Norse Code Part 12

"But it's not just farmers," Mist reminded him. "It's also two Aesir, not to mention you and me and Lilly."

"A few umbrellas don't make much difference in a hurricane, kid."

"Well, so what?" Mist said. "You're Einherjar. Isn't your whole existence about fighting a hopeless battle against overwhelming odds? Here's your chance."

"I'm supposed to fall in the clang and clatter of swords on the field of Vigrid. Not be chopped into pieces and used to patch holes in the corpse gate. That would hardly be the glorious death I've earned."

Mist turned to Hermod. "You're being awfully quiet. Say something."

Hermod ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw. "I think Grimnir's probably right, but not just because we'd have to overcome a force of arms. That's not the biggest thing we're facing here. It's what the sibyl told us about: the force of inevitability. The Ragnarok prophecy isn't a prediction of things that could happen. It's a description of the way things will happen. It's a map of time and occurrence. It's the way the universe is laid out. That's what we're up against."

"So, what, then? We give up? Let the farmers try to fix things while we sit back and-"

"No. I say we help them." Mist and Grimnir both looked at him with surprise. "The only hope we have of stopping Ragnarok is by attacking the links in the chain of events. The sibyl said the links were weakest in Helheim, so if we're going to strike, this is the best place to do it. And if we did manage to get control of the s.h.i.+p, we'd be severing a major link. That alone might be enough to avert the final catastrophe."

Grimnir rolled his eyes, but Mist stood on tiptoe and kissed Hermod on the cheek. The act left him with a sensation that was the closest thing to warmth he'd experienced since crossing over into these lands.

THE SABOTEURS set out on their long walk to the river Gjoll. The party consisted of Mist and her sister, Grimnir, Winston, and the two Aesir, but only three of the Iowans: Henry Verdant, his hulking twenty-year-old nephew, Ike, and Alice Kirkpatrick, Ellhead's librarian, a woman with silver streaks in her black hair and arms as tough and lean as strips of beef jerky. Hod and Henry had agreed that a group this large traveling across the plains of Helheim was already at great risk for attracting attention and that the rest of them would serve the cause better by engaging in diversionary tactics, like drawing Garm's pups into fruitless chases through the rock fields.

The Iowans had heard indications of other groups launching a.s.saults on the corpse wall and on Hel's palace, but communication in Helheim was poor at best, and as far as any of the Iowans knew for sure, their operation was the only one under way.

"You and Hod are quite a team," Mist said to Lilly, falling into step with her sister.

"We have common goals," Lilly said, a little defensively.

Mist felt a glow. It had been a long time since she'd been able to needle her big sister about a boy.

"You actually seem tighter than I'd expect after only three months."

"Has it been only three months since we died?" Lilly said, surprised. "It seems like it's been so much longer than that. I don't think time works the same way here as it does back home. Anyway, I won't ask about you and Grimnir-I know walking sides of beef aren't your type. But what about Hermod?"

"Him?" Mist laughed at the absurdity of it. Per haps a little too forcefully, she thought, catching Lilly's smirk. "Not even if he was the last G.o.d on earth. He's nothing but the kind of trouble I can't stand: flaky and distracted."

"I like it when he calls you 'Mist,'" said Lilly.

"It's my Valkyrie name," Mist protested.

"It sounds more like a stripper name."

"It should have been your name. You were always the fighter, first when we were kids and then later with all that rock-throwing you used to do at cops, sucking down tear gas. Me, I was the bookworm. When we got shot-"

"When we got shot," Lilly interrupted, "you tried to block me from more bullets."

"While you were trying to do the exact same thing for me."

"And now you're wondering why you became a Valkyrie while I got consigned to a c.r.a.ppy afterlife."

"Don't you wonder?" Mist asked.

"Sweetie, life's arbitrary and capricious and unfair. People are either born to a world with running hot water or they're born to a world where a mosquito kills them in their first month of life. People die rich and go to heaven or they die poor and go to h.e.l.l. That's the way I've always seen it."

"And you're still an eat-the-rich kind of gal."

"You bet your a.s.s I am," Lilly said. "This arrangement where Odin gets his dead and Hel gets hers? n.o.body ever asked me what I thought about it. I didn't get a vote. So if all I can do is p.i.s.s off some G.o.ds by s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with their system, that's good enough for me." They walked along, vulnerable in the open plain. "What about you, Kath? What's your stake in all this?"

"I'm not as political as you. I just wanted you back. You, and a man I helped put here. That didn't work out."

Lilly made a sympathetic noise. "Sorry that got you stuck down here with me."

"I don't think we're stuck," Mist said.

"Maybe not. But a.s.suming we get out of here, what then?"

"There's not much left to do at this point except try to save the world."

Lilly's shoes scuffed the dust. "Give me a pen and I'll sign your pet.i.tion. And stop changing the subject. What's the deal with you and Hermod, seriously?"

THE s.h.i.+P first appeared on the horizon as a gray smudge with a skinny stick emerging from it, but as they drew closer to the river where it was docked, its immense scale became evident. Narrow and low to the waterline, Naglfar was long enough for a thousand oarsmen. She bobbed and creaked in the black waters. Dark, mottled scales clacked and rattled over her hull in the wind-the nails of the dead. A single mast made of femurs lashed together with sinew towered over the deck and supported a vast, square sail. Extending from the prow, a dragon-shaped figurehead reared up, wriggling human corpses impaled on its teeth.

Naglfar wasn't just a troop-transport s.h.i.+p. It was like a section of Helheim itself, a weapon of terror to bring death to the living lands.

Henry Verdant gathered the group behind the cover of a concrete-colored tree.

"I don't see any guards at all," Mist said. "No draugr, nothing."

"Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there," Hod said.

The dead began to show up gradually, alone or in small groups, coming across the plain at their slow, relentless pace. These were neither draugr nor Hel's soldiers. They were hunters and gatherers and peasants and clerks and factory workers. Normal folk. When they arrived at the river's edge, leather-armored dead waiting at the s.h.i.+p drove them up the boarding ramp with whips and spears.

"This is good," Hod said. "We won't have to fight our way or sneak aboard. We can just let ourselves get press-ganged with the rest of the dead."

"I never figured getting on board would be the hard part," Grimnir said. "It's fighting our way through hundreds of Hel's troops that worries me."

"Overpowering them isn't part of the plan," Verdant reminded the party. He scratched a diagram in the dust with a stick. "We move to the back of the s.h.i.+p, trying not to attract any undue attention." He marked an X. "Then we gather here, at the tiller, and take out whoever's manning it. The Asgardians will handle the waves of troops who'll no doubt come for us then, while the rest of us founder the s.h.i.+p. We keep Hel's troops out of living territory. That's the mission."

Hermod looked down at Verdant's diagram with a skeptical frown. "Dead people are always so quick to suggest suicide missions. Hod, how many do you think you can clobber at a time with your stick?"

"As many as I need to. And you'll be ready with your sword."

Hermod shook his head. "Big talk, but it's not like we're Thor and Vidar."

The party left the cover of the tree and made their way to the riverbank, where they joined the procession of dead without attracting notice. The three Iowans took the lead position, with Lilly and Hod in line behind them, followed by Grimnir, Winston, and Hermod. Mist fell into place beside a decapitated man, whose head was fastened to his chest by straps around his forehead, cheeks, and chin.

"What befell you?" the man said after a few dozen paces. His speech was garbled from the straps limiting the mobility of his jaw.

"What do you mean?"

He waved vaguely toward his neck, from which emerged truncated vertebrae. "I murdered a duke in his sleep. Being highborn myself, I was granted the courtesy of the ax instead of the rope, for which I was very grateful, at the time. In retrospect, with hanging I would have suffered only a few moments of agony and I'd still have my head attached in the afterlife."

Mist couldn't think of anything to say to that.

"So," the man said again, "what befell you?"

"I was a murder victim."

He murmured his sympathy.

"Do you know why they need so many of us?" Mist asked him. "With Hel's troops already in place-"

"Her fighters are for fighting. But Naglfar needs bodies at the oars. That's where we shall be forced to serve."

The Iowans reached the boarding ramp and walked up to the rail, where a particularly beefy pair of dead fellows was stopping people for inspection before letting them on the s.h.i.+p. It was hard to tell by what criteria they were judging, but after a nervous few moments, Verdant, Ike, and Alice Kirkpatrick were given nods of permission, and they boarded without incident. Hod and Lilly climbed the ramp after them and were also let on board. But when Hermod tried to follow, one of the dead fellows put a hand on his chest.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Getting set to sail," Hermod said jauntily.

Two more large men approached. Even dead, they projected an air of officious thuggery.

Squeezing past the dead separating her from Hermod and Grimnir, Mist hoped neither of them would do something stupid or impulsive. She looked up nervously at the s.h.i.+p. Having boarded, Lilly and Hod were no longer in sight.

One of the men leaned over Hermod and sniffed. "You smell funny," he said, wrinkling his nose. "You smell alive."

"I a.s.sure you, I'm quite dead," Hermod lied with indignation.

The man motioned the other guards closer. "What do you guys think?"

They all flared their nostrils, except for one of them, who had no nose and presumably admitted Hermod's life-affirming fumes through his exposed nasal cavity.

"Alive," p.r.o.nounced the noseless one, and all the guards made noises of agreement.

The boarding of Naglfar had come to a stop, and Mist felt the press of the dead building up behind her. The decapitated man kept nudging her with his strap-on head. Mist elbowed him back and reached for her sword.

"We should go," Grimnir whispered to her.

"And leave Lilly and the others? No."

"We can't do them much good if we get ripped limb from limb," he retorted, but before Mist could formulate a response, an eerie, multivoiced, growling moan came from the s.h.i.+p.

"Draugr," Hermod yelled. He bear-hugged Mist and leaped off the ramp, absorbing the impact of landing with his own body. Grimnir and Winston dropped next to them.

The draugr came spilling over the s.h.i.+p's rail, clawing and gnas.h.i.+ng at the dead scrambling to get out of their way. They bit the slower ones, tore their throats, plucked out eyes. Hermod doubted this was part of some planned attack. More likely, Hel's forces had simply lost control of their zombies. That was the problem with draugr: They made for a fearsome force, but they could just as easily turn on their commanders.

Mist madly swung her blade, but despite her efforts to scythe through all comers, the draugr kept pressing in closer, climbing over one another to snap their teeth near her face and reach in with raking fingers. Hands grasped her wrists, immobilizing her sword arm, but then Winston was there, biting her a.s.sailant's leg to pull the draugr off.

Mist struggled to make her way back up the ramp, to the s.h.i.+p, to help Lilly with whatever she was facing on board, but the crush of bodies boiling around her drew her farther away.

Then came a freight-train roar that gave even the draugr pause, and Mist glanced upriver to see a wall of water rus.h.i.+ng forward, jumbled with chunks of ice and uprooted trees and tumbling dead. The wave slammed into her, smas.h.i.+ng her breath away and lifting her up in a swell of water and debris. Rolling in the turbulence, her body cracked against tree limbs, against rocks and the bodies of the dead. As she struggled to stay on the surface, the current took her along the length of the s.h.i.+p and past it.

The s.h.i.+p strained against its mooring lines until they snapped, whipping around and striking dead, slicing them to pieces. The great sail billowed out, and the fingernails covering the hull clicked and clacked like a colony of scuttling crabs.

Naglfar set sail.

Mist fell beneath the current, dirt forcing its way into her tightly shut eyes. Her head collided so hard with some object that she was sure her skull would shatter like a flowerpot. Crushed, buried, battered.

The water popped her back to the top, and a hand grasped her flailing arm and pulled her onto a floating tree trunk. She lay there on her stomach, choking on water and mud. She was only dimly aware when somebody rolled her onto her side and pounded between her shoulder blades. After a while she was able to draw air into her tortured lungs. Some time later, she realized it was Hermod who was helping her. He cleaned out her eyes as best he could with water from his canteen.

They clung to the tree, carried by the floodwaters. Grimnir crouched down at one end, like the lookout on a s.h.i.+p's prow, while a miserable-looking Winston shook water and muck from his fur.

"What happened?" Mist managed to wheeze out.

"The prophecy says when the Midgard serpent stirs, Naglfar will set sail on the floodwaters," Hermod said, gazing upriver. "Guess the serpent's alarm clock went off."

"Lilly and Hod? The Iowans?"

"On their own now," Hermod said, daubing her forehead. Apparently she was bleeding. He patted her right leg, moving down from thigh to ankle, and then the left one. "Checking for broken bones," he explained, sounding defensive, when he caught a look from Grimnir. With a strip of cloth from his jacket, he buddy-taped her ring finger and pinky together.

"Guys, you wanna look at this?" Grimnir pointed ahead, but the gesture was unnecessary. The sky before them was a kaleidoscopic storm. Other worlds were visible in brief flashes through the fragments: enormous pines, mountains of frost, stalagmite-encrusted caverns, skysc.r.a.pers with snowdrifts piling up to the fifth floors.

"World's breaking apart," said Hermod. "I think this might be it."

The river spiraled into the crazy quilt, and Mist and Hermod clutched each other as the tree trunk rushed on.

LILLY CAST HER gaze down Naglfar's long deck but, except for Hod, she saw no sign of her companions, lost in the chaos of the draugr skirmish on the riverbank. As Hel's troops struggled to leash the remaining loose draugr, Lilly tried to calm herself and get a grip on their tactical situation.

Hel's soldiers were well equipped: men in bronze helmets and ostrich plumes, a Confederate side by side with a Union soldier, a n.a.z.i SS officer, and others dressed and outfitted in ways it would have taken a military historian to identify. Even if Lilly and Hod could find the Iowans, they had no chance of taking the s.h.i.+p.

A whip cracked over Lilly's head, and a man in a black wool peacoat stepped forward. His face was a mangled mess of welts, a rusty cargo hook embedded in his right eye. "All right, you worthless dead, man your posts. Malingerers get flayed and turned into sailcloth. You two," he barked, glaring at Lilly with his one good eye. "Why are you just standing there? Looking to get run up the mast?"

"We just boarded, sir," Lilly said, managing a reasonable tone of voice. "What are our posts, please?"

"The pumps," the man cried, gesticulating in any number of directions. "D'you think I want to sail all the way to Midgard with a cursed slurry 'round my ankles? Man the pumps or I'll have you as my own ration!"

"Aye, sir," Lilly said crisply, and she gripped Hod's arm and retreated as quickly as she could.

The other press-ganged crew members seemed no more sure of their a.s.signed positions than did Lilly and Hod, and they gained little sympathy from the officers, who cracked their whips and struck any sailor unlucky enough to come within range.

Lilly hurried over to the pumps, devices fas.h.i.+oned from pelvic bones, and bent to the work.

"Who's at the helm?" Hod asked, close to her ear.

Lilly described the creature standing at the stern. Struggling to hold the tiller steady, he or she or it stood at least twenty feet tall, bulging with slabs of muscle, its head wreathed in thick, kelplike ropes of hair. Its bare chest was laid open, revealing ribs and lungs and a heart like a deflated football.

"A dead Jotun," Hod said. "A giant."