it. Maybe it was something in the air, or just exhaustion; but my thought processes were beginning to resemble a well-scrambled egg. I turned my eyes back toward the far shore, which to my astonishment suddenly was only a hundred yards away.
There was no repetition of the bone beach. Instead, the ground was an odd, indefinable grey, somewhere between green and black, undercut at the water's edge to form a steep clay bank as high as my waist. The other side of the bridge had collapsed into stony rubble. From the river's edge, the land rose in sharp ridges, each higher than the last, blocking further view inland. Strewn across those ridges, and half buried in them, were jagged boulders, somewhat lighter grey in color, ranging from no larger than my fist to massive blocks that would've dwarfed a three-bedroom house. Some glinted oddly in the light, with occasional bright flashes of genuine color that made me wonder if they, too, were phosphorescing.
I didn't see anything that remotely resembled buildings. There was no sign of vegetation; but as we neared the bank, I could see that the top six inches of soil were extremely dark, forming a layer that looked richer, more organic than the clay below. The whole sweep of land was barren, utterly deserted. I wasn't sure if I should be relieved or apprehensive at the lack of habitation.
I had no more than these few moments for an impression of my destination because the boat had stopped dead in the water. The silence of the cavern rushed into my ears, replacing the roar of wind. We were still a good twenty yards from shore. I turned to look at Modgud. What now?
"You must pay the toll," she said softly, her eyes dancing.
I glanced at the intervening yards of water. I was a pretty good swimmer. A cackle interrupted my thoughts. She had picked up the braincase bowl and was scooping out a handful of silver coins. Modgud dipped the skull into the water, filling it; but carefully kept her gnarled fingers dry. She raised the braincase to eye level. Seconds later, water poured out the hole it had eaten through the bottom. I swallowed.
"You must pay the toll," she said again, with a grin that lingered as her eyes measured my braincase against the ruined bowl in her hand.
"Uh..." I fumbled through my pockets, fingers shaking despite my efforts to remain calm. I dug out a scant handful of change and saw mostly pennies, plus a couple of old "lucky" dimes I was never without.
I didn't have any gold, except the little gold Thor's hammer on a chain around my neck. I was awfully fond of that.
"I—uh—haven't got any gold coins—"
Modgud spat over the side. There was a quiet hiss as spittle struck the acid "water." Her lip curled. "Gold is for trinkets. Junk. Silver was the price of the bridge, and silver is the price of the ferry."
I scooped up both dimes and started to hand them over.
A disembodied voice reached across the water. "I wouldn't give her both, if I were you."
I spun. Pennies slid all over the bottom of the skiff. A man was rising to his feet, from a comfortable seat against a boulder.
"What?" I knew I sounded like a Vienna Boys' Choir soprano, and didn't care. I'd looked at that piece of ground, and hadn't even noticed him.
"I'd give her only one," he repeated, with a genial smile. "How else will you pay for the ride back across?"
Good point.
If I lived that long.
I handed Modgud one dime. She curled bony, claw-tipped fingers around it.
The boat swept silently toward shore, and grounded gently a moment later. The owner of the disembodied voice had come down to the shoreline, and now stood looking into the skiff. Blond, with laughing blue eyes. He was surprisingly short, but compactly built and muscular. There couldn't have been an ounce of fat anywhere on him. Even at my best—which I hadn't been since getting shot full of holes—I was nothing but flabby standing beside him. And this guy was dead as a doornail. Dead people were supposed to look... well... decently dead.