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  "You make me smile already, mortal that dictates to gods, and claims to defeat them. And Sigyn is right, with that comes hope. Not a lot of it, but a tiny spark. Why should I negotiate, Jerry? Ragnarok is sure. The Wanderer himself knows he cannot win when the Time comes."

  Jerry shrugged, as nonchalantly as he could. "Nothing is sure, this time around."

  "It is all happening again!" said Sigyn. "I was sure of that."

  "And," continued Jerry, "if I am right, this is the pattern. It will happen again, and again, until the Krim's masters get tired of it, unless we stop them."

  "That's a powerful argument," conceded Loki, with a crooked grin. "Once is bad enough. So, name your terms, Jerry."

  Jerry could understand why Loki had got away with blue murder so often in Norse myth. His smile went all the way to his eyes. There was mischief in those eyes, but there was also a trustability to it. In some ways it reminded him of Lamont's youngest child's smile. It had the same childlike quality to it. Not heedful of consequences perhaps, but with no true intent of evil. And yet . . .

  Loki led the forces of giantkind against the Æsir in the final battle. The gods had bound him, but not killed him. Odin had by this time known that Loki and Loki's offspring would kill him, and the other Ás. Why had he allowed him to live? There had to be reasons. Odin was not known for fairness.

  Jerry swallowed. "First, my girlfriend, my best friend and his wife and children are out there. I won't have them hurt."

  Loki nodded. "We place our values in those we know and love most. Many are the men who would kill a stranger."

  "But when the world falls, those close to us must fall too," said Sigyn.

  Jerry started realizing that she was more than just loyal. Well, to cope with a man like Loki you'd have be clever and subtle at manipulation.

  "I will have vengeance for my sons, Loki," she continued. "You promised me that." There was an implacability there, that Jerry could feel was as unstoppable as the tide. "You promised me Asgard would fall."

  Loki sighed. "Never make promises to women, Jerry. Not even in your cups. They have a way of remembering everything you have said, in exactly the way that suits them." Despite the sarcasm in the words, Loki's smile at her contained both affection and acknowledgment of the agreement. "I said that I would destroy those who did what they did to Narfi and Váli."

  "And to do that we must bring down the walls of Asgard," she said.

  Loki shrugged. "Which I arranged to have built, and which will withstand the mountain giants and the frost giants, among which I have my kin."

  "But not the sons of Muspellheim," said Sigyn quietly.

  Jerry had it now, that elusive trace of memory. Surtur the fire demon, who had spread his fire and darkness all over the nine worlds at the end of Ragnarok. Surtur, the lord of the fiery South, that balanced Nifelheim of the frozen North. There was a certain symmetry to Norse myth. Sigyn might not want to have Loki destroy the world, but she would let him, if that was the cost of her vengeance. And if Jerry had it right, Ragnarok was something that virtually nothing had survived.

  Chapter 11

  Watching from among the heather and rocks on the ridge, Lamont saw how the dragon wound its way down to the burn and drank from the dark water, and then turned and made its way back. It huffed as it went, emitting clouds of yellowish noxious-looking vapor from its nose.

  "Where are those kids?" asked Emmitt.

  Ty and Tolly had disappeared again. Lamont was beginning to regret pairing them up. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but Ty was enough of a handful on his own. He just had to be one of the most inventive and creative eight-year-old fabricationists in the United States. Marie called it lying, but Lamont suspected that to Ty the line between truth and fiction was somewhere in the Cartoon Network.

  "Darn those kids. Where did you last see them?"

  "They were just down slope from me. Playing some game. I told them to lie still."

  Lamont studied the slope. No Chicago Bears sweatshirt visible. There was a slight indent, an incipient stream-bed, with more cover in it than on the rest of the hillside, just below where the kids had been. "They must have gone down the gully. I'll go and look."

  "We'll stick together," said Marie firmly. "There's nowhere else they could have gone."

  So they made their way down. They found them in a small cave—along with two other people.

  One was a man who could have passed for Arnold Schwarzenegger's body double, except that he was blond and had a naked sword in his hand. The other—a short and stocky bearded dwarf—had not drawn his weapon, but looked decidedly nasty.

  "—ling you the truth," Ty was saying. "The power-rangers are coming. We're just scouting for them because Dracona the green transformer has their scent. I wouldn't touch us if I were you."

  "Tyrone, you come here this minute!" said Marie, startling the two strangers out of any action they might have been contemplating.

  Lamont kept a firm hold on the rock that he'd picked up. It wasn't much against that sword, but it was all there was to hand, here. Admittedly, by the look on the face of the tall guy with the sword, he wouldn't need it that much. The big blond looked positively relieved to see them. He lowered his sword, pointed at a stack of implements against the wall, and said something in a lordly gabble.

  What was that saying architects were so fond of? Form defines function, if Lamont remembered right. It was true, Lamont reflected. Those things might be Norse era tools, but they were still spades, and the blond sword-swinger plainly was expecting people who didn't have swords to do the digging, especially coal-dust covered ones.

  Well, a spade—even a wooden one with metal edge—was still a better weapon than a rock. "Take a spade, people," said Lamont in a very even voice. His son and Medea's were still too close to a man with a naked sword. "And try to look like that's what you came here to do."

  A spade is a good disguise. See a man with a spade and you assume that he's a workman, thought Lamont, looking at the blond swordsman's casual stance as he attempted to talk to the now blue-kneed PSA agents. It had been a fairly brisk early autumn day back in Chicago. Lamont, Marie, Liz and kids all were dressed for that. But it was much too cold for the gear the PSA agents were wearing. Sandals, brass greaves, the skirty thing—a peltoi, he thought it was called—and a cuirass didn't do too well in this temperature.

  Lamont almost grinned. A pity Jerry wasn't here. He'd like to have pointed out that they looked mighty cuirass . . .

  Blondie looked a bit scornful about their outfits, but seeing as they'd brought him some serfs to do his digging he wasn't making a fuss. He and the dubious-looking dwarf led them down into the valley, across the burn, and to the dragon's path. He pointed. Lamont added the Norse word for dig into his vocabulary.

  "A hole big enough to trap a dragon?" said Liz quietly. "You've got to be kidding me. Let's get out of here, Lamont. I'll distract him, you hit him. We can deal with the dwarf."

  "Okay."

  She paused, seeing someone new appear on the scene. From nowhere, it seemed like. "Um. On second thought, better keep digging. That's the guy we saw in the castle. Odin himself, if Jerry was right."

  It was Odin indeed, in his blue cloak and broad hat, and with just one eye. Fortunately he was not really interested in labor unrest. He was pointing at the ground. Maybe he was saying that Blondie didn't have a building permit. Lamont noticed, however, that Odin's arrival had led to the dwarf's abrupt departure.

  And Odin's departure led to the pit digging being moved too. They were now to dig a trench up the slope. Fortunately, it was fairly soft loam. Unfortunately, their chances for rushing the blond muscular warrior were considerably slimmer. He was sitting on a high rock, sharpening his sword. He tossed a fragment of wool into the air and held the blade out as it fell. The sword appeared to split the drifting wool.

  Surely nothing could be that sharp? On the other hand, did they really want to find out?

  "There'll be a chance to
sneak off later," said Liz quietly.

  It certainly seemed a safer option, and fortunately Blondie wasn't after much in the way of entrenchments. He was not watching his diggers but keeping a wary eye on the dragon's cave. He obviously saw something that made him decide that now was the time to leave and suddenly they were herded back up to the shallow cave. The dwarf had made a fire. The PSA agents looked like they were going to kiss him. Blondie didn't seem to be planning to stay and enjoy it though. He took up a folded piece of brown coarse fabric and turned toward the mouth of the cave.

  "When he's gone," whispered Liz.

  But then Blondie turned back, beckoned to Lamont, and tossed the fabric at him. It was a lot heavier than it looked. Lamont's knees almost buckled.

  Now, Blondie gestured for Lamont to follow him. So they all started trooping out, but he waved the rest of them back with that bright sword of his.

  Lamont followed him back down the hill to the shallow pits. Blondie got into one, pointed at the rough cloth, and said something in Norse. Lamont got the message, even without the Norse. He covered up the hole, with its warrior inside, and pinned down the edges of the cloth with rocks. Now was the perfect time to hit Blondie so hard with the shovel that he couldn't use his sword, and depart hurriedly.

  But Lamont couldn't bring himself to do it. The idiot was plainly planning to stab the dragon from underneath, and that dragon made Bitar and Smitar look kittenish.

  From under the cloth the blond warrior said something that Lamont guessed to be "vamoose." Looking at the belch of yellow smoke coming from the dragon-cave, Lamont didn't need any further invitation. He legged it across the peat-stained stream and ran for the cave. Now, maybe, they could get out of here. . . .

  Looking back, he saw that the huge green dragon was slowly making his way out of his lair. Lamont ducked behind a handy rock and wished there had been a very much bigger handy rock. Peeping out through some fronds of dead fern that still clung to the stone, he watched the dragon ponderously advance down the path toward the pit where the blond Norseman lay hidden.

  Lamont could see three possible outcomes. First, the man might just succeed. Second, the dragon might just find him and kill him. Third, he might wound the dragon. It was the third possibility that worried Lamont the most—and, unfortunately, it seemed the most likely. This was not a very large valley, it was not a very deep cave that his family was hiding in, and this was a very small rock he was hiding behind. And a wooden spade wasn't going to make much of an impression, if a sword that sharp couldn't.

  He watched. And waited.

  In the cave Liz cursed under her breath. The dwarf whose name was apparently Reginn, judging from what she thought the blond guy with body-builder build had called him, had drawn his sword and was intent on the scene down below. If it hadn't been for Lamont being stuck behind a tiny rock a good two hundred yards closer to the dragon than any sane person wanted to be, this would have been the perfect time to make a sharp exit. She had a boyfriend to go looking for, and she had a feeling that the blond guy and this Reginn were up to no good, even if dragon-killing was a traditional knightly practice.

  Besides, she was a biologist. There were probably far more knightly types than dragons anyway. She watched Reginn's intent face. It held an expression that seemed a combination of fear and nasty delight. Liz could probably swat him with one of these heavy wooden shovels, but there was no way that Marie would leave and let Lamont catch up. Actually, there was no way Liz could just leave him down there, for that matter, no matter how sensible it would be.

  The dragon appeared to be crawling slowly toward the holes they'd dug. It stopped and puffed some of that sulphurous yellow smoke, then turned its great head, as if tasting the air. For a brief, wild moment Liz considered yelling a warning. But that would most likely be terminal for all of them.

  The dragon continued its slow pace forward.

  Suddenly, a great gout of the yellow smoke roared and gushed out of that fangy mouth and surged across the valley. The dragon reared up and Liz could see a spurting fountain of black blood. Its blood hit the grass, and the grass withered and smoked. The dragon twitched and clawed the ground, its great tail thrashing as if it was about to do a lizard trick and come right off.

  The dragon jerked spasmodically. And then again, and reared up trying to reach the place from where its black life-blood leached out onto the ground.

  Even from here she could hear that it was saying something. To Liz that made the dying worse, somehow.

  They watched and waited. And then the blond man emerged from the side of the dragon, his great sword held aloft, and it seemed to catch the sun like some shaft of silver. Liz wasn't surprised that the others clapped. The dwarf was capering in glee. He waved his sword at them and bellowed something that was probably "out." Before Liz decided to take him out, he chopped a solitary spruce—perhaps four inches thick—with a single cheerful swipe.

  He shooed them ahead of him like he was herding geese. He was soon happily engaged in kicking the dragon, and loudly congratulating his knight, who was cleaning his sword, and beaming toothily himself.

  "Now do you think we can just slip away?" said Marie. "Where the hell are those children? Come here, you two. Don't you dare go near that cave!"

  Unfortunately that yell, while it had turned the two boys back, had also reminded the dwarf and the blond dragon slayer of their presence.

  They found themselves lifting a very heavy foreleg while Reginn and the dragon slayer took part in some gory butchery. At length the two of them hauled out a heart the size of a steamer-trunk. It was speared onto a spruce sapling, and they were sent walking up the hill with it back to the cave and to the fire. Reginn waved cheerfully with a snaggle-toothed smile and left them to make a dragon-heart barbeque.

  By the way Ella had stopped to be sick, the dish might not catch on in the U.S. Liz suspected it might be a better hit back in South Africa, where the men doing the barbequing—"braai-ing"—believed in alcohol marinade, principally applied internally to themselves, because the meat was too hot. This blond dragon slayer was their kin in spirit, anyway. He had dug out a flask of something and was applying it liberally internally, and not offering to share, either.

  Liz had spent much of her adult life working with commercial fishermen. She was used to out-toughing and out-drinking men. And right now she wouldn't have minded showing this fellow how it was done. Still, after dragon-killing, a drink was probably a fairly reasonable thing to want.

  Liz tried to turn the meat, more on principal than out of any real interest in cooking dragon heart properly, burned herself, and sucked her fingers.

  "Ow! Give me a hand with this, will you," she said, putting her fingers back in her mouth. It was some indication of how long ago breakfast had been that dragon heart tasted quite appetizing.

  Emmitt responded, after a prod from Lamont. He had the bright idea of using another stick. It didn't work too well either on the lopsided weight of heart. He ended up burning his fingers too, and instinctively sucking them, before they got the meat propped the other way.

  The blond dragon slayer now tried his hand at singing. You'd have thought that a noise like that would have frightened off birds and any other wildlife, but Liz noticed that two ravens fluttered in and perched on a ledge near the entrance. They eyed the grilling heart with greedy, beady eyes.

  "Where are the others?" one raven asked the other.

  "Probably still flapping along."

  "Probably flapping in the other direction, Hugin," cawed the first. "You were supposed to watch them."

  "I was tired," said the raven grumpily. "Do you know what it was like trying to find a single nuthatch, let alone five? Here on Gnita-moor of all places."