He shook his head. “I just refuse to believe in you, man.”
The icy gray eyes blinked once. Then Thor’s surprised expression faded into a deathly cool smile. “I did not ken your other insults. But for calling me a man, you shall die as you seem to wish, before the morning sun.”
He stood up and placed a hand on Chris’s shoulder, as if emparting a friendly benediction, but even the casual power of that touch felt vicelike.
“I only add this, little one. We Aesir have come invited, and we arrived not in ships—even ships between the stars—but instead upon the wings of Death itself. This much, this boon of knowledge I grant thee, in honor of your defiance.”
Then, in a swirl of furs and displaced air, the creature was gone, leaving Chris alone again to watch the coals flicker slowly and turn into ashes.
6
The Teutonic priests were resplendant in red and black, their robes traced in gold and silver. Platinum eagles’ wings rose from their top-heavy helms as they marched around a great circle of standing stones, chanting in a tongue that sounded much older.
An altar, carved with gaping dragons’ mouths, stood beside a raging bonfire. Smoke rose in a turbulent funnel, carrying bright sparks upward toward a full moon. Heat blazed at the ring of prisoners, each chained to his own obelisk of rough-hewn rock.
They faced southward, looking from a Gotland prominence across the Baltic toward a shore that had once been Poland, and for a little while after that had been the “Thousand Year Reich.”
The waters were unnaturally calm, almost glassy, reflecting a nearly perfect image of the bonfire alongside the Moon’s rippling twin.
“Fro must be back from Labrador,” O’Leary commented loudly enough for Chris to hear him over the chanting and the pounding drums. “That’d explain the clear night. He’s th’ god of tempests.”
Chris glanced at the man sourly, and O’Leary grinned back apologetically. “Sorry, man. I mean he’s th’ little green alien who’s in charge of weather control. Make you feel any better?”
I had that coming, Chris thought. He smiled dryly and shrugged. “I don’t suppose it matters all that much, now.”
O’Leary watched the Aryan Brothers march by again, carrying a giant swastika alongside a great dragon-like totem. The technician started to say something, but then he blinked and seemed to mumble to himself, as if trying to catch a drifting thought. When the procession had passed, he turned to Chris, a mystified expression on his face. “I just remembered something.”
Chris sighed. “What is it now, O’Leary?”
The beatnik frowned in puzzlement. “I can’t figure why it slipped my mind until now. But back when we were on the beach, unloading the bomb parts, Old Loki pulled me aside. It was all so hectic, but I could swear I saw him palm th’ H-bomb trigger mechanism, Chris. That means…”
Chris nodded. “That means he knew we were going to be captured. I’d already figured that out, O’Leary. At least the Nazis won’t get the trigger.”
“Yeah. But that’s not all I just remembered, Chris. Loki told me to tell you something for him. He said you’d asked him a question, and he told me to relay an answer he said you might understand.”
O’Leary shook his head. “I don’t know why I forgot to tell you about it until now.”
Chris laughed. Of course the renegade Aes had put the man under a post-hypnotic command to recall the message only later… perhaps only in a situation like this.
“What is it, O’Leary? What did he say to tell me?”
“It was just one word, Chris. He said to tell you—necromancy. And then he clammed up. Wasn’t much after that that the SS jumped us. What’d he mean by that, Captain? What was your question, anyway? What does the answer mean?”
Chris did not reply. He stared at the funnel of sparks climbing toward the Moon.
With his last question he had asked Loki about the camps—about the awesome, horrible, concentrated effort of death that had been perpetrated, first in Europe and then in Russia and Africa. What were they for? There had to be more to it than a plan to eliminate some bothersome minorities.
Moreover, why had Loki, who normally seemed so oblivious to human life, acted to rescue so many from the death factories, at so great a risk
Necromancy. That was Loki’s delayed reply to his final question. And Loki had told it in such a way that Chris might have his answer, but never be able tell anyone who mattered.
Necromancy…
The word stood for the performance of magic, but magic of a special, terrible kind. In legend, a concentrated field created by the death agony of human beings to drive his spells.
But that was just superstitious nonsense!
Light-headed, Chris looked out across the sand at the hulking Aesir, seated on their gilded thrones, heard the chanting of the priests, and wished he could dismiss the idea as easily as he once would have.
Was that the reason the Nazis had dared to wage a war they otherwise could never have won? Because they believed that they could create such concentrated, distilled horror that ancient spells would actually work?
It explained so much. Other nations had gone insane, in human history. Other movements had been evil. But none had perpetrated such crimes with such dedication and efficiency. The horror must have been directed not so much at death itself, but at some hideous goal beyond death!
“They… made… the Aesir. That’s what Loki meant by thinking that, maybe, his own memories were false… when he suspected that he was actually no older than I…”
“What was that, Cap’n?” O’Leary leaned as far as his chains would allow. “I couldn’t follow…”
But the procession chose that moment to stop. The High Priest, carrying a golden sword, held it before Odin’s throne. The father of the “gods” touched it and the Aesir’s rumbling chant could be heard, lower than human singing, a hungry sound like a growl that trembled within the Earth.
One of the chained Allies—a Free Briton—was dragged, numbed with dread, from his obelisk toward the fire and the dragon altar.
Chris shut his eyes, as if to hold out the screams. “Jesus!” O’Leary hissed.
Yes. Chris thought. Invoke Jesus. Or Allah or God of Abraham. Wake up, Brahma! For your dream has turned into a nightmare.
He understood clearly now why Loki had not told him his answer while there was even an infinitesmal chance that he might ever make it home again alive.
Thank you, Loki.
Better America and the Last Alliance should go down fighting honorably than even be tempted by this knowledge… to have its will tested by this way out. For if the Allies ever tried to adopt the enemy’s methods, there would be nothing left in the soul of humanity to fight for.
Who would we conjure, Chris wondered. If we ever did use those spells? Superman? Or Captain Marvel? Oh, they’d be more than a match for the Aesir, certainly! Our myths were boundless.
He laughed, and the sound turned into a sob as another scream of agony pierced the night.
Thank you, Loki, for sparing us that test of our souls.
He had no idea where the renegade “trickster god” had gone, or whether this debacle had only been a cloak for some deeper, more secret mission.
Could that be? Chris wondered. He knew that it was possible, still. Soldiers seldom ever saw the big picture, and President Marshall did not have to tell his OSS captains everything. This mission could just have been a feint, a minor piece in a greater plan.