"I think we can escape this cell, at least," I said. I drew from my pocket a handful of white chemical powder and showed it to them. "It's the chemical I always carried in my plane to melt ice from the wheels when necessary. I showed Loki this handful and then put it in my pocket."
"What good will that do, Jarl Keith?" Freya asked puzzledly.
"The lock on the door of this cell is a crude one, made of soft copper," I answered. "I believe this substance can burn away enough of the lock to free us. I'm going to try it anyhow."
I stuffed the chemical powder into the large crevices of the clumsy lock. Then I took our jar of water and poured a little over the powder. The hissing and sizzling of the chemical reaction continued for several minutes. When it ceased, I gently tugged at the lock. It still held. I pulled harder, and with a rasp, it gave way.
"Follow me," I whispered tensely. "I think I know the direction to the court where the plane is. If we only can get through the corridors without meeting anyone!"
We emerged into the dusty stone passage. I led the way toward the right, taking the first cross-corridor that led northward. The cold chill of the night fog penetrated the marrow of our bones, and our nerves were harp-string taut as we pressed on through the dark corridors.
Suddenly I shrank back into the shadows. I had seen two Jotun warriors approaching from a cross-corridor ahead.
"Hurry!" one was urging the other fearfully. "Do you wish to meet the hideous one that now lurks in these passages?"
"Frey, we'll have to jump them," I whispered. "Be ready."
The two Jotuns came around the corner into our dusky corridor. Frey and I leaped on them, taking them utterly by surprise. What followed was not pretty. We had grabbed their throats, for it was essential that they should not give an alarm. There was a fierce, deadly scuffle in the misty, dark tunnel, until we throttled them.
The Jotuns lay limp when Frey and I straightened, panting. We took the swords the two warriors had not had a chance to draw.
"Come on," I panted. "This way. Those warriors must have entered from one of the outside courts."
We hurried down the shadowy passage from which the Jotuns had come. Then Freya suddenly stopped, pulling me to a halt.
"Listen, Jarl Keith," she urged in a hushed voice. "Something sinister is coming."
In the silence, I heard a strange, silky, rustling sound in the dark and misty passage ahead. It was growing nearer, louder–
A giant, spade-shaped head reared out of the curling mists ahead of us! Two opaline, unwinking eyes that held the dull glitter of an alien intelligence contemplated us from above a gaping mouth in which a forked red tongue flickered.
"This is what the Jotuns feared!" Frey cried wildly.
"The fates save us!" Freya prayed. "It is Iormungandr."
I also recognized that giant, scaly body of long, rippling blackness, that huge head and those alien, glittering eyes. It was Iormungandr who towered before us in the misty dusk of the chill tunnel. The ageless and undying, the great Midgard serpent itself, was glaring down with blood-lusting eyes!
Chapter XIII
Flight and Death
We stood petrified by horror in that foggy, stone-walled corridor, gazing cataleptically at the hideous creature whose reptilian head was rearing up from the curling white mists. Freya's slim figure had shrunk against me with a choking cry. Frey stood in front of us, his sword raised, his face wild as he looked up at the looming head.
The hideous, abnormally huge coils could only be glimpsed in the mists beyond. But the giant spade-shaped head that hung above us was clear to our appalled vision. The enormous, opaline eyes were coldly brilliant as they stared down at us.
In that moment of stupefying horror, I recognized the intelligence in those unwinking reptilian eyes. This ser- pent of a bygone age had lived on for centuries in this land of eternal youth, with its master Loki and wolf Fenris. It had acquired an intelligence comparable with the human. A strange mind shone from those coldly malignant eyes.
"The Midgard snake!" Frey whispered.
"Jarl Keith!" Freya screamed to me.
The great head of the snake Iormungandr abruptly darted toward us. Frey struck out madly with his sword. I saw the blade slash into the scaly neck. But it caused only a shallow wound from which merely a little black blood oozed.
The Midgard serpent recoiled, however. Its opaline eyes flamed with rage. From the jaws of the monster, with a terrific hiss, came a cloud of fine green spray that flew toward Frey. He reeled back, covered by that weird vapor. But I leaped forward, dragging him and Freya ahead. I saw our single chance. The momentary recoil of the serpent had left open the mouth of a corridor on the right!
"Quick!" I cried, pulling them toward the black passage.
Frey seemed blinded by the green spray of the serpent. The monster's vast coils were twitching with rage, its head swaying angrily forward again. But we plunged safely into that branching corridor. It was utterly dark. As we stumbled forward in it, I heard a distant babble of alarm from the upper levels of the Jotun palace.
"The Jotuns will be after us," I cautioned. "Loki will be warned of our escape."
"Jarl Keith, Iormungandr follows us!" Freya cried wildly.
The angry hiss of the giant serpent was echoing from the stone walls. And I could hear the loud rustle and scrape of its scaled body as it glided into the dark passage after us.
No more than a few moments could have passed before we reached the end of the passage. But it seemed ages that we ran in blind, unreasoning terror. Slipping on the mossy, wet stone floor, we could hear the clamor of the far-off alarm grow louder and the hissing rustle of the Midgard snake overtaking us.
Then I collided with a metal door that closed the end of the passage. My heart throbbed as if it would burst as I clawed frantically for the knob. If it were locked, if we were trapped here by the serpent–
My hand found the catch, and I tore the door open. Outside was the open air. We stared at the night that was filled with curling white fog-mists through which shone the ghostly Moon. I pulled Freya and the stunned Frey through and slammed the door shut behind us. The catch fell. Next moment, there was a loud thump against the other side of the door as the Midgard snake's huge head struck it.
We had emerged into one of the courtyards of the great palace. In the vague mists, the squat, brutal bulbs of Jotunheim's structures rose darkly all around us. But now torchlight was flashing from the upper windows of the palace as the alarm spread.
"Which way?" Frey mumbled thickly, gaping about in the shrouding mists, his sword in his unnerved hand.
"This way," I said decisively, leading them toward the left. "It's the next court."
Then I heard the stamp of restless horses on the stone paving of an adjoining court. We ran forward. Frey was staggering like a drunken man as we burst into that adjoining court. Out of the mists loomed a Jotun guard, black-bearded, huge, his face a white blur in the fog.
"Who are you?" he challenged. When he saw the fair hair of my two companions, he uttered a loud cry. "Aesir!"
He struck at me with his sword, but I had the advantage of surprise. I ran in with an upward thrust of my blade, slid past his defense, ripped between the laces of his brynja. He collapsed, the alarm bubbling through the blood that filled his throat.
I began running toward the vague shape of my rocket plane, which loomed out of the mist. But suddenly I remembered that the port window had been smashed when I had first landed on the sandy beach below Midgard's frowning cliffs. Flying in the cold, thin air of the Arctic, I might lose consciousness and crash into the sea. In any case, my hands would be too numb to handle the firing wheel.