"Edmond Hamilton - The Monsters of Juntonheim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

You can rest in Asgard. Jarl Keith. she said. And you have nothing to fear from my people.

I do not fear, I answered thickly, but my dazed mind makes me unhappy. Are you people really the
old gods?

Gods, she repeated. I do not understand you, Jarl Keith. There are no gods except the three Norns
and their mother, Wyrd, the fates whom we worship.

I clenched my teeth and stared straight ahead. If they weren't the ancient Norse gods, why did they give
themselves, their city, the lands around them, the names I had found in the legends? On the other hand, it
couldn't be a fake, for they seemed genuinely bewildered by me and my questions. Naturally they might
have been fairly recent immigrants to this weird blind spot, perhaps the tenth or fifteenth generation. In
that case, they wouldn't be immortals, of course, and there would be a perfectly reasonable explanation
for their names and those of their city and surroundings. But would recent colonists dare the vengeance
of their gods by taking their names? I had to change that question when another thought struck me. Even
if the colony were thousands of years old, there would still be some remembrance of the Aesir the old
gods! But these people worshiped the Norns and their mother, Wyrd, which meant they were not gods
and did not regard the Aesir as supernatural beings!


Defeatedly I stopped thinking when we reached the rainbow bridge. Five hundred feet long, it consisted
of brilliantly painted slabs of stone, laid across two huge arched beams of massive, silvery metal. Far
beneath this giddy span, the green sea rolled between the promontory and the island, Asgard. My hair
stood up in fright as we rode our horses up the arch. Their hoofs clattered on the stone, proving the
solidity of the bridge. But I shrank from looking over either side, for there were no railings or low walls.
But neither the Aesir nor their horses showed apprehension.


Bifrost Bridge hung in the sky like a rainbow frozen into stone. And I, Keith Masters, with Thor, Frey
and Freya of the old Aesir, was riding across it into Asgard, the mythical city of the gods!




Chapter IV. Odin Speaks


The bridge ended in a massive guard-house of gray stone, built sheer on the precipitous edge of Asgard.
The only entrance to the city beyond was by an arched way through the fort, which was, barred by
metal gates. But as our horses clattered over the stupendous bridge, a guard blew a long, throbbing call
on a great horn that hung in a sling.


Our horses paused. Warily I glanced down into the abyss and looked at the island more closely. I noted
that in the eastern cliffs was a deep fiord with a narrow entrance, in which floated several dozen ships.
Dragon-ships like those of the old Vikings, they were forty to eighty feet long, with brazen beaks on their
bows and sails furled and oars stacked. From the fiord, a steep path led upward to the plateau.


In answer to the blast on the horn, a tall, lordly man in gleaming mail and helmet came out on the tower