Sleipnir

Chapter Three

I finally managed to get the sparker going. The carbide lit with a hissing pop. The cave was so quiet I could hear the silence listening to me, waiting for me to make a move. So I just sat still for a moment and let my eyes adjust to the grey light pouring from my helmet. There should've been a warm yellow glow; but the walls swallowed the color, leaving only an eerie, dead grey to light the low-ceilinged cavern. Even my skin looked grey. The only exception was that deep black hole beside me.

When I got a good look at it...

There was literally no way I could have avoided stepping into that hole.

It was a good four feet across, nearly round, and smack in the middle of the passage Bjornssen and I'd been following. If it had been there, I would either have seen it or fallen into it. No question. But a hole that size couldn't have opened up between us without either of us noticing—a cave-in is not a quiet phenomenon. If it was an illusion, it was a damned good one.

I leaned cautiously forward. The walls were absolutely perpendicular. No ledges, no bumps, no projections—it plunged straight down like an enormous sewer pipe farther than my light could penetrate into the blackness. I hadn't heard Bjornssen hit bottom. I sat back again, knowing that I had to stand up, move, do something; and wished intensely for a cigarette. I hadn't smoked anything in three years.

My lamp flickered; then flared bright again, and sent shadows rippling across the walls. Odd kind of rock in this part of the cave. Stranger yet, hadn't I just been thinking that when Bjornssen disappeared? My brows puckered and I chewed at my upper lip, moving my head to play the light across the opposite wall.

The surface was jagged, and unused to light. Even the shadows it cast were wrong. Nothing I could put my finger on, exactly...

I got to thinking about the marks Bjornssen had made with his surveyor's tape, and a feeling I didn't stop to analyze hauled me to my feet. I piled my gear in a heap and went back to verify the last marker, which my guide had made about ten feet the other side of the chimney.

Jumping over the gaping hole gave me a case of serious sweats—which was stupid. I was too smart—or too well trained, anyway—to let fear get the best of me like some half-brained Stone Age savage. So I worked harder at reminding myself that I was a modern, civilized, highly trained combat soldier on a very simple recon mission. Christ—it was only a ten-foot recon at that. In a totally empty cave. No problem.

After two full minutes of steady hiking, I still hadn't found it. I looked back the way I'd come, and absently scratched my elbow. Odd, I didn't think I'd walked that far from the spot where we'd spent the night. I went back to the chimney and started again, watching both walls this time and paying closer attention.

It still wasn't there.

Just when and where had Bjornssen made that last mark? I knew he'd put a marker along the straight stretch here, and Bjornssen always plastered a bit of tape at every turn. I'd watched the "mark-the-trail ritual" too many times to doubt that. We'd come through a whole series of turns and side tunnels fifty feet back, or so. I'd miscalculated, was all.

I started from the chimney again. Sixty-five feet of carefully measured steps later, I stopped. Nothing. Not a trace of where we'd spent the "night." Not even a hint of old adhesive on the walls. And while I never actually saw them change, the shadows looked different every time I glanced away and back.

Worse, the side tunnels were missing. As far as I could see, ahead and behind, there was nothing but unbroken grey rock wall.

At one hundred twenty feet I stopped again, breathing hard. My shirt was soaked and sweat trickled down my skivvies (I hoped it was sweat) to run past my knees and into the tops of my socks. It tickled like blazes—and I was too worried to scratch.

Those tunnels couldn't be gone. They couldn't. But they were. Suddenly I wondered what else might disappear—

Goddamned one-eyed son-of-a-bitch!

I broke and ran like hell for my pack, leaping the chimney like a running longjumper. My gear was still piled where I'd left it, complete with food, canteens, carbide—and the Armalite AR-180 assault rifle strapped across it... .

I slid down against the wall, barely feeling the needle-sharp projections that scraped my back, and sat swearing at the wall opposite me. Odin was playing games again.

I scrubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and tugged on my hair for a moment, and wondered with a nagging sense of futility what would have happened if I hadn't kept my half of that misbegotten bargain with Odin? Surely it couldn't have been much worse than what had happened. I laughed aloud, and shuddered at the same time.

It was far too late, of course, but I couldn't help wishing I'd kept the knife and said the hell with Odin and every other god ever invented. What a waste of a perfectly good blade... and a pile of money, not to mention my time, and Gary's.

I even found myself wishing for Frau Brunner's company. Odin himself would've thought twice about crossing her.

Frau Brunner—a shrewd old woman who had survived everything from the Allied Blitz to navigating landmines at the East German border—was known throughout town as a shark.

Her standard sales-floor expression was a scowl that routinely cowed GIs, tourists, and rabid dogs. By the time I'd bargained my way to a final sale on the Mauser K-98-k bayonet I'd chosen, I was sweating into my uniform, and was convinced that Frau Brunner was a throwback to the original Viking traders she was descended from. She might have been closer to eighty than seventy, and was homely as a bald crow—but the lady was sharp.

Which made the compliment Gary paid me when we walked out the door even sweeter.

"Pretty good, RB." He grinned. "Most of the officers on base warn guys away from her; but you got a good price on that. Nice blade, too." Then his grin turned nasty. "Too bad you can't bargain like that when it really counts. If you could talk like that to the brass, you wouldn't get yourself in half the jams you end up in. And you might just get yourself out of the other half."

I grunted and didn't deign to respond.

He chuckled. "Cat's got your tongue, eh? Well, you did a good job, anyway. Sometimes Frau Brunner reminds me a little of my grandma. She used to make me bargain for cookies when I was a kid. Nobody ever got anything over on her. You'd love her."

"I'd like to meet her," I said, thinking about the lonely old woman who'd cried over the letter Gary'd shown me. "Think you could talk her into visiting you over here?"

Gary shrugged. "Don't know. She's kind of funny about traveling. Says the men in the family have done enough traveling for several lifetimes. She's got a point, I guess, considering the odd corners of the world we've been sent to fight in. Grandpa, Dad, and now me. She never figured on a bunch of ragheads shooting at me over here. Poor Grandma." Gary shook his head; then got an evil glint in his eye. "One of these fine nights, you know, those bastards are going to overrun the site, and leave brass holding a bunch of bodies in the bag. Ought to be some fight, huh?"

I regarded Vernon with a jaundiced eye. Gary—and his dad, and his granddad—had been raised with this pagan thing about fighting for glory because that's what life was for. Both his father and grandfather had been decorated in their respective generations' wars before they died together, pointlessly, in a car wreck. I guess Gary was just intent on continuing the family tradition.

I admired Gary's heroic attitude; but it was going to get him killed, and then where would he be? Pact with Odin notwithstanding, sometimes Vernon had carried this Viking stuff a little too far. You did a whole lot more damage to the enemy if you shot twenty or so with a sniper than if you took out half a dozen in a suicide dash—and you generally didn't lose the sniper, either. Patton had had the right of it as far as I was concerned—make the other poor, dumb son-of-a-bitch die for his country.

"You know, Gary," I said as we headed for the railway station, "I figured out why there aren't any more Berserkers. They killed themselves off before they could reproduce. What was it Niven and Pournelle said? `Evolution in action'?"

He gave me an enigmatic look from under his eyebrows. "Never thought of it quite that way," he said quietly. "Maybe that's why Grandma asked me to quit Special Forces." His voice trailed off quietly and I winced; I hadn't meant to rake up bad memories. He'd once admitted—somewhat shamefacedly—that he couldn't say no to anything his grandmother asked, because he was all the old lady had left to live for.

Our train ride was short, and soon we were back at the little village near the missile site, headed into the surrounding forest. Within minutes, streets and houses were out of sight. It was hard to believe, sometimes, that you couldn't get farther than a couple of kilometers from civilization anywhere in Germany. The forests were so dark and forbidding, you could almost convince yourself you were living a thousand years in the past—then a group of school kids would come trooping by, waving and shouting and playing radios or something... .

"Uh, Gary?" I was careful to keep my voice low-pitched. That wasn't reverence for the forest; just ingrained caution and leftover paranoia. One couldn't always count on hedgehogs. I hadn't told Gary any details about my oath, and hadn't planned to—but the towering silence of the trees left me looking over my shoulder for... something. I didn't know quite what. Abruptly I wanted to share my thoughts.

"Yeah?" He glanced back.

"Anything strike you as, well, strange about that hedgehog the other night?"

Gary turned to look at me over his shoulder. "Like what?"

"Like why it didn't just roll up into a ball under the pine tree? It was close enough to me, it must've heard my heart beating, never mind smelled me, and you know how shy they are about people."

"You weren't moving, Randy."

"No, but..."

Gary glanced back again, one brow cocked quizzically.

"Okay, I'd barely taken that oath when out he strolls, maybe saving our collective bacon."

He stopped walking. "So you wonder if Odin heard you?"

I grimaced, falling silent again, and Gary nodded silently, as if to himself. We kept walking. It was stupid, and I was probably just as superstitious as Brunowski—who at least was honest enough to admit it—but I couldn't help wondering, at least a little. Kind of nifty to think of a genuine god answering my oath... but then again, maybe not. What might a god consider a "marker"? And what would a god do if he called it in and I couldn't pay?

Well-l-l, either way it couldn't hurt to just cover my bets—which was, after all, the reason I was out here, and not sleeping late. At least Gary hadn't laughed at me.

A few minutes later he found the spot we'd been looking for, an enormous oak tree that looked old and twisted enough to have seen the Germanic tribes sweep the Romans before them on their drive south. Well, maybe not that old—but it might have been old enough actually to have had sacrifices made to Odin in it. How long did an oak tree live?

Gooseflesh crawled along my back. I shook myself mentally and hastily removed the bayonet from its wrappings and steel sheath. I shucked off my heavy jacket and handed it to Gary, and shivered in the cold air as I rolled up my sleeve. Holding out my arm, I firmly took hold of the bayonet's grip and drew the edge of the blade lightly along the inside of my forearm.

I suppressed a gasp as the cold steel opened my skin. As blood dripped down my wrist and fingers to puddle on the frozen ground, I said, "May it please the one-eyed god, the Valfather who sits in Hlidskjalf, where he sees and understands all: this offering of a new-blooded steel blade is given in fulfillment of my own oath given in promise of blood."

I'd memorized the words in German, having looked up some of them to be sure. After I finished speaking them, I knelt at the base of the tree and drove the blade up to its grip into the hard ground. I rose then, and found Gary standing behind me. Weak winter sunlight turned his sandy hair to gold, while I shivered in shadows under the gnarled old tree. His eyes had a faraway look. I wondered what he was thinking. Or dreaming...

I wasn't sure why, but the moment reminded me of Hohenfels, when we'd been out one damp and shivery late autumn day, on a week-long field problem. Gary and I had been ordered to secure an observation post on one of the hills, so we dug in—and discovered it wasn't a hill at all. Under the moss and leaves and gnarled tree roots there were crumbled blocks of stone.

"Holy Mother of Odin," Gary had whispered into the silence. "It's a burial mound, RB."

"I didn't think they were found this far south."

"They aren't."

I don't know why we whispered; but we did.

The sun was so low and the mist so thick we nearly missed the hole broken into one side. Right outside that hole, almost as though someone had planted it there when those stones were still raw from the cut earth, stood the blackened skeleton of a huge oak tree. A stray breeze opened a rent in the mist and the dying sun bathed the mound in light the color of blood; a cold, bitter draft eddied from the hole.

"Jesus, what's that smell?"

Gary hadn't heard. He took three steps toward the gaping hole and stopped. Only the luminous dial on his watch, flashing in the gloom, reminded me this was the twentieth century.

"They used to perform sacrifices on trees like that," Gary murmured. "They'd take a warrior and strangle him and spear him in the heart while he choked to death. Then they'd hang him in an oak tree for Odin, who would send a valkyrie, or maybe his stallion, Sleipnir, to fetch the sacrifice to Valhalla."

Gary stared at the tree; then gazed off into the mist, where disturbing shapes loomed indistinctly and tricked the eyes. "You can almost see Sleipnir coming—"

"Shut up, will you?" I spoke louder than I'd intended. Gary started and swung to face me; then grinned. "Sorry. It gets to you sometimes, you know?"

I knew. But we had to sleep on the cursed mound.

For a moment he looked as sheepish as I felt; then we grabbed our shovels, and got busy with the army's observation post.

I'd forgotten all about that day; until now. Gary looked really eerie, with that golden light touching his face, and a stark shadow from the naked oak branch over my head cutting across him. I shivered without quite knowing why, and wondered if burying that knife had been such a good idea after all. Blood still dripped down my arm, warm and sticky.

"Gary, you got that lousy bandage?"

He blinked a couple of times; then walked over and bent to look. "Good cut, Randy. Not too deep. Yeah, it's right here." He pulled out the gauze and wrapped my arm securely, stemming the flow. I wiped my bloodstained fingers on an extra cloth I'd brought along and rolled my sleeve down and buttoned the cuff; then put my coat back on, feeling a little foolish.

Now that the ceremony was over and I'd fulfilled my half of the bargain, I found I couldn't get away from that tree fast enough, and led the way until we were out of sight of it. I slowed down, then, hands thrust deep in my pockets, and worked at ignoring the slight burning in my left arm. Gary walked beside me, uncharacteristically silent.

I spoke without looking directly at him. "You think I'm crazy?"

He shook his head; but the corners of his mouth twitched.

"Nope. Sacrificing to Odin is pretty sane behavior for you, Randy."

Sometimes I really hated the fact that Gary could outrun me.

I finally gave up the chase, and with my remaining breath, yelled, "If you'll stop running, I'll let you live... !"

He stopped—grinning—and waited for me.

"You know," I mused, once I got my breath back, "those old Vikings, they weren't far wrong, I guess. Good friends, good sex, good fights, plenty of gold—hell, at least they had something to believe in."

Unexpectedly irritated, I kicked at a dead branch and sent it scooting off through the dead leaves. "Some nights on those towers I'd give a lot to have something I could really believe in."

Gary nodded. "Yeah. I guess what I hate worst is the idea of dying for nothing. I don't know, Randy. I guess if I were to die, I'd want to go the way they did. Take off for Valhalla in a blaze of glory; then more good friends, more good sex, more fighting and gold, right up to the end of everything." He laughed. "Who knows? You game to find out with me?"

I blinked. Sometimes Gary overdid things. "Be serious, man. We got plans for tonight."

He laughed. "And you're buying, right?"

"You bet. So let's get back to town. I'm freezing my ass off out here." The undefinable feeling I'd had since the moment that hedgehog had strolled out into the open had finally evaporated.

Well, almost.

As we'd headed toward town, I hadn't quite been able to suppress the urge to glance over my shoulder... .

Months later, I was still glancing over my shoulder, in a cave that Somebody was rearranging like a con man's shell game. I dropped my hands against my thighs and deliberately uncurled my fingers. Brooding on the past wasn't going to get me out of this fix. I had to figure out what to do next, and I had to make the right decision on the first try. Odin probably wouldn't give me the luxury of a second chance.

It was pretty obvious that I couldn't go back, even if I'd wanted to—which I didn't. What wasn't at all obvious was why I couldn't go back. If Odin had simply wanted to get rid of me, it would have been far easier just to drop me quietly down that hole. Bjornssen certainly wouldn't have wasted any time making tracks out of here to live off my money if I'd died. Not only would I have been out of his hair, there would have been no one left alive with any reason to discover the truth behind the legends about Garm's Cave.

Odin was just toying with me. Or maybe he had something even nastier planned. Ugh. Something worse than pulling the earth out from under my feet? I glanced down at my pack and grimaced. If I didn't move very, very carefully, I was a dead man.

Or worse...

I snorted and listened to the sound disappear, swallowed up by the blackness. Since "back" was out of the question, my two main options appeared to be "forward" and "down"—down the hole after Bjornssen, that is.

Right. Odin would love that.

Some options.

Maybe, in the final analysis, that was why Odin had killed Bjornssen. This way he knew exactly where I was, stumbling around blind in his territory, not mine. The idea that a god might consider me too dangerous to leave running around loose didn't exactly comfort me; but it did kind of stroke the ego... .

Frankly, I could do without that kind of ego-boo.

I considered my supplies. I had food (some), water (less), carbide (not nearly enough), and cyalume chemical lightsticks (mostly half-hour shorties). Bjornssen had been packing most of the carbide and a good portion of our food—which did me no good at all—so I gritted my teeth and stopped wasting time wishing I had his gear. I also didn't have time to waste backtracking for water, since I wasn't at all certain it would be there anymore.

I had plenty of ammunition in my pack—but on further reflection I remembered you can't fuel a carbide lamp with smokeless powder. Besides, what would I do afterward with all those iron-jacketed pistol bullets? Eat them? The idea of starving did nothing to lighten my mood—and if I didn't find Niflheim soon, I quite likely would starve to death.

What was it the sergeants were always telling us—prior planning prevents piss-poor performance? I laughed aloud and began stowing my ammo again. The way things were looking, I should've packed in a whole lot more food, and a whole lot less "insurance." I was going to be an awfully embarrassed ghost if I showed up as an emaciated corpse in Hel's death hall while lugging around enough hardware to storm Grenada... again.

I shook my head and finished stowing my arsenal. Poor Klaus... He really hadn't been able to figure out why I'd brought all this stuff along. His first question to me, back in the world of sunlight and wind and rain, had been why I wanted to pick the most dangerous, least explored cave in northern Europe and explore it as far as I could get, when the only time I'd spent in any cave was the night I'd bivouacked in a genuine prehistoric site in the Neanderthal Valley while on military maneuvers.

Being me, naturally I'd said, "That's a very good question," and then had proceeded to lie for all I was worth—while plopping hundred-dollar bills down in front of him. Fortunately he had run out of questions before I ran out of money. His second question had been why in God's name (his God's name, anyway) I wanted to carry a bunch of guns on a spelunking trip. My answer—more hundred-dollar bills—hadn't satisfied him until his stack was a whole lot taller than mine.

I just hadn't seen any sense in trying to explain that facing down Niflheim's permanent residents was probably going to call for all the firepower I could lug with me. So call me paranoid. Apparitions like Sleipnir aren't that easy to explain. Or believe, for that matter. Quite probably I was the only person left alive in the world who did believe.

I hadn't packed that AR-180 assault rifle for target practice.

But I didn't tell Klaus that. I just said I had no intention of dying slowly at the bottom of some cliff, if I happened to fall and shatter half my bones, then laid down more money until he shut up and agreed. It'd cost me nearly my whole severance pay, but he'd bought it. I glanced at the bottomless chimney. He'd bought it, all right.

I unholstered my P-7 pistol, and balanced it across my palm. Its lines were sleek, deadly. So was Gary's sheath knife, strapped to my calf. What if I were fooling myself? Even if Niflheim were as real as the gun in my hand—and I'd seen the proof of that—what if a living man couldn't get there? All the myths and sagas were pretty consistent on one point. The gods did the choosing, not men. It was more than possible I'd just wander around down here until I died, without ever seeing anything more interesting than grey rock walls.

I reholstered the P-7.

It didn't matter.

Odin was breaking the rules ten ways from Sunday—I'd seen the goddamned proof of that, too. And if he could cheat the Norns, then I could get to Niflheim. Without dying. I hadn't doubted it before, when there was still a chance to back out, and I wasn't about to doubt it now.

I looked down the long stretch of bland grey tunnel, and listened as the silence echoed in my ears. The cave twisted into the bowel of the mountain like a wormhole burrowed into the core of a rotten apple. Feeling some sympathy with a cockroach about to be squashed, I shouldered my gear, stuck an emergency cyalume stick in my shirt pocket, and started down the jagged slope.