"It could be a good plan, except for a couple of details," said Lamont.
"Oh? Like what?"
"Like the outfits."
Liz started to swear, bit it off, suddenly realizing the age of her audience. "Sort out the reeds. We'll need at least two. I'll go after them."
She set off at a rapid pace after Loki and Sigyn and the three Norns. She found them a few hundred yards down the trail, with the Norns coming out from behind a large rock, dressed in more typical Norse-Mythworld women's clothing, each with their hooded garments in their hands. Now that you could see them, Urd was revealed to be a tiny wrinkled crone, Verdani a woman with experience-lines around her fine eyes. And Skuld was jailbait. Pouting jailbait. They held out their hooded clothes.
Liz was startled into pausing. "How did you know . . . ?"
"We know," said Skuld loftily. Somehow she managed to look down her nose at Liz, which was quite a feat, because she was tiny.
Liz took a deep breath. "All right. Different rules for different places. I don't suppose you'd like to tell me what is going to happen?"
"No," said Urd. She prodded Loki with her stick. "Let's go, Son of Laufey."
Loki held up his hands and shrugged. "They never tell you anything unless it is to make your life a misery, anyway, Liz."
"Get on with you, Son of Laufey," said Verdani. "The one-eyed wanderer comes into my provence."
"We'd better move then, Liz. Odin is nearly here. You'd better get back."
So Liz hastened back to the rest of the party, inspecting the hooded outfits as she jogged, and realizing that she had a problem.
The Norns were small. There was no way that most adults would fit in those outfits. Thrúd, or her . . . or Lamont wasn't going to get into them with a shoehorn. Thor was not either, not even if they sewed all three outfits together. Besides the Norns had said something about Odin detecting another power—and Thor and Thrúd were powers, too. They'd better back off.
She arrived back at the waiting group next to the well.
"Where is Verdani's provence?" she panted.
"The present," said Thrúd.
"Ah," said Liz, as the situation became clearer to her. "Look, Odin must nearly be here. And we have a problem. These outfits are way too small for any of the adults. Or even for Emmitt."
"I'll do it," said Ella. She pointed to Ty and Tolly, involved in one of their games that involved a lot of giggling and dodging. "You two! Dress! It's time you did something useful."
"But . . ." said Lamont.
"Somebody has to do it, Daddy," said Ella. Now that she had communication, real or imagined, with her twin, and some shred of hope for her mother, the girl was beginning to come out of the shell that she'd constructed for herself. She'd taken to following Thrúd around. Her announcement had had an effect, not, by the look on Lamont Jackson's face, one he was altogether pleased with. Besides, Liz remembered, Marie had said that both girls flew at anything that vaguely smacked of acting.
"We'll be in the water, Lamont. Right next to them."
"Me too," said Thor.
Liz shook her head. "Kids, scramble into these." She held out the clothes. "Thor, the Norns said that Odin would know if Loki was here. I think the same probably applies to you. And to Thrúd. So I'll need you to back off, with Emmitt. Up there somewhere? If we have trouble . . . well, you could throw a thunderbolt or two. Give us a chance to try to get the kids out."
Thor folded his arms. "I do not flee from a fight."
"Thor, we don't want this to be a fight! That's the whole point. Please?"
"It's the right thing, Papa," said Thrúd. "And I can hear the sound of hooves."
Reluctantly, Thor unbuckled his belt of strength and handed it to Lamont. "Take this. A mortal cannot long survive in a fight with the Ás, but it may give you the strength you need to flee Odin with the children."
Lamont put around his waist. "I'm honored, Thor."
"And I wish it was me," said Emmitt.
"One day," said Thor, putting a hand on the boy's shoulders.
Liz handed Thrúd her bag. "In a pinch, hit someone with it. And we'll need those reeds."
"Fortunately we all cut some," said Thrúd, handing her a bunch of hollow reed stalks in exchange.
"You're stars." Liz smiled, relaxing now that action was finally at hand. She knew you were supposed to get tense, but not doing something had been very hard. "We'd better get rid of some of these clothes," she said to Lamont. "And I hope you can swim."
"I hope so too," said Lamont with a smile, patting Thor's belt. "Otherwise I'll be a strong drowner."
Liz stepped out of her green skirt. "It's close enough to the color of the water. I'll take it with us. It'll do to hide behind."
"Good thing that Thor has left," said Lamont. "I hate to think what he'd say about a man hiding behind a woman's skirts, especially when they were wearing his belt of strength."
Jerry approached the end of the journey with a mixture of terror and relief. On the relief side, the journey in the cart had ended. On the terror side, the food had given some clarity to his mind, even if he was woozy at times.
If memory served him correctly, they were heading toward Mirmir's well, where Mirmir had made Odin pluck out one of his own eyes to gain a draft of the well of wisdom. Jerry was no fool. He could only see one reason for Odin taking him along, and it wasn't for his company.
The walk down the steep slope was playing havoc with his eyes. He would have thought that they'd put up a better effort while he still had two! He wasn't even seeing double. He was seeing treble. Three little black-clad hooded figures, standing next to the water. And he'd have sworn that the smaller two were playing scissors-stone-paper.
"Why have you brought warriors to Mirmir's well?" said a high girlish voice. "You know that it is not allowed."
Odin turned to the Einherjar accompanying them. "Go back to the chariot. I thought Loki might be here but he isn't." He jerked Jerry's collar. "I can deal with this one on my own."
As they advanced, Jerry saw that the hoods masked the Norn's faces in deep shadow, except for the tip of one nose. "Stop that," said the tallest Norn to the other two.
"I would have thought Urd had put away such childlike pastimes," said Odin, sounding suspicious.
"It's my second childhood," said the smallest Norn in a quavering treble. "I had a terrible first childhood, and I'm going to enjoy this one. And it keeps Skuld happy."
"That is wisdom," said Odin. "Great Norns, I would give my right eye for a horn of water from Mirmir's well."
"The price has gone up," said the tallest Norn. "The price is now a human sacrifice."
"Push him over the edge into the water," said the second childhood Norn.
"Throw him into the well," said the third.
"To drown and enrich the pool with his blood," clarified the tallest.
"Do you want me to cut his throat first?" Odin pushed Jerry to the lip of the pool.
"No!" said the Norns in hasty chorus.
"He's got to struggle."
"Otherwise it doesn't work."
"Push him in!"
So Odin did.
It couldn't have been more than ten feet down to the water, but it felt like fifty.
Jerry's screaming was the sweetest sound Liz had heard in long time. He hit the water with a terrific splash, and Liz went after him. The water they were hiding in was deliciously warm, and tinglingly effervescent. Unfortunately, the green color was due to the dense mats of water-weed.
Liz battled through the muck, and reached the threshing figure. She tried to grab Jerry and pull him to the edge, under the lip, but got a kick that nearly drowned her instead. It knocked all the air out of her, and she had to thrash for the surface.
Then a strong hand grabbed her.
Jerry had two shocks when Odin casually pushed him over the edge into Mirmir's well. The first was not that unpleasant. He was going to drown in warm water.
The second—that someone was pullin
g him down—was terrifying. He swallowed a fair amount of water trying to scream, and kicked with all his might. He was rewarded with a meaty impact. Then something grabbed him and flung him in against the lip. Moments later he was joined by a gasping Liz, who was weakly trying to push something into his hand. It was a sort of pipe, and she put a similar thing in her mouth. Then the same strong hand pulled him under. He had the intelligence left to put the pipe in his mouth and try to breathe through it.
He felt a hand find his and squeeze gently. And a layer of something was pulled over him.
"What happened there?" Odin demanded.
Ella couldn't think quite what to say. She'd seen Liz burst out of the water herself. And then a black form—probably, she hoped, her daddy. And a fair amount of splashing.
A sudden horrible thought occurred to her. Maybe there really was some kind of monster down in this water. Maybe it had eaten all of them. She leaned over the edge, not caring about anything else except finding out if he was all right. She saw the bamboos in the misty water.
"It's the water demons," said Ty. "It's like . . . this drowned woman that lives in a cave near the bottom of the well, and she pulls them down and sucks their brains out through their noses."
"Oh," said Odin. "But I thought I also saw some dark shape attack."
"That's the water-wolf," Ty explained. "It lives at the very bottom of the well in between all the dead men's bones and treasure and it tries to get them first. It uses the blood to wash the bones and it likes to gnaw the flesh off their toes. And it eats their guts like spaghetti, and . . ."
"Stop giving away our secrets," said Tolly.
"Yes. Go and fetch Odin a horn full of water," said Ella hastily. Once Ty got going he was nearly impossible to stop, especially with anything ghoulish.
Odin drank the horn of water. "I thank you, wise Norns. Now I will escort you back to Urd's well."
"No," said Ella firmly, trying to remember exactly how the Norns had spoken. "Now go. Great danger threatens you if you stay."
"Tell me more," said Odin.
"Only if you give us your other eye," said Tolly.
Odin put his hand over it, protectively.
"Samurai Jack is coming," warned Ty sepulchrally. "And he is a giant giant and he's dead already, so you can't kill him and . . . and he's got snakes for hair. And even if you cut his head off he just grows another two."
Odin backed off.
"Samurai Jack?" said the man with him. Ella placed him. The one that had been there when Thor's wife had come home. He was the creep who'd stolen Thor's gloves and belt of strength and then made the whiskey-smelling stuff that had got Thor so drunk!
"Thjalfi," she hissed, "you are a lowlife asshole." Ma wasn't around to hear it.
Odin was already heading away, so he didn't see a Norn kick his henchman on the shins. Hard.
"Creep. Lowlife. Scumbag. Bottom-feeder," he heard, as Thjalfi scrambled and limped after him.
These Norns were certainly knowledgeable. But Thjalfi was a useful creep, scumbag, and lowlife bottom-feeder.
The Krim device tried furiously to get Odin-Krim's attention. He was right on top of them, positionally!
But Odin was not responding. He was even more strong-willed than Krim. Prukrin transfer selection involved the gullible, the easily manipulated, and those with various emotional energy keys. Odin had none of those features. Instead he was very Krim-like.
Lying under the water, covered in a layer of weed and Liz's skirt, Lamont waited for the inevitable to happen. How could he watch the kids and stay under water? He had to go and look. Had to.
Just then there were two almost simultaneous splashes. Lamont shot his head out of the water like a submarine launched cruise missile. A grinning Ty and Tolly were swimming toward them, splashing and laughing.
"I told them not to," said Ella from above.
"Honey," said Liz. "Why don't you join us too? You were absolutely brilliant." She was hugging a bemused but smiling Jerry Lukacs. "I'm never letting you out of my sight for one instant, ever again. You've got so thin, love."
"It's . . . been a bit of a rough journey." He squinted at her. "And the last time I saw you, you were busy kissing someone else."
Liz blushed. "It wasn't what it looked like. And I think you saved me from getting raped."
"She went there to look for you, Jerry," said Lamont, "without realizing that Valkyries are the Norse equivalent of boom-boom girls. She was acting the part and trying to get her partner blind drunk. So don't make a fuss about it, because she's been tearing herself apart to think how she's going explain it to you."
Jerry blinked. "She doesn't have to explain anything."
"But I want to," said Liz. "First, though, we need to get you out of here, get you dry, fed, and your hands untied."
She looked as if she was about to start crying any moment, with the chin definitely quivering slightly, which was not something you expected from Liz. She also looked as if she was going to devour him with her eyes.
"Sounds good," said Jerry. "Especially the fed part. I've eaten half a magic apple, thirty-six nuts, four bird eggs, and a bowl of gruel in the last nine days. Does anyone know what has become of Loki and Sigyn, by the way?"
"He took the Norns back off to Urd's well. Sigyn went along to keep an eye on Skuld," said Lamont.
"Skuld-uggery! She wanted to make sure he Urd on the side of caution," said Jerry. And then gaped as Liz, instead of groaning, burst into a flood of tears and hugged him fiercely.
"It wasn't that bad," he said warily, once he could breathe again.
"It was bloody awful," she said, smiling through the tears. "But it's so very you."
"Are you absorbing wisdom through the skin?" asked Thor from the edge of the water. "What did you do to Odin? He and his troops are still galloping their horses away from this place."
"That," said Ella, with a scowl, "was my little brother. He's a menace."
"I thought it was way cool," said Tolly admiringly. "Especially the part about the drowned woman. How did you find out all this neat stuff?"
Agent Stephens watched the black bird warily. It did have a large beak. It also had a roll of parchment around one leg. "The message is for you," said the bird. "I could peck it off, but it probably would be illegible. I was told to tell you Tom Harkness sent me."
Agent Stephens had had a hard time in the last while, reconciling himself with the fact that his entire purpose in life was now something he had to reassess, in the light of being somewhere where the U.S. was not even a concept, and from where he had no chance of return or even of fulfilling his mission. He and Bott had tagged along with the party of moderns simply because they did not know where else to go. Preparation and briefing for the Harkness mission had of necessity been scanty. And then not only had they lost their guides, their destination and their way home, they'd also lost their mission . . . or so he'd believed.
Now, unless someone was deceiving them, he had to reassess again. With trembling fingers he undid the little scroll. What he saw there was enough to convince him that Tom Harkness was still alive—and in this Mythworld, the Norse one, not still stranded in the Greek Mythworld.