The Beasts Of Valhalla

Golly had disappeared, swinging my shoulders back and forth to gain momentum, pumping my knees up and down, thinking that being a dwarf in a snowstorm is a real pain in the ass.

Then, suddenly, it was as if I were looking through a window in the storm, and what I saw through the window, twenty yards ahead, were the bare, skeletal shapes of trees-lots of them; Golly, whatever her mental state, had known where she was going. Whimpering with both cold and delight, I half ran, half swam through the drifts and fell on my face inside the shelter of the trees.

Protected by the natural windbreak of the forest, I could see. Lying still on my belly, hugging the frozen loam of the forest floor, I looked around; there was no sign of Stryder London. Already I felt warmer.

'Golly!' I shouted as I got to my feet. 'Come here! I'm going to start a fire!'

Nothing.

I ran around for a while, shouting her name, making a lot of noise. I knew that I might attract London as well as Golly, but that was the point of the exercise. Even if I hadn't been dependent for my life on a battery pack that was rapidly draining, I knew now that I could never hope to track down Stryder London. I suspected-desperately hoped-that I had one last, secret weapon in my arsenal, one that had apparently gone unnoticed even during the extensive biotesting; if anyone had detected what I considered to be my most horrible symptom, it had never been mentioned to me. To use it against Stryder London, I had to be in physical contact, and if I couldn't find the Warrior leader, then he would have to find me.

Shhh.

Whisper made short work of cutting up deadwood on the ground into a collection of wood shavings, twigs, and a good-sized pile of logs. I gathered together a mound of wood shavings and dead leaves, stuck the muzzle of the machine pistol into it and emptied the gun. The flame discharge from the barrel ignited the leaves, and within minutes I had a roaring fire to warm me and save my batteries. I placed the empty machine pistol and Whisper on the ground near the fire where they could be seen, then sat cross-legged by the flames and waited.

I didn't have long to wait. I heard nothing and was just comfortably dozing off when I felt a circle of very cold steel touch my ear.

'Hello, General,' I said. 'Please don't tell me to freeze. I've already done that number.'

'What the hell is this all about, Frederickson?'

'What's what about? Take that gun out of my ear, will you? It's cold.'

'The shots and this fire; you must have known I'd find you.'

'That was the idea, dumbie.'

Keeping his machine pistol leveled on my chest, London moved around me. He picked up Whisper, lifted up the edge of his parka and stuck her in his belt. He examined the empty machine pistol, threw it away into the forest behind him. Then he studied me through narrowed lids. 'What do you think you have up your sleeve, Frederickson?' he asked at last.

'Nothing but arms.'

'Show me.'

I stood, unzipped my parka and spread it to show that I had no more weapons.

'What's with the battery pack?'

'I've gone cold-blooded, and I need a heating unit to keep me alive. You can check it out if you want to, but there's no trick. The game's over. One way or another, I'm going to die soon. I want to die with my brother.'

'I don't believe you, Frederickson,' London answered without hesitation. 'You're not a quitter. I've known a lot of very good fighting men, but I've never met a man who keeps coming, no matter what the odds, the way you do. You're quite mad, you know.'

'Now you sound like Garth,' I replied as I zipped up my parka. 'Would you take me to him, please?'

'You have no chance of defeating me or the purpose of Seigmund Loge, Frederickson. Absolutely none. You never did.'

'I thought I just said that.'

London used Whisper to slice narrow strips of bark from a tree, and he used the strips to tie my hands behind my back. Then, using a long strip as a choke tether, he led me off through the trees to the northwest. We traversed a gully, went over a couple of small hills, finally came to his camp. He'd built a solid lean-to on the lee side of a small cliff, and there was a steady hardwood fire that was virtually smokeless. Garth, his hands and feet bound by rope, was lying on the ground close to the fire. A rope around his neck snaked away and was anchored to the trunk of a tree close to the lean-to.

Garth glanced up at our approach, and by the light of the fire I watched his human eyes fill with inconsolable grief and a sense of loss. I shrugged, managed a very thin smile.

'What now?' I asked as I sat down next to Garth.

London tied my neck tether to a tree. 'I take you to Dr. Loge,' he answered as he tied my ankles together with a length of rope he'd taken from the lean-to.

'He's somewhere in Greenland, isn't he? Inside a ring.'

London looked up, obviously startled. 'Who told you that?! How could you know?!'

'I do know. What kind of a ring is it? Where is it?'

London straightened up. 'You'll find out where Dr. Loge is when I take you to him.'

'He's going to dissect Garth and me, you know. That's what you're taking us to.'

London removed Whisper from his belt, turned her over in his hands. 'My job is to deliver you,' he said as he hefted Whisper, then flicked his wrist and sent her flying through the air. The blade stuck in a log, quivered, the Damascus steel glinting in the firelight. 'What's done with you isn't my concern. You know I have my regrets, but I have my duty.'

'What's done with us may not be your concern, but it's still your responsibility.'

'I'm sorry.'

'When do we go?'

London looked up at the sky, which had grown very dark. 'There's a storm coming-a bad one. We'll wait it out here, and by tomorrow morn- '

Suddenly Golly came flying off the edge of the cliff above the lean-to. She hit the ground, rolled, and came up charging at London. The Warrior clawed for his gun and had it halfway out of his holster when Golly hit him. The Warrior flew backward through the air and almost landed in my lap. Golly started to charge again, abruptly stopped when she saw the gun swinging around toward her, turned to her left and headed around the fire for the trees. London leaned over me, took careful aim on Golly's back and was about to pull the trigger when I leaned forward and sank my teeth into his right cheek.

London's burst of fire went over Golly's head, and she disappeared from sight as London cursed and flailed at me. I hung on to his cheek, chewing the raw flesh and working saliva into the wound. Finally he tore free, and I spat out the chunk of flesh he'd left in my mouth.

Holding one hand to his bleeding cheek, London raised his machine pistol to club me, then thought better of it. 'You're not the class act I thought you were, Frederickson,' he said, as if that were the best insult he could think of. Then he turned and walked away into the woods, apparently looking for Golly.

London looked more than a little peaked when he returned about five minutes later. In fact, he didn't look well at all. His face had gone gray and seemed to grow even darker before my eyes as he staggered, caroming off the naked trees. He fell on his back in front of the lean-to, got up on his knees, crawled toward us.

Somehow, he'd managed to hang on to his machine pistol.

Garth and I looked at each other, and I could see in his eyes that he understood what was happening.

London also understood what was happening, and I could see by the look in his eyes that he didn't appreciate the irony of it all.

'You… poisoned me,' Lieutenant General Stryder London, AWOL from the U.S. Army, whispered hoarsely as he flopped on the ground in front of me. 'Kill… you… too.'

Garth and I watched with more than passing interest as the hand with the machine pistol lifted off the ground; it was trembling violently, but it was moving. Toward us. Then it stopped, collapsed to the ground.

'Now that's a class act,' I said as London twitched and died.

Garth threw back his head and uttered a long, drawn-out howl of triumph and joy.

'Don't get too excited yet, brother,' I said as I tested the strength of the tether around my neck and only managed to tighten it. 'There's a blizzard on the way, the fire's going out, and London hog-tied us pretty good. Can