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  "Water," said Lamont.

  "That stuff kills you," said Thor. "Really. And fish . . . well, they live in it."

  Liz could believe that the local water might easily kill you. Like the Greeks drinking wine, almost everyone here probably drank something with alcohol in it to keep the waterborne diseases limited, if not completely at bay. Boiled or spring water it would have to be.

  Thjalfi tried to pour some more of the mead into Thor's horn. Marie plucked the jug out of his hand and emptied it over his head.

  Sif smiled sweetly at her. "You say she is a power greater than you, husband?"

  Thor looked at Thjalfi, dripping and gaping, and nodded. Marie grinned. And then her face spasmed with pain, briefly.

  "So don' push me," she gasped. "Gimme one of those pills, Lamont honey." The pills had altered, but still seemed to work.

  Thjalfi had backed off to the now open mead-barrel, which stood beside the other three unbroached ones. He was about to refill the jug, despite his dripping, when Marie caught sight of him.

  She whistled at the dragon, to get Jörmungand's attention. "You. Go and finish up that lot."

  Jörmungand didn't wait for a second invitation. She surged up and plunged her gargantuan black-lipped mouth around the first barrel, and up-ended it down her throat. The next one she just swallowed whole . . . as she did with the last two. And then she gave a little ladylike burp, and said " 'scuse me."

  Sif watched with little red spots of furious color blossoming on her cheeks. Liz was sure, now, that Thor's wife not only understood Thor's drinking problem, but had come here with just one purpose in mind—to get him drunk. She was also certain that Thjalfi was up to his plump neck in whatever Sif was up to.

  The real question was why? Liz could only think of one plausible answer. The Krim had lost two prior encounters with some of this set of humans, so it was treading more cautiously now. One of its aims was presumably to get any allies they might have made out of the way.

  "All right," growled Fenrir. "She got to drink all the drink. Can I eat all the food?"

  "No," said Liz firmly. "You need a properly managed diet, or you'll end up with all sorts of growth problems. And we don't want that."

  Fenrir stared at her, his bucket-sized toothy mouth wide open. "Diet . . ." he said, as if he might be pronouncing a foreign word. "Did you say 'diet'?"

  "Not starvation. I just need to adjust your protein and calcium input. You're growing too fast. You'll end up with weak bones. Wolfing down everything is just not on. I want you a strong and beautiful wolf, not one crippled with joint pains."

  "Just one roast ox?" said Fenrir pleadingly.

  Jörmungand began to hiccup.

  "So what we do now?" said Special Agent Bott to his companion.

  "They're treating us like amateurs and pariahs," said Stephens.

  "Yeah, I know." Bott examined what his laser sighting device had become. He tossed the piece of pitch-pine and flint aside. "Trouble is, they do know more than we do. And they don't seem very interested in cooperation."

  That was at the root of their problems here. Cooperation. These guys seemed to have no loyalty and worse, no respect. The scary thing was that the others were in control. Well, more in control than Stephens or he were.

  "That Thjalfi . . ." Bott mused. "The local factotum fellow. He seemed more friendly."

  "At least he brought me a loaf of bread, and took away the meat," said the vegetarian. "I don't see why they all find it so funny."

  "I suppose it is very odd in this culture. Anyway. I think we should cultivate this Thjalfi."

  His companion shrugged. "Why not? We can't complete our primary objective. If I understand it right we don't have much of a chance of getting back to the U.S. either. Except these guys did manage it before."

  Bott nodded. "That's why I think its worth sticking with them. Even if means putting up with their nonsense."

  "Until we get home."

  "Yeah," said Bott, rubbing his hands together. "It'll be quite different then."

  "Shouldn't have drunk that stuff so fast," admitted Jörmungand, a bit later. Liz was no expert on the proper color of dragons, but that particular greenish tinge didn't look right at all.

  "A mistake," she agreed, nodding. Liz felt genuinely disoriented. Women going off in pairs to the bathroom was something she hadn't actually thought of across the species-divide. And Jörmungand being sick was something she could have passed on entirely.

  "Just . . . drink helps me to forget my sorrows. Helps me to forget that I'm a freak."

  "You're not a freak! You're a very fine dragon!" Who has just puked up four hogsheads of mead, the barrel staves, a roasted ox, and some large sharks, but she didn't say it aloud.

  "I'm too fat," sniffed Jörmungand. "These dragon friends of yours will never like me. I need to diet!"

  At this rate, thought Liz, I'll have an anorexic dragon in my life. "Nonsense," she said robustly. "Who told you that rubbish?"

  Jörmungand sniffed again. "It says so in all the skaldic sagas I've read. They say I am so big I have to live in the ocean. And I've read all of them. They . . . help me get away from myself."

  "I wouldn't believe everything you read. I mean, who wrote them?" asked Liz.

  "Some of the greatest skalds in history, and some of the worst," said Jörmungand. "You must know more about them than I do, being a skald yourself."

  "Um," said Liz. "I just think that what I really am is lost in translation. And I promise you that I've written a lot of things I didn't believe myself, and they're supposed to be true. I was writing about fish—and I'm not a fish. Naturally, I get some things wrong. If these skalds were writing about dragons, unless they were dragons, they probably got things wrong too. Trust me. My skills are not skaldic poetry . . . well, not any kind of poetry, but I know a lot about zoology." Liz saw the puzzled look. "Take it as the study of animals."

  "Like hunting?"

  "No. More like understanding how they work . . . look, just trust me, I'm an expert. You are not fat. Just . . . very big. The skalds have it wrong. I'm sure, if you think about it, you'll find they get other things wrong."

  "Oh, all the time. And most of them can't write for old rakfisk. I mean take that stupid death scene in the Völsung Saga. Could it be any more contrived? Here is Atli dying, having been murdered by Gúdrun, and they stop to have a long pointless bicker about her temperament not always having been what it should have been. Artistry," said Jörmungand sarcastically. "I could do it better myself."

  "Spoken like a true critic," said Liz.

  "I think it goes with a serpentine body," said Jörmungand, flicking out her forked tongue.

  Marie turned, too late, to try and pull the sharp thing out of her. It must have killed her, she realized. Consciousness was fading like the light seemed to be. All she was aware of was that golden-haired woman smiling toothily in triumph as she fell.

  Regret. She hadn't even been able to say a proper goodbye to Lamont and the children. . . .

  She'd come into the room looking for Thor. At this stage, the guy was going to need near constant support, but he was doing well. She'd found him—and Sif and Thjalfi. Thor had been in a chair, lolling, drool running down his chin and the air smelling like 'shine.

  Chapter 18

  "Marie's missing," said Lamont worriedly, as soon as Liz and Jörmungand returned. "So are Sif and that bum Thjalfi. I think they kidnapped her. And Thor's useless. He got into the booze again. Got drunk faster than you can believe."

  Liz took a deep breath. "If they did kidnap her, there's only one place she can have been taken, Lamont. Valhöll."

  Lamont's eyes narrowed. "That's what I figure, too. I'm going to have to ask you to look after the kids, Liz."

  "Don't be stupid, Lamont."

  "She's my wife, Liz. She's my . . . she's . . ."

  "I know. It is kind of obvious. And she's great. But she wouldn't thank you—or me—if I let you get killed. She's living on borrowed time, Lam
ont."

  "That's why I've got to get to her."

  Liz shook her head. "I know that makes it even more precious. But it also means you've got to stay alive. For your children." She made a face. "It's not that I'm unwilling, but, well, I've all the parenting skills of a shopping mall."

  Lamont clenched his fists. "I can't just leave her. I can't just do nothing. I can't. Marie . . ."

  "I know," said Liz. "So I'll go, instead."

  Lamont blinked. "You?"

  She shrugged. "For a recce anyway. Look, you stick out in this place . . . like a bar of Ivory soap in a coal scuttle."

  Lamont managed a crooked smile. "More like the other way around, but I take your point."

  Liz patted her chest. "For once being built like a milkmaid and having . . . uh, blond hair does make me look like a local. My ancestors were mostly Dutch, which is just a bit closer to Norse than yours. And I gather there are these Valkyries wandering around. So I'll just go and wander. By the sounds of it they're all half-smashed on this local brew anyway. Let me go and see what I can find out. I was planning to go anyway, and I might find that they've put her in with Jerry. We'll send Lodin to the stables again. A two-pronged attack. In the meanwhile you can get Thor sobered up and get ready for whatever action we have to take."

  "If we can take action." Something about the way he said it suggested that he was preparing himself for it to be too late, and was already thinking of payback. And that you didn't want to be the guy on the receiving end.

  Liz put a hand on Lamont's arm. "If they just wanted to kill her, they could have done it here. And you looked for signs of a struggle, didn't you?"

  Lamont nodded. "Nothing obvious, anyway. I'm not exactly a forensics team, Liz. But, well, this Valhöll doesn't sound like a healthy place for a woman to go 'wandering,' as you put it."

  "I can take care of myself. I used to work on fishing trawlers, Lamont, not in a seminary for refined young ladies from genteel homes. There are several guys walking around at home who have three Adam's apples and lovely soprano voices."

  "What?" He looked puzzled.

  "Guys who used to have baritone voices, one Adam's apple and two balls," said Liz cheerfully. "Now, I think I need a suitable outfit. And helping myself to that woman's best clothing has appeal, especially if I can wreck it before I get back. You go and locate Lodin while I dress. And keep an eye out for the children. If they want hostages, those are the best."

  "I suppose I'd better take the kids with me everywhere I go," said Lamont in sudden fear. "I can't ask those waste-of-breath agent types to do it."

  "Bring the children to me," said Jörmungand. "And I'll get Fenrir. There aren't any Ás around except Thor who would take me and my brother on. I'll keep an eye on them." As an afterthought she said, "And I won't let Fenrir eat any of them either."

  Marie felt as weak as a cat. Had the cancer suddenly taken some kind of giant leap forward? The last she remembered was the potent smell of distilled liquor, and yelling at Thor. Too late. He was already far gone, damn the bitch. And then that thing being stuck into her . . .

  Opening her eyes, Marie saw the bitch in person looking down on her. Her arm was linked with the old guy with a missing eye.

  "I knew she was no good," muttered Marie, a muzzy determination in her mind to take at least one swing at Thor's wife, somehow. She'd backed down from pretty damn little before she knew she had the cancer. There were times when it wasn't worth your job or the other sort of trouble. She had a good man and family to look after. Since the diagnosis, she'd decided that she would back down for nothing. Not ever again.

  The one-eyed man viewed her wild swing dispassionately. She'd come nowhere near the golden-haired blonde, but it hadn't stopped Sif from backing away.

  "A warrior-woman," said the one-eyed one.

  "Thor says that she is more powerful than he is, Odin," said Sif warily.

  "Perhaps in determination," mused Odin, as Marie tried to get up from where she'd fallen.

  "She stopped Thor from drinking, Odin. That's why I had to get her out of there. I have managed to get him full of the drink again with Thjalfi's help. But she'd gotten him to stop earlier, and she'd do it again. That has to be some kind of magic."

  "Nonetheless, she's a human, even if she's colored wrong. Not one of the ones that thwarted . . . the other before. I can detect no signs of godlike power. She is no danger. Her death and pain can merely strengthen this Ur-world. I will use her in one of the myth recreations."

  "I thought we might want her as a hostage," said Sif doubtfully.

  Odin tugged his beard. "We can do both." He picked up a long thorn, that Marie now remembered Sif stabbing her with. "The thorn of sleep. Let her lie, without breath, but without death, inside the ring of flames. I seem to have lost Brynhild."

  He pushed the thorn into her, and the place whirled into oblivion again. The last thing Marie heard was him saying as if from some incredible distance:

  "Valkyries. Bear her to within the hall I have prepared on the mountaintop, inside the wall of flames. And see she gets a mailshirt."

  Thrúd walked out to go and fetch a mailshirt. It seemed impossible that her own mother had not recognized her, even in these thrall-rags and a hood. But then she'd hardly recognized herself in them, in the sword-blade mirror.

  She was incredibly pleased to have an excuse to get out of the room. How disgusting could Sif get? Odin! He was sort of her grandfather! It was sick enough when the old lecher had tried to feel her up. But Sif was all over him, just as Modi had said! And by the sounds of it, the black-elf woman had managed to stop Papa-Thor drinking. So Sif went and kidnapped her!

  Thrúd ground her teeth. She'd find out exactly which flame-mount the Valkyries were going to transport this black-elf to and then get back to Bilskríner to see how Papa-Thor was doing. She swallowed. He was such a big idiot. He'd never believe Sif was doing anything wrong.

  Who could she turn to for help? This black-elf? Getting her free would be quite some task. She was paler skinned than the black-elves that Thrúd had met in her travels through Nifelheim. And they had had straight, greasy black hair, rather like that know-it-all, Alvis, nothing at all like hers.

  Thank all the gods for Loki! Uncle Fox would have been her first choice, if Odin hadn't chained him away somewhere. Sif hadn't liked Loki, which, after he'd shaved her hair off, was hardly surprising.

  Thrúd ground her teeth again. It might just have made him the ideal ally.

  Chapter 19

  "Yes, you do have to wear a mailshirt," said Jörmungand firmly. "All the Valkyries do."

  Liz held the offending garment at arm's length. "You realize that if it was going to do any good, there is no way I could hold this out like this? It's too light."

  "I could bite through it like fine vellum," said Fenrir, licking his lips. "But I think it is for the look of the thing. No one expects Valkyries to actually fight."

  "Even for the look of things," insisted Liz, "this is designed for someone with smaller shoulders. And a smaller bra-size. It's metal and it doesn't stretch."

  "I'll see what I can do to the side straps," said Lamont in a subdued voice. "Not much I can do about the chest part, though. Is there no way you can fit into it?"

  Liz looked at his face and nodded. "I was just complaining for the sake of it, Lamont. It'll be a bit of a squeeze but I'll manage. But you might need tin snips and pliers to get me out of it again."