He looked back—
The wolf charged.
The gun was out of its holster—but the beast had already leapt with shocking speed, knocking Eddie over. Nina shrieked as she jumped out of the way.
The wolf weighed as much as a man, and was easily as strong, claws raking his clothing as it lunged for his throat. Eddie managed to whip up his right arm and force the creature’s head back just as its jaws snapped, twisted teeth mere inches from his face.
He pulled the Wildey’s trigger. The huge handgun’s boom was almost deafening; he expected the noise to scare off both attackers.
It didn’t. The wolf flinched away from the retort and muzzle flash, but then continued its attack with even greater ferocity, bloodlust overpowering fear. The second animal hesitated, only to resume its advance when it saw its companion was not harmed.
“Nina!” Eddie cried, struggling to hold off the writhing monstrosity. “Get out of here, run!”
Nina stumbled back, caught between the urge to flee and the desire to help her husband. She chose the latter, drawing back a leg to kick the wolf off him—
The other animal made its move, rushing at her. Nina broke off her attempted attack and ducked sideways. Its momentum carried it past her—but it immediately scrabbled around for another try, growling and slavering.
She ran for the overturned snowmobile, but could already hear the wolf closing fast from behind—
Nina dived over the vehicle, landing hard among its scattered equipment. The animal veered away to circle the snowmobile for a clear run at its prey.
Eddie yelled as the wolf’s claws slashed at him again, ripping through his hood and gouging his jaw. A couple of inches lower, and it would have torn into his neck. “Fuck off, Cujo!” he growled, clenching his free hand into a fist and punching the animal in the face.
Pinned by the monster, he couldn’t put his full force into the blow—but it was still enough to startle it. The wolf let out an angry growl, pulling back before making another lunge.
The momentary retreat gave Eddie the chance to move his arm. He brought the Wildey to bear—
The wolf’s huge jaws clamped around his hand. Sharp fangs tore through his coat’s thick sleeve. They dug into his skin, about to slash tendons and arteries—
Another Magnum round boomed—and the entire back of the creature’s head exploded.
The Wildey was inside its mouth—and Eddie had pulled the trigger.
The wolf collapsed on top of him. He pulled open the animal’s slack jaws to extract his gun, then shoved the corpse away. “Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf now?” he muttered as he got to his feet—only to freeze at a sound from the void.
A long, keening howl.
More shadowy shapes loomed through the drifting fog. The rest of the wolf pack.
They circled, closing in. Eddie turned, tracking them—then remembered there was another, much nearer. “Nina!”
The gunshot had again caused the second wolf to freeze, but now it resumed its charge at Nina, still on her hands and knees beside the wrecked snowmobile. She desperately snatched up a baton-shaped piece of fallen cargo, about to wield it as a club—
It had a better use.
The baton was a flare. She yanked off the protective plastic cap and slapped her palm against the striker as the snarling predator raced in for the kill. The flare sizzled to life, blazing bright red at its tip.
She brought it up—
The wolf sprang.
It slammed her back against the snowmobile with an almost triumphant snarl—which turned to a shriek as she stabbed the burning flare into its neck. The beast leapt away, jumping and spinning as it tried to escape the searing pain, but the intense heat had set its fur alight. With a horrible wail, it raced away into the fog, flames spreading over its body and turning it into a running torch.
Eddie scrambled across the snow, vaulting the snowmobile to land beside her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so,” she gasped, still winded. She saw his torn and bloodied clothing. “Jesus! What about you?”
“I’m fine—the blood’s from Mr. Wool-uff.”
“What happened to it?”
He held up the Wildey, drool still glistening on the polished metal. “It bit off more than it could chew.” A very brief smile, which disappeared as he looked back at the approaching pack. “There’s more of the fucking things, though.”
“Okay, so shoot them!”
“I will, when I get a clear shot. But they’re not daft.” The other wolves had clearly recognized that their prey was far from defenseless, and changed tactics. They were now circling the couple and drawing away to fade into the fog before darting back into view as if daring them to react. “I don’t even know how many there are. Three, four—I can’t tell.” He tracked one of the running shapes, which sensed the danger and retreated into the void, only for one of its companions to appear off to the side, moving in the other direction. “And I’ve only got five shots left in this mag—if I miss, it’ll take me a few seconds to reload, and that’ll give them a chance to come at us.”
“Would this help?”
She had picked up one of the soldiers’ AK-12s and flicked off the safety, raising the assault rifle to firing position. He grinned. “And I thought you didn’t like guns.”
“I don’t, but sometimes they’re useful!” Nina looked down the sights, following one of the wolves as it ran at her—and fired. The gun was set to fully automatic, unleashing a thudding fusillade of bullets. The monster screeched and tumbled to a stop in the blood-speckled snow.
“Over here!” Eddie warned. She spun as two more wolves charged toward the snowmobile from the opposite direction. Another burst from the Kalashnikov brought one of them down, the other felled by a single cannon-fire blast from the Wildey.
Nina’s dismay at killing the creatures was tempered by the sure knowledge that they had been about to tear out her throat. “Are there any more of them?” she asked, scanning the emptiness surrounding her.
“Don’t know.” Eddie did the same, keeping the Wildey raised. “There might—Shit!”
Movement in the corner of his vision—which resolved into a wolf racing toward him at terrifying speed. He whirled as it made a flying leap over the snowmobile—
The Wildey boomed again, but the animal’s momentum carried it onward. It hit Eddie, bowling him over and sending the gun flying.
“Eddie!” Nina cried, pointing the AK at the wolf—but it did not move, lying on its side with its mouth agape. The snow beneath it slowly turned red.
Eddie stood, wincing at a pain in his shoulder from the collision. “Aaa-fuckin’-wooo, you bastard,” he told the dead beast before looking around. If there were any more wolves out in the fog, they had taken the hint and fled. “Where’d my gun go? If I lose another Wildey, you’ll never let me hear the bloody end of it …”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you that it’s over there, then,” said Nina, managing a faint smile as she caught her breath.
Eddie tramped to where she had indicated, finding his gun half buried in the snow. He retrieved it, then came back to her, taking a closer look at the wolf’s body. It was just as deformed as the first they had seen, oversized and overmuscled but also misshapen, ugly lumps beneath its skin—and in some cases bursting out through it, lesions visible through the fur. “Christ, look at this. It’s like something out of The Thing.”
Nina had seen similar deformities before. “It’s the eitr,” she said, with a shiver that was caused by more than just the cold. “Just like in those photos Kagan’s boss showed us.”
“Yeah. We must be in the right place, then. The stuff’s mutated them.”
They both stared unhappily at the corpse, then turned at a noise. Not the howl of wolves this time, but the burr of engines. The other snowmobiles came into view.
The two remaining soldiers halted thirty feet away and jumped off their snowmobile, AK-12s at the ready as they checked for threats. “My God!
” Berkeley exclaimed as Kagan stopped beside Eddie and Nina. “We heard the shots. What the hell happened here?”
Kagan was more concerned by his comrade’s body. “Kontarsky!” he cried, running to the fallen figure, but after a brief examination he returned more slowly, expression stricken. “Have you seen Lishin?” he asked Eddie.
The Yorkshireman shook his head. “One of them dragged him off. Don’t know where, but we haven’t seen him. He’s probably dead. I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” Kagan said quietly. He regarded one of the animals. “The eitr—it did this to them. It is the only explanation.”
“We know,” said Nina.
“And this would have been from only the smallest exposure. Anything more, and they would not have lived this long. I have never seen the effects with my own eyes before, but …” A pause, then he set his shoulders. “Now you know why we must destroy the eitr, yes? What happened to the wolves must never get off this island.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” said Eddie.
Berkeley shook his head. “I don’t understand. How could these wolves have survived so long? The Vikings called this place the vale of Fenrir, but they can’t possibly have lived all this time.”
“These are probably the children of animals that came to the island a few months ago when the sea was frozen,” Kagan told him. “The parents would have died after being exposed to the eitr—but their pups lived for a time, even like this.”
“It’s horrible,” said Nina.
“Yes. But we can stop it—we must stop it.” Another regretful look at the soldier’s body, then the Russian returned to his vehicle. “Come. We must move.”
“Keep it,” Eddie said to Nina as she was about to put down the AK-12. “We might need it.” He holstered the Wildey, and they returned to their snowmobile as the others restarted their engines. “Oi! This time, don’t go so bloody fast!” he shouted. “We need to stick together!”
“Agreed,” said Kagan. He wheeled around back along his own trail, then powered away, though with more restraint than before. The soldiers followed, Eddie bringing the third snowmobile into line behind them.
The landscape began to climb again, before long lifting them clear of the fog trapped in the valley. Swathes of low cloud still clung to the mountainside, but the peak itself came back into clear view, an ominous, irregular pyramid jabbing at the overcast sky.
Berkeley’s translations of the ancient runes required very little interpretation to follow. The “broken finger” was a long slab of rock that the cold had sheared in two along a fault line, the narrow end pointing uphill. The barren island spread out below as they ascended.
The group was concerned only with what awaited above, however. There had been no sight or sound of the helicopter; the only conclusion was that it had landed.
And if it had … then its occupants had found the object of their search.
Berkeley tapped Kagan’s shoulder. The Russian pulled up, the other two snowmobiles drawing alongside. “What is it?” Nina asked.
“End of the line,” said Berkeley. “We need to look for open ground. Once we find it … that’s it. We’re at Vigrid, where the Vikings were going to face Ragnarök.”
Eddie gazed up the slope. “It’s got to be that,” he said, pointing. Off to one side of the looming peak, a few hundred feet higher than the group’s position, part of the terrain leveled out. The wind blew spiraling wisps of snow off its edge.
“Looks like we can ride all the way to it,” said Nina.
“Don’t think we should, though. We don’t want ’em to know we’re coming. If they saw the ship, they might be watching out for company.”
“That rock,” said Kagan, pointing at a boulder not far below the flatter ground. “We will leave the snowmobiles there and go on foot.” He glanced behind Berkeley as if to reassure himself that the case containing Thor’s Hammer was still secured, then set off once more. Eddie kept pace alongside him, the soldiers bringing up the rear.
It took five minutes to reach their destination. Eddie stopped his snowmobile by the boulder and dismounted, Nina slinging her borrowed Kalashnikov from one shoulder. A disgruntled Berkeley watched her. “Shouldn’t I have a gun too?” he asked.
Kagan’s only response was a brief barking laugh, while Eddie was more verbose. “Don’t fucking think so, mate.”
“Why not? I know how to handle myself—I’ve used guns before. Well, okay, I’ve done some target shooting, but I know one end from the other. And I must have proved I’m on your side by now. Even to you, Nina.”
“Maybe so,” she replied, “but even if I did want you to have one, the other gun’s back down there with those wolves.” She gestured into the gray haze below. “And I don’t know if we got all of them or not.”
Berkeley looked for a moment as if he was seriously considering trekking back down the mountain to retrieve the weapon, then shook his head in resignation. “All right, okay. But if we find ourselves outgunned when we get up there, don’t blame me.”
“That’s fine. There are plenty of other things I can blame you for.”
“For God’s sake,” he muttered, before changing the subject by taking out his notes. “Okay. This has to be Vigrid. Once we’re up there”—he gestured toward the plateau—“then we’re at the pit. The lair of Jörmungandr. The Midgard Serpent.”
“Well, we already fought his brother the wolf,” said Eddie, gathering his gear from the back of the snowmobile. “How does that work, by the way? Their dad must have been into some fucked-up stuff.”
“Loki was a trickster,” said Berkeley as the rest of the team collected their own belongings and followed the Englishman up the hill. “He could take on any form. Actually,” he continued, suddenly brightening as a thought struck him, “the mutation of those wolves? If that was caused by the eitr, it could explain some other Norse legends. Giants, monopodes, skraelings—they might all have been people or creatures who’d suffered the same sort of mutations.”
“Maybe you can rehabilitate yourself in the archaeological world by writing a paper about it,” Nina said in a cutting tone. Berkeley got the message and fell into a sullen silence.
They climbed the slope. It grew steeper as they approached the lip of the plateau, bare rock exposed where snow could no longer find purchase. The last few dozen yards became a climb.
Eddie was first to the top. He waved for the others to hold position, cautiously raising his head to peer over the edge. “I can see the chopper,” he reported.
Kagan joined him, the case containing Thor’s Hammer on his back. “What about Lock and his people?”
“There’s a guy hanging about, but I don’t see anyone else. Although …” He brought up a hand to shield his eyes from the blowing snow. “There’s a big crater as well. It must be the eitr pit.”
There was a flurry of movement as Nina, Berkeley, and the soldiers all scrambled up to look. “You are right,” said Kagan grimly. “It is like the one that was found on Novaya Zemlya.”
The plateau was not quite flat; they had arrived near its upper end, the snowy plain dropping gently by about a hundred feet over its length before falling sharply away down the mountainside. The helicopter, a large Sikorsky S-76 painted in high-visibility red to stand out in Arctic conditions, sat motionless two hundred yards away, below their position. A man stood near it, apparently on guard, but he was looking away from them toward the only other feature nearby.
A gaping hole.
It was a ragged oval dropping into the heart of the mountain, more than a hundred feet across at its widest. Steam rose from the opening, condensing as it hit the colder air above before being whisked away by the endless wind. “There’s something warm down there,” said Nina, seeing no snow around its edge.
Kagan nodded. “The eitr comes from somewhere deep inside the earth. The other pit was hot also.”
“Looks like Lock and Hoyt are already inside,” said Eddie. At one side of the pit, a metal trestle had been
set up to hold several ropes descending into the abyss. “How many of them are there?” Nina asked. “Chopper that size could carry a dozen people, easy. Great, another fucking private army.”
“So what are we going to do?” said Berkeley.
“No matter what, we cannot let them leave with the eitr,” insisted Kagan. “We must take out that helicopter. Then we will go into the pit and use Thor’s Hammer.”
“If it works,” said Eddie. He observed the scene below thoughtfully. The man was still watching the pit, apparently waiting for those inside to return to the surface. “They don’t know we’re here.”
“You sure?” said Nina.
“If they did, Hoyt wouldn’t have only left one bloke up here. He’s nasty, but he’s not stupid. That guy’s just keeping an eye on the ropes.”
“What are you thinking?” Kagan asked.
“That we can sneak right up to the chopper without being seen. We’ll use those rocks for cover.” He gestured at several stones poking up from the snow between the group’s position and the helicopter. “If he stays focused on the hole, we can get within fifty feet of him before he even realizes we’re there.”
“And if he looks around before then?” said Berkeley.
Eddie took out the Wildey. “Then I find out how accurate this is at long range! But I reckon we can do it.”
“So do I,” said Kagan, nodding. He spoke to his men in Russian, then turned back to Eddie. “They will keep us covered on the way to the helicopter.”
“Make sure they don’t shoot that thing on your back, eh?” The Englishman cautiously rose. “Nina, wait here until it’s safe. Keep an eye on him.” He jerked a thumb at Berkeley.
“I don’t need to be baby-sat,” Berkeley complained. His sour expression became more concerned as Nina unslung her AK-12. “Nina, are you sure you know how to use that thing?”