Lawyers in Hell (35 page)

“Sorry about that,” Simpson said, “but this is going to hurt.”

“I’ll … manage.”

“Forget what I said about Yankee Chills.  On three?”

Wendell nodded.

*

The travelers took a break at the top of a small hill.  A cluster of men, dressed in shaggy furs, retreated before them at their approach and huddled at the far end of the hilltop, staring fearfully at the giant.  They had picked up large stones and held them in their hands, prepared to throw, pitiful weapons indeed against a giant of Vafthruthir’s size.

Wendell sat shivering on the ground, drawing breath in ragged gasps while his arm throbbed in time with his pulse.

“Your companion should kill you and move on,” Vafthruthir said.  “You will not live to reach the ice fields, let alone cross them.  And neither of you will cross them alive dressed as you are.”

“What did he say?” Simpson crouched next to him.

“Kill me.  Won’t live long anyway.”

“Much as I’d like to, how will I understand the giant without you, or him me?”

Wendell snorted.  “Not sure if you’re joking.”

“When you figure it out,” Simpson said, “you tell me.”

“There’s more.  Ice fields.  Said we won’t survive them dressed as we are.”

Simpson looked across to where the other occupants of this hilltop were huddled.  “Not dressed as we are, huh?”

“What are you thinking?”

“We need warmer clothes.  They have warmer clothes.”

“You can’t.  For one thing, they outnumber us and….”

“Relax, Holmes.”  Simpson stood up.  “I’m not like your General Sherman.  I plan to trade for some of their furs.  But first we’ve got to get you strengthened up and that means getting you fed.”

Wendell suppressed a laugh.  “Have you seen anything to eat around here?”

Simpson laughed.  “Not only a Yankee, but a city boy.  You just wait right here.”  He stopped to gather up some rocks then walked down the hill, disappearing in the mist.

“Where does your friend go?” Vafthruthnir asked.

“He said he’s going to get food,” Wendell said.

The group at the other end of the hilltop started whispering together.  One of them took a few steps in their direction.  “You have food?  Please, can you give us some?”

“Go away, Midgarder,” Vafthruthnir said.  “We have nothing for you.”

Wendell faded in and out of consciousness several times before Simpson returned and squatted next to him.  “Can you sit up, Holmes?”

Wendell struggled upright.

“There’s no fire, so you’ll have to eat it raw, but here.”  Simpson held out several cuts of meat roughly cylindrical in shape, about an inch to an inch and a half across and about six inches long.

“What’s that?”

Simpson said nothing, simply held out the meat.

“Snake!”  Wendell said after a moment.  “You can’t eat that.  Those things are poisonous!”

Simpson sighed.  “City boy.  The snakes make their poison in the head.  As long as you don’t eat that they’re fine.  You Yankees had better supplies than we did in the war.  A lot of my boys would catch snakes and eat ’em, because that’s all they had.  Now we need to get your strength back up.  So eat.”

Wendell took a piece in his good arm and tentatively bit into it.  The meat was stringy and had a somewhat fishy taste.  Before he’d half realized it, he had gobbled the meat from the bones and was reaching for another piece.

After Wendell finished the second piece, Simpson held up a hand.  “That’s enough for now.  Feeling better?”

“A bit,” Wendell said.

Simpson nodded.  “As I remember, you said that first fellow wanted food?  Well, these look just as hungry.”  Simpson stood and held down a hand to Wendell.  Wendell took it and, with Simpson’s help, rose to his feet.  “It’s time to do some bartering, I think.”

*

Wendell knew that eventually he would regret the food he’d eaten.  In the meantime, the meat, along with the furs for which Simpson had traded more pieces of snake, renewed his strength.  His ribs and arm still ached but his vision no longer had the disturbing tendency to go double.

Simpson had traded snake meat not only for furs, but also for a pair of woolen breaches that he had converted into a crude backpack, the legs serving as straps.  He had stuffed additional snake meat into the pack.

“Time to take a break,” Simpson said when at last the three travelers returned to the stream.  He shrugged out of the pack and set it on the ground, then pointed at Wendell.  “You, sit.  Rest.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel,” Wendell saluted.

“I’ll be back shortly,” Simpson said.

“Shouldn’t you rest too?”

“I’m not injured.  I’ll rest a bit when I get back.”  With that, Simpson walked upstream until he vanished into the mist.

“Your friend is a strange one, Midgarder.”  Vafthruthnir said.

“Strange?  Maybe.”  Wendell squirmed where he sat, trying to find a comfortable position.  “And he’s not exactly a friend.  We’re more like old enemies.”

“Old enemies, you say?”

“Different sides of a war.  His side lost.”

“So both of you were warriors?”

“Soldiers,” Wendell said.  “Lawyers.  Judges.  Different sorts of politicians.”  He shook his head.  “‘The player on the other side….’”

The giant sat next to Wendell.  With his head in his lap he was almost at a comfortably conversational distance.  “What do you mean, ‘player on the other side’?”

“It’s from an essay by an old professor, Thomas Huxley.  ‘The player on the other side is hidden from us.  We know that his play is always fair, just and patient.  But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.  To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength.  And one who plays ill is checkmated – without haste, but without remorse.’  We made our share of mistakes in that war, but in the end, it was Simpson’s side who lost.  In the end, they didn’t have the industry, or the manpower to win.”

“But they had valor?”

“Oh, yes,” Wendell said.  “Valor they had, in plenty.”

“Then he should remain here, as should you,” Vafthruthnir said.

“What?  Why?”

“Ragnarok, the Fate of the Gods, is coming, Midgarder.  Whether soon or late, no one knows, but its coming is certain.  The hosts will set sail from Niffelheim on Naglfar, the Ship of the Dead, and join with the sons of Surtr and with my giant kin, the Jötuns, and we shall march on the abode of the Gods, Asgard, and Asgard will fall.  And a new day shall dawn for all that is goodly and beautiful in the gold-thatched hall of Gimle.”  Vafthruthnir sighed.  “And yet for many years few have come to swell our ranks.  Two doughty warriors would be a welcome addition.”  He raised his hands and spread them out.  “This place of mists and darkness, Niffelhel, is not the whole of Niffelheim.  While we do not have the pleasures of Valhöl, one can wait in peace for the coming of Ragnarok.”

Wendell thought better of saying what he thought, that he had no intention of staying in this place.  “You have given me much to think about.”

*

Simpson returned with an armload of dead snakes, which he immediately set about skinning, gutting, and cutting into pieces about six inches long.  Once done, he packed the snake pieces into his makeshift backpack and shouldered it.  “Trade goods,” he said in response to Wendell’s questioning look.  “We may need them.  Ready to proceed?”

Wendell nodded and got to his feet.

“This way,” Vafthruthnir said, and proceeded downstream along the bank.

After three more breaks, at each of which Simpson killed more snakes to add to their store of meat, the stream they had been following joined a large river.

“Touch not the water,” Vafthruthnir said.  “You will not die, but the agonies will make you long for the mercy of death.  We continue this way.”  He pointed downstream once more.

“Is it just me or is it getting colder?” Wendell asked.

“Not so many snakes anymore,” Simpson said.

“Aye, it is becoming colder,” Vafthruthnir said, “and much colder yet will it be, before we are through.  The ice fields lie ahead, and beyond them what remains of Ginungagap, the yawning void from before the world was.  Only there can we find our way free of Niffelhel.”

Soon they encountered the first frost in hollows along the riverbank.  When asked, Vafthruthnir admitted that the frost was free of venom and safe to swallow.  Wendell and Simpson scraped loose handfuls to suck on.  The frost relieved the thirst that had been building in the sight of so much water that they dared not drink.

As they continued, the edges of the river became rimmed in ice.  The ice extended up the banks and before long they were walking on a sheet of ice broken only by the dark trace of the river, curls of mist rising from its surface.

When Simpson called another halt, the river had finally frozen completely.  The river ice had a yellow-green cast, in contrast to the blue-white of the ice elsewhere.  Although the sky remained a murky gray, the mists had cleared in the cold.

Frost rimed the furs around their heads and the cold burned in their noses as they breathed.  Vafthruthnir, despite his light clothing, did not seem to experience any discomfort from the cold.

“Does it get much colder than this?” Simpson asked.

Wendell repeated the question for Vafthruthnir who answered, “Not much colder, Midgarder.  We have only a few more leagues for this leg of our journey, and then you shall see a wonder such as few Midgarder eyes have witnessed.”

“Press on, then,” Simpson said when Wendell translated.

True to the giant’s word, as they crested a small rise, the ice dropped away before them in a jagged cliff.  Here the river broke free of the ice and fell for miles before disappearing in the depths below.

To his right more than a dozen miles away, Wendell saw an irregular wall of gray-brown.  The wall extended both down into the gap and up into the sky above them for as far as the eye could see.  Ahead, more than twice as far loomed a second wall of dark red.  Wendell could not see where bottom of the … canyon seemed such an inadequate word … might be in the miles below them.

“Ginungagap,” Vafthruthnir shouted over the roar of the waterfall, “or what remains of it since the creation of the World Ash.” Vafthruthnir pointed at the gray-brown wall in the distance to their right.  Wendell sucked frigid air over his teeth as he realized that Vafthruthnir meant that wall, extending beyond sight in all directions, was the World Ash, or part of it, and that would make it the same tree on which Nidhogg had been gnawing.

The river that the three had been following was not the only cascade breaking from the near wall.  To their right, stretching out into the distance were four others; to their left, six more.  Vafthruthnir pointed to the farthest one on the left.  “There.  That is where we must go, the Gjöll, the river resounding.”

*

The crossing to the Gjöll was harrowing, across the treacherous ice, close enough to see the precipice, but no closer.  The Gjöll, when they reached it, was not completely frozen over like the other rivers, but filled with ice floes that howled as they ground against each other before tumbling over the falls and into the depths.  The noise of the ice, and the river running beneath it beat at their ears.  They turned to follow the Gjöll upstream.

The unchanging light provided no clue to how long they marched.  Wendell thought it was days.  The pain in his arm and in his side had receded to a dull ache by the time the ice had finally receded and they gained the rocky shore of the river.  On this side of the ice there were no snakes.  Instead, small stands of scrub provided wood for fire to warm them and cook the snake meat that Simpson insisted Wendell eat.

The Gjöll broke over rapids frequently.  The roar of one set of rapids did not completely fade behind them before the roar of the next began.  They walked in the constant bellow of water crashing over rocks.

When they left the riverside, they left the ice behind, so the thirst they’d avoided while crossing the ice returned to dog them.

“Isn’t this water safe?” Simpson asked at one of their rest stops.  “Look at all those fish in it.” He waved toward the slender silver shapes that flitted through the water.

“Those are not fish, Midgarder,” Vafthruthnir said when Wendell had repeated the question.

Wendell looked at the slender, silver forms running down the river.  “Not fish?  Then what are they?”

“They are knives, Midgarder.  The Gjöll is the river that flows with knives.  The water here is poisonous.  You cannot drink this water, nor can you swim in it, nor wade.  The only place to cross is at the bridge, the Gjällerbru.”

On their march, they came upon a black wall of dressed stone to their left.  It ran until it vanished into the distance.  Ahead, it curved and followed roughly parallel to the river.  The wall was unbroken by window or door and Wendell guessed the height to be about fifty feet.

“That wall marks the border of Helheim, the abode of Hel and the dead who did not die in combat,” Vafthruthnir said.  “There the dead await the coming of Ragnarok.  We shall soon be at the Gjällerbru, where I shall be quit of you.”

They had made four rest stops and were close to making a fifth when they rounded a bend in the river and a bridge came into view.  At this point the river was, Wendell judged, a little over a quarter mile across.  A covered bridge of post and beam construction spanned its width.  The sides of the bridge were covered in wood planks and the roof was a thatch of glittering yellow that caused Wendell to catch his breath.

“Yes, Midgarder,” Vafthruthnir said on noticing Wendell’s stare.  “The Gjällerbru is thatched with gold.”  The giant sighed.  “Once Helheim was a place of rest and contemplation for those who did not die in combat.  It was a place of beauty.  Then, some say, your Christian beliefs started infecting the Norsemen.  Over time, Helheim became a place of darkness and of cold.  Then the souls stopped coming.”

Vafthruthnir stopped.  “There is your way out, if you can manage it.  Cross the bridge and there is a cave angled upward which leads to the upper realms.”  He smiled, a grim smile, made all the more ghastly being on a severed head.  “The giant Modgud guards the bridge, and will allow none to leave.  And should you somehow pass her, Garmr waits at the top of the cave and will allow none dead to pass out and none living to pass within.”