Sleipnir

Chapter Seven

A dark swirl of water raced away from me, down into the heart of the mountain, as cold as my gut. The next choice I made might well be my last. I had to decide not only whether I went left or right; but also whether or not to trust the knife which now hung poised along my calf. A grimace tugged at my lips.

The immortal Juliet had begged Romeo not to swear by the "inconstant moon" lest his love prove just as changeable; the risk that this knife would be just as fickle loomed in the foreground of my awareness.

I eyed the blade uneasily; then reached down and felt the grip slide smoothly into my hand. Instead of holding it by the haft, I simply laid the knife across my palms and stared at it. It was heavy and reassuringly solid to the touch; but—as I had learned shortly after acquiring the damned thing—I had ample reason to be wary. I glanced at the river again. The fall of black water churned its surface with endless boiling motion.

Black knife, black water...

The knife lay cold and dead against my palms, giving me no clue. But then I didn't really need the knife to make my decision. The Christian hell might be notoriously easy to get into; but I was betting the Norse one wasn't. I thrust the blade back into its sheath and came briskly to my feet. I cast one last longing glance down that dry passageway... .

Then strode forward into black spray.

Gingerly I tested the footing along the edge, as far away from the cascading waterfall as possible. In seconds I was drenched to the skin, and the bottom continued to slope away, leaving me hip-deep and sinking in next to no time. The water was cold, nearer the temperature of an ice cube than liquid water. I gritted my teeth and kept going, trying unsuccessfully not to shiver as the icy water filled my boots and chilled my bones.

The bottom slowly leveled out, and I found myself waist-deep, struggling to stay upright in swift current that tugged at my pack and threatened to drag my feet out from under me. Gradually the current slowed as the walls widened out. Unfortunately, that made hanging on more difficult. Soon I couldn't reach both sides at once. After the roar of the waterfall died away, the only sound was that of the river itself, softly hissing over and around rocky protrusions.

I began to shiver in earnest as my frozen body tried to warm itself. Dying of hypothermia hadn't occurred to me; but it was entirely possible. Somehow I didn't think freezing to death qualified a hero for admission into Valhalla. Not that I felt much like a hero; I was just too goddamned mad to lie back and enjoy what most people would have considered inevitable.

I actually laughed aloud. The sound skittered across the black river and vanished downstream. Odin was probably very unhappy that I wasn't most people. I hadn't been, even before Gary's death, and afterward...

Afterward, I had felt a bitter kinship with the poor guy in Heinlein's The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, who had started sleeping nights handcuffed to his wife. But that guy's solution to his personal nightmare had been to run away and hope it didn't get any worse.

I didn't do things that way.

It had eventually occurred to me that Gary's murder had been—mythologically speaking—impossible. Gary Vernon had been "collected" by Sleipnir, Odin's personal courier for fetching to the Valhall those warriors killed in battle.

Gary Vernon had died in a traffic accident.

Sleipnir did not collect—and never had—traffic-accident victims. Those who died accidentally ended up in Niflheim, not Valhalla. That realization had stopped me cold in my tracks for a couple of days; fortunately, they were quiet days, because an entire division probably could have rolled through the fences next to my tower and I wouldn't have noticed. I'd been too busy with thoughts that leapfrogged across all the old stories I'd ever read as I tried to make sense of something even more impossible than the impossible.

And then, when I couldn't make sense of it, I'd gone out and done additional research. Lots and lots of additional research. My new obsession might have made me the butt of endless jokes; but nobody razzed me much. Of course, Rosetti's new orthodontia, compliments of Uncle Sam, might have prompted some of that reluctance. Somehow word had gotten around to leave me and my pagan gods strictly alone... .

Beneath the trappings of glory and drinking and whoring it up, the old Viking religion was damned vicious. Three old hags called the Norns made all the rules—including the ones the gods themselves lived by. These three witches made the Greek Fates look like Sleeping Beauty's Good Fairies. Their rules for living—and dying—were ugly, cruel, full of blood and torture and death. Nobody, including Odin, spat without those three old hags' by-your-leave, and nobody broke the rules.

Warriors—those who died in battle—and accident victims did not share the same afterlife. Not ever. And yet there Odin was, apparently throwing everybody into one stewpot, willy-nilly. Odin wasn't allowed to collect victims of accidents—or disease, or old age—for his great battle hall. But he'd collected Gary. And apparently the Norns were letting him get away with it.

That had left me with two possibilities. Either the army had lied about the accident—which was not only entirely possible, but highly probable, if ragheads had been involved—or something really screwy was going on here. Why would Odin start stealing men wherever he found them? And why would the Norns let him?

To answer my first question, I'd collared Hill, the driver, and Rosetti—separately—and had done my best (or worst, depending on your viewpoint) to get the real story out of them. They had agreed on every detail. Gary had died in a plain-and-simple truck wreck. No raghead ambush, no sabotage of the truck, no nothing. Just one blind-drunk muther at the wheel and one dead GI. I think they had to rehospitalize Hill after I got done with him... .

Meanwhile, Odin had gotten away with murder. And probably would again—maybe even mine. I bitterly acknowledged that fact, and, somewhere in the process of getting drunk and ripping up a German bar and a few dozen of the Palestinian "Turks" who hung out there, I felt like I finally understood why Oedipus—who had also fallen afoul of a divine joke too cruel to bear—had stabbed out his own eyes.

And then, quietly and clear-headedly, I had vowed that Odin would pay. No matter what it took. Which left me with figuring out how. A mortal doesn't just hop a bus for the home of the gods... .

Not even dying was a surefire way to get to him. Most of the dead went to the goddess Hel's hall in Niflheim, and a full half the warriors killed in battle were claimed by Freyja for her hall, wherever that was. Besides, I didn't want to die first just in order to get to Odin. Dead men don't get much done, and I had a lot to accomplish.

The only reliable way to get to Odin without dying was to cross the rainbow bridge Bifrost, into Asgard. Problem was, it bypassed Earth without stopping. Besides, no mortal could cross it anyway; it was too fragile. I had to come up with another way to get to Odin.

A really convoluted, arguably crazy way.

According to the old stories, a man could find his way into the underworld—without dying first—by locating a very deep cave, and following it down to the echoing bridge that led from Earth into Niflheim, the "underworld"—not precisely hell (since that was called Niflhel); but certainly not heaven, either.

The old stories also said that Loki was chained in the underworld as punishment for killing Baldr, Odin's favorite son. He would remain there until the twilight of the gods and their final battle at Ragnarok.

Sleipnir—through a biologically improbable series of events—was Loki's son.

And Sleipnir—bless his big black heart—was the only creature in the combined nine worlds able to cross between any two of them at will.

Voila: All I had to do was catch Sleipnir and ride him to Asgard. Once I got Odin within arm's reach, I would wring his cursed neck for him. Piece of cake. Always assuming a human being could kill a god, of course... .

The one thing I couldn't do was just sit and do nothing. I had to believe one man could change what was happening, because to believe in predestination—that everything was fixed and immutable, that nothing you did meant spit in the long run—was to believe that Gary and I, the rest of humanity, everything we'd accomplished as a species was worth nothing. It meant we hadn't done anything more meaningful than run headlong down Somebody's elaborate rat maze. I wouldn't buy that.

I might be an asshole; but I sure as hell wasn't a rat.

The gods were mortal, after a fashion. They were all slated to die at Ragnarok. If everything were foreordained, and ran according to rules as immutable as the physics that governed nuclear fission, then Fenrir would kill Odin, Thor would die of poison blown by the Midgard serpent, and traffic-accident victims would always end up in Niflheim, not Sleipnir's teeth.

But if everything weren't foreordained...

I didn't know if I could kill a god; but I knew I had to try. If he could snatch victims from insignificant traffic accidents, who could guess what bigger and better "accidents" he might arrange? It wouldn't take much meddling to blow the lid off the uneasy peace we had going at the moment. That would sure as hell give him a steady supply of bodies. He had to be stopped; and there just wasn't anybody else I could think of in any position to stop him.

The Norns—hiding under the roots of the world tree, where the great rainbow bridge spanned the gap between Asgard and the Norns' shadowy hall—made the rules Odin had been breaking.

I didn't much care.

I was not only going to break the rules, I was going to play another game altogether. Which left me waist-deep in a freezing river somewhere in the middle of a Norwegian mountain.

I don't know how long I slogged through the cold water, putting one booted foot carefully ahead of the other and forcing my shivering body to keep moving. My watch had tritium-coated hands and numbers, which meant I could see them even without the carbide light; but my brain wouldn't register the time properly. I knew I had to get out of the water soon or I would freeze to death.

Unfortunately there was no end to the river in sight. The walls began to narrow down again, causing the current to pick up. My legs were so numb I was having trouble keeping my footing, and the only thing that saved me from falling a couple of times was grabbing for the walls. The rough stone cut my hands, so I braced myself long enough to dig a pair of wet gloves out of my butt pack. They were cold and soaked; but saved the skin of my palms several times during the next few minutes.

I was shivering so hard now, it was a race between the numbness and convulsions as to which would dunk me in the end—

My footing disappeared without warning. I dropped off a shelf and floundered, choking with icy water up my nose. The weight of the pack dragged me under. My waterlogged boots hampered my efforts to kick toward the surface. I flailed desperately and managed to get my face above water long enough to gasp.

I stared wildly into utter blackness. Not only had the carbide lamp hissed and gone out instantly; but the current had dragged my helmet away into the darkness, gone before I could even think of grabbing for it.

A low rumble grew ominously in my ears. The current—which had picked up sharply—dragged me mercilessly along. Blind, half frozen, I flailed both arms, and scraped my hand against the wall. I tried to grab hold; but only managed to scrape up my arm without finding purchase. Kicking hard slewed me sideways in the heavy current, then smacked me hard into the wall, sooner than I expected. I tried again to grab hold, scrabbling with hands and feet.

The roar grew louder and the current picked up more speed. Try as I might, the river scraped me along the wall (leaving bits of cloth and skin behind) toward a dropoff—a cliff, or chimney, no doubt—which certainly lay ahead. When my feet bumped into something, it took my brain a couple of seconds to register the impact.

When realization sank in, I kicked hard. There was a shelf of rock, very narrow, under my feet. I tried to brace myself on it; but the current was too swift. I ended up sliding sideways on tippytoes, trying to maintain contact with the ledge.

The roar had grown to a deafening thunder, and the current dragged at my clothes and pack, trying to drag me bodily off the tiny shelf. My head bumped into something extremely hard and I ducked instinctively.

I almost lost my balance, and flung both arms upward. My hands smacked against the ceiling. Primate instinct took over from the lizard brain. I jammed my feet against the bottom and braced my hands hard against the ceiling, and halted my slide toward doom. Thus supported, I was able to hold my position; but I wasn't sure how long I could maintain my stance, shivering as hard as I was.

There was obviously one mutha of a hole somewhere up ahead—and very close, from the sound of it. My tunnel was narrowing down so fast I'd be completely underwater soon—if I didn't get dragged down the hole first. I was so cold I couldn't think what to do; trying to reason felt like trying to swim in Jell-O. The only coherent thought I could dredge up wasn't particularly useful. To wit, if I let go of the ceiling, I was going to drown, assuming I didn't first hit the bottom of the hole into which the river was pouring.

The germ of a thought percolated into my numbed brain and I braced myself carefully, letting go with one hand to fumble inside my shirt pocket. Sure enough, my emergency cyalume stick was still there. Ripping the foil off with my teeth, I held one end against the ceiling and applied pressure to the other end. The plastic outer tube bent until the glass vial floating inside snapped. I shook vigorously, and was rewarded with a cool, chemical glow which lit my surroundings.

I stood jammed against one wall of a six-foot-wide tunnel, with dark water racing by so fast it made me dizzy to watch. The cave ceiling arced down to meet the water some fifteen feet ahead. Either that, or that was where the river dropped off into the hole, and the tunnel dropped off with it.

Somewhat desperately I scanned the wall and saw a roundish patch of darkness maybe two feet this side of the dropoff point. A side tunnel? Big enough for me to get into? Or just a small hollow that led nowhere? Even if it were a tunnel, could I hang on against the current long enough to drag myself into it? Not that I had much choice either way.

With nothing to lose but my life—which I figured was long since forfeit anyway—I clenched the cyalume in my teeth and inched forward, fighting the drag of the current, until my arms ached with the strain of pushing against the ceiling. The current tore at me so strongly, I didn't dare raise my feet. Instead I shuffled along, scraping my boots against the rock riverbed.

Closer, and I could see the opening: hole, all right, and big enough for me to squeeze into, even with the pack. The edges and inside surfaces were rounded and worn smooth from water, suggesting that the level of the river was considerably higher at times, bleeding off part of its flow into this side chute.

The side passage floor was at chest level. Could I drag myself up into it, with muscles frozen stiff and trembling from exhaustion, before the current dragged me into that bottomless pit? I didn't give myself odds on that one; but again, there wasn't much choice. I thought briefly about easier roads to Hell, and muttered something obscene around the lightstick clenched in my teeth.

I was not going to dive down that waterfall.

I reached the opening and braced myself. I was going to have to let go with my right arm. I shut my eyes, and drew a deep breath around the cyalume; then grabbed the edge of the hole. The current slammed me sideways. I bashed my elbow against the side of the new tunnel; but I wasn't swept away. I fought to shuffle back against the current, while pulling against the edge of the tunnel as hard as I could with my right arm. I gained about six inches, which put me more or less back in front of the hole again.

Walking my fingers along—while maintaining pressure against the ceiling with my palm—allowed me to reach the edge of the tunnel. I tensed and tried to ready myself for a lunge that would be my one and only chance. Bearing in mind Yoda's immortal words, "There is no try..." I emptied my lungs, filled them again, and emptied them once more (which wasn't easy with a cyalume stick in my mouth). I attempted to calm myself and closed my eyes to concentrate... .

Water yanked my feet sideways. I landed with nearly rib-cracking force against the right wall. My breath slammed out in a guttural grunt and I almost dropped the cyalume stick. My right arm was crushed against stone. I dragged myself forward half an inch, an inch, two inches... .

The river pulled madly at my legs, dragged me back again. I clung sideways, face jammed against rock, left hand scrabbling for purchase, and thought wildly about the knife in my boot sheath, where it did me no good at all... .

I cursed; then dragged my right leg painfully up out of the water. I worked my knee up along the wall while I tried to find some sort of toehold with my other foot, and did it the hard way. I clung with my left hand; then made a grab for the knife—

My fingers closed around it. And as I twisted and slipped and started to fall back into the river, I jabbed the blade into solid rock. It sank straight into the wall. And held.

I pulled myself up two inches; got my other knee out of the water; felt the strain in the knife as it began to bend under my weight. I collapsed forward onto the ledge with startling suddenness. My feet hung out over space, clear of the water.

I rolled flat onto my stomach across the cyalume stick, and felt my hand drop. The haft quivered as my fingers slid away. I lay in utter blackness, my feet barely clear of the water.

I was still alive.

I tried to smile. Good old knife... it had even managed to get rid of Johnson for me. My eyes closed all by themselves. Poor, stupid Johnson...

The day had begun decently. It graduated to miserable in short order, and left me convinced to my socks that Somebody Up There had taken very serious notice of one otherwise insignificant GI.

It was supposed to have been a classic ambush. Things had started out well, in fact, despite the conditions. After a bad blizzard, the weather had turned clear, with bitter temperatures and worse wind chill. Hauling sixty-five pounds of gear, I had slogged through snow that drifted knee-deep in places. Johnson stumbled ahead of me, muttering incoherently. After the rainy warmth of Oregon, returning to Germany's biting cold had been a shock.

With Lieutenant Donaldson in charge of the exercise, Staff Sergeant Myers as our squad leader, and Wally as acting fire team leader, we had experienced, trustworthy personnel running the show. Which was something of a relief.

Donaldson barked orders into the freezing air and we got moving. Setting up the ambush beat standing around freezing to death. We positioned ourselves in a crescent-shaped deployment back up in the trees on a fairly steep hillside.

Below us a small road snaked along the edge of the hill; we centered ourselves on the outside of a ninety-degree turn, far enough from the crest not to be visible against the skyline if we stood up, but close enough to the top to scramble over it quickly. We'd spring our hit-and-run ambush on the convoy expected through sometime during the next two hours, then melt away over the ridge.

On the far side of the road, twenty yards or so distant, was another stand of woods. On our side, a snow-and-stubble covered field stretched away to the right, toward another woodline. We were in a good position; Donaldson knew what he was doing. Down on the far end of the crescent, Simpkins' squad had set up their M-60 machine gun to command a clear view down the road as it departed from the corner. At the other end, the weapons squad was setting up another M-60, positioned to rake the road in the other direction.

The result was the classic crossfire pattern, which in combat would have forced the enemy off the road in our direction, right into the fire of four eight-man rifle squads lying in ambush between the machine guns. In addition, my squad had two 90mm recoilless rifles, which looked like old-time World War II bazookas, but had more range and carried a lot more punch.

None of this impressive array of weaponry was, of course, loaded for our training exercise. The brass, in their wisdom, had determined there was enough chance of us dumb troopies hurting ourselves on a training maneuver, without the added risks of live ammo. Given the presence of troopies like Johnson, I was, for a change, inclined to agree.

All of which meant the three guys carrying 40mm grenade launchers attached to their M-16s didn't even have dummy grenades with them. The only "weapons" we had with us were blanks for the M-16s and the M-60s, a collection of pocket knives, and the ubiquitous entrenching tools that infantrymen since the days of Julius Caesar have carried with them in order to dig fortified emplacements. (Which was the only way to get your ass out of the hand-to-hand stuff without succumbing to cowardice.)

The major complaint I had about the setup was being ordered to take cover in two-man positions. Under battle conditions, one man would rest or sleep while the other kept watch. But...

I'd been teamed with Johnson.

To give him his due, Donaldson probably didn't know.

For my position, I'd chosen a tangle of bushes that concealed me from both the road and the hilltop. About ten feet to my left, Monroe fed a belt of blanks into the M-60's tray with a minimum of clanking and rattling. Then as he and his partner concealed themselves, I settled into the shallow trench I'd dug between my chosen bushes. Since I'd carefully distributed the excess dirt and snow smoothly beneath the bushes where it wouldn't show, I was nearly invisible from every direction.

Johnson was directly to my left. I could just see Wally and Crater over beyond Johnson, between him and Monroe. Gradually things got quiet as everybody settled in; within ten minutes the only sound I could hear was the wind and Johnson squirming in the snow. Moron. We waited, got colder, then colder still. At moments like this I understood why Uncle Sam wanted me. Nobody with brains would confuse this sort of thing with the patriotic satisfaction all the recruiting posters prate about.

That made me think of Gary again. I felt like a broken record, stuck on "raging mad." But if I let myself dwell on it, they'd end up locking me up in Leavenworth for life, because Johnson wouldn't come out of the ensuing brawl alive. That misbegotten little idiot had actually protested that the relief would be too short-shifted if I left for the funeral. Amazing, how strong nine healthy infantrymen can be... .

I'd almost gotten to his throat anyway.

Johnson shifted around again, so that snow crunched loud as a rifle report under him.

"Keep still!" I hissed viciously.

He flipped me the bird, but subsided.

I forced my concentration back onto my job. No convoy in sight. No trace of advance scouts anywhere. I held in a sigh.

Damn, it was cold.

As we lay there, waiting for that stupid convoy to show up so we could shoot the theoretical shit out of it and then get moving—and somewhat warmer again—I found myself uneasily wanting to glance over my shoulder. For reasons I couldn't fully explain, the skin on the back of my neck prickled, and my right palm itched. As the feeling worsened, I began wishing I had a loaded pistol, or even a decent knife. I would even have welcomed holding that weird black thing Gary's grandmother had given me.

I tried to shake myself out of my mood. Maybe I should have taken more leave time, after all. Here I was on routine winter maneuvers, and I felt as jumpy and disquieted as the night Sleipnir had—

Snow crunched, from somewhere behind us. I stiffened. Then it came again: a stealthy footstep, almost silent, from behind and to my right, in the trees farther up the hill... .

I swore under my breath. Wouldn't it figure the aggressors would come scouting through the woods ahead of their column? It occurred to me that—since I seemed to have more acute hearing than the rest of the guys—probably no one else had heard it.

I did a lightning-fast review of our tactical situation. Our primary objective had been concealment from the road; but as far as I could tell, we were concealed from the direction of the hilltop, too, unless someone moved, betraying our position. We were pretty good at what we did.

Abruptly I swore under my breath. Archibald Johnson wasn't... . Then I had two of them in sight, all but invisible in snow-and-winter-tree-bark camos. They were moving down between the trees, toward the field. My glance fell across the rifles they carried—

—Ahh, shit.

Those weren't rubber training AKs they were carrying. They were as real as the sudden fear-stink in my nostrils. I focused my gaze, and saw dark faces, thin noses, black Palestinian eyes... .

Ragheads.

They were already among us, still without having seen a thing. From my position I could see Wally's eyes; but only because I knew exactly where to look. I could tell he'd seen them, too; he looked as scared as I felt.

I glanced at my rifle—loaded with nothing but training blanks—and speculated upon the kind of stopping power blanks might have if things got hot. The M-16 didn't even produce a useful muzzle blast; most of the gas vented to the side. I eyed the entrenching tool lying close beside me, and swore under my breath. Great, a useless gun and a shovel. That made me feel much better.

Intent on their own movements, they still hadn't seen us. I uttered a tiny prayer—but not to Odin—that they'd just keep going, never seeing or hearing a thing, like ships in the night.

And they might have; but for the contribution of Mr. Model Soldier. Two feet away, Johnson shifted again. Snow crunched under his damn belly. The ragheads spun, crouched—and Johnson saw them for the first time.

I held my breath. Johnson gave a grunt of surprise and—

SHIT!

—made a reflex grab for his M-16.

Bark exploded from the trees. Bullets tore past my head and a cloud of snow erupted from the ground. I heard Crater yell, and suddenly Johnson was cowering behind a tree trunk. I fired the blanks in my rifle, with exactly the results I'd expected—none. The M-60 was blazing away, too, with no more effect than I'd had. If it had been closer to the bastards, the bigger blanks might have done some damage—but this wasn't horseshoes.

The only cover between me—flattened out in the snow—and a hail of live bullets was an all-too-thin screen of low bushes. Fortunately, on full-auto, their fire only lasted about two endless seconds; then their last hot brass sizzled into the snow.

I took a quick personal inventory.

I wasn't hit.

I knew I was going to be surprised about that when I got around to it.

Instantly, I launched toward the nearest raghead, entrenching tool in hand. He saw me coming and tried to hurry home another magazine but jammed it. He didn't get another chance.

Midspring, something warm—something that felt like flesh—wrapped around my wrist. Before I could react, the death-black blade of Gary's knife had buried itself in the raghead's belly. It sliced upward through cloth and flesh like so much soft cheese. A scream split the air—

Followed almost instantly by a curse from the other raghead. In his haste, he'd managed to drop his second magazine in the snow. I grinned in his face and the knife slashed out. A greenish aura swirled within the very substance of the blade as it severed the raghead's hand. His rifle—and hand—dropped to the snow. Without slowing, the knife continued upward through the raghead's throat, and cut short his scream.

I whirled and stopped. It was over. There had been only two. I found myself on my knees, panting hard, staring in abrupt amazement at the impossible knife clutched in my palm. The heavy blade was streaked with red against the snow; so was most of my uniform. Only now did I realize that the long, curved "tail" of the haft was somehow wrapped snugly around my wrist.

Twice...

Likewise—now that it had my undivided attention—I could tell that the flesh-textured surface of the haft was indeed radiating a perceptible warmth against my frozen skin.

I looked more closely. Call it a hallucination, but those damned eyes were twinkling, visibly—and the haft moved within my grasp. Somehow, from somewhere, I was getting the impression of laughter... .

But even as I stared, the eerie glow died away, and the knife was flat black again. I yelled and shook my hand violently, trying to shake the thing loose. It fell to the snow, and blurred—or maybe it was my vision—

I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, a bloody entrenching tool lay in the snow before me.

"Hey, Randy—"

A hand fell on my shoulder. With a shout I convulsed sideways. I landed sprawled in the snow and my cheek touched something warm and wet. I jerked away and looked down. It was the raghead's severed hand. Still twitching in the snow.

"Man, you okay?" Monroe looked scared and worried and awestruck at the same time.

"Uhng... ."

The guys crowded around. I sat up slowly. Someone was yelling for the lieutenant, and someone else was yelling for the medic. Everyone was talking at once. I felt sick and dizzy; it was difficult to follow what was going on.

Sergeant Brown shouted for order and formed us into a circular defensive perimeter—fat lot of good that would do, but it felt right—while Lieutenant Donaldson radioed Captain Jones that we'd had a real incident, somebody trying to steal weapons, and that shots had been fired. The L-T was also bright enough to call for another platoon—an armed one—to search the area for other terrorist patrols.

"How many down, Sergeant?" I heard him call.

"Two enemy dead; one of our boys down."

Donaldson relayed that and requested an ambulance. Wally was yelling for the medic to shag his butt. Crater swore nonstop, propped against a tree, his pants covered with blood. Wally held a compress against the wound. The medic pushed Wally out of the way and took over.

"Crater," I called shakily, "you okay?"

"Yeah, dammit, I took one across the back of my effin' thigh—ahhhh!" The medic had ripped his pants open. "Keep that asshole away from me or I'll kill the son-of—ahhhh—" He yelled again as the medic did something else to his leg.

"Clam it, Barnes!" Brown barked. "Watch the goddamn perimeter!" He then turned his wrath on Monroe, who'd left his position.

Chuck stood over Johnson and clutched his useless M-16. Chuck made a good show of watching the perimeter. He was also effectively holding Johnson down. That worthless dildo lay shivering in the snow, looking utterly wretched. No one had to ask Crater who the "asshole" was.

The ambulance showed up seconds before three jeeploads of MPs skidded to a halt. It would have been hard to decide which we were happier to see. The ambulance meant help for Crater; but the MPs had bullets.

They landed spitting orders.

"Get these men out of here."

"Anyone touch that evidence?"

"Search everyone—I don't want any goddamned souvenirs walking off this site!"

"Who was directly involved in this?"

The latter question was from the MP Captain in charge of the investigation. Lieutenant Donaldson had the two ranking MPs in tow, moving purposefully toward Sergeant Brown. The MPs patted down the platoon for souvenirs, then sent us out of the area they had already roped off as the "crime scene."

Brown reported succinctly who had done what to whom.

Donaldson glanced at me, then looked at the ragheads closely for the first time. His eyes widened. Then he turned on me, his expression grim, and noticed the condition of my uniform. "Spill it, son."

Not wanting a court-martial for insubordination, I chose not to reply that I already had spilled it. In quantity. Not wanting a Section Eight, I was not about to mention Gary's knife. I did describe Johnson's giveaway of our position; then toe-danced selectively through the details of my role in the fight. The MP Captain listened intently. I watched him even more so. My blood pressure began to subside as it became apparent that he was not more than normally suspicious.

"This is the weapon?" Donaldson asked into the silence that ensued when I finished. He pointed toward the bloody entrenching tool with the toe of one boot.

"Yessir. It was the only thing I could think of grabbing, sir, when the blanks didn't have any effect."

The MPs examined the dead terrorists while Donaldson eyed the severed hand. "And just how did you inflict this kind of damage with an entrenching tool, soldier?"

I opened my mouth on empty air when Johnson broke in. His voice was shaking almost as hard as the rest of him.

"It wasn't the shovel—he had a knife, dammit, a huge knife! I saw it—it was about a foot long and black... ."

He gulped and shut up under the L-T's withering stare.

Donaldson regarded me quizzically. I shrugged, forcing myself to meet his eyes. "I don't know what he's talking about, sir. I haven't got anything more than a pocket knife on me. And"—I indicated the entrenching tool with a jerk of my thumb—"there's blood all over the shovel. I keep it sharp, sir. I just swung hard and thought about it afterward."

"Maybe Barnes used shovel judo," Chuck suggested helpfully into the silence.

Donaldson glared at him; then had me strip in the snow. Of course there wasn't a knife anywhere to be found, other than my little three-inch folder.

"There will be an inquest, soldier," he said, skewering me with his gaze while I got dressed. "Everyone involved will be questioned by Captain Plunkett." He nodded toward the MP Captain concluding his notes on my report.

Plunkett finished scrawling in his notebook and looked up. "I want this site left untouched, and I want all of you back at the base immediately. Out into the road, all of you. Detriech, make sure you get all the brass. Half of it's going to be under the snow."

After being dismissed, we trudged down to join the rest of the platoon on the road. There we waited for the truck Lieutenant Donaldson had radioed for. We stood around in the snow and carefully avoided meeting each other's eyes. Especially me. I had more reason not to want to talk with anyone than all the rest of them combined. Being a hero is embarrassing. Plus, I really needed to get back to the base armory and look inside that damned box. It was there, of course—it had to be there—but I needed very badly to see that it was there.

Though I wasn't certain I could trust my own eyes anymore... .

Several hours of intensive grilling later, the MPs were satisfied and I was free to go, the last member of our squad released. The others were waiting outside, questions written all over their faces.

"I dunno," I said. "They pumped me for all I was worth; then shut up like clams. My guess is they'll hush it up like usual."

Wally nodded.

"How's Crater?" I asked.

"Okay. The medics are holding him at the infirmary overnight; then he'll be back with us for light duty. They're sending us back to the field, I guess."

Wally didn't sound pleased.

"At least we're still around to go back," Chuck said quietly. "I never saw anything like it, man," he added. "Jumping them like that, with nothing but a goddamn shovel. We were lucky they didn't hit us worse before you got them. How'd you do it?"

I looked off into the distance, uncomfortable over the awe in his voice. I had pulled a suicidal-seeming stunt with a shovel and they all figured I was some kind of hero who'd saved their lives, or something.

Well, maybe I had at that, but it sure wasn't because I was fearless in the face of death.

As for how I'd managed it, I couldn't admit to them or anyone else what'd really done the killing. Only Johnson had seen that knife, and he'd been ridiculed for blurting it out; would probably get cashiered on a Section Eight, if he stuck to his story. Not that I'd be sorry to see him go.

"I don't know. Honest, I just don't know. Blind dumb luck, I guess. Have I got time to head over to the armory?"

"Armory?" Chuck laughed. "What're you going to do; ask if they've got any more of those deadly entrenching tools?"

"Or something." I forced a grin.

Wally nodded. "Okay, meet us in twenty outside the mess hall. Truck's supposed to be waiting there."

I left them and made my way reluctantly back to the armory. The armorer looked annoyed at my request; but went and got the box. He tossed the wooden case onto the table between us with a solid thunk, and buried himself again in his spy thriller.

It hadn't changed in the twenty-four hours it had sat in the locked safe. It was still a slim wooden box, still wrapped in faded old gingham. I stood for a long moment just looking at it; then made my hands open the lid, quickly.

It was still there. The light from the overhead bulb glinted coldly along the nonreflective black blade. Irrationally, I had the feeling it was looking up at me. There was no trace of blood anywhere. The curve of the haft was precisely the same as when I had first laid eyes on it. I attempted to flex the "tail" with both hands. Reason told me that nothing that solid could bend.

But it had... .

From somewhere came an impression of unheard laughter.

I glanced up at the sergeant. He was still oblivious to the world. Okay. Symptom or fact... we'd see.

I picked up the knife and held it in a battle grip. It still felt warm under my palm. Feeling a little foolish, I dared it to move.

It did. Faster than my eyes could follow, the tail whipped around my wrist and gripped firmly.

I bit off an exclamation and forced myself to stand still. Nothing further happened: no glowing green light, no glittering eyes. The knife just lay quietly in my hand, its tail curled impossibly around my arm.

As the initial shock wore off, it slowly occurred to me that this could be a real helluva useful knife—if any of this were really happening, as opposed to a warning that my load might be shifting.

Gary's grandmother had said this thing had chosen me. I had almost talked myself into believing that was her way of saying, "I want you to have this." Now I wasn't so sure. How in the nine worlds had a little old lady in Oregon gotten hold of this thing? Had she known what she had?

It struck me, standing there in the armory with a supernatural knife wrapped around my arm, that if Gary'd had this knife with him the night Sleipnir showed up, Odin might have been short one world-class champion for his band of not-so-merry men. Or could the knife have come to Gary from Oregon when he really needed it? Not, I realized slowly, that it would've done much good in a car wreck. Besides, there was something else clamoring for attention in my forebrain.

Who had sent this knife to me?

First Odin kills my best friend, then somebody sends me a supernatural knife by way of the grieving family? I narrowed my eyes, and tightened my grip on the warm haft. Didn't the one-eyed god of battle often present certain warriors with special, magical blades just before...

The knife seemed almost to squirm in my grasp.

This reeked of Odin's touch. I didn't trust the knife—or the situation—any further than I could throw either of them. Even if the knife had just saved my ass, I wasn't about to make any more deals with Odin Oath-Breaker, much less accept his bribe. I'd seen what happened when men made a pact with Odin. He broke faith, and killed them.

I eyed the knife. It eyed me right back. I wondered if it could "hear" me.

"How about it?" I asked silently. "You know how I feel. Whatever you are, if you think I'm going to be a good little human now, you might as well go back where you came from."

Surprisingly it purred in my palm. Briefly the tail squeezed tighter.

Now what the hell was that supposed to mean?

I studied the—carved?—face of the dragon, and was forced to admit that there were exciting possibilities to owning such a knife. It could follow me anywhere, disappear when I couldn't afford to get caught with it, and in a fight wrap itself so firmly around my arm that no blow short of cutting off my hand would dislodge it. Why, with a knife like that I could even take on a god in one-to-one combat—

I caught my breath sharply.

Then stared at the weapon in my hand.

It fairly purred.

Alarm flooded through me, so deep I couldn't keep my hands from shaking as I released my grip. I didn't know what to think as I laid the thick blade across my other palm. The tail unwrapped obediently, resuming almost instantaneously its former rigid shape. Gently I returned it to its box and closed the lid.

"Put it back, will you?"

I thought that had come out sounding fairly normal.

The armorer glanced up, nodded, and put the book down.

"Thanks."

"Sure thing, bud."

Uneasily I watched him return it to the locked safe; then I retreated back out into the cold. I was so distracted, I damn near walked past the waiting troop transport. The guys gave up attempts at conversation well before we got back to the maneuvers site.