The Sword of Surtur Page 11

  “Fine,” Lorelei surrendered. “You have the right of it. The dark elf who stole the shard from Surtur’s sword also made a map of the fortress. At least as much of it as he saw. I memorized that map.” She shook her head. “I didn’t tell either of you in case you were captured. You can’t tell an enemy something you don’t know.”

  Tyr had expected such an answer, much as it discouraged him. “To the right, then, and let’s find these stairs before any of the stronghold’s denizens come strolling this way.”

  The three set off down the enormous hallway. Fortune favored them, for they saw no one as they dashed for the steps. Lorelei guided them unerringly to an alcove that branched off from the main hall. A spiral of cut pumice bore its way down into the mountain, lit not by crystal globes, but by the pulsating glow of the walls themselves. The scale was much smaller than that of the main hall. Tyr took some relief in that, until he reflected that the most powerful giants were shapeshifters. The only giant in all the Nine Worlds who could rival Surtur in terms of power was Ymir, though in a pinch Tyr would give the edge to the Master of Muspelheim. If a room was too small for the fire giant, he’d simply change to a size it could accommodate.

  “I could almost wish to face Surtur now and get it over with,” Tyr said as they started down the steps.

  Lorelei’s face went pale with horror. “Don’t even think such a thing! If it can be helped, we must steal his sword before he even knows we’re here.” She grasped his arm in a despairing grip. “Please, Tyr, don’t squander this chance for the sake of vanity. You… you mean too much to me.”

  The words were drawn from her almost as a confession. She quickly turned from him and started ahead down the steps. Tyr felt a warmth rush through him that wasn’t caused by Muspelheim. Something he’d hardly noticed had happened since they’d left Asgard. He’d come to care deeply about Lorelei. He refused to heed the warning voice at the back of his mind, the one that insisted she couldn’t be trusted, that she was holding things from them. In other matters perhaps she was overly cautious, but in this Tyr was certain he knew the truth. Lorelei’s heart had opened to him.

  Bjorn shot him a bleak look, his face at once angry and pained. The wolfhunter hastened after Lorelei. With his cloak drawn up over him, the resemblance to a devoted dog chasing after its mistress impressed itself on Tyr. He sympathized with his friend, but, after all, how could Bjorn aspire to such ambition. Lorelei was a confidant of the Aesir, not some rough frontierswoman from Varinheim. She’d sought to turn the heart of Thor, did he really think she’d settle for a mere huntsman?

  Tyr shook his head as he descended the steps, trying to clear the disparaging thoughts swirling in his mind. He’d never looked down upon Bjorn before, nor any other Asgardian who’d shown their mettle. Why should he harbor these ugly ideas now?

  He suspected he already knew the answer. Enchantment, the forte of Amora, and was not Lorelei her sister? If she’d learned other arcane arts from her, why not the one Amora knew best of all? Yes, it rang true to Tyr, this explanation for the influence working upon him.

  Yet, even recognizing it, Tyr couldn’t shake off that influence. He didn’t want to.

  Fifteen

  The lower vaults below the fortress somehow managed to be even hotter than those above. Tyr likened the atmosphere to that of a sauna, blisteringly humid as cracks in the walls and floor vented steam into the corridors. A violent red light dominated everything, pulsing from the walls themselves. These appeared to be unworked for the most part, natural lava tubes that were now employed by Surtur’s minions. While there was some consistency to their height, maintaining a ceiling of eight feet, the width of the tunnels varied wildly. At times the halls expanded to twenty feet and more, in other instances they closed in so that the Asgardians were forced to move in single file.

  Side branches were frequent as well, veering off at random intervals. Most of these, Tyr noted, were simply diversions of the old lava tubes. Sometimes, however, there was evidence of deliberate construction. Lorelei was careful to divert them away from these sections. “Barracks and guard rooms,” she explained. “Places more likely to harbor fire demons.”

  “I’m surprised we haven’t already run into a patrol,” Tyr said.

  Bjorn, in the lead, turned to give his friend a sour look. “You underestimate my ability as a scout. I’ll hear any fire demons long before they hear us.”

  As if conjured by the wolfhunter’s boast, a group of six fire demons rounded the corner ahead of them. They stopped, surprise on their faces. Before the guards could make a move, Tyr heard Lorelei invoke an incantation and gesture with her hand.

  Their confusion evaporated in an instant, replaced with a murderous rage. The fire demons came rushing down the tunnel, brandishing their swords and spiked maces. Bjorn made to meet their charge, but he was struck by the slash of a burning sword. He slammed against the wall, flung aside by the blow. Had any of them paused, the fire demons could have made short work of the defenseless man. But their ire was fixated on a different target. Howling their fury, they ran straight for Lorelei.

  “Stay behind me and keep your shield raised,” Tyr ordered as he stepped forward to meet the charge.

  “That was my intention,” Lorelei quipped, drawing the shield off her back while replacing the box in her satchel.

  The next instant Tyr was engaged by the fire demons. They tried to swat him aside as they had Bjorn, but in their reckless anger they learned too late that the Aesir wasn’t so easily bypassed. Tyrsfang flashed, striking down the foremost of the guards as the demon slashed at him with her sword. The demon behind her rushed in with a heavy mace. Tyr intercepted the blow with his shield and thrust his blade into his foe’s body. He kicked the maceman away and lunged at a third fire demon as he tried to dart around him and come to grips with Lorelei. A brutal sweep of the glimmering sword spilled the guard to the floor.

  Bjorn was up now, staggering back to his feet and shaking his head. He ripped a hand axe from his belt and threw it into a fire demon’s back. The cleaving edge crunched through the guard’s leathery hide, and the nimbus of flame flickered away as he collapsed. The huntsman groped about on the floor for his battleaxe, obviously still shaken by the initial charge.

  The last two fire demons threw themselves ahead with rabid ferocity. Tyr smashed one in the face with his shield and drove his sword into the other. As the one he’d stabbed expired, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. He’d expected the one he’d slammed with his shield to be stunned by the impact, but such was her vicious determination to attack Lorelei that she didn’t even stop to recover the sword she’d dropped. Snarling like a tigress, she threw herself at the woman with her clawed hands.

  Lorelei staggered when she used her own shield to fend off the fire demon’s leap. Then the Uru dagger was in her fist. While the guard clawed at the warding shield, Lorelei drove the dirk over and over into the demon. Only when the flames crackling about the guard’s body dissipated did she relent.

  “They fought like blood-mad berserkers,” Tyr observed as he looked over the bodies. None of them had so much as a flicker of fire crackling across their skin, and the eyes of each had hardened into blackened coals. “No thought to their own protection.”

  Lorelei sheathed her dirk and slung the shield over her back. “My magic did that,” she said. “I put into their minds such antipathy for me that they could think of nothing else.”

  Bjorn stared at her in disbelief. “You might have been killed,” he objected, neglecting the ragged tear in his armor where a fire demon’s sword had almost ended his own life. “Why would you provoke them like that?”

  “It was the only way to ensure none of them broke away to spread an alert,” Lorelei answered. Though she addressed Bjorn, her eyes were on Tyr, much to the former’s chagrin. “I was depending on you to stop them before they could reach me.”

  Tyr frowned at the
explanation. “A gamble… and the wager was your life.”

  “Not much of a gamble when I had you to defend me,” Lorelei chided. She patted the dirk on her belt. “Even when the last one got past you, I was under your protection.”

  Bjorn gave an annoyed grunt as he stomped over and recovered his hand axe. He glanced around. “I don’t see anywhere we can hide these guards,” he said. “When the next patrol comes through, they’re certain to sound the alarm. All we’ve accomplished here is to buy ourselves a little time. We’d best make use of it.” He turned to start off down the tunnel, but Tyr motioned for him to wait.

  “We can’t use the main passages now,” Tyr said. He turned back to Lorelei. “That map you studied, did it show any routes that are more neglected? Less likely to be patrolled?” He was thinking of the dark elf and how that intruder, at least, had been able to slink through Surtur’s stronghold and get out again.

  “There are paths we could take,” Lorelei replied. “But there are reasons the fire demons avoid them. The dark elf noted that the walls are thinner in such places. More apt to split and spill lava into the tunnels. Sometimes the volcano will tremble and cause rockfalls that seal off passageways.”

  “We’ll chance it,” Tyr decided. “Once the alarm is given, the main corridors will be swarming with guards. They’d bar our advance as completely as any cave-in could.”

  Bjorn pulled at his beard. “So which way do we go?”

  Lorelei was quiet for a moment. She closed her eyes. Tyr could imagine her visualizing the dark elf map in her mind. “Two more turns to the left ahead of us,” she stated. “We’ll have to pass close to a guardroom, but after that we’ll have a little-used tunnel.” A pause as she added a note of worry to her voice. “At least, if the volcano has left it there.”

  “If it isn’t, we’ll dig our way through,” Tyr said. He stepped in front of Bjorn when the huntsman started to lead the way again. “I’ll go first,” he told him.

  “What’s this?” Bjorn demanded.

  Tyr fixed him with a stern look. “You should’ve heard those guards before they got that close to us. The Bjorn Wolfsbane I’ve hunted beside for so many years would never have let himself be surprised like that. I don’t know what’s distracting you, but until you figure it out, I’m going first.”

  Bjorn bit down on whatever reply he was going to make. Tyr could see in his friend’s eyes that the reprimand stung all the more sharply because it was justified. He knew he’d failed them. What made Bjorn angry was to have that fact expressed in front of Lorelei. Maybe, if the huntsman were thinking more clearly, he’d realize it was thinking about her that made him inattentive.

  Tyr wouldn’t make that mistake.

  Sixteen

  Just as Lorelei had warned, the abandoned tunnels proved dangerous to navigate. The walls pulsed with the barely restrained molten flow of the volcano, the glow they emanated swelling from the red of the main corridors to burning white. Tyr was thankful that only the widest parts of the path had displayed such intensity. At least so far.

  The floor was littered with pumice that had been expelled into the tunnels at one time or another. Steam vents spewed their boiling vapor in infrequent spurts. Several times one or another of them had been scalded when one of the fissures suddenly became active. Even Tyr’s Aesir skin was tender where a blast had spewed directly in his face. He could imagine that a man of Midgard would have been cooked in his boots by the discharge.

  The rumble of the volcano was a perpetual din, a low roar that was ever pressing in upon their hearing. Too irregular, too menacing to deafen his senses to, Tyr conceded that at his most vigilant he’d likely miss a whole company of fire demons marching ahead of them in the tunnel. In that, at least, the infernal passages were proving their worth. There’d been no evidence that the stronghold’s garrison ever ventured into these halls.

  “If the whole place doesn’t come down about our ears, we’ll have made a lot of progress,” Lorelei said, consulting the box once again. “These tunnels should get us very near to the forge.”

  An angrier than usual tremor rolled through the mountain. Debris drifted down from the roof. Bjorn snarled in surprise and drew away from the wall as a little trickle of magma seeped out. “We’ll be roasted if this goes on much longer,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow.

  “Not much farther,” Lorelei told him. She gestured at the fiery passage ahead of Tyr. “The map indicated this should reconnect with the main corridor. We only need to stay to the course.”

  Tyr raised his shield as a chunk of rock fell from the ceiling. “If the mountain lets us,” he said. A long blast of steam erupted from the floor a dozen feet away, spreading across the passage. “Hurry through!” he urged the others. “There’s no saying when it’ll stop!” He clenched his eyes shut as he sprinted through the boiling vapor, uncomfortably reminded of the miasma that had so nearly overwhelmed them on the plateau.

  When he felt the dripping heat lessen, Tyr opened his eyes again. He saw, only five feet ahead of him, the wall of the tunnel. It curved away to his right before turning once more to the left. He thought he heard a sound from that direction, a cracking grating noise. “Quick!” he shouted to his companions as they emerged from the steam. “It sounds like the tunnel is coming apart up ahead.”

  Hoping they could slip through before the way was blocked, Tyr ran. Strangely, the sounds he’d heard fell away, though he could still feel tremors rolling through the mountain. If the noise was caused by strain upon the tunnel, its volume should have increased, not gone silent.

  The second turn opened into a wider passageway. The first thing Tyr noticed was the bones that littered the floor. He could tell at a glance they belonged to fire demons. The splintered, broken state of them was explained by the creature that stood amid the litter. A mammoth lizard as big as an ox, its hide purplish flecked with black. The reptile had its jaws clamped around a femur, and Tyr realized the cracking sound had been the animal gnawing at its meal. Now, having heard him shout, the lizard stood immobile, its yellow eyes watching him as he rounded the corner.

  The scene held for just a moment, god and reptile staring at one another, neither prepared to make the first move. It was when Lorelei and Bjorn came upon the tableau that the lizard made its choice. Seeing more Asgardians turn the corner, it hissed angrily. The bone fell from its jaws and shattered on the floor. With its eyes fixed on Tyr, the reptile charged at him.

  It should have been impossible for anything as large as the lizard to move as quickly as it did. The scrambling, somehow frantic gait brought the reptile upon him before Tyr could even raise his sword. The scaly weight of it threw him back against Bjorn and Lorelei, pressing all three of them against the wall. Long claws raked against Tyr’s armor while the blunt snout shoved against him, trying to turn him so it could bite his head.

  “Filthy scavenger!” Tyr growled at the hissing reptile. He brought his arm around, shoving the shield in its mouth as it finally tried to snap at his face. “You’ll not make a meal of me!” He brought Tyrsfang chopping against one of its clawed legs, breaking it and leaving the limb dangling at its side.

  The lizard appeared to give no notice to its hurt, but continued to rake at him with its other claws. The powerful jaws locked about the shield, exerting such force that the red metal began to crumple. Tyr raked his sword across the lashings and slipped his arm free a moment before it was crushed in the reptile’s maw. Tyr whipped his left arm around and drove the cup covering his stump into the beast’s eye.

  The hurt to its eye wasn’t so easily ignored. The lizard whipped back in pain, lashing the ground behind it with its long, whip-like tail. Tyr stepped forward, letting Bjorn and Lorelei push away from the wall. His advance, however, only rekindled the reptile’s agitation. Hissing once more, it ran at him, now with a flopping, flailing motion since one foreleg hung useless at its side.

  Prepared th
is time, with the lizard’s erratic speed compromised by its injury, Tyr met the charge with a sweep of his sword. The blade cracked against the blunted skull, cutting through the scaly hide. The fanged jaws snapped at him, but the reptilian teeth slid harmlessly down his breastplate, unable to find purchase. He struck again, this time slashing the beast in the neck.

  Sizzling blood pumped from the wound, but the reptile was still capable of fight. It whipped about, shifting its massive body so that its entire weight drove against Tyr. He realized it was trying to whip him with its tail, but instead it smacked him with the equivalent of a hip. The impact threw him to the floor and sent him tumbling away.

  “Stay off him!” Bjorn cried, driving his axe into the lizard’s flank. The reptile was too intent on Tyr to be turned aside by another enemy. Hissing its rage, the brute flop-scurried at him once more.

  Tyr grappled with the lizard as it flung itself upon him. He winced as he felt one of the claws sink into his thigh. There was no room to bring his sword into play, so he locked his arms around the beast’s neck and squeezed. The scaly hide felt hot under his grip and he gagged from the stink of its blood. It jerked its head back and forth, trying to twist free of his grip.

  “Don’t ignore me, drake!” Bjorn snarled as he returned to the fray. The axe bit down into the lizard’s flailing tail, severing several feet of it. The reptile scurried away from the injury and the one who delivered it, sprinting toward the other end of the tunnel.

  “Let it get away!” Lorelei was shouting, running after the lizard as it carried Tyr with it. Tyr could only smile at her words. There was no way for him to release his hold on the brute, not unless he wanted to be kicked or trampled.

  The lizard carried him onward through the passageway. Tyr felt the heat of the walls as they ran past them, then the gradual lessening of that heat as they emerged into a much broader tunnel. It was here that the reptile’s endurance finally exhausted itself. A shudder went through it and with a last stagger, it crashed to the floor.