Norse Code Part 8

"I have a habit of doing that." Lilly picked up a rock that had narrowly missed her and speedballed it back into the crowd. She heard the satisfying impact of rock on bone.

"Well, at least they can't kill you," Hod said as a rock whizzed past his ear. "But they can render your body such that it will be little more than a bag of pulp or a scattering of debris, yet even then you will remain conscious."

"G.o.d, you're cheery."

"I am of the Aesir tribe, true, but there's no need to call me G.o.d."

"I think you misunderstood what I meant."

"Very likely. Now, please, crouch down."

Hod lifted his stick, and Lilly saw what he had in mind. She ducked and heard a great whoosh of air as his stick circled overhead like a helicopter rotor blade. He hit those closest and batted away a few hurled stones. The mob scattered.

"They'll be back," Hod said. "And now that you've identified yourself as my friend, they'll come after you as well."

"Who said I was your friend?"

"You didn't need to. It doesn't take much in Helheim to find yourself the target of blame. Blame for Baldr, blame for death, blame for lack of good footwear. Now they'll blame you too."

"Terrific. So we should get out of here."

"Yes," Hod said.

"Where to?"

Hod pointed off in the distance with his stick, but Lilly didn't think he was pointing at anything in particular.

She set off with him, not knowing what he was all about, or where they were going, or what they'd do when they got there. Hod didn't know either. "We're going that way," he said. "We can do there everything we can do here, but hopefully with fewer rocks being flung at us."

"Yeah. Okay. That actually makes sense." Besides, staying on the move made her feel a little less dead.

THEY MADE slow progress down a packed-dirt path wide enough to be a two-lane street. Hod swept his crooked stick before him to determine his way. She'd gotten out of him that he'd spent a long time in the custody of Hel, though what a long time meant in a land of G.o.ds and dead mortals was something she was still having trouble calibrating. He claimed he'd recently escaped Hel's palace, with the a.s.sistance of Baldr's wife, but he refused to say much more about that matter.

In return, Lilly gave him the online-dating version of her biography, with brief sketches of some of her felonies thrown in to make herself sound more interesting. She'd left home at sixteen, finding Los Angeles too tainted by Hollywood and Beverly Hills. After trying out life as a barista, a ba.s.s player, but mostly a sofa-surfer, she'd fallen in with a group of anarchists in Washington State who were saving up to fly to Geneva to protest a G8 summit. She'd come back from that trip with a broken wrist, Taser scars, a criminal record, and a life's calling.

"How did your family feel about all this?" Hod asked.

Lilly's feet shuffled through the dust. "My grandmother died when I was in Switzerland. Kathy never really forgave me for that. I wish we'd managed to settle that stuff before I died."

"And your grandmother? Have you sought her out here?"

"No. It would be ... I don't want to see anyone I knew when I was alive. I guess that's cowardly."

Hod was quiet for a while. Then, "No," he said. "I understand completely."

They walked on together. Vapors swirled around them, occasionally thinning enough to reveal low, one-story structures built of piled stones and limbs from dead gray trees. Gaps in the piles suggested windows and doorways, and some of the buildings had awnings woven from thin boughs. Not so much buildings, Lilly judged as they pa.s.sed a pile of rocks arranged to resemble a fire hydrant, but abstract simulacrums of them.

"Who built this place?" she asked.

"They were mostly dead from your lands, perhaps two generations removed from you. Iowans, they called themselves. Many of them had died together in a tornado. In Midgard they had built a town, and they sought to build it here again, as best they could. It took them longer to gather the materials than you might believe."

Lilly shook her head in bemus.e.m.e.nt. She could imagine hardened, determined, Depression-era townsfolk trying to reconstruct Main Street, dreaming of one day building a library and a city hall and a little park with a statue, schools and houses, all of it. They dreamed of building an America with sticks and stones.

"What happened to them?"

Hod's stick sc.r.a.ped the dirt. "I'm not certain. I heard that Hel put them in the corpse gate."

They went on for a while, only the sound of their footfalls disturbing the silence.

"Is that what she'll do with us if we're caught trying to break out?" Lilly said.

"She'd probably make you part of the gate," Hod said matter-of-factly, "but I'm of the Aesir, one of her prized possessions. I imagine she'd want to keep me around, probably in chains, possibly tortured."

Better that than be tangled up in the writhing ma.s.s of bodies in the gate. The idea of getting cuddly with other corpses made her empty stomach quiver.

Of course, she herself was a corpse. Or was she? If she managed to breach the wall and get out, what would she be? A ghost? A zombie? Nothing at all?

A ragged growl cut off her thoughts, and she felt a jolt shoot through her legs. Whatever the state of her existence, that sure as h.e.l.l had felt like an adrenaline spike.

"Do you see anything?" Hod demanded in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, his staff raised. Lilly realized he was afraid.

"No. What was that? It sounded like an animal."

"Garm. Hel has sent her best servant after us."

Lilly tried to a.n.a.lyze their situation tactically. Except for Hod's stick, they had no weapons. And Hod's blindness ruled out a fast retreat. Their best bet was to take cover in one of the nearby buildings.

She hooked Hod by the arm and pulled him through a doorway. Inside were more stones, arranged into shelves against the walls. When she spotted a waist-high stack of rocks, atop which sat another stack in the unmistakable shape of a cash register, she came to the heartbreaking conclusion that the place was supposed to be a shop of some kind. The shelves were bare; apparently the townspeople had not gotten around to sculpting stone merchandise.

"We can duck down here," she said, hunkering behind the counter.

"Garm will smell us out," Hod said. "He probably already has. He'll squeeze through the doorway and bring the walls down with him. The last thing you will see before he tears your head off is blood and slaver dripping from his jaws. Hel will probably have your head placed such that you will be able to view your own decapitated body. Thankfully, being blind, I will be spared the sight of my own corpse."

"Thanks, Sunshine," Lilly hissed. "But as long as my head's still attached to me, I'm staying attached to it. What's Garm's weakness?"

Hod considered this for a moment. "It is said he can be subdued with Hel cakes, which never fail those who gave bread freely in life."

"I used to collect cans for food drives. Does that count?"

"I would have no way of knowing," Hod said. "I don't write law."

Another growl ripped the air. It was a nasty, terrible sound, a force of nature driven by hunger and malevolence. Lilly wiped her palms on her thighs, though she wasn't sweating. She hadn't perspired or wept or p.i.s.sed or shat since dying.

"What are Hel cakes, anyway?"

"I'm not sure," said Hod. "But it seems unlikely that Garm could be dissuaded from his pursuit by mere morsels. Some lore is only invention."

"So our best option is throwing rocks?" said Lilly, incredulous.

"Now, now, it's not that bad. We also have sticks," Hod chided, shaking his staff at her.

And then the front wall caved in, and an enormous beast stood among the wreckage and billowing dust. Emaciated, with cobweb-gray fur stretched over ribs as thick as bamboo poles, the hound vibrated with anger. When it stalked forward, its blade-sharp shoulders six feet off the ground, Lilly could see the movement of every muscle and tendon. She tried to draw her eyes away from its scab-red eyes and yellow, blood-smeared teeth, but she couldn't look away. The dog's low growl seemed to come from all directions.

"I have a plan," Hod said in a conversational tone. "I'll need your help. Throw a stone at the dog to make him bark. That will help me locate him. Then, when I attack, you run."

The hound's ears snapped flat against its skull.

"That's suicide," Lilly whispered. "For both of us."

Hod's brow drew down over his abysmal eyes. "Stop thinking like a living person and throw a d.a.m.ned rock, will you?"

She lifted a card-deck-size stone from the counter and, with a grunt, chucked it at the hound's head.

The dog let out a shrieking, stomach-gouging bark and sprang forward. Hod leaped high in the air to meet it. Swinging his staff overhead in a circle, he brought it down with a snap across the hound's muzzle. The ground shook as both G.o.d and monster returned to earth. Hod's stick wheeled as he backpedaled, striking the hound with each end of it. Another bark collapsed into a choked screech as Hod thrust his staff into the hound's throat. Again and again, with snapping jaws, b.l.o.o.d.y foam spraying from its mouth, the hound tried to get around the blurring motion of Hod's stick, but again and again Hod drove it back with quick strikes.

Lilly hurled rocks at the dog, but even when one connected with the hound's eye, there was no discernible effect. That was not the case with Hod's blows, which drove the hound back and had it yelping with pain. Lilly watched the Aesir fight, fascinated. So this was what it meant to be a G.o.d.

The hound ceased its attack and backed against the rubble of the fallen wall. b.l.o.o.d.y stripes from Hod's blows marked its fur. The violent canine madness had left its eyes. Now it lowered itself to the ground and merely looked sad.

Hod was still unbloodied, but he looked worse off than the dog. His breath came in ragged sobs, his alabaster flesh looking like wax. "I thought I told you to run," he said between gulps of air.

"That's chickens.h.i.t," Lilly said, not willing to admit to him that it had been fear and awe that had held her in place.

"Then I just spent myself for nothing. I suppose that's fitting, this being Hel's realm, but mortals should follow the counsel of G.o.ds."

"I don't think the dead should be counted as mortal. But, anyway, what do we do now? Fido looks like he's catching his breath."

"Indeed, I believe he is. And when he does, I shall again go on the attack, and this time you will flee like a startled rabbit. Garm will catch you soon enough, but if delaying the inevitable is good enough for Odin, it's good enough for you."

As if on cue, the hound rose from its haunches, towering atop its polelike legs. It pulled its lips back and showed its teeth. Ropes of blood and saliva stretched to the ground.

Terror shivered down Lilly's thighs, but she would not run, would not abandon Hod to this. She'd faced death before, she reminded herself. She'd even died. Why should she fear anything now?

A sound drew her attention down toward her feet. A flat stone the size of a pizza box slid aside and revealed a man's face looking up at her from a dark hole. "I'd drop down here, if I was you," the man said, before vanishing back down the hole.

Lilly wasted no time. "Back over the counter," she shouted to Hod, rushing to yank him by the arms. Still clutching him, she stepped into the void. Together, they fell.

It turned out not to be very far to fall. Following the weak greenish halo of the man's torch, Lilly and Hod trailed him down a narrow rock pa.s.sage-the ceiling so low they all had to crouch to avoid sc.r.a.ping their heads. After what seemed like several minutes of turning sideways to squeeze through the corridor, rock walls abrading their skin, they followed the path sharply downward. The sounds of Garm's anger faded only a little.

Finally, the man came to a stop and turned to face Lilly and Hod. In bib overalls and a plaid shirt, he was as stocky as a bale of hay. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, the entire left side of which was the autumnal rust of old blood.

"You'll have to tell me who you are if you want me to take you another inch," he said, furrowing his push-broom eyebrows.

"Hod, son of Odin," said Hod wearily. "And Lilly Castillo, late of Midgard."

"Venice, California," Lilly supplied. "Get us away from here and we'll owe you."

"Owe me? That sorta implies you have something to pay me with."

More grating sounds. Garm was digging through the rock.

"Didn't you hear my friend?" Lilly said, grasping at straws. "He's a son of Odin. Wouldn't you like to curry the favor of G.o.ds?"

The man laughed and spat at the same time. "Aw, h.e.l.l, we know all about Hod in these parts. Skewered his own brother, fouled things up for all of us. I'd say he already owes us more than three times my last mortgage."

Hod smiled bitterly and offered a shallow bow.

"We're going to follow you wherever you're headed, no matter what," Lilly said. "So you can either proceed or wait here for Garm to mine through the rock and tear us to shreds."

"Garm? Oh, no, that ain't Garm. That's just one of Garm's pups." The man shook his head, incredulous. "Haven't you ever seen Garm?"

"I don't see much," Hod answered.

The low ceiling seemed to shiver as the noise of the hound's labors grew louder.

"Well, I suppose you did answer my question. Follow me." He turned on his worn boot heels and led the way with his light.

The route became more complex and disorienting. After a time, the dog's digging was no longer audible, and the pa.s.sage opened onto a chamber the size of a three-car garage. It was lit by about forty men and women carrying sticks smeared in some sort of bioluminescent slime. They seemed more costumed than clothed, the men wearing jeans and shirts of cuts and fabrics that Lilly a.s.sociated with the Dust Bowl and Woody Guthrie. Most of the women wore ap.r.o.ns. Their faces, whether lean or fleshy, carried the weight of hard times. And, like the other dead, they wore their old wounds-lacerations and bent limbs and caved-in heads. Lilly noticed that many of them had made repairs to their clothing, the rips patched up and st.i.tched tight. Lilly fingered the hole in her own shirt, near her ribs.

"Who are you people?" she asked.

The man who'd rescued Hod and Lilly turned to the others. "The blind fella's a G.o.d," he said, ignoring her question. "The gal says she's from California."

"California, huh?" said a handsome woman with gray streaks in her black hair and a small cleft at the tip of her long nose. Little blue flowers decorated her ap.r.o.n. "My brother went to California. Men with shotguns turned him away at the Kern County border. They fired shots over his truck even while he was driving away, didn't care that his kids were in back with everything they owned."

Another woman stepped forward, squinting at Lilly. "Are you a Mexican?"

"I was born in Los Angeles," Lilly said carefully. "My family's from Mexico."

The woman turned to face the group. "Mexicans in California ain't got it no better than folks like us," she said. "But I don't know about the blind one. Maybe we should have a vote."

"He handled Garm's pup pretty well," said their rescuer.

A bark echoed down the length of the chamber.

"You sure that's just one of the pups, Henry?" asked the woman with the cleft nose. "That sounded awful big."

Henry's bushy eyebrows went up and down in a little shrug. "I dunno, Alice. Sometimes monsters get bigger."

Alice accepted this fact unhappily. Returning to the business at hand, she said, "I'm not sure about the girl, but we've learned everything we need to know about G.o.ds. The b.i.t.c.h-queen Hel's a G.o.d, ain't she? Everything that's ever gone wrong since we died is because of a G.o.d. Jesus excepted, of course." She crossed herself, as did several of the others. "And this blind one, we've all heard stories about him, how he killed his own brother out of jealousy and brought on blizzards and dust storms and twisters. He might be the very one who killed us all."

Lilly looked at Hod, waiting for him to speak up in his own defense. But he just stood there with a small, patient smile on his face, a silent observer to his own character a.s.sa.s.sination.

Lilly had no reputation with these people, so there was no way she'd be able to talk them into accepting Hod out of a sense of pathos. She'd have to opt for practical arguments.

"Hod's been in Helheim longer than any of us," she said. "He knows things about this place that could be crucial. And he's a fighter. Whatever dangers you people are facing out here, he can be useful."