Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 09:04:20 -0700 Reply-To: Hank Wyckoff Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Hank Wyckoff Subject: (19A/30) Reading the Endtrails -- HL Posting This chapter has been split in order to follow the maximum line rule. The Cycle of Axer Carrick, Part 4 Reading the Endtrails (19A/30) A continuation of: When the Veil is Lifted The Duplicity Frostmelt Axer made one of his special drinks: Guiness over Bass over Absolut. Sure, the vodka mixed with the Bass pretty quickly, and it was tasteless, but it would give a hell of a kick after a while. Heimdall was pretty pleased as he looked at Axer. "I'll have to say you're a great bartender. I haven't had anything this good in a long time." He took a sip and sighed deeply, "This is *really* good." Just to be fair to Axer, Heimdall told him what he had told Nick and Tracy -- during that time, Tracy took a cat nap and Nick tried unsuccessfully to talk to Nat. Nat absolutely refused to talk to him, choosing instead to spend her time at a table, staring at the corner. Heimdall finished giving Axer the background information and then looked around, "Hey -- I thought this place thrived at night! Where is everyone?" Axer nodded over to the door, "Didn't you know? Whenever we have a little get-together, LaCroix closes the place down -- he calls it 'inventory time'. Nobody seems to mind." "Hmm..." Heimdall drained his imperial pint glass and reached for a pitcher of beer that Axer had just set down. "Oh well." While he rested his throat with some more beer, Tracy woke back up and Nick drifted on over. It worked out rather neatly, because Heimdall was ready to finish his story. Although Nick and Tracy had threatened to pin him with the murders, he didn't seem to mind. Taking another draw of beer, he continued where he had left off at the station. "Like I was saying, Kerry and I were up north. North of the Arctic Circle..." ============================================================ Heimdall's Tale ============================================================ ...and we were making sure that the natives wouldn't treat us like fresh meat ready to be smoked. Kerry sure had a real knack for that skill -- keeping from being smoked, that is. We stayed with them for a week, resting our feet from our most recent road march. We must have walked for a full week there, so we really deserved it. Once a week passed, we both started to get cabin fever. That was when we started to get social with the natives. I don't have much trouble picking up a language -- that's just the way I am. But Kerry -- he was a wonder. He was able to make his needs be known from the start, and after a week, he was having conversations with them. Of course, it was child talk, but hell -- I challenge you to pick up a primitive language in a week! It took a month for me to catch up to Kerry's skill. By this time, we were respected because both of us were crazy enough to kill polar bear and walrus. Sure, we weren't the only ones, but it was still a big deal back then, so it kept us useful. It also kept us fed. In retrospect, I really wish that Kerry hadn't learned their language so much, because he started nosing around about their rune tattoos. One thing led to another, and he started night-dreaming, looking up at the stars, and talking about stuff that made no sense to me. Stuff like 'starry wisdom', 'smoking mirror', and 'the branches of the tree'. Maybe it was the aliens that did it to him. I still don't know. All I know is that he was touched by some sort of lunatic. It was a few weeks later, when we were both drowsy from eating a big feast, that he told me, "There's a cave not far from here that I want to explore. The People say that the Gods left great treasures in there. I want to see it for myself." "Don't you think there's a good reason they'd leave it alone?" I asked. I hadn't heard about this cave, but I figured that legends were better off left as legends instead of sad facts. "Don't you want to find out for yourself?!" he stood up and ranted at me. "This is *wisdom*!" Wisdom is not a good word to use around me. I had more than enough with wisdom. I obey my common sense, and that's good enough for me, and I told him so. Kerry sulked on his own, and didn't talk to me for a week. Time heals, though, and he forgot about his little snit. He even seemed to forget about it, and when he made another suggestion, it was that we go out and hunt some caribou. It was that time of the year, and I was all for it. We went out with a team of hunters, so I thought this would be hunting as usual. And you know, it was. We went out and killed more caribou than we did in a long time, even on the way up. We were on the way back when a storm buried us in snow, and Kerry and I were separated from the rest of the group. They moved on, figuring it was better to reach the village with the meat than to risk dying in search for us, and risk leaving the meat out in the field where nobody would be able to find it before it was too late. There wasn't any wood out here, so Kerry was starting to fret, but I must have started laughing and told him not to worry. "You know that you can eat this meat raw, you know," I told him. He looked skeptical, so I ate a good chunk of meat just to show him. I came from a culture where we ate raw meat just as much as cooked, so it was like old times for me. We ate our meat and tried to move on, but the storm got worse, and eventually we reached the strangest cave. Most caves are set into the sides of hills and mountains -- this one was a natural cave with a mouth that opened up on flat ground without any mountains in sight. It opened up and sloped gently downwards into the darkness. Kerry looked at me, saying, "You know that it's the only thing we can do now. The cold'll kill us for sure without any fire." I was feeling the chill pretty strongly, so I agreed with him and let him lead the way. Since we didn't have wood on either of us, we had to descend slowly enough to let our eyes adjust as much as possible. Enough light cracked through that it was like walking through a house at night. There's enough light that you can just barely see. The cave sloped downward for about a mile, then reached a man-made door of lead and stone. It looked almost medieval in appearance, and I said so. "This could be almost Roman in design!" But I could find no writing or any other artifact identifying this place. But then again, it was dark in there. Maybe I missed something. I was curious enough to try opening the door myself, but it wouldn't budge. Kerry snickered and opened it himself with great ease, telling me, "It's all in the touch." On the other side of the door was a natural source of light that blinded us for a moment. It came from some minerals that created their own light -- faint by our standards in this room right now, but bright enough to give us headaches and force us to close our eyes a few minutes until our vision returned. When our vision did return, we found ourselves in a great hall. It was like being inside of a great Viking feasting hall, except that instead of wood, it was stone. It was obvious that some group of people invested a great deal of time and energy in carving this room out. It might have even explained the cave, except that I still swear that it looked natural. Not only did it look like a Viking hall by design, but it also was filled with Viking relics and artifacts. The tables set in the center of the from door to wall, the swords and shields set on the walls, the Chief's weapons set against the Head of the Table. It was like I had traveled back in time and entered the feasting hall that I knew so well. I almost expected my Father to stare me in the eye with his own and ask me what I had seen during my observations. But this was empty, and so for me it was like roving through a graveyard. "This is it!" cried Kerry with some bit of mania. "This is the place that the People were talking about! See -- at the far end of the room!" He ran towards the Chief's chair, grabbing a spear. I saw it. Memories flooded back to me, shaking my nerves pretty well. I remember being on my knees somehow as I saw Gungnir, the spear of Odin. This was not his hall, but somehow his spear was here. I scanned the other weapons and saw the other belongings of the Aesir. I saw the bow of Ullr, the hammer of Thor, the swords of Frey, the Axe of Loki, and my own sword. I had either lost it in a bout of drunkenness -- I believed. That was in 1066, when I lay collapsed on an English tavern table. Hadradi died that very night in an unsuccessful raid on the shores of Britain. The king who represented the old order lay dead. No, it's not really important. I was just remembering... By the looks of it, my sword must have been taken, because I can't just forget and leave it in a place thousands of miles from England, to a place I'd never been. --------------------------------------------------------- Henry Wyckoff -- wyckoff@ag.arizona.edu Q: Want to know how to conserve bandwitdth? A: We all stay off the web and watch the servers shut down. =========================================================================