Part 22 (1/2)

”There are a hundred more on the two s.h.i.+ps,” Maya told Odin. ”Oh, Jack, we have Nea to thank for most of this. Nea and Wolden. After you and your men left, Nea took her Kalis, as she called them, and some of her people. They came through the barrier and made their way to the Old s.h.i.+p. They surprised the few guards that Grim Hagen had left. They freed me and the other prisoners. Then we got our little army together and came to help. Without Nea, it could never have been done.” She buried her face on Odin's shoulder. ”Oh, Jack, when we were kids together we used to laugh at her.”

He patted her shoulder comfortingly, for he could think of nothing to say.

He had seen soldiers like Nea--cast-offs from their home-towns gallantly going to their deaths. It was something that he could not understand. And being honest, he had nothing to say.

Clean-up was begun. Jack Odin left Val of the Lorens to take over. Then he rushed to the stairway where last he had seen Gunnar. The fires had burned out. The steps were blackened. A few smoking corpses were still upon the stairs.

Odin's face was covered with blood. His strength was nearly gone. But he went up the stairs two steps at a time, his spent breath whistling through his b.l.o.o.d.y nostrils.

There at the top of the stairs he found Gunnar. And Gunnar's dead lay thick about him.

Gunnar had moved himself to a sitting position against one of the railings.

His chin was upon his great chest and his eyes were closed as though he slept. But when Odin knelt beside him, he opened one eye and looked up with a twisted smile upon his broad face. One side of his face was barely recognizable. Gunnar was badly burned. He had been thrust through at least a dozen times. But Gunnar lived.

”Eh, Nors-King,” he whispered, sitting up straight as Odin steadied him in his arms. ”It was a long time to wait. And I thought sometimes that I would not make it. But I held on, for I knew you would come. Oh, it has been a long wait--and it took all my strength.”

”As fast as I could,” Odin answered in a choking voice. ”As fast as I could, O Chief of the Neeblings. For Ragnarok is past, and the tree of life still reaches into the stars. The twilight is past and new suns and new earths are quickened. And Gunnar still lives.”

”Part of him.” Gunnar blinked his good eye. ”What happened down there? Oh,”

he gasped in pain, ”to have missed the fighting!”

”Maya lives and I live. Ato is wounded. Wolden came at the last to help us, Gunnar. We won. And I have killed Grim Hagen with my bare hands, even as I promised.”

”Good, Nors-King. I knew always that one of us would kill him. Oh, it was a grand fight. But Gunnar will sharpen his sword no more. There was a ford near my father's house where the clear water ran fresh over the stones.

That might help me. But it is far away. And my father too. You tell Freida that we did not make the long trip in vain.”

”If I can,” Odin promised.

”Oh, you can. For we have won the stars and nothing is beyond us--except youth, maybe.”

Gunnar closed his eyes and slept for a few minutes while Odin held him in his arms. Then Gunnar awoke.

He smiled at Jack Odin and murmured:

”To awake on the sea of the stars--”

Jack Odin had heard Gunnar sing those words before. They belonged to an old Norse lullaby that Gunnar's mother had crooned to him when he was a little boy.

Then Gunnar died.

And Odin knelt over him, tears streaming down his broken face.

CHAPTER 19

Six months had pa.s.sed since the battle.

The city of the violet dome was rebuilt. The ashes of the dead had been strewn upon the mossy plains. The two s.h.i.+ps now stood in peace and gazed at each other across the expanse of moss and gra.s.s that had replaced the cinders left from the fighting.