Clutching the roots of a tree, Chris looked back. A dozen yards away, the dwarf lay flat on his back, a smoking ruin where a mortar round must have landed squarely.

  But then he felt a hand on his shoulder. O’Leary pointed up the hill and whispered, goggle-eyed.

  “Dig it, man.”

  Chris turned and stared upslope at a huge, manlike being striding down the hillside, followed by dark-cloaked, heavily armed men. The giant figure carried an enormous bludgeon which screamed whenever he threw it, crushing trees and marines without prejudice, exploding massive conifers into kindling and men into jam. Then, as if by a will of its own, the weapon swept back into the red-bearded Aesir’s hand.

  Not mortars, Chris realized. Thor’s hammer.

  Of Loki, there was no sign at all.

  * * *

  3

  “There, there, Hugin. Fear not the dark Americans. They shall not hurt thee.”

  The one-eyed being called Odin sat upon a throne of ebony, bearing on his upraised hand a raven the same color as night. A jewel set in the giant’s eyepatch glittered like an orb more far-seeing than the one he had lost. Across his lap lay a shining spear.

  On both sides stood fur-clad beings just as imposing, one blond, with a great axe laid arrogantly over his shoulder. The other, red-bearded, leaned lazily on a hammer the size of a normal man.

  Guards in black leather, twin lightning strikes on their collars, stood at attention around the immense hall of hewn timber columns. Even their rifles were polished black. The only spot of color on each SS uniform was a red swastika armband.

  Odin gazed down at the prisoners, chained in a heap on the floor of the great hall.

  “Alas. Poor Hugin has not forgiven you Americans. His brother, Munin, was lost when Berlin boiled under your Hellfire bombs.”

  The Aesir chief’s remaining eye gleamed ferally. “And who can blame my poor watch-bird, or fail to understand a father’s grief, when that same flame deluge consumed my bright boy, my far-seeing Heimdallr.”

  Survivors of the ill-fated raiding party lay exhausted on the cold stone floor. Unconscious and dying, Major Marlowe was in no condition to answer, but one of the Free British volunteers stood, rattling his chains, and spat in front of the massive throne.

  “Pearson!” O’Leary tried to pull on the man’s arm, but was shrugged off as the Briton shook his fist.

  “Yeah, they got your precious boy in Berlin. Like you killed everyone in London an’ Paris! I say the Yanks were too soft, stopping there. They shoulda gone ahead an’ fried every last Aryan bitch an’ cub…”

  His defiance was cut off as an SS officer knocked him down. Troopers brought their rifle butts down, again and again. Finally, Odin waved them back.

  “Take the body to the center of the Great Circle, to be given full rites.”

  The officer looked up sharply, but Odin rumbled in a tone that assumed obedience. “We value courage, even in our foes. I want that brave man with me, when Fimbul-Winter blows.”

  Black-uniformed guards cut the limp form free as the chief Aesir chucked his raven under the beak, offering a morsel of meat. He spoke to the huge redhead standing beside him.

  “Thor, my son. These other creatures are thine. Poor prizes, I admit, but they did show some prowess in following the Liar this far. What will thou do with them?”

  The giant stroked his hammer with gauntlets the size of small dogs. He made even Loki seem small. Stepping forward to scan the prisoners, Thor seemed to be searching for something. When his gaze lighted on Chris, it seemed to shimmer. Thor’s voice was as deep as the growling of earthquakes.

  “I will deign to speak with one or two, Father.”

  Odin nodded.

  “Have them cast in a pit somewhere,” he told an SS general nearby, who clicked heels and bowed low. “Await my son’s pleasure.”

  The Nazis hauled Chris and the other survivors away, but not before Chris overheard the elder Aesir tell his offspring, “Find out what you can about that wolf-spawn, Loki. Then give them over for ritual sacrifice.”

  * * *

  4

  Poor Major Marlowe had been right about one thing. The Nazis would never have won without the Aesir, or something like them. Hitler and his gang must have believed from the start that they could somehow call forth the ancient “gods,” or they would surely never have dared wage such a war, one certain to bring in America.

  Indeed, by early 1944 it had seemed all but over. There was hell yet to pay, of course, but nobody back home feared defeat anymore. The Russians were pushing in from the east. Rome was almost taken, and the Mediterranean was an Allied lake. The Japanese were crumbling—pushed back or bottled up in island after island. Meanwhile the greatest armada in history gathered in England, preparing to cross the Channel and lance the Nazi boil for good and all.

  In factories and shipyards across America, the Arsenal of Democracy poured forth more war materiel in a month than the Third Reich produced in its best year. Ships rolled off the ways at intervals of hours. Planes every few minutes.

  Most important of all, in Italy, Africa and the Pacific, a rabble of farmers and city boys had been tempered, becoming warriors in a great army. Man to man, they were a match for their experienced foe, and outnumbered them as well.

  Already there was talk of the postwar recovery, of plans to help in the rebuilding, and a “United Nations” to keep the peace forever.

  In ’44 Chris had been just a child in knee pants, devouring Chet Nimitz novels and praying with all his might that there would be something half as glorious to do in his adulthood as what his uncles were achieving overseas right then. Maybe there would be adventures in space, he hoped. For after this, the horror of war would surely never be allowed again.

  Then came the rumors…tales of setbacks on the Eastern front…of reeling Soviet armies sent into sudden, unexpected retreat. The reasons were unclear…mostly, what came back were superstitious rumblings that no modern person credited.

  Voices on a street corner:

  Damn Russkies… I knew all along they didn’ have no stayin’ power…Alla time yammerin’ ’bout a “second front”… Well, we’ll give ’em a second front. Save their hash. Don’t fret, Ivan. Uncle Sam’s coming…

  Then it was June, and the Norman sky was filled with planes. Ships covered the Channel, as far as any eye could see. The greatest armada of free men ever assembled…

  Sitting against a cold stone wall in an underground cell, Chris pinched his eyes shut and tried to crush away the memory of grainy black-and-white films he had been shown. Photographs never seen by the public.

  D-Day…

  D for disaster.

  Cyclones, hundreds of them, spinning like horrible tops, rising out of the dawn mists. They grew and climbed till dark funnels seemed to stretch beyond the sky. Approaching the ships, one could make out terrible figures riding those whirling winds, driving the storms faster and faster with beating wings…

  “Marlowe’s come up aces and eights, man.” O’Leary sighed heavily as he sagged down next to Chris. “You’re the big cheese now, dad.”

  Chris closed his eyes. All men die, he thought, reminding himself that he hadn’t really liked the dour Marine all that much, anyway.

  He mourned nonetheless, if for no other reason than that Marlowe had been his insulation, protecting him from that bitch called command.

  “So what gives now, chief?”

  Chris looked at O’Leary. The man was really too old to be playing kids’ games. There were lines at the edges of those doelike eyes, and baby fat was turning into a double chin. The Army recognized genius, and put up with a lot from its civilian experts. But Chris wondered—not for the first time—how this escapee from Greenwich Village ever came to a position of responsibility.

  Loki chose him. That was the real answer. Like he chose me.

  So much for the god of cleverness.

  “What gives is that you damp down the beat-rap, O’Leary. Making only every third sentence incomprehensible should be enough to provide your emotional crutch.”

  The beatnik technician winced, and Chris at once regretted the outburst.

  “Oh, never mind.” He changed the subject. “How are the rest of the men doing?”

  “Copacetic, I guess…I mean, they’re okay, for guys slated for ritual shortening in a few hours. They all knew this was a suicide mission. Just wanted to take a few of the bastards with them, is all.”

  Chris nodded. If we had another year or two…

  By then the missile scientists would have had rockets accurate enough to go for a surgical strike, making this attempt to sneak in bombs under the enemy’s noses unnecessary. The Satellite was just the beginning, if they had time.

  “Pearson was right, man,” O’Leary muttered as he collapsed against the wall next to Chris. “We shoulda pasted them with everything we had. Melted Europe to slag, if that’s what it took.”

  “By the time we had enough bombs, they had atomic weapons, too,” Chris pointed out.

  “So? After we fried Peenemunde, their delivery systems stagnated. And they haven’t got a clue how to go thermonuclear! Why, even if they did manage to disassemble our bomb…”

  “God forbid!” Chris blinked. His heart raced, even considering the possibility. If the Nazis managed to make the leap from A-bomb to fusion weapons…

  The tech shook his head vigorously. “I scoped—I mean I checked out the destruct triggers myself, Chris. Anyone pokes around to try to see how a U.S. of A. type H-bomb works will be in for a nasty surprise.”

  That had, of course, been a minimum requirement before being allowed to attempt this mission. Had they been able to assemble the weapon near the “Great Circle” of Aesgard, the course of war might have changed. Now, all they could hope was that the separate components would melt to slag as they were supposed to when their timers expired.

  O’Leary persisted. “I still think we should have launched everything we had back in ’52.”

  Chris knew how the man felt. Most Americans believed the exchange would be worth it. A full-scale strike at Hitler’s homeland would have seared the heart out of it. The monster’s retaliation, with cruder rockets and fission bombs, might have been a price worth paying.

  When he had learned the real reason, at first Chris refused to believe it. He had assumed that Loki was lying…that it was an Aesir trick. But since then he had seen the truth. America’s arsenal was a two-edged sword. Unless used carefully it would cut both ways.

  There was a rattling of keys. Three SS guards stepped in, looking down their noses at the dejected Allied raiders.

  “Great Thor would speak vit’ your leader,” the officer said in thickly accented English. When no one moved, his gaze fell on Chris. “This one. Our lord wants him especially.”

  Guards seized Chris by the arms, lifting him bodily.

  “Cool as glass, dad,” O’Leary said. “Drive ’em crazy, baby.”

  Chris glanced back from the door. “You too, O’Leary.”

  The dungeon gate slammed shut behind him.

  * * *

  5

  “You are a Dane, are you not?”

  Chris stood tied to a pillar in front of a crackling fireplace. The Gestapo official peered at Chris from several angles before asking his question.

  “Danish by ancestry. What of it?” Chris shrugged under his bonds.

  The Nazi clucked. “Oh, nothing in particular. It is just that I never cease to be amazed when I find specimens of clearly superior stock fighting against their own divine heritage.”

  Chris lifted an eyebrow. “Do you interrogate a lot of prisoners?”

  “Oh, yes, very many.”

  “Well, then you must be amazed all the time.”

  The Gestapo man blinked, then smiled sourly. He stepped back to light a cigarette, and Chris noticed that his hands were trembling.

  “But doesn’t your very blood cry out when you find yourself working with, going into battle alongside, racial scum, mongrels…?”

  Chris laughed. He turned his head and regarded the Nazi icily.

  “Why are you here?”

  The fellow blinked again. “See here. I am in charge of intelligence and party doctrinal—”

  “You’re a jailor. The priests of the Aesir run everything now. The mystics in the SS control the Reich. Hitler’s a tottering old syphilitic they won’t let out of Berchtesgaden. And you old-fashioned Nazis are barely tolerated anymore.”

  The officer sucked at his cigarette. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that all that racial claptrap was just window dressing. An excuse to set up the death camps. But the SS would’ve been just as happy to use Aryans in them, if that was the only way to—to…”

  “Yes?” The Gestapo man stepped forward. “To do what? If the purpose of the camps was not the elimination of impure races, then what, smart man? What?”

  There was a brittle, high-pitched edge to the man’s laughter. “You do not know, do you? Even Loki did not tell you!”

  Chris could have sworn that there was disappointment in the officer’s eyes…as if he had hoped to learn something from Chris, and felt let down to find out his prisoner was just as much in the dark.

  No, I wasted a question. Loki didn’t tell me about the reason for the camps.

  Chris glanced at the other man’s trembling hands, that had doubtless wreaked more hell on broken bodies than bore contemplating. All in a cause that was no longer even relevant to the winning side.

  “Poor obsolete National Socialist,” Chris said. “Your dreams, mad as they were, were human ones. How does it feel to have it all taken over by aliens? To watch it change beyond recognition?”

  The Gestapo man reddened. Fumbling, he plucked a truncheon from the wall and smacked it in his gloved left hand.

  “I will change something else beyond recognition,” he growled. “And if I am obsolete, at least I am still allowed the pleasure of my craft.”

  He approached, smiling, a thin film on his lips. Chris braced himself as the arm swung back. But then the leather curtains parted. A large shadow fell across the rug. The officer paled and snapped to attention.

  Red-bearded Thor nodded briefly, shrugging out of his fur cloak.

  “You may go,” he rumbled.

  Chris did not even look at the Nazi as the interrogator tried to meet his eye for the last time. Chris watched coals in the fireplace until the curtains swished again and he was alone with the alien.

  Thor sat cross-legged, joining Chris in contemplating the flames. When he used his hammer to prod the logs, heat brought out fine, glowing designs in the massive iron head.

  “Fro sends word from Vineland…from the sea thou callest Labrador. There has been a slaughter of many brave men. Those cowards’ tools—‘submarines’—did frightful harm to our fleet. But in the end, Fro’s tempests were masterful. The landing is secured.”

  Chris controlled a sinking feeling in his stomach. This was expected. Worse would come this winter.

  Thor shook his head. “This is a bad war. Where is the honor, when thousands die unable even to show valor?”

  Chris had more experience than most Americans in holding conversation with gods. Still, he took a chance by speaking without permission.

  “I agree, Great One. But you can’t blame us for that.”

  Thor’s eyes glittered as he inspected Chris.

  “No, brave worm. I do not blame you. That you have used your flame weapons as little as you have speaks well for the pride of thy leaders. Or perhaps they know what our wrath would be, if they were spent wantonly.”

  I never should have been allowed on this mission. I know too much, Chris realized. Loki had been the one to overrule High Command and insist that Chris come along. But that made him the only one here who knew the real reason the H-bombs had been kept leashed.

  Dust from atom blasts, and soot from burning cities—those were what Allied High Command feared, more than radiation or Nazi retaliation. Already, from limited use of nuclear weapons so far, the weather had chilled measurably.

  And Aesir were much stronger in winter! Scientists verified Loki’s story, that careless use of the Allied nuclear advantage would lead to catastrophe, no matter how badly they seared the other side.

  “We too prefer a more personal approach,” Chris said, hoping to keep the Aes believing his own explanation. “No man wants to be killed by powers beyond his understanding, impossible to resist or fight back against.”

  Thor’s rumble, this time, was low laughter.

  “Well said, worm. Thou dost chastize as Freyr does, with words that reap, even as they sow.”

  The Aes leaned forward a little. “You would earn merit, small one, if you told me how to find the Brother of Lies.”

  Those gray eyes were like cold clouds, and Chris felt his sense of reality waver as he looked into them. It took an effort of will to tear his gaze away, replying with a dry mouth.

  “I…don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The rumbling changed tone, deepening. Chris felt a rough touch as Thor brushed his cheek with the leather-bound haft of his great war hammer.

  “Loki, youngling. Tell me where the Trickster may be found, and you may yet escape your doom, you may even find a place by my side. In the world to come, there will be no greater place for a man.”

  This time Chris steeled himself to meet the hypnotic pools. Thor’s eyes seemed to reach hungrily for his soul, as a magnet might call to native iron. Chris fought back with a savage heat of hatred.

  “Not…for all the Valkyries in your pathetic alien pantheon,” he whispered, half breathless. “I’d rather run with wolves.”

  The smile vanished. Thor blinked, and for a moment Chris thought he saw the Aesir’s image waver just a little, as if…as if Chris were looking through a man-shaped fold in space.

  “Courage will not save thee from the wages of disrespect, worm,” the shape warned, and solidified again into a fur-clad giant.