The Beasts Of Valhalla

the buttons were missing. He was carrying a fat, ugly truncheon wrapped in black leather and stained with blood.

He stood for a few moments, glaring at me, then abruptly swung the truncheon at the brick wall behind him.

Thunk! Thunk!

'Bastards!' he panted in a hoarse, sibilant whisper, the breath whistling in the spaces where his front teeth had been. 'Sons-of-bitches!'

He lunged and swung at the bars, and I just managed to snatch my fingers away in time to keep them from being crushed.

Clong!

'Something upsetting you, Jake? Having a bad day at the office?'

Clong! Clong!

'God!' Bolesh, white-faced and shuddering, hunched his shoulders and writhed, as if he were burning up from some unquenchable, white-hot fire blazing deep in whatever was left of his soul. 'How I hate the two of you! I hate you!'

'Now, Jake, it's nothing more than a slight personality conflict. Why don't you calm down?'

Thunk! Thunk!

'Shut up, you little dwarf shit! You fuck! You're a diseased thing, Frederickson! You're crooked! Wait until you see what I've got waiting for the two of you!'

The last words were almost, if not quite, enough to make me want to kiss him. It meant he hadn't beaten Garth to death, and wasn't planning to-at least not in the short run. The steel fist that had been clenched around my heart relaxed slightly.

'Put the sapper away, Jake,' I said evenly. 'Come on in here and we'll go one on one. You're not afraid of a little old diseased, crooked dwarf, are you?'

Clong! Clong! Clong!

'You always thought you were so Goddamn smart! Robby, the smart freak! Robby, the all-A's freak!'

Thunk!

'— and Garth the protector!'

Clong!

'— do you understand, dwarf?! God didn't make you right!'

My old buddy Jake had gone right over the edge, fallen a long way, landed on his head and bounced a few times. Always the optimist, I kept glancing down the corridor and hoping that someone would come running in with a bucket of cold water. Nope. If there were deputies in the office outside, they were too smart to get in the way of the rabid animal who was their boss. It didn't bode well.

Thunk! Clong!

'They're going to be looking for my brother too, Jake,' I said quickly, deciding that it was time for some serious discussion. I was making an effort to sound calm, but I was forced to shout in order to be heard over his ranting. 'You know how big the Volsung Corporation is! You may hate Garth and me, but you have to be afraid of them! You're running amok, and they're not going to like it!'

'Shut up, you diseased dwarf fuck! I don't need their permission to do what I'm going to do to you! Wait! Just wait!'

Clong! Thunk! Clong!

'This has become too big for you, Jake! Give yourself a break! Ask for some help, some guidance! Put in that call to Lippitt!'

'You bastard! You shit bastard! You've ruined everything!'

'Jake,' I sighed wearily, realizing that I would have had a better chance of communicating with a shark in a feeding frenzy, 'you were always the once-and-future asshole. At least fix your wig. Seeing you with your hair hanging off really makes me want to throw up.'

He went bone white, gaped at me for a few seconds, then clawed at his hair with his free hand. The toupee came off in his fingers, leaving strands of tacky hair glue clinging like cobwebs to his furry scalp.

'Brenner!' the county sheriff bawled. 'Peters! Get in here!'

Now they came. Two pasty-faced deputies ran into the cell block, winced when they saw the snit their boss was in, stopped in front of him and stiffened.

Bolesh threw the greasy mat that was his hair into a corner, then took a key ring out of his pocket and unlocked the door to my cell. He had stopped ranting, but his hands were trembling and he was taking in great, gulping breaths, as if he could not get enough air. It was, I thought, a terrific time for him to suffer a heart attack.

He pushed open the cell door, swung the truncheon.

Clong!

'Keep your guns on him,' Bolesh said to his deputies. 'If he tries to fight back or get away, shoot him in the legs.'

There wasn't going to be any heart attack. My initial fear was that he'd come forward and try to smash out my brains summarily, which meant that I'd have to make some kind of move; I'd be shot, but I'd damn well try to kill Bolesh before I went down.

I sat down on the edge of the cot, planted both feet flat on the floor, and tried to look terrified-a feat that wasn't at all difficult. I stiffened the fingers of my right hand and concentrated all my attention on the spot on his thorax just below the rib cage, the gateway to his solar plexus; a blow delivered there at the right angle and with sufficient force could burst his heart. I would have only one chance, and I'd spend it if I didn't like the angle his first blow was coming from.

The deputies were in the cell now, flanking me; each was steadying his gun with both hands and aiming at my kneecaps.

The initial blow was angled away from my head, toward the soft flesh on my right side, below the rib cage. Bolesh didn't seem to be interested in beating me to death either-just close to it. I relaxed my fingers, exhaled loudly, and leaned slightly to my left in an effort to absorb some of the blow's force and pain.

There was nothing to do now but take the beating. It wouldn't be the first time Jake Bolesh had made me piss blood, but I swore it would be the last. I vowed that I would survive anything Bolesh did to me, and then-some way-I would kill him. Planning what I was going to do to him served as a kind of anesthetic while he worked me over. Finally he made a mistake, hit me just a bit too hard, and I passed out.

11

DREAMS of dragons and dungeons, tunnels and trolls, marched through my head; Orcs, elves, hobbits, and dwarfs. Magic swords and sashes. There were magnificent, sentient horses, brave Companies on heroic Quests battling against impossible odds with the salvation of the Earth hanging in the balance. There were vast treasure hordes, savage winds capable of stripping flesh from bone, poisonous spiders as big as boxcars, giant slinking beasts. There were Heroes and-of course-an abominable Prince of Evil so powerful it seemed nothing could stop his inexorable advance toward the conquest of the planet and the enslavement, forever, of its peoples. Only the Hero, usually frail and hopelessly outnumbered, could save the world; but time was running out, and the hoary legions of the Prince of Evil were closing in…

Whoopee.

And, of course, there was usually a Wizard with a magical staff around to bail the Hero out of really tacky situations. This particular Wizard looked like a Ku Klux Klansman in drag, but I knew he was a Wizard because his flowing black satin robe was ornately decorated with magical symbols woven out of sparkling gold and silver thread. He wore a peaked cap of black satin, and a black leather flap in which eyeholes had been cut out covered his face.

This Wizard was really Gandalf-on-the-spot, because he happened to be in my cell, bending over me and