Living in interesting times was a curse I could've done without. I reholstered the P-7.

"You'll point out the way to Loki, then?"He shook his head. Mistrust had crept into his eyes. Baldr was supposed to've been the trusting type. Clearly, he'd learned caution in the eons he'd been stuck in this slimepit of a world.

"No, I think not. This game is too serious for blundering about in the dark. My hostess will want to speak with you, at the very least."

"I thought Hel was only interested in dead men."

His smile was sincere enough. "True; but this is her world, after all, and we are but guests in it. She would not be pleased if you refused an audience. And believe me, no living mortal within her sphere of influence would want to anger her. I am not complaining, understand. She's a good hostess. But you are out of place here, so the same rules don't exactly apply to you."

I didn't bother to observe that so far none of the rules had applied to me.

"Come, pack up your strange belongings and follow me; I'll take you to Hel."

I didn't care for the sound of that; but didn't see that I had much choice.

We struck out along the shoreline. Baldr said conversationally, "I couldn't help noticing that the Sly Biter is with you."

"The what?" I glanced around involuntarily.

"The Sly Biter. Your knife. I'd always wondered what had become of it. Somehow, I'm not too surprised it wound up in your hands. It has a way of turning up precisely when and where it's needed.

How'd it find you?"

I started to comment; then shut my lips. I shouldn't have been surprised.

"You recognize this thing, huh?" I slipped the knife out of its sheath and watched in satisfaction as the tail wrapped around my arm.

"Of course." He sounded surprised. "I used to see it frequently when I was younger. It disappeared, though," he added thoughtfully, "right before I was killed."

Interesting. Maybe I could finally get some answers.

"Where'd it come from? What exactly is it?" Green light caught the blade and sang gleefully along the invisible edge. The scaly haft was warm against my palm. It pulsed with an arcane life.

Baldr's voice warmed to his subject. "The Biter hasbeen since before I was born. Some say it was carved from the living root of Yggdrasil." He gestured toward the cavern "ceiling," and the familiarity of swirling light patterns clicked.

"Others claim . . . Well, it justis . The Norns probably would know for sure where it came from.

My father had it for a while; that's how I know it. But it's an odd creature, the Biter."

"Then it is alive?"

"Oh, yes, without a doubt. Well, not perhaps alive in the sense you might think; but it is not just a soulless artifact. Itchooses those who will carry it, not the other way around, though I'm not terribly clear on why or how."

He grinned. "Father was furious when it deserted him. It's said that when the Biter chooses a mortal, only the mortal's death will break the bond." He frowned thoughtfully, and gave me a disquieted glance. "I'm also told it turns up whenever the Balance swings precariously. When that happens, it acts its will on those who are destined to tip the scales in the direction decreed by the Norns. Thus will it be until Ragnarok. The Destruction of the Worlds," he added, as if expecting me not to know what it meant.

"I know what Ragnarok is," I said dryly.

He smiled, unoffended. "Most of your contemporaries don't. It's sad, you know, being forgotten."

"Yeah, life's a bitch and then you die."

"How very Norse!" He chuckled.

I wasn't laughing.

Instead, I stared at the Biter. Worked its will on me, did it? We'd just see about that. Light sang off its black skin, glinted in its black eyes. Something Baldr had said had begun to bother me. If the Biter did its own choosing-and had deserted Odin-what, precisely, did that mean tome ? What did itwant? And just whose side was it on, anyway?Could I trust it or not?

Whatever the answer, Odin had been upset to lose it. I grinned. The thought that the Biter preferred my company to his gave me a great deal of satisfaction.

"It's a temperamental little bastard," was all I said.

I carefully resheathed it. At Baldr's request, I related a few of my adventures with the Biter, leaving out key bits of information here and there. Baldr laughed merrily when I told him about the entrenching tool and the ragheads. I managed to keep the conversation light and humorous.

Then, as he took up the thread of conversation and began an improbable tale about the Biter and a frost giant, a biting wind picked up, seemingly out of nowhere. I shivered hard. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I was just about at the end of my strength, and I wasn't dressed for freezing wind. Given the state of my clothes, I was barelydressed . When I fell behind, wheezing loudly in the cold air, Baldr slowed and stopped.

"I fear I must apologize again," he said ruefully.

Baldr assisted me over to a large boulder, which sported flecks and speckles of glowing yellow phosphorescence. It wasn't a warm phosphorescence, though, so I just sat wearily, shivering.

"Yeah? What for this time?"

"You are injured, tired, and undoubtedly suffering from hunger and thirst, and I've kept you walking all this time when there was no need."

A gust of wind caught us, and I wrapped both arms around myself, trying to get warm.

"And you are cold, as well. I really am sorry. . . ."

"I know, I know, it's just that the dead don't get tired and thirsty, right?"

"Well, yes; but that's no excuse when I'm responsible for your welfare. By the time you've caught your breath they should be here."

"Who?"

He put fingers to his lips and emitted an extraordinarily shrill whistle. It was the loudest sound I'd yet heard from an inhabitant of Niflheim, and I was surprised when it echoed off the distant ceiling.

I was just getting my wind back-and the racing of my heart under control again-when a low rumble of thunder shook the ground. Before I could open my mouth to ask what was up, two enormous horses burst into view from beyond a nearby house-sized boulder. Their sharp hooves churned up the dark soil as they slid to a halt in front of us. They were bridled, and saddled, and obedient as big, shaggy dogs.

They didn't appear to be breathing hard from their run. In fact, I couldn't detect any breathing at all.

When I thought about it, I realized that-except for drawing air to speak-Baldr hadn't been breathing, either.

I eyed our mounts. "Dead horses?"

"What else? Several of your ancestors were thoughtful enough to bury horses with themselves, which has provided us with a wide variety of excellent mounts and draft animals. These were once war horses." He grimaced, and sighed. "Their unfortunate masters died of old age in their sleep. Poor souls; no man deserves such a fate-but we can't all die in glory, can we?"

"No," I said dryly, "I don't suppose we can. The species wouldn't survive it, if we did."

He grinned. "I like the way you think. It's . . . refreshing. Here, let me introduce you to your mount so there'll be no misunderstandings. He hasn't carried a live rider in hundreds of years."

Baldr urged one of the horses forward, and I wondered what I was supposed to do. I'd never been on a horse in my life.

He glanced at my face-did a quick double take-then halted the animal several paces away. He rested one hand casually on the animal's-shoulder?-and lifted one shaggy blond eyebrow in apparent surprise.

His question came out sounding droll. "Not a horseman?""Uh, no."

He gave me a look that seemed to ask what the hell we learned on Earth these days. But he didn't say anything; just patiently explained how to mount, steer, start, and stop. I struggled aboard, envious of Baldr's graceful leap to his animal's back.

"We'll go at a slow trot," he said, urging his horse forward. I followed suit, and my horse obeyed, tossing its head briefly in irritation before settling down to the job of nursing me along.

Riding was marginally better than walking, except for the cold wind; but I couldn't grasp properly with my injured knees, so I just sat loosely, hanging on to the reinsand the mane, and flopped along as best I could. Each jolt sent agony through the tear across my tailbone. Gradually the seat of my pants grew warm and sticky. I'd almost rather have walked.

My horse didn't like it much better than I did; but he was surprisingly cooperative, for a war stallion. Dying must've taken all the spirit out of him. We got along well enough, at any rate, and the horse's longer legs covered the ground in mile-eating strides. We approached a massive bend in the river, and Baldr turned his horse slightly inland, urging the animal up the flank of the nearest boulder-strewn ridge.

I followed, having absorbed enough basics to avoid sliding off backward when the horse started up the steep slope. My knees hurt from trying to grip; but I stayed on and, within moments, we reached the crest. Our new vantage point revealed a long, shallow valley, with headlands that jutted out on either side of the bend in the river. The result was an enormously broad, sheltered harbor.

I pulled up sharply. Baldr stopped his horse to let me look, innately courteous. Below us, situated some fifty yards inland from the river's edge, stood a building that would've dwarfed anything but the Pentagon. A gate the size of a football goalpost had been set in a massive wall that ran right around the structure. Spread out as far as I could see, squatting right up the slopes of the ridgelines to either side, were houses, mud streets, and what looked astonishingly like farms.

I felt like a high-desert plainsman astride my shaggy war horse, looking down from my barren wasteland onto civilization.

We had arrived at Hel's Hall of Death.

Chapter Thirteen.

The panorama below was one of the dreariest I'd ever seen; it was dark and dull, in shades of green, grey, and black, with a very little bit of dirty white and yellow shining up briefly whenever the eerie phosphorescent lightplay in the ceiling flared brighter directly overhead.

There was movement in the "fields," and along the narrow clay roads. I couldn't identify the crops growing in the farm rows. There was no cheerful sound of bustle and activity, no warm firelight from hearths or windows; just a slow, ponderous sense of heavy, endless work to be done by people dead long before I'd been born.

The farms and the miserable town must furnish Hel with foodstuffs and goods. She hadn't been dead when Odin had banished her here; so presumably she still needed to eat, drink, and make merry in her own gloomy fashion. In that context, it made sense to put to work the legions of dead under her authority. I wondered if she gave them any choice. Somehow I doubted it; but even hard work must be a somewhat attractive alternative to eternal boredom.

As I watched, a curtain of dull mist swept in off the river, obscuring the hall, so Baldr led the way down the slope and I fought to keep from sliding up my horse's neck. When we finally touched level ground again, we were near a hard clay road. It led from a black dock on the river to the massive gate of Hel's hall. The dock seemed to be for Modgud's skiff-I saw no evidence of any other craft.

We rode toward the gate, and were swallowed by dark mist. I shivered under a blast of sleet, which was condensing within the mist to fall on anything miserable enough to be caught below. The gate was closed, and-judging from the looks of the fortress-probably barred from inside.The closer we rode, the bigger it loomed, until I had to crane my neck, shielding my eyes with one hand against the sleeting mist. The wall itself was built from massive chunks of utterly black stone, mortared with what looked sickeningly like dried blood.

The gate was metal, dull and colorless until a blast of wind opened a rent in the mist, admitting a glare from a bright swirl directly overhead. The brighter light revealed it to be badly tarnished silver. The surface was utterly flat, with no patterns; but the massive posts at the corners were topped by human skulls, coated inside and out with silver, also badly tarnished.

The gate swung ponderously open at Baldr's approach. It groaned like something out of a really bad horror movie. I could've done without the theatrics. If I hadn't been so jittery, I probably would have laughed out loud. Baldr rode straight through. I followed nervously, craning my neck to see what had opened the massive gate so effortlessly. There was nothing there, of course.

Instinctively I rebelled at the idea that it opened by magic; but I was dealing with gods and goddesses, and I'd already seen several sciences go out the window, at least partway. Gary's death alone had tossed out physics and biology. It would have made me feel slightly better to believe there were hidden weights and pulleys concealed inside that massive wall, the better to awe superstitious peasants. But I couldn't really bring myself to believe it.

However she managed it, the gates swung wide to admit us, then closed solidly again. The heavy thud sounded muffled behind us. My horse shied, and I grabbed at his mane to keep from falling off.

"Stupid animal," I muttered, wondering why my rock-steady beast would turn abruptly skittish. The fact that Baldr was also having trouble with his mount made me feel slightly better-until I thought through the implications. . . .

"Better dismount while you can," Baldr called back, jumping lightly to the ground.

I tried to imitate his style; but my knees gave out and my feet slipped on the ice coating the stone road. I landed in a painful lump under my horse's belly, and the blow jarred the wind from me. The horse snorted and bolted sideways, leaving me to scrape my much-battered self off the road.

Baldr lent me a welcome hand. I swayed for a moment, feeling as though all my bones had jellied under this last insult. Baldr kept me from falling, and I leaned on his arm for support until the worst had passed.

"What's got into them?" I wheezed, jerking my thumb at the horses, who stood huddled against the gate. Obviously they wanted out again very badly.

"Even a dead horse can smell death."

Oh.

We stood on a paved flagstone road that led to enormous double doors. Huge grooves, six inches deep, slashed into the flagstones just beyond the gate. I remembered reading-somewhere back in the world of yellow sunlight and warmth-that Sleipnir had jumped this gate, when the gods sent him to ask Hel to return the newly murdered Baldr. Sleipnir's hooves had cut those grooves; but his mission had failed. Baldr was still Hel's guest.

Hel's hall was made of extremely dense wood, coated black as Modgud's skiff had been. The closer we approached, the harder the sleet fell. I found myself shuddering uncontrollably. I maintained a tenuous grip on the ice, which coated everything, and was glad I'd worn my combat boots. I concentrated on not falling a second time. I was too proud to ask Baldr for help walking this last little bit -although by the time we got to the doors, I regretted it.

A rectangle of blackness loomed; I looked up to see the huge hall door swinging silently open.

Come into my parlor. . . . Baldr stood waiting. I tried to hurry; but just as I reached the threshold, he grabbed my arm.

"Take care," was all he said. He reached out with one toe and tapped the broad flagstone in front of the door. It dropped dizzily out of sight, instantly lost into a yawning black chasm.

I swayed. He steadied me. "The entry stone of Hel's Hall is called Drop-to-Destruction-never forget that."That wasn't bloody likely.

The stone slid up out of the depths, grinding back into place. Baldr stepped carefully over it; then turned and gave me assistance I badly needed. By the time we were inside, I was leaning pretty heavily on his shoulder, pride be damned. The door swung shut with a hollow bang. I looked around Lady Death's home.

"What's this place called?" I muttered, trying to adjust my eyes to the extremely dim light.

"Eljudnir," Baldr answered. "That means Damp-with-Sleet," he added, glancing at me to see if I'd take offense at the translation.

"Huh. Appropriate."

An enormous fireplace across the room boasted the oddest fire I'd ever laid eyes on. It flickered eerily in the semidarkness, its flames an odd blend of greens and yellows as some unknown, glowing vegetable matter burned on the hearth. I could feel the heat from where I stood, though, and leaned imperceptibly toward it, wishing I had the strength to walk closer. Baldr guided me slowly across the room.

The air was thick, the light foul and disturbing. It distorted the shapes of stone furniture scattered around the immense room. I looked for the source of the strange lighting, and found-hanging from the ceiling in enormous nets-twisted fungi. They glowed balefully in the shadows near the ceiling. Great loops of chain ran between the nets, and held suspended in midair large, glowing boulders. Their rusty red and orange phosphorescent minerals added a touch of alien color to the room.

I noticed queasily that the boulders had been carved into horrifying shapes. The impression was of a torture chamber bathed in bloody light.

"Ugh, how can you bear this?" I muttered.

Baldr shrugged, and helped me to a stone chair near the fire. "It's better than a dank hovel out in the sleet. And I told you, Hel really isn't a bad hostess. Just a little grim."

Grim wasn't the word for this nightmare room. If her house were this bad . . . Decor usually reflected the owner's personality. Well, shewas Death. At least the fire was warm. An extraordinarily old man was making his way toward us from a shadowed doorway, moving so slowly, it looked as if he were swimming through blood.

Baldr addressed him before he could get very far into the room.

"Ganglati, please inform your mistress that her guest has arrived, and ask Ganglot to send my wife to us."

The ancient man nodded, took five minutes to turn around, and slowly disappeared.