And, of course, they flew on wings far too small to support them.

  “Duck and keep going!” David shouted. “April, your sword!”

  I bent close to the horse’s neck, yanked Etain’s sword from my belt and held it straight up into the air.

  It wasn’t enough. With a high-pitched screech the gargoyles reached us. One landed on my bent back, sank its needle teeth into my skin. I screamed, “Get it off, get it off!”

  Our three horses were rump to rump now, crowded together, my legs bumping into David’s on one side, Christopher’s on another. The fourth and fifth horses pranced nervously on their lead. We were a tight mass of sweating horses and freaking humans.

  I felt a horrible tear through my skin. The gargoyle was gone. David had ripped it off. I sat up, whacked at another one flying straight for my throat. Etain’s sword cut through the gray flesh with ease. It fell with a thud to the ground.

  Another came at me. I saw David swing his sword and the gargoyle’s head dropped clean off. Christopher twisted in his saddle. “David! I can’t reach it.”

  A horrible animal scream! A gargoyle had landed heavily on the fourth horse and was sinking its teeth, vampirelike, into the horse’s neck. The horse swung its head violently but couldn’t dislodge the beast that was drawing blood through twenty tiny needles, causing twenty tiny dark rivers to flow. It tried to rear but couldn’t, too close packed to the other horses. Christopher started to dismount. “Don’t!” David ordered. “Let the horse go.

  Cut the lead and move on.”

  “Damn!” With a slash, Christopher cut loose the forth horse.

  Still blindfolded, completely panicked, the horse backed away from us. It seemed to be what the gargoyles wanted. Because like a swarm of high-pitched buzzing bees, the remaining ten or so descended on the stranded animal, ignoring us.

  What luck for us. “Let’s go, let’s go!” David ordered. We did, not at a run, too dangerous with the horses unable to see and our not knowing what was coming next. But not at a stately pace, either.

  “April, you okay?”

  I nodded. My back burned with pain and I could feel the blood trickling, but I was alive. And we’d survived Hel’s first test.

  “Yeah.”

  Until the next obstacle Hel throws our way, I thought.

  We rode on. The gargoyle-things didn’t follow. I kept glancing at the rock ceiling, squinting in the almost dark, but saw none. Small lamps, not unlike those used in Baldwin’s kingdom, were set in the walls at intervals of about ten feet now.

  If Hel meant to unnerve unwelcome visitors by making them wander through the almost unremitting dark, she was succeeding. At least as far as I was concerned.

  “David?” I said. My voice echoed strangely off the walls.

  “Do we have any idea of where we’re going? I mean, I’m assuming this path takes us to Hel. But what do we do if we come to a break in the road? Do we have any idea of which way to go? Do we have any idea of how big this place is?”

  David’s reply came low. “No.”

  “We’re intrepid travelers, April,” Christopher said. “We’re just all carefree and jolly. When we come to a fork in the road, why, we’ll just flip a coin or something.”

  I decided not to ask any more questions.

  “Whoa!” David suddenly reined in his horse. It obeyed easily. It didn’t seem to sense the suddenly new environment, didn’t hear the howls or smell the feces and blood and death.

  The scene before us was like something from an Hieronymous Bosch painting come to life — masses of men and women writhing in agony, limbs distorted, mouths open and howling, guts spilling and blood flowing.

  “Great,” Christopher said. “We go through that or we go back. Guess which I’m going to suggest we do. I’m not overly fond of the idea of becoming a hamburger.”

  David stared ahead, like he was trying to see something below or beyond the scene. “It’s not real,” he said, but he didn’t sound so sure. “It’s meant to frighten us back. But I don’t think it’ll hurt us.”

  “Are you sure?” I whispered.

  “No. But no one’s noticed us yet. Why? We’re only a few feet away. It came out of nowhere. The horses aren’t scared.”

  “Well, that works for me, General, doesn’t it?” Christopher sneered. “The horses know best. Let’s just wade right through this madhouse, this debauched slaughterhouse. No problem!”

  I thought about it, though. “I think David’s right, Christopher.

  I really want to go back and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we’re kind of committed here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m just keeping my eyes straight ahead.”

  “Me, too,” I said. I’d already seen certain acts of brutality I sincerely wished I had not seen,

  “Follow me. Be ready,” David said. He looked as sick as I felt.

  The passage was psychological torture. Watching, trying not to watch, afraid we’d be pulled into the mess. But we passed through the scene unnoticed. No one reached out a bloody hand to yank me off my horse. No one — nothing —

  attacked. We were passing calmly through a living panorama of horror and abuse. A tableau of psychotic exploits. A ride from a lunatic’s amusement park, complete with Smell-o-Vision and sound effects in Dolby Surround Sound. It succeeded in frightening me deeply.

  When the last horse had stepped beyond the scene it disappeared. It was gone. Just vanished.

  “Good call, David,” Christopher said. Sincerely.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I think. But it’s been far too easy so far. I don’t like it. The worst is yet to come. Gotta be.”

  “David? Can you please hold back the happy act? Okay?

  Just this once?”

  Chapter

  XXV

  We were now back in a dungeonlike place. Along the walls hung instruments of torture: belts and straps; manacles and chains.

  “After that carnival back there, I am so not in the mood for an S&M joke,” I warned Christopher.

  “You know what, April? Me, neither,” he admitted.

  On a long wooden table lay a collection of what looked like butchering implements. Meaning, very large knives, some with long, skinny blades, like for cutting a fillet, others more like hatchets and machetes.

  An Iron Maiden against one wall. A rack. And over another table, a very large, sharp blade on a pendulum.

  “We obviously don’t want to stay here,” David muttered.

  “Let’s go.”

  We did. Moved quickly through the chamber and into the next area. A wide, open space at the center of which was a massive pit of bubbling stuff, glowing like red-hot lava, emitting spurts of steam and shots of flame.

  And suddenly, up out of the pit of fire and brimstone, stumbling out of the flames unburned — impossible — eleven men. Or what were once men.

  “Freakin’ Night of the Living Dead,” Christopher hissed. “I Married a Zombie. Get me out of here. I have seen enough.”

  The troop of figures stumbled toward us, beseeching, moaning. On each one the flesh was eaten away in places.

  Each one emitted the sickly-sweet stench of infection and decay.

  One man’s stomach was a gaping and ragged hole, intestines spilling out and down his thighs. Another was missing both arms at the shoulders. A third man had been scalped almost down to the eyebrow ridge, the entire top half of his skull cut away. I’d heard the phrase “the walking wounded” used to describe people with a lot of emotional baggage. These men were actual walking wounded. There was no way, no way they could survive these wounds. Unless, of course, Hel was keeping them alive. Another one of her games of torture.

  “What do they want?” I whimpered.

  “They want us to put them out of their misery.” David dismounted and held Galahad’s sword at the ready, two hands around the hilt. Christopher and I dismounted, too. I don’t know why. “Can we?”

  “We’re going to try.”

  With a shout David charged the first man in the pack. He didn’t falter or fall back. Just kept coming. There was a sickening sound as the sword slid through wet, oozing flesh. And as it came away, the new wound simply closed up.

  Galahad’s sword had no effect on these men.

  David stumbled. The rotting man shoved him aside with a supernatural strength. David crashed to the ground and lay there, stunned. The men continued toward me and Christopher.

  Moaning, groaning, whimpering, their scabbed and sore-covered hands reaching for us. If Galahad’s sword couldn’t stop them on their desperate march, what could?

  Etain’s sword. Maybe.

  But before I could find the nerve to reach for the sword, Christopher yanked me aside. “Watch out!”

  The horses! David’s and Christopher’s and the fifth horse, but not mine, were being pulled toward the pit! Their blindfolds had been ripped off and we could see their eyes wide and rolling; hear their frantic neighing, see their twelve hooves planted firmly but to no avail.

  “No!” I shouted. I reached for the tail of David’s horse, but it slipped through my hands.

  And then Christopher grabbed me by the shoulders and forcibly turned me away so that I wouldn’t see. But I heard.

  Horrible, horrible screaming and then nothing but the bubbling red stuff spitting and cracking.

  I pulled away from Christopher.

  Oh, God, the men were still coming! They were so close now, the stench unbearable. My stomach heaved, I gagged but stood my ground. I yanked the enchanted elfin sword from my belt. Pushed a suddenly frozen Christopher out of the way. The first man was only an arm’s length away. It was now or never.

  “April, no!” David yelled, coming to.

  With a grunt that came from my feet I slashed at the first “man.” His body fell a second later.

  The other men surged forward.

  And then it struck me: Was this a crime or an act of mercy?

  Self-defense, April, another voice inside me cried out.

  I lunged. Again and again. Eleven in all.

  I shut down. April went away.

  I watched as flesh suddenly melted away, like in time-lapse photography, and became muscle and tissue and ligament and tendon. Watched as that all melted away to become bone.

  Watched as the pile of skeletons was reduced to a smaller pile of dust.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “You had to do it.” David.

  Christopher. “Yeah. If it hadn’t been for you, April…”

  “Don’t say it,” I said. “Don’t say anything.”

  Chapter

  XXVI

  We walked on. Christopher led my horse, the only one who’d survived. Still, Hel was nowhere to be seen.

  “Biding her time,” David said grimly. “She’ll be here.”

  I tried to keep my mind focused on the ultimate task. Rescue Thor and Baldur. Get out of there.

  David and Christopher remained silent. Before long, we found ourselves returned to the place we’d never thought we’d see again. Hel’s “museum.”

  A collection of massive, craggy, blue-tinted blocks of ice.

  Like tall chunks of iceberg. Twelve on the left, twelve on the right.

  And in each block, visible through a smooth piece of slanted surface, a god. Sometimes a creature we couldn’t identify.

  This was Hel’s cemetery for the undead, a graveyard for the barely living.

  “Do we get them all out?” I asked.

  “No time. We do what we came to do, no more. Later, well, we’ll see who else we can save.”

  I started to protest. But David was right. I was being sentimental. We had no time.

  “Hah. When hell freezes over,” Christopher mused. “Not so impossible, after all.”

  “We get Thor out first,” David said. “Then Baldur.”

  “Hang on,” I said to Baldur as we walked past. Baldur was dressed like a wealthy Viking. He was tall, of course, built like a rock, and handsome. Hel herself had told us he was Odin’s favorite, most beloved of the gods of Asgard. Baldur had said no to Hel’s advances. She’d taken away his sword and locked him away in ice. Maybe she’d thought he was only playing hard to get.

  We stopped before Thor’s icy prison.

  “Do you think he can hear us?” I said, looking into Thor’s rigid face.

  “Let’s hope so,” Christopher said. “I don’t want to have to throw down with this guy. Something tells me I’d lose.”

  Oh, yeah. Thor was huge, god-sized, bigger by far than Baldur. Bigger even than Loki in his most pumped and ferocious state. His arms were bare and had to be several feet around.

  His legs, encased in dark leather boots, could have been pilings for a house. His hair was long and wild and red-blond.

  Calvin Klein would have sold his soul to get that hair under contract.

  Yes. Probably Christopher would lose.

  David started to hack at the block of ice with Galahad’s sword.

  “Get ready to grab him when the ice breaks,” David grunted. “He’s got to be weak. His muscles broken down. And he doesn’t have Mjolnir yet.”

  “Do gods have actual muscles?” Christopher asked, but he braced himself to catch the big god. “Well, it was nice knowing you, kids. This guy falls on me, I’m roadkill.”

  Ice splinters flew through the air. “Watch you eyes,” David cautioned.

  “Let’s just get him on the horse,” I said. “If the horse can hold him. Then we’ll get the other one out.”

  And then, David’s sword cut through the last quarter inch of ice. And with the eerie sound like a lake thawing, Thor half-fell, half-pushed his way through the opening.

  “Look out!”

  David and Christopher braced themselves against the massive weight of the god as first one leg, then the other stepped through the shattered prison and onto the ground.

  “Oh, sh —”

  Christopher and David crashed to their knees, still trying to support Thor from each side.

  “Can he stand?” I asked inanely.

  “I…” The voice was a croak, but a god-sized one. “I can…

  stand. Thanks to these good fellows…”

  Using David’s and Christopher’s shoulders as supports, Thor pushed himself to his full height. And swayed. David climbed to his feet and grabbed Thor’s right arm. His fingers looked like twigs against a tree trunk. Christopher groaned, stood, and grabbed Thor’s left arm.

  “Uh, mighty Thor,” I said, “we have to free Baldur and get out of here, fast. Can you walk? Try to take a step. We have one horse; we lost the others to Hel”

  “Many thanks, good lady. But the mighty Thor will stand on his own feet. Who are you humans who have bravely entered Hel’s domain in order to free me and my fellow god?” he said.

  His voice was already stronger but he didn’t look too steady overall.

  “We’ll explain later,” David said. “But we work with Merlin.

  We’re on your side. Now we have to get Baldur.”

  Still unsteady on his feet, but growing increasingly more used to movement after who knows how long, Thor followed us back to Baldur’s icy prison. He insisted on helping smash the ice with his hands. He was more of a hindrance than a help. But even David didn’t have the heart to ask him to stop. The guy was seriously grateful.

  Finally, we heard the same desperate creak, and with a little help, Baldur broke free.

  Whoever said real men don’t cry is a fool Okay, Thor and Baldur were gods, but they bawled in each other’s arms with joy. “I hate to break up this little love fest,” Christopher said, “but we are going to be fried if we don’t move. Now.”

  David nodded. “Right. Uh, we have to go, er, sirs.”

  Thor and Baldur pulled away from each other and wiped their eyes. “If only I had Mjolnir,” Thor lamented, “I would stand and fight until Hel begged for mercy. And, of course, I would show her none.”

  “If only I had my sword,” Baldur growled.

  “If wishes were horses, fools would ride.” The four of them looked at me. “What I mean is, come on!” I pulled on my horse’s bridle. “Hel could be…”

  And then, there she was.

  Chapter

  XXVII

  I felt her first, a cold dark presence behind me. No mistaking who it was.

  Automatically, the gods turned to face the threat.

  “Thor, Baldur!” David yelled, refusing to turn with them.

  “Don’t look at her face, keep your eyes down.”

  “Oh, crap, I knew this was not a good idea,” Christopher said. Hel.

  A raging, rampaging goddess of death. One half of her body lovely and luscious and enviable. The skin firm and supple, the hair lustrous, the eye bright. The other half of her body, a rotted-out corpse, stuffed with maggots and worms, wet gray flesh hanging in flaps. A goddess capable of reducing men to quivering heaps of desire and loathing. Hel could drive a man crazy in an instant, tortured between all-consuming lust and overwhelming disgust.

  No way could David and Christopher stand and fight and win. Especially when they also had to keep Thor and Baldur safe from Hel’s grasp.

  “Go, go, go!” I screamed. “Don’t look at her, just go!”

  They did. David and Christopher in the lead, with Baldur and Thor stumbling just behind, all four ran, panicked, back toward the Great Diggings.

  Hel didn’t seem to care. For some reason, I was the one she wanted. Just me.

  But first, my horse.

  “I saved this one for myself,” she said gleefully. “I have been watching your progress through my kingdom, waiting for just this moment. And now…”

  With an awful crash, my horse fell. I let go of the lead and jumped back.

  The horse screamed once and was silent.

  “How dare you interfere?” she asked calmly.

  I screamed. Out of control, just screaming now, using words I rarely if ever had used, hurling insults like darts, yelling, yelling, yelling. My face was on fire, my limbs trembling, I just wanted to rip Hel apart with my bare hands, I was losing it.

 

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