The Sleeping Army (4 page)

Freya was startled by the venom in her voice.

‘Oh Gods, Roskva, when will you let it alone?' said Alfi. He clenched his fists and drummed them against his legs.

So Roskva was Thor's slave. Oh. Freya flushed, and not just from the heat of the rainbow's flames.

‘Alfi? Are you a king?' she asked.

‘If only,' said Alfi. ‘I'm also Thor's bondservant.'

How awful to be a slave, even if your master was a God. Freya wished she hadn't asked.

‘Our life was stolen long ago,' said Roskva, as if she could read Freya's thoughts.

‘What do you mean?' said Freya. ‘How old
are
you?'

Roskva scrunched up her face. ‘Who knows? I don't remember any more. We were children when Thor took us from our parents. Now … we're still children. Just old ones.'

‘Why did he take you?' asked Freya. Once she started asking questions, she always found it hard to stop.

‘It's a long story,' said Alfi.

Suddenly Freya had a horrible thought.

‘Am I going to be a slave too?' said Freya.

Alfi laughed and shook his head.

‘Then why are we going to Asgard? You must tell me.'

‘Because we've been summoned,' said Alfi.

‘But why?' said Freya. ‘What happens if we
don't
go?'

Roskva and Alfi glanced at each other. The great horse shook his head and flicked his ears nervously.

Alfi shrugged. ‘We have no choice.'

‘I know you're slaves, but why don't you just run away?' persisted Freya.

Roskva slapped her. Freya stepped backwards,
clutching her stinging cheek. She wanted to slap her right back but something about Roskva's stony face stopped her.

‘When Gods give orders we obey,' said Roskva.

‘And even if we
could
run, where would we go?' said Alfi. ‘Our parents have been dead for thousands of years. We have nowhere to go but Asgard.'

But I do, thought Freya.

‘You know I can't stay for long,' said Freya. ‘My dad will be worried about me and I'll need to get back.'

Alfi and Roskva looked at each other again.

‘What?' said Freya. She began to feel afraid. ‘What aren't you telling me?'

There was a clomp-clomp stomp-stomp-stomping behind them. The horse shied.

‘Whoa, whoa, Sleipnir,' said Roskva as the huge Bear-Shirt appeared, panting and sweaty. His sword was bloody. Great white gobs of foamy sweat dripped off him as if he were an animal. He looked as grey and dirty as a block of broken ice.

‘We thought we'd lost you,' said Alfi.

I wish we had, thought Freya, shrinking back.

The giant man grunted. He wiped his iron-studded sword on his skins, leaving a reddish streak across his huge chest. Freya trembled. His fist was like a club.
His bulging arms were thicker than a man's thighs. His crooked, bristly grey eyebrows met in the middle and his face was criss-crossed with scars.

His black raven shield, which he carried slung over his arm, was overlaid with gold and embossed with jewels.

‘What's your name?' asked Roskva.

The berserk grunted again.

‘Snot.'

‘Snot? But that's a girl's name,' said Roskva.

‘It's not,' he growled. The knotted muscles on his neck bulged.

‘I'm sure it is,' Roskva said. ‘The next farm over had a girl called Snot. Remember, Alfi? Ugly little troll she was, too, with all those cracked teeth. Snot? Really? Did your parents want a girl or something?'

‘Say that again and I'll kill you,' said Snot.

Roskva opened her mouth, then closed it. Holding tight to Sleipnir's bridle, she stomped on ahead.

‘I remember you,' said Alfi. ‘You arrived at Valhalla, ignored the place Woden assigned you and yanked two men out of their seats and took their places.'

‘And you were the one we threw bones at,' said Snot.

Alfi looked away. A faint blush spread over his face and neck.

Freya didn't know what to say. She was usually the picked-on one, too.

‘Come on,' shouted Roskva. ‘We're almost there! If we're lucky, Heimdall will have cake and mead to welcome us home. He'll have seen us coming ages ago.'

Freya forgot how tired she felt and how much her legs ached.

Asgard! The great fortress of the Gods. The lush green meadows, the palace roofs thatched with gleaming gold. The sky-high stone ramparts built by a giant, protecting the mighty palaces of shining silver. Asgard.

Oh, Mum, if you could see me now, thought Freya, as she stepped off the trembling rainbow into the realm of the Gods.

‘Yoo-hoo! Hello! It's us! Roskva and Alfi. Hello!'

‘Who are you calling?' asked Freya, gaping at the curving wall of golden-brown rocks and boulders that soared upward into the bright sky, high as a mountain, higher than any wall she'd ever seen. She felt tiny and insignificant standing beneath the gigantic ramparts.

‘Heimdall,' said Roskva. ‘Hellooooo! Heimdall!'

The guardian of the Gods, the one whose horn she'd blown. He'd be angry with her for her terrible presumption, she thought, shrinking inside.

‘He lives at the end of heaven outside the wall …
guarding the bridge,' muttered Alfi. ‘Where could he be?'

Roskva looked around. ‘He never leaves the heaven-mountain,' she said.

‘Maybe he didn't hear you,' said Freya.

‘The Wind-Shield of the Gods can hear the grass growing on earth,' said Alfi. ‘He can hear the wool growing on sheep. He can hear fish breathing in the sea.'

‘He heard us,' said Roskva. She looked grim.

‘But where's Heimdall's palace?' said Alfi. ‘It should be over there.' He pointed to a barren stretch of land, with weeds growing amidst piles of stones and rubble. ‘There, under the wall, at the end of the bridge.'

Freya stared at the ruin. Roskva and Alfi exchanged rapid words in their own language.

‘What are you saying?' said Freya. She heard the fear in their voices.

They ignored her.

‘Maybe he moved,' said Freya.

‘Maybe the All-Father gave him a better palace,' said Alfi.

‘It's possible,' said Roskva. She looked doubtful.

‘Roskva, I'm scared,' said Alfi.

‘Let's go in,' said Roskva quietly. ‘There's the little
doorway we can creep through.'

‘It'll be locked,' said Alfi.

‘Then we'll just have to break it, won't we?' said Roskva. ‘We don't have time to wait for Heimdall to get back from wherever he is.'

Sleipnir suddenly reared and snorted and dug his hooves into the ground. However hard Roskva and Alfi tugged on his bridle, he wouldn't budge.

‘Leave him,' said Snot. He gnawed on his shield and bared his chipped black teeth. His matted grey wolf-hair stood up in bristly tufts. His rank smell was unbearable. Freya turned her face away from him, but Roskva and Alfi didn't seem to notice.

They left Sleipnir beside the flaming bridge, and stood before the wooden door, studded with nails and criss-crossed with iron bars, cut into a gigantic doorway. Roskva tugged hard on the rusty latch, which fell off in her hand. She bit her lip, and pushed the door open. With a screech, the door splintered and snapped off its great hinges.

‘Get your sword out, you stinking son of a mare!' snapped Snot. ‘Never walk ahead of your weapon.'

Alfi blushed and drew his sword.

Then, one by one, they walked through the gateway into Asgard.

Freya gasped. For once, she couldn't speak as she looked around the stronghold of the Gods.

Tumbleweed blew across the desolate plains. Thistles and brambles covered the parched ground. There were no shimmering green and gold fields rolling out to infinity. No mighty gleaming citadels. Just nettles growing higher than any Freya had ever seen.

Where were the palaces? All she could see was the wind-swept world tree Yggdrasil soaring high into the heavens. She heard the far-off roar of torrential rivers. Otherwise all was silent, as if Asgard was asleep.

‘Are you sure … are you sure we're in the right place?' Freya felt overwhelmed with disappointment. Was this some kind of practical joke her weird companions were playing on her? Had they yanked her from her life and dragged her here to roam around a dusty wasteland? How could she have been so gullible to think she'd be meeting the Gods?

She glared at Roskva and Alfi.

Alfi looked ashen. He clutched Roskva's sleeve.

‘Do you think the frost giants attacked while we were asleep?' he murmured. ‘Could Ragnarok have happened?'

Roskva shook her head. ‘The earth still exists. So
does the sun and the moon. We saw the stars tonight. It's not the end of days.'

Snot growled and gripped his sword.

‘Who did this? I'll kill them!' he howled. Then, bellowing, ‘Valhalla! Valhalla!' he ran towards the remains of a vast, derelict Hall beside a fast-flowing river.

Freya, Alfi, and Roskva followed him. They stood inside the ruined walls, unable to speak. Bits of tarnished metal, scrapings from the vanished roof, and a few rusted spears lay scattered in the dirt.

This was Valhalla. The Hall of the Slain. The gold-bright palace of Woden's chosen warriors. The dark, echoing wine hall was now only home to the winds.

‘This hall was so bright they used swords instead of fire for light,' murmured Alfi. ‘The rafters were made of spear shafts and thatched with overlapping shields of gold. There were helmets and red-gold mail coats strewn everywhere, and men shouting and drinking … even Woden's wolves are gone; I used to give them meat scraps … there were five hundred and forty doors. I know, I used to walk around and count them while the Valkyries, the Choosers of the Slain, served mead and haunches of boar to the tired warriors. That's the corner where I tried to barricade myself from the men
who pelted me with bones when they'd finished eating and my Master wasn't there to protect me.'

Freya's skin prickled. She was reminded of old photographs of American ghost towns, where only a few sun-bleached buildings and dirt roads showed that anyone had ever lived there. She felt as if she were walking in an ancient graveyard, untouched and unvisited for centuries, with tumbled-down stones and worn-out inscriptions the only signs of the people who had once walked the earth.

Snot stared at the shards of a black cauldron in the middle of the floor, and kicked at a few shield fragments. A rotten, sagging mead-bench was shoved against what was left of a wall. He picked it up and hurled it against the ground where it splintered. ‘I sat here,' he muttered. ‘Woden put me in a low place by a door, because I was newly arrived and yet to prove myself. Ha! I didn't stay there long. As they say, fast temper grows in a seat far from the High Table.' He sighed. ‘We fought all day and feasted all night.'

‘Didn't that get boring?' blurted Freya, before she could stop herself.

Snot glowered down at her over his raven shield. His dark eyes glinted beneath his crooked brows.

‘How else can you forget your self?' he said.

Freya wished she'd kept her mouth shut. Snot frightened her and she wanted to keep away from him as much as possible. She left him to his memories inside the ruins of Valhalla and walked over to where Alfi and Roskva were standing amidst dried-out rushes and sedges, watching the river roaring past as if they had lost the will to move.

‘The All-Father's palace should be over there,' said Alfi, pointing into empty space. Freya squinted. She could just make out a few piles of stones and pillars far off in the distance. It looked like the ruins of the Roman Forum.

‘Let me just have a quick look around,' said Alfi. ‘Wait here.'

Freya watched astonished, as he ran off. One moment he was there, the next … not.

‘He's fast,' said Freya.

‘They say only thought can outrun him,' said Roskva. ‘Bit of an exaggeration, but he's pretty speedy.'