"Well, yes; but that's no excuse when I'm responsible for your welfare. By the time you've caught your breath they should be here."
"Who?"
He put fingers to his lips and emitted an extraordinarily shrill whistle. It was the loudest sound I'd yet heard from an inhabitant of Niflheim, and I was surprised when it echoed off the distant ceiling.
I was just getting my wind back—and the racing of my heart under control again—when a low rumble of thunder shook the ground. Before I could open my mouth to ask what was up, two enormous horses burst into view from beyond a nearby house-sized boulder. Their sharp hooves churned up the dark soil as they slid to a halt in front of us. They were bridled, and saddled, and obedient as big, shaggy dogs.
They didn't appear to be breathing hard from their run. In fact, I couldn't detect any breathing at all. When I thought about it, I realized that—except for drawing air to speak—Baldr hadn't been breathing, either.
I eyed our mounts. "Dead horses?"
"What else? Several of your ancestors were thoughtful enough to bury horses with themselves, which has provided us with a wide variety of excellent mounts and draft animals. These were once war horses." He grimaced, and sighed. "Their unfortunate masters died of old age in their sleep. Poor souls; no man deserves such a fate—but we can't all die in glory, can we?"
"No," I said dryly, "I don't suppose we can. The species wouldn't survive it, if we did."
He grinned. "I like the way you think. It's... refreshing. Here, let me introduce you to your mount so there'll be no misunderstandings. He hasn't carried a live rider in hundreds of years."
Baldr urged one of the horses forward, and I wondered what I was supposed to do. I'd never been on a horse in my life.
He glanced at my face—did a quick double take—then halted the animal several paces away. He rested one hand casually on the animal's—shoulder?—and lifted one shaggy blond eyebrow in apparent surprise.
His question came out sounding droll. "Not a horseman?"
"Uh, no."
He gave me a look that seemed to ask what the hell we learned on Earth these days. But he didn't say anything; just patiently explained how to mount, steer, start, and stop. I struggled aboard, envious of Baldr's graceful leap to his animal's back.
"We'll go at a slow trot," he said, urging his horse forward. I followed suit, and my horse obeyed, tossing its head briefly in irritation before settling down to the job of nursing me along.
Riding was marginally better than walking, except for the cold wind; but I couldn't grasp properly with my injured knees, so I just sat loosely, hanging on to the reins and the mane, and flopped along as best I could. Each jolt sent agony through the tear across my tailbone. Gradually the seat of my pants grew warm and sticky. I'd almost <MI>rather have walked.
My horse didn't like it much better than I did; but he was surprisingly cooperative, for a war stallion. Dying must've taken all the spirit out of him. We got along well enough, at any rate, and the horse's longer legs covered the ground in mile-eating strides. We approached a massive bend in the river, and Baldr turned his horse slightly inland, urging the animal up the flank of the nearest boulder-strewn ridge.
I followed, having absorbed enough basics to avoid sliding off backward when the horse started up the steep slope. My knees hurt from trying to grip; but I stayed on and, within moments, we reached the crest. Our new vantage point revealed a long, shallow valley, with headlands that jutted out on either side of the bend in the river. The result was an enormously broad, sheltered harbor.
I pulled up sharply. Baldr stopped his horse to let me look, innately courteous. Below us, situated some fifty yards inland from the river's edge, stood a building that would've dwarfed anything but the Pentagon. A gate the size of a football goalpost had been set in a massive wall that ran right around the structure. Spread out as far as I could see, squatting right up the slopes of the ridgelines to either side, were houses, mud streets, and what looked astonishingly like farms.
I felt like a high-desert plainsman astride my shaggy war horse, looking down from my barren wasteland onto civilization.
We had arrived at Hel's Hall of Death.
Chapter Thirteen
The panorama below was one of the dreariest I'd ever seen; it was dark and dull, in shades of green, grey, and black, with a very little bit of dirty white and yellow shining up briefly whenever the eerie phosphorescent lightplay in the ceiling flared brighter directly overhead.
There was movement in the "fields," and along the narrow clay roads. I couldn't identify the crops growing in the farm rows. There was no cheerful sound of bustle and activity, no warm firelight from hearths or windows; just a slow, ponderous sense of heavy, endless work to be done by people dead long before I'd been born.
The farms and the miserable town must furnish Hel with foodstuffs and goods. She hadn't been dead when Odin had banished her here; so presumably she still needed to eat, drink, and make merry in her own gloomy fashion. In that context, it made sense to put to work the legions of dead under her authority. I wondered if she gave them any choice. Somehow I doubted it; but even hard work must be a somewhat attractive alternative to eternal boredom.
As I watched, a curtain of dull mist swept in off the river, obscuring the hall, so Baldr led the way down the slope and I fought to keep from sliding up my horse's neck. When we finally touched level ground again, we were near a hard clay road. It led from a black dock on the river to the massive gate of Hel's hall. The dock seemed to be for Modgud's skiff—I saw no evidence of any other craft.
We rode toward the gate, and were swallowed by dark mist. I shivered under a blast of sleet, which was condensing within the mist to fall on anything miserable enough to be caught below. The gate was closed, and—judging from the looks of the fortress—probably barred from inside.
The closer we rode, the bigger it loomed, until I had to crane my neck, shielding my eyes with one hand against the sleeting mist. The wall itself was built from massive chunks of utterly black stone, mortared with what looked sickeningly like dried blood.
The gate was metal, dull and colorless until a blast of wind opened a rent in the mist, admitting a glare from a bright swirl directly overhead. The brighter light revealed it to be badly tarnished silver. The surface was utterly flat, with no patterns; but the massive posts at the corners were topped by human skulls, coated inside and out with silver, also badly tarnished.
The gate swung ponderously open at Baldr's approach. It groaned like something out of a really bad horror movie. I could've done without the theatrics. If I hadn't been so jittery, I probably would have laughed out loud. Baldr rode straight through. I followed nervously, craning my neck to see what had opened the massive gate so effortlessly. There was nothing there, of course.
Instinctively I rebelled at the idea that it opened by magic; but I was dealing with gods and goddesses, and I'd already seen several sciences go out the window, at least partway. Gary's death alone had tossed out physics and biology. It would have made me feel slightly better to believe there were hidden weights and pulleys concealed inside that massive wall, the better to awe superstitious peasants. But I couldn't really bring myself to believe it.
However she managed it, the gates swung wide to admit us, then closed solidly again. The heavy thud sounded muffled behind us. My horse shied, and I grabbed at his mane to keep from falling off.
"Stupid animal," I muttered, wondering why my rock-steady beast would turn abruptly skittish. The fact that Baldr was also having trouble with his mount made me feel slightly better—until I thought through the implications... .