The Quest for Valhalla

Chapter 32

“Sam, I don’t feel so good,” Nina complained as she ran her dainty fingers through the moist hair line of her forehead and temples. Casually her body fell against him. Her white cotton shirt clung to her back and chest, drenched in perspiration, even in the cold of the season.

Sam tried not to express the true extent of his concern, but when she closed her tired eyes, he glanced up at Gunnar and Eldard who carried equally worried looks. The four of them were aboard the ‘Teufelchen’, a private boat Nina had chartered to take them to the Walhalla via the Danube from Regensburg to the town of Donaustauf, where the majestic marble structure beamed. It sat atop a hill rising from the banks of the Danube, like a silent sentinel of heroes.

Her relationship with Dave Purdue came in handy, even Sam had to admit. The allowance her boyfriend gifted her by means of a platinum credit card in her name, had served as funding for their urgent mission, with added help from another Purdue lackey named Frida McKay who facilitated visas in an astonishingly quick, and less than legal way if the money was right. They had to find the legendary Hall of Odin before the Order of the Black Sun could invade the sacred place and claim the devastating destructive power locked inside for their own nefarious goals.

Of course the Brotherhood had its own affluent benefactors, both private and corporate in Europe, Asia, America, and even the Balkan States. There were numerous companies who did not want to see their cozy world of capitalism and power toppled. Ensuring that Valhalla and its dreadful demon captive remained concealed from both belief and known topography, The Brotherhood was thus funded generously.

This was a small excursion by their standards, just an unassuming trip for four people who had to keep an eye on the enemy. Such an undertaking would hardly constitute a formal expedition request, and so Dr. Gould thought it best to pay for it herself. While they trekked according to Sam’s visions, the rest of their fellowship endeavored to strike at the head of the serpent, hoping to thwart its evil intentions once and for all. They were adamant to destroy the den of the red haired demoness and all within, uprooting her foothold on the quest for Valhalla and for good measure, obliterate her minions. If they could kill her in the process, they would commemorate it with an extravagant celebration.

Nina suddenly jumped up and bolted toward the railing on the starboard side of the vessel, where she leaned over and vomited profusely into the calm glassy water of the river.

“Go away!” she shouted when she heard Sam rush to help her. “I don’t want you to see me puke, for fucks sake!”

Sam stopped in his tracks and looked at the two bikers. They looked serious and quite sick themselves. Their rough ponytails lashed in the considerable breeze that swept over the deck and their eyes were bloodshot and saggy behind their shades, from where they leered at him. Sam gestured questioningly and Gunnar motioned with his head for the journalist to join him on the far side of the deck, one flight up. The stunning scenery around them, the green long grass fields and the soft glimmer of the water in the weak sunlight, could not cheer them up.

In the hard gusts of wind that battered their hair and faces, tugging wildly at their shirts, the two men looked down on the frail frame of the pretty historian.

“Sam, I don’t know what they implanted in Nina’s arm, but it is not a tracker, my friend. It is something… I think… organic?” Gunnar guessed and looked to the handsome dark eyed journalist for an opinion.

“Organic? Why do you say that?”

“Look, we checked, remember? Nothing. Then I had Tomi get me a small metal detector, like a scanner… that didn’t show anything either. All I can think is, by the looks of her, her system has been contaminated,” the Sleipnir leader suggested, fighting off the loose hair strands that slapped against his face as he spoke softly enough for Nina not to hear and loud enough to brave the hissing of the wind.

Sam swallowed hard, “Contaminated by what? A virus?” Then the most dreadful of thoughts slammed into his psyche and his heart ached momentarily at the idea. “Oh god, don’t tell me they infected her with HIV!”

Gunnar did not look as alarmed as Sam figured he ought to have had. He shook his head.

“It would have been a fucking evil thing to do, but I don’t think that is what they did. The symptoms are too severe already, which has me thinking that it must be something very dangerous, something that rips through a human body like it means to, hey,” Gunnar said as he wiped his hair from his face. His eyes looked past Sam into the background. Slapping Sam on the arm, the biker gestured at the wonderful vision ahead. It was the splendid Parthenon-like Walhalla emerging from behind the trees. Bright white and stately it greeted the travelers from the hillside as the ‘Teufelchen’ pulled into the boat landing. From beneath them, they heard Nina’s voice, “Look! We’re here, lads!” Her cry sounded significantly stronger than a few minutes before when she was peaked and weak.

Steps amounting to approximately 360, give or take a few leaps, ushered them up to the leviathan memorial for German-speaking achievers. It was a strange quest for the group, because they were acting on one vision, but still had no idea where to go once they entered the grand halls and corridors of Walhalla’s brilliant architecture. Sam had not had any subsequent dreams and they were still befuddled by the horses he had seen in his last vision. What it meant, not one of them could decipher. Yet.

He was very aware, though, of the compound in his veins. It constantly battered him with migraines and he suffered from nightmares of the sinister variety. Now that he saw the place from his vision in living color, he felt overwhelmed.

Inside the magnificent monument erected by King Ludwig I in 1842, the party of four seekers walked in absolute awe of their surroundings. Sam led them along the oddly familiar path of the vision horses up to where the two split up.

“Jesus, it’s going to take us a week to read through all these stones, man,” Eldard moaned as his eyes scanned the vast layout of the building and its seemingly countless tributes, all lined against the walls and placed ornately on marble and decorative stone features.

“I know, but what choice do we have?” Nina said, dwarfed next to him. “Wait!” she exclaimed suddenly. Motioning to them to stay put, Nina went in search of some tourist information booth where she could acquire a pamphlet or printed guide to all the historical figures honored within the tall walls.

While she was absent, the men could discuss her. Sam nervously chewed his lip as she walked away, “I don’t like not knowing what is ailing her. Couldn’t we get her to a doctor for blood tests?”

“We could, I suppose, but what do you think is going to happen if they find something illegal or suspicious in her platelets?” Gunnar whispered. “They’re fucking Nazis, Sam.”

Eldard nodded in agreement while giving a gawking security guard an intimidating look.

“I get it, Gunnar, but the longer we don’t know what this is in her system, the closer she gets to dying from it!” Sam whispered hard, his frustration evident. “Do you seriously want to tell me your extensive organization doesn’t have any doctors working for you?”

“Shut up. Here she comes,” Eldard reported as Nina approached with a smile, guide in hand.

“We’ll pick this up later,” Sam assured his two male accomplices.

“Okay, I have a list of names here. Sam, you say the horses stopped here?” she asked, paging to the section where this particular hall was listed. Sam nodded, but his head was somewhere else, somewhere where he could get Nina a doctor that would not report any suspicious compounds discovered slowly killing his friend.

“I have been thinking about the vision,” Gunnar said as he stood behind Nina, reading the names over her shoulder. “There is a reason Sam saw horses, specifically. I think we’d have to look for anything equestrian, any figures represented here who had something to do with horses.”

Eldard and Nina shot him a confused glance.

“What?”

Eldard answered, “You do realize that most of these lads here were horsemen, Gunnar?”

Nina chuckled at the boyish exchange of face-pulling the two big men gave one another.

“One wore a crown, correct? So we have to look for a king, I suppose,” Nina said softly.

“There!” Eldard pointed at a name on the printed list. Being the archivist and scribe of the Scottish faction of the organization, he knew a thing or two about ancient history, particularly that of ancient Britain. He continued before she could ask, “King Hengist. He was a 5th Century Anglo-Saxon king, a heathen. Worshipped Odin and Freya. Hengist and his brother, Horsa, these lads served as mercenaries aiding Vortigern, the a warlord in Britain.”

“So?” Sam asked, clearly impatient.

“So,” Eldard roared just a little, sending a jolt through the security guard who still watched him with quick unobtrusive glances, “One horse had a crown, the other not, just like the two brothers. And so…” he deliberately mocked Sam’s lack of patience as well as his lack of historical knowledge, “the two horses in your vision has to be these two. It’s all in their names — Hengist means ‘stallion’ and Horsa…”

“Means ‘horse’!” Nina snapped her fingers.

“That is correct, my dear Dr. Gould,” Eldard flashed her his warm smile again.

“Okay, so to save time, let’s check out both of their plaques at the same time and see if they say anything about Valhalla,” Gunnar suggested and immediately he sauntered over to where Hengist was said to be.

Sam took Nina gently by her arm and as they located Horsa’s memorial, he whispered, “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine, Sam. Really. Just a bit under the weather. Fuck knows what those freaks did to my arm. All the more reason to do this,” she reassured him, placing her hand upon the hand he held her arm with. She looked deep into Sam’s eyes and she could see how troubled he was by her condition.

“I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you, Nina. Just do me a solid and go see a doctor after this little trip, alright?” he implored. She perceived intense sincerity from him and elected not to spoil the moment with some jesting remark. Instead, she simply nodded and rubbed his hand.

“I think we found something,” they heard Gunnar exclaim. He showed them the wording of the plaque and pointed out where it represented an ancient code, only taught to very few Nordic tribes. The Brotherhood and Sleipnir itself possessed four members who were taught this method — and Eldard was one of them. The gentle giant smiled proudly. He took the book from Nina and noted the code vertically on the edge of the page. After some scrutiny, he came to the conclusion that the code revealed a succession of numbers in three groups:

“Great. What are they?” Sam asked, genuinely curious.

“They might be coordinates?” Gunnar answered, shrugging and looking at the others for their opinion. Nina felt her temperature rise, but she said nothing for fear of digressing from the task at hand should she admit that her health was indeed failing rapidly. In her growing fever her eyes saw the numbers dancing before her. Her eyes burned and her vision blurred on the last number sequence.

‘Why do I know this? I’ve seen this somewhere,’ she thought to herself, while repressing her rising discomfort for the sake of her companions. Like a bolt of psychic lightning the number flashed in her reminiscence, written in red upon a rock by a river. Nina staggered backward, her eyes fluttering. Gunnar caught her, but she recovered quickly and laughed affectedly, “I’m such a clutz! Fell over my own damn feet.”

They laughed with her, but Gunnar could feel her skin scorch his. He knew it was imperative that they get to a medical professional soon, even if just to determine what she was afflicted with. In her clouded mind, she tried her best to retrieve the memory of the rock and the writing, but it eluded her every time she attempted to peer further than the short replay of what she did remember.

In her current state, it would be exceedingly taxing to assemble any sense anyway, as her head grew heavy as granite under the force of the impending blackout. Nina collapsed suddenly, hitting the shiny floor with a thump at the feet of her companions. Her cheekbone cracked under the gravity of her fall and she submitted to the gathering darkness while her ears convinced her that, overhead, she could hear the whinny of horses and the restless clopping of hooves.