The horse was out from its constricting walls now, clattering out on to a great bridge that sprang through the air—what air this could be in the world below, Hermoth did not know. He was passing ghosts now, shades that looked anxiously at him, aware of the clatter of the hooves, unlike their own silent passage. They were insignificant ghosts, pale men and women, children, not ghosts chosen for Valhalla or the groves of Frey. And at the bottom of the bridge there, there were gates.
As Sleipnir tore towards them they swung slowly shut. Hermoth stooped, whispered encouragement in the ear of his steed.
A clenching of muscles, a leap so high it seemed they would strike the lower surface of Hel itself. The gates were behind them, the baffled guardians gaping in their track.
This time it was a wall, a wall that ran up, or so it seemed, to the sky that was not there. Yet there was a crack, a tiny crack, at the top. Too small for Sleipnir, too small for Hermoth. Hermoth did not need to be told that this was magic. He drew rein, cantered up, stopped, dismounted. Beat with his massive knuckles on the stone wall, beat till his knuckles were bloody, ignoring the pain, as he always did.
A voice from the other side. “Who is that, that does not beat like a pale ghost from Hel?”
“Hermoth I am, Othin’s boy, Othin’s errand-rider. I come to speak to Balder.”
Another voice, and this one Balder’s, slow and dragging and weary, as if the mouth were filled with mold. “Go home, Hermoth, and tell them: I may not leave unless the whole world weeps for me. And I know. Just as there was one thing that would harm me, so there is one thing that will not weep. Tell them.” And the voice trailed away as if being dragged down some long and dusty corridor.
Hermoth did not hesitate or falter, for such was not his nature. He knew certainty when he heard it. And he had no fear of returning with such a discouraging message. He mounted and turned again to ride back. Thought for a moment. Reached inside his tunic, where he had stowed a black cock from Asgarth, one of Othin’s own breed.
He whipped the knife from his belt, slashed the head from the cockerel, threw first the head, and then the body, with the accuracy of the great ones through the crack between wall and sky.
A moment later he heard a sound through the stone wall, a sound so strong it seemed to make the wall reverberate. A cock crowing. Crowing for dawn, for new life, for resurrection.
Wondering, Hermoth turned to ride back through Helgate and over the Giallar-bridge that divides the Hel-world from the other eight. He did not know what this meant, but he did not think it would be a surprise to Othin.
What was it that Othin had whispered to his dead son on the pyre?
Shef’s head jerked upright, conscious that something was going on outside. His body ran with sweat, he had slept too long. For an instant he thought the shouting must mean that at long last, Ragnhild had come. As she had done once before when he slept in the steam-room. Then his ears caught the sound of exultation, delight, not dismay. They were shouting something. What was it? “The wind, the wind?”
Cuthred was at the door, gripping the handle. The door had stuck, as they often did in the heat, and Shef’s heart thumped for an instant—few worse fates than dying baked in the heat of a steam-bath, but it had been known to happen. Then the door snapped open, and the light and cold air streamed in.
Cuthred took two paces out and leapt over the railing into the water below. Shef followed him, gasping as the bitter-cold water closed over his head. After his experience on the ice Shef had thought he would never willingly enter cold water again, but steam-baths changed your mind. The two men swam together to the ladder that led out to the platform where they had hung their clothes, climbed out, gaping at the horde of running men who seemed to have appeared from nowhere.