Edmond Hamilton A Yank at Valhalla

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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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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