Eric Flint - Pyramid Power

Jerry, knowing he had eight and half more days, ate a small sliver of apple. It had a invigorating and rejuvenating effect on him. Not perhaps as much as if he'd eaten the whole thing, but enough to ease the pain of the spear stab and make the prospect of a nine day vigil with nothing but a malicious-tongued squirrel for company seem survivable. "Hey. We have to try," he said. "Maybe you can teach me these runes. I know a few."

"Maybe. And maybe I can be off about my business," said Ratatosk. "Things to do, creatures to insult. The trouble is Nidhogg and the eagle are both lamebrains. I have to strain my intellect to add a bit of spice and malice to the messages, or they'd both have got bored years ago and eaten me. I'll strip some corpses for warm gear for you."

It wasn't quite what Jerry would have chosen as a wardrobe, but the present owners didn't really have much use for them. And even with the hat and cloak and Skadi's slightly too large boots it was going to be very cold on this branch. Cold and a long time in which to do nothing, without any reading matter. No wonder Odin had stolen runes and talked to the hanged corpses.

It would give him some time to do some thinking, he supposed. Thinking of just what the hell Liz had been up to in Odin's feasting-hall for starters. There was nothing formal between them… really. Had she perhaps slipped into the spell of this place and its role-play and beliefs? Jerry desperately wanted to believe that she had some reason for passionately kissing a Norse god with gold teeth and a big horn, besides the obvious.

The other thing he could think about was how they could get home. That was possibly even harder to unravel, but it didn't occupy as much of his mind-proving, against all probabilities, that academics can be human too.

"Word for you on that lover of yours from Ratatosk via Nidhogg," said Loki.

Liz turned eagerly. Loki held up a calming hand. "He's in one piece. But reaching him, now, would be nearly impossible. He's going to try to escape at the end of the nine days. Nothing much we can do for him now. However, if your raven informant is right… when Odin ventures on Mirmir's well, we'll have him."

Loki made a face. "You do realize that this means that Odin is unlikely to trade your man for any treasure? We'll have to seize him from them. It does leave us with a useful horn."

Liz sighed. "So where is this well?"

"It is at the root of Yggdrasil that spreads itself deep into the lands of the frost giants. We can travel there at will, whereas the place where your Jerry is now is not one that we could reach. Odin will travel with some force, but we will be there before him."

"Just so long as Jerry doesn't find himself as the meat in the sandwich."

"What is a sandwich?" asked Loki.

Eric Flint Dave Freer

Pyramid Power

The first night on the branch had been the worst night of Jerry's experience. The early hours were just terrifying, with only the sounds of the relentless wind and the moving branches-and things that passed in the night. Something jumped right over him, touching the rope and nearly plucking him into space.

After that it grew quieter and colder. Even with fur over-trousers and a knitted jerkin-type thing that might have been designed for Icelandic fishermen, Jerry was cold. Long before morning he'd untied the rope and huddled into a tight little shivering ball under the blue cloak, in the middle of the branch. The cloak was fortunately a thick weave, oiled and pretty windproof, or he would have died of exposure before dawn. He even resorted to scratching the rune that he was fairly sure was Loki's name on the bark.

Maybe that, or the wind dying down kept him alive. The sky was beginning to pale when he thought of the apple in his pocket. Heaven knew he didn't feel much like eating, but it might just help.

A tiny piece was all he could manage to bite. It might be little furry from his pocket, but it had kept very well. And it did have miraculous properties, warming him like a shot of over-proof whiskey. Warmed him enough to be standing and tied back on to his rope when he spied a couple of cold-looking warriors on the cliff-edge perhaps a hundred and thirty yards away peering at him.

He stood still, except for the shivering-but they probably wouldn't see that from so far off. Eight more days and nights of this?

Ratatosk arrived just after sunup. He spat out a cheekfull of nuts. He also had a tiny skin flask, perhaps a quarter of a pint, slung on a red cord over his shoulder. Maybe for a squirrel it was a feast. But oh for an extra-large jelly donut… make that three, and a tall coffee.

"Brisk this morning, isn't it?" said the squirrel rubbing his paws together. "You can eat. The guards have gone back into the little hut at the end of the branch."

"It's very generous of you," said Jerry, looking at the four nuts.

"You're telling me," said Ratatosk. "That's part of my winter store. And in this weather all I want to do is go back to sleep in my hole. It's nice and warm and out of the wind. Cozy."

Jerry realized that the little tree rat was doing it on purpose. "Save it for the eagle and the Nidhogg. I'm half-frozen. I don't know if I can take another night like that."

"Soft," scoffed Ratatosk. "You'll need to toughen up because it looks like we're going to get some sleet." He held out the little flask. "This is water from Urd's well, by the way." He sniggered. "Nidhogg decided Asgard was too busy right now to worry about the Norns. He nearly got one too. They've run off to Mirmir's well. Now. I have to go off and tell the eagle that Nidhogg saw him on high, but he thought he was a runty sparrow. Want anything else?"

A fire, shelter, and the hell out of here, thought Jerry, but what he said was, "More food and drink, I'm afraid. And maybe some more clothes. I was desperately cold last night."

Ratatosk twitched his nose. "There is a knothole a bit further up the branch. The stags go to drink there at night. I'll see what I can do about the rest."

Jerry realized that he'd been there a good twenty hours but had spent most of his time peering toward the cliff, or shivering under the cloak. He'd very carefully not looked down, and he also hadn't looked up or out much.

About fifty yards farther out the great branch divided. A limb went upward and there was a V he could probably shelter in. And out on the outer branches was a great big stag, grazing. So that was what had nearly sent him over the edge last night. Yggdrasil, as he vaguely remembered, had had a good few of them. The tree looked big enough for a whole herd. Well, he'd sworn off squirrel but venison was sounding good, even raw, if not as appealing as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Of course, the fact that the stags were not small and he was unarmed, and, unlike Liz, totally inexperienced at any form of hunting, did make the chances of venison nearly as remote as the peanut-butter sandwich.

When a squall of mixed sleet and rain came along, as Ratatosk had predicted, Jerry untied himself and retreated to the V. There was a deeper groove there than he'd realized, and it was virtually out of the wind. Though he hadn't meant to, he fell asleep. He was awakened by the squirrel tweaking his nose and shaking droplets off his damp fur onto his face. "Move. The rain is nearly over."

So Jerry moved, sleepily, and then woke very, very suddenly when he lost his footing on the wet bark and nearly disappeared over the edge. His heart was still doing about four hundred beats to the minute when he reached the rope, tied himself on, and prepared to act dead again. He even had a chance to take a handful of sleet to suck before anyone came along the cliff edge.

There turned out to be one fortunate aspect to the situation. The cliff, which to Jerry's non-outdoorsman eyes looked slightly higher than Everest, obviously caused a lot of updraft. That, in turn, made the tree-branch a place that was intermittently bathed in misty cloud as the air cooled and the water vapor condensed out of it. That meant he could at least sit for a while, hidden.