Shea swung the ponderous weapon up in an effort to parry that downstroke. He never knew how, but in that instant the sword went as light as an amusement park cane. The blades met. With a tearing scream of metal Shea’s sword sheared right through the flaming blade, The tip sailed over his head, landing with a crackle of flame in some brush behind. Almost without Shea’s trying, his big blade swept around in a perfect stop-thrust in carte, and through the monster’s throat. With a bubbling shriek the giant crashed to earth.
Shea spun around. Beyond the lip of the dyke Heimdall was hotly engaged with his big adversary, their blades flickering, but the third giant was coming up to take a part. Shea scrambled upon the dyke and ran towards him, surprised to discover he was shouting at the top of his voice.
The giant changed course and in no time he was towering right over him. Shea easily caught the first slash with a simple party carte. The giant hesitated, irresolute; Shea saw his chance, whipped both blades around in a bind in octave, and lunged. The giant’s flaming sword was pushed back against its owner, and Shea’s point took him in the stomach with such a rush that Shea almost fell onto the collapsing monster’s body.
«Ho, ho!» cried Heimdall. He was standing over his fallen opponent, terrible bloody slashes in the giant’s body showing dim red in the light of the burning swords on the ground. «Through the guts! Never have I seen a man who used a sword as he would a spear, thrust and not strike. By Thor’s hammer, Warlock Harald, I had not expected to find you so good a man of your hands! I have seen those do worse who were called berserks and champions.» He laughed, and tossed his own sword up to catch it by the hilt. «Surely you shall be of my band at the Time. Though in the end it is nothing remarkable, seeing what blade you have there.»
The big sword had become heavy again and weighted Shea’s arm down. There was a trickle of blood up over the hilt onto his hand. «Looks like a plain sword to me,» he said.
«By no means. That is the enchanted sword, Frey’s invincible Hundingsbana, that shall one day be Surt’s death. Hai! Gods and men will shout for this day; for the last of the war weapons of the Æsir is recovered! But we must hurry. Snögg!»
«Here,» said the troll, emerging from a clump of treeferns. «Forgot to say. I put troll spell on sword so light from blade don’t show giants where we go. It wear off in a day or two.»
«Can you tell us where there is a mountain tall and cold near here?» asked Heimdall.
«Is one — oh, many miles north. Called Steinnbjörg. Walk three days.»
«That is something less than good news,» said Heimdall. «Already we have reached the seventh night since Thor’s play with the giants of Jötunheim. By the length of his journey the Wanderer should tomorrow be at the gates of Hell. We must seek him there; much depends on it.»
Shea had been thinking furiously. If he knew enough to be a warlock, why not use the knowledge?
«Can I get hold of a few brooms?» he demanded.
«Brooms? Strange are your desires, warlock of another world,» said Heimdall.
«What you want him for?» asked Snögg.
«I may be able to work a magic trick.»
Snögg thought. «In thrall’s house, two mile east, maybe brooms. Thrall he get sick, die.»
«Lead on,» said Shea.
They were off again through the darkness. Now and then they glimpsed a pinpoint of light in the distance, as some one of the other giant search parties moved about, but none approached them.
TEN
The thrall’s hut proved a crazy pile of basalt blocks chinked with moss. The door sagged ajar. Inside it was too black to see anything.
«Snögg,» asked Shea, «can you take a little of the spell off this sword so we can have some light?»
He held it out. Snögg ran his hands up and down the blade, muttering. A faint golden gleam came from it, revealing a pair of brooms in one corner of the single-room hut. One was fairly new, the other an ancient wreck with most of the willow twigs that had composed it broken or missing.
«Now,» he said, «I need the feathers of a bird. Preferably a swift, as that’s about the fastest filer. There ought to be some around.»
«On roof, I think,» said Snögg. «You wait; I get.» He slid out, and they heard him grunting and scrambling up the hut. Presently he was back with a puff of feathers in his scaly hand.
Shea had been working out the proper spell in his head, applying both the Law of Contagion and the Law of Similarity. Now he laid the brooms on the floor and brushed them gently with the feathers, chanting:
«Bird of the south, swift bird of the south,
Lend us your wings for a night.
Stir these brooms to movement, O bird of the south
As swift as your own and as light.»
He tossed one of the feathers into the air and blew at it, so that it bobbed about without falling.
«Verdfölnir, greatest of hawks, I invoke you!» he cried. Catching the feather, he stooped, picking at the strings that held the broom till they were loosened, inserted the feathers in the broom, and made all tight again. Kneeling, he made what he hoped were mystic passes over the brooms, declaiming:
«Up, up, arise!
Bear us away;
We must be in the mountains
Before the new day.»
«Now,» he said, «I think we can get to your Steinnbjörg soon enough.»
Snögg pointed to the brooms, which in that pale light seemed to be stirring with a motion of their own. «You fly through air?» he inquired.
«With the greatest of ease. If you want to come, I guess that new broom will carry two of us.»
«Oh, no!» said Snögg, backing away. «No thank, by Ymir! I stay on ground, you bet. I go to Elvagevu on foot. Not break beautiful me. You not worry. I know way.»
Snögg made a vague gesture of farewell and slipped out the door. Heimdall and Shea followed him, the latter with the brooms. The sky was beginning to show its first touch of dawn. «Now, let’s see how these broomsticks of ours work,» said Shea.
«What is the art of their use?» asked Heimdall.
Shea hadn’t the least idea. But he answered boldly. «Just watch me and imitate me,» he said, and squatting over his broom, with the stick between his legs and Hundingsbana stuck through his belt, said:
«By oak, ash, and broom
Before the night’s gloom,
We soar to Steinobjörgen
To stay the world’s doom.»
The broom leaped up under him with a jerk that almost left its rider behind.
Shea gripped the stick till his knuckles were white. Up — up — up he went, till everything was blotted out in the damp opaqueness of cloud. The broom rushed on at a steeper and steeper angle, till Shea found to his horror that it was rearing over backward. He wound his legs around the stick and clung, while the broom hung for a second suspended at the top of its loop with Shea dangling beneath. It dived, then fell over sidewise, spun this way and that, with its passenger flopping like a bell clapper.
The dark earth popped out from beneath the clouds and rushed up at him. Just as he was sure he was about to crash, he managed to swing himself around the stick. The broom darted straight ahead at frightening speed, then started to nose up again. Shea inched forward to shift his weight. The broom slowed up, teetered to a forty-five degree angle and fell off into a spin. The black rock of Muspellheim whirled madly beneath. Shea leaned back, tugging upon the stick. The broom came out of it and promptly fell into another spin on the opposite side. Shea pulled it out of that, too, being careful not to give so much pressure this time. By now he was so dizzy he couldn’t tell whether he was spinning or not.
For a few seconds the broom scudded along with a pitching motion like a porpoise with the itch. This was worse than Thor’s chariot. Shea’s stomach, always sensitive to such movements, failed him abruptly and he strewed Muspellheim with the remains of his last meal. Having accomplished this, he set himself grimly to the task of mastering his steed. He discovered that it had the characteristics of an airplane both longitudinally and laterally unstable. The moment it began to nose up, down, or sidewise the movement had to be corrected instantly and to just the right degree. But it could be managed.