Eric Flint - Pyramid Power

But there was no room to maneuver the ladder. They had to leave it propped half up, half down.

They moved down the passage past the open doorway, from which stentorian snores of truly epic proportions were issuing. Jerry had moved himself to the front-"point," he thought soldiers called it-while Liz brought up the rear, tailed by the four worried looking PSA agents. As they came to where this passage intersected another, Jerry nearly walked into a man who was hurrying around the corner the other way.

There was a torch just there and so Jerry got a really good look at the man, before he turned in a swirl of blue cloak and sprinted off down the passage. It was not the kind of face you forgot, strong, lined, with an eagle-beak nose, a sour turn to the mouth… and an empty eye-socket.

And a pyramid-pendant around his neck.

With a cold shock Jerry knew that he'd just met the Krim's local flunky. To make things worse, his name happened to be Odin. He'd not been pleased to see Jerry, and there had definitely been a look of recognition in that solitary cold blue eye.

"We're in trouble," said Jerry. "This is Norse myth, all right, and the Krim is definitely in control. That was Odin."

Lamont's eyes widened. "Let's see if we can find a window. Before we run into Loki, next."

"Loki? You mean like Thor's evil half-brother from the Marvel comics," said Emmitt, eyes wide, slight sulky look forgotten. "So… is Thor around too? Throwing thunderbolts…"

Jerry nodded. "I think they took some liberties with the mythology, but yes, probably. They won't be the sort of characters they are in the comics, necessarily."

"Way cool!" said Ty happily.

Jerry didn't have a chance to explain that it probably wouldn't be. Liz bustled up. "Jerry, I think you should let me take the front. You're leading us in circles."

It was said with a smile, and a militant swing to the new shoulder bag. She probably wanted the chance to give any other Norse gods a kick where it hurt most and a swat across the head with that bag. It didn't have the weight-yet-of her old one, but it had metal corners and a good solid strap. Liz believed in finding weapons where you could. She was also, from a youth spent in the African bush, someone with senses honed to a degree that Jerry knew he couldn't match.

He cheerfully moved to tail-end Charlie… well, not including the PSA men. Poor fellows. They looked a little out of their depth here.

It rapidly became apparent that, inside a building at any rate, Liz's sense of direction was no better than Jerry's.

She'd brought them back to the ladder. Only it wasn't half up anymore, and a group of men in Norse-style helmets and mailshirts were climbing it. By the shout that went up when they saw her, the chase was on.

Liz sat down and kicked the ladder outwards, with all the strength in her powerful legs. The sounds of cascading men, cracking timber, and screams of pain and fury came from below.

"I think we'd better find a way out before they find another way up," said Lamont.

"I think we'd better take our chances with that sleeper," said Jerry. They hurried on. But at the door, Liz paused, shook her head and put her finger to her lips. She pointed onwards. Jerry realized that there were no snores.

"He looked at me," said Liz, quietly motioning them to the other side of the passage. "He looked at me and said something like 'Sif,' and lay down again."

"There's one of him. We could overpower him," said one of the agents.

Liz shook her head. "He's enormous. I don't think you could shift him, let alone overpower him. We'll try the passage your Odin came from."

They did, and soon realized just what Odin had been doing there. It led to a bridge-a sort of sideless hanging gallery-across the hall below with its long lines of fires. The hall was virtually deserted now, except for dead bodies and two standing figures. One of them was one-eyed Odin, wearing a swirling blue cloak. The other figure wore a girdle of iron and metal gauntlets, and held a metal rod in one hand, clumsily. His red beard appeared to have a problem-it wasn't attached on one side.

Odin pointed at them and said something that included the word "Thjalfi."

Whatever he said stirred the other person to hasty action. He ran to get underneath the bridge and raised the metal staff.

"Run!" yelled Jerry. He couldn't shove, because the PSA agent would have tumbled off.

The man blinked and said, "Why?" just as the staff began to somehow grow and push the whole stone structure up toward the rafters, sending the arch-bridge's keystone tumbling. Trapped with the PSA agent on a piece of rock that was somehow balanced on the metal rod, Jerry saw one agent fall toward the fires, and Lamont and another agent haul Ella up onto the crumbling stones on the far side. Then he was hard against the great stone beams of the ceiling.

There was a narrow gap between the stone beams and the crooked wooden purlins. Jerry forced his way up there, but then realized that wasn't going to help. He was going to be crushed into the rotten thatch.

Luckily, the thatch turned out to be really, really old and rotten, cracking and splintering-and trickling icy water down his collar. Jerry managed to squirm his head up and through the rotted reed. Then, he got an arm out and pulled himself up, away from the crushing rock. Beneath him the stone beam groaned.

It was bleakly gray out here, and cold. The bitter wind brought flurries of snow to join that which already lay in drifts wherever it could find purchase on the steepness. Heaving-cautiously, because this thatch was centuries old by the feel of it-Jerry hauled himself out onto the roof. It was apparently merely thatch over a hole, because he could see rock, gray and snow-corniced, and wind-bent little alpine bushes off to the side.

Just below him was the head and shoulders of the PSA agent. The man's face was contorted with pain, and he was struggling to get up. Jerry could no more leave him there than he could have deserted a book. Cautiously he edged down and helped.

"My leg is trapped," said the man, weakly. "Ahhh. I can't move it. Pull me!"

Jerry did his best, but the thatch was truly rotten. He put his foot right though-onto a stone beam. That gave him something solid to stand on so he could pull properly. Which he did, with the result that when the slab of stone of the 'bridge' was dropped inside-or at least, by deduction and the crashing noise, Jerry imagined that must have happened-the PSA agent came free abruptly. Together they rolled, slid and cascaded down the thatch. It was probably the only safe way to have gotten off that rotted surface without falling through it, down into the hall-a fifty-foot fall, very possibly into the fires.

They landed together in a tumble of snow, filthy rotten straw and the debris of centuries, at a point where the runoff was plainly intended to go off down the hillside.

By this time the PSA agent was groaning and white-faced with pain.

Jerry knew he faced some very awkward choices. The others were in there, somewhere. But what did he do with an injured man?

He settled for examining the injury. He was no anatomist, and the man was no help. The sandal-clad foot had plainly been trapped between the stone beam and the rising bridge-piece. Only the fact that they were both very roughly hewed could have saved the man's foot from becoming jelly, but plainly it hadn't saved several bones. The injury itself shouldn't kill him. But given the temperature out here, exposure would. Bare legs, except for brass greaves, bare arms and a skirt of peltoi and a brass cuirass, were fine for Mediterranean summer warfare. Here the man was going to die from the shock and the cold.

"Can you lean on me and we can try to get to some shelter?" asked Jerry.

The PSA agent nodded. "Lost my gun."