Norse Code Part 17

Grimnir wanted to give him a quick, noncommittal response and keep moving, but such behavior wouldn't do here, especially not when it came to discourse with Aesir.

"The name's Grimnir. And, yeah, I work for Radgrid."

"Right on," said Modi, grabbing four beer tankards from a pa.s.sing slave and downing them all in rapid succession. He belched fetid breath and let the tankards crash to the floor. He was wearing a pair of wraparound mirror shades, a smear of heavy-duty suntan lotion across the bridge of his nose.

"Cool party, huh?" said Modi.

"Right on," said Magni.

Grimnir now remembered that he did not merely dislike Magni and Modi but that, in fact, he hated them. And to be asked a second time since arriving in Valhalla about his a.s.sociation with Radgrid-well, it was weird.

Claiming the need to pee, he bid the brothers farewell and fled the hall.

Grimnir kept some private rooms near the servant quarters on one of the city's lower slopes, and as he made his way there, the contrast between the revelry in Valhalla and the subdued atmosphere beyond its timbers could not have been more stark.

His breath clouded when he entered his rooms, the fire in the hearth dead despite the fact that he'd hired a man to keep it stoked at all times. It was hard to get good help in these late days. He himself hadn't turned out to be such a faithful servant to Radgrid-a source of shame but not regret. Mist needed him more. And, in the end, he'd come to believe in her cause over any others.

Feeling along the wall to the woodpile, he stewed over Tang Xiang's accusations. Who stood to profit from Ragnarok? The obvious answer was, anyone who survived to inherit the new world that was coming after. According to that old bat sibyl, that meant Baldr and Hod, Vidar and Vali, and those two faux-surfer hodads, Magni and Modi. That was six G.o.ds right there who had reason to discourage anyone from fighting against the monsters and giants at the end. Some of them might even be willing to help Ragnarok along, to speed the ascent of the survivors. That was certainly what Grimnir would do, if he were an Aesir prophesied to rule after Ragnarok. And he'd go a step further by promising afterlife favors to anyone who supported him now, even if he had no way of a.s.suring those persons' survival.

With no shortage of people who might try to game the system, Grimnir hadn't really left Mist behind to tilt at windmills. He'd left her to fight a d.a.m.ned conspiracy.

How fast, he wondered, could he get back across the rainbow bridge? If he grabbed a fresh horse while Valhalla partied, he might be able to find Mist before Hermod had a chance to drag her off on his next series of disasters.

"Grimnir."

He drew his dagger and turned around to be struck by a flashlight beam. Even in the glare, he recognized Radgrid's silhouette.

"Bright," he said, blinking.

"My apologies." She redirected the beam to the stone wall, casting the room in a cone of lemon-colored light. Her hair glinted like burnished copper, framing her icicle-white face. "I don't mean to trespa.s.s," she said, "but I'd heard you were seen leaving Valhalla, and I thought I might find you here."

She's going to ask me for a progress report, thought Grimnir. She'd want to know if he'd ever managed to track down her little renegade Valkyrie. She'd eventually get around to asking about Hermod too. And she'd use the interview as an opportunity to find out if Grimnir knew about the Ragnarok conspiracy, of which he was now as certain as he was about his own shoe size.

I know nothing, I suspect nothing, don't make a face, don't make a face, think about your shoe size, don't make a face.

Radgrid's expression changed subtly, growing cooler.

Dammit, thought Grimnir. He must have made a face.

"Fourteen triple-E," he said.

He charged her like a bull elephant, lunging to the side just in time to avoid Radgrid's side-thrust kick to his knee. He whipped his dagger around and struck for her neck, but she was too fast, and his blade made only a shallow nick in her arm. Rather than dance with her, he moved around and dove through the door.

He was not surprised to find Modi and Magni waiting for him outside.

Grimnir ran. He knew he had no chance of besting the brothers in combat, even though most of their great feats of strength were probably exaggerated, but he might have a chance of reaching the rainbow bridge if he could lose them in the labyrinthine markets near Hod's fallen-down old hall. Like most of the Aesir, Magni and Modi seldom came near this part of the city, but Grimnir knew its every stable and back alley.

He scaled the timber wall of a slave house and crept along its roof, listening for sounds of the brothers' clumsy pursuit.

"Dude, Radgrid's removed all her protections. If you die outside Valhalla, you'll be totally dead," one of the brothers called. "Come on out and we'll let you live."

Leaping between rooftops, Grimnir made his way to the trades district, where hammers striking anvils rang from the workshops. The roofs were too far apart to leap across here, and he was forced to ground. His boots splashed in stinking waste as he ran down the tanners' lane, and he didn't slow as he raced through a market specializing in Alfheim p.o.r.nography. In his haste, he knocked over a cart of explicitly carved stones but kept on going. He wasn't far from the tall gra.s.sland between the city and the bridge, and if he kept low, he doubted those two lumbering clods would catch him.

An arrow pierced his back. Grimnir fell with a shocked scream.

He rolled onto his shoulder and tried in vain to reach the arrow while Radgrid slowly approached, another arrow nocked in her bow. Every movement sent spikes of pain shooting through his entire body, down to the tips of his toes. He drew his sword.

"Do your friends have the eye?" Radgrid said.

Leaning on his sword for support, Grimnir forced himself to his feet. He struggled for breath. "Even if I knew what you were talking about, I wouldn't tell you."

She loosed her arrow, and Grimnir's blade sang when he knocked the shaft from the air. The effort cost him. He blinked sweat from his eyes.

Radgrid nocked another arrow.

"What did they promise you, Radgrid? The chance to be some G.o.dling's lap bunny?"

She loosed the arrow, and Grimnir swatted at it. The broken shaft scratched his cheek. His knees felt like water.

"I will be no one's concubine," she said. "Instead, I will be a G.o.ddess myself, given a world all my own."

"How nice for you. Who's arranging this little promotion? It's totally out of Magni and Modi's league. Vidar, then? Come on, you're going to kill me anyway. Consider filling me in on things my severance pay."

Radgrid nocked another arrow.

"How high up the chain of command does this go? Is it Frigg? Odin himself?"

She loosed the arrow. It glanced off his sword and lodged below his collarbone, and he roared at the drilling pain.

She nocked another arrow and pulled back on the string.

"Swords, you b.i.t.c.h. Let's finish this with swords."

The Valkyrie stood motionless for a moment, and then she slowly relieved the tension on her bow. "As you wish, Grimnir."

Modi and Magni stepped from the alley behind her, red-faced and breathing hard. Their sword blades resembled chain saws. Radgrid put down her bow and drew her own sword, a long, lethal needle.

With two arrows jutting from his body, Grimnir grinned. "You wanna wait for your two thugs to catch their breath, or should we just launch right into it?"

"You can't win, Grimnir. It's hopeless."

Grimnir coughed. He tasted blood. "Is that supposed to discourage me? I'm Einherjar. Hopeless fights are my specialty."

"It didn't have to be this way," Radgrid said, with what seemed like genuine regret. "Why didn't you bring Mist to me instead of allying yourself with her and Hermod? Your higher oath was to me."

"The simple truth is, I like her better." He raised his sword as high as he could, and with a cry of rage and pain, he surged forward.

He dodged Radgrid's first thrust and rammed his shoulder into her, knocking her back into Magni. With the two of them busy untangling themselves, Grimnir went for Modi, driving his blade halfway through his skull. The G.o.d collapsed with a soft squeak, his brains leaking from his crushed head, but Grimnir could not dislodge his sword. He heard Magni's footsteps thundering behind him.

Ah, well, thought Grimnir. I've been a dead man for centuries anyway. And, hey, he'd killed Modi, who was supposed to have survived Ragnarok. So much for the prophecy, then.

He regretted only that he wouldn't be able to tell Mist about it. She would have found it encouraging.

THERE WAS NOISE and there was pain. The noise was the ringing buzz of a misshapen gong that wouldn't let the little bones in Mist's ears stop vibrating. The pain was a deep bone ache, as though she'd been beaten with pillows stuffed with lead shot. Both were courtesy of the shock wave from the grenade she'd tossed through the seam before it had sealed, with her and Hermod on one side of it and Vidar on the other.

Most of Vidar, anyway. His singed hand and forearm lay a few feet away, fingers still gripping his sword. Mist made a point of not looking in that direction. The severed arm was a grisly sight, but the weird blade was downright objectionable.

Mist and Hermod and Winston had fetched up on a sharp knuckle of rock in a small bay ringed by crumbled masonry. Lightning flashed in the indigo sky, but no report of thunder followed. The scent of warm bread hung on the air.

A mild wind rustled Sleipnir's mane. Mist cautiously patted the horse's neck, grateful for his help in the timely evacuation from the Hollywood Bowl. Now she just needed to figure out how to hoist Hermod onto Sleipnir's back so they could get out of here before Vidar came after them. Hermod's wound didn't look too gruesome, just a clean slit in his shoulder a few inches long, but he was in bad shape. Mist drew a healing rune around the wound in Sharpie pen, but it didn't seem to help. Hermod murmured feverishly. The words Mist could pick out were limited to wolves and eye and coffee.

Rhythmic splashing wafted through the fog, accompanied by the hollow drumming of wood b.u.mping against wood: a rowboat.

Hermod continued to babble. Would he suffocate if she stuffed his jacket in his mouth to shut him up?

"Put the eye in the hole," Hermod groaned. "Oh, the hole in me is so big."

The sounds of rowing paused. Mist held her breath, but it was useless. Hermod moaned softly, Winston panted wetly, and Sleipnir rumbled with a distinctly unhorselike growl.

Mist pried Vidar's fingers from his sword, kicked his arm into the water, and struggled against nausea while she stowed the sword in Hermod's duffel. She drew her own sword and crouched low as the graceful prow of a boat approached the rock.

Long white oars rose out of the water to be stowed aboard the boat, and then a figure gracefully lifted itself over the gunwales and settled on the ground. Mist found herself huddling before a woman dressed in a swan-white gown, her golden hair gleaming even in the dim light. Splattered with muck and blood, Mist said, "This man is under my protection."

The woman raised a slender hand in a gesture of placation. "Be at ease, Lady Valkyrie. I have no intent to harm him. He is, after all, the son of Frigg."

Hermod groaned.

Mist kept her sword drawn as she watched the woman kneel to examine Hermod's wound. "This is more than an injury of the flesh," she said. "What caused it?"

"Something sharp," Mist snapped. She took a breath to calm herself. "Can you help him?"

"He needs Frigg's medicine, and soon, or I think he will die."

Mist managed to hide her surprise. She'd thought this woman was Frigg, but evidently not, unless Aesir G.o.ddesses referred to themselves in the third person, like professional athletes.

Hermod was deadweight, and with Mist taking him by the armpits and Frigg's lady taking his legs, they struggled to lower him into the boat.

"The waters are shallow," the lady said, eyeing Sleipnir. "You can follow me on the All-Father's horse, and we will make best speed."

Mist despised the idea of leaving Hermod in this stranger's care, but Hermod was no longer moving, and his breathing had become labored.

"Lady, if you hurt him, I will kill you. Under stand?"

The woman nodded serenely.

Sleipnir clopped behind the boat, following it down an inlet into a marsh, where the low-hanging fog thinned to reveal an amalgam structure that was part timber hall, part gigantic gingerbread cottage, part modern suburban tract house, and part membranous tent shaped like a uterus. Home. Motherhood.

Long piers of white stone formed a narrow channel that led through arched openings, into the building. Once through the arch, the lady guided the boat to a dock where more ladies in white gently lifted Hermod from the boat and placed him on a stretcher of woven boughs, cushioned with gra.s.s. As they bore him down a walkway bordered on each side by running water, Mist followed, Winston's nails clicking on a floor that was exactly the same linoleum she'd grown up with in her grandmother's kitchen. Was Frigg's house conforming to Mist's expectations of home?

The ladies left Sleipnir behind with more of Frigg's attendants, who argued quietly over who should attempt to feed him.

Pathways and bridges crossed a network of pools and rivulets and waterfalls. Here and there were platforms of stone, little island-rooms, equipped with looms and beds and cauldrons hanging over cooking fires.

"Can we hurry it up?" Mist asked when she could no longer stand the funereal pace of the wordless procession. One of the women turned her head and gave Mist a dignified smile. Everything about Frigg's matrons was calm, controlled, and very Stepford Wife.

They pa.s.sed beneath a timber archway and into a s.p.a.cious, enclosed grotto. Water trickled down rough walls threaded with flower-dotted vines. In the center of the room rose a splendid bed of gnarled wood, dressed with white pillows and piles of fleece, bright as sunlit clouds. Mist concentrated on the bed, because she was terrified of looking directly at the figure dominating the room: Hermod's mother.

Frigg stood before the hearth, stirring an enormous kettle with a paddle. Mist attempted a greeting that caught in her throat, and Frigg smiled gently, her cheeks touched with pink, her blue eyes like a warm bath, and Mist wanted to fall into her abundant bosom and hear lullabies.

"Ma'am," Mist managed.

"Thank you for bringing my son home," Frigg said as the ladies transferred him to the bed.

"He's badly hurt," Mist said. "It was a special sword. It can cut through-"

"We can talk of this later. First I shall attend to Hermod. You must go with my ladies and rest. They will bathe and feed you and return you to your full strength."

"I'd rather stay here, ma'am. If that's all right ..."

"I am mother to healing and renewal, daughter. Let me care for Hermod's needs while my ladies care for yours."

Mist allowed herself to be led off by one of the ladies, stealing a backward glance at Hermod's white, clammy face. Frigg sprinkled something into her cauldron and stirred. The air smelled like earth and spring rain, and Mist couldn't understand why she'd felt any misgivings at having arrived here and leaving Hermod in Frigg's care.

All was well in the house of Frigg.

The lady brought Mist to a room where a clean white robe and furs awaited on a bench, and Mist nearly wept when she saw the wooden tub br.i.m.m.i.n.g with steaming water. Beside it on a small table rested a board stacked with meat and cheeses and fruit.

"Will this do, Lady Valkyrie?"

Oh, sweet Jesus, yes, thought Mist.

The lady withdrew, and Mist shrugged off her coat.

HERMOD AWOKE in a coc.o.o.n of warmth and safety. Soft fur blankets pressed down on him with comforting weight, and the air smelled of cinnamon. He was dimly aware of something wrong with his right shoulder, but he wouldn't have to worry about it as long as he kept his eyes shut. He could deal with it later. Better yet, someone else could deal with it. Nothing could touch him as long as he kept his eyes shut.

"Hermod," someone said. For some reason, he a.s.sociated the voice with the color green. It was gentle but strong, like a towering pine tree, boughs swaying in the breeze.

"Hermod, wake up."

And now he was completely and utterly alert, but he kept his eyes shut and listened. His mother's voice was pleasant but deeply frightening.

"Open your eyes, Hermod."

Hermod obeyed.

His mother's face, leaning over him and smiling, was lovely, of course. Not youthful, but ageless. She put a cool hand on his forehead. "How are you feeling?"